PINNLAND EMPIRE: BEST OF 2005 (throwback)

Thursday, January 19, 2012

BEST OF 2005 (throwback)

I know I'm a few years late, but thanks to David's recent blog post over at Toronto Film Review (along with John & Chris's best of 2005 movie lists over at The Pink Smoke), I've come to realize that after all the dust had settled and all the bad and/or painfully average movies where pushed aside, 2005 was a REALLY great year for film (in my opinion at least). I mean just the release of 'Cache' alone (a film myself and MANY others consider to be one of the best movies of the last decade) was good enough. It was a subtle yet effective look at racism in Europe and how demons from our past that we try to forget or sweep under the rug come back to haunt us leaving damaging effects. We also had the return of Terrence Malick ('The New World' - the incredibly flawed yet incredibly beautiful film about John Smith and Pocahontas), Gus Van Sant's tribute to Kurt Cobain in the form of 'Last Days' and the revamping of the Batman series (sorry but even as I get older and start to see some of Christopher Nolan's flaws, those are great movies and they gave the comic book-adapted movie genre the surge of energy it needed). Newcomers like Miranda July with her romantic, Todd Solondz/Hal Hartley-influenced feature film debut; 'Me & You & Everyone We Know' and Carlos Reygadas ('Battle In Heaven') made their mark as well. Indie heavyweights like Jim Jarmusch with his existential road movie; 'Broken Flowers' and Larry Clarke ('Wassup Rockers') still showed that they could hang with the new generation of filmmakers that they ironically (somewhat) have influenced. And even though today we're left with a bunch of barely funny Judd Apatow "bro movies" that just don't seem to stop coming, you gotta give '40 Year Old Virgin' the respect it deserves (lets just pretend its 2005 and we had no idea of what was to come from the director & producer I've dubbed; "The White Tyler Perry").
This list is also an interesting look at how much my taste has changed over the years. For those of you who use to read my movie rants on my myspace blog back in the day, you'd remember that I wasn't a fan of films like 'Dear Wendy' (Lars Von Trier & Thomas Vinterberg's comment on gun violence in America), 'Junebug' or even 'Battle In Heaven' (wow, I cant believe I use to NOT like that movie), but low and behold...those films are now mentioned on here.
Compiling this list was so much fun that over the next few months I may go back and do more "Best Of" movie lists from previous years (especially 2000 which not only brought us 'In The Mood For Love', 'Yi Yi' AND 'Dancer In The Dark' but the U.S. theatrical release of 'Beau Travail')

So the list goes...

TOP 10 FILMS OF 2005:

Cache

Head-On

Broken Flowers

Last Days

Wallace & Gromit In The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit

Me & You & Everyone We Know

Battle In Heaven

Grizzly Man

The New World

40 Year Old Virgin

TOP 5 FILMS FROM 2004 NOT RELEASED THEATRICALLY IN THE U.S. UNTIL 2005:
Like I've said before (and I'm sure some of you are already aware of this) not every big movie from the festival circuit makes it to U.S. theaters in a timely fashion. 2005 brought us releases from some of the current masters of cinema like; Claire Denis ('The Intruder'), Olivier Assayas ('Clean') and Wong Kar Wai ('2046'), one of the "leaders of the new school"; Apichatpong Weerasethakul ('Tropical Malady') and one of the most underrated modern directors out right now; Lodge Kerrigan ('Keane'). I know that I'm kinda poaching selections from the previous year but hey, I'm in the U.S. and we didn't get these releases until 2005.
The interesting thing about these selections is that my opinion on these films have not changed one bit. Actually...that's not true. Not only have I continued to love these films over the years but as I get older, stuff like 'The Intruder' (along with the rest of Claire Denis' work) feels like one dreamy masterpiece.

2046