Top 10 Movies of 2005

I know this seems a bit ridiculous to finally give you my top ten list from last year seeing as how it's like August, but I had a pretty big 2005, got married, bought a condo, had an appendix out, quit two jobs, started my own business, wrote a novel (todd.wordpress.com), got my handicap down to 10.6 (back up to 12.4 but still) along with a handful of other things. So it's taken me awhile to make sure I've seen all the major films from 2005, and I need to see them all before making a complete list, right, because then where would my credibility be? So here goes·

Honorable Mention - As is usual, there are more than 10 films worthy of note every year, not top 10 material, but certainly good movies that should be recommend, notice that I'm not listing: Crash, Good Night and Good Luck, Munich, Syriana, or Cinderella Man, and I'll quickly tell you why. For a little over a decade now, film folks have been talking about how the rise of the independent film has caused the death of the serious studio drama. That the independents won, and that the auteur filmmaker still rules and that the art of film is alive and well in their hands. But that isn't what happened. What happened was that the so-called auteur filmmaker just became the major studio adult drama filmmaker, and those adult dramas are made for the same reasons that all other studio films are made and that's to make money. So they're just as safe, and just as vanilla, and water down their message, and make it easy for the dumb retards in middle America to understand while not talking down to the elitist intellectuals on the coasts, as any other big blockbuster summer Hollywood popcorn flick. Because of that, all these big studio dramas become increasingly irrelevant as they still try to play to the masses, but don't really have anything to say. I don't want to be part of some Crash backlash, but I was shocked at all the talk of how profound and important Crash was. It's commentary on race relations would have been profound maybe in the 60s or something, but this is all stuff we know, watch old Richard Pryor or Eddie Murphy standup from decades ago and you get the message, which is basically that there is still racism, it still exists in all forms and amongst all races. This isn't profound, and for all the talk that Crash was daring, I found it to be extremely safe. The white people are bad (but conflicted) and the other races are bad (but with reason). My main point is that you should leave the intense human drama to the independents. Studios should stick to what they do best which is make big loud fun movies, utilizing the resources that they have to make movies that independents simply can't (except for Robert Rodriguez, but we'll get to him later.)

Honorable Mention (no particular order):

• Mr & Mrs. Smith
• Walk to Line
• Murderball
• The Upside of Anger
• War of the Worlds
• Charlie & the Chocolate Factory
• Howl's Moving Castle
• Me and You and Everyone We Know
• Millions
• Oldboy

11- 20 (again no particular order here):

• Three Extremes
• Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
• Capote
• A History of Violence
• Serenity
• Corpse Bride
• The Weather Man
• Match Point
• Kung Fu Hustle
• Transamerica

Top 10:

10) The Three Burials of Melquiadas Estrada - Tommy Lee Jones directed this throwback redemption story about tough guys with big tough hearts, who still believe in honor, valor and the keeping of a man's word. Along the way Jones' gave himself probably the best role of his career, and gave Barry Pepper another great part to do his whole bug eyed emaciated intense and sad Barry Pepper thing in. Good stuff, go track this film down.

9) Lord of War - I'm so confused by Nicholas Cage he has been as great (Leaving Las Vegas, Red Rock West, Birdy, Wild at Heart, Raising Arizona, Honeymoon in Vegas) as he's been awful (The Rock, Con Air, Face/Off, City of Angels). Now he's on a roll, with 4 very good movies in the past couple of years Matchstick Men, National Treasure, The Weather Man and Lord of War. Which makes me optimistic about The Wicker Man and Ghost Rider. Anyway, Lord of War was a surprise to me, I hadn't heard anything about it, and then it turned out to be great. See, studios still can make good intense subversive adult dramas. Of course the movie didn't do well because the idiot retards in middle America didn't get it that it was satire. I also was happy to see another good film by Andrew Niccol who directed the great (and overlooked) Gattaca.

8) Brokeback Mountain - I thought we were done with all of the Brokeback Mountain jokes, but then Turtle throws one out there in last week's episode of Entourage. It's a good film, well made, well acted (although Jake Gyllenhaal kind of overdoes it at times, but then again, he's the fem, so I guess that makes sense). As far as being "courageous" roles for Ledger and Gyllenhaal to take, I guess that's true, although about a decade ago, in Wong Kar Wai's Happy Together Leslie Chung and Tony Leung, who at the time were two of the three biggest stars in Hong Kong cinema (the other being Chow Yun Fat of course) were far more, well· expressive. But I guess in America we're still stuck in our puritanical nonsense. Anyway, it's a great movie, that actually transcends its subject matter, and I'll admit that subject matter does make me somewhat uncomfortable, but it didn't bother me in this film at all.

7) The Devil's Rejects - Again, a huge surprise, The Devil's Rejects picks up where Rob Zombie's first film The House of 1000 Corpses leaves off, but is an infinitely superior film. Zombie has certainly matured as a filmmaker and a writer, as he somehow creates instead of another exploitation gore flick, a great revenge/action/mystery/road/gore movie. And the end is, lyrical, poetic, I don't know, almost beautiful. Great work.

6) Junebug - A lot was made about the performance by Amy Adams in this film and she is incredible, but so is everyone else. A truly great small family drama/comedy, this is what the independents do best, and this was the best indie film of the year.

5) 2046 - Wong Kar Wai's follow up to his equally great In the Mood for Love, 2046 is mysterious, sexy, and visually stunning. This may be Kar Wai's masterpiece, although I'm torn between this and Chungking Express and the aforementioned In the Mood for Love. The cast of 2046 is basically an all-star team of Hong Kong cinema: Tony Leung, Gong Li, Ziyi Zhang, Maggie Cheung, and Faye Wong. But the real star of this movie is the director of photography Christopher Doyle.

4) King Kong - Peter Jackson remade a classic, and somehow pulled off a classic in his own right. There's still a bit too much of the whole Peter Jackson people looking at each other longingly thing going on, but it's a remarkable work. It actually confirms the talent that made the first two Lord of the Rings movies (not to mention all of his brilliant early work) and makes you forget about how much he screwed up the last Lord of the Rings movie.

3) The 40 Year Old Virgin - Going into the summer I was sure that Wedding Crashers was going to be the summer's great comedy, but it was overlong, and outside of Will Ferrel's cameo in it, wasn't all that funny. And it was trumped, big time, by The 40 Year Old Virgin. Steve Carrell had a hell of a year last year (and was my nominee for Negative Waves Man of the Year by the way) with The Office and this movie, which just keeps getting better on further views. Paul Rudd is a comic genius, "Yeah, well, you know, it's nine dollar beer night." Ha!

2) Batman Begins - If we can forget about weird Katie Holmes' presence in this movie, we can't really find another flaw in it. A great take on the Batman origin story, this one while not technical based on, is closer to Frank Miller's Batman: Year One comic. Shortly after I saw Batman Begins I unfortunately caught Batman and Robin on HBO and was astounded by how much of a steaming pile of shit that was. Christopher Nolan single-handedly resurrected the Batman franchise in spades, and in the process made close to the best comic book movie ever made. Best of course, until Sin City.

1) Sin City - I risk being branded a fan-boy on this one, for three consecutive years I've selected a movie that Quentin Tarantino had his hands in for the #1 movie of the year. And Robert Rodriquez is one of my personal heroes, listen, I'll admit it, maybe I am a bit of a fan-boy, but I stand by the fact that the Kill Bill movies were the two best films of their respective years, and that Sin City was the best film of '05. Rodriguez, Tarantino, and Richard Linklater are the holy trinity of 90s independent filmmakers. Their films, El Mariachi, Reservoir Dogs, and Slacker are revolutionary, and what Rodriquez has done here is nothing short of revolutionary in its own right. To dismiss the visual and technical treatment of Frank Miller's graphic novel as gimmicky, would be ignorant and short sighted. Rodriguez's vision has always been his greatest asset, and by having the technical vision to accurately adapt Frank Miller's creative vision onto film (or digital tape) shows that Rodriguez is a master craftsman, being able to utilize the tools of his trade to create new images that we really haven't seen before. Also his whole giving co-director credit to Frank Miller, and basically telling the director's guild they can go screw themselves is pretty cool too.