Yesterday Sir Monkeypants and I were discussing the major life events of 2004, and one of mine was, sadly, “saw one movie in the theatre — Return Of The King — in the very first week of January.” And that’s not even a 2004 movie!
So we started to think of movies from 2004 we’ve actually seen (on video, of course) and we came up with a total of five. Gack.
So I present my top 5 movies of 2004:
1. Kill Bill Vol 2
2. Hidalgo
3. 50 First Dates
4. Hellboy
5. Taking Lives
And my worst 5:
1. Taking Lives
2. Hellboy
3. 50 First Dates
4. Hidalgo
5. Kill Bill Vol. 2
Aaaaaand we wonder why I had to kill Sidekick :).
TurtleHead 
I think I’d agree with that ordering of those films.
Although I’d be tempted to put “Taking Lives” at number 10, or number 100, even if I’d only seen 5 movies all year.
According to a 2004 movie list I found on the internet, I only saw 21 movies this year. Going through the list I realized that there were a lot of interesting-looking movies, but I missed most of them. So out of the movies I saw, I’d say the top 5 were:
1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
2. Collateral
3. Fahrenheit 9/11
4. Kill Bill, Vol. 2
5. The Village
The worst five were:
1. Taking Lives
2. The Day After Tomorrow
3. I, Robot
4. Starsky & Hutch
5. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
My vote for most stupidly hilarious movie: Team America
My vote for the movie I pretended-to-think-was-juvenile-but-secretly-really-liked: Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle
Comedy Most Pleasantly Surprised By: Welcome to Mooseport
Most Boring Movie With The Best Performance By A Lead Actor: Ray
How is it that we’ve all seen Taking Lives?? You’d think that one of us would have seen it, decided it sucks and then spread the word around.
I wanted to see H&KGTWK but I didn’t get around to it. It’s still on my rental list. Why? There’s a brown guy starring in it. I feel like I should support him.
We are this close to actually seeing Eternal Sunshine. brought over the DVD just before Christmas but we haven’t gotten around to actually viewing it yet. Soon, though! Ah yes, we are so hip :).
I’m surprised to see you putting The Village on your top 5 list. All I read were bad reviews. Everyone seemed to think that the “mystery” was forced and that M. Night has become kind of a hack in the way he tries to push a surprise ending into every one of his films. Personally I really like his filmmaking style and I’d like to see it no matter what, so I’m happy to hear at least one of my friends actually liked it.
As says below, how is it that everyone has actually seen Taking Lives? Didn’t it last, like, two weeks tops at the theatre? In our case I think it was the fact that it was rushed out to DVD, and our video store had like, a million copies, that made us rent it.
Seems like Angelina Jolie owes us all a refund!
That darned Ebert gave it a good review!
I want a refund from him too!
What I want to know is, if you have so little time for movies, why are 50 First Dates, Hidalgo and Taking Lives 3 of the 5 movies you’ve seen this year?
This list is very misleading because we actually did see lots of good movies this year on DVD (well, maybe “lots” is an exaggeration), but they were all 2003 movies. The lag for DVD releases is surprisingly long, at least six months, and up to a year for smaller art-house movies. Summer 2004 movies like Spider-Man 2 and The Bourne Supremacy just came out on DVD in December and we haven’t gotten around to renting them yet. I’m sure it’ll be at least summer 2005 before we can get at the stuff that will win awards this season.
As for Hidalgo, though, we had to rent that one, because The First Lady is really, really into horses :).
Yeah, me too. There’s one hilarious scene in the movie where he’s chewed out by his dad, using the typical mixed-up lingo that Indian parents often do and I totally related to it.
It’s actually quite surprising that it was recommended by Ebert and Roeper, though. It’s totally juvenile and you don’t want to let the kiddies watch or to watch it with friends who aren’t completely open-minded.
Maybe we need an Early Bad Movie Warning System to save us from crap like Taking Lives.
For us it was a trip to the cheap theater on Tuesday night when our first choice was sold out.
The great thing about paying $1.50 to see a movie is that you’re not nearly as pissed when it turns out to be crap. I didn’t care for Taking Lives, but I don’t think it was so bad that I minded losing a couple of bucks over it.