Questions For Hollywood As The Credits Roll For 2004

Hollywood is making it more and more difficult for people like me to do a “best-of” list by the actual end of the year. Over 50 mainstream movies will have been released between the Thanksgiving holiday and December 31, so I’m not about to tell you that I’ve got my favorites all picked out.

In fact, I’m doing all I can just to keep up with the year-end flurry of Oscar-caliber films: among the six movies nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Dramatic Motion Picture (The Aviator, Closer, Finding Neverland, Hotel Rwanda, Kinsey and Million Dollar Baby), none went into wide release before November!

Thus, I’ll save my actual picks for February after the Academy Award nominations have been announced and I’ve had a chance to cram before Oscar time. So, this week, as we head into a new year, I’d like to ponder some interesting questions that 2004 will have left behind.

What will big-budget, blockbuster films do now that The Lord of the Rings trilogy has ended? What will fill the vacuum?

The early answer to that one is very positive. After The Return of the King, the third and final installment of Peter Jackson’s film adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s work, swept the Oscars last year (it won in all 11 categories for which it was nominated, including Best Picture), several franchise films picked up their games as well instead of resting on past laurels.

Director Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 was a worthy follow-up to his highly regarded, first big-screen attempt at capturing the web-slinging hero’s antics, and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, directed by Alfonso Cuaron, is arguably the best yet of the film versions of the best-selling book series about a boy wizard.

Other sequels that garnered critical and popular acclaim where Shrek 2, Kill Bill – Vol. 2 and Ocean’s Twelve. It was good to see many filmmakers didn’t regard their sequels as simply a chance to bilk loyal moviegoers out of their money by giving them the exact same movie again. However, to be fair, the year still gave us more than enough of those too.

Who will be the next “funny man” to impress us with his an ability to also be unflinchingly dramatic?

It’s not exactly a new phenomenon for comedic actors to cross genres. Such familiar names as Jackie Gleason, Jack Lemmon, Tom Hanks and Robin Williams have done it before. This year, several talented comedians stood out. Jim Carrey, who has tried before with The Truman Show, Man on the Moon and The Majestic, earned high marks for his fine work in the cleverly conceived Eternal  Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and then struck gold again in the current holiday hit Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.

But perhaps an even more impressive cinematic twosome was scored by former stand-up comedian Jamie Foxx, who got our attention in two diverse roles. First, in Collateral, as a common cabbie, he more than holds his own against a superb Tom Cruise in an electrifying thriller by director Michael Mann. Secondly, he is almost assured an Oscar nomination for his outstanding work as the lead role in the biopic Ray. His performance is much more than just sheer mimicry... he helps give insight into one of American popular music’s most talented artists.

What will be the next film to get tongues a-wagging at the water cooler?

The year started off with a bang in February with the release of Mel Gibson’s controversial film The Passion of the Christ, and the heat ratcheted up again over the summer with Michael Moore’s polarizing documentary feature Fahrenheit 9/11. Whether one saw those films or not, it seemed everyone had an opinion about them, making each film ultimately a hit at the box office as well in the court of public discourse.

Let’s hope the New Year brings with it some movies of equal disagreement, dispute, and intrigue. After all, that’s a large part of what makes discussing films fun!