KEITH PHIPPS
Top Ten
1. A History Of Violence
How did David Cronenberg make an unapologetic piece of pulp that's also a subtle investigation into the violent instincts still lodged next to the human heart? Slowly. After a shocking opening, the film lulls viewers into a comfortable portrait of small-town America and a happy family—led by Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello—that calls it home. Then a bloody act of heroism ruins it all by revealing what's been there all along. The film's central plot point could easily have been an eye-roller, but the combination of Cronenberg's austere approach, Mortensen's beneath-the-skin performance, and the intense support of Bello, Ed Harris, and William Hurt make it profound.
2. The Squid And The Whale
3. King Kong
4. Brokeback Mountain
5. 2046
Wong Kar-Wai's follow-up to In The Mood For Love reportedly began life as a very different movie. Somehow, it assumed the shape it was always supposed to have. A more or less direct sequel to Mood, 2046 spins science-fiction asides out of Tony Leung's post-Mood heartbreak as he finds comfort in a series of doomed romances and never-to-be infatuations. Wong captures the beauty in Leung's sadness, in a tribute to love's losers, beautiful and otherwise.
6. Grizzly Man
7. Pride & Prejudice
There are enough uninspired literary adaptations out there to make the whole enterprise of turning classics into films seem questionable. Then there are films like the Joe Wright-directed Pride & Prejudice that make it all seem worthwhile. A lean, cinematic take on Jane Austen's most beloved novel, Wright's film captures the comedy and the heartache of early 19th-century courtship without a dollop of extra starch. It made most of this year's contemporary romantic comedies look behind the times.
8. Batman Begins
9. The New World
10. Oldboy
The Next Five
What do Nobody Knows—Hirokazu Koreeda's harrowing story of four abandoned children—and Nick Park's claymation mock-horror movie Wallace & Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit have in common? Apart from their ability to immerse viewers in previously unimagined worlds, not too much. But that's part of why we go to movies, isn't it? The experience never has to be the same. Some of the best films of 2005 played with expectations: In Broken Flowers, Jim Jarmusch took Bill Murray on a Homeric journey for a lost child that revealed much about its hero even as it deepened his confusion. Steven Spielberg's Munich begins as an almost-conventional political thriller and ends as a trip into the dark heart of underground politics. And as for that dumb sex comedy The 40-Year-Old Virgin, was there a film with bigger laughs or a more sensitive romance last year? (Answer: no.)
Performance Of The Year
Every gesture counts in Jeff Daniels' performance as the failing patriarch in Noah Baumbach's The Squid And The Whale. Nobody gets off easy in Baumbach's semi-autobiographical chronicle of an '80s divorce. But Daniels' character—with his comic self-regard, toxic arrogance, and unquestioning sense of rightness—gets off least easily of all. It's a credit to Daniels that, working beneath a beard that acts as a mask and staying within an emotional register that seldom rises above a four, he finds a character who's human after all.
Overrated
Hooray! Ingmar Bergman made another movie. Boo! It's Saraband, a tortured return to well-worn themes that's unattractively shot on DV and feels about three hours longer than its two-hour running time.
Underrated
It was either the best terrible movie of the year or the worst great one, but once seen, it's hard to shake Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown. A film straight from the heart, it takes a big risk in asking audiences to follow along through a highly personal film about failure, loss, and magical, life-affirming pixie women. It also fails big. Orlando Bloom is inscrutable as the lead, Kirsten Dunst does the best she can with an impossible part, and you can almost hear the life draining out of some scenes. (It's that low, fizzing noise beneath all those Tom Petty songs.) And yet somehow it remains an affecting depiction of how to use family, friends, and transcendent bits of pop culture to patch a life back together. Crowe believes it so strongly that it's hard not to believe along with him.
Future Film That Time Forgot
For one brief moment, technology, the popularity of Hilary Duff, and the availability of Heather Locklear conspired to create The Perfect Man, in which the terminally chipper Duff tries to cheer up mom Locklear by becoming her online secret admirer. Unintentionally creepy? You bet. But not quite as creepy as the film's attempt to co-opt online culture. "Hey, all you bloggers!", Duff begins one entry in her online diary. Coming soon to a little-visited corner of the Netflix warehouse near you.
Worst Of The Year
Honestly, worse movies than Dirty Love were probably released this year. But none were as singularly terrible. Written by star Jenny McCarthy and directed by her husband John Mallory Asher (the pair had separated by the time of the publicity tour), it would be just another living-and-loving-in-L.A. comedy if it weren't for, you know, the scene where McCarthy floods a supermarket with her menstrual fluid. (Much slippin' 'n' slidin' ensues.) Or Carmen Electra's virtual-blackface performance as McCarthy's gun-toting, Ebonics-slangin' pal. Or the scene where McCarthy bares a puke-covered breast. The list, sadly, goes on.
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