2003 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]

 The Top 10 of the Year

1. Finding Nemo - Andrew Stanton, Lee Unkrich + Best Adventure Movie of the Year + Best American Movie of the Year + Best Family Movie of the Year + Best Mega-hit Movie of the Year + Best Poster of the Year + Most Profitable Movie of the Year: 282.12 mil. $ range

2. School of Rock - Richard Linklater + Best Big Hit Movie of the Year + Best Breakthrough Performance of the Year: Jack Black + Best Music Movie of the Year

3. Elephant - Gus Van Sant + Best High School Movie of the Year + Best Societal Critique of the Year + Best True-Crime Movie of the Year + Best Youth Movie of the Year + Most Deserved Hit of the Year

4. The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (documentary) - Errol Morris + Best Biopic of the Year + Best War Movie of the Year

5. Six Feet Under - season 3 - Alan Ball, creator + Best Continuing TV-series of the Year + Best Drama of the Year + Best Los Angeles Title of the Year

6. Anything Else - Woody Allen + Best Huge Flop Movie of the Year + Best New York Movie of the Year + Best Romcom of the Year + Most Under-appreciated Movie of the Year 

 

7. Memories of Murder/살인의 추억 (Sarinui chueok) - Bong Joon Ho + Best Crime-Drama of the Year + Best Serial Killer Movie of the Year + Best South Korean Movie of the Year

8. Elf - Jon Favreau + Best Christmas Movie of the Year + Best Huge Hit of the Year 

9. 24 - season 3 - Robert Cochran, Joel Surnow, creators + Best Action Title of the Year + Most Suspenseful Title of the Year

 

10. Monsieur Ibrahim/Monsieur Ibrahim et les Fleurs du Coran - François Dupeyron + Best Adaptation of the Year + Best Coming-of-age Movie of the Year + Best Paris Movie of the Year

Other great 2003 movies (in alphabetical order):

21 Grams - Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu

Bad Santa - Terry Zwigoff + Best Dark Comedy of the Year

Casa de los Babys - John Sayles + Best Low-Budget Movie of the Year

Coffee and Cigarettes - Jim Jarmusch + Best B/W Movie of the Year

Dogville - Lars Von Trier + Best Big Flop Movie of the Year + Best Danish Movie of the Year + Best Ensemble of the Year: Nicole Kidman, Ben Gazzara, James Caan, Lauren Bacall, Harriet Andersson, Chloë Sevigny, Patricia Clarkson, Paul Bettany, Stellen Skarsgård, Zeljko Ivanek + Best Epic of the Year + Best Experimental Movie of the Year

Evil/Ondskan - Mikael Håfström + Best Period Movie of the Year + Best Swedish Movie of the Year

The Five Obstructions/De Fem Benspænd - Jørgen Leth, Lars Von Trier

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl - Gore Verbinski + Best New Franchise of the Year + Best Pirate Movie of the Year

 

 

Something's Gotta Give - Nancy Meyers + Best Screen Couple of the Year: Jack Nicholson & Diane Keaton

The Triplets of Belleville/Les Triplettes de Belleville/Belleville Rendez-vous - Sylvain Chomet + French Movie of the Year + Most Undeserved Flop of the Year

 
Good, recommendable 2003 movies (in alphabetical order):

American Splendor - Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini

Beyond Re-Animator - Brian Yuzna + Gore Movie of the Year + Best Horror Comedy of the Year + Best Spanish Movie of the Year

Bruce Almighty - Tom Shadyac

The Company - Robert Altman + Best Dance Movie of the Year + Best Mega-flop of the Year

The Cooler - Wayne Kramer + Best Las Vegas Movie of the Year

Freaky Friday - Mark Waters + Best Fantasy Movie of the Year

The Green Butchers - Anders Thomas Jensen + Best Comedy of the Year

House of Sand and Fog - Vadim Perelman

The Hulk - Ang Lee + Best San Francisco Movie of the Year + Best Superhero Movie of the Year + Most Expensive Flop of the Year: 38.92 mil. $ range 

 

The Human Stain - Robert Benton

 

Matchstick Men - Ridley Scott

Mona Lisa Smile - Mike Newell + Best Massachusetts Movie of the Year

Noi the Albino/Nói Albinói - Dagur Kári + Best Icelandic Movie of the Year

 

 

Open Range - Kevin Costner + Comeback of the Year: Kevin Costner + Best Western of the Year

Owning Mahowny - Richard Kwietniowski + Best Canadian Movie of the Year

Reconstruction - Christoffer Boe + Best Art Film of the Year + Best Copenhagen Movie of the Year + Best Debut Movie of the Year + Best Romance of the Year

The Skeleton Key - Iain Softley + Best Louisiana Movie of the Year

Song for a Raggy Boy - Aisling Walsh + Best Box Office Disaster of the Year + Best Irish Movie of the Year

The Station Agent - Tom McCarthy + Best Independent Movie of the Year + Best Dramedy of the Year + Best Shooting Star Actor of the Year: Peter Dinklage

Swimming Pool - François Ozon + Best Erotic Movie of the Year

The Bottom 10 of the Year

1. Rapid Exchange (video) - Tripp Reed

 

 

2. Out for a Kill - Michael Oblowitz + Most Deserved Flop of the Year 

 

3. Freddy vs. Jason - Ronny Yu + Most Undeserved Hit of the Year 

 

 

4. Gothika - Mathieu Kassovitz

5. Time of the Wolf/Le Temps du Loup - Michael Haneke + Worst $ Return of the Year: 0.04

6. My Life Without Me - Isabel Coixet

 

7. Marci X - Richard Benjamin + Career-Killer of the Year: Richard Benjamin

8. The Core - Jon Amiel + Most Ridiculous Movie of the Year

9. Dreamcatcher - Lawrence Kasdan

10. The Recruit - Roger Donaldson


Other failed, poor and/or mediocre 2003 movies and TV-series (in alphabetical order):

Angels in America (miniseries) - Mike Nichols

Carnivàle - season 1 - Daniel Knauf

Final Destination 2 - David R. Ellis

Girl with a Pearl Earring - Peter Webber 

The Man of the Year/O Homem do Ano - José Henrique Fonseca 

Oldboy/올드보이 (Oldeuboi) - Park Chan-wook + Most Overrated Movie of the Year
Old School - Todd Phillips 

Once Upon a Time in Mexico - Robert Rodriguez 

Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior/องค์บาก - Prachya Pinkaew + Best $ Return of the Year: 18.3 times its cost + Best Martial Arts Movie of the Year + Best Thai Movie of the Year

 

Runaway Jury - Gary Fleder + Worst Poster of the Year

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring/Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and Spring/봄 여름 가을 겨울 그리고 봄/Bom yeoreum gaeul gyeoul geurigo bom - Kim Ki-duk 

[61 titles in total]

Notes:

The second updated lists of 2003 in films and TV-series brings the title count up by 15 to now 61 reviewed titles. No new titles make it to the Top 10 in this update, while 2 etch their ways onto the Bottom 10 list.

The Top 10 boasts an impressive 6 masterpieces: Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich's universally beloved oceanic adventure fable Finding Nemo reigns supreme and is the only 2nd animated film to rank 1st so far, (after Pixar's Inside Out (2015)), and in a rare occurrence also the year's most profitable film. 2nd best is Richard Linklater's rock 'n roll family music comedy School of Rock; and 3rd is Gus Van Sant's Columbine High massacre-inspired true-crime drama Elephant. The Top 10 list goes on with Errol Morris's dizzying Robert S. McNamara documentary biopic Fog of War; the 3rd season of Alan Ball's poignant funeral home drama Six Feet Under; Woody Allen's hilarious, incisive New-York-set relationship comedy Anything Else; Joon Bong Ho's astounding serial killer crime-drama Memories of Murder; Jon Favreau's Christmas cheer laugh-fest Elf; the 3rd season of Robert Cochran and Joel Surnow's suspenseful action series 24; and rounds off withFrançois Dupeyron's warm, erotic coming-of-age drama Monsieur Ibrahim. 

Among the other great titles of the year we find Lars Von Trier's staggering US examination, drama epic Dogville, Sylvain Chomet's eccentric, original animation delight, The Triplets of Belleville, Terry Zwigoff's anti-Christmas comedy Bad Santa, Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu's fate-crossing heavy drama 21 Grams, John Sayles' adoption drama Casa de los Babys, Gore Verbinski's swashbuckling family favorite Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and Mikael Håfström's engrossing period school-set youth drama Evil.
And among the noteworthy if merely good outputs are Christoffer Boe's Copenhagen-set love-themed art film Reconstruction, Robert Altman's ballet portrait The Company, Anders Thomas Jensen's outrageous and hilarious macabre comedy The Green Butchers, Mark Waters' body-swap fantasy comedy Freaky Friday, Ang Lee's spectacular superhero action adventure Hulk and Kevin Costner's awesome return to directing, classical western Open Range.
On the year's Bottom 10 list, the leader is still Tripp Reed's action video banality Rapid Exchange. 2nd place is taken by new entry Michael Oblowitz's laughably poor actioner Out for a Kill, with Ronny Yu's loud, inane Freddy vs. Jason claiming bronze. The list goes on with Mathieu Kassovitz's awful horror Gothika, Michael Hanekeis apcalyptic, depressant head-scratcher Time of the Wolf, Isabel Coixet's depressing bore My Life Without Me, Richard Benjamin's class and race comedy disaster Marci X, Jon Amiel's deeply inane disaster/sci-fi movie attempt The Core, Lawrence Kasdan's career-crippling, expensive flop horror Dreamcatcher, with Roger Donaldson's dull agent thriller The Recruit now rounding out the list. Gary Fleder's showy courtroom thriller Runaway Jury and Mike Nichols' too opulent AIDS miniseries Angels in America escape the list in this update.
Cementing their names in 2003 were Lars Von Trier, who aside from the incredible Americana drama Dogville also released the evocative artist competition documentary The Five Obstructions (with Jørgen Leth), Johnny Depp, who broke through as a major A level marquee star with Pirates of the Caribbean while also head-lining smaller hit Once Upon a Time in Mexico, - and Jim Carrey, who reaffirmed his staying box office power again with Bruce Almighty. On the other end we saw diminishing returns from senior stars like Dustin Hoffman (Runaway Jury), Al Pacino (The Recruit), Julia Roberts (Mona Lisa Smile) and Nicolas Cage (Matchstick Men) and a wobbly, mega-budgeted new venture from HBO in Daniel Knauf's Carnivàle TV-series. Adult dramas had it tough: Dogville, The Human Stain (both with Nicole Kidman), Owning Mahowny, House of Sand and Fog and Girl with a Pearl Earring all bombed. And an eye-popping Marvel adventure, - incredible in hindsight, - lost most of all (Ang Lee's Hulk.)

 

On the 2004 Oscars:

Billy Chrystal hosted the night, which became the most-watched telecast in 4 years with incredible 44 mil. viewers. The night had one overwhelming winner in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, which won the 11 Oscars it was nominated for, tying most wins ever with Ben-Hur (1959) and Titanic (1997), and becoming the largest sweep for a single film in Oscar history.

LoTR 3 took home Best Picture, Director (Peter Jackson), Adapted Screenplay (Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Jackson), Score (Howard Shore), Song (Walsh, Shore and Annie Lennox's Into the West), Sound Mixing, Art Direction, Makeup, Costume Design, Editing and Visual Effects. The other films nominated in the Best Picture category were Lost in Translation, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Mystic River and Seabiscuit.

Mystic River won Best Actor (Sean Penn) and Supporting Actor (Tim Robbins). Charlize Theron won Best Actress for Monster; Renée Zellweger Supporting Actress for Cold Mountain. Sofia Coppola won Best Original Screenplay for Lost in Translation; Finding Nemo Best Animation, Denys Arcand's French The Barbarian Invasians Best Foreign Language Film; Errol Morris and Michael Williams' The Fog of War Best Documentary. The short Oscars went to Chernobyl Heart (doc.), Two Soldiers (live action) and Harvie Krumpet (animation). Russell Boyd won Best Cinematography for Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, which also won for Sound Editing. Blake Edwards won an honorary award.

On the 2003 Cannes Film Festival

French opera and theater director, filmmaker, actor and producer Patrice Chéreau acted as jury president for the 56th festival, which saw Gus Van Sant's American Elephant win the Palme d'Or. The other films in the main competition were: At Five in the Afternoon, The Barbarian Invasions, Bright Future, The Brown Bunny, Carandiru, Les Côtelettes, Dogville, Father and Son, Incantato, Little Lili, Mystic Rover, Purple Butterfly, Shara, Strayed, Swimming Pool, That Day, The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story, Tiresia and Uzak.

 
Biggest flops of the year:

[The loss is based solely on the cost and box office earnings for the films. Marketing costs and additional revenue (home video, TV rights and other auxiliary profits) are not taken into account] 

1. The Hulk  38.92 mil. $ range (NEW ENTRY)

2. Dreamcatcher - 37.72 mil. $ range

3. Matchstick Men - 35.8 mil. $ range
4. The Core - 30.64 mil. $ range

5. The Human Stain - 20.84 mil. $ range (NEW ENTRY)

6. Marci X - 19.36 mil. $ range 

7. Mona Lisa Smile - 15.78 mil. range
8. Anything Else - 12.6 mil. $ range
9. The Company - 12.44 mil. $ range

10. Out for a Kill - 10.78 mil. $ range (NEW ENTRY)

= Combined losses: 234.88 mil. $

Biggest hits of the year:

[The gain is based solely on the cost and box office earnings for the films. Marketing costs and additional revenue (home video, TV rights and other auxiliary profits) are not taken into account] 

1. Finding Nemo - 282.12 mil. $ range
2. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl - 121.68 mil. $ range
3. Bruce Almighty - 112.8 mil. $ range
4. Elf - 55.16 mil. $ range
5. Freaky Friday - 44.32 mil. $ range

6. Something's Gotta Give - 26.68 mil. $ range

7. School of Rock - 17.48 mil. $ range

8. Gothika - 16.64 mil. $ range

9. Freddy vs. Jason - 15.96 mil. $ range
10. Bad Santa - 12.4 mil. $ range

= Combined profits: 705.24 mil. $ range

2003 titles on the watch-list:

The Room, Camp, The Card Player, Latter Days, A Mighty Wind, Cold Mountain, Thirteen, Pieces of April, Zelary, Big Fish, Harvie Krumpet, Boundin', Destino, Nibbles, Two Soldiers, (A)Torzija, Most, Chernobyl Heart, Asylum, Ferry Tales, My Architect, All the Real Girls, Wasp, 7:35 in the Morning, Two Cars, One Night, Tupac: Resurrection

Previous annual lists: 

    
2021 in films - according to Film Excess 

2020 in films - according to Film Excess 

2019 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 

2019 in films - according to Film Excess 
2018 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2018 in films - according to Film Excess  
2017 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2017 in films - according to Film Excess
2016 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2016 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 
2016 in films - according to Film Excess

2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV] 
2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II] 
2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess  
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II] 
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2014 in films - according to Film Excess
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED V]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 
2013 in films - according to Film Excess    
2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED V] 
2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2012 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2012 in films - according to Film Excess
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2011 in films - according to Film Excess
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess  
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess   

2008 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II] 
2008 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2008 in films - according to Film Excess
2007 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2007 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2007 in films - according to Film Excess

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II] 
2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess   
2005 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess  

2004 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 
2004 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess

2003 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 
2003 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 
2002 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 
2001 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 

2000 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess

1999 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess  

1998 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 

1997 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 

1996 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 

1995 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess

What do you think of the 2003 lists?
Which 2003 titles would make it to your top and bottom lists?
Which worthwhile 2003 titles are missing on the watch-list?