SFBG. Year in Film.

The lists, the specials, the issues, they just keep on coming. The San Francisco Bay Guardian's "Year in Film":

• Cheryl Eddy, who selects a top five (Shaun of the Dead is #1) and a bottom five (congrats, M Night Shyamalan), found 2004 in general shot through with testosterone and movies "carved from the craggy rocks of dude-dom."

• Dennis Harvey, whose top ten leads with Dig!, bears bad news: "Indeed, we may be facing a massive turn toward censorship just when mainstream entertainment is arguably the blandest it's been in 40 years. Where was all the screen sex in 2004? Mostly MIA."

• The top six spots on Bangkok-based Chuck Stephens's top ten are all Asian films, at least a few of which most Americans have never had the chance to see. But to hear Stephens tell it, he lives in piracy heaven - and likes it that way. Note: If you're reading this, you're living there, too.

• Because David Larsen is a lecturer in classics rather than a critic, he's excused from making a top ten. Instead, he reviews the role of verisimilitude in this year's sword-n-sandals epics.

• For Susan Gerhard, torture was an excruciatingly omnipresence, on screen and off. She found relief in Tarnation, her #1; surprise entry: Troy, sharing slot #4 with Hero.

• "What is this monster called the music documentary these days?" asks Kimberly Chun; her top ten is, as she calls it, "scattershot," but is a pretty good list nonetheless.

• Someone had to do it: Political docs. That someone is Max Goldberg. His #1, though, isn't one, at least not directly: Tarnation.

• Five contributors name "the best films that might not be coming soon to a theater near you - but they should be."

• Great idea for a list of lists: Bay Area Sundance-bound filmmakers look back at 2004.

Also in the SFBG: Goldberg on Moolaadé, "a film that's experienced more than it's watched," and brief reviews of music DVDs.

Posted by dwhudson at December 29, 2004 9:19 AM