It's that time of year again (at least, it was when I started writing this on Dec 27), when movie critics, amateur and pro alike, crank out their Top 10 lists and whatnot. Now that I have a (kinda) public forum, I figured I'd jump on the bandwagon.
Instead of coming up with 10 movies I especially liked, I'm just going to mention every movie I saw in a theater (adding DVDs to the mix would take too long). While I do have some clear favorites, I'm not going to put much effort into ranking them all. I'd like to get this posted sometime soon, without having to delay with a lot of deep thought over whether or not I liked Mr. & Mrs. Smith more than I liked Fantastic Four.
Also, I have some metaphorical apples and oranges in here. I liked Ray for different reasons than I liked Revenge of The Sith (very, very different reasons). As such, I've categorized a little.
First, here are the movies that M and I saw for pretty much the sole purpose of seeing as many Best Picture, Actor and Actress Oscar nominees as possible (we went 5 for 5 with the Picture nominees).
Million Dollar Baby - Not bad. I've seen less deserving movies get the Best Picture Oscar. I knew going in where they were going to take the story, so no surprises there for me.
Ray - I was expecting more racism, since it was about a black performer in the 50's, and I was very relieved to see very little of that (I wonder if that makes me prejudiced about movies concerning black performers in the 50's?). Very good movie. Probably should have won the Oscar that $1M Baby got.
Finding Neverland - Meh. Not a bad movie, but not really my cup o' tea either. Had Kate Winslet, who looks like my wife, so it had that going for it.
Being Julia - Annette Benning got a nomination for this, and was considered the front-runner at the time, so we went and saw this. Again, not really my thing, but it was nice to see her win out in the end. The character, that is, not Annette Benning the actress - she lost to Hillary Swank.
The Aviator - Pretty good, but a little too overedited at times. Watching Hughes' OCD in action was interesting.
I saw the fifth Best Picture Nominee, Sideways, in 2004, so that doesn't really count for this list. But since you (might have) asked, I liked it a lot, and it was my favorite to win, though I knew it didn't have much of a chance.
Next up are the movies I saw at the Maryland Film Festival. I saw a lot of shorts that are too numerous to mention, but I saw a couple full-length movies, listed below.
Blackmail - An early Hitchcock silent movie (from the late 20's, I believe). Normally, silent movies don't really grab me, but this one was very good. There was a live orchestra in the theater doing the music and sound effects. The instruments were all metal items, such as a truck spring, some sheet metal, and even a bedpan (which they didn't use for this movie) that the musicians would hit. It was really something to hear. I hope they come back to do another silent movie this coming year.
Gorilla At Large - A 3D movie that had among its cast a young Anne Bancroft (a fact that she apparently didn't like to admit to later in her career). Not a great movie, but the 3D effects were very good. When Anne Bancroft died later in the year, and Entertainment Weekly included in the obituary article a picture of her "from the 50's", I recognized it as coming from Gorilla At Large.
And finally, here are the movies that we saw because we just wanted to see 'em. They are more or less in the reverse order of how much I liked them, though my specific preferences change a lot, depending on my mood.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith - We wanted to go see a movie, and this was pretty much the only option we had, so we went with it. It helped that we had free passes to see something. It had its moments, but we only got a little more than we paid for.
Fantastic Four - Another free movie. I did want to see this, but I was willing to wait for DVD. I bumped up the timetable when I knew I could see it in the theater for free. It wasn't a Spiderman-caliber comic adaptation (by any means), but I didn't feel like my time was wasted either.
Flight of The Phoenix - Another movie that got seen because there was nothing better around at the time. It was OK. Nothing stunning or anything, but it didn't leave me wishing my money had gone elsewhere.
War of The Worlds - This one I was intent on seeing and paid money to see. It also scared the living hell outta me. I've always been creeped out by aliens (and yet, I'm into sci-fi - go figure), but I think what really did it was the fact that it involved regular people like you and me being chased by big predators with no real hope of prevailing, other than staying hidden forever. And the attack started pretty harsh too, which set the mood for the rest of the movie. The ending was an unbelievable cop-out (by "ending", I mean the end of the Tom Cruise storyline, not the Martian storyline - though one might have called that a cop-out too if they didn't already know about it ahead of time.)
March of The Penguins - Informative and entertaining. I hear that the original French version had a narrator doing voices for the penguins, like "Gee mommy, it sure is colder out here than it was inside the egg!" or something of that nature (I have no idea what was actually said). Replacing that guy with Morgan Freeman, who keeps the narration in the third person, for the American release was a very good idea.
Charlie and The Chocolate Factory - I may catch some heat for this, but I haven't been much of a Tim Burton fan. A lot of the time, he takes on projects that just don't work with his particular style, the most unforgivable of which being Batman. But then, there are stories like this, which seem to be right up his alley and thus work very well. Many people prefer the Gene Wilder version, and I suppose they're justified in doing so, but this is more faithful to the book (if you ignore the extra backstory and ending that ties that all together), and I like both Willy Wonka and Charlie better in this version. Updating Mike Teevee to a video game nut, instead of just a TV nut, worked for me too.
A Very Long Engagement - I liked Amelie, so I made a point to see this too, since it had the same director and the same Audrey Tautou. I was not disappointed and pretty much ended up liking this a little bit better. It's a little depressing, since much of it takes place on a WWI battleground, but not too much so.
A Streetcar Named Desire - This was a Hurricane Katrina Benefit, so between that, and the fact that M is both a big Streetcar fan and a New Orleans native, we had to go see this. I had seen it once before on DVD, but, like most movies, it's better in a theater, especially the one we saw it in (the same one I saw Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail in.) I followed it better this time around, but I still think that Stella's change of heart about Stanley at the very end was way too sudden. I think the play was a little more clear about why, but since it involves topics that were far too risque in the 50's, the movie had to skirt around it and, in the process, make it more confusing.
Wallace and Gromit and The Curse of The Wererabbit - This was a fun movie. Who knew that a clay dog could say so much without ever speaking! Most of the plot is pretty obvious, since it is aimed at kids, but it's still fun to watch.
The Aristocrats - Hil-frikkin'-larious, assuming you can stomach the extremely distasteful humor (topics include incest, bodily emissions of all kinds, ritualistic murder and a little bit of rape). It's also very interesting how much variation can go into a single joke, both in content and in presentation.
Any of the remaining six movies on this list could be called my favorite of 2005, depending on what criterium or criteria is at the front of my mind at the time.
Serenity - The rebirth (albeit likely a one-time rebirth) of Firefly, the very prematurely cancelled TV series. A great continuation (and a good closure, if it comes to that) of the story. The humor is still there, yet another interesting villain comes along, we finally get a (fairly) good look at the Reavers, the action's actually a little better. It's pretty much everything a Firefly fan could ask for, and a perfectly entertaining movie for someone who's never seen the show (though, for full attachment to the characters, I suggest seeing the show first - there's only 14 episodes. Otherwise, you won't be lost jumping into the story here). There is a scene or two we really would have preferred not to see, but them's the breaks. It certainly elevates the tension for much of the remainder of the movie, let me tell ya.
Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire - The best of the Harry Potter movies. The third movie started making these kids more real, and HP4 keeps it goin'. The biggest success with the movie, however, is that it manages to fit a bazillion-page book into a little more than 2 hours and makes it work. There really isn't much that got cut out in the adaptation that I thought should have been carried over. While I didn't object to most of the changes made to help tie the condensed plot together, there were a couple of scenes that I would have found to be a bit superfluous if I didn't already know the backstory from the book (as was the case in HP3, when the uninitiated were left to guess how Prof. Lupin knew how to work the map).
Revenge of The Sith - The best of the Star Wars prequels, which may or may not be saying much, depending on how I'm feeling about ol' Mr. Lucas on a given day. After seeing it the first time, I felt empty. I was expecting more. I had managed to convince myself that it would be different this time, that George Lucas wouldn't blow it, like he had the previous two times, when it came time to explain it all. Oh well. It took me two more viewings (most recently on DVD a few days ago) and reading the novelization before I could work it all out in my mind into something satisfying. I think the key failure (the "nooooooooooo" scene aside) is that Anakin's conversion was too wishy-washy. Sure, Anakin could have conflicting feelings about everything leading up to the critical point, but once that point was reached (choosing Palpatine over the Jedi by disarming Mace Windu), there should have been no more visible conflict in him. Instead, he follows up that choice with an anguished "What have I done?". That showed continued indecision, and left us with no real turning point. George Lucas is a talentless hack when it comes to writing screenplays, and for that matter, directing human beings. He is, however, good at putting on a special effects and action show that's fun to look at, so it's not a complete loss. Plus, it was a Star Wars movie, and I'm a longtime drinker of Luca's Kool-Aid, so I can't help but like the overall movie, and even list it among my favorites for the year. It's amazing what being part of a cult will do to you.
King Kong - It starts out just a bit too slow (do we really need to know the cabin boy's backstory?), but once it gets started - hooboy. Very true to the original 1933 version, except for the extremely different relationship between Anne and Kong (in 1933 she was perpetually scared of him and had no desire whatsoever to go to Empire State climbing, whereas in 2005, she starts feeling affection for him and actually does the last 20 feet or so of the building climb herself, following Kong to the very top.) This is the best Kong yet, referring both to the movie and the character. I'm not sure if everybody would agree, but making Kong even more gorilla-like was a great idea. While Kong '33 and Kong '76 came stomping in on the ground to collect Anne (or, in the case of '76, Dwan - that's not a misprint) during the sacrifice, Kong '05 comes in jumping from tree to tree like an actual gorilla. Peter Jackson made, in my opinion, just about the greatest movie in cinema history when he made Return of The King. I'm happy to say that, while he didn't quite live up to his Lord of The Rings success, he sure didn't sully his reputation either with King Kong. I just wish it hadn't dragged so much at the beginning.
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - It is a testament to how good a movie is when I, a special effects snob, say that the effects were only OK, but it didn't matter to me in the slightest. It was well-cast (Liam Neeson is the go-to guy these days for wise leader-type characters, so he was really good as Aslan) and told a great story. It was fine by me if the blue-screening was obvious sometimes or if the effects looked a little too cartoony to pull off looking real.
Batman Begins - When I started making this list, this was my pick for best movie of the year, an opinion that I'm wavering a bit on, but not much. It is, without question, the best Batman movie ever made. Most of the reasons have been said before by others. The origin story is actually believable - you will believe that a man can have a good reason to dress up like a bat and fight crime. The story focuses on the hero, and not on the villains, for a change. In fact, they start us out with lesser-known villains in this first chapter to avoid drawing attention away from the important story - the beginning of Batman's career (though we do get a clever reference to one of the more popular villains near the end of the movie). And Christian Bale nails it not just playing Batman, but playing Bruce Wayne too. Michael Caine is now the definitive Alfred in my mind too.
And that's pretty much it! I can finally get this sucker posted!
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