There's always plenty of pretentious piffle among any year's releases, but 2004 produced a bumper crop of nonsense. We have space (and patience) for just two items: Director Michel Gondry's production of yet another fatuous script by Charlie Kaufman, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and David O. Russell's I Heart Huckabees. The former is about how you have to lose love in order to find it. The latter is about losing and finding your identity. But both explore these favorite sophomoric topics through complex comical devices more amusing, apparently, to their creators than they possibly can be to any reasonable person who happens to find himself in the audience.
Come fly with us, and Leo, through the best (and worst) of 2004. Tops in the cinema this year include Scorsese's Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator. Elsewhere, Deadwood was good TV, and a Strange tale fascinated readers.