2003

Movie Title Screens: 2003 | Academy Awards: 2003 | Film History Milestones: 2003

Title Screen Film Genre(s), Title, Year, (Country), Length, Director, Description

Big Fish (2003), 125 minutes, D: Tim Burton

Dogville (2003, Denm.), 177 minutes, D: Lars von Trier

The Dreamers (2003, Fr./It./UK), 116 minutes, D: Bernardo Bertolucci

Finding Nemo (2003), 100 minutes, D: Andrew Stanton, Lee Unkrich

Good Bye Lenin! (2003, Germany), 121 minutes, D: Wolfgang Becker
Wolfgang Becker's off-beat, political, and metaphoric comedy/drama, somewhat preposterous in its premise, was set in East Berlin during the crucial years of 1989-1990. It was necessary for filmmakers to reconstruct a believable and authentic setting of the divided city with period cars, clothes, advertisements, furnishings, products and artifacts. This Rip Van Winkle satire told of the efforts of a devoted young East Berliner named Alex (Daniel Brühl) in 1989 to protect his comatose mother Christiane (Katrin Sass) from more suffering. When Alex was arrested during an anti-government protest, she was shocked and had a near-fatal heart attack. His elaborate ruse was to prevent his bed-ridden matriarch, a fervent, idealistic socialist-activist, from awakening and painfully learning that her beloved East Germany had been massively transformed. With the end of the Cold War and the fall of both the Berlin wall and the German Democratic Republic's (GDR) Socialist Party, Marxism-Leninism had been entirely abandoned. Caught between the extremes of free enterprise and the old Communist system, he strove to keep up illusory pretenses. His conspiracy included searching for old government-branded coffee and pickle jars to repackage products, keeping the drab apartment's furniture, and filming fake pre-unification news broadcasts. He cleverly recreated the fictional charade that the vanished German Democratic Republic (GDR) still existed. The influential film turned the Kerner family crisis into a dramatic allegory of Germany's own struggle to heal, adapt, and rebuild itself. Shot mostly in the former East Berlin, this acclaimed film focused on the day-to-day experiences of life in the city. Revelations in the film's third act set up new scenarios and realities - both Alex and his mother could no longer live in the past.

House of Sand and Fog (2003), 126 minutes, D: Vadim Perelman

Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), 111 minutes, D: Quentin Tarantino

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003, US/NZ), 201 minutes, D: Peter Jackson
See The Lord of the Rings series.
Peter Jackson's monumental, big-budget action/adventure epic (all three films) was a dazzling synthesis of many fantastical elements from J.R.R. Tolkein's masterwork about Middle-Earth: an heroic quest, good vs. evil, war stories, sci-fi creatures (dwarves, elves, goblins, orcs, etc.) and ancient wonders. Multiple story lines and epic battles were interwoven together in a story of friendship, loyalty, honor and courage. The quest was specifically to destroy a powerful artifact known as the One Ring, created by the Dark Lord Sauron (the eponymous "Lord of the Rings"), in order to end Sauron's lordship over the Elves and Middle Earth. A series of awe-inspiring battles culminated with the defeat of Sauron, an end to corrupted Wizard Saruman the White (Christopher Lee), and the destruction of the Ring. Innovative motion capture created the unforgettable creature of Gollum (Andy Serkis) (once a good hobbit named Sméagol), who served as the wretched guide to young hobbits Frodo (Elijah Wood) and friend Sam (Sean Astin) during their mission - to return the Ring to Mordor and destroy it in Mount Doom's molten lava.

Lost in Translation (2003, US/Jp.), 102 minutes, D: Sofia Coppola

Love, Actually (2003, UK), 135 minutes, D: Richard Curtis

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), 138 minutes, D: Peter Weir

The Matrix Reloaded (2003), 138 minutes, D: Andy and Larry Wachowski
See Matrix series.

The Matrix Revolutions (2003), 129 minutes, D: Andy and Larry Wachowski
See Matrix series.

A Mighty Wind (2003), 91 minutes, D: Christopher Guest

Monster (2003), 93 minutes, D: Patty Jenkins

Mystic River (2003), 137 minutes, D: Clint Eastwood
The centerpiece of this bleak Clint Eastwood film was the brutal murder of 19-year-old Katie Markum (Emmy Rossum), the beloved daughter of ex-con and grocery-store owner Jimmy Markum (Sean Penn). Massachusetts homicide detective Sean Devine (Kevin Bacon), the boyhood friend of Jimmy, was assigned to the case while Jimmy conducted his own search for the killer. Markum suspected a third boyhood friend as the murderer - disturbed, violated, and haunted sexual-abuse victim Dave Boyle (Tim Robbins), who claimed that on the same night he murdered a pedophile in the parking lot of McGill's bar after seeing him having sex in a car with a child prostitute. Markum forced Dave to falsely admit to Katie's murder, then executed him and dumped his body in the Mystic River - only a few hours before the real killers confessed. A break in the case finally came through a clue on a 911 tape and a gun trace, which led investigators to Silent Ray Harris and his skateboard pal John O'Shea. The two boys accidentally fired the gun during a prank, injuring Katie, and then pursued her when she fled and finished the job.

Oldboy (2003, S. Korea), 118 minutes, D: Park Chan-wook
Co-writer/director Park Chan-wook's mysterious, neo-noirish, compelling, suspenseful and visceral (double) revenge action-thriller was an ultra-violent, potently sinister tale (told mostly in flashback). Its themes included vengeance, conspiracy, guilt, the taboo of incest, hypnotism, and redemption. In the film's complex tale beginning with a flashback, the male protagonist Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik) detailed the circumstances of his fate 15 years earlier in 1988 when he was arrested for disorderly drunkenness on his daughter's 4th birthday, July 5th! He was abducted and found himself waking up and imprisoned in a strange, dingy, windowless hotel-like room in South Korea without knowing the charges or his captors; he was fed through a door slot and kept sedated so he wouldn't commit suicide out of despair. In the locked room, he learned from color-TV viewing during his long 15 years of imprisonment that he had been charged (and framed!) for his wife Kim's murder, and that his young four year-old daughter had been sent away to live with foster parents. He wrote voluminous notes in his autobiographical journals-diaries about who he might have hurt to cause his imprisonment. 15 years later in the year 2003, Dae-su was inexplicably freed and released, and entered a sushi restaurant where he became acquainted with a helpful and young sushi chef named Mi-do (Kang Hye-jeong), someone he recognized as familiar from a Korean TV cooking show. Dae-su received a taunting, enigmatic phone call from his unidentified, villainous, sadistic and insane captor-tormentor (later identified as Woo-jin Lee (Yu Ji-tae)). Dae-su asked about the extent of his hypnotic control; the caller challenged Dae-su to investigate the reasons for his incarceration with a cryptic clue, before consuming a live octopus headfirst. After briefly taking him into her apartment when he became sick, Mi-do began to assist him in following clues in order to unravel the mystery and discover the enigmatic reasons for what had occurred to him. Dae-su surrealistic vengeance against his captor(s) and prison officials. After identifying the location of the private prison where he was held, he confronted the prison manager Park Cheol-woong (Dal-su Oh), and sought revenge by questioning and brutally torturing the man (with 15 tooth extractions) who had locked him up for 15 years. After further sleuthing with his friend Joo-hwan (Ji Dae-han), Dae-su came face-to-face with his captor and a protective bodyguard (Mr. Han); Dae-su had inexplicably been freed after 15 years, and was given an ultimatum by his captor - he was challenged to find answers about his prison-punishment in only five days. If he failed, Mi-do would die. During that time, Dae-su and Mi-do left town and went to a 'love hotel' and had sex together for the first time, but then they realized that his tormenter had wired Dae-su and knew about their sexual contact and where they were. Eventually, Dae-su discovered that his "Evergreen" tormentor was his former grade-school classmate Lee Woo-jin (Yoo Ji-tae). During their high-school days years earlier when they were classmates, young Woo-jin's own sister Lee Soo-ah (Yoon Jin-seo) was rumored to be slutty and for some reason had committed suicide; Dae-su naturally suspected that Woo-jin had imprisoned him as retaliation after wrongly blaming him for his sister's death. In a startling flashback, young Dae-su had unintentionally witnessed Woo-jin and an unidentified female having sexual relations together (although he didn't know that they were related siblings - and therefore that their sexual act was incestual); afterwards due to one off-handed comment, Dae-su relayed what he had seen (regarded as very inconsequential to him at the time) to his friend Joo-hwan. In the present day, millionaire villain Woo-jin confirmed to Dae-su that his diabolical and vengeful plan of imprisonment was definitely in retaliation for the incident regarding his humiliated sister's rumored incestuous pregnancy that led to her subsequent death, even though Dae-su had no part in further exaggerated gossip. Nonetheless, Dae-su was solely blamed by Woo-jin for spreading the initial rumor. While hateful accusations were spreading, Woo-Jin's sister experienced a false pregnancy and then committed suicide, by presumably throwing herself over a dam (on July 5th!). Dae-su suggested that Woo-jin had been present at the time of his sister's death at the dam, due to photographic evidence. Woo-jin countered by describing how Dae-su had been programmed via hypnosis to meet, fall in love and have sex with his own daughter - in order to also have Dae-su commit incest and to feel the same pain. Dae-su debased himself, eventually deciding to subject himself to an extremely-painful tongue self-excisement with a rusty pair of scissors - to find atonement and to prevent any further rumors or talk after realizing he had taken the virginity of his own long-lost daughter Mi-do (an act of unintended incest!). The film's major plot twist was that Woo-jin had murdered his own suicidal sister (by letting go of her over the side of Habchun Dam) - she had not committed suicide; as the guilty memory from years earlier came over him (she was pregnant with his child - the reason that he had released her), he shot himself in the side of the head, as he exited the building via the elevator. As the film concluded with an ambiguous ending, Dae-su was attempting to erase his unbearable knowledge of his lover Mi-do being his daughter, so that they could continue to live together in ignorance.

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), 143 minutes, D: Gore Verbinski
See Pirates of the Caribbean series.

Seabiscuit (2003), 141 minutes, D: Gary Ross

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), 109 minutes, D: Jonathan Mostow
See Terminator series.

thirteen (2003), 100 minutes, D: Catherine Hardwicke

The Triplets of Belleville (2003, Fr.) (aka Les Triplettes de Belleville), 80 minutes, D: Sylvain Chomet

21 Grams (2003), 124 minutes, D: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritut

Under the Tuscan Sun (2003), 113 minutes, D: Audrey Wells
The pretext for this idyllic, spellbinding, postcard-pretty Tuscan travelogue and upscale romantic chick flick was that the marriage of Frances Mayes (Diane Lane), a San Francisco literary author/professor, had abruptly ended. To start a new life and pursue happiness, she accepted an invitation to a ten-day European tour. She ended up impulsively purchasing and restoring a small, 300 year-old fixer-upper farm house (named Bramasole or "yearn for the light") in the Italian hill town of Cortona in the eastern part of Tuscany. The inspiring escapist locale showed off stunning, panoramic, heavenly sun-soaked landscapes and sunflowers, including the Chianti region's tan-colored soil, deep-cut green countryside and turquoise sky, and the bleached cliff sides and blue seas of Positano.

X2: X-Men United (2003), 133 minutes, D: Bryan Singer
See X-Men series.

Title Screen	Film Genre(s), Title, Year, (Country), Length, Director, Description
	Big Fish (2003), 125 minutes, D: Tim Burton
	Dogville (2003, Denm.), 177 minutes, D: Lars von Trier
	The Dreamers (2003, Fr./It./UK), 116 minutes, D: Bernardo Bertolucci
	Finding Nemo (2003), 100 minutes, D: Andrew Stanton, Lee Unkrich
	Good Bye Lenin! (2003, Germany), 121 minutes, D: Wolfgang Becker Wolfgang Becker's off-beat, political, and metaphoric comedy/drama, somewhat preposterous in its premise, was set in East Berlin during the crucial years of 1989-1990. It was necessary for filmmakers to reconstruct a believable and authentic setting of the divided city with period cars, clothes, advertisements, furnishings, products and artifacts. This Rip Van Winkle satire told of the efforts of a devoted young East Berliner named Alex (Daniel Brühl) in 1989 to protect his comatose mother Christiane (Katrin Sass) from more suffering. When Alex was arrested during an anti-government protest, she was shocked and had a near-fatal heart attack. His elaborate ruse was to prevent his bed-ridden matriarch, a fervent, idealistic socialist-activist, from awakening and painfully learning that her beloved East Germany had been massively transformed. With the end of the Cold War and the fall of both the Berlin wall and the German Democratic Republic's (GDR) Socialist Party, Marxism-Leninism had been entirely abandoned. Caught between the extremes of free enterprise and the old Communist system, he strove to keep up illusory pretenses. His conspiracy included searching for old government-branded coffee and pickle jars to repackage products, keeping the drab apartment's furniture, and filming fake pre-unification news broadcasts. He cleverly recreated the fictional charade that the vanished German Democratic Republic (GDR) still existed. The influential film turned the Kerner family crisis into a dramatic allegory of Germany's own struggle to heal, adapt, and rebuild itself. Shot mostly in the former East Berlin, this acclaimed film focused on the day-to-day experiences of life in the city. Revelations in the film's third act set up new scenarios and realities - both Alex and his mother could no longer live in the past.
	House of Sand and Fog (2003), 126 minutes, D: Vadim Perelman
	Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), 111 minutes, D: Quentin Tarantino
	The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003, US/NZ), 201 minutes, D: Peter Jackson See The Lord of the Rings series. Peter Jackson's monumental, big-budget action/adventure epic (all three films) was a dazzling synthesis of many fantastical elements from J.R.R. Tolkein's masterwork about Middle-Earth: an heroic quest, good vs. evil, war stories, sci-fi creatures (dwarves, elves, goblins, orcs, etc.) and ancient wonders. Multiple story lines and epic battles were interwoven together in a story of friendship, loyalty, honor and courage. The quest was specifically to destroy a powerful artifact known as the One Ring, created by the Dark Lord Sauron (the eponymous "Lord of the Rings"), in order to end Sauron's lordship over the Elves and Middle Earth. A series of awe-inspiring battles culminated with the defeat of Sauron, an end to corrupted Wizard Saruman the White (Christopher Lee), and the destruction of the Ring. Innovative motion capture created the unforgettable creature of Gollum (Andy Serkis) (once a good hobbit named Sméagol), who served as the wretched guide to young hobbits Frodo (Elijah Wood) and friend Sam (Sean Astin) during their mission - to return the Ring to Mordor and destroy it in Mount Doom's molten lava.
	Lost in Translation (2003, US/Jp.), 102 minutes, D: Sofia Coppola
	Love, Actually (2003, UK), 135 minutes, D: Richard Curtis
	Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), 138 minutes, D: Peter Weir
	The Matrix Reloaded (2003), 138 minutes, D: Andy and Larry Wachowski See Matrix series.
	The Matrix Revolutions (2003), 129 minutes, D: Andy and Larry Wachowski See Matrix series.
	A Mighty Wind (2003), 91 minutes, D: Christopher Guest
	Monster (2003), 93 minutes, D: Patty Jenkins
	Mystic River (2003), 137 minutes, D: Clint Eastwood The centerpiece of this bleak Clint Eastwood film was the brutal murder of 19-year-old Katie Markum (Emmy Rossum), the beloved daughter of ex-con and grocery-store owner Jimmy Markum (Sean Penn). Massachusetts homicide detective Sean Devine (Kevin Bacon), the boyhood friend of Jimmy, was assigned to the case while Jimmy conducted his own search for the killer. Markum suspected a third boyhood friend as the murderer - disturbed, violated, and haunted sexual-abuse victim Dave Boyle (Tim Robbins), who claimed that on the same night he murdered a pedophile in the parking lot of McGill's bar after seeing him having sex in a car with a child prostitute. Markum forced Dave to falsely admit to Katie's murder, then executed him and dumped his body in the Mystic River - only a few hours before the real killers confessed. A break in the case finally came through a clue on a 911 tape and a gun trace, which led investigators to Silent Ray Harris and his skateboard pal John O'Shea. The two boys accidentally fired the gun during a prank, injuring Katie, and then pursued her when she fled and finished the job.
	Oldboy (2003, S. Korea), 118 minutes, D: Park Chan-wook Co-writer/director Park Chan-wook's mysterious, neo-noirish, compelling, suspenseful and visceral (double) revenge action-thriller was an ultra-violent, potently sinister tale (told mostly in flashback). Its themes included vengeance, conspiracy, guilt, the taboo of incest, hypnotism, and redemption. In the film's complex tale beginning with a flashback, the male protagonist Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik) detailed the circumstances of his fate 15 years earlier in 1988 when he was arrested for disorderly drunkenness on his daughter's 4th birthday, July 5th! He was abducted and found himself waking up and imprisoned in a strange, dingy, windowless hotel-like room in South Korea without knowing the charges or his captors; he was fed through a door slot and kept sedated so he wouldn't commit suicide out of despair. In the locked room, he learned from color-TV viewing during his long 15 years of imprisonment that he had been charged (and framed!) for his wife Kim's murder, and that his young four year-old daughter had been sent away to live with foster parents. He wrote voluminous notes in his autobiographical journals-diaries about who he might have hurt to cause his imprisonment. 15 years later in the year 2003, Dae-su was inexplicably freed and released, and entered a sushi restaurant where he became acquainted with a helpful and young sushi chef named Mi-do (Kang Hye-jeong), someone he recognized as familiar from a Korean TV cooking show. Dae-su received a taunting, enigmatic phone call from his unidentified, villainous, sadistic and insane captor-tormentor (later identified as Woo-jin Lee (Yu Ji-tae)). Dae-su asked about the extent of his hypnotic control; the caller challenged Dae-su to investigate the reasons for his incarceration with a cryptic clue, before consuming a live octopus headfirst. After briefly taking him into her apartment when he became sick, Mi-do began to assist him in following clues in order to unravel the mystery and discover the enigmatic reasons for what had occurred to him. Dae-su surrealistic vengeance against his captor(s) and prison officials. After identifying the location of the private prison where he was held, he confronted the prison manager Park Cheol-woong (Dal-su Oh), and sought revenge by questioning and brutally torturing the man (with 15 tooth extractions) who had locked him up for 15 years. After further sleuthing with his friend Joo-hwan (Ji Dae-han), Dae-su came face-to-face with his captor and a protective bodyguard (Mr. Han); Dae-su had inexplicably been freed after 15 years, and was given an ultimatum by his captor - he was challenged to find answers about his prison-punishment in only five days. If he failed, Mi-do would die. During that time, Dae-su and Mi-do left town and went to a 'love hotel' and had sex together for the first time, but then they realized that his tormenter had wired Dae-su and knew about their sexual contact and where they were. Eventually, Dae-su discovered that his "Evergreen" tormentor was his former grade-school classmate Lee Woo-jin (Yoo Ji-tae). During their high-school days years earlier when they were classmates, young Woo-jin's own sister Lee Soo-ah (Yoon Jin-seo) was rumored to be slutty and for some reason had committed suicide; Dae-su naturally suspected that Woo-jin had imprisoned him as retaliation after wrongly blaming him for his sister's death. In a startling flashback, young Dae-su had unintentionally witnessed Woo-jin and an unidentified female having sexual relations together (although he didn't know that they were related siblings - and therefore that their sexual act was incestual); afterwards due to one off-handed comment, Dae-su relayed what he had seen (regarded as very inconsequential to him at the time) to his friend Joo-hwan. In the present day, millionaire villain Woo-jin confirmed to Dae-su that his diabolical and vengeful plan of imprisonment was definitely in retaliation for the incident regarding his humiliated sister's rumored incestuous pregnancy that led to her subsequent death, even though Dae-su had no part in further exaggerated gossip. Nonetheless, Dae-su was solely blamed by Woo-jin for spreading the initial rumor. While hateful accusations were spreading, Woo-Jin's sister experienced a false pregnancy and then committed suicide, by presumably throwing herself over a dam (on July 5th!). Dae-su suggested that Woo-jin had been present at the time of his sister's death at the dam, due to photographic evidence. Woo-jin countered by describing how Dae-su had been programmed via hypnosis to meet, fall in love and have sex with his own daughter - in order to also have Dae-su commit incest and to feel the same pain. Dae-su debased himself, eventually deciding to subject himself to an extremely-painful tongue self-excisement with a rusty pair of scissors - to find atonement and to prevent any further rumors or talk after realizing he had taken the virginity of his own long-lost daughter Mi-do (an act of unintended incest!). The film's major plot twist was that Woo-jin had murdered his own suicidal sister (by letting go of her over the side of Habchun Dam) - she had not committed suicide; as the guilty memory from years earlier came over him (she was pregnant with his child - the reason that he had released her), he shot himself in the side of the head, as he exited the building via the elevator. As the film concluded with an ambiguous ending, Dae-su was attempting to erase his unbearable knowledge of his lover Mi-do being his daughter, so that they could continue to live together in ignorance.
	Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), 143 minutes, D: Gore Verbinski See Pirates of the Caribbean series.
	Seabiscuit (2003), 141 minutes, D: Gary Ross
	Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), 109 minutes, D: Jonathan Mostow See Terminator series.
	thirteen (2003), 100 minutes, D: Catherine Hardwicke
	The Triplets of Belleville (2003, Fr.) (aka Les Triplettes de Belleville), 80 minutes, D: Sylvain Chomet
	21 Grams (2003), 124 minutes, D: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritut
	Under the Tuscan Sun (2003), 113 minutes, D: Audrey Wells The pretext for this idyllic, spellbinding, postcard-pretty Tuscan travelogue and upscale romantic chick flick was that the marriage of Frances Mayes (Diane Lane), a San Francisco literary author/professor, had abruptly ended. To start a new life and pursue happiness, she accepted an invitation to a ten-day European tour. She ended up impulsively purchasing and restoring a small, 300 year-old fixer-upper farm house (named Bramasole or "yearn for the light") in the Italian hill town of Cortona in the eastern part of Tuscany. The inspiring escapist locale showed off stunning, panoramic, heavenly sun-soaked landscapes and sunflowers, including the Chianti region's tan-colored soil, deep-cut green countryside and turquoise sky, and the bleached cliff sides and blue seas of Positano.
	X2: X-Men United (2003), 133 minutes, D: Bryan Singer See X-Men series.