The Best and Worst of 2005

Gay Romances and Political Upheavals Highlight Weak Year at the Movies

By Sara Michelle Fetters

Is it over? Do we actually have to take anymore? Or, as I hope, is 2005 finally seeing the way of the Dodo and this cinematic train wreck is finally behind us?

The answer is, of course, an emphatic “yes,” as there are really only two major features (Terrence Malick’s The New World, Woody Allen’s Match Point) from this past year that I have left to see. And while I am anticipating both of these immensely, seeing this year finally exit the room (don’t let the door hit you on the way out) isn’t going to cause me to shed too many tears.

Okay, it wasn’t all bad. I actually wrote six four-star reviews in 2005, the most I’ve written in quite some time, and there were plenty of other features that sent my heart soaring. But in a year when the most over-reported story in cinema history was the prolonged box office slump (don’t worry about the money, look at the ticket sales, they’re down almost 10% and that is troubling) looking for quality at the multiplex was almost an afterthought. But then, finding it was almost as difficult, especially when trifling trash like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Fantastic 4 and The Dukes of Hazzard are the best you could hope to find.

Brokeback Mountain - Photo © Copyright Focus Features

But there are things about this past year I will cherish. From Rachel McAdams (in everything she touched), to Joss Whedon (hitting theaters with a bang that only a few took the time to see), to a giant ape slip-sliding across Central Park (the best representation of pure joy I’ve seen in ages) I will carry memories from 2005 that will last a lifetime. More importantly, the year was a watershed for independent-minded Hollywood superstars to finally take back the medium from the corporations that rule them. George Clooney asked tough questions with uneasy answers in both Syriana and Good Night, and Good Luck., Felicity Huffman shed Desperate Housewives to become a timid transsexual driving cross-country with her street hustler son, Keanu Reeves took on New Age healthcare in Thumbsucker, Ralph Fiennes stood up to pharmaceutical corruption in The Constant Gardener, while Philip Seymour Hoffman in Capote and Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain gave the performances of the year as two very different gay men searching for vastly different truths.

So maybe the year wasn’t as awful as I’m letting on. Still, the lows definitely outnumbered the highs, and while the year’s best films might just go down as classics (and I’m very sure a few of them will), the majority will be forgotten quickly, turning to dust as the sands of time slowly tick through that proverbial hourglass.

The following are my Ten Best movies of the year, followed by a few thoughts, remembrances and moments I’ll likely treasure in a cinematic year I’d rather forget.

1.   GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK. (George Clooney)

George Clooney had an astonishing year. In Stephen Gaghan’s Syriana, he gave the performance of his life, plumbing depths and emotional quagmires I didn’t think the actor had in him. This movie, however, was the one that resonated with me most. Working with co-screenwriter Grant Heslov, the duo fashioned a journalistic thriller about the McCarthy era that resonated beyond its 1960’s setting and felt like it was happening today. If history is something we are doomed to repeat if we do not take the time to learn from it, Good Night, and Good Luck. spelled that point out as clearly as any other movie this year. Better, it just happened to be the most thrilling, entertaining and spellbinding picture of 2005.

2.   (tie) GRIZZLY MAN (Werner Herzog) & MAD HOT BALLROOM (Marilyn Agrelo)

In a year when documentary filmmaking went to a whole other level (Murderball, The Aristocrats, Gunner Palace, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, March of the Penguins, The White Diamond, Rize, Bob Dylan: No Direction Home), these two, for me, were the cream of the crop. One was about New York fifth graders taking ballroom dancing lessons; the other was about a crazed naturalist getting eaten by a bear; both transcended their subject matter to become something luminous and eternal. On a side note, the fact Grizzly Man did not make the final Oscar ballot for potential Best Documentary nominees borders on being criminal.

Grizzly Man - Photo © Copyright Lionsgate Entertainment

3.   WALLACE & GROMIT: CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT (Nick Park, Steve Box)

The year’s best comedy, best family film and best animated motion picture, the folks at Aardman Animation Studios could not have hoped for anything better when they made the decision to take their famous twosome from shorts to features. Splendid and spellbinding, Curse of the Were-Rabbit is the type of entertainment you talk about for months, reveling in and each every moment of its layered silliness and absurdist comedy. To quote another popular British icon of family entertainment, Wallace and Gromit’s first feature is practically perfect in every way.

4.   BATMAN BEGINS (Christopher Nolan)

The Dark Knight returned in a big way in 2005, director Christopher Nolan setting a new bar for all future comic book adaptations to come. Complex, brooding, dark yet full of energy and life, this take on Bob Kane’s icon became something transcendent and passionately complex, a hero rooted in the fabric of our deepest fears and our highest aspirations. In the end, Batman isn’t a hero because he was born to be but rather because he chose to be, and watching him get there was one of last year’s most entertainingly stunning thrill rides.

5.   BROKEN FLOWERS (Jim Jarmusch)

Bill Murray continued his hot streak with this piece, a deeply heartfelt and surprisingly adoring peon to love and life lost amidst the chaos of age and time. Jim Jarmusch does something magical here, asking audiences to understand and relate to a rogue and a rascal who has loved and left so many women he can’t even remember them all. In the end, our hearts break as Murray stands, quite literally, at a crossroads, one he himself has made. Beautiful and genuinely emotional, this just might be the performance of Murray’s entire career.

6.   SERENITY (Joss Whedon)

Now, raise your hand if you thought Whedon, the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, was going to be successful bringing his critically acclaimed yet extremely short-lived FOX sci-fi television show Firefly to the big screen? No worries, I loved the TV show and didn’t think it was going to be possible, either, so don’t feel bad about believing the acclaimed writer-director would fail. But he didn’t, not even close, and Serenity blasted off into the stratosphere as the single best television-to-film adaptation of all time (and I’m including The Fugitive in that assessment). Better than four of Lucas’ Star Wars films, more complex and literate than any other popcorn feature this side of Nolan’s Batman Begins, Whedon crafted a sci-fi spectacular for the ages, one that sends both the pulse and the spirits soaring.

7.   BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (Ang Lee)

In a way, I’m jumping on the bandwagon. Don’t get me wrong, Ang Lee’s modern-day Western about intolerance, bigotry and secret love is one of the most heartfelt and passionate films of the year, I just wasn’t as blown away by it like so many of my peers have been. That said, what did blow me away was the performance of Heath Ledger. This is the kind of performance of which legends are made, the actor digging so deeply into the differing layers of his gay cowboy it is impossible to not come away shaking and sobbing. Yes this is a landmark film, touching on taboo subject matter with intimate delicacy. But what matters most are the characters, and if you don’t believe in them then their love can’t help but ring hollow. Ledger made me care. Better, he made me cry.

The Constant Gardener - Photo © Copyright Focus Features

8.   THE CONSTANT GARDENER (Fernando Meirelles)

A breathtaking thriller, a shattering conspiracy theory, an epic adventure, Fernando Meirelles’ adaptation of John Le Carré’s novel is one of the most wondrously entertaining pictures a person could ever hope to see. But, above everything else, it is also a love story, and up with Brokeback Mountain this one is easily the most overpoweringly devastating of the entire year. Holding it together is actor Ralph Fiennes who in year without Heath Ledger and Phillip Seymour Hoffman we’d be talking about as being the frontrunner for Oscar. As it is, he’ll have to settle for being a nominee while meanwhile the movie gets to be lauded as one of 2005’s best.

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