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Not all of the films on my list are readily available but hopefully they will all come around in one form or another.Quote:
Originally posted by wpqx
Well your list Howard has put me to shame, I realize that I might not be as knowledgable as I thought, although one or two films may have been released here in Chicago last year.
Howard, as usual, you bring us all up to another level. I hope one day when I visit my relatives in Seattle I can bop up to Vancouver (where I used to visit back in the 80's) and arrange a visit. I have a feeling that my knowledge about film is miniscule compared with yours. Thank you for every post.
German writer, actor, director, producer Hubert Sauper's "Darwin's Nightmare" was originally released in 2004, but was also entered last year in four different competitions and won. I'm not sure if or when it was shown in LA to qualify for the Oscars. I know someone showed the list on this site. There are several wonderful reviews at IMDB. I'm looking forward to seeing it as the subject matter is something I feel very strongly about. Thank you for adding it to your list and bringing up the subject for discussion.
That is a very kind thing to say. Thank you very much. Actually, compared to other denizens of this film board and other boards I frequent, my knowledge of films is rather limited. I hope you get a chance to see Darwin's Nightmare in the near future. It does not present a very pretty picture but it is an important one. Thanks again.Quote:
Originally posted by cinemabon
Howard, as usual, you bring us all up to another level. I hope one day when I visit my relatives in Seattle I can bop up to Vancouver (where I used to visit back in the 80's) and arrange a visit. I have a feeling that my knowledge about film is miniscule compared with yours. Thank you for every post.
Howard
CHRIS KNIPP'S MOVIE BEST LISTS FOR 2005
TEN BEST U.S.
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (ANG LEE)
BROKEN FLOWERS (JIM JARMUSCH)
CAPOTE (BENNETT MILLER)
GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK (GEORGE CLOONEY)
GRIZZLY MAN (WERNER HERZOG)
LAST DAYS (GUS VAN SANT)
LORDS OF DOGTOWN (CATHERINE HARDWICK)
MATCH POINT (WOODY ALLEN)
MYSTERIOUS SKIN (GREGG ARAKI)
THUMBSUCKER (MIKE MILLS)
TEN BEST FOREIGN
2046 (WONG KAR WAI)
THE BEAT THAT MY HEART SKIPPED (JACQUES AUDIARD)
BEING JULIA (ISTVÁN SZABÓ)
THE BEST OF YOUTH (MARCO TULLIO GIORDANA)
CACHÉ (MICHAEL HANEKE)
GAMES OF LAW AND CHANCE (ABDEL KECHICHE)
GOOD MORNING, NIGHT (MARCO BELLOCCHIO)
INNOCENCE (LUCILE HADZIHALILOVIC)
THE INTRUDER (CLAIRE DENIS)
NOBODY KNOWS (HIROKAZU KOREEDA)
BEST UNRELEASED
BUBBLE (STEPHEN SODERBERGH)
THE CHILD (JEAN-PIERRE & LUC DARDENNE)
THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU (CRISTI PUIU)
GABRIELLE (PATRICE CHÉREAU)
REGULAR LOVERS (PHILIPPE GARREL)
THE SUN (ALEKSANDR SUKUROV)
THREE TIMES (HOU HSIAU HSIEN)
LOS MUERTOS (LISANDRO ALONSO)
BEST DOCUMENTARIES
[GRIZZLY MAN]
THE BOYS OF BARAKA (HEIDI EWING, RACHEL GRADY)
MONDOVINO (JONATHAN NOSSITER)
NO DIRECTION HOME (MARTIN SCORSESE)
SHORTLISTED, ALL CATEGORIES
CRASH (PAUL HAGGIS)
DOWN TO THE BONE (DEBRA GRANAK)
FORTY SHADES OF BLUE (IRA SACHS)
A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE (DAVID CRONENGERG)
JUNEBUG (PHIL MORISON)
KINGS AND QUEEN (ARNAUD DESPLECHIN)
KONTROLL (NIMRÓD ANTÁL)
MUNICH (STEPHEN SPIELBERG)
THE SQUID AND THE WHALE (NOAH BAUMBACH)
SYRIANA (STEPHEN GAGHAN)
BEST REVIVAL
PROFESSIONE: REPORTER (PASSENGER, 1975, MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI)
YEAR'S MOST OVERRATED
A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE (DAVID CRONENBERG)
ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW (MIRANDA JULY)
THE SQUID AND THE WHALE (NOAH BAUMBACH)
WISH I'D SEEN
CAFÉ LUMIÈRE (HOU HSIAU HSIEN)
DARWIN'S NIGHTMARE (HUBERT SAUPER)
THE HOLY GIRL (LUCRETIA MARTEL)
MY SUMMER OF LOVE (PAWEL PAWLIKOWSKI)
THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA (TOMMY LEE JONES)
TROPICAL MALADY (APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL)
THE WORLD (JIA ZHANG-KE)
On Chris Knipp website.
As you can see, I have trouble narrowing it down, and years ago gave up the idea of a list of only ten when the rest of the world's cinematic production had to be included in a list of ten. We get to see more new American films than anything else, but the rest of the world is stiff competition.
I enjoy a lot of what I see, because even though I watch a lot, I choose carefully what I watch. But I do have opinions, and I don't mind saying when something is overrrated or downright bad. My job as I see it is to be true to my own responses, regardless of what other people think or say.
Some of the best I saw we have to wait for before they'll ever see the dark of a U.S. movie house, because they're coming later, or maybe never, to our theaters: Cristi Puiu's The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, Stephen Soderbergh's Bubble and the Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's L'Enfant (all coming) and Aleksandr Sokurov's The Sun, Patrice Chéreau's Gabrielle, Philippe Garrel's Regular Lovers and Lisandro Alonso's Los Muertos (without distributors). But what did make it to US screens included some very amusing, spine chilling, or moving stuff.
TEN BEST U.S. (alphabetical)
Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee) is an extraordinary mainstream event: a movie where two young Hollywood hunks (Gyllanhaal and Ledger) play out a heartbreaking doomed gay love affair. Wow! This hit me hardest of all that I saw. Whatever it loses of the hardscrabble pain of Proulx's short story it gains in impact and meaning for ordinary people, and average gay men are thrilled out of their skins. That includes me.
Broken Flowers (Jim Jarmusch) shows the sardonic auteur working with prince of deadpan Bill Murray, a marriage made in heaven that's dripping with droll feminine vignettes, really a slow feast of choice acting turns.
Capote (Bennett Miller) is Phillip Seymour Hoffman's devastatingly accurate recreation of Truman Capote at work on his cruel, self-destroying "non-fiction novel" In Cold Blood. A triumph for the gifted Hoffman.
Good Night, and Good Luck (George Clooney) is so elegant, so intelligent, you may forget it's a little history lesson about an earlier era of government overreaching. Ed Murrow battling Joe McCarthy. It's lucky that that witty charmer Clooney is also smart, and he's political too, which is even cooler.
Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog) is an important documentary portrait that shows the devastating innocence of a man who anthropomorphizes lethal wild beasts. This is very specific about the guy, but it's also about all of us and how we misjudge and misunderstand nature, to our peril.
Last Days (Gus Van Sant) is a stoned visual poem, a hypnotic meditation on youth and death with a surprisingly intense performance by Michael Pitt that completes the Van Sant trilogy begun with Gerry and Elephant and makes up for all Van Sant's dips into mediocrity since My Own Private Idaho.
Lords of Dogtown (Catherine Hardwick) is an accurate and funny and fun portrait of the legends of skateboarding, full of spicy performances, notably Heath Ledger's as druggy coach/sponsor Skip Engblom. This was a breakthrough year for Ledger, whose cred as a serous and selfless actor, no pretty-boy, is now firm.
Match Point (Woody Allen) With this sparkling, enjoyable social climber-cum-Hitchcockian-suspense drama set in London, Woody got himself back on the map. This one isn't like Chinese food. You aren't hungry an hour later; you remember it, thanks to Rhys-Meyers and Johansson's chemistry.
Mysterious Skin (Gregg Araki) The formerly wild and silly queer-cinema queen Araki took on a new maturity with this serious story about two victims of pedophilia trying to grow up. Joseph Gordon-Levitt gives a strong performance. This is tough material handled with imagination and taking us somewhere very dark and real.
Thumbsucker (Mike Mills) shows a fresh light touch with the tired coming-of-age theme.
TEN BEST FOREIGN
2046 (Wong Kar Wai) The most lush and complicated of Wong's period fantasies yet, the end of an epic series. It's so pretty and plot-encrusted it almost makes you sick, but what sweet sickness!
The Beat That My Heart Skipped (Jacques Audiard). Molding James Toback's first fillm into a rich unclassifiable mix of thriller and portrait-of--failed-artist-as-a-young-man, Audiard gave us one of the most complex and complete films of the year. Another breakthrough for a young actor into serous cred: Romain Duris.
The Best of Youth (Marco Tullio Giordana) In-depth decades-spanning family portrait that shows off the Italian sense of time and place and ability to spin a mini-series such as we poor Anglos are starved for.
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Being Julia (István Szabó) isn't a great movie but it's hilarious Masterpiece Theatre-type fun and a wonderful display of Annette Benning's inexhaustible talent.
Caché (Michael Haneke) Haneke likes to tease and torment us into guilty awarenesses. This is Haneke in top form, with a consistently challenging and original work about responsibility and connectedness
.
Games of Love and Chance (Abdel Kechiche) A brilliant amalgam of French classicism and ghetto angst; not everybody in the US saw this story about love and class by and about French people of Arab descent living outside Paris, but the French gave it their highest award for a reason. It's pretty real, and it's very smart.
Good Morning, Night (Marco Bellocchio) Another surprisingly beautiful visual and auditory poem made out of something very dark. This portrait of a terrorist act, the Aldo Moro kidnapping that tore up Italy in 1978, is seen by Bellocchio from within as a study of moral doubt.
Innocence (Lucile Hadzihalilovic) A terrifyingly consistent, coherent, and beautiful first film that provides a fantastic dreamlike vision of girlhood and oppression.
The Intruder (Claire Denis), Amidst the mostly conventional American movies of the Christmas season, watching Claire Denis' new one was like taking a plunge in cold, fresh water. Pure cinema, without limits or guidelines.
Nobody Knows (Hirokazu Koreeda) In this excruciatingly claustrophobic story of abandoned siblings trying to muddle through, Koreeda looks deep into the saddest side of childhood: its helplessness.
There was other good stuff. My shortlist includes Down to the Bone (Debra Granak), Kings and Queen (Arnaud Desplechin), and Kontroll (Nimród Antal). Credit for good intentions has to go to a muddled pair grasping at political significance, Munich (Steven Spielberg) and Syriana (Stephen Gaghan) and to the high-pitched Crash (Paul Haggis).
Besides Grizzly Man, several other documentaries went the extra mile (if not at all as many as last year), notably the muckraking Mondovino (Jonathan Nossiter) which exposes egomania and globalization in the wine trade, The Boys of Baraka (Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady), about a valiant effort to save Baltimore ghetto youths, and Martin Scorsese's thrilling and seamless portrait of young genius in process of self-creation, the Bob Dylan study, No Direction Home.
The best revival surely was Antonioni's Professione: reporter, starring Jack Nicolson, previously known here (in a U.S. edit) as The Passenger and in retrospect possibly Antonioni's most perfect film, as well as his personal favorite. It's looking very good at the age of 30.
Excellent but still overrated were Cronenberg's A History of Violence (which is better to talk about than to watch), Fernando Moreilles' inappropriately overwrought adaptation of John Le Carré's The Constant Gardener (it was a good year for Ralph Fiennes with that and the swoony Merchant/Ivory swansong, The White Goddess). Noah Baumbach's The Squid and the Whale is a good study of kids dealing with a divorce, but not as brilliant as people said. I saw a lot of movies this year, but I'm guessing there still are at least a dozen or so, maybe more, new releases that might have caused a rearrangement of this list, and possibly of my psyche, if I hadn't unfortunately missed them.
2046 (WONG KAR WAI) - I was under the impression that you didn't think very highly of it.
THE BEST OF YOUTH (MARCO TULLIO GIORDANA) - Ditto
GAMES OF LOVE AND CHANCE (ABDEL KECHICHE)
BEST DOCUMENTARIES
What about Mad Hot Ballroom?
WISH I'D SEEN
FATELESS (LAJOS KOLTAI) - This should count as a 2006 release.
I guess you're right about Fateless--I know it just opened in NYC around January 6th, somehow I thought I'd seen it on somebody's '05 list. My mistake. Good, I didn't lose it, and I look forward to it, it sounds great. Anyway, it's true: I "wish I'd seen" it January 6th, only that was the day I left NYC.
Well with Best of Youth, you have an example of how I bow to public pressure. I saw it in an Italian context, and my Italian teacher and I fell all over each other putting it down, but in retrospect it is pretty great for what it is, and people here loved it, it has stayed in my mind, and I redid my list to consist only of real 2005 US releases of foreign films and that made a space for it.
Mad Hot Ballroom was charming; I guess I thought it was too cute. Thar reminds me that I saw Rize, but I thought Rize was a mess, even though it had some good stuff in it. I would see no harm in including Mad Hot Ballroom. And it seems like it's been made into a fiction movie now with Antonio Banderas, Take the Lead..
Now as for 2046, I just held off on it because Wong is so big to me, and it is so complex, I didn't know what to say about it. Books have practically already been written about it, and the timing became off because I saw it on dvd way before it came out in theaters here, and that way I lose momentum to review a film. I also do think that it's overwrought, and that he's come to a kind of dead end, but it's also incredibly gorgeous and stylistically rich and original, and it would be completely insane not to include it as one of the best foreign films of the year. Sometimes my feelings are complicated; that's one reason why I can't use a grading system and don't rank my Best Lists and just put them in alphabetical order.
I missed Best of Youth. It played in Chicago on two separate days, but when the theater is an hour away and tickets are $9.25 for each, then I wasn't really motivated enough to see it. Cafe Lumiere was actually released on DVD even though it is getting it's theatrical premiere here in another couple of weeks. Although movies are generally better on the big screen, I think in this case I'll just stick with the DVD, makes my life easier, it's hard enough keeping up with the numerous releases this year.
After all Best of Youth was basically made for TV, so there's no reason you shouldn't watch it on dvds. I watched it on Italian dvds that were projected on a screen for us. But it's shame to see certain movies that one might get to see on the big screen, any other way. I am aware that I have the time and the means that some don't have to do this, though. I actually saw 2046, Good Morning Night, Games of Love and Chance, and Innocence on dvd. I am glad that I saw Last Days on the big screen, also Caché, The Sun, Los Muertos, L'Enfant, and Bubble. Bubble is still coming, so people can catch it in theaters. But it's made to read both ways.....
CK, what about The Sun?!?! I haven't had time to pull my own list together... will work on it over the weekend.
Peter
What do you mean, What about The Sun? I love The Sun, but as far as I know it has no US distributor so far. I listed it therefore under BEST UNRELEASED and at the start of my "prose" version of my lists. All my BEST FOREIGN list are films actually released in the US in 2005.
Got it, that makes sense. I thought it had US dist, but looks like it doesn't... NY Film Fest is the only distribution listing on imdb for this classic. That sucks. "Solntse" being the Russian title.
Coming out in France on Feb 1. The lucky French get it.
Getting off topic. Will try and pull my 10 list together.
P
I still gotta lotta catching up to do but so far these films are the "best" I've seen:
Batman Begins
Sin City
The White Diamond - I suspect Grizzly Man will make the list without any twisting of my arm. Herzog is a living cinema legend. Period.
Princess Raccoon
My Dad is 100 Years Old
Manderlay
Dear Wendy
King Kong
Water
Walk the Line
By far the biggest hit at the box office was the French doc March of the Penguins at $77 million. Its combination of previously inaccessible landscapes and compelling story of species survival was unbeatable. March of the Penguins was the single documentary I watched in 2005 that demanded a large screen for full appreciation. The filming itself was quite a feat, giving the harsh conditions and polar setting. Too much has been made by detractors of the arguable flaws of the approach to voice-over commentary. A distant second was Mad Hot Ballroom, with a total box office of about 8 million. The sight of 11 year olds, sons and daughters of immigrants living in NYC, applying themselves to learn different types of dances was uplifting and charming, yet superficial. It's a shame that the flick concentrates so much on the competition aspect and so little on how the kids were transformed by the experience. Towards the end of Mad Hot Ballroom, the principal of the winning P.S. remarks about the transformation of two kids who were on the verge of criminality and gang behavior prior to learning and eventually excelling at dancing. It's a shame the film failed to deal with how the discipline and focus required to perform had an impact on the kids' lives. Consider for instance how Murderball, while dwelling on the winning and losing, kept its focus on the lives of its sportsmen-with-disabilities. One gets a clear idea of how these men emerged from tragedy to become the fierce competitirs of today.
My favorite documentary of 2005 deals with the Rwanda genocide, the UN man who attempted to stop it , and how failure affected him. It balances the political with the personal with uncommon skill, so that one sheds light on the other.
BEST DOCUMENTARY
1.Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Romeo Dallaire (Peter Raymont/Canada)
2.Darwin's Nightmare (Hubert Sauper/Austria-Belgium-France)
RUNNER-UPS
Another Road Home (Danae Elon/USA)
Bob Dylan: No Direction Home (Scorsese/USA)
Death in Gaza (James Miller/UK)
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (Alex Gibney/USA)
Grizzly Man (Herzog/USA)
Henri Langlois: Phantom of the Cinematheque (Jacques Richard/Fra)
March of the Penguins (Luc Jacquet/France)
Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (Ken Burns/USA)
The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till (Keith and Kevin Beauchamp/USA)
HONORABLE MENTION
Murderball (Rubin and Shapiro/USA)
*I think all of these titles are already available on dvd.
Thanks for your informed comments. I've got some catching up to do. Of course you mean "biggest hits at the box office" among docs, since that $71 million figure is less than a fifth the $380 million Star Wars II made and a whole bunch of fiction flicks made over $200 mil. I'm sorry I found the syrupy antropomorphizing narration by Morgan Freeman turned me off, way off, on Penguins (the French or other language versions may be quite different, from what I hear) and I ran kicking and screaming to the bleak picture of nature and nature lovers provided in Grizzly Man, which I'm glad to see is also on your list. You're larger-spirited than I am to be able to like them both.
I take it you didn't take so strongly to The Wild Parrots of Telgraph Hill? Not as much of a wow movie but another one that treats not just nature but man's relationship to it (the comparison with Grizzly Man is one that ought to be more explored) -- and you clearly prefer deeper more rounded pictures, your reason for faulting Mad, Hot Ballroom for not exploring enough how the dancers were changed by the competition, an excellent criticism. When they get personal, or when they lose their cool, or when they get so close to their subjects it almost hurts and maybe it changes you and even makes you cry, that's when you realize why documentaries matter, and matter a heck of a lot.
I realized when I saw the Cinescene editor Chris Dashiell's long list of recommended documentaries for 2005 (scroll down on his page to see it) that I missed a lot and I'll have to catch up, especially on the political ones. It was maybe a bit dumb of me to comment that 2005 wasn't as good a year as 2004 for docs: I may just not have seen enough of them last year and gotten luckier the year before.
Some I see I've missed (not just from this year): Lost Boys of Sudan, The Weather Underground, Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in our Times, Unconstitutional: The War on Our Civil Liberties, Children Underground, Tell Them Who You Are, Twist of Faith, Henry Langlois: Phantom of the Cinematheque, La Sierra, The Yes Men, and Wal-Mart: the High Cost of Low Price (most of these are from Dashiell's list).
For their socio-econo-political interest (important to see even if of varying quality), I'd mention The Future of Food, The Boys of Baraka (still coming in some areas) and the quirky, super-thorough Mondovino. And again not the best documenataries in my opinion but important as portraits of artists: Be Here to Love Me: a Film About Townes Van Zandt and William Eggleston in the Real World.