I’ve been catching up on some 2004 flicks: Mean Creek, The Machinist, Vanity Fair, The Door in the Floor.
In terms of overall quality, I’d put them pretty much in that same order. All were good. Mean Creek and The Machinist were outstandingly good. Those two are heavy meditations on ethics and personal responsibility, though they go about presenting those themes in very different ways.
The bookish among you will probably enjoy all the subtle Dostoyevsky references in The Machinist. And, of course, Vanity Fair is based upon the novel of the same name by Thackeray. I was forced to read said novel in high school. I didn’t enjoy it then, though I might now. But I don’t remember enough of it to compare it with the film, which I did enjoy.