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2004 was a pretty slow year for movies in my opinion. A few leap out at me, but there was no big star that I adore. Maybe it’s because there was no Lord of the Rings movie this year :P.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Michel Gondry the director comes from doing alot of fantastic music videos for the White Stripes and Bjork among others. He has a knack for doing practical effects through editing. No fancy computer work. And it carries over to this film. Everything was done practically with no CG. The movie is thoughtful and a mind trip. Charlie Kauffman scripts tend to be ingeniously insane. And it was nice seeing Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey basically switching their typical role types. Highly recommended for those who have no seen it. I didn’t get a chance to see this in the theaters, but I bought it as a blind buy on DVD and don’t regret it at all.

I’m a big fan of Michael Mann movies, Heat and the Insider being a couple of my favorites. Mann does a great job of visualizing a realistic Los Angeles, and presents not an action movie, but a drama that gets into the characters’ heads and has action elements to progress the plot. Tom Cruise was awesome as the bad guy, but Jamie Foxx here really shows his stuff. I think this is his breakout role, and Ray being the film that secures himself into being a serious actor. Only regret of this movie is the ending. It turns into a Terminator-style thriller chase, and ends kind of anticlimatically. But I still recommend it as it is one of my favorites of the year.

I don’t know what else I can say about Pixar, but they have been nearly perfect. I admit I thought this one wasn’t going to up to par with the rest of them, but it was awesome. Their next movie, Cars, is giving me doubts though. The Incredibles was a no brainer. Best animated movie of the year.

Okay I’m gonna stop using pictures now just to run through other stuff quickly.

The other big animation movie was Shrek 2. I liked it a lot. Really funny. But the Livin’ la Vida Loca bit was dated. But gotta keep in mind they start work on these movies years ahead of time.

The big blockbuster of the year was Spider-man 2. I was not disappointed. It exceeded my expectations. Director Sam Raimi made one of the best comic adaptations ever. While it has all the pretty effects and action you come to expect from comic heros, the movie itself is really about the characters, and the movie spends a lot of time getting that across.

Hellboy. Probably the 2nd best comic adaptation of the year. This is a comic that has a premise that may sound silly, and characters that may seem silly. But the film takes itself very seriously and this world of Hellboy seems very believeable. I enjoyed it so much I bought the DVD and then bought the director’s cut DVD.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban didn’t have a big effect on the box office as its predecessors. But it wasn’t because the movie was bad. This installment takes a darker turn and it works out pretty well. However I found this film to be less memorable than the others. Doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it, because I did.

Kill Bill vol. 2. A lot of people expected another blood fest and didn’t get it. They then decided this one wasn’t as good as the first. But I think this one was better than the first. Perhaps because I savor the dialogue more than the action in between, and this volume had more of it. I really love both volumes together and would rather view them together as one movie.

more to come…