Earlier today we finished up our look at the 2003 Oscar races, with me seeing every film that Oscar cited for all of its narrative, feature-length categories. But before we head into our next year (we'll kick it off tomorrow), the tables are turned and I get my say. I have spent much of the past 10 weeks not only rewatching a few of the movies listed below, but also seeking out films from 2003 that Oscar ignored but that peaked my interest. A few of the films listed below, as a result, are recent viewings while others were films I saw for the first time in a darkened theater some 19 years ago. While I can't possibly see everything, I feel that I have done my due diligence on 2003, and this is the stellar group of nominees I have amassed. Enjoy!
Cold Mountain
Elephant
Finding Nemo
Kill Bill: Volume 1
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Lost in Translation
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
Peter Pan
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Something's Gotta Give
Gold: As you might've noticed, I was very, very close on this one, as there are actually four movies that sit on my personal Top 100 films on this list (making 2003 one of, if not my top favorite year on said list). But I can't look away from the majesty of Peter Jackson's magnum opus, even in what I'd argue is the least of the three films-it's a gigantic, gorgeous ode to cinema, and I drank it all up.
Silver: Close behind is Lost in Translation, a beautifully romantic picture (and another ode to cinema), with Sofia Coppola giving us a brief moment of transcendence in the lives of two divergent figures, and showing us in the process how precious all of life is.
Bronze: A tight race, but I'm going to go with Peter Pan, a movie that fills my whole heart with joy, in a slight bid over Pirates, which is another movie that I feel encapsulates the best parts of the theatrical experience. Both are pirate-themed adventures that take on a fantastical element, so it seems fitting they're linked, but Pan carries me away just a little bit more in its opening moments (again, razor thin edge though that I might change on a different day).
Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation)
PJ Hogan (Peter Pan)
Peter Jackson (The Return of the King)
Quentin Tarantino (Kill Bill: Volume 1)
Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean)
Gold: An easier competition for me. Peter Jackson deserves massive credit for not just making his films feel like full films on their own, but also interconnected stories that can exist simultaneously apart & together. The gigantic final battles are a wonder-to-behold, and he gives each character their due.
Silver: Sofia Coppola's job isn't easy. She has to make it feel like a lifetime's worth of connection passes in the confines of a few days, while also making sure we know that this is fleeting, and cannot last. Her direction makes every spare moment count (and the fact that she did this on a shoot that lasted just a few weeks is all the more amazing).
Bronze: I'm going to switch this one up and give it to Verbinski. It's not easy to take what could've been something of a joke film and make it feel totally quality AND have a great popcorn aspect. Pirates is partially about letting the actors do what they want, but it's also about Verbinski keeping the action spry & moving forward, which he does.
Johnny Depp (Pirates of the Caribbean)
Jude Law (Cold Mountain)
Viggo Mortensen (The Return of the King)
Bill Murray (Lost in Translation)
Sean Penn (Mystic River)
Gold: The performance of a lifetime, Johnny Depp's first characterization was so good you honestly don't care about the diminishing returns on the sequels. Drawn from nothing but his own interpretation of the figure, Depp makes Captain Jack Sparrow one of the great cinematic characters, and I love every second of it.
Silver: A really strong field, Bill Murray would've been a worthy winner (albeit I'm not pulling the "razor close" card again here-this is Depp's trophy, fair and square). Murray lets go of some of his comedic crutches while letting others (like his impossibly good timing) take center stage, and he has terrific, never-too-chilly chemistry with Johansson. You understand why his Bob Harris has been a public favorite for decades.
Bronze: We'll finish off with a third Oscar nominee (and in this case Oscar's winner), Sean Penn. Penn's performance is the truly great part of Mystic River-you see a man who has taken advantage of the system for decades faced with an impossible, unrelated consequence, and watch as he shreds his world apart looking for absolution.
Jamie Lee Curtis (Freaky Friday)
Rachel Hurd-Wood (Peter Pan)
Scarlett Johansson (Lost in Translation)
Diane Keaton (Something's Gotta Give)
Uma Thurman (Kill Bill: Volume 1)
Gold: Johansson had been working for several years in Lost in Translation, but Coppola knew that she'd only get to make her breakthrough once. The perfect encapsulation of "young, but not at heart" and still unsure of what to make of the world, her Charlotte is radiant & captures the film's spirit.
Silver: Few actors have the ability to make physical humor as personal & emotional as Diane Keaton. In Something's Gotta Give, she shares a woman who had closed off her heart, and when it opens she doesn't know how to handle it, and whether that sort of raw energy is worth shaky ground. In different hands she'd have appeared cold or a bit of a joke, but Keaton knows Erica is just unpracticed.
Bronze: Uma Thurman gets the role of a lifetime as a revenge-seeking bride who is intent on destroying everyone who disintegrated her life. Few performances from Quentin Tarantino's pen have felt so complete, or so at home in the mouths of his actors, as what Thurman does here.
Sean Astin (The Return of the King)
Jason Isaacs (Peter Pan)
Ian McKellen (The Return of the King)
Andy Serkis (The Return of the King)
Geoffrey Rush (Pirates of the Caribbean)
Gold: First off, look at this list, then look at Oscar's, and tell me this isn't better. And then explain to me why Sean Astin, the heart of the Lord of the Rings trilogy who gets some unbelievable monologues in this installment of the series is somehow ignored by Oscar for, what, Alec Baldwin in The Cooler? Come on...
Silver: Geoffrey Rush is an actor that I don't always gravitate toward (I think he plays his characterizations too big), but there are parts that are perfect for him, and toward the top of that list is Captain Barbossa, which he plays with villainous intent and campy delight.
Bronze: They're all so good, how do you pick? I'll give my final medal to Andy Serkis, who while he doesn't have the sheer jaw-dropping delight of The Two Towers here, makes up for it by giving us more range in Gollum's characterization, his potential road to redemption and ultimate path to hell.
Ellen Degeneres (Finding Nemo)
Anna Faris (Lost in Translation)
Marcia Gay Harden (Mystic River)
Miranda Otto (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King)
Emma Thompson (Love, Actually)
Gold: I'm going to give this one to Harden, I think (honestly, 2003 has left me with more "close call" races than any My Ballot we've encountered so far-there's a lot of love being poured into these choices). I think hers is the most complete from A-to-Z characterization, and similar to Rush, she fights some of her broader choices as an actress to make a potentially bombastic character feel like a real one.
Silver: It's hard sometimes to remember that there's an entire movie where Emma Thompson is consistently strong as a woman who believes her husband is having an affair. When Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" starts to play upon the confirmation, though, Thompson completely nails the characterization, unforgettably stealing a holiday classic from a cast of pros.
Bronze: Vocal performances are sometimes hard to judge-they don't have the advantage of giving us some of an actor's greatest tools (eyes, hands, facial moments). But the best vocal performances, like what Ellen Degeneres does in Finding Nemo, find a way to impart that-you can see in Dory every facial tick & pull.
Cold Mountain
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Mystic River
Peter Pan
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Gold: Peter Jackson may have put slightly too many endings onto The Return of the King but that's about the only fault I can find in this script. A beautiful sendoff for a group of beloved characters, one that never feels like it's insulting or short-changing any favorites while feeling too indulgent.
Silver: JM Barrie's tale of the boy who never grew up is timeless, but it almost always struggles in translation. PJ Hogan's take, though, is loyal to the original source and it pays off with a genuine sense of classical adventure, never winking, but always a joy.
Bronze: Taking a Disneyland ride (albeit my favorite Disneyland ride) and turning it into a true tale of adventures on the high seas that would translate into four more movies and, well, a revamped Disneyland ride is truly an achievement, so well done on Pirates.
Finding Nemo
Kill Bill: Volume 1
Lost in Translation
Love, Actually
Something's Gotta Give
Gold: "Make it Suntori Times"...Lost in Translation is brimming with so many great, quotable lines that it could honestly get this trophy just on that alone. That it also tells a romantic tale of friendship, and two lost ships finding each other in the night is just icing on the cake of the best writing of 2003.
Silver: Pixar was kicking into truly high gear with the tale of a lonely dad running across the ocean in hopes of finding his son. Great dialogue (particularly from Degeneres' Dory), and a tale full of heart & substance-there's a reason it had a hit sequel thirteen years later-people were engrossed by this tale (pun intended).
Bronze: Quentin Tarantino's revenge fantasy is full of so many great touches (particularly starting in the middle of the list rather than at the beginning-I love that), and great lines...Tarantino is always filled with fun, and this was still in the days when he had Sally Menke to make his scripts tight.
Finding Nemo
Piglet's Big Movie
The Triplets of Belleville
Gold: In a weak year for this category, Finding Nemo stands apart even more. As we've already mentioned, it's filled with fine vocal work (not just from Degeneres, but also Allison Janney & Willem Dafoe are strong too), looks beautiful (those blues & oranges...it's hard to imagine that on the other side of the studio Disney was making something as ugly as Chicken Little while this was happening), and is full of imagination.
Silver: It might occasionally be a bit too long, but Belleville makes up for it with an ear worm of a main song and a lot of inventive, clever jokes within the animation, particularly the way that the titular triplets are so connected as to almost be a glob by the time we reach them in their old age.
Bronze: I am a sucker for anything at the Hundred Acre Wood, and Piglet getting his first titular outing feels like a perfect place to applaud. I like that it isn't particularly cutesy or updated, but instead feels authentic to the classic 1970's Milne incarnations from Disney.
Kill Bill: Volume 1
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
Peter Pan
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Gold: Once again bringing Howard Shore's mountainous score to life amidst battles and shifting worlds, Return of the King uses perfect dialogue mixing to get some of the series' most crucial moments, particularly Sam's "I can't carry the ring!" and Eowyn's "I am no man!" to maximum effect.
Silver: I mean, all of Quentin Tarantino's movies, mixing in music alongside a host of practical action/fight sequence noises, is the stuff the whole industry must pay homage to. Kill Bill sounds sensational.
Bronze: The use of practical vs. actual effects in Master and Commander represents a host of challenges for the sound mixers, who have to find ways to make the dialogue in the battle sequences not feel drowned out by the literal, well, drowning (this isn't easy-just ask Christopher Nolan). That it all sounds splendid is a testament to this team.
Finding Nemo
Kill Bill: Volume 1
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Gold: To this day, I don't know what Oscar was thinking snubbing Return of the King here. The battle scenes, particularly the ones at Gondor, are so specific & filled with noise coming from every corner-it's brilliant stuff, and deserved not just a nomination, but a win.
Silver: Pirates of the Caribbean is so good at making it feel as if we're all transported to the high seas. The clanking boots & bones of the dead crew on the Black Pearl make a routine noise sound totally specific, which is what great sound editors can do.
Bronze: Finding Nemo might be the high-water mark when it comes to Pixar's sound editing team. Particularly strong points for realism (notice the constant hum of the aquarium in the dentist's office) and the way that the gnarly turtles make you feel like you're being pulled along for their ride.
Cold Mountain
Finding Nemo
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Peter Pan
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Gold: One of the cardinal sins is when a score replaces the narrator...but there's an exception to every rule, and Pirates of the Caribbean is that exception. This music would become shorthand for these characters, and really for the franchise as a whole-instantly iconic, swashbuckling & escapist.
Silver: Gabriel Yared's sparing score in Cold Mountain is deceiving. Initially viewed as an undertone to the rest of the strong song score, it instead telegraphs much of what we're about to see-the romance of this journey, but the brevity of it as well. Cold Mountain is not a place where happiness can sustain.
Bronze: Howard Shore is obviously borrowing from himself here, but there's much to offer in Return of the King that we haven't necessarily encountered already. Particularly the lighting of the beacons stands out as an iconic moment enhanced by the specific music playing in the background.
"Belleville Rendez-vous," (The Triplets of Belleville)
"Into the West," (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King)
"A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow," (A Mighty Wind)
"The Scarlet Tide," (Cold Mountain)
"You Will Be My Ain True Love," (Cold Mountain)
Gold: Despite it being an end credits song (which I tend to shy away from), "Into the West" gives us searing vocals and a moment for us to just settle into the 10-hour journey we've concluded. Lennox so well-matches the story at hand (having Howard Shore do the music helped) that it feels less an end credits number and more a final ending to add to the list.
Silver: In an otherwise routine Christopher Guest movie, A Might Wind brings us a reminder of why the music movement at the center of this story touched so many people at the time-given the opportunity to play for a laugh, "A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow" instead solemnly reminds us that love can last across any divide.
Bronze: Picking between the songs in Cold Mountain is tough, but if forced to choose I'd probably go with "You Will Be My Ain True Love," which well-matches the rough realism of the movie, while still indulging its romantic sensibilities.
Girl with a Pearl Earring
Kill Bill: Volume 1
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Peter Pan
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Gold: Even with some of the scenes borrowed from previous movies, it's hard to deny Return of the King yet another gold medal here, with the white city of Gondor and the battle scenes laying waste to it one of the more titanic moments throughout Jackson's opus.
Silver: The scale of Peter Pan is the first thing you notice about its set design...notice the flight to Neverland and how it almost feels like they're flying into a storybook. There's something just a little bit staged about this that I love so much, that it always feels a touch unreal (honestly, if that's a trick of the budget then more films should be denied their CGI).
Bronze: I could tell you the dimensions, rooms, & even seating arrangements aboard the Black Pearl by heart-that's the kind of specificity that Pirates of the Caribbean brings to its look at a Caribbean at the height of the golden age of buccaneers.
Cold Mountain
Girl with a Pearl Earring
Kill Bill: Volume 1
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Lost in Translation
Gold: Painting like Vermeer, Eduardo Serra borrows heavily from his film's own subject in Girl with a Pearl Earring, giving us a Dutch countryside filled with an almost supernatural glow of white light.
Silver: Andrew Lesnie's glorious third act in Return of the King is accentuated by several key scenes that need a long lens that knows the story well. The lighting of the beacons, in particular, stands apart as a scene that you needed to build toward. Yes, Lesnie is borrowing from some past work, but it's more building off of it with callbacks that accentuate the drama.
Bronze: John Seale makes a war-torn South feel all too real in Cold Mountain, giving us a combination of wide-angle shots of the Civil War, almost setting the world into a different kind of hellscape, while also giving us arguably the best-lensed sex scenes in a prestige American film (what-it's true!).
Cold Mountain
Down with Love
Girl with a Pearl Earring
Kill Bill: Volume 1
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Gold: Sometimes a nomination here comes down to a series of costumes trying to tell a story...and sometimes it comes down to one outfit. There are a ton of really iconic looks in Kill Bill (Elle Driver & Gogo both became go-to Halloween costumes for a reason), but come on...when you think of this movie, you think of Uma Thurman's iconic banana yellow jumpsuit, using costume as shorthand for a character.
Silver: Largely forgotten today, the delicious Rock-and-Doris looks on display in Down with Love are scrumptious. The best trick is the yellow and black-and-white checkered mirroring done by Sarah Paulson & Renee Zellweger, but there's no scene in this movie that doesn't feel cheeky & bold with its costume design.
Bronze: Return of the King may be borrowing from past incantations, but the realism in the battle scenes combined with some of our newer looks (particularly King Aragorn & Queen Arwen and really everything about the freshened colors of the coronation scene) make it impossible to deny it one of my medals.
Elephant
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Lost in Translation
Peter Pan
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Gold: The Return of the King's sharp action scenes are obviously the calling card here, but for me it's honestly the way that the editing team manages to make every character feel like they've had their farewell without it dragging too ferociously (or feeling too repetitive).
Silver: Kind of on the opposite end of the spectrum than Return of the King (with its gargantuan runtime) is Lost in Translation, making every second feel like it's being plucked out of time. When you're doing a "ticking clock romance" you need to feel that time is fading away, and that's what the editing team in this movie ensures is happening (you always want more).
Bronze: A techical feat, the final twenty minutes of Elephant are horrifying, feeling like they're happening in almost real time as we understand who will live & who will die in this shocking, brutal drama.
Girl with a Pearl Earring
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Monster
Peter Pan
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Gold: Two incarnations in particular stand out as new to Return of the King that makes any other victor feel impossible. First we have the transformation of Smeagol into Gollum, a combination of decrepit makeup and special effects that is a sight-to-behold. Second, we have the distinctive character of Gothmog, standing apart as the movie's most distinctive & important orc.
Silver: Honestly, Charlize Theron owes half of her Oscar to the un-nominated makeup team of Monster. I never know quite how to feel about deglamming (I think the recent conversation about this is an earned one), but there's no denying that Theron's transformation is a driving part of her character, letting us see the changes in her appearance as the film continues.
Bronze: A dirty (but pretty) Johnny Depp would inspire countless cosplays in the years that followed, but the entire crew of Pirates of the Caribbean is playing to win here from Keira Knightley's ridiculous coif to Orlando Bloom's sweeping mane...looking pretty is also worthy of an Oscar if the makeup team is helping the cause.
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
The Matrix Reloaded
Peter Pan
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Gold: So many of the best visual effects of Lord of the Rings show up in Return of the King. The marching elephants, the Army of the Dead, the melting ring at Mordor...these are all iconic for the series for a reason...they all look exact.
Silver: Rather than going cheesy, the effects team behind Pirates of the Caribbean took their jobs deadly serious. Think of the way that the fights at sea feel so realistic, so as to better accentuate the crew of the damned (with particular points to the undead versions of Geoffrey Rush, Johnny Depp, and that monkey).
Bronze: Part of visual effects is finding a way to draw you into the story (it's not always about the most or even the most realistic). This is the case for the storybook world of Peter Pan, which gives us illusions from a dream, rather than trying to make it feel like a mud-and-all take on Neverland.
Also in 2003: Picture, Director, Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2003
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