I almost forgot to do this this month. After starting a draft of it in mid-March, I remembered on the third-to-last day of April it was still sitting there in my drafts. I can't miss a monthly installment of something on my blog, now can I?
As we go back in time, this year contains the first movie I saw in the theater with my wife (The Aviator) and a handful of the movies that remind me of my romantically tumultuous year of 2004, where I was trying to get back together with an ex for most of the year and had a drama-filled long distance fling in the middle. Suffice it to say that meeting my wife a week before Christmas brought some much-needed stability that I am still enjoying to this day.
Only 59 films! When I think of the 111 more movies I ranked in 2021 than in 2004, I don't think so much of a man who is frittering away most of his time on frivolous things, who used to spend that time so much better. No, instead I think of a man who watched a lot of evening baseball games, so therefore, he didn't have time to watch a lot of evening movies. There are no American sports conflicts in the nighttime hours in Australia, and my ability to watch movies -- both new movies and revisits of favorites -- has leapt forward accordingly.
Here were the rankings of the 59 films I saw in 2004 when I closed those rankings in late January or early February of 2005:
1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
2. Finding Neverland
3. Sideways
4. Hero
5. The Girl Next Door
6. The Aviator
7. Maria Full of Grace
8. A Very Long Engagement
9. The Incredibles
10. Super Size Me
11. Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
12. Garden State
13. Closer
14. Baadasssss!
15. Touching the Void
16. Team America: World Police
17. Shaun of the Dead
18. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
19. Dawn of the Dead
20. Kill Bill - Volume 2
21. Before Sunset
22. Million Dollar Baby
23. The Manchurian Candidate
24. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
25. The Forgotten
26. Fahrenheit 9/11
27. Napoleon Dynamite
28. Wimbledon
29. Spider-Man 2
30. Along Came Polly
31. Miracle
32. Collateral
33. In Good Company
34. The Day After Tomorrow
35. Win a Date With Tad Hamilton!
36. 13 Going on 30
37. The Polar Express
38. Still, We Believe: The Boston Red Sox Movie
39. Mean Girls
40. Hellboy
41. Eurotrip
42. Open Water
43. The House of Flying Daggers
44. The Ladykillers
45. Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
46. The Butterfly Effect
47. Taking Lives
48. Welcome to Mooseport
49. Saved!
50. Osama
51. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
52. The Passion of the Christ
53. The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement
54. You Got Served
55. The Village
56. Laws of Attraction
57. Spanglish
58. I Heart Huckabees
59. Troy
Before I even do the comparison with where these films are on my Flickchart now, I can see there will be some huge jumps of films I didn't properly appreciate when they first came out. As a reminder, the number in the following list is the film's ranking on Flickchart (out of 5874 films), followed by the percentage of that ranking (out of 5874 films). That's then followed by the number of spots it went up since 2004 (a positive number) or down since 2004 (a negative number), relative to the other 58 films I ranked back then.
1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (44, 99%) 0
2. Sideways (109, 98%) 1
3. The Girl Next Door (189, 97%) 2
4. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (297, 95%) 14
5. Hero (311, 95%) -1
6. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (328, 94%) 18
7. Shaun of the Dead (329, 94%) 10
8. Finding Neverland (401, 93%) -6
9. Dawn of the Dead (588, 90%) 9
10. The Aviator (737, 87%) -4
11. Maria Full of Grace (745, 87%) -4
12. Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (837, 86%) -1
13. The Incredibles (841, 86%) -4
14. Napoleon Dynamite (874, 85%) 13
15. Team America: World Police (898, 85%) 1
16. Closer (931, 84%) -3
17. Kill Bill - Volume 2 (936, 84%) 3
18. A Very Long Engagement (945, 84%) -10
19. Baadasssss! (1084, 82%) -5
20. Super Size Me (1123, 81%) -10
21. Garden State (1303, 78%) -9
22. In Good Company (1443, 75%) 11
23. Before Sunset (1465, 75%) -2
24. Along Came Polly (1485, 75%) 6
25. Miracle (1844, 69%) 6
26. The Manchurian Candidate (1975, 66%) -3
27. Touching the Void (1986, 66%) -12
28. Spider-Man 2 (2306, 61%) 1
29. Fahrenheit 9/11 (2461, 58%) -3
30. Wimbledon (2570, 56%) -2
31. Million Dollar Baby (2593, 56%) -9
32. The Forgotten (2779, 53%) -7
33. Mean Girls (2810, 52%) 6
34. Win a Date With Tad Hamilton (3151, 46%) 1
35. Open Water (3292, 44%) 7
36. Hellboy (3396, 42%) 4
37. The House of Flying Daggers (3586, 39%) 6
38. Still, We Believe: The Boston Red Sox Movie (3902, 34%) 0
39. Collateral (4025, 31%) -7
40. Eurotrip (4382, 25%) 1
41. Saved! (4384, 25%) 8
42. The Polar Express (4507, 23%) -5
43. The Day After Tomorrow (4565, 22%) -9
44. Osama (4570, 22%) 6
45. The Village (4649, 21%) 10
46. Welcome to Mooseport (4844, 18%) 2
47. 13 Going on 30 (4906, 16%) -11
48. The Butterfly Effect (4924, 16%) -2
49. The Ladykillers (4992, 15%) -5
50. The Passion of the Christ (5022, 15%) 2
51. Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (5223, 11%) -6
52. The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (5231, 11%) 1
53. Taking Lives (5359, 9%) -6
54. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (5412, 8%) -3
55. I Heart Huckabees (5507, 6%) 3
56. Spanglish (5547, 6%) 1
57. Laws of Attraction (5554, 5%) -1
58. Troy (5756, 2%) 1
59. You Got Served (5758, 2%) -5
Five best movies I've seen since closing the list (alphabetical): Birth, Downfall, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Man on Wire, The Sea Inside
Five worst movies I've seen since closing the list (alphabetical): The Cookout, Paparazzi, Surviving Christmas, Twentynine Palms, White Chicks
Biggest risers: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (+18), Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (+14), Napoleon Dynamite (+13)
Biggest fallers: Touching the Void (-12), 13 Going on 30 (-11), A Very Long Engagement (-10)
Average percentage on Flickchart: 53.25% (1 of 4)
Two of the three big risers are what are now considered classic and/or cult comedies. It's difficult to know in the moment how they will endure, but Anchorman and Napoleon Dynamite certainly have had a life well beyond 2004 -- though probably only one of them really holds up these days. (I haven't felt particularly compelled to revisit Dynamite recently, probably because I want my initial impression of it to remain untainted.) The biggest riser, though, is a lot more of a curious phenomenon. I always rated the third Harry Potter movie, the one directed by Alfonso Cuaron, as a triumph, possibly my favorite in the whole series -- its only meaningful competition coming from the final movie. Why it wasn't higher than #24 in my initial rankings is beyond me at this point.
None of the fallers is a movie about which I have really changed my opinion, but they were probably a little too elevated to begin with -- or I just haven't done much thinking about them in the years since. A Very Long Engagement in particular would be worthy of a rewatch, as I saw it only that one time. As for 13 Going on 30, I watched it in a weekend where I was supposed to be receiving a visit to Los Angeles from the aforementioned fling, who lived in Chicago, but who had to cancel at the last moment, so I was depressed that weekend. That's also when I watched Collateral. To this day I still associate those two movies with that weekend, though I rewatched Collateral last year to confirm that I just don't think it's all that. (It also dropped seven spots.)
Also I am perplexed that the innocuous You Got Served is my lowest ranked movie of this year. It's no great shakes, but every time I come across it at this spot on Flickchart I wonder if I woke up on the wrong side of the bed the day I ranked it. One day it will come up against a film ranked higher than it that shouldn't be, win that duel, and get out of the 2004 basement.
Overall a very strong group, as evidenced by the average 53.25% ranking on Flickchart -- easily the highest of the four years so far.
If I don't actually forget rather than almost forgetting, I'll look at 2003 in May.
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