The Best Films of 2004 | Roger Ebert

As the nation descends into anarchy, he puts on his suit and tie every morning and fakes business as usual, dealing with a murderous Hutu general not as a criminal, but as a valued client; a man who yesterday orchestrated mass murder might today want to show that he knows how to behave appropriately in the hotel lobby. With Nick Nolte as a U.N. peacekeeper who ignores his orders to help Cheadle and the lives that have come into their care.

The third film by David Gordon Green, at 29 the most poetically gifted director of his generation. Jamie Bell and Devon Alan play two brothers in rural Georgia, one a rebel, one a sweet, odd loner. Their father mourns for their dead mother and chooses for them to live in virtual isolation; then their ex-con uncle arrives, and everything changes. There is a family legend about gold coins that leads to jealousy and bloodshed, and the boys escape the uncle and try to survive during a journey both harrowing and strangely romantic; the film has the form of an action picture but the feel of a lyrical fable, and Green's eye for his backwoods locations and rusty urban hideaways creates a world immediately distinctive as his own.

His style has been categorized as "Southern Gothic," but that's too narrow. There is a poetic merging of realism and surrealism; every detail is founded on accurate observation, but the effect is somehow mythological. Listen to his dialogue; his characters say things that sound exactly like the sort of things they would really say, and yet are like nothing anyone has ever said before.

Special Jury Prize

At every film festival, the jury creates a special prize for a film that did not win the first award, and yet is somehow too good for second place. As a jury of one, I usually award my Special Prize to 10 splendid films, but this year I have chosen 15, because there is not a one I can do without. Alphabetically:

"The Assassination of Richard Nixon," which opens wide in January, stars Sean Penn as a man whose demons have destroyed his marriage and now threaten his job as an office supplies salesman. Whatever his problem, his symptom is to decide what is absolutely right, and then to absolutely insist upon it; he doesn't know when to shut up and has little idea of his effect on other people. Under unbearable psychological pressure, he marches steadfastly toward madness.

"Closer" is Mike Nichols' story, based on Patrick Marber's play, about four characters who fall in and out of love and betrayal in various combinations, complicated by their tendency to tell the truth when it doesn't exactly help anyone to know it. Natalie Portman is luminous in her first grown-up role, as a New York stripper who comes to London and falls in love with Jude Law, a journalist who writes a novel about their affair and then falls in love with Julia Roberts, his publicity photographer. She in turn meets Clive Owen, a doctor who, in his turn, meets Portman. These four people richly deserve one another. Seduced by seduction itself, they play at relationships which are lies in almost every respect, except their desire to sleep with each other.

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