The Year In Movies

Forget the Oscars, the box office, the geek buzz off the Internet and the junk that overwhelmed the goodies -- it was "The Mike and Mel Show" that defined 2004 at the movies. Just as the election divided the country into blue states and red states, Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 and Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ -- two gigantic hits -- split audiences right down the middle. You can scarcely find anyone in liberal Hollywood who admits to even seeing The Passion, with its bloody, tortured Jesus and its unapologetic appeal to the religious right. And show me the Republican who'll own up to lending an ear to Moore's political broadside against George W.

If those two movies were the only issue, the story would end right there. But the polarizing effect typified by Fahrenheit and Passion could be felt in every multiplex this year. Red-state movies offered family fare, usually animated, with uncomplicated moral values. And at the box office they won in a landslide.

Blue-state movies, the kind that dominate my Ten Best list, questioned the moral status quo and struggled to hold onto an audience. In the R-rated sexual fireball that is Closer, the Natalie Portman character is asked her opinion of photographs in an art exhibit. "They're reassuring," she answers. "That means they're a lie." Here are ten movies that preferred harder truths.

1) Sideways
Directed by Alexander Payne

Two washouts -- a failed novelist (Paul Giamatti) and a horn-dog actor (Thomas Haden Church) dreading his impending marriage -- hit California wine country, get wasted and pick up two waitresses (Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh). And this I'm calling the best movie of the year? You better believe it. Sideways has it all: Sublime acting; acutely perceptive direction by Alexander Payne, who wrote the model of a script with Jim Taylor; and a way of getting inside the heads of its characters until the details of their obsessions, their language and their coping mechanisms for failure in life and love hold up a mirror for all of us to gaze at our flawed selves. It's the only perfect movie of 2004.

2) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Directed by Michel Gondry

It seems impossible that Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) can keep turning out such innovative scripts, each finding the harsh reality in fantasy. Sunshine, directed with visual wizardry by Michel Gondry, raises the bar by being his most deeply felt work to date. A subtly moving Jim Carrey and a flamboyantly superb Kate Winslet work miracles as ex-lovers who seek medical help to erase each other from their bruised memories. The film juggles so many ideas that it threatens to spin out of control. But watch out -- it sneaks up on you and knocks you flat.

3) Million Dollar Baby
Directed by Clint Eastwood

It sounds like pure cliche: a cranky, no-bull fight trainer (Clint Eastwood) grudgingly takes on a girl boxer (Hilary Swank) with the help of a retired champ (Morgan Freeman). But Eastwood, as actor and director, cuts out every ounce of formula fat and replaces it with unsparing intelligence and rigorous attention to emotional detail. The film hits you like a surprise left hook. And Eastwood's performance nudges past Unforgiven, Tightrope and In the Line of Fire to rank as the best of his career.

4) The Aviator
Directed by Martin Scorsese

You have to look hard to find the fiercely violent rumblings of the director of Raging Bull, Taxi Driver and GoodFellas in this propulsively entertaining biography of eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio, in his most mature and mesmerizing performance). But Martin Scorsese puts his indelible stamp and a fresh spin on this tale of old Hollywood and an obsessive-compulsive aviation tycoon with a visionary's eye on the future. Hughes' tormented genius powers the epic we've been waiting for all year.

5) The Incredibles
Directed by Brad Bird

Red-staters have tried to claim this Pixar animated classic as their own. Screw that. Kiddies may thrill to this tale of a superhero family that comes out of retirement to kick ass. Let them. But writer and director Brad Bird, a gifted and wicked original, pulls in themes of midlife crisis, marital angst and parental dysfunction that give the movie a depth charge you won't find in Shrek 2, Shark Tale or SpongeBob. Only a sequel-begging ending disappoints.

6) Kinsey
Directed by Bill Condon

Red-staters won't go near this potent and provocative biopic about Alfred Kinsey (a never-better Liam Neeson), the researcher who revolutionized America in the 1940s by laying out every kinky detail of the dick-pulling, pussy-licking and acrobatic sex positioning going on in the nation's bedrooms and often right out in public. Laura Linney gives a knockout performance as Dr. K.'s wife ("I never see him since he discovered sex"). Director-writer Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters) takes playfully perverse joy in showing how sexual hypocrisy is still alive and well.

7) Closer
Directed by Mike Nichols

More sex. this time from four gorgeous actors (Julia Roberts, Natalie Portman, Clive Owen, Jude Law) unafraid to tell it like it is. Mike Nichols, working from Patrick Marber's play, orchestrates this sex-swapping quartet like a maestro of twisted eroticism, showing how truth can heal and also hurt like hell. With dialogue that singes the ears, Closer isn't interested in offering comfort to the confused. It wants to sting. And does it ever.

8) Finding Neverland
Directed by Marc Forster

There's a terrific irony in this fact-based tale of Peter Pan author J.M. Barrie (a beautifully nuanced turn by Johnny Depp) being sold as a feel-good fable. Barrie, trapped in a loveless marriage, uses a young widow (Kate Winslet) and her four sons, especially Peter (the superb Freddie Highmore), as a model for his most famous work. The film, directed by Marc Forster (Monster's Ball), is gently and quietly moving. Its power comes not from sentiment but from its compelling grip on loneliness and its effect on more than one lost boy.

9) Kill Bill Vol. 2
Directed by Quentin Tarantino

The Academy will probably never recognize Uma Thurman for her tour de force as the Bride in Quentin Tarantino's gritty and grand tribute to the grind-house fun of action-revenge tales from Hong Kong to Japan. Vol. 2, which supersizes David Carradine's slithery brilliance as Bill, does more than add to 2003's Vol. 1 -- it completes the picture in high style. Tarantino is drunk on the disreputable thrill of movies that aren't supposed to be good for you.

10) Fahrenheit 9/11
Directed by Michael Moore

The biggest documentary moneymaker ever ($120 million) is the blue-state movie of the year. It's also a film with historical, humanist and cinematic value far beyond its brave but futile attempt to boot George W. Bush from the White House. That failure may mean that Moore will lose his bid to see Fahrenheit 9/11 become the first doc to win an Oscar nomination as Best Picture. Come on, you Academy slogs, make a little history, why don't you? Whatever you think of Big Mike, his film is seriously funny and influential. Look at the nonfiction films, from Super Size Me to Control Room, that thrived this year. Moore has put a Woodward-and-Bernstein spin on a neglected form and made docs a cool place to be for film rebels spoiling to be heard.

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