Cole Smithey's Best And Worst Films Of 2005

By Cole Smithey

A groundswell of politically charged films arrived in 2005 to map out areas of secluded truths about the ways governments, corporations and tyrants of similar stripes wrangle violence and fear over the world's citizens. Narrative cinema joined with documentaries toward providing an information stream that spins in an orbit apart from the prejudiced influence of America's heavily censored media. It was also a significant year for original-minded filmmakers to elaborate on social themes of personal exploitation, desire and redemption. The year was especially fun for discovering laughs and visual surprises amid the inordinate number of very good movies.

Unfortunately, 2005 also punished audiences with so much cinematic tripe that it could send you into a week's worth of depression.

Here are the top ten films that made 2005 a banner year for seeing movies and the worst ten that made me want to exit the cinema.

The Best Films Of 2005:

10. Capote
Director Bennett Miller and screenwriter Dan Futterman focus on Truman Capote's determination to write a "non-fiction novel" as a genre-revolutionizing device to elevate himself as a public figure of literary excellence alongside Proust and Tennessee Williams.

9. Hustle & Flow
"Hustle & Flow" is a perfect example of an American independent film that boldly embraces its intangible subject and squeezes out sparks from every line of subtext-rich dialogue.

8. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
Screenwriter Shane Black ("Lethal Weapon") returns to movies after a long hiatus to make a splashy neo-noir buddy thriller with plenty of laughs and jaw-dropping plot twists. "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" is a royal cinematic treat.

7. Walk The Line
Director James Mangold does a phenomenal job of celebrating the life and hardships of one of country music's greatest singers with a sincere and powerful movie that's graced with flawless performances by Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon.

6. Match Point
Woody Allen creates an elegant romantic suspense movie that soars by way of Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Scarlett Johansson. Between the London location and his new muse (Scarlett Johansson), Woody Allen has reinvented himself.

5. Downfall
"Downfall" is director Oliver Hirschbiegel's stunning cinematic achievement that illuminates minutiae about the last 10 days of the nefarious German leader who won the hearts of many and destroyed the lives of many more. Most unmistakable in the film's subtext is Hitler's deeply held contempt for his own people. Sound familiar?

4. Munich
Steven Spielberg's uncompromising allegory about the way that violence begets violence is a visually arresting and emotionally brutal wake up call.

3. Syriana
Writer/director Stephen Gaghan's political thriller, about the corruption and greed underlying the geopolitical system's myopic focus on oil, is a knockout.

2. North Country
"North Country" subtly links the social injustices against women in the story to the ways in which women are still diminished by corporate domination in American society today. Charlize Theron is magnificent.

1. Good Night And Good Luck
Writer/director/actor George Clooney's rigorous movie, about newscaster Edward R. Murrow's public confrontation with Senator Joseph McCarthy when the diabolical Senator was ruining lives and careers under a banner of an anti-Communist ideology, presents the audience with a consummate depiction of the media speaking truth to power.

Honorable mentions (in no particular order) go to: "Transamerica," "Crash," "The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada," "Jarhead," "Cinderella Man," "King Kong," "Sin City," "Lord Of War," "Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room," "The Aristocrats," "The Matador," "Mysterious Skin," "The Warrior," "Wallace & Gromit," "Kung Fu Hustle," "March Of The Penguins," "Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior" and "The Constant Gardener."

The Worst Films Of 2005

10. Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire
The movie ticks along like a watch with a dying battery. If "darker" means that it makes you close your eyes for extended periods, then this Harry Potter episode does seem very dim.

9. Domino
Keira Knightly slums her talents as pretty girl bounty hunter Domino Harvey in director Tony Scott's cartoonish fictionalization of Harvey's unconventional lifestyle. "Domino" is a steaming pile of green-tinted celluloid.

8. Must Love Dogs
You'd think being single was the worst thing in the world based on the way John's (John Cusack) and Sarah's (Diane Lane) friends and family treat them while pushing the disconsolate people into posting and responding to internet single's ads.

7. The Wedding Date
Director Clare Kilner ended up with the tagline, "Love doesn't come cheap" to describe "The Wedding Date" even though the movie attempts to disprove the publicity claim by showing that any American bimbo can buy a male prostitute and live happily ever after.

6. Dark Water
This miserable remake of a 2002 Japanese thriller, about a little devil ghost girl haunting for attention, should put the last nail in the coffin of Hollywood remakes of this played-out horror sub-genre. Esteemed Brazilian director Walter Salles falls flat on his face on his first Hollywood outing.

5. Me And You And Everyone We Know
This wobbly low fidelity romantic comedy is filled with distinctly unlikable characters and an unsubstantiated use of child sexuality that further clouds writer/director/actress Miranda July's morally rudderless course.

4. The Talent Given Us
This movie is a sickening hour-and-a-half of one annoying family's navel-gazing dirty laundry. It's just gross.

3. The Devil's Rejects
Controversial for its gratuitous use of exploitative violence and gore "The Devil's Rejects" is ultimately unredeemable for its wrongheaded attempt at glamorizing a band of vicious serial killers. It is a fascist piece of neoconservative filmmaking that should be ignored with a vengeance.

2. Last Days
Boring, self-indulgent and punctuated by Gus Van Sant's trademark homosexual kissing scene, "Last Days" will make you wish this were his last movie. And you though "Gerry" was bad.

1. Palindromes
Todd Solandz pursues his reprehensible oeuvre as a white representative of Spike Lee's look-at-me cinema of inarticulate exploitation. "Palindromes" is a sloppy movie that uses the shock value of seeing adult men humping numerous underage girls as a recurring visual device that's inscrutably linked to some vague slant on abortion. Solandz uses pedophilia to prop up his irrelevant contribution to cinema, and like director Larry Clark, should never be allowed to make another film.

Dishonorable mentions go to "The Fog," "Stealth," "XXX: State Of The Union," "Stay," "Shopgirl" and "A Lot Like Love."

Your Alternative DVD Gift Guide

By Cole Smithey

Sure, giving a copy of this year's breakout documentary hit "March Of The Penguins" to your parents will fill the bill for a much-needed stocking-stuffer, but what about your well-read friends who do and see everything. For them you'll want a DVD gift that they will cherish and watch with amazement at your canny ability to cut through the Hollywood crap and come up with an alternative cinematic gem.

Kino Video is an equivalent DVD label to the much-worshiped Criterion brand of venerable movie excellence. Kino's "Krzysztof Kieslowski Collection" is a thing of such weighty magnitude that even your amigo with the 180 I.Q. will be dazzled at the set of six films from the Polish director famous for his "Blue," "White" and "Red" trilogy of films based on France's credo of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. "Camera Buff," "No End," "A Short Film About Love," "The Scar," "Blind Chance" and "A Short Film About Killing" are deeply absorbing films that operate on more levels of narrative possibilities than you can digest in a single viewing.

If you want to challenge your art student comrades with something especially spicy, you might consider Kino's 2-DVD set "Avant-Garde: Experimental Cinema Of The 1920s and '30s." It's a fascinating group of experimental black & white short films from the Raymond Rohauer collection. Imaginative works from such remarkable directors as Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp and Orson Welles grace the provocative set.

For the knowledgeable music lover in your life there's "The Right Spectacle: The Very Best Of Elvis Costello - The Videos," which features over an hour's worth of archive footage of Costello at the height of his angry young man phase. The bulk of the DVD contains 27 Costello music videos that mock the art form while supporting songs like "Oliver's Army" and "Good Year For The Roses."

"Made In Sheffield. The Birth Of Electronic Pop" (from Plexifilm) fills an essential period in modern music that linked Punk to the British New Wave with bands intent on destroying rock music. Interview subjects like the late John Peel, The Human League's Phil Oakey and Ian Craig Marsh, and music critic Andy Gill shed light on the indispensable influence of Sheffield's electronic music scene.

The musical piece de resistance is "X: The Unheard Music." It's a rarely seen documentary about the best damn punk band to come out of L.A., and filmmaker W.T. Morgan captures the superlative group at the height of their exceptional musical powers in this 1985 assemblage of the social environment, ideas and charismatic personalities of X.

If your goal is anointing an artistic line of erotic dialogue with your beneficiary then an anime title like "Temptation" (on Anime 18) carries on the traditions of the carefully coded Japanese art form with a sexual punch.

Maria Beatty's "Ecstasy In Berlin 1926" presents a more fetishistic angle on the erotic with Sonya Sovereign and Paula Rosengarthen exploring vintage exotic experiences under tinted black & white film that embellishes their costume-correct passions.

Under the category of forbidden films, Peter Watkins' "Punishment Park" (New Yorker Films) fulfills its status as "one of the most controversial films ever made." The docu-drama is set at once in America's past, present and future where a group of civilians are charged with suspicion of intent to engage in future, possible acts of sabotage. The group are brought before a civilian tribunal and sent to a desert detention camp where they are tortured by brutal police guards. "Punishment Park" is a masterpiece of political satire.

Documentarian Ross McElwee's homespun movies have a disarming flare for touching on shared personal experiences while sticking to his uncompromising vision. "The Ross McElwee DVD Collection" features "Sherman's March," "Time Indefinite," "Six O'Clock News," "Bright Leaves," "Charleen" and "Backyard." Each movie embodies McElwee's deeply humanistic take on his subjects, and makes us richer for the experience.

Sports aficionados will appreciate the determination and athleticism of riders in the Tour de France as the classic race is shown in all of its brutal glory in Pepe Danquart's documentary "Hell On Wheels" (First Run Features).   

For the retro-thinking kid on your list there's the "Killer Cult Classics" box set (Goodtimes Entertainment) of '50s horror B-movies including "The Brain That Wouldn't Die," "The Wasp Woman," "Teenagers From Outer Space," and "The Killer Shrews."

If you need a more mainstream retro gift, "Three's Company: Season Five" (Anchor Bay) or "M*A*S*H: Season Nine" (20th Century Fox) carry the trademark wit and charm of '70s television sitcoms.

Werner Herzog's box set of seven audaciously original films is a quirky DVD gift certain to strike enthusiasm in the eyes of the beholder. "The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser," "Even Dwarfs Started Small," "Lessons Of Darkness," "Fata Morgana," "Heart Of Glass," "Little Dieter Needs To Fly" and "Strozek" are movies that will live on in the dream-life memory of their viewer. With his dark intellect, keen eye for composition and uncanny instinct for narrative, Herzog is as "alternative" a film director as you can hope to find.