2003: The Year In Film

By Steven Snyder

I can sum up the year in one gesture: a shrug. Not a disgusted shrug, or an evil glare, but just an ambivalent disregard for the majority of what came my way. Many have touted 2003 as some epic year; a year when shocking films reached the screen and changed the medium.

Give me a break!

For the first time in years, I could not make a top 10 list out of 4-star movies. Time after time I saw films of great promise falter in the home stretch. I saw movies that could not develop their ideas into a complete story. I saw films water down their narratives with overdone or unbelievable conclusions. This was not the year of the great film, but the year of the nearly-great, almost-awesome film.

While I would agree that the mean quality of the Hollywood product increased this year, there were far fewer exemplary outliers. When typically there is a B average, with several A’s and several C’s, in 2003 there were almost all B+’s or A-‘s, with almost no A+’s. Some may think this makes for a great year at the movies, but it is those outliers that distinguish a great year for me – the notable works that will live on in our minds and hearts long after the calendar has been flipped to the next page.

What films will I remember the most? Well, here in March, three months later, I am still extremely fond of the conclusion to the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, am still enamored with “Lost In Translation,” have continued to talk about “Raising Victor Vargas,” “Big Fish” and the esoteric documentary “Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working With Time.”

And I already have my undiscovered favorite from 2003. Every year I seem to find one film after the fact that grows on me like no others. For 2003 it is Ridley Scott’s “Matchstick Men,” a touching story about an obsessive compulsive con man who learns to emerge from his shell thanks to a reunion with a daughter he never knew he had. It’s funny, absurd, slick and, what I always find most impressive, unpredictable. The story grows in different directions as it goes, watching these characters bond, interact and grow in the unexpected bursts reflective of change in the real world.

I leave 2003 with my five or six favorite titles under my arm, shrugging off the praise the industry has bestowed on itself for its wonderful year, hoping for better in 2004, but not holding my breath.