Mystic River (2003)

Director Clint Eastwood's Best Picture Oscar-nominated Mystic River is simply a Boston-set police procedural, really, which makes all the solemnity, all the anguish of the story - all the blue-grey bleakness - and the fact an investigation that takes a matter of days to resolve is couched in twenty-five years of trauma context, a bit much - certainly once the movie ends and you know who killed Katie Markum, the daughter of ex-convict Jimmy Markum (a Best Actor Oscar-winning performance from Sean Penn) the question will have crossed your mind why so much trouble was taken to tell what is essentially a coincidence-heavy episode of Law and Order.

★★★☆☆

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Quicksand (2003)

When writing these movie blog posts, I sometimes have to take a stab in the dark at a movie's year of release until I have a chance to look it up later and after finishing "Quicksand" - a title that lured me in with the promise of Hitchcockian thrills and a synopsis that did the same (a guy falsely accused of murder goes on the run in Monte Carlo) - I took a punt that it was from 1983 and still find it hard to believe what I watched - straight-to-video nonsense with 80s tv-series production values, ludicrous plotting, and surely Michael Keaton and Michael Caine's career-worst performances - was actually released twenty years later than I'd assumed, in 2003.

★★☆☆☆

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The Core (2003)

When Earth's electromagnetic forces start misbehaving, unleashing a barrage of stock-footage world-landmark destruction, a crew of scientists, geologists and astronauts is assembled to drive a worm-like burrowing craft to the centre of the Earth to "restart the Earth's core", and boy do they have their work cut out for them: no, not saving the Earth but trying to make look interesting their repetitive chair-shaking encounters with, "Oh my god, diamonds the size of Cape Cod" (chair shake, chair shake) and "Oh my god, giant empty geodes" (chair shake, chair shake) and "Oh my god, hull-breaching lava" (chair shake, chair shake) etc, etc.

★★☆☆☆

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Travellers and Magicians (Chang Hup The Gi Tril Nung) (2003)

A mountain villager in Bhutan embarks upon a trip to New York where a friend assures him he can pick apples and earn in half a day what he is earning a month as a government official, but on his way, he meets a rice paper maker and his daughter, an apple seller, a drunk, and a jovial monk, and it is the monk who tells him an epic story within a story - a mythological Bhutanese The Postman Always Rings Twice - that eventually has the man reconsidering the beautiful impermanence of things, like his trip, like his notion of a dreamland, and like this wonderful refreshing breeze of a drama you'll wish never had to end.

★★★★★

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Who Killed Bambi? (Qui a tué Bambi?) (2003)

In a way, it is like Alien - a monster lurks in the dark corridors of an isolated someplace and a strong female lead, as terrified as she is in awe, takes it on - but this thriller is set in a hospital, not a spaceship, and while ultimately of little consequence, the movie is a perfectly chilling diversion for fans of the thriller genre and features some great moments of tension between the heroine - a slight but formidable student nurse - and the surgeon she suspects is up to no good.

★★★☆☆

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The Room (2003)

Staggering in its artlessness, mystifyingly plotted, and abominably acted, Tommy Wiseau's The Room, often cited as the worst movie ever made, tells an apparently autobiographical story of a love triangle and features go-nowhere subplots, inconsistent character psychology, and actors who clearly are not even having a good time, and so it is no wonder it has gone on to become the cult classic it has, a riotous midnight screening to jeer and holler at.

☆☆☆☆☆

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In The Cut (2003)

I love Meg Ryan as a non-comedic actress and I love Jane Campion's intelligent films, and I love Mark Ruffalo and mysteries and thrillers, which is why it pains me to say I don't very much love this ambitious Jane Campion mystery thriller starring a deadly serious Meg Ryan and Mark Ruffalo because while the movie is a clever feminist text with its message written into every line of dialogue and squeezed eloquently into the title and palpable in every scene (all of them, but consider for example Ryan and Ruffalo's first love scene which starts as a reenactment of an assault, or Ryan's self-conscious out-loud articulation of public transport poetry), In The Cut, about a serial killer who disarticulates women, doesn't work as a mystery thriller because everyone in the movie's claustrophobic circle of action is a disgusting misogynistic objectifier of women and long before the film ends it ceases to matter who among the lunatics - the really obvious culprit or one of the others on the periphery - is the killer, and unfortunately endscenes set in what is an absurd symbolic dreamscape do a disservice to the strong feminist text AND the mystery thriller.

★★★☆☆

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School of Rock (2003)

The nuns are students, the convent is a private elementary school, the criminal masquerading as a sister is a loafer masquerading unqualified as a teacher and, also just like Sister Act, rules are broken, music unites, the no-hoper discovers a purpose, his charges discover their inner rock gods, and it is all thanks to Jack Black's genuine, unabashed, and infectious enthusiasm for rock and roll that this movie, despite its well-trodden plot and issues here and there with gender stereotyping, is a feelgood classic.

★★★★★

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Hulk (2003)

In his other films, director Ang Lee successfully melds themes and genres in a way atypical of traditional Hollywood - homosexual romance and life on the land in the American Midwest in Brokeback Mountain, major release wuxia in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon - but here, his mix of superhero origin story and drama about the uncommunicative men, delivered in comic-book panels and blobby cgi, is less engaging because Lee forgets to give Bruce Banner anything heroic to do beyond overcoming his personal demons, which I suppose is heroic but it ends up feeling like the movie takes two hours to get to a starting point.

★★☆☆☆

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Freddy vs Jason (2003)

By pitting Nightmare on Elm Street's dreamstalker Freddy Krueger against Friday the 13th's undead serial killer Jason, this largely incoherent slasher contributes nothing lasting to the mythology of either horror icon, only detracts, and in the end proves not as scary as it is unpleasant with its constant refrains of "bitch", "faggot" and "sweet dark meat" to describe victims.

☆☆☆☆☆

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Old Boy (올드보이) (2003)

Upon his release from 15 years of captivity in a small hotel room, a man sets out to discover the identity of his captor and the reasons for his imprisonment, in Park Chan Wook's neo-noir mystery based on a Japanese manga which, from this implausible set-up, becomes in turns hilarious, ridiculous, tragic, fantastical, moving and disturbing, and is distinguished by its featuring the most harrowing scene of mental collapse ever committed to screen.

★★★★★

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Kill Bill Volume 1 (2003)

Quentin Tarantino abandons narrative conventions and any concerns other writer-directors might have regarding style, taste and decorum, and has a blast introducing his Nameless Bride and setting her on her four-hour murderous path of revenge that was only at the last minute before its cinema release sliced into two halves as if by the swoosh of Hattori Hanzo steel; as it turns out, this first half is concluded in an even better second half, Kill Bill Volume 2.

★★★★☆

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Out of Time (2003)

Imagine No Way Out - a man stays only a small step ahead of an investigation that threatens to identify him as the culprit in a crime - crossed with Wild Things - a twisty, turny thriller set against a sultry Florida backdrop - and you've got this entertaining and at times quite funny crime thriller with Denzel Washington as the police officer struggling to avoid an erroneous murder charge.

★★★☆☆

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Swimming Pool (2003)

A mystery writer on deadline retreats to her publisher's Spanish hacienda to really engross herself in writing but instead becomes engrossed in the publisher's wayward sex-kitten daughter unexpectedly there - she creates mayhem but will surely provide enough fodder to ease the writer's writer's block, in this suspense thriller full of all the right ingredients but sadly undercooked.

★★★☆☆

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Love Actually (2003)

This saccharine romantic comedy is replayed on television about three times a week and I've grown to loathe it, but at least on the first occasion it is a pleasure, featuring an ensemble all-star cast in a series of interconnected stories that share the central theme of messy love.

★★★★☆

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Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle Of Life (2003)

Nods to the Lara Croft series of computer games — shark punches, motorbike rides along the Great Wall of China, and skimpy silver and gold tomb-raiding outfits — keep this sequel a fanboy's fantasy rather than the female-helmed Indiana Jones-style adventure of wider appeal that the movie could have been, with Lara Croft hunting an orb belonging to Alexander the Great.

★★☆☆☆

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X2: X-men United (2003)

The best of all the X-men movies, this sequel of the original has it all - a thrilling non-stop action plot, moments of laugh-out-loud humour mostly thanks to Wolverine, and the best thing of all — alone, worth the price of admission — is the invasion scene at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters in which audiences are treated to a fast-paced and exhilarating showcase of the mutants' weird and wonderful gifts.

★★★★☆

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Old School (2003)

Before Bad Neighbours was funny enough to warrant a sequel, there was this similarly themed but dreadfully unfunny Will Ferrell movie about middle-aged men who form a fraternity to avoid eviction - do not expect a sequel.

☆☆☆☆☆

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Something's Gotta Give (2003)

In this movie-length laundry detergeant commercial, Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Amanda Peet and Keanu Reeves, clad in brilliant whites, float around what looks like Martha Stewart's house or an IKEA showroom and engage in romantic dalliances, come to terms with old age, get over their age biases and conquer their body hang-ups.

★★☆☆☆

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Terminator 3 Rise of the Machines (2003)

This serviceable third episode of the Terminator franchise is essentially the same movie as 1991s Terminator 2 just with more humour and different skins: John Connor, conceived in number one, a teenage kid in two, and a twentysomething here, gets hunted by the latest Skynet threat, T-X, a scowling, stilettoed female version of the T-1000 liquid metal cop of movie number two, and Arnold Schwarzenegger again zips back in time, steals clothes, shades and a motorbike and helps keep John and his new friend Katherine Brewster safe...although it is her turn to have all her nearest and dearest slaughtered.

★★★☆☆

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