Decade in Review: 2005 Top Ten

2009 is almost over and so many magazines and websites have already offered up their best of the year AND decade that I'm afraid y'all will get sick of the retrospectives before The Film Experience has chimed on. Remember: the tortoise wins! 2005's top ten list (in its original form) follows. New comments in red.

Public Favorites (Box Office): Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, War of the Worlds, King Kong, Wedding Crashers, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Batman Begins, Madagascar and Mr & Mrs Smith
Oscar Favorites: Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Crash, Good Night and Good Luck and Munich
My Vote For UnderAppreciated: In Her Shoes, Happy Endings and The White Countess
Top Ten Runners Up (11-15): The Squid and the Whale, Match Point, The New World, Junebug and The Beat That My Heart Skipped. I like all five of these even better today than I did at the time... and more than a few things in my top ten list. I'd definitely reorder.

10 Corpse Bride
If there is one thing I value above all else in animated films, it's vivid character designs and cohesive artistic vision. In this area, Tim Burton's Corpse Bride has few equals. Credit goes to the titular auteur Tim Burton and co-director Mike Johnson's guiding goth-happy hands as well as one of Hollywood's finest production designers, Alex McDowell. (His past visually stunning credits include Minority Report, The Terminal, Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, and Fight Club. And still no Oscar nomination for his troubles... tsk tsk Hollywood.)

Beyond its superb visual delights, Burton's best film in years also digs up rich voicework from its cast, and offers an enchanting tale both sweet and sour. Nowhere close to perfect but Corpse Bride's got magic to spare.

09 Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were Rabbit
(Another animated film that's blissfully not of the currently homogenous CG *only* school of animation)

I have been a fan of W&G for a long time and enjoying them for an entire feature was akin to visiting with supremely droll friends whom one never sees enough of. To sweeten the reunion, they brought along the sublimely silly Lady Tottington. They even uncovered a heretofore unseen sense of humor in Ralph Fiennes (who voices bunny-hunting Victor Quartermaine). W & G's last cinematic outing was in 1995. A plea to Nick Park: Please do not make us wait another whole decade for the next adventure.

Curious that I shoved two animated films into the top ten... especially considering how strong the runners up were. I blame this partially on my own childlike delight at stop motion animation (it gets to me on some primal level) but mostly on release schedules. I know I'm too susceptible to that but it's just the way I am. I am better at loving things I'm familiar with than brand new things I've just met. And I had JUST gotten a glimpse of Match Point and I remember that I had an awful awful time processing The New World and what was going on with Oscar qualifications that year. Like Nick recently mentioned, I wasn't even sure which version of the Malick movie I was watching. And I don't know that it even still exists. I'm nervous about what this says about me but I actually felt physically angry at the idea that a movie I saw in the theater was not the same movie that my friends saw in the theater which was maybe not even the same movie that critics were writing about for their readers who would never be able to see that one. In some ways I'm still angry. It makes no sense to be this bonkers about it but I even feel like there should be laws against that ever happening again.

08 Good Night, and Good Luck.
Seasonal truth: As surely as leaves fall in autumn, "prestige" dramas arrive in movie theaters. They are generally set in the past, always aim to be 'classy', wish to delight year-end awards voters with gorgeous production values, and plan to be good for you, too. Rarely however are do they deliver on all four counts. This recreation of the 1950s media war between journalist Edward R Murrow (played by the mesmerizing David Strathairn) and Communist hunting Senator Joseph McCarthy (playing himself in archival footage) gratefully hits all of its mark. It's a prestige bullseye for writer, director, star, and emerging activist hero George Clooney.

I have had no desire whatsoever to rewatch this. Does that mean I overvalued it or is one enjoyable viewing of anything reason enough to love a movie?

07 Kings & Queen
Ever since seeing Arnaud Depleschin's wondrously mutating film Rois et Reine about a single mother named Nola (the superb Emmanuelle Devos) and the four men (father, son, ex-lover, and fiancé) in her life I've been desperately trying to pin it down. Exactly what is it?

Whatever it is --melodrama, comedy, existential quandry-- it's as gripping as any fine novel. And to extend the comparison further, it seems just as rich and information packed. Like Nola herself, Kings and Queen is a mysterious and possessive creature: Ultimately unknowable but unwilling to let you withdraw from its world.

06 Brødre
I first saw this Danish drama @ TIFF in 2004 where it became one of my two favorites of the festival. A year later Brothers was released in the states to critical acclaim but made not much of a ripple at the arthouse box office, making it one of the many lost foreign pleasures of the year.

Hollywood may soon be utilizing director Susanne Bier. It's easy to see why. This drama about a young family turned upside down by the news that the husband has been killed in Afghanistan is emotionally potent without ever once feeling forced, despite story elements that would be either pedestrian or overplayed in lesser hands. There's nary a false note struck from the entire ensemble including Hollywood actress Connie Nielsen (making her first film in her homeland) who has never looked better or been more sympathetic onscreen.

Oops. Hollywood didn't take my warning about a story that would feel "pedestrian or overplayed in lesser hands". They went and proved my point just two weeks ago.

05 Me and You and Everyone We Know
Quirky. Edgy. Precocious. Artsy. Odd. These are all adjectives that truthfully describe Miranda July's debut film. Unfortunately all of these carry a whiff of negative connotation. Any of them alone can feel like mere attitudinal posing if a film has nothing to say. Thankfully Me and You and Everyone We Know, with its endearing cast of childlike adults and children playing at adult games has plenty to say about life and connections in this digital age. So quirky yes, but blissfully so. Me and You transcends any adjective you'd like to bestow on it.

One of Miranda July's funniest affectations in her performance/digital art is her tendency to use pre-recorded crowd cheering to punctuate her lines or do her own repetitous call/response with a lowered voice creating her own sycophant lover. I didn't need the prompting to express my adulation. In a year filled with promising debut filmmakers hers was the most endearing new voice.

This movie feels a bit like a lost oddball relic now. Not that it's aged poorly... just that it was always such an idiosyncratic unfashionable feeling thing that it stills feels a bit like an installation rather than a movie that came out. I hope she makes another film soon.

04 Caché
The last time I saw a Michael Haneke picture the title was The Piano Teacher. I was completely terrified, revolted, and stunned. Though nothing in Caché (also known as Hidden) reaches the peak of Isabelle's Huppert's performance accomplishment in the earlier film, I much prefer the newer film, which offers me the same visceral mix of reactions, albeit in different quantities. Perhaps in 2002 I just wasn't ready for the way Michael Haneke mercilessly dissects human weakness.

This mind-bender (and politically-minded story) about a rich French couple and the stalker-like videotapes that begin arriving at their door is masterfully told and rewards attentive viewing. The Austrian auteur uses no musical scoring, no quick editing, and no cheap Hollywood "gotcha!" scare tactics but still manages to thoroughly unnerve the audience. And unlike most tales meant to terrify, Caché also gives the intellect a workout. Michael Haneke may be the most gifted frightener since Alfred Hitchcock.

03 Pride & Prejudice
Confession: Prior to seeing this romantic romp from debuting director Joe Wright I had not read the Jane Austen novel nor seen the BBC miniseries which many consider definitive. I have since begun to fill in those gaps. For those angered at the films many liberties taken (300 plus page novels can't make it to film without cuts --sorry) I say pshaw! What matters is the spirit of the thing. And spirit the new Pride & Prejudice has in spades.

Austen's writing is full of memorable characters, delicious staccato banter and wit and breakneck pace. In this impressively cinematic transformation, the nimble cinematography, beautifully dexterous setpieces, and highly enjoyable performances have all been beautifully choreographed together to ape the high spirits of Austen's eternal charmer. For pure movie-movie fun and swoon-worthy romance, this film is tough to beat.

I am not at all embarrassed by my love for this film, but I do think I overstated the case with the bronze medal. I'd move Caché up a spot for sure.

02 A History of Violence
David Cronenberg, the legendary Canadian director, is a shining beacon to all fringe dwelling filmmakers with a taste for mainstream exposure. You can make an accessible film without losing any of your maverick qualities or subversive spirit. Cronenberg hardly sold out upon taking the reins of this graphic novel adaptation. His signature offputting bits, like his taste for body-horror are still present, just less visible. In one of the film's many masterfully pivoting scenes, Edie Stall (Maria Bello) suddenly vomits upon learning a disturbing truth about her husband. This isn't the in-your-face gynecological terror of Dead Ringers (another Cronenberg masterpiece) but damned if it's not psychologically connected to Mrs. Stall's genitals

...Violence is one of those rare movies that expands and contracts with the audiences expectations. For film fanatics wishing to get lost in the celluloid, it's as deep as you want it to be. For the more casual moviegoer it's a shocking thriller. Either way it's a superbly crafted piece of cinema.

01 Brokeback Mountain
When I read the famous short story upon which this instant classic is based it haunted me for weeks. In very few pages with precise and spare prose, Annie Proulx gave me a portrait of two lives and broke my heart in the process. The film version has that same lean spirit but miraculously never missteps in expanding her original story. This portrait has fresh details and a stunning humanism. Ang Lee paints the secondary characters, wives, mothers, employers, fathers nearly as vividly. In the process the confident auteur has deepened the tragedy of the original story. Brokeback Mountain is no longer just a small but perfect romantic tragedy. It's now an improbably behemoth portrait of tragedy spilling out all over; this is the price of love rejected and forbidden --both for all those who find it and all those who deny its place in society.

Brokeback, which felt like an instant classic at the time, has never disappointed on repeat visits. If anything its familiarity works for it. Like Jack and Ennis, this love deepens. Will it haunt for a whole lifetime?


How does 2005 hold up for you? Which were your favorites at the time and which have snuck up on you as enduring loves?
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