I would love to write a long blog detailing my comments on film this year; best and worst, and so forth, and I will. But I am on a public library computer and I feel so rushed when they give that, "There are people waiting to use the internet, stick to the fifteen minute rule," speech which most people ignore. But, I will give it my best to write as much as I can for now.

Here are films I liked in 2003. I have not seen BIG FISH or MONSTER and maybe a couple of others, but these are the movies I saw in 2003. I will then order them for a list.

DIRTY PRETTY THINGS, LOTR: RETURN OF THE KING, MYSTIC RIVER, KILL BILL VOL.I, LOST IN TRANSLATION, SEABISCUIT, FINDING NEMO, SHATTERED GLASS, 21 GRAMS, HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG, MASTER AND COMMANDER, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, LILYA 4-EVER, THE GOOD THIEF, BETTER LUCK TOMORROW, CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS, SPELLBOUND

There are likely more, but these stood out in my mind as of now. Here's the Top 10:

10. MASTER AND COMMANDER: Director Peter Weir joins my top 10 list for what would be the 3rd time (DEAD POETS SOCIETY, 1989, and THE TRUMAN SHOW, my number one movie of 1998) and actor Russell Crowe makes it for the first time since L.A. CONFIDENTIAL (1997). Seriously, Crowe has been great, but GLADIATOR and A BEAUTIFUL MIND certainly were NOT Best Pictures despite what the Academy says. This is a great sea tale, with some actual tension, and what I may enjoy most in films: tactics. I love it when a character thinks about his moves, weighs the consequences, tries to better an intelligent enemy.

9. 21 GRAMS: Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, and Benecio Del Toro all give Oscar-worthy performances in this film about life and death. Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu goes a Tarantino/MEMENTO route in telling the story, and it's fascinating. Highly depressing and sad, but meaningful.

8. LILYA 4-EVER: A Russian girl finds herself betrayed and given little choice, which results in one of the most harrowing circumstances in film: enslaved prostitution. This movie is unforgettable, Oksana Akinshina is brilliant as the 17-year-old lead, and director Lukas Moodysson films some of the most brutal sex scenes ever made, driving the point home emphatically.

7. SPELLBOUND: Perhaps the first documentary to enter my top 10, although HOOP DREAMS might have made it 1994 (but that's such a good year). As you will see, it's not the last. In this one, we have 8 kids, all driven to succeed by one force or another, attempting to win the National Spelling Bee broadcast by ESPN. Each time one of the 8 get eliminated, it's devastating, because you know what they went through to get there, and on such unbelievably hard words!

6. FINDING NEMO: The Pixar people have yet to come out with a bad film. Every one of their digitally created cartoons is filled with background gags and detail, accentuating a good story, good voice performances, sharp writing. Here, believe it or not guys, Ellen DeGeneres steals the show as Dory, and just like Andy Serkis for Gollum deserves some kind of Academy appreciation.

5. CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS: Not since PARADISE LOST have I seen a documentary this incredible. What is inordinately fascinating about it is that both sides argue so convincingly about what happened, and they are completely opposite. Did Arnold Friedman and his son sexually abuse boys in their home while teaching a computer class? One guy says, absolutely, and here's the games they used to play with me and so forth, and then another guy in the class says, "Well, it was just like any other class I've ever taken." It cracks the top 5. It's a wonderful film.

4. MYSTIC RIVER: Sean Penn gives the performance that will win him the Oscar (and he deserves it), Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon are also worthy, in this film--was there a theme in film this year about child abuse?--about three childhood friends who take separate paths after Robbins' character as a child is kidnapped and abused. Now grown up, Penn's daughter is murdered, and bad circumstances lead Penn to believe that it was Robbins who did it. Marcia Gay Harden will likely also be nominated as Robbins' wife, whose doubt leads to the resolution. Clint Eastwood's best since UNFORGIVEN, and may land him another Oscar for direction.

3. LOST IN TRANSLATION: Bill Murray is a cinch to get nominated, and Scarlett Johannson should be, in what turns out to be a pseudo-biopic, a personal satire for director Sofia Coppola about her life with now ex-husband Spike Jonze. I saw this movie 3 times, easily the most I've seen a movie, ever, in the theatre. Anyway, with Murray anchoring the movie and Johannson a perfect collaborator, you can watch this movie in a trance during its dreamlike narrative. Two lost souls who've found each other. It's that perfect kind of different love story, where it's not steam and sex that draw people together. It's beautiful.

2. KILL BILL, VOL. I: This and LOST IN TRANSLATION are essentially ties for the number two spot. Quentin Tarantino makes one of the most visually luscious films of the year, with help from master cinematographer Robert Richardson. Uma Thurman, visually luscious in her own right, kicks a lot of ass. The movie has a funny fight in a house with Vivica A. Fox, chronologically the 2nd main victim, and a great kung-fu scene in a tea house, ending with a snowy swordfight with Lucy Liu, sandwiching a fabulous Japanimation sequence. It's bloody, funny: it's Tarantino, making the list again (PULP FICTION, 1994, and JACKIE BROWN, 1997). It might very well have been number one had the movie not been split into two.

1. LOTR: RETURN OF THE KING: There were numerous trilogies completed this year. THE TERMINATOR, THE MATRIX, SPY KIDS, EL MARIACHI, AMERICAN PIE, etc, but none of those could match the importance of one chapter of this series. I have recently written my review of LOTR so I will spare any more praise, just know that with all of the hard work that obviously goes into every shot, how brutal the schedule must have been, with, really, a miniscule budget of $275 million to complete all 3 movies, no film beats this.

More later.