Well, I think it's safe to finally take an official look back at 2005. Granted, I still haven't seen every movie (don't hold your breath, "Diary of a Mad Black Woman"), but the ones that I was holding out for ("The Squid and the Whale") will just have to suffer the same unfair inconvenience that I did last year in my fruitless attempts to find a way to watch them. Indie movies with a 3-theater release schedule should be simultaneously made available on DVD. What loss would there be?
The movies I did see turned out by and large to be of similar quality to those from years past, with a few exceptions, the most egregious being that there was no defining triumph, no masterpiece or hands-down great movie from January to December (and January if you count all the Oscar come-latelys). Yes, there are movies I would say are wonderful, excellent, awesome, but not one that really came out as a bona-fide instant-classic, something I could immediately add to my 100 Favorite Movies List (not that I ever update that old thing). You could argue that that's a rare thing, and I shouldn't expect A+ film experiences every weekend, but considering there's been at least 2 or 3 of these kinds of magical cornerstones for every single year for as long as I can remember, its absence in 2005 is meaningful.
No disrespect to "Sin City" or "Grizzly Man", my two favorite films of the year, but they didn't climb all the way to the top. If this were a classroom and I was using the percentage system, they would each get about a 96%. Smashing work, but missing that final thrust to make them truly special. They're no "The Incredibles", or "Punch-Drunk Love", or "Royal Tenenbaums". Hell, I'd probably put at least the best SEVEN movies of last year over the best movie of this year. Not a good sign.
What went wrong? Beats me. Could be I'm getting more cynical in my old age (FYI, old = mid-'20s), but I doubt that. I've had that worry a lot throughout my life and it always resolves itself. Maybe my expectations were too high for some movies, but no, thinking of 2004's "Sideways" or 2003's "Lost in Translation", I had pretty much reserved seats for them in my top 5 and they earned 'em good 'n' plenty, so it can't be my fault that "Brokeback Mountain" didn't live up to its potential (ALMOST, almost). The movies just aren't as good these days? Broadly speaking, yes that's an obvious truth. Never before has the concentration of just plain unwatchable movies been this high in one year. BUT, in terms of the good movies (and shouldabeens), it's hard to say. On the one hand, yes, "Brokeback" and "King Kong" and "Elizabethtown" and "Walk the Line" should have been even better, no matter how impossible and unfair that sounds (like, honestly, what else could Jackson do to spruce up "King Kong"?). On the other, a majority of my top films are ones that surprised me or delighted me far beyond my expectations ("Fever Pitch", "War of the Worlds", "Howl's Moving Castle"), and it's only because they aren't quite "A+"s that I'm complaining of a lack of "A+"s, but really, the relativitiy of the matter shows that I have much more to be thankful for from 2005 than I have to grump about like an ingrate. "Reefer Madness" and "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" came out of nowhere, "Wallace and Gromit" was entertainment nirvana, I wasn't looking forward to "Jarhead" or "Batman Begins", and miraculously, "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" was everything I wished it would be but never thought it could. Gregg Araki proved he isn't a hopeless scumbag ("Mysterious Skin"), "Star Wars" went out on a satisfying high note, Disney actually delivered a GOOD live-action family film for once ("Sky High"), Tim Burton became an official self-parodying hack in the summer ("Charlie and the Chocolate Factory") but then rebounded in the fall with an equally self-aware but infinitely more rewarding "Nightmare Before Christmas" sequel, Stephen Chow spectacularly revived Jackie Chan's fledging legacy of vivacious and inventive martial artistry, Spielberg perfectly recreated his 1993 glory of genuinely good summer blockbuster thrill-ride followed by a genuinely great winter work of art (and against the odds, no less, briskly filming both in such a dubiously short period of time), and "Harry Potter" continued an improbably flawless winning streak.
And those are just the best stories. Ignoring the surplus of crap and occasional letdown, I should be grateful that I got to add any of the aforementioned movies to my heart and mind. The movie industry could be churning out nothing BUT "Stealth"s, so complaining about the state of affairs after being treating to such things as a marvelous penguin documentary and a "Batman" sequel with Gary Oldman in it is like a rich guy whining that he only made $10 million last month. What kind of narrow-minded asshole am I? Okay, so never mind all that. Even with no Pixar or stirring, pensive character drama (almost, "Brokeback"!), this was still a good year. Maybe not a great one (looking back, I think I saw a lot more bad movies than good ones), but we should be so lucky...
FAVORITE FILMS OF 2005
1) Grizzly Man
2) Sin City
3) The 40-Year-Old Virgin
4) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
5) Crash
6) Wallace and Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
7) Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical
8) Brokeback Mountain
9) Kung Fu Hustle
10) Howl's Moving Castle
runners-up:
11) Fever Pitch
12) Jarhead
13) War of the Worlds
14) Munich
15) Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
16) Tim Burton's Corpse Bride
17) Match Point
18) Batman Begins
19) Mysterious Skin
20) Happy Endings
21) Good Night, and Good Luck
22) Sky High
23) Me and You and Everyone We Know
24) Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
25) Wedding Crashers
MOVIES I HAVEN'T SEEN YET (but want/need to)
1) The Squid and the Whale
2) MirrorMask
3) Capote
4) The Matador
5) Wolf Creek
6) Rent
7) Green Street Hooligans
8) Everything is Illuminated
9) Pride & Prejudice
UNRELEASED MOVIES I'M LOOKING FORWARD TO
1) Brick
2) Thank You for Smoking
3) Romance and Cigarettes
4) Stephen Tobolowsky's Birthday Party
5) LolliLove
LEAST FAVORITE FILMS OF 2005 (like last year, not necessarily the worst, but "Alone in the Dark" and "White Noise" are fish in a barrel, and I have more vicious hostility for these)
1) The Devil's Rejects
2) Domino
3) Pretty Persuasion
4) The Ring Two
5) Dark Water
6) Saw II
7) Four Brothers
8) Constantine
9) Assault on Precinct 13
10) Kingdom of Heaven
The "Don't Get Me Wrong" Awards (aka these movies sucked, too)
Hide and Seek
White Noise
Elektra
Boogeyman
The Amityville Horror
Alone in the Dark
Racing Stripes
Return of the Living Dead 4 and 5
The Cave
Son of the Mask
Bewitched
The Interpreter
The Fog
Fantastic Four
Herbie: Fully Loaded
Valiant
Be Cool
The Bad News Bears
Red Eye
Lord of War
The Dukes of Hazzard
The Ringer
MOST OVERRATED
1) A History of Violence
2) The Ringer
3) Red Eye
4) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
5) The Devil's Rejects
MOST UNDERRATED
1) Fever Pitch
2) The Weather Man
3) Sky High
4) The Island
5) Fun with Dick and Jane
DIRECTORS WHO LET ME DOWN
1) Cameron Crow (Elizabethtown)
2) Richard Linklater (The Bad News Bears)
3) Andrew Niccol (Lord of War)
4) Wes Craven (Cursed)
5) Wes Craven (Red Eye)
6) Woody Allen (Melinda and Melinda)
7) Tim Burton (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)
8) George Romero (Land of the Dead)
9) Stephen Gaghan (Syriana)
10) Steve Martin (Shopgirl) - not the director but the primary creative force
BEST CAST
1) Good Night, and Good Luck
2) The 40-Year-Old Virgin
3) Brokeback Mountain
5) Crash
6) Happy Endings
7) Me and You and Everyone We Know
8) Munich
AND SPECIAL PRIZES FOR BEST CAST FOR JUST 2 LEADS
9) Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer)
10) Wedding Crashers (Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson)
11) Walk the Line (Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon)
BEST CAST ENSEMBLES THAT DON'T REALLY DO MUCH, BUT ARE AWESOME ANYWAY
1) Sin City
2) Batman Begins
BEST SEQUEL
1) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
2) Batman Begins
3) Star Wars
WORST SEQUEL (not counting the 500 I didn't see)
1) The Ring Two
2) Son of the Mask
3) Saw II
And I won't make any commitments (as on that year-end preview I never finished), but if I have time and interest, I'll do a Best Actors list and maybe some others, like movies I think could be the best of 2006. But this is probably enough. Cheers to the new year, and may all its films be ever finer!
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