My 2004 film rankings (in 2004)

This is the fourth in a 2022 monthly posting of the 12 year-end rankings I completed prior to starting this blog, on the occasion of my 25th anniversary of ranking movies. I'm posting them as a form of permanent backup, plus to do a little analysis of how my impression of the movies has changed since then. I'm going in reverse order and will end with 1996 in December. 

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. 

I'm Thinking of Kaufman Things: Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine

This is the fourth in my bi-monthly 2021 series revisiting the films of Charlie Kaufman.

"... of the Spotless Mind." Yes, I know. I usually do include a movie's full title on first reference, especially in the subject of the post. But this allows me to get the whole post title on one line, so you'll just have to forgive me. Besides, who doesn't know what you're talking about when you say Eternal Sunshine?

So we go from a Dangerous Mind in May to a Spotless Mind in July. Did not even notice the parallel construction of those two titles until just a few minutes ago.

This is the only month in the series in which I am watching two films, which was necessary to fit all of Kaufman's movies (minus the one that inspired it, I'm Thinking of Ending Things) into a one-year bi-monthly structure. I chose these two to lump together because they are easily his films I've seen the most, as they were each my #1 film of their respective release years (2002 and 2004). I can be sure of five viewings of each now, three apiece since I started recording my rewatches back in 2006, and at least one apiece in the years between when they were released and 2006. If we just say it's five viewings for both, that'll make their pairing together this month seem even more predestined. 

I wasn't sure how much I'd have to say about Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, thinking that my familiarity with them would rob me of fresh insight. As it turned out, I ended up taking a decent number of notes for each.

The first thing I wanted to point out is how they relate to each other. I noticed both films begin with a neurotic voiceover from the main character, though Kaufman's voiceover as himself is a lot more self-effacing and contains a lot more self-loathing than the one he writes for Jim Carrey's Joel Barish in Eternal Sunshine. Both characters speak as though they are writing a journal, though only Joel actually is. They both talk about their personal tendencies, particularly their poisonous, self-defeating ones. Nicolas Cage's Kaufman concentrates in particular on his encroaching baldness and perceived fatness. Joel probably doesn't because he is neither bald nor fat.

A few scenes later, Joel says "Why do I fall in love with every woman who shows me the least bit of attention?" This could be a question every Kaufman character asks. 

Still, in a very real sense, Joel represents progress for the Kaufman stand-in. I couldn't help but notice that both of these films contain a scene where the Kaufman character is being asked inside by the woman he obviously likes when dropping her off after a date. The actual Kaufman in Adaptation turns down the offer by Cara Seymour's Amelia, despite her evident interest, as well as his own obvious interest in her. Moments later in his internal monologue, he says he's going to reverse that choice and go up to the door to kiss her. Instead he starts driving away. Joel initially rejects the offer of Kate Winslet's Clementine as well, but when she makes a second attempt, he relents. That's progress, but he still takes himself home before things have a chance to get really physical, citing the same thing Kaufman cites in Adaptation -- that he has to get up early the next day. But, this play works for Joel in the long run as he gets into a relationship with Clementine that is plenty physical.

Is this a real increase in Kaufman's optimism and self-esteem over a period of two years? It's hard to say. But if we are looking ahead to September's film, Synecdoche New York, it kind of looks like the answer is no. He actually has several romantic dalliances in that movie, including a marriage from before the story even begins, but Caden Cotard feels as repugnant in general to Kaufman as any of his characters. Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves though.

Both of these films also contain at least one character, and sometimes multiple characters, that Kaufman aspires to be, who emit a more effortless sense of cool and a far more easy sense of confidence. In Adaptation there are two such characters: 1) His brother Donald, also played by Cage, who is basically Charlie's exact opposite in every respect except for his appearance; 2) John LaRoche, played by Chris Cooper (in his Oscar-winning performance), who is brazen and rednecky while Kaufman is effete and intellectual and timid, though LaRoche is also extremely intelligent, making him even more of an aspirational figure for Charlie. 

That character is a bit harder to find in Eternal Sunshine, but I'd argue it is Mark Ruffalo's Stan. He's a bit of a Kaufman schlub but he's also a real cool dresser and is dating a real catch, Kirsten Dunst's Mary. He's like a Kaufman made good, maybe one step further than Joel. Then there's also a Kaufman gone bad, Elijah Wood's Patrick, who is like a Kaufman who gives in to his latent stalker tendencies. 

Although there's no other character to share Kaufman's neuroses in Adaptation, I'd argue there is one in Eternal Sunshine. Interestingly, that's Clementine herself, the original manic pixie dream girl (or one of them anyway), who also confesses to having found herself ugly as a child, and frequently talks about how fucked up she is. I think we'd see this a lot more easily if she were granted the internal monologue that Joel is granted, but only one of these per film is allowed. 

Speaking of the objects of Kaufman's interests, I noticed that he's got a particular type that represents sort of an ideal to him -- and it's not Clementine, much as she may intrigue him. Seymour actually seems to be the template for this, if we are again looking ahead to his future films. Physically, Seymour has a similarity of appearance to his love interest in Synecdoche, played by Emily Watson, and also to his love interest in Anomalisa, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh -- probably more like Watson as they are both British. I'd even say there is something similar about all these actresses to Patricia Arquette, who appears as a love interest in Human Nature. (Is Drew Barrymore from Confessions of a Dangerous Mind someone we should include in this group? I think probably that's a bridge too far.)

Some other isolated thoughts from my notes:

- In multiple projects we have seen that several characters in the film represent particular sides of Kaufman's personality, and that may have no more literal depiction than in Adaptation. Not only do we have Nicolas Cage playing both Kaufman and his brother, who have very different personalities, but we hear about this within the text of the film as well. Donald Kaufman's script "The Three" deals with a serial killer, a detective and the killer's next victim, who are all the same person. "Trick photography" is his explanation of how you accomplish the effect -- a sly commentary on the current film, in which trick photography is being used to film two Nicolas Cages in the same scene, who represent different sides of the same character's personality, just like the three characters in "The Three." We of course see this splitting of one character's personality revisited in all of Kaufman's films that come after this.

- In talking about the possible film version of the adaptation Charlie Kaufman is writing in Adaptation -- which includes himself and Donald, just as the movie we're watching does (it's all very self-reflexive) -- Donald says "I think I should play me." This is yet another demonstration of just how different Donald is than Charlie. The "real" Charlie does not play himself, casting Nicolas Cage instead. Though one assumes that if Donald actually existed, he would have cast himself rather than Cage -- and also that Kaufman must have, on some level, considered playing the role, if only he'd had a bit more chutzpah or if only he'd deluded himself a bit about his own abilities as an actor. Which is something Donald would have no problem doing, or actually, does without even realizing he's doing it, since Donald is the consummate under-thinker while Charlie is the consummate over-thinker. 

- I noticed the flashback scenes in Adaptation, where we see the early years of the earth as well as certain historical figures, felt more like something out of the Michel Gondry playbook than the Spike Jonze playbook. I'm wondering if Kaufman urged Jonze to film them this way after he worked together with Gondry on Human Nature -- even if he worked with Jonze first on Being John Malkovich. 

- Both of these films feature an interest in science -- in some cases weird science -- that we have seen in most of the Kaufman films to date. In Adaptation, it's this interest in orchids that was part of his original mission statement to adapt The Orchid Thief, though also in all these "creatures emerging from the primordial ooze" flashback sequences. In Eternal Sunshine, it's the very process used to erase the unwanted memories.

- I noted, not for the first time, that the music that plays over Joel and Clementine meeting each other on the train to Montauk is very goofy and whimsical. Clearly that is to a purpose, even though the tone that has been introduced in the few minutes before that is decidedly wintry and melancholy. I'm wondering if it is Kaufman's and Gondry's acknowledgement that this sort of meet cute scene has a history on screen, and is very tropy in nature. It kind of remind me of a sitcom, which speaks to some of what Kaufman is looking at in his Confessions of a Dangerous Mind script. 

- This isn't related to one of Kaufman's other projects, but I noticed a similarity between Eternal Sunshine and another film I love from this same period: Vanilla Sky. And it has to do with that same "uncontrollable slippage of time" concept that I find amply present in both Sky and in Synecdoche New York. When the sleeping Joel inside his own brain realizes he can't control the loss of his memories and that this is extremely distressing to him, he yells at the sky "I don't want to do this anymore, I want to call it off!" In the tone of voice and in the function within the narrative, it reminds me of Tom Cruise yelling "TECH SUPPORT!" in one of my favorite moments of Vanilla Sky. Both films are dealing with the artificial manipulation of memories to wipe out the memory of something painful that has happened to the main character. No wonder I love both of these movies so much.

- Lastly: Both Eternal Sunshine and I'm Thinking of Ending Things end on a shot in the snow, though the former is much more optimistic in its conclusion than the latter. 

One thing from watching these two films that I really did not expect: I enjoyed my revisit of Adaptation much more than my revisit of Eternal Sunshine. Though both are former #1 films for me, my working conventional wisdom was that I liked Eternal Sunshine better, as I ranked it higher both in my best of the 2000s rankings (#5 vs. #11) and currently on Flickchart (#38 vs. #56). However, on this viewing, I felt myself resisting Eternal Sunshine just a little, finding it a bit too twee for its own good in certain spots -- especially surprising since I don't think of Kaufman as this type of person. Adaptation clearly seems like the more mind-blowing achievement on a script level, even as clever as some of Kaufman's notions in Eternal Sunshine are. 

I'm starting to think that the things that are great about Eternal Sunshine are more equally attributable to Kaufman and Gondry, whereas Kaufman's involvement is more dominant in Adaptation, and maybe that I prefer Kaufman dominance. (Which is why two of the three films Kaufman himself directed resonated with me so much.) I'm wondering if part of that was confirmed when I watched a little featurette afterward on my Eternal Sunshine DVD, a conversation with Carrey and Gondry where we get to see some of Gondry's process and the things he was dreaming up on the fly. 

I suspect Eternal Sunshine may have spoken to me more than Adaptation initially, precisely because of its melancholy elements -- when I first saw the movie, I was recovering from a breakup and starting to recognize that we probably were not going to get back together. As I've grown older and have been in a happy marriage for 13 years, I'm probably a little less affected by the poignancy of a lost relationship and maybe in a better position to appreciate the pure cleverness of Adaptation. 

Okay, in September it's time for what could possibly overtake both of these as my favorite Kaufman: Synecdoche New York. It'll be my third viewing, so it hasn't yet had the repeat exposure to really challenge the other two. I could easily see that happening this time around though. 

A country best left undiscovered

How is it that the more movies you like a film rips off, the less likely you are to like it?

I mean, if a movie is going to rip off better movies, at least it's good if it's better movies you really like. You'd think that would be a good start.

Yet despite borrowing heavily from the likes of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Donnie Darko, Edge of Tomorrow and, I guess, Flatliners -- all movies I quite like -- The Discovery was a total snooze.

Netlfix's second-released (if I'm keeping track) high-profile movie picked up at this year's Sundance, The Discovery is from Charlie McDowell, the guy who directed a mind-bender from a few years ago that I liked slightly less than everyone else: The One I Love.

That movie didn't do all it could have and the ending was disappointingly predictable, but before that it was a genuinely fresh vision that refused to explain all of its secrets. The setup of that movie is unlike any I'd seen before. Whereas the setup of The Discovery is ... a tad more familiar.

The idea is good. A scientist uncovers irrefutable proof of the existence of some kind of afterlife, as they have detected brainwaves leaving the body on a subatomic level at the moment of death. At least, I believe that's the explanation. Let's just say it's irrefutable proof within the world of the movie and we'll just have to accept that.

Which I would be perfectly willing to do, but the movie doesn't do much with its interesting concept. This evidence has prompted a spike in suicide rates around the world, as no longer do unhappy people feel like they need to live the rest of their miserable existences in their corporeal shells. Instead, they can immediately punch their ticket to the next plane of existence. I'm doubtful that this would really happen, but again I am willing to suspend disbelief.

It's just that this movie doesn't show us much at all, and it tells us things relentlessly, unambiguously, starting right with the amateurish exposition in the opening scene -- an interview between a TV journalist (Mary Steenburgen) and this scientist (Robert Redford), in which she recaps everything we need to know in a dozen lines of awkward stiffness. About 15 minutes in I commented to my wife that this was about the most talky movie I had ever seen. (An exaggeration, but the degree of my dissatisfaction with what I'd seen thus far prompted me to it.)

To tell you the ways this rips off the movies I've referenced above would constitute spoilers, so I won't do that. But I do think it's worth telling you about the hilariously derivative meet cute between the romantic leads, played by Jason Segel and Rooney Mara, which happens near the beginning so it's spoiler free.

Segel, a reserved introvert, and Mara, an extrovert with manic pixie dream girl ambitions (except that she's suicidal), meet much the same way that the characters played by Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet, Joel and Clementine, meet in Eternal Sunshine. Joel being a reserved introvert and Clementine being an extrovert with manic pixie dream girl ambitions (though not suicidal). In both cases they are the only two in each other's vicinity on a public transport, here a ferry, there a train. In both cases he sits in his seat normally while she drapes herself over her own seat. In both cases she tries to crack his facade with acerbic wit while he gradually warms to the unfamiliar situation. In both cases they even talk about the meaning of the woman's name (Clementine's bit about the song and her hair color, and Mara saying her character doesn't look like an Isla, though of course she does). In Charlie Kaufman's case, though, he was at least happy to go with ordinary names that have no thematic meaning -- well, maybe not totally ordinary names, but at least no thematic meaning. Not the case with McDowell, who names one Will (one of the most metaphorical names we have, right after Grace) and names the other Isla (she's an island, you see).

Everything thuds down with about that same level of subtlety.

I don't think there was an intended play on words with the title The Discovery and Shakespeare, who called death "the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns."  But it's clear that Charlie McDowell is no Shakespeare, and this country is not worth visiting.

Mood Indigo is a bad movie to watch while eating tacos

We take our dinner in front of the television in my house.

We make no excuses. We make no apologies. It's just what we do.

We do have a practical rule, however, that confines us to English-language programming during dinner. When you're looking down at your plate to scoop up new bites of food, you're missing whatever's appearing on the screen for those two or three seconds. If you miss a little visual information, that tends to be okay -- or so we've determined. But if you miss reading the subtitles? You could be lost by the third bite.

That rule meets its toughest test when the viewing on tap for the evening is a foreign language film. We're both so tired these days, what with two kids under age four (who have both been sick for more than a week), that we just can't afford to spend dinnertime watching an entire half-hour comedy as an appetizer for the foreign film. If we don't start that movie close to 7:30 sharp, we ain't gonna finish it.

And so it was that we stretched our rule last night for Michel Gondry's Mood Indigo, which was due back at the library today. I'm most worried about my wife in situations like this, since she tends to more fastidiously assemble the bites on her fork, while I will just shove the food in the general direction of my face, as long as my eyes can stay fixed on the screen. But my wife is nearly fluent in the film's language, French, so I had only myself to worry about, and deemed I was up for the task. As long as most of the food made it in my cake hole, I'd be okay.

But I kind of forgot it was taco night. Or rather, it only came to be taco night about an hour before the movie, when my older son and I went down to the shops to fetch some beef mince.

Tacos require more assembly than most dishes a person could have for dinner, so the "shoving blindly toward the opening" approach wasn't going to work for me. Then complicate things by the fact that not only is it French, but the white subtitles often disappeared into the background, lacking the helpful little black borders around the letters that distinguish a good subtitling job. Then add the fact that this film's opening credits in particular are alive with activity, both visual information and rapid-fire French language dialogue, and you've got a ten-minute period that's even busier than the busiest sections of Amelie.

It's a miracle we made it through.

Glad we did, though, because those first ten minutes feature rows of typists typing on typewriters that pass by on conveyor belts, an eel sticking its head cheekily out a number of sink faucets in trying to escape the chef intent on cooking him, and a piano that makes cocktails, the type of which depends on the tune played.

This was a movie worth seeing every little bit of, and for the most part, we did.

And here are some other things I have to say about it ...

My rare head start

Haven't heard of Mood Indigo? Well, that doesn't surprise me. It hasn't even been released theatrically in the U.S. yet. That won't happen until July 18th.

So how am I seeing it here, on video -- and on video from the library?

Well, Mood Indigo was playing in cinemas here last October. I would have seen it, in fact, except for the fact that I was heavily focused on compiling my 2013 rankings, and I wanted to concentrate on movies people back in the U.S. were buzzing about. No one had even heard of Mood Indigo, so I worried that it had somehow just slipped through the cracks without even getting a U.S. release. A surprising fate for the director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, to be sure, but nothing that would qualify as unprecedented.

Then I realized -- we're getting Mood Indigo before everyone else. Nearly a year before, in fact.

It's not common, but this is the known flip side of the discrepancy between U.S. and foreign release dates, which I usually think favors the U.S. Some films -- mainstream films -- get released in places like England and Australia first. Especially if, you know, they were made in England or Australia. Or in this case, France.

Two other films that came out last year in Oz but not until this year in the U.S. are British imports Filth (starring James McAvoy and based on a book by Irvine Welsh) and the Steve Coogan vehicle Alan Partridge (known here as Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa).

What do I love about all three of these films? They make easy adds to my 2014 list, since I still do design this list according to U.S. release dates.

I'm glad I waited on Mood Indigo, the only one of these three I felt a strong urge to see in the theater, because if I had seen Indigo last year, I would have felt compelled to count it in my 2013 list. Now that I've waited, I can rank it the same year as other American critics who see it for the first time this year.

And I also get to see it more than a month before most of the people reading this ... which is a rare feeling indeed, when half of last year's best picture nominees didn't even get released here until February.

Michel Gondry is back

Where had you gone, Michel Gondry?

The director of Eternal Sunshine seemed to be very much on track to continue dazzling indie audiences for the rest of his professional career, following up that 2004 hit with the only barely lesser film The Science of Sleep (2006). But when his next two films with Hollywood actors were the disappointing duo of Be Kind Rewind (2008) and The Green Hornet (2011), he seemed to have really lost his way.

But what concerned me most was when Gondry started making films I had to work to even hear about. The Green Hornet was only three years ago now, but those three years have featured a near return to obscurity for the Frenchman. It seemed that every time I turned around, I was hearing about a Gondry film that I should have been hearing more about. In 2012 he made some feature I had never heard of called The We and the I, and then in 2013 he followed it up with some documentary I had never heard of called Is the Man Who is Tall Happy? Their titles alone suggested to me that this represented a willful return to eccentric inaccessibility for a directed who felt burned by Hollywood. Since I don't even know what those movies are about, I'm going only on impressions here.

Well, I'm not going to tell you that Mood Indigo is some Hollywood popcorn film, but it does feel as though Gondry is getting back to what he was doing in Sunshine and Sleep. And that is most certainly a good thing.

Gondry's DIY, crafts-informed approach to visuals makes a major return here. If so-called "practical effects" are what we long to return to in our monster movies, you could say that Gondry's sets, props and artistic flourishes represent a kind of "practical artwork" that feels tactile and charming.

But what's truly memorable about Mood Indigo is the way Gondry almost entirely disregards the physics of this film's physical universe. Early on, characters master a dance craze that involve their legs curving and arcing like pieces of taut wire. An ice-skating scene features a character whose torso inexplicably elongates an additional 40 feet. Characters frequently lose track of gravity and go flying off either skyward or forward. This is to say nothing of the various inanimate objects that come to life, and animals that suddenly appear in speaking roles designed for humans.

Simply put, Gondry has rediscovered the joys of the impossible that disappeared from his post-Sleep Hollywood work. The result is an effort that does not live up to the impossibly high standards of Sunshine, and may not even be as good as Sleep, but is at least in the same conversation as both of them. It's whimsical with a capital W, but never crosses that fine line that might make it precious.

Nor is this to say that the movie is going where you think it will go, or that its tone will stay this upbeat. That's all I'll say.

The strange death of Boris Vian

Having thought she knew nothing about this movie going in, my wife quickly realized that it was based on a novel by French novelist Boris Vian. Not only had she read Vian, but she had actually read this particular novel, which was entitled L'Ecume des Jours (as is the movie in French -- literally, The Scum of the Days). The English title was Froth on the Daydream ... which I guess did not make a very good title for a movie. (But would make an excellent pairing with the title Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.)

I soon found myself discovering more about, and becoming steadily more fascinated by, this man, Boris Vian.

It turns out that Boris Vian, who died in 1959, had had just one other of his works turned into a movie. My wife told me that it was I Spit On Your Grave, the brutal 1978 exploitation film in which a woman goes on a killing spree avenging her own gang rape.

Not really what I expected from a guy whose other book was being turned into something that seemed like a cross between Jean Jeunet, Terry Gilliam and David Cronenberg.

It turns out my wife was half right. I Spit On Your Graves was indeed the title of the novel, but it was made into a 1959 film with the title I Spit On Your Grave by Michel Gast, not the 1978 Meir Zarchi film. It would seem that the two films are related, but the plot synopsis for the 1959 film on IMDB dispels that notion: "Joe Grant, a light-skinned African-American, heads to a small Southern town to investigate the lynching death of his brother. He draws the attention of a gorgeous heiress whom he learns may have been involved in the killing."

Well, it could have been the famously reviled 1978 version for how little Vian thought of it. Having already fought with the producers about their interpretation of his work and asking to have his name removed, he could stand it no longer during a French screening of the completed film. A few minutes in he allegedly blurted out "These guys are supposed to be American? My ass!" He then collapsed from a massive coronary and died on the way to the hospital.

If that's not putting yourself into your art, I don't know what is.

Something tells me Vian would have looked more favorably on Mood Indigo ... though he probably wouldn't have lived to see it anyway, as he'd be 94.

Just because

I threw in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind last night. Just because.

And "just because" has become an increasingly rare reason for me to watch a movie these days.

As both a working critic and a prolific blogger, I've always got "good reasons" to watch the movies I watch. I watch them because I'm reviewing them. I watch them because they're helping me review a different movie. I watch them because I'm working on some crazy project, like ranking my top 82 films released between 2005 and 2008. I watch them because my wife rented them from Netflix. Even "because I've never seen it before" is a purpose-driven reason to watch a movie.

But sometimes it's nice to watch a movie just because. Just because you own it. Just because you love it and haven't seen it in awhile. Just because it's a Wednesday night.

All three of these reasons applied when I watched Eternal Sunshine. It wasn't a premeditated viewing -- it just happened. Okay, I had been thinking about it all day, but it wasn't something I knew I was going to do yesterday. And with the way we order our rental queues and anticipate theatrical release dates, a movie I didn't know I was going to watch yesterday counts as unpremeditated for me.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was my fifth favorite movie of the 2000s, as ranked here, but I hadn't seen it since 2005 or 2006. (Truth be told, that was my purpose-driven reason to watch it, to determine where it ranked. But I didn't end up watching it back in January, when I was finalizing those rankings.) And I don't know what it was, but some buried instinct drove me to set aside my normally aggressive viewing schedule of purpose-driven movies, in order to watch it. So last night I did.

And since I don't have anything further to say, other than the implied message that we should all take the time to revisit movies "just because," I thought I'd comment on a few newly detected observations from my most recent viewing:

1) There was a funny moment early on when I wanted to check if a gaffe had been committed in the dialogue. Joel (Jim Carrey) is just learning from his friends (played by Jane Adams and David Cross) that Clementine (Kate Winslet) has undergone a radical new procedure that will allow her memories of Joel to be erased. When the characters played by Adams and Cross argue over whether it's right to be telling him this, Cross' character says, "It's about Joel, who's an adult, not Mama Carrie's kid." Except what I heard was "Mama Carrey's kid." I immediately searched the internet, including IMDB's listing of continuity errors, to see if this had been some kind of slip-up that no one ever caught. See, Jim Carrey is quite literally "Mama Carrey's kid," if you want to refer to his mother, Mrs. Carrey, as "Mama Carrey." What it turned out to be was that Adams' character is named Carrie, which struck me as possibly more than a coincidence. I thought it might have been another instance of someone referring to a real Carrey/Carrie by name -- you may remember that in Star Wars, after his character returns from blowing up the Death Star, Mark Hamill shouts "Carrie!" to Princess Leia (played by Carrie Fisher). They never caught it and it stayed in the movie.

2) Winslet is rightly considered one of our best actresses, and she received one of her six Oscar nominations for this film. But what I think is so fabulous about this particular performance is that it was the first time we really got to see her playing a modern woman -- someone with her hair dyed a different color in every scene, at that. That she mastered this as easily as all her roles in stuffy period pieces shows not only her talent, but also her range. There are plenty of people out there who have talent but no range, and I was pleased to be reminded that Kate has both.

3) Speaking of good performances, I think the secondary storyline involving Mark Ruffalo, Kirsten Dunst, Elijah Wood and Tom Wilkinson tends to get overlooked in the appreciation of Eternal Sunshine. They all give good performances, but the one that really flummoxes me is Ruffalo. Ruffalo was born in 1967, meaning he was 36 years old when he was filming these scenes. That makes him 14 years older than Wood and 15 years older than Dunst. Yet he somehow "shrunk himself" -- that's the only way I can describe it -- in order to adopt the mannerisms, appearance and physicality of a kid who just graduated college, seeming every bit the contemporary of Wood and Dunst. Go back and watch that performance, and you'll realize that Ruffalo has played full-grown men both before and after Eternal Sunshine -- but transformed himself into an early twentysomething kid here. It's almost creepy.

4) I love the way this movie speaks to anyone who has ever gone through a breakup, especially those who have sought to mend fences and start again. Eternal Sunshine underscores our addiction to our memories, and the necessity that we'll romanticize them, even if it's sometimes hurtful and destructive to us. Then it gives us that happy ending all incurable romantics and wounded souls want, but it comes with an asterisk. Joel and Clementine agree to try again, but they also realize they know where this will go -- if they start as blank slates, as they did when they first met, events will inevitably play themselves out to a point of irreconcilable difference once again, even if the details will be different. The movie tells us that we don't really want this happy ending, and by demonstrating the futility of trying to revisit a doomed relationship, it means to give its heartbroken viewers a different kind of happy ending: the closure they so desperately need, which will help them contextualize their memories, rather than feed off them.

I should watch things "just because" more often, indeed.