Looking back at the worst films of 2004, there was the usual highly praised garbage and the undeserved hits (or semi-hits). Yet you can't help but remember what an extraordinary movie year it was anyway. So many worthwhile films left town too quickly because of the rush to feed the home-video market. This meant that expensively promoted but lousy films gained a longer theatrical life—or bigger public profile—than they warranted. For every specious media pick, there was a little-known film that did the same thing better.
Last year's worst films make it necessary to promote the idea of an Alternative Cinema, hopefully to develop a taste for movies that question the status quo, go against mediocrity and demonstrate more imagination and originality than media hype is able to communicate. So it's imperative to change things, to speak up for a worthy dozen alongside the 12 worst. It was a year to be surprised and keep hopeful. For each of these offensive movies, the year offered an honorable alternate. (My 2004 best list will come later.)
De-Lovely < You Got Served It didn't seem likely that movie musicals could get worse than Moulin Rouge or Chicago, but Irwin Winkler's moribund biography of Cole Porter sunk even lower. Miscast actors and anachronistic pop stars (Alanis Morrissette imitating Ethel Merman! And Elvis Costello's massacre of "Let's Misbehave"!) resulted in a lunatic misrepresentation of Broadway's golden era. This bio-pic was both coy and fuzzy about Porter's sex life, the final insult to the fine art of his innuendo. It's a De-Saster.
You Got Served was proudly pop, a hiphop musical with muscular dancing that expressed the sexual and political energy of a not-yet calcified culture. It put life in the face of showbiz snobs.
Closer < When Will I Be Loved? Mike Nichols' grotesque fantasy used tabloid stars to glamorize sexual dysfunction and interpersonal deception. Fake-ugliness appealed to the middle-class taste for "harsh truth." No wonder James Toback's When Will I Be Loved?—a searing and freakily sensual expose of privilege—angered middle-brow reviewers. Its truth was really harsh, a wake-up call to Generation G (for greed). Toback aimed for poignance rather than self-satisfied cynicism. Starting with Neve Campbell's rudderless sexual pirate, it was also more imaginatively acted than all of Closer.
Birth < Deserted Station Not a reverse Lolita, Nicole Kidman's Birth had her falling in love with a child who convinces her he is her reincarnated husband. But the film was so high-minded that director Jonathan Glazer didn't realize he had the makings of a farce. The joke was on audiences who sat patiently through this glum unlove story. The Iranian Deserted Station used a childless woman's sympathy for a group of rural school kids to remind her what grace and privilege mean. A rebuke to Birth, this was the opposite of decadence.
Finding Neverland < Bear Cub Returning routine sentimentality to the story of how J.M. Barrie wrote Peter Pan, this manipulative melodrama reaches its shameless climax when Barrie (Johnny Depp) comforts a fatherless child (played by insufferable child actor Freddie Highmore). The uncle-nephew relationship in Bear Cub is never cloying. Because director Luis Miguel Albaladejo examines the nature of social and family relations, the emotions that come through are earned and powerful. De Sica and Chaplin could envy Bear Cub.
The Aviator < The Dreamers What profiteth a movie brat to win an Oscar and lose his legacy? It's hard to see Scorsese's entry-point for this whitewash bio-pic of millionaire Howard Hughes who produced mostly lousy films and finished his life on the lunatic fringe. This unwieldy behind-the-scenes epic makes a mockery of Hollywood while glamorizing capitalist excess. Compare it to Bertolucci's The Dreamers, which stays the course of enlightened cinephilia. Bertolucci recalls the excitement of political commitment (May '68) and equates it to romantic/sexual liberation—and confusion. Against Scorsese's crude impersonations of Hollywood legends, Bertolucci memorably juxtaposes student activists spiritually channeling their movie idols. Rich stuff, and genuine.
Tarnation < The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou Jonathan Caouette's therapeutic collage movie is also a jumbled, insensitive family portrait. Its inordinate praise mistook the director's autistic, hysterical scrapbook method for a sensible, artistic ordering of his tastes, fantasies and experience. Wes Anderson's latest feature is as personal and revealing, but because it is constantly surprising and creative, it is never impertinent. Anderson's response to pop experience is healthy and progressive; Caouette's smacks of pitiful and shameless self-exploitation.
Maria Full of Grace < Spanglish This pseudo-Third World indie is actually full of crap. An anti-Homeland Security tearjerker, the story of a Colombian supermodel type puts a twist on illegal immigration. New motto: Give me your bored and materialistic—especially if they have no gag reflex. James L. Brooks' Spanglish exposes all that nonsense "humanism" with an immigration and integration story that honestly questions the values of L.A.'s soft-headed and wrongheaded liberals. His complex view of family love and social commitment shows the difference between compassion and condescension. Funny and remarkable.
Dogville < Greendale Lars Von Trier's anti-Americanism is only superficially political. He's really anti-art, and this travesty of Our Town is no more than a hoax, a hipster's way of denying emotion in art. Von Trier's not after a human essence, but personal glory. People who mistake Nicole Kidman for an actress also mistake Von Trier for a visionary. Neil Young finally puts his 9/11 anxiety on the screen by envisioning small-town America as a chorus of dissatisfactions, folkloric longings and disgust with the media that is stronger than disgust with the government. It's a lyrical mirror reflection done in the style of authentic outsider art. Essentially, a screw-you to Lars.
Cowards Bend the Knee < Torque Guy Maddin continues to bowdlerize silent cinema for a sham cognoscenti. Antique pop culture still has more mystery and surprise than Maddin's drab campiness. In all, he distorts pop history—something music-video director Joseph Kahn never does in his debut feature Torque. Kahn satirizes action movies the way Maddin would like to satirize silents, but the difference is that Kahn respects the expressive potential of the vroom-vroom genre. The only rival to Torque's images would be a collaboration between Godard and James Rosenquist. After Hero, it's the most exultant pop art of the year. Turn the sound off and it's still a thrill.
Before Sunset < Mr. 3000 It doesn't take a non-narcissist love story to best Before Sunset. A movie like Mr. 3000, about a preening star who learns what it means to be selfless, to recognize a partner's worth, to enjoy life—not angst—will do. Bernie Mac's charm knocks Ethan Hawke's and Julie Delpy's bedraggled vanity out the park.
The Sea Inside < Crimson Gold Alejandro Amenabar's Oscar vehicle for Javier Bardem is not about the right to die but to kvetch. Its temerity is embarrassing next to the story of a youth's deep-down, basic yearning to live in Crimson Gold. Director Jafar Panahi makes suicide all the more moving by showing it for what it is.
Motorcycle Diaries < Hotel Rwanda A travelogue disguised as a reverie of prelapsarian politics versus the hard issue of a nation's civil war. Che Guevara's stardom seems especially trivial next to a Rwandan citizen's moral struggle. One movie makes history picturesque, the other makes it anguished and immediate. o
