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THE BEST OF 2005
IN CASE YOU WANT TO SKIP ALL THE COMMENTARY AND GO STRAIGHT ONTO THE TOP 10 LIST,
PURE AND SIMPLE WITH NO FUSS, THEN CLICK HERE, BUT YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO READ ON
AND GET THE FULL EFFECT OF THE 2005 COUNTDOWN, SO FORGET I EVEN MENTIONED IT.
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Before we get into the Top films of 2005, I want to make brief mention of those films that did not make the list. Still some great filmmaking, but coming up a bit shy of the "Big Ten". In no particular order, here are the runners-up.
Tropical Malady, the third film from the nearly unpronouncably-named Thai Auteur, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, is a surrealy played out gay love story, fluctuating somewhere between political realism and mythological allegory. Kore-eda Hirokazu's Nobody Knows, is the all-too-true story of a Japanese mother who abandons her five children in a Tokyo apartment. Their transformation from happy-go-lucky children to bitter love-lost waifs (and worse) is a strange and eerie marvel to behold. A Toute de Suite, from the closest thing we have to a new Franch Waver, Benoit Jacquot (not that he's that new), is a stunning black & white tale of love, deception, despair and longing. Kontroll, the debut film from Hungarian Nimrod Antal, is a grimy film set entirely in the underground subway system of Bedapest. Sort of like Quentin Tarantino goes Eastern European. The Holy Girl, from Argentinian filmmaker Lucretia Martel, tells the story of a young girl, the older man who desires her and the search for God in everyday life. Pawel Pawlikowski's My Summer of Love transforms two young girls' new found love into a game of lies. Natalie Press gives a remarkable performance in her feature debut. George Clooney creates a sharp, crisp look at Edward R. Murrow and Senator Joseph McCarthy in Good Night, and Good Luck., a film that has equally dire ties to the politics of today's America. Performance artist turned director Miranda July gave us Me and You and Everyone We Know, a just-beyond-taboo coming-of-age story intermingling with a just-beyond-divorce love story intermingling with a just-beyond-loneliness diorama of a group of semi-Altmanesque characters. Hany Abu-Assad's Paradise Now is more than just a political powderkeg - much much more - it is a pair of young men's search for right and wrong in the world, and their finding out that there is no answer to their questions. Howl's Moving Castle, Hayao Miyazaki's follow-up to the anime masterpiece, Spirited Away, is a bubbling, belching, huffing and puffing fantasy story repleat with charm, wisdom and an old-fashioned adventure sorely lacking in most of today's CGI-spawned animated movies. Schizo, the debut feature from Gulshat Omarova, and one of the first features coming out of the budding film industry of newly formed Kazakhstan, is something even Godard could sink his teeth into. 5x2, from the French Epicrean filmmaker, Francois Ozon, plays out in reverse order, from divorce to first meeting, in one of the most intriguingly nuanced films in a long while. The Squid & the Whale, the semi-autobiographical film from Noah Baumbach, is a brutally honest look at the breakdown of an already barely tethered together family. Jia Zhang-ke, considered to be the greatest new talent out of Mainland China, sends forth The World, a cunning and sharp-witted look at modern China and the consumerism that is eroding away its ancient foundations. Crash, the directorial debut from one of last year's Best Screenplay Oscar nominees (for Million Dollar Baby), Paul Haggis, is a multi-layered and multi-textured diatribe on race in modern day LA. German-Turk filmmaker Fatih Akin, gave us Head-On, a half-punk half-traditional story of lost love and the despair that it causes. Philip Seymour Hoffman's brilliant characterization of Truman Capote, along with a cool - almost icy cold - camera, bring Bennett Miller's Capote to a creepy forbidding apex. Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers is nothing less than a tour de force for the deadpan style of Bill Murray. Kim Ki-duk - a Korean filmmaker that never quite impressed before - now gives us 3-Iron, an almost entirely silently acted film with moments of sheer quiet beauty. Phil Morrison's debut, Junebug, is a tragic comedy turned comedic tragedy - all the while playing a morality tale of manners and culture. Fernando Meirelles' The Constant Gardener with his unique visual style is not only a gripping political story, but, thanks to the stellar performances of Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz, also an epic love story. Pride & Prejudice, the third filmed version - this time from first-timer Joe Wright - is a swirling ensemble of oblique elegance.
There is one more film I would like to mention before getting down to the Top 10, and that film is the oft-loathed Ma Mère. I place it here - essentially in the number eleven spot - and direly stand by my convictions in calling it a dirty little near masterpiece. Here is what I said in my original review, just after seeing the film at last year's Philadelphia Film Festival: "With the same deja vu repulsion that sent droves of white-picket-fenced suburbanites spewing their way out of theatres midway through such invidious fare as Vincent Gallo's Brown Bunny and last year's festival champion, Catherine Breillat's Anatomy of Hell, at least two dozen filmgoers panicstrickenly escaped the screening of Christophe Honore's Ma Mère, long before an ending that may just have caused these puritanical humdrummers to spontaneously combust right there in the Ritz East. Languidly teetering between a blaise melancholy and downright lethargy, Honore's look at a sexually infused mother and her unnatural libidinous preoccupation with her spiritually mustered teenage son, is anything but panic-inducing. Set at a typically French pace, Ma Mère slowly emboldens itself from playful teasing to orgiastic hedonism to sado-masochistic revelry to, finally, fatalistic satiation and lambasted salvation. A epicurean near-masterpiece that secretly thrills the curiosity in all of us, while scaring the bejeezus out of all the straights in the audience (not that any but the brave were left come credit time)." So many have hated it, but I stand by my original statements dammit.
And now, without further ado, the Top 10 Films of 2005...
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#10
Oldboy
Directed by Chan-wook Park
Take one wriggling octopus and bite deep into its brain as its tentacles wrap themselves around you in a last ditch effort to squirm its way back to its nearly forgotten ocean home. That opening sentence was meant to shock, in just the same way that Park's movie - and the aboved paraphrased scene - was meant to. Part two of his revenge trilogy, Chan-wook Park, enfant terrible of the Korean New Wave, mixes sensory overload with dark humour with sexually perverse undertones and has created a mind-blowing bash-in-the-face motion picture - full of moments that shock and moments that inspire awe and wonder. The story of a drunken baffoon who is mysteriously imprisoned for fifteen years, and upon his release, must find the whos, whats, wheres, hows and whys of what has happened to him, is a stellar fast-paced nearly surreal amusement park ride of blatant hedonism and twisted grotesque retaliations.
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#9
Or (Mon Tresor)
Directed by Keren Yedeya
We see so many artistic endeavors coming out of the Middle East these days. Poems, books, songs, film, paintings - all with a political edge to them - for obvious resons of course. But here is a film from Israel that takes a different path toward enlightenment. Instead of focusing on the political or the quasi-socio-religious aspects of life - especially the lives of women - Keren Yedeya, in her directorial debut, has created an intensely personal look at a mother/daughter relationship - repleat with warts and all. With a camera that not only plays at voyeurism and the invasion of personal space (you can almost touch the flesh of these two woman as close as the camera seems to pry) but goes so far as to be construed as virtually raping these women. Intense to the nth power, the story of Or and her mother is a provocative slice of Hell, served up on a platter of the sad mundane existence of everyday life.
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#8
Kings & Queen
Directed by Arnaud Desplechin
Arnaud Desplechin, the fastidious director of 2000's Esther Kahn, hands us yet another brilliantly acted bravura cinematic conglomeration of esoteric camera work, seemless editing and glass ceiling-shattering moments of brilliance. The story of a woman who may or may not think she is a solar sytem unto herself and her ex-husband who may or may not believe himself to be the one last genius left upon Earth. Emmanuelle Devos and Mathieu Amalric shout out near perfect portrayals of two human beings both on the verge of breakdown and at the same time both on the verge of redemption. Shattering in its complexity amidst such a small circle of ever-closing satellites - as was Esther Kahn - Desplechin's Kings & Queen works on about seven different levels all at once, without ever overloading to the point of non recognition.
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#7
Last Days
Directed by Gus Van Sant
First there was Gerry, a crushing and brutal take on man versus nature versus man again. Then there was Elephant, a swirling fall-back-upon-itself thesis on school shootings and what causes them. Now comes Gus Van Sant's final piece of his "death trilogy". More than loosely based upon the few final days of Kurt Cobain's life, Michael Pitt is burned out alt-rocker Blake (with allusion to poet William Blake very much intended), roaming about the woods of his old house, contemplating how he will die. Meticulously edited in the same style as the earlier two films - meaning in a slow lugubrious manner with plenty of time for ponderment and/or contemplation - Van Sant creates an emotionally subliminal work of art, not unlike the poems of ole Bill Blake himself.
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#6
Brokeback Mountain
Directed by Ang Lee
There isn't much more I can say about this beautiful film that I haven't already said - I have been rather vocal about it. This was easily one the most emotionally gripping films I have ever seen - with or without the supposed "ick factor" that so many have been harping on and on about. So instead of coming up with something new, here is an excerpt from my original review: "A triumph of wills for all those involved in its long creation. From Proulx's original writing, to McMurtry & Ossana's re-tooling, to Lee's sharply subtle direction, to Ledger & Gyllenhall's intrepid performances. Political powderkeg or not, Brokeback Mountain is, not only Ang Lee's greatest cinematic achievement yet, but also one of the most beautifully tragic love stories ever told." What more can be said?
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#5
The New World
Directed by Terrence Malick
Malick's latest film swirls and sways about as if it was a very part of nature itself. The blowing grass seems to speak to the audience and the rolling rivers almost pour over us as we watch The New World. Malick's camera, both reclusive as he is and participatory as he wants us to be, snakes about the characters - especially Pocahontas portrayer, Q'Orianka Kilcher - as if it were making love to each and every one of them - and we the voyeurs. Although probably Malick's weakest film yet (only his fourth) it still shines far and above nearly anything else coming out of the Hollywood Hills. Beautifully rapt and georgeously attired, The New World - even with the trepedations of Colin Farrell being involved (but remember that Malick managed to make even Richard Gere look good once) - begins on a high note of visceral enchantment and splendors its way to enrapture us the entire way through.
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#4
A History of Violence
Directed by David Cronenberg
There have been films that have taken the proverbial microscope to problems of violence in society, and more acurately, our detached and dispassioned eye for said violence. Films such as Natural Born Killers and Elephant, but Cronenberg's latest (and his greatest I must say) delves much deeper than any of its predecessors. Showing the emotional highs and lows of violence, and those most desensitized to it, Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello - as well as a sadly-truncated performance from William Hurt - plow through the film as if their lives depended on it. Powerful and intense to the point of almost no return - and the ending is possibly the best finale in any film this year. Cronenberg, who made (among others) The Fly, Dead Ringers, eXistenZ and Spider ends up having his least "out-there" film being his best yet.
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#3
Caché
Directed by Michael Haneke
Always a brides maid, never a bride. For the second consecutive year, Michael Haneke, possibly the most viscerally adulterative auteur in the known world, comes in third place on my annual Top 10 List. Last year it was the criminally underappreciated Time of the Wolf and this year it is Caché, the story of the typical Haneke Bourgeois nuclear family being harassed by a never-to-be-known stalker intent on...well, we never really are very sure of the whys, whats and whos of the plot, and I am sure that is exactly the way Haneke wants it - and likes it - and savours it. Terrifying in the most subtle way (not unlike his earlier Funny Games), even in the end, when we think we may finally get an answer to the question that has been plaguing us all movie-long, the rug is viciously pulled out from under us. Shot with the hands of a seeming killer, Haneke, who never fails to shock even we most jaded critics, is at the top of his game here - not that he has ever been anywhere but.
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#2
Saraband
Directed by Ingmar Bergman
We have all been waiting since 1983 for this film to finally happen. That was the year in which Ingmar Bergman's "final" film, Fanny & Alexander hit American shores and we knew (even I at such a tender age) the world of cinema was losing one of its greatest (and in my opinion THE greatest). With a smattering of screenplays written over the next two decades, it wasn't until 2003 that Bergman once again would sit behind the camera and direct one final(?) time. Originally broadcast on Swedish TV, the ultra-reclusive Bergman reluctantly agreed to enter the film in 2004's New York Film Festival (where I first laid eyes upon it) and the rest is history. Upon its 2005 US theatrical release, and as elegant as ever, we all see the beauty that has been sorely and sadly missing from cinema for the past twenty years.
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#1
2046
Directed by Wong Kar-wai
And finally, number one. After first seeing 2046 (the way most cinephiles in America and Europe first saw it - on an all region dvd player) nearly a year ago, I went back and rewatched In the Mood for Love, the film that works as a basis for this semi-sequel. On watching the special features I noticed many originally deleted scenes that now pop up - in altered form - here in 2046. My conclusion merely expounds on what I have always thought of Wong Kar-wai - his (possibly) lifelong attempt at making one long and winding master film of swirling, swaying, swooning brilliance. 2046 is not only a continuation of In the Mood for Love but also (if not in subject, then in a visual array of a singular cohesive beauty) is the beautiful bouncing baby boy of Chungking Express, Fallen Angels and Happy Together. Wong Kar-wai is - hands down - the most expressively eloquent filmmaker working today.
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