Claudia Puig's best: 2003 was a hard year for paring down a list of favorite movies to 10. It has been an exceptional year for documentaries, quirky comedic performances (Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean, Jamie Lee Curtis in Freaky Friday) and newcomers such as Bend It Like Beckham's Parminder Nagra and In America's Bolger sisters. My 10 favorites:

1. Lost in Translation. Sofia Coppola's funny, poignant film about friendship and cultural barriers stars Bill Murray in his best role ever and the supremely talented Scarlett Johansson, so wonderful, but under-appreciated, in 2000's Ghost World.

2. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. The final installment of Peter Jackson's Tolkien trilogy raises the 9-hour-plus film to towering classic status. Every detail is perfect, from the vertical cities of man to massive battle scenes and bonds of friendship between Hobbits, men and elves.

3. In America. Jim Sheridan's semi-autobiographical story of a family struggling to overcome grief by moving from Ireland to New York is sweet, lyrical and touching.

4. Mystic River. A top-notch thriller based on the Dennis Lehane novel that packs some of the year's most powerful performances, notably those of Sean Penn and Tim Robbins. Clint Eastwood is at the top of his game at 73 with this gripping and harsh material, expertly directing a cast that includes Marcia Gay Harden, Kevin Bacon and Laura Linney.

5. Spellbound. One of the year's most riveting thrillers is a documentary about middle-schoolers preparing for a national spelling bee. A pattern emerges of smart, curious and disciplined children and their devoted parents. The story's dramatic unfolding ensures that you'll root aloud for your favorite spellers.

6. 21 Grams. The most emotionally honest film this year is perhaps the hardest to sit through, with its naked exploration of senseless death and overwhelming grief. But it's worth the discomfort to watch a quartet of superlative performances: Naomi Watts, Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro and Melissa Leo. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's worthy follow-up to the acclaimed Spanish language Amores Perros is told in a similarly fractured narrative style, which suits the story brilliantly.

7. House of Sand and Fog. The acting is superb in this tragic tale of an Iranian émigré and a down-on-her-luck American divorcée who battle to the end over ownership of a modest Bay Area home. Based on Andre Dubus III's gripping best-selling novel.

8. Finding Nemo. The journey of a father fish searching for his lost son is funny, sweet and touching. And the computer-animated visuals are among the most stunningly beautiful ever seen. An undersea treasure for all audiences.

9. The Fog of War. A fascinating documentary offering life lessons of one of the most controversial and brilliant U.S. political figures, former defense secretary Robert McNamara. At 87, he is lucidly candid, on the Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam War and U.S. foreign policy in general, with implications for the current war on terrorism and the Iraq War. It's a testament to documentarian Errol Morris' artistry that McNamara is, by turns, unnervingly honest, swaggeringly self-serving and cagily disingenuous, but always human.

10. The Magdalene Sisters. An exploration of convent laundries in Ireland that existed until the mid-1990s to brutalize and humiliate "fallen women." Three young actresses, who portray teenage girls sent away indefinitely by their families to face daily torment, give heart-wrenchingly powerful performances.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/reviews/2003-12-26-2003-movies-best-puig_x.htm

... and her worst: 

1. Beyond Borders. Beyond boring: Angelina Jolie and Clive Owen are dull as doornails when they're supposed to be passionate lovers in this ridiculous action adventure tale with a bleeding heart. Jolie, a wealthy socialite, gets a social conscience overnight and heads for the poorest regions of Africa in head-to-toe white clothing to help starving babies and to see her heartthrob. Nary a speck of dust sullies her pristine duds.

2. The Cat in the Hat. Mike Myers wrings any drop of charm out of a feline with a chapeau and delights in off-color, inappropriate humor to boot.

3. Daddy Day Care/Haunted Mansion. Eddie Murphy continues his streak of bad movies and lackluster performances. In the first, he's laid off and opens a day care center. Hilarity never ensues. In Haunted Mansion, he's a workaholic Realtor who ends up in a silly, spooky house with his whole family. Again, no hilarity.

4. Dreamcatcher. A story by Stephen King with supernatural subject matter (an unstoppable alien force) simply shouldn't be so darn dull and laughable. Morgan Freeman, such a dignified deity in Bruce Almighty, plays an over-the-top military vigilante.

5. Final Destination 2. An offensively violent film about all the horrifically accidental ways one can meet one's maker.

6. Gigli. A romantic comedy with a glaring lack of chemistry between the real-life couple Ben Affleck and Jenny from the Block. This clinched their place as the most over-exposed star couple on the block. Even Affleck scoffed at the movie publicly, relishing in its bevy of bad reviews on TheTonight Show.

7. Legally Blonde: Red, White and Blonde. This plodding sequel to the light-and-entertaining Reese Witherspoon comedy, about a brainy babe who goes to law school, tries to tackle issues such as animal rights and political corruption, and fails in that regard just as it thuds in the comedy department.

8. The Life of David Gale. Kevin Spacey stars as a death row inmate and former college professor being interviewed by Kate Winslet, who plays an intrepid reporter named Bitsy. There's not an itsy bitsy reason for this movie to have been made. Nor can we understand why actors such as Spacey, Winslet and Laura Linney signed on.

9. Masked and Anonymous. Bob Dylan is a massively talented folk-rock singer/songwriter, but he sure isn't a filmmaker. He collaborated on the screenplay for this muddled mess. Despite a great soundtrack and an all-star cast, including Jessica Lange, John Goodman, Val Kilmer, Penelope Cruz and Jeff Bridges, the result is more enigmatic and incomprehensible than Mr. Zimmerman's most obscure song.

10. Uptown Girls. The screen's worst pairing (next to J.Lo and Ben) was the young/old blonde duo of Dakota Fanning and Brittany Murphy. Fanning comes across as spoiled, pouty and affected. Or was that Murphy?
http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/reviews/2003-12-26-2003-movies-worst-puig_x.htm

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Mike Clark's best: A couple of technicalities affect this list. March's Nowhere in Africa could easily have made on my top-10, but it seemed odd to include a movie that has already won an Oscar as 2002's best foreign film. And had the uncut, differently edited Concert for George been the version that played theaters (both are on the DVD), it would have been a lock.As usual, the differences between a No. 7 choice and a No. 20 aren't that large, so I'd be remiss in not acknowledging the substantial viewing pleasure I got from Bad Santa, Big Fish, Cinemania, Dirty Pretty Things, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Matchstick Men; A Mighty Wind, Pirates of the Caribbean, Something's Gotta Give and Winged Migration. But 10 is 10, and the hair-splitting is done as we prepare for Mandy Moore, playing the president's daughter in Chasing Liberty, to kick off the year on Jan 9.  My picks for the year's best movies are:

1. Finding Nemo. Take away the comedy and you still have one of the most visually splendid movies in years, animated or otherwise. Take away the Barrier Reef splendors and you still have comedy that regales in the aquarium of a Sydney dentist's office. A masterpiece.

2. Capturing the Friedmans. Were a retired Great Neck, N.Y., teacher and his son guilty of sodomizing children 16 years ago? Just when you think you have it figured out, the movies' most provocative mind-bender since 2000's Memento offers credible refutation that sends you back at least to Square 2. A standout in a year of great documentaries.

3. The Fog of War. The great Errol Morris gets 87-year-old Robert S. McNamara to talk of his role in the firebombing of Japanese cities in 1945 and his seven-year tenure under two presidents as secretary of defense during the Cuban missile crisis and Vietnam. This invaluable record just about has it all.

4. Thirteen. Holly Hunter and Evan Rachel Wood are unforgettably raw-nerved as mother and daughter in the most powerful of all recent wayward-youth sagas. But also credit co-star Nikki Reed, just 13 when she co-wrote the screenplay about a socially uncertain teen's descent into drugs, sex and shoplifting.

5. Stevie. Filmmaker Steve James was an official Big Brother to Stephen Dale Fielding, an abused out-of-wedlock child who, as the movie begins, has gotten into the most serious in a lifetime of scrapes. They reunite, and James begins filming as the court date looms, in a shattering portrait that's in a class with James' co-directed classic Hoop Dreams.

6. House of Sand and Fog. As one of the least-compromised Hollywood releases from any screen era, the morally gray movie of Andre Dubus III's novel gets my nod over Mystic River and 21 Grams as the fall/year-end's most emotionally resonant downer. Even Jennifer Connelly and Ben Kingsley, great as they are, can't totally dominate this acting ensemble.

7. Lost in Translation. Sofia Coppola's confident direction modifies Bill Murray's trademark passive-aggressive style into brilliantly played comic bewilderment. And Murray synchs perfectly with co-star Scarlett Johansson for the year's top romantic comedy.

8. Cold Mountain. The kind of big, old-fashioned (in the good sense) epic it's still possible to get when an entire cast and crew of A-list talent mesh harmoniously on a major production. In many ways, it's the best Civil War movie ever.

9. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. With the pressure on, producer/director/co-writer Peter Jackson came through with the first "No. 3" since Goldfinger to rate as best of its bunch. The movie's incessant litany of "endings" is a serious sticking point, but there's an enthralling hour of action when I'll bet not a single kernel of popcorn is sold.

10. American Splendor. Underground comics, dilapidated living-room shelving and a guy who drives from Cleveland to Toledo to see Revenge of the Nerds. The best movie about society's untrendiest since 2000's even better Ghost World is a triumph for actors Paul Giamatti, Hope Davis, Judah Friedlander and, of course, cartoonist Harvey Pekar, the film's subject.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/reviews/2003-12-26-2003-movies-best_x.htm

... and his worst:

1. Chasing Papi.  A Hispanic-babe comedy so broad that you'd swear it was written by, directed by and starring (in every role) '70s "Cuchi-Cuchi Girl" Charo. Prospective viewing victims had better pack a warehouse of "hoochi."

2. Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat. I quit ordering shrimp pizzas 35 years ago after my college date said they smelled like "cat breath." Crude jokes for kiddies and hard-sell merchandizing do, too.

3. The Hunted. Tommy Lee Jones chases Benicio Del Toro, a blade-wielder gifted in hand-to-hand combat. Even braver than Jones is director William Friedkin, who gives himself two full-screen credits at the end.

4. Dreamcatcher. More aliens, more cheese.Say, isn't scripter William Goldman the same mouth-off who was knocking Gangs of New York in his journalistic Oscar-pieces? Really, now.

5. Bad Boys II. You'll recall that in Daredevil, Ben Affleck's Matt Murdock character has been blinded by toxic waste. This noxious 147-minute sequel proves that the same now goes for major studios — at least during the movie year's first 46 weeks.

6. Gods and Generals. Four hours of parlor songs, poetry and husband-wife chatter obscure the battles of Bull Run, Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg. Even if they'd been shooting patrons for desertion at multiplex exits, I know folks who would have risked it.

7. My Boss' Daughter. Now that Ashton Kutcher has flunked entrance-level romantic comedy, he can proceed to Hamlet (aka Dude, Where's My Father?)

8. Cold Creek Manor. Two months before Disney brought out The Haunted Mansion, subsidiary Touchstone put the billionth "serious" possessed-digs thriller into theaters (uh, briefly). Each film would have played better with the other's reels inter-switched.

9. Daredevil. Cast here as the supernatural law partner of Dinnerfor Five's Jon Favreau, Ben Affleck made two movies (incredibly, this one's worse than Gigli ) to guarantee him any restaurant's table for one.

10. Lara Croft, Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life — and then, Beyond Borders. Please, someone, stop Angelina Jolie before she kills again.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/reviews/2003-12-26-2003-movies-worst_x.htm