2005 in film.

Top ten box-office films of 2005:

1. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
2. Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
3. The Chronicles of Narnia The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
4. War of the Worlds
5. King Kong
6. Madagascar
7. Mr. & Mrs. Smith
8. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
9. Batman Begins
10. Hitch

What are your top three films for 2005? We will keep a running tally and eventually have some sort of bracket. For me it would be:

1. The New World
2. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
3. Three Times

What are some of the forgotten gems from the year? What is overrated? What did you discover at a young age and what did you discover later?

YEARS IN FILM • forum.chorus.fm

 

So many films just missed it. The great Dardennes film L'Enfant, Spielberg's haunting Munich, the weird and engrossing The Wayward Cloud, the monumental Brokeback Mountain, and arguably Michael Haneke's best film, Cache.

I didn't like A History of Violence or Junebug when I saw them, but I was very new to cinephilia when I saw them and people I trust praise them. The Sun, which didn't come out until 2009 in the United States, is an interesting like at Japan's Emperor Hirohito. Grizzly Man is one of the all-time great documentaries, and 49 Up really started to explore the tragedy and regrets of life.

 

1. The Devil’s Rejects
2. Capote
3. The Descent

 

1. Munich
2. Elizabethtown
3. Batman Begins

To this day I do not know why I love Elizabethtown as much as I do.

 

Ah, yes, the thread with all the prequel memes.

 

My actual vote is Wedding Crashers. Yeah some of it is cringe-y now but goddamn did 17 year old me think it's hilarious and I still get a lot of laughs out of it now. Looking through the top 150 box offices movies, I really didn't see a lot that I liked tbh. 40 Year Old Virgin also came out that year and obviously 17 year old me enjoyed that as well.

 

1. Munich
2. The Squid and the Whale
3. A History of Violence

 

1. Caché
2. Grizzly Man
3. The Proposition

My friends and I skipped school and went to the theatre, we were talking to one of the attendants who seemed cool and he recommended Jar Head. Every war movie I had seen before if it didn't glorify war was at least thrilling. Leaving the cinema was a weird feeling, we recognised that the movie had affected us but didn't know how to process it, we were trying to Ferris Bueller that day. Dude should've recd Wedding Crashers but we did learn a lesson we wouldn't have at school.

 

1. Election
2. The New World
3. A History of Violence

Just generally speaking Johnnie To is criminally underrated (in the US at least) but Election especially is a really great movie about how tradition and honor in a capitalist society is really nothing more than a cover for barbarism and men stepping over eachother to wield more power. Gets more and more relevant with each passing year. Wish there was a wider US release for it. The New World doesn't quite reach the emotional resonance of The Tree of Life for me but it's still deeply powerful.

 

1. Munich
2. Brokeback Mountain
3. Capote

 

1. The Devil’s Rejects
2. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
3. The Devil and Daniel Johnston

 

1. The New World
2. Brokeback Mountain
3. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

 

1. Oldboy
2. Grizzly Man
3. Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith


I don't feel good about any of these picks.

 

hitch gonna win. I feel it.

 

Oldboy was 2003

 

Looks like I need to see more from this year and definitely need to rewatch Munich. I don’t love A History of Violence or Brokeback Mountain as much as others.

1. Sympathy for Lady Vengeance
2. The New World
3. Paradise Now

HM: Batman Begins, The Descent, Brick, Grizzly Man, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, V For Vendetta, The Proposition

 

Ahh you're right. The English release was early 2005 so it came up on some lists I was looking at.

 

1. The New World
2. The Squid and the Whale
3. Munich

Honorable mentions:

Cache
Grizzly Man
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
The 40-Year Old Virgin
Wedding Crashers
Good Night and Good Luck
The Descent

 

1. The New World
2. The Proposition
3. Grizzly Man

I read the description to The Death of Mr. Lazarescu and I really need to see that movie. Really solid year and so many others could be on the list. I really agree that Election is overlooked and To is such an underrated filmmaker but couldn’t put it over The Proposition and Grizzly Man. The Proposition is right up my alley, a beautifully filmed gritty and violent western. Grizzly Man is one of the best documentaries I’ve ever seen and Herzog is perfect for that story.

 

1. A Bittersweet Life
2. Sympathy for Lady Vengeance
3. Serenity

4. Strange Circus
5. Lords of Dogtown
6. Adam's Apples
7. Brokeback Mountain
8. The Descent
9. Batman Begins
10. A History of Violence

Also love The 40 Year Old Virgin, L'enfant, The Squid and the Whale, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, The Devil's Rejects, Caché, Lord of War, The New World and Brick.

 

1. Cave of the Yellow Dog
2. The Descent
3. Cache

Cave of the Yellow Dog is a beautiful small drama / documentary about life on the Mongolian steppes, that's gentle and an absolute treat to watch. Director Byambasuren Davaa really should be better known - she's made 4 perfect films.

The Descent might be one of the scariest films I've ever seen, about a caving adventure gone wrong. What it does so well is that it gives you ~20 minutes of human and natural terror, with the claustrophobia of being trapped in the caves, before ~50 minutes of inhuman terror, when we find out the caves aren't actually uninhabited. You'll be sweating in fear long before the creatures turn up.

Cache is Haneke's best film, a fantastic exploration of guilt, both personal and national, and the violence bubbling below the surface that can re-surface decades later as a result. Manages to be continually engaging, even at it's most mundane and still, which I sometimes struggle with Haneke, but this really works. I also love the dog story at the dinner party - have shamelessly pinched that myself to good effect.

Honourable mentions;

A couple of good Herzog documentaries this year, Grizzly Man as others have mentioned, and the more playful The Wild Blue Yonder, which repurposes footage of Earth and uses it to tell a cosmic story narrated by a stranded alien. Herzog should have played the alien though.

A few good ones from Korea, the last of Park Chan Wook's vengeance trilogy, with Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, which is worth seeking out in the "Fade to Black" version, with the colours draining out of it gradually. Hong Sang Soo's A Tale of Cinema is a great film, the sort of film that only he would make, and re-make basically over and over again, with his specific style. A Bittersweet Life is a great gangster film that appears to be pulling heavily from HK Heroic Bloodshed cinema, full of style, but deliberately hollow.

Cronenberg's A History of Violence is a fantastic film from him, and while I'm not 100% sure I like the direction it goes in after the first hour or so, that first hour is fantastic.

The Proposition is a sweaty, dirty Australian Western written by Nick Cave, that stinks of dirt, sweat and dried blood. You'll need a shower after watching it.

A Cock and Bull Story is a playful and silly film about filming an adaption of The Life of Tristram Shandy, a meta-textual 18th Century novel. For those that have enjoyed the TV Show / Film of The Trip, this is Winterbottom, Coogan and Brydon doing the same thing.

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is a sympathetic and tragic film about the death of an elderly man in Bucharest, that manages to be full of black comedy too.

For some dishonourable mentions, we have the awful Battle in Heaven that feels like a checklist of a bad arthouse film, including un-simulated sex, long naval gazing takes, and a formless plot. For something awful in a different direction we have Green Street, which casts Charlie Hunnam and Elijah Wood as West Ham hooligans, and is painful to watch.

 

1. Munich
2. A History of Violence
3. The Descent

Grizzly Man, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Brokeback Mountain, or The Squid and the Whale could all have easily gotten that third spot

 

This is another superb year with several contenders for the top three but they are nonetheless the following -

1. Batman Begins
2. King Kong
3. V for Vendetta

Those in bold were potential top three choices with the rest being ones I have enjoyed to varying degrees; Noroi: The Curse, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, The Descent, Broken Flowers, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, A History of Violence, Kingdom of Heaven (Director's Cut), Caché, Lord of War, Constantine, Sin City, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Red Eye, Flightplan, and The Matador.

 

The New World wins it with 16 votes. Munich was in second place with 13 votes. The New World will move on to the bracket.