By PETER CALDER and RUSSELL BAILLIE
It was, in this part of the world, the year of Whale Rider. But it's not on our list - having seen it about this time last year we named it the best film of 2002, hoping it would encourage readers to go along and see the Great New Zealand Film Of Our Age which opened back in January. Many of you did, as it turned out.
It also worked out for the best, really - the debate between which is a better movie, Whale Rider or The Return of the King, is one that could have gone all night.
Otherwise, the movie year was - at the multiplex at least - one that felt like it had a saggy middle suffering an advanced case of Hollywood sequelitis and superhero-worship.
On the local front, of the few New Zealand films (Toy Love, The Locals, Kombi Nation, Her Majesty), only Whale Rider managed to capture audience imaginations.
But, as this list attests, there were still great movies to be had this year, from all over the genre pool.
1. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Sometimes bigger is just better. Yeah it's a bit long-winded at the ending. Yeah the special effects and scenery - good on ya New Zealand - can tend to, er, dwarf everything else, like the acting. Yeah, if you didn't see the other two you might wonder just what's really going on between Sam and Frodo, or for that matter, Legolas and Gimli. But what a movie. It's the best of the three, arguably better at telling the story's closing episodes than the part of Tolkien's trilogy it springs from. That Jackson bloke improves with each film and clearly deserves a pay rise (oh, right, nice work if you can get it). On The Return of the King, he's not only delivered an exceptional grand finale, he's ensured the LOTR screen trilogy is a classic for the ages.
2. City of God
Fernando Meirelles' rollercoaster ride through life on the mean streets of Rio de Janeiro was a raw, reckless and unforgettably eye-popping film driven by kinetic, swirling camerawork. Rare moments of stylistic showiness were balanced by an extraordinary command of tone. It felt like documentary, but it was more real than real life.
3. The Pianist
Roman Polanski's Cannes Palme d'Or winner (which also earned him a best director Oscar) was a restrained yet harrowing memoir of the Holocaust seen through the eyes of a middle-class Polish Jewish survivor. It had its gutwrenching moments but ultimately reminded us that survival depends on tiny twists of fate. (Now on video/DVD)
4. Far From Heaven
Both homage to and pastiche of the domestic melodramas of its 1950s setting, Todd Haynes' depiction of a corroding marriage had a retro aesthetic sensibility but a fiercely modern intelligence and was driven by a pitch-perfect performance from the ever-versatile Julianne Moore. (Now on video/DVD)
5. Talk To Her
Pedro Almodovar, the most inventive and original of European directors, made a film about men and the long convalescence from the wounds provoked by passion. It had the plot elements of a soap opera but a keen sense of its characters' inner lives and it nestled in the heart for days. (Now on video/DVD)
6. American Splendor
This absorbing biopic of Harvey Pekar, a cult hero for his autobiographical stories in the American Splendor comic books came complete with a radical structure - sometimes its cast interacted with the people they were depicting. That neatly blurred the lines between Pekar the real guy and obsessive-compulsive gloom merchant, Pekar the semi-famous cult figure and Pekar the illustrated man. The result was one of the year's most touching screen love stories.
7. Mystic River
Clint Eastwood's 24th film as director perfectly suited his grand but sometimes ponderous style as he unfolded an intergenerational revenge tragedy in blue-collar Boston assisted by brilliant performances by some of the cream of American acting. A substantial and serious film, it was easily the equal of anything he had done. (Now screening at cinemas)
8. Spider
The movies' grimmest portrait of demented isolation since Polanski's The Tenant was David Cronenberg's most purely cinematic film, a soul-chilling glimpse inside the paranoid void of one man's head. Ralph Fiennes' title-role performance was beyond praise, a studied bravura which both impressed and entranced. Hard but brilliant.
9. Bloody Sunday
Paul Greengrass' "docu-melodrama" about the Derry massacre burnt with a phosphorescent but was remarkably unsentimental and even-handed, depicting the tragedy as an always-inevitable collision of many factors. It was also clear-headed enough to make the complicated seem simple without ever being simplistic.
10. 25th Hour
Spike Lee turned in the cinematic equivalent of a symphonic poem, less a story than a series of human interactions with a richly suggestive script, lamenting the corrosive effects of greed and the seismic transformation of the city's culture wrought by the events of 9/11. An inspired piece of work by one of the age's truly masterful filmmakers. (Now on video/DVD).
11. Travelling Birds
Watching the airborne hit of the film festival was as close as most of us will get to flight as cameras on remote control gliders, light aircraft and balloons followed birds and exploded our notion of flight as effortless. So eerily perfect, the images seemed computer-generated.
12. A Mighty Wind
The newest mockumentary from the duo of satirists behind This Is Spinal Tap and Best In Show was, like the best spoofs; affectionate, even reverential. Its music was also better than much of the stuff it lampooned. A comic masterpiece. (On video/DVD January 21)
13. Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself
The deadpan title of this utterly beguiling black comedy gave no hint of the subtlety and texture within. This made-in-Denamrk story of a cheerfully suicidal Glaswegian depressive was a movie of dense emotional intelligence which never took itself too seriously. Full of great one-liners, the film nailed us in the heart.
14. Sweet Sixteen
The latest from Ken Loach, the godfather of socially-conscious English-speaking cinema, was the equal of his best, investing a heartbreakingly grim story with a humour both winning and bleak.
The story of a doomed 15-year-old Glasgow lad's grimly inevitable decline and fall had a thread of righteous anger but was, until the last scene, devoid of sentimentality.
15. Adaptation
After their Being John Malkovich, director Spike Jonze and writer Charlie Kaufman delivered another perplexing mind-bender, a semi-autobiographical tale of creative blockage, sibling rivalry, Hollywood politics and flower-poaching. In his double role - as Kaufman and twin brother "Donald" - Cage was twice as good as he has been in many a year.
16. Irreversible
The year's most controversial film, rightly restricted to a single festival screening, was a work of extraordinary technical assurance (12 scenes; 12 unedited shots) and its reverse narrative packed a visceral emotional wallop because the optimistic last scenes were overcast with our knowledge of what was to come, thus making us eerily complicit in its horrors. A deeply disturbing masterpiece.
17. Standing in the Shadows of Motown
This joyous rockumentary went behind the legend of the Motown label, profiling the Detroit session guys known as the Funk Brothers who, between them, played on more hits that the Beatles and the Rolling Stones combined. Their story was told through archival footage, re-enactments, still photos and casual conversation, then given added lustre when they get behind their instruments again in concert. (Now available on video/DVD.)
18. Finding Nemo
The latest from the computer animated wizards at Pixar played a little more Disneyesque than the company's previous output but it was still a visual wonder. And its story about how Marlon, the neurotic clownfish, on a mission to get from the Great Barrier Reef to Sydney to rescue his son from a dentist's aquarium made this the second best "quest" movie of the year, and definitely the funniest. (On video/DVD January 16)
19. Secretary
If you put aside the spanking, the self-mutilation, the humiliation, the cruelty and the provocative sexual and workplace politics, this indie American drama really was a nice little romantic comedy, deep down. Beneath its kinky exterior it was a sweet funny film about how two folk - Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader - realise their peculiar psychoses might mesh into a tender and loving relationship. And live happily, obsessively, ever after.
20. Phone Booth
As meretricious as anything the showy Joel Schumacher has made, this one-gimmick movie about a cynical publicist pinned down by a vengeful sniper was often dismally silly but was always almost indecently exciting, ratcheting the tension up early and never letting go. Slick, sharp, empty and riveting. (Now on video/DVD)
Herald Feature: 2003: Year in review
<i>Films of the year</i>
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