M Y S T I C R I V E R Director Clint Eastwood's best movies are always about people trying desperately to escape desperately fated lives, and this is one of his best. That's not only because of Brian Helgeland's impeccable adaptation of Dennis Lehane's novel, or his perfect cast, headed by Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon, but because Eastwood casts such a knowing, sympathetic eye on their lower-class neighborhood, in which dim hopes are constantly battered by grim circumstances.
A M E R I C A N S P L E N D O R
We know, we know: Depression is a serious illness, often enough a tragedy. It's not nice to laugh at. But what else can you do when you confront glum Harvey Pekar, who has made a great anti-hero out of himself by writing realistic comix about his life as a Cleveland hospital clerk? He's superbly impersonated by Paul Giamatti, Hope Davis is perfectly-matched as his wife and the husband-wife directing team of Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, using delightful, home-made visual effects, has made a perversely inspiring odyssey of Harvey's life and hard times.
F I N D I N G N E M O
Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, but who knew they were capable of the funniest dialogue this side of Billy Wilder? And who knew that Pixar Animation Studios was capable of making such breathtakingly pretty pictures? This story of a brave little clown fish, separated from his anxious dad, with both of them swimming through dozens of watery perils before they reunite, is one of the great animation features of all time.
T H E H U M A N S T A I N
Novelist Philip Roth wrapped all the great American tragedies — race, sex, class tensions — into one superbly snakey narrative. Writer Nicholas Meyer and director Robert Benton have made a sinuous adaptation of Roth's work, capturing his bleak, compelling irony with unforced perfection. The leading players — Anthony Hopkins as a black professor pretending to be a white man, Nicole Kidman as a rich girl masquerading as trailer-park trash — are only unlikely at first glance. They insinuate themselves into our grieving hearts with perfectly understated passion.
G L O O M Y S U N D A Y
A restaurant in pre-war Budapest; a menage a trois involving its owner, its head-waitress and its piano player; the growing threat of Nazism; the composition of the famous, eponymous ballad — out of such unlikely materials writer-director Rolf Schubel has composed an emotionally lush, formally elegant movie, rich in romantic rue and grace. Touched but not dominated by anti-Semitic terror, it reaches one those rare surprise endings that is both morally bracing and morally balancing — and utterly right.
M A N O N T H E T R A I N
The title character, played by French rocker Johnny Halliday, is a hard-nosed, increasingly hard-pressed hood. In town for a heist, he accidentally meets a reclusive, poetically inclined teacher (Jean Rochefort). The former moves into the latter's house and each comes to want the other's life, with results that are wry, sad and instructive in the way good French melodramas, from Pepe Le Moko to Breathless, once routinely were. Director Patrice Leconte remembers, and recreates the old black magic with stunning intelligence and wit.
S E A B I S C U I T
It's all right for cinephiles to enjoy films like this. But they're not supposed to appreciate them. We disagree. Writer-director Gary Ross's adaptation of Laura Hillenbrand's best selling book is beautiful to look at, faithful to its source's honest, upbeat emotions and maybe the most joyful and satisfying night at the movies 2003 had to offer. It also reminds us that Depression-era America, whatever its flaws, had a secular hopefulness, a generosity of spirit, that is sadly lacking in Bushland.
V E R O N I C A G U E R I N
Cricits mostly reviewed producer Jerry Bruckheimer's and director Joel Schumacher's slam-bang track records, pretty much ignoring what was on the screen in front of them. That was the tragic story of a good-hearted, occasionally distracted but utterly determined reporter, who went up against a brutal Irish mob and was assassinated for her pains. Cate Blanchett played the eponymous heroine brilliantly and the film lingers powerfully, touchingly in mind.
H O U S E O F S A N D A N D F O G
A stiff-necked Iranian exile (the superb Ben Kingsley) acquires his American dream house at auction. Its careless former owner (Jennifer Connolly) understands that what he did may be legal, but is morally wrong. Out of this seemingly unpromising real-estate wrangle, first-time writer-director Vadim Perelman (working from the novel by Andre Dubus III) has created a tense and ultimately devastating cross-cultural tragedy.
T H E B A R B A R I A N I N V A S I O N S
In Montreal, cranky, priapic Remy is dying before his time. His rich, estranged son arrives from London and coldly starts buying his father a smooth exit from life. Rounding up the old boy's past friends and lovers, they both begin to see his life and their relationship in a new and more forgiving light. Writer-director Denis Arcand plays down the sentiment, plays up the ironies and emerges with a lovely, acceptant meditation on the end game we all must play.
C O L D M O U N T A I N
The soldier, Inman, is trying to fight his way home through the fog of (civil) war. Ada, his chaste and faithful lover, awaits him, while fending off rapacious intruders at her home place in Cold Mountain. Writer-director Anthony Mingella once again demonstrates his inability to create a satisfying dramatic arc (or characters that can hold the screen). The result is a plodding, epic-scale exercise in masochism — deep-dish movie making at its toneless worst.
