Oversight
This blog is called Filmica Plus, yet I have only produced 1.5 film reviews since its inception. I will rectify this now by beginning my serial rundown of the top 10 films of 2003. So sit down and SHUT UP.

The rules of it are that the film had to have come out in 2003, and had a cinematic release. This can include as part of a film festival (and thank goodness for that, considering most films that get general release in Australia are terribly shithouse.

So, I begin at number 10. Lilja-4-Ever.


This is a rather bleak little outing. It's a Swedish film about a girl living somewhere not very nice in the former Soviet Union, who, thinking she's about to start a new, idyllic life, winds up in the most appalling of circumstances. Lukas Moodysson who made this film (Together and Show Me Love are some of his other successful works) is highly skilled in eliciting devastatingly convincing performances from his young actors, and this really is an excellent film by anyone's standards. However Moodysson saw fit to include a couple of fantasy sequences which I found to be untenably earnest and clunky and for this reason the film only came in at number 10 for 2003. Still, you should definitely see this: Oksana Akinshina is quite a revelation as Lilja, and the soundtrack is marvellous too.