2004 Top Ten List

  • Primer (Shane Carruth)
  • Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
  • The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson)
  • Before Sunset (Richard Linklater)
  • I ♥ Huckabees (David O. Russell)
  • Spartan (David Mamet)
  • 3-iron (Kim Ki-duk)
  • Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry)
  • Red Lights (Cédric Kahn)
  • Whisky (Pablo Stoll & Juan Pablo Rebella)
  • Additional 2004 Films By Rating

  • Head-On (Fatih Akin)
  • The Big Bounce (George Armitage)
  • The Holy Girl (Lucrecia Martel)
  • Birth (Jonathan Glazer)
  • Touch the Sound (Thomas Riedelsheimer)
  • The Incredibles (Brad Bird)
  • Control Room (Jehane Noujaim)
  • Shaun of the Dead (Edgar Wright)
  • House of Flying Daggers (Zhang Yimou)
  • Dawn of the Dead (Zack Snyder)
  • Vera Drake (Mike Leigh)
  • In Your Hands (Annette K. Olesen)
  • Spider-Man 2 (Sam Raimi)
  • Innocence (Lucile Hadžihalilović)
  • Citizen Dog (Wisit Sasanatieng)
  • I, Robot (Alex Proyas)
  • Riding Giants (Stacy Peralta)
  • My Summer of Love (Pawel Pawlikowski)
  • Duck Season (Fernando Eimbcke)
  • Bad Education (Pedro Almodóvar)
  • DiG! (Ondi Timoner)
  • The Aviator (Martin Scorsese)
  • The Garden of Earthly Delights (Lech Majewski)
  • The Power of Nightmares (Adam Curtis)
  • Kung Fu Hustle (Stephen Chow)
  • The Machinist (Brad Anderson)
  • Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood)
  • 2046 (Wong Kar-wai)
  • 13 Lakes (James Benning)
  • Cinévardaphoto (Agnès Varda)
  • Kill Bill Vol. 2 (Quentin Tarantino)
  • District B13 (Pierre Morel)
  • Le Pont des Arts (Eugène Green)
  • Intimate Strangers (Patrice Leconte)
  • Clean (Olivier Assayas)
  • Collateral (Michael Mann)
  • Sideways (Alexander Payne)
  • Stray Dogs (Marziyeh Meshkini)
  • Howl's Moving Castle (Hiyao Miyazaki)
  • Maria Full of Grace (Joshua Marston)
  • Napoleon Dynamite (Jared Hess)
  • Undertow (David Gordon Green)
  • The White Diamond (Werner Herzog)
  • The Polar Express (Robert Zemeckis)
  • The World (Jia Zhangke)
  • The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (Stephen Hillenburg)
  • Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (Joe Berlinger & Bruce Sinofsky)
  • Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Alfonso Cuarón)
  • The Manchurian Candidate (Jonathan Demme)
  • Enduring Love (Roger Michell)
  • p.s. (Dylan Kidd)
  • Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (Adam McKay)
  • Changing Times (André Téchiné)
  • Brothers (Susanne Bier)
  • Troy (Wolfgang Petersen)
  • Mean Creek (Jacob Aaron Estes)
  • Canary (Akihiko Shiota)
  • Closer (Mike Nichols)
  • The Consequences of Love (Paolo Sorrentino)
  • Millions (Danny Boyle)
  • Antares (Götz Spielmann)
  • The 10th District Court: Moments of Trial (Raymond Depardon)
  • The Edukators (Hans Weingartner)
  • The Taste of Tea (Katsuhito Ishii)
  • Zebraman (Takashi Miike)
  • The Assassination of Richard Nixon (Niels Mueller)
  • Gilles' Wife (Frédéric Fonteyne)
  • Three...Extremes (Fruit Chan/Park ChanWook/Takashi Miike)
  • The Bridesmaid (Claude Chabrol)
  • The Door in the Floor (Tod Williams)
  • Broken Lizard's Club Dread (Jay Chandrasekhar)
  • The Bourne Supremacy (Paul Greengrass)
  • Eros (Wong Kar Wai/Steven Soderbergh/Michelangelo Antonioni)
  • Or (My Treasure) (Keren Yedaya)
  • To Take a Wife (Ronit Elkabetz & Shlomi Elkabetz)
  • The Case of the Grinning Cat (Chris Marker)
  • Calvaire (Fabrice du Welz)
  • Mean Girls (Mark Waters)
  • Keane (Lodge Kerrigan)
  • Mysterious Skin (Gregg Araki)
  • Bergman Island (Marie Nyreröd)
  • Hotel Rwanda (Terry George)
  • Look at Me (Agnès Jaoui)
  • A Very Long Engagement (Jean Pierre Jeunet)
  • Ten Skies (James Benning)
  • Kinsey (Bill Condon)
  • Melinda and Melinda (Woody Allen)
  • Friday Night Lights (Peter Berg)
  • Hellboy (Guillermo Del Toro)
  • A tout de suite (Benoît Jacquot)
  • Persons of Interest (Alison Maclean & Tobias Perse)
  • Team America: World Police (Trey Parker)
  • Star Spangled to Death (Ken Jacobs)
  • Shrek 2 (Andrew Adamson & Kelly Asbury & Conrad Vernon)
  • Lightning in a Bottle (Antoine Fuqua)
  • Disney's Teacher's Pet (Timothy Björklund)
  • Omagh (Pete Travis)
  • Super Size Me (Morgan Spurlock)
  • Ae Fond Kiss... (Ken Loach)
  • Izo (Takashi Miike)
  • Finding Neverland (Marc Forster)
  • We Don't Live Here Anymore (John Curran)
  • They Came Back (Robin Campillo)
  • Nobody Knows (Hirokazu Kore-eda)
  • The Ladykillers (Joel Coen & Ethan Coen)
  • Land of Plenty (Wim Wenders)
  • Life Is a Miracle (Emir Kusturica)
  • Private (Saverio Costanzo)
  • Starsky & Hutch (Todd Phillips)
  • Man on Fire (Tony Scott)
  • Kings & Queen (Arnaud Desplechin)
  • Ella Enchanted (Tommy O'Haver)
  • The Motorcycle Diaries (Walter Salles)
  • The Girl Next Door (Luke Greenfield)
  • 5 x 2 (François Ozon)
  • Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (Danny Leiner)
  • A hole in my heart (Lukas Moodysson)
  • The Terminal (Steven Spielberg)
  • In Good Company (Paul Weitz)
  • C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America (Kevin Willmott)
  • Tomorrow We Move (Chantal Akerman)
  • Spanglish (James L. Brooks)
  • Downfall (Oliver Hirschbiegel)
  • Everyday People (Jim McKay)
  • Samaritan Girl (Kim Ki-duk)
  • The Village (M. Night Shyamalan)
  • Twist of Faith (Kirby Dick)
  • Woman Is the Future of Man (Hong Sang-soo)
  • Criminal (Gregory Jacobs)
  • When Will I Be Loved (James Toback)
  • Pusher II (Nicolas Winding Refn)
  • Mondovino (Jonathan Nossiter)
  • Exiles (Tony Gatlif)
  • Kekexili: Mountain Patrol (Lu Chuan)
  • My Father Is an Engineer (Robert Guédiguian)
  • Secret Window (David Koepp)
  • Throwdown (Johnnie To)
  • Vital (Shinya Tsukamoto)
  • The Sea Inside (Alejandro Amenábar)
  • Ray (Taylor Hackford)
  • Moolaadé (Ousmane Sembene)
  • Silver City (John Sayles)
  • Breaking News (Johnnie To)
  • Triple Agent (Eric Rohmer)
  • Saw (James Wan)
  • Fahrenheit 9/11 (Michael Moore)
  • In the Battlefields (Danielle Arbid)
  • Turtles Can Fly (Bahman Ghobadi)
  • The Notebook (Nick Cassavetes)
  • Notre Musique (Jean-Luc Godard)
  • Innocence (Mamoru Oshii)
  • Dead Man's Shoes (Shane Meadows)
  • Laws of Attraction (Peter Howitt)
  • The Grudge (Takashi Shimizu)
  • El Crimen Perfecto (The Perfect Crime) (Alex de la Iglesia)
  • Beyond the Sea (Kevin Spacey)
  • Pirated Copy (He Jian-Jun)
  • Up and Down (Jan Hrebejk)
  • Rolling Family (Pablo Trapero)
  • The Passion of the Christ (Mel Gibson)
  • The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (Asia Argento)
  • The Butterfly Effect (Eric Bress & J. Mackye Gruber)
  • The Intruder (Claire Denis)
  • Never Die Alone (Ernest Dickerson)
  • The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (Stephen Hopkins)
  • Ocean's Twelve (Steven Soderbergh)
  • In My Country (John Boorman)
  • Envy (Barry Levinson)
  • Anatomy of Hell (Catherine Breillat)
  • The Weeping Meadow (Theo Angelopoulos)
  • Palindromes (Todd Solondz)
  • Los muertos (Lisandro Alonso)
  • Crash (Paul Haggis)
  • 10 on Ten (Abbas Kiarostami)