Fav Movies of 2004 Part 1.

After a pretty disappointing Shark's Tales last night, here I look back to some of my personal Favs of the year ... So far that is. There's still 1.5 mths before then end of the year and some pretty incredible films i am still very much looking forward to ... "The Incredibles", "The Birth", etc.... 2004 has seen it's share of good movies, and some that pop to my mind so far include, "Captain Sky and the World of Tomorrow", "Spiderman 2", "Farenheit 911", "Kill bill 2" etc. Counting down to the end of 2004, I will do a few "lookbacks" to the those movies that moved and awed me in the past year, and when the year ends, I will put up a top 10/15 or 20 list of the year's favs.

This installment features: "Spider-man 2" and "Kill bill 2"

Spider-man 2: I would not have imagined myself to list a superhero movie as one of the best film of the year. But this is one movie that not only looked good, had great special effects .. and most importantly, had a HEART! wow! .. a Superhero movie that actually had a proper story to push it through and still kicked ass with their action sequences. This is now one of my all time favourite superhero movies - putting it up in the ranks of Superman I,II and The Crow. What I loved about the main character was how "everyday" he was. He was a regular college student, with money problems, schoolwork problems and also girl problem. He was trying so hard to do so many things, to make money cos he needs to pay rent and to eat, to cope with his school work and all these while trying to save the world. You could feel sorry for him, and almost wished that he could just live like a normal person. The person who wrote the script was a genius. A great story for a great superhero. Bravo!

The director Sam Raimi is also one of my favourite directors, and his previous works were all wide and varied. His past works included the Evil Dead series, A Simple Plan, and also the TV series Hercules and Xena. Very versatile dude and you guys should really check out his previous movies - especially "A Simple Plan".

Kill Bill 2: Woah ... both these movies are sequels. But these sequels were in everyway equal or better than their predecessor. The interesting thing about Kill Bill 2 is that, those who disliked it gave the same reasons as those who disliked Spider-man 2 - they all complained that it was too slow. I feel really sorry for these people who would rather sit through a mindless action movie than to have one that explored the depths of the characters' relationships. They will never understand the true underlying work that went into creating these great characters and the beauty of really good writing. Well, that aside, why do I like Kill Bill 2? Basically it is because this sequel made Kill Bill 1 better. What i meant was that, after watching Vol. 2, it made me wanna watch Vol. 1 again. The script was cheesy, yet witty. The setup was simple yet ingenious. The acting was outrageous but extremely fun to watch. The format was unconventional yet so thoroughly original. I applaud the efforts of Quentin Tarantino. This is probably one of my all time favourite movies - along with Pulp Fiction.