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2003 will be remembered as the year of the documentary. My two favorite movies of the year and five of the top 12 were documentaries. Portraits of the powerful and the insignificant, people and birds, spelling champs and criminals all graced Chicago theaters this year. Documentary filmmakers brought us face to face with nature, poverty, families, war, and art in ways that challenged our notions of reality and provoked us to consider the world around us. For those who believe that movies are far more than just entertainment, this was an exciting development. Whether it's the beginning of a trend or a one-time gift from the movie gods remains to be seen, but it was a wonderfully welcome occurrence in any event.

The rest of the filmmaking world wasn't just resting on its laurels. Hollywood reminded us that you could still create films that combined artistic excellence with popular appeal, by releasing movies like Finding Nemo, In America, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Return of the King. A recent article in the New York Times groused that it was a down year for foreign films, but that's only true if you're talking about the box office success of Amelie or Life is Beautiful. If you knew where to look, though, there was a trove of compelling and provocative movies from all around the globe.

As always, my top 10 list is based on movies that were shown in the Chicago area and which I saw for the first time. That means a movie like Fog of War, a sure candidate for film of the year, will have to wait till 2004, when it opens at the Music Box theater. And though City of God opened theatrically here in Chicago last winter, I saw it at the Chicago Film Festival in 2002 and included it in last year's list. But enough introduction. Here are my top ten movies of 2003.

1. Stevie
The best film of the year is a little documentary that only played in Chicago for a couple weeks. Which is particularly shameful given that the director, Steve James, is an Oak Park native. James is best known for directing the landmark documentary Hoop Dreams, but Stevie is even more powerful. A portrait of a twenty-something man accused of molesting his eight-year-old cousin, the documentary is also an extraordinary meditation on family, community, and our responsibilities to our "neighbor." Now available on dvd, it's absolutely essential viewing.

2. Open City
Doc Films continued their exemplary programming last spring with a series entitled Voyage to Italy. The best of the bunch was this groundbreaking film from Roberto Rossellini. Shot during and just after WWII, the movie focuses on the Italian resistance during the war, exploring the nature of loyalty and faith. It set the standard for Italian neo-realism, a movement that has had a profound influence on the Iranian New Wave and many of this year's documentary films.

3. 25th Hour
A bravura piece of filmmaking from director Spike Lee, this portrait of a man on his last day before heading to prison is great storytelling. Ed Norton gives a fantastic performance as a drug dealer facing hard time, and his final hours are spent revisiting old stomping grounds, hanging out with friends and family, and pondering his life. The supporting cast, especially Brian Cox and Rosario Dawson, is marvelous, the cinematography is fantastic, and Lee's use of a post-9/11 New York is visionary.

4. Finding Nemo
The Pixar folks hit yet another home run with this enchanting and compelling tale of a father and his son. Yes, the father and the son are fish, but, like all great characters, they're embodiments of the human condition. The animation is spectacularly beautiful, with a gorgeous palette of color unmatched in any other feature this year. There are few movies that are entertaining to audiences of any age, and none this year did it so well.

5. Good Bye, Dragon Inn
Admittedly, this film will be entertaining to only a very select audience. Those of you who've read my writing for a while know that I am a fan of slow, meditative works, and this one certainly fits the bill. It uses a run-down movie theater as its inspiration to explore the nature of movie watching. Some of it is extraordinarily funny, but it's also a deeply personal consideration of the types of stories we tell. By contrasting the main character, a club-footed woman who acts as the theater's manager, with the heroine on screen, a martial artist in full flight, director Tsai Ming-liang interrogates why we tend to favor certain types of movies and then makes a stirring defense for his own cinematic style. The final scene is breathtaking in its beauty.

6. Daisies
Facets Multimedia is responsible for two of the entries on my list. The first is this quirky, strange, and exceedingly cool Czech film from the '60s. Directed by female director Vera Chytilova, this movie feels like a bizarre combination of Godard and surrealism, with a strong proto-feminist sensibility, to boot. It's hilarious in spots and provocative in others. Fortunately for Chicago audiences, Doc Films is showing it on Jan. 25 (look for a full Doc preview in next week's Hyde Park Herald).

7. Ten
I mentioned the Iranian New Wave, and the lead director in that movement, Abbas Kiarostami, released another masterpiece this year. While some critics, notably Roger Ebert, dismissed it as a dull, formalist exercise, Ten is in fact an amazing mix of fiction and documentary, one that examines how the nature of film and editing structure and affect a story. It's also a fantastic portrait of women in Iran, struggling with injustice and everyday life.

8. In This World
Though Michael Winterbottom is a British director known for his eclectic taste, his latest film was profoundly influenced by Kiarostami and other Iranian directors. His tale of two Afghan refugees making a long, overland journey to London is poignant and deeply moving. By situating the film in post-war Afghanistan and Pakistan and then threading through the Middle East, Winterbottom forces his Western audience to confront the human dimension of places we only seem to bomb, to understand the people whom we stereotype and vilify. The refugee problem is an international crisis, and yet most Westerners don't have a clue or choose not to have one. This film is a powerful portrayal of what we try not to see.

9. The films of Aki Kaurismaki
In the dog days of August, Facets offered a cool drink of Aki Kaurismaki, one of Europe's most accomplished directors. Fourteen movies were screened over ten days, including masterpieces like Drifting Clouds and The Match Factory Girl, which gave Chicago audiences a rare chance to catch up with Aki's cool, Finnish universe.

10. Time of the Wolf
The Chicago Film Festival reminded us of the power of world cinema, with Time of the Wolf the second film on my list (Good Bye, Dragon Inn also appeared at the fest). Directed by Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke, Time of the Wolf is a rigorous, difficult and mind-blowing film. Taking place after some apocalyptic event, the story features a band of characters struggling to survive. The film features a take-no-prisoners approach, but no film of 2003 so powerfully detailed the basic nature of the human condition.
 

For those who want to compare my list with other critics' top10s, here are my ten best films released theatrically in 2003: 

1. Stevie
2. Fog of War
3. Finding Nemo
4. Ten
5. In This World
6. City of God
7. Under the Skin of the City
8. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
9. Spellbound
10. Spider.

Other highly worthy movies of 2003 include: Bus 174, Decay of Fiction, Girl with a Pearl Earring, In America, Lilya 4-Ever, Lost in Translation, Man without a Past, Pirates of the Caribbean, Raising Victor Vargas, Return of the King, Rivers and Tides, and Triplets of Belleville.

by J. Robert Parks