Year’s Best I: Movies

Hey – the end of the year is upon us, and that means it’s time for lists! Lists of the best … I dunno, how ’bout movies, music and books for starters?

Herewith, in my extremely subjective opinion, the best movies of 2004:

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. This story of a couple who resort to extreme measures to extricate each other from their lives is downright haunting. You could say it’s about personal identity: what makes us who we are? Are we atomistic selves existing in isolation from the other, or are we essentially persons-in-relation? Also: if we try to eliminate suffering and loss, do we lose our humanity itself?

Sideways. A road-trip movie for grownups. Any movie that can take characters this unsympathetic and make you care about them is aces in my book. And if this movie doesn’t make you want to go home and enjoy a fine glass of Pinot, nothing will!

Bonus feature: Movies that made a big splash which I didn’t even bother to see: Farenheit 9/11 and The Passion of the Christ. (Incidentally, I still think it’s hard to beat Zefirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth, but for pure Hollywood cheese you can’t do better than The Greatest Story Ever Told. Charlton Heston as John the Baptist! John Wayne as the centurion at the foot of the Cross!! How are you going to beat that??)