The year in movies ’05
Posted on Sunday, December 25, 2005
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Style/140676/
Acritic friend told me last week she was having trouble coming up with a Top 10 list this year. I disagreed with her. I can easily think of 10 worthy documentaries or 10 foreign-language films alone. And, as of this writing, I haven’t seen Steven Spielberg’s Munich or Terrence Malick’s The New World, two films that certainly belong in any conversation about the year’s best.
As in any year, if you look too long you see trends begin to emerge — a lot of movies could be read as Sept. 11, 2001, responses, from George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck and Stephen Gaghan’s Syriana to Michael Haneke’s Cache. Movies about journalists ? Capote ; Good Night, and Good Luck and maybe Cache. (Daniel Auteuil’s character hosts a television chat show about books. ) Bio-pics ? Walk the Line and Capote. Movies set (primarily ) in the 1960 s : Brokeback Mountain, Walk the Line and Capote. But I’m not sure we have sufficient distance on the year to try and decide what it all means — better to take the year in film under advisement, to sleep on it. In five years we’ll know what was really important and what was transitory. In five years I’ll have all but forgotten some of these movies, but for the second straight year there is a clear No. 1.
TOP 10 1. Brokeback Mountain — Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain is an astonishing, beautiful film about which I’ll have more to say when it opens here (probably in early February ). While there’s plenty of noise being made by people who haven’t seen it, I’ll just say it’s the best movie I’ve seen since American Beauty in 1999.
2. 3-Iron — A couple of years ago, Kim Ki-Duk was an obscure Korean filmmaker. Today he’s one of the leading lights of world cinema, an original and trenchant visionary who in less than a decade has written and directed a clutch of exquisite films that, despite differences in tone and texture, seem of a piece.
Perhaps the best way to understand the movie at hand is to think of it as Wings of Desire in reverse. In that film by Wim Wenders, an angel longs to become part of the world. In this film, a mysterious, genial young man teaches himself to tread so lightly on the earth that he effectively becomes a spirit. And yet, like Wings of Desire, 3-Iron is also a sweet, if unsettling, story of transcendent romance.
3. A History of Violence — For the past 30 years, David Cronenberg has been the most consistently interesting director working in English. While he is widely perceived as the King of Venereal Horror, his body of work argues for a revaluation of him as one of the genuine masters, a filmmaker of extraordinary vision and no small range.
A History of Violence may be his best yet. It is an art movie disguised as a blood-soaked action-thriller ; the latest and greatest of Cronenberg’s selfdescribed sellouts to the mainstream. With its roots in a popular graphic novel, this mock genre piece tells the story of Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen ), an ostensibly average guy with a secret, bloody past.
4. The Constant Gardener — A visually intelligent and richly textured film about drug-company atrocities in Africa that touches on the residual shame of colonialism, the inherent amorality of global capitalism and the indestructibility of love. It is frankly remarkable in that it challenges rather than reassures its intended audience.
You can feel the tension between the cool intelligent architecture of John Le Carre’s novel and director Fernando Meirelles’ raging cinematic fauvism. In conspiracy with cinematographer Cesar Charlone, Meirelles pushes hand-held cameras into the faces of his actors — used to working with “real people,” he seems affronted by the implicit artifice of the profession — goading them to pull something authentic out of this melodrama. And his cast — which includes Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz — are more than up to the challenge.
5. Cache (Hidden ) — Michael Haneke’s latest art-house shocker is an essay on the corrosive effects of terrorism as well as an allegorical indictment of French racial bias, with wonderfully calibrated performances from the aforementioned Auteuil and Juliette Binoche.
6. Match Point — Woody Allen’s latest may be his best since the similarly themed Crimes & Misdemeanors in 1989 ; at the very least it’s an intriguing character study that evolves into a dark and suspenseful tale of a moral coward’s progress through London society.
7. The Squid and the Whale — There is a literary specificity to The Squid and the Whale that is absent from most films, a reliance on details to serve not only as indicators of character, place and time, but to carry the emotional freight of the film. Most of the time, the details feel right ; they fit seamlessly into the narrative flow, evoking mild but assuring tremors of recognition. But for a couple of sour notes, the movie is perfect.
8. Saraband — Ingmar Bergman, 87, announced his retirement from filmmaking in 1983 after the release of Fanny and Alexander, but continued to work in television. Saraband, which is billed as his absolute final project, is an alternately crushing and tender revisiting of the characters from 1973 ’s Scenes From a Marriage.
9. Crash — Paul Haggis’ wellacted roundelay about barely submerged tensions in Los Angeles introduced a new phrase into the lexicon — the racially charged “crash moment.” While we might debate whether Oprah Winfrey’s perceived snub at a French luxury-goods store actually qualifies as a genuine “crash moment” (she was denied entrance to the Hermes boutique on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore in Paris when she stopped by after the posted closing time — presumably because that’s when the VIPs shop ), the film itself is intelligent, provocative and sober.
10. Walk the Line — Tremendously enjoyable, a story of genuine true-life redemption that doesn’t cheat its subject or its putative audience. Way better than Ray.
A SECOND 10 11. Wallace & Gromit : The Curse of the Were-Rabbit — A wonderful, warm film flawed only to the degree that some American children lacking familiarity with the British commonplace might be confounded by some of the jokes that cause their parents to smile.
12. Capote — Philip Seymour Hoffman is impressive in the title role.
13. Pride & Prejudice — Director Joe Wright’s stated mission was to return the story to the point of view of Elizabeth Bennet (Keira Knightley ). Excellent choice.
14. Paradise Now — While geopolitical realities shape this story of two would-be suicide bombers from Palestine, the characters remain recognizably human, to the point where we begin to suspect their arguments are voiced largely to convince themselves.
15. Junebug — Phil Morrison’s Junebug is a wonderfully specific and becalmed movie about what happens when a particular guy brings his wife home to meet his unique, intractably Southern family. It is a movie that slowly reveals its compassion for ordinary people, each of whom is eventually revealed as an individual, possessed of an array of qualities — some good, some bad — but most merely personal.
16. Broken Flowers — Broken Flowers won’t win any new fans for Jim Jarmusch’s style of quirky dramedy or for latemodel Bill Murray’s brand of comedic lethargy, but as an eloquent and compassionate study of regret and self-mourning, it’s a wonder.
17. The Beautiful Country — A pilgrim’s song that tells what could have been a bathetic story with persuasive compassion, admirable restraint and a painterly precision. What’s more important than plausibility here is the strangeness of landscape seen through the fresh eyes of the immigrant — things communicated wordlessly, through fluttery colors and silent, moteshot light.
18. Millions — A rare family film that doesn’t condescend to its audience and earns its sweetness without stooping to sentimentality. Affecting but not manipulative, and populated with real humans who yearn and dream and try to do the right thing even as they’re subject to temptation.
19. Hustle & Flow — More like Robert Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller and Hal Ashby’s The Last Detail than the blaxploitation products to which it is routinely compared.
20. It’s All Gone Pete Tong — Metafiction is a dangerous game to play in a country where some people still believe The Blair Witch Project is an actual documentary, but it’s apparent writer-director Michael Dowse has faith in us. A mockumentary about a deaf DJ, it features a great performance by Paul Kaye.
Honorable mention : Howl’s Moving Castle, Me and You and Everyone We Know, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, Enron : The Smartest Guys in the Room, Look at Me, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Downfall, Dear Frankie, The Aristocrats, Chrystal, Layer Cake, Walk on Water, Murderball, Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, Rize, March of the Penguins, The Matador, 2046, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Up & Down, Tim Burton’s The Corpse Bride, Breakfast on Pluto, The Family Stone. Haven’t seen : Munich, The Libertine, Casanova, The New World. A movie I probably should watch again when I’m in a better mood : Syriana. Overrated movie of the year : Good Night, and Good Luck. Best movies I saw this year that won’t be officially released until 2006 : Thank You for Smoking, L’enfer. E-mail :
pmartin@arkansasonline. com