HARVEY'S LIST OF 2005 RELEASES

John seems to think that everyone waits with bated breath for these lists. But let’s face it: a critic sees three to six hundred films a year before settling on ten best, while I see maybe thirty films a year, most of which I choose to see and which I am therefore predisposed to like. But it’s not a bad exercise because my feelings about film change all the time and I am developing an overview which I think justifies the creation of a list, for myself as much as for anyone else. So having said that, here’s my thoughts on the films of 2005 that I did see (in order of preference, but always subject to change):

THE BEST OF THE YEAR

1.

FATELESS

This is to the rest of the year’s films what Verdi’s Requiem  or Beethoven’s Ninth is to the rest of music. Beautifully stark images that burn into the memory, painterly and even, at times, surreal, and yet its beauty in no way trivializes its subject matter: the Holocaust. From Hungary; the only other film on the subject anywhere near as powerful was from the Czech republic, a film made three years after the end of World War II, DISTANT JOURNEY, which practically nobody knows about but which has recently become available on DVD.  Both films demonstrate what's possible when horror is transformed into poetry.     

2.

2046

What can I say? Wong Kar-Wei's films to me are sheer rapture, endlessly surprising, always visually thrilling. It’s one of the reasons I still care about going to the movies.

3.

LAST DAYS

I admire Gus Van Sant for going his own way and this film and ELEPHANT put me in a kind of trance, made me look at things differently than I might ordinarily. Isn’t that what a director is supposed to do? Make me see differently? There is a scene in this film – I won’t go into it – that I will remember when I have forgotten every frame of any other movie I saw this year.  Yes, the film requires patience. So what? If you have two hours

to spend in a movie house, why waste them on seeing just what you expected to see?

4.

MUNICH

and

5.

WAR OF THE WORLDS

Only Steven Spielberg had the guts and the talent to come close to understanding the mood of our times, at least to how I feel about it. He so perfectly captured, in WAR no less than in MUNICH (where its proximity to reality makes it easier to grasp onto) the fear and frustration in the midst of random terror, the endless cycle of killing and retribution, the paranoia we now live with on a daily level. Spielberg gets short shrift from most people, critics as well as audiences, but he is our best storyteller, and one of the few remaining humanists in cinema today. The critics of MUNICH, in particular, displayed a soullessness that was downright frightening. If we don’t look at our own responsibility in this global madness, we are doomed.

6.

BREAKFAST ON PLUTO

The first time I saw this film, I enjoyed it as an alternately merry and scary take on what might happen if Fellini’s Cabiria were an Irish transvestite searching for love in general and his mother in particular in London, but, upon the second viewing, it took on mythic proportions, aswirl in innovation, heartbreaking and deeply human and, in its way, epically comic. Cillian Murphy’s odd but mesmerizing performance is the cement that holds the film together, but everyone – that includes Brendan Gleeson, Stephen Rea, Bryan Ferry, Gavin Friday, Liam Neeson – is wonderful. I can’t remember a Neil Jordan film I didn’t like. This one I loved.

7.

BROKEN FLOWERS

All the requisite Jim Jarmusch touches – planes taking off (but going where?), a disconcertingly deadpan central character, a landscape that is pure Americana: all familiar and all disconnected  - but so much richer and more mature than anything he has ever done before, mostly because it’s peopled with what seems like the entire spectrum of humanity, from every strata of society,  characters so normal they seem eccentric, sometimes endearing, sometimes ugly, always true. The best acting ensemble of the year.

8.

LOOK AT ME

Yes, Woody Allen made his best film in a long time this year, but this French film made me feel as good as Allen’s best films used to make me feel: as if I had been invited into the lives of a group of people I thought I knew well until I was forced to look a little closer. I liked them less but, because I recognized a bit of myself in them, I found it difficult to dismiss them as members  of the human race. And, by the way, compare the people in this film with the people in THE SQUID AND THE WHALE, and see the difference in the ways we can look at intellectuals.

9.

A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE

Stylistically, more direct and straightforward than what we might come to expect from David Cronenberg, but, then, who else would have found the perfect balance between the real and the surreal as if they, in fact, co-exist. And he understands so well that violence not only resides in all of us but that, once released, it can even have healing powers. I didn’t know it was based on a graphic novel when I saw it, but now that I know it, it makes perfect sense. It explains the grisly humor that always lies just below the surface.

10.

GRIZZLY MAN

If the film’s subject, a wacko failed performer who spends his summers getting closer and closer to the bears he loves and ends up being mauled and eaten alive (along with his girlfriend) by the bears, didn't exist, then Werner Herzog would have had to invent him. Of course, he didn’t have to. But what he did have to do was get closer to him than anyone in his right mind would choose to.

11.

NINE LIVES

Rodrigo Garcia, the son of  the great novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, tells in nine one-take scenes the little epiphanies that nine women experience in events that might seem mundane at first, but are rendered meaningful by the wrenching way the camera gets to look into those moments and are helped immeasurably by some of the best performances I’ve ever seen in one film.  One of those films that gets lost in the shuffle, that doesn't get enough attention, that escapes notice, that, fuck it, doesn't ever get seen. Robin Wright Penn and Holly Hunter stand out in a cast that includes Lisa Gay Hamilton, Elphidia Carrillo, Kathy Baker and Sissy Spacek.

RUNNERS-UP

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN

A model of Hollywood craftsmanship: well written, sensitively directed, beautifully acted, elegantly photographed. But when I connect the dots between one Ang Lee film and another, I see no consistent vision, merely talent. I can’t deny my tears, however, and its depiction of oppression was so true that I cried more than once. On the other hand, I’m not so sure I trust the tears I shed at the film’s climax; those, I think, were manipulated out of me.

THE THREE BURIALS OF MALQUIADES ESTRADA

Tommy Lee Jones, not George Clooney, was the year’s best actor-turned-director. A gritty and harsh depiction of illegal immigrants, and, at the same time, a magical fable about love and friendship.

WALLACE AND GROMIT:  THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT

I have a real nostalgia for a kind of low-key eccentric British humor and I found it again – in spades – in this film.

THE ARISTOCRATS

A good case could be made for the social significance of this documentary, but it seems to me that it’s more than enough that it just happens to be the year’s funniest movie.

DOWNFALL

Hitler’s last days in a bunker in a Berlin under siege. Why did I keep feeling that it was about living in America right now?

THE FAMILY STONE

If context is everything, then what more can I say than this: we saw it late afternoon on Christmas Eve and we left the theatre full of the spirit of the season, something I wasn’t feeling at all until that moment. What engaged me was the unpredictability of the characters; their contradictions seemed real and I liked them even as they irritated me and I understood how dysfunctional they were and yet how well they functioned individually and as a group. Like most of the people I know!

MATCH POINT

I saw this as an homage to one of the iconographical films of my adolescence – George Stevens’ A PLACE IN THE SUN – and that was enough to keep me in thrall. One point must be made: I’ve seen the Stevens film so many times I’ve lost count but I doubt that I will want to see MATCH POINT again (except that I might, for fun, when it’s released on DVD, watch it in tandem with PLACE).

THE HOLY GIRL

A strange little film from Argentina that builds slowly and ultimately becomes a fascinating study of sexual awakening; a film of tiny gestures rather than big statements. Not totally satisfying but its director, Lucretia Martel, deserves attention; she may make a great film one day.

PULSE

Kiyoshi Kurosawa is my discovery this year; I’ve seen three of his films now and they are really one continuous film; the eerie ghost-like images suggest horror movies but, at their core, they are metaphysical meditations on death. Admittedly a very personal taste, but I don’t think I am alone in my admiration.  Lynn K., do you hear me? Do you know these films?

DISAPPOINTMENTS

CAPOTE

I like films that move slowly if the screen is filled with telling detail, but the deliberate pace of this film screams out: “Look at how serious I am!” Basically, it's an “actor’s movie” with pretensions. But the actors are glorious. And Hoffman provides some insights into Capote that are refreshing in their cruelty and ugliness. Also, the film encouraged me to re-read IN COLD BLOOD, which reminded me that, at his best, Capote was a great American writer.

GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK

Ah, if good intentions were all, this might very well be the film everyone seems to think it is. As it is, its heart is in the right place, but it has neither depth nor insight nor an historically accurate picture of how long we put up with McCarthy before we finally spoke up against him. The crisp black-and-white cinematography will probably look great on DVD; that’s good because, what is this, after all, but a television drama about a black-and-white television program?

CRASH

My cousin Mimi says that the subject – racism – is at least a good reason to make a film. Granted. And all the more reason to make a good film on the subject. A tapestry of curious coincidences, this gets obvious and predictable and finally, all tied up in pretty sociological ribbons. The writing is seriously overheated, a compassionate white man’s expression of every race argument you can think of, through characters who never become human beings, merely spokespersons for those arguments. The worst “important” movie of the year. Another TV film passing itself off as a piece of cinema.

CACHÉ

You’d have to be blind to not see the stylishness of this film. Still, it seemed to me the most dishonest piece of crap imaginable hiding behind a stylish façade. In the midst of all this crap, there is a haunting performance by an actor named Maurice Benichou as a Muslim who has no future because his past has been taken from him.

MARCH OF THE PENGUINS

Ho-hum!

THE SQUID AND THE WHALE

I recognize these people; they are pretty fucking real. But I hated spending time with them in an atmosphere of such smarmy anti-intellectualism.

TRANSAMERICA

I liked this film. And I didn’t like it. But there was more to like than not to like. It just didn’t, for reasons I’m not sure of, stick to me. 

FILMS I LIKED WHEN I SAW THEM

AND HAVE SINCE FORGOTTEN

JUNEBUG

(although I vividly remember Amy Adams)

PRETTY PERSUASION

(Maybe I should see it again) 

THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN

(actually, what I remember is that I laughed a lot through the first two-thirds, then I stopped laughing and, once I stopped laughing, I stopped watching the screen with any concentrated interest)

Biggest waste of talent

Wes Craven’s RED EYE

Most depressing film

THE WEATHER MAN

Winner of the "I-hope-I-never-have-to-sit-through-another-film-that-suggests-the-past-by-shooting-in-sepia-and-gold" award

CINDERELLA MAN

It wasn't Beauty killed the Beast;
it was Peter Jackson

KING KONG

Wonderful actors working within a vacuum

THE UPSIDE OF ANGER

STANDOUT PERFORMANCES

ACTORS

Heath Ledger (BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN)

Philip Seymour Hoffman (CAPOTE)

Cillian Murphy (BREAKFAST ON PLUTO)

Bruno Ganz (DOWNFALL)

Jean-Pierre Bacri (LOOK AT ME)

Jake Gyllenhall (BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN)

SUPPORTING ACTORS

Matthew Goode (MATCH POINT)

Barry Pepper (THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA)

Chris Cooper (CAPOTE)

Maurice Benichou (CACHÉ)

William Hurt (A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE)

Stephen Rea (BREAKFAST ON PLUTO)

ACTRESSES

Diane Keaton (THE FAMILY STONE)

Maria Bello (A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE)

Joan Allen (THE UPSIDE OF ANGER)

Felicity Huffman (TRANSAMERICA)

Agnes Jaoui (LOOK AT ME)

Naomi Watts (KING KONG)

SUPPORTING ACTRESSES

Robin Wright Penn (NINE LIVES)

Sharon Stone (BROKEN FLOWERS)

Tilda Swinton (BROKEN FLOWERS)

Amy Adams (JUNEBUG)

Michelle Williams (BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN)

Lynn Cohen (MUNICH)

BONUS!

some films I saw this year
but missed last year that excited me as much as anything I saw this year:

THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU

WHICH MEANS OF COURSE
that there are films of 2005 that I haven't seen yet which might have made the list:

THE BEAT MY HEART SKIPPED

BEST FILM I SAW THIS YEAR

Robert Bresson’s AU HAZARD BALTHAZAR which I missed in 1967.

And, if AU HAZARD BALTHAZAR, which made almost every other recent film look like a five-finger exercise, is any example, then there are clearly many other films made in the past that need to be discovered or re-discovered, films which will be around when most of the films of 2005 are forgotten.