2005 Top Ten List
By Apparently 2046 was in Lexington for only a two day engagement, which I, of course, missed. In retrospect, seeing 2046 on Sunday instead of Munich would clearly have been the right choice, although in my defense Munich will be out of Lexington by the end of the week, as well.
You can call me pretty underwhelmed by the year in film. I recall having a lot less trouble filling out my top ten last year. I suppose it’s possible that the top of this year’s list is a little better than last years (although I love both Sideways and Eternal Sunshine), but I think last year had more depth.
As always, in no particular order:
The New World: Reviewed here.
Match Point:Reviewed here.
The Squid and the Whale: As Scott has pointed out, it’s just way too easy for me to see myself in the Jeff Daniels role, or perhaps more in some combination of the father and son; I certainly have gone through periods in which I was way, WAY too fond of Pink Floyd.
Capote: Capote was remarkably good, but didn’t quite catch my imagination. I felt a little bit cold when I left the theater. The movie is well done, so it might have been my mood, or some idiosyncrasy of mine that prevented me from fully engaging with it. However, I don’t hesistate to recommend it; Hoffman was outstanding.
I Walk the Line: It was a weak year. Reese Witherspoon was an outstanding June Carter and the music was great, but I found it far too formulaic for my taste.
Jarhead: I seem to have liked Jarhead a lot more than most. There’s no doubt that Sam Mendes has lost a fair bit of goodwill since American Beauty, a film that is dreadfully flawed, hopefully overrated, yet still compelling in a number of ways. Gyllenhaal was good in Jarhead, but I felt most attracted by the narrative, which captured the boredom of war as well as any picture I’ve seen, and avoided most of the war movie cliches by leaving the protagonists hanging.
A History of Violence: I liked History of Violence much more the second time I saw it. I don’t tend to care for Cronenberg all that much, although I must have seen The Fly ten or fifteen times when I was a kid. The end was weak, but the main body, and especially the first fifteen minutes (through the coffee shop scene) were excellent. Ed Harris was good in a supporting role, but I didn’t care for William Hurt.
Broken Flowers: I found this movie very depressing.
Downfall: Goddamn, this was a depressing movie. It takes some talent to show Nazis in all of the horrific awfulness, refuse to apologize for them one bit, and yet still render them human and understandable. It’s not quite right to say that the audience is intended to sympathize with Goebbels, but some empathy seems possible, which is a remarkable achievement.
Brokeback Mountain: Probably the strongest film of the year. I don’t hold to the new Sullivan-Kaus line that Brokeback really isn’t that good; it’s a very, very strong film without any serious flaws.
Notable exclusions include 2046, Nobody Knows, Memories Murder, March of the Penguins, and Grizzly Man, none of which I’ve seen.