The Movie Snob’s 2004 Year in Review.

I’ll say up front that a couple of these movies probably came out in 2003, but I saw them for the first time in 2004. Thus, they’re on this list. So sue me.

Best Drama: I’ll pick two, in no particular order. First, Friday Night Lights. I am not much of a sports fan, but I found this movie engrossing. It’s the true story of a single season of high school football in a small west Texas town that is consumed with football and demands nothing less than a state championship of its coach. Billy Bob Thornton is fine as the put-upon coach, but the young actors who play the stars of the team are really outstanding. Second, Finding Neverland is an excellent little movie about the life of playwright J.M. Barrie, who wrote Peter Pan. Johnny Depp was perfect for the part. Honorable mention to the comedy/drama Sideways, about two buddies facing down their midlife crises by drinking their way through the California wine country.

Best Action Flick: I’ll pick two again. The thinking man’s action movie would be Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. Russell Crowe delivers another fine performance as the gruff and bluff Captain Jack Aubry, and the director did an amazing job of filming the sea battles between these old wooden sailing ships. For mindless schlock, I thoroughly enjoyed Troy. Sure, they reduced a war that lasted ten years to roughly two weeks, ignored the gods that started the whole thing, and changed Achilles’ motivation for sulking out half the war from timeless honor to [ick] love. But for all that, I enjoyed every minute of it. Honorable mention: Spider-Man 2. But I liked the first one better.

Best Comedy: Slim pickings in this category since the Spinal Tap crew didn’t put anything out this year. Surprise hit Napoleon Dynamite definitely had some laughs, but I felt a little guilty for laughing at people who seem to exist solely to be ridiculed by the rest of creation. Shaun of the Dead was a fun ride for a while, but it ran out of gas before the end. Mean Girls and I Heart Huckabees both had their moments, but were by no means great.

Best Documentary: I was sorry that there was no Winged Migration II this year, but happily another excellent documentary filled the void. No, I’m not talking about the Michael Moore atrocity. I mean the 2003 release My Architect, a fascinating biopic about architect Louis Kahn, who designed the Kimbell Art Museum over in Fort Worth. He lived a strange life, marrying only one woman but leaving children by three. His youngest child made this excellent film to try to understand the father he barely knew.

Best Melodrama: If you blinked, you missed I Am David, the tear-jerking tale of a little boy who escapes from a Communist concentration camp in 1952 Bulgaria. Yeah, it’s syrupy, and the plot has some holes in it, but I still loved it.

In a Class by Itself: The Passion of the Christ. Enough ink has been spilled about this movie to last a lifetime. I won’t add to it here.

Other Honorable Mentions:

The Barbarian Invasions – a French or Canadian or French-Canadian import about a father who is dying and his estranged adult son who reaches out to comfort him in his last months.

Big Fish – not the biggest, best, greatest movie of all time as That Guy Named David would have it, but definitely an enjoyable one.

The Station Agent – a very sweet little movie about friendship. An angry dwarf moves out to the middle of nowhere to get away from people, but he learns that getting away from people isn’t that easy.

Cold Mountain – good story, beautiful cinematography, fine cast. And Nicole Kidman somehow manages to run a pathetic little dirt farm throughout the whole Civil War without a hair out of place.

The Incredibles – fine movie, just a little long for my taste.

Bubba Ho-Tep – the best Elvis-versus-the-Mummy movie I have ever seen.