Best films of 2005
2005 was a good year. A wide variety of well-made films were released this year, many of them coming in below then advertising radar to be wonderful surprises.
I saw 60 films in the theater this year. Here are my 10 favorites.
1) Oldboy
Oldboy, from Korean director Park Chanwook, is the kind of film that the U.S. can almost never produce, but Korea can produce easily. It's repulsive, outrageous, operatic, and utterly riveting. Oh Dae-Su, an alcoholic wreck of a man, is kidnapped and imprisoned in a hotel room for 15 years without knowing the identity or motives of his kidnappers. When he is unceremoniously released, he has five days to figure out who imprisoned him and, more importantly, why. His story of revenge takes unexpected (and extremely gruesome) twists, but is masterfully and viscerally shot and paced. This movie has an incredible vitality and urgency, and is an amazing, inventive film from start to finish.
2) Broken Flowers
For me, the most pleasant surprise of the year. Jim Jarmusch's minutely-paced fable with Bill Murray as a listless ex-womanizer who recieves an anonymous letter from an old girlfriend explaining that he has an 18-year-old son. His reluctant road trip to visit each of his exes (in order to find the typewriter the letter was written on) is nearly the entire film, and each visit is like a little short film in itself. The movie is charming and mysterious, the script was written with Bill Murray in mind, and he plays a wonderfully sad and disaffected man; almost the wiser older cousin to his Bob Harris from Lost in Translation. If you haven't seen a Jim Jarmusch movie before, this might be the place to start.
3) Batman Begins
Man, I loved this. No synopsis necessary, except to say that Christopher Nolan draws you into his vision of Gotham City, rather than keeping his distance like Tim Burton, or shoving it down your throat like Joel Schumacher and his abominable last two Batman pictures. Bonus: all the batmoblie stunts are accomplished in real stunt-driving time without any CG manipulation.
4) Grizzly Man
Another surprise, this time a documentary from German director Werner Herzog. Timothy Treadwell, a bear enthusiast, spends summers in a Northern wildlife refuge living among bears and guarding them from the dangers of humans, as well as taping footage of the bears and himself in wildlife-program style. Assembled from his archive footage after his death, I was ready to walk out after the opening 5 minutes where Treadwell cloyingly and effetely rambles on self-importantly about being the bears' protector. However, this is just the entry point, and it becomes a sad portrait of a delusional and extremely lonely man who wanted, in all likelihood, to become a bear himself. With interviews of Treadwell's friends intercut with his (frankly amazing) footage and the haunting suggestion that he precipitated his own death by putting himself at the mercy of killer animals, it veers into unexpected emotional territory and is one of the great documentaries.
5) Munich
Steven Spielberg's thriller about the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games and subsequent secret revenge campaign against its Palestinian architects is long, nuanced, and extremely well-crafted. Shot in a retro 70s French Connection style (lots of camera zooms and pans with a washed-out look) with incredible suspense and extremely violent action, it starts out simply and descends into a nightmarish paranoia where anyone involved with the conflict becomes marked and is used for the purposes of governmental forces beyond knowing. Along with Syriana, this is the year's movie to see at least twice to fully understand.
6) Brokeback Mountain
Ang Lee's film, based on the New Yorker story of the same name by Annie Proulx. Two Wyoming cowboys spend a summer ranching sheep together, stumble into a sexual act, discover they're in love, and spend the next 20 years trying to cope with this discovery. This is probably the last remaining "forbidden love" story that's yet untold, and it's a matter-of-fact film that just lets the camera watch what happens without moralizing. The self-hatred and longing of these two men is pitifully real, and the beautiful photography (shot in Alberta) lends the emontionally-constrained film the beauty and grandeur it needs.
7) Three ... Extremes
They don't call it "Asia Extreme" for nothing, folks. Three disgusting and haunting shorts by Asia's most "extreme" directors (China's Fruit Chan, Korea's Park Chanwook, and Japan's Takahashi Miike) make this a combination plate of great filmmaking with something guaranteed to horrify nearly anyone. Definitely worth checking out if you like A-horror, but definitely not for all tastes.
8) Syriana
If you only see eight films this year, see Syriana. If you only see ten films this year, see Syriana twice more to figure it all out. This, along with Crash and Brokeback Mountain, is the most important film made in 2005. A cross-woven portrait of oil interests in the Middle East and the effect on everyone involved is nearly inpenetrable in the number of angles and characters involved, but the point is well-taken: international politics involving a finite and valuable substance is bound to be the most convoluted and difficult enterprise imaginable. Shot in a kind of docudrama style like 2000's Traffic (with the same screenwriter, Stephen Gaghan, also directing) it's too inscrutable to spell out any answers to the problem, but allows the viewer to see the complexity and stakes on a global scale.
9) Good Night, and Good Luck.
George Clooney's period piece on newsman Edward R. Murrow's steady resistance to Senator Joseph McCarthy during the red scare of the 1950s. A beautifully shot and well-acted portrait of Murrow's unimpeachable professionalism and bravery in a defining moment of American history.
10) Crash
The Do The Right Thing for the next 25 years. Paul Haggis's meditation on discrimination in modern Los Angeles, from many racial points of view, with surprising results and powerful characters. Redemption is the idea here; if you can stay through the almost unbearably intense scenarios the film puts its characters through, you'll leave this movie exhilarated, and recommending that other people go see it.