I’m finally ready. I spent some time looking back, shocked to see I’ve seen almost 100 movies in all of 2005. When you think about it, a movie every 3.65 days is pretty damn frequent. And double-damn to B-dawg, who beat me to this by three weeks.
- The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
- Bend It Like Beckham
- The Station Agent
- I Heart Huckabees
- Kinsey
- Serenity
- Ray
- Finding Neverland
- Shaun of the Dead
- Shaolin Soccer
And lest you think this was easy, the following also merited consideraiton on the list.
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
- Mona Lisa Smile
- Garden State
- Collateral
- Maria Full of Grace
- Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events
- Before Sunrise
- Mystic River
- March of the Penguins
- Batman Begins
- The Pianist
- The Dreamers
- Jersey Girl
- Closer
The first of the Chronicles of Narnia adaptions was, much to my shock, a really well-done movie. It captured the same spirit and feel of the book without being either overbearing (something easy to do in an adaptation of these books) or superficial. The Station Agent was a curious piece of work, with an offbeat pacing and an ending that was a surprise in a world awash with movies where you can see what’s coming a mile down the track. Serenity is one that won’t make too many top 10 lists, but as a fan of the series FireFly it was a wonderful feeling to get closure on a TV series that tragically ended prematurely. Shaun of the Dead was a hillariously frightening take on the zombie theme, while Shaolin Soccer provided yet another take on the crazy-martial-arts-in-stylized-action genre, like Kung Fu Hustle. With soccer. Really, how could you go wrong?
I still find Natalie Portman adorable, which has as much to do with two of the movies considered as anything else. And Collateral was just a fun revenge flick with a whole host of violence that takes place south of the border, with Denzel Washington’s character finding his own form of redemption in the end. And while the latest Star Wars installment was the best out of Episodes 1 – 3, it paled in comparison to many of the good movies that I saw in 2005. Truthfully I only mention it because B-Dawg reminded me it came out in 2005. If you’re looking for action, Batman Begins is a much better movie, and Serenity was a much better Sci-Fi movie than Star Wars.
I couldn’t place Dodgeball or Napolean Dynamite on this list despite appreciating certain aspects of Napolean Dynamite. The horrible blandness of Napolean Dynamite, with its tediuous pacing, drove me up the wall as I watched it. Yet the same dysfunction was hillarious to observe.
I should do a top 10 list of the best shows cancelled before they reached their prime, but that would be too depressing. All I can say is Wonderfalls was actually a quirky show that would have been fantastic had it lasted.
One reply on “Top 10 Movies I saw in 2005”
I’m completely with you on “Napolean Dynamite” – it’s equally brilliant and awful, and settles out somewhere in the middle. But “I Heart Huckabees”? The first thing I said after watching it was, “I want to punch this movie in the face.” Maybe if I’d seen it in a different frame of mind, but the pretentiousness for pretentiousnesses sake bugged the living hell out of me.
And hey, don’t feel bad – I actually keep track of books/movies through the year, so I have an idea of what little culture I’ve absorbed over the months.