March/April 2006

FILM COMMENT READER'S POLL: THE TOP 50 FILMS OF 2005

If our annual readers’ choice poll functions on some level as a report card on how well this magazine is catering to the needs of those who buy it, we did pretty well this year. True, we missed the boat on Capote, Crash, and Syriana. But on the plus side, five of our six 2005 cover films made your top 20, and we published features on or reviews of 22 of your top 30. And Film Comment’s readers, contributors, and editors are of one mind when it comes to the film of the year.

(The numbers in parentheses refer to the film’s ranking in last issue’s 2005 Critics’ Poll.)

And congratulations to the winners selected randomly from this year’s poll participants: Tomas Santamaria of Mandeville, LA (First Prize recipient of DVDs from the Criterion Collection), Andrea Estepa of Huntington, PA (Second Prize), Sara Crump of Sherman Oaks, CA, and Alex Sofalvi of Toledo, OH (Third and Fourth Prizes).

1. A History of Violence (David Cronenberg, U.S.) (1)
2. 2046 (Wong Kar Wai, China/Hong Kong/France) (2)
3. Good Night, And Good Luck (George Clooney, U.S.)(11)
4. Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, U.S.) (7)
5. Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog, U.S./Canada) (5)
6. Capote (Bennett Miller, U.S.) (10)
7. The Squid and the Whale (Noah Baumbach, U.S.) (6)
8. Match Point (Woody Allen, U.K./U.S.) (21)
9. Munich (Steven Spielberg, U.S.) (17)
10. The New World (Terrence Malick, U.S.) (25)
11. Caché/Hidden (Michael Haneke, France/Austria/Germany/Italy) (4)
12. Broken Flowers (Jim Jarmusch, U.S./France) (39)
13. Me and You and Everyone We Know (Miranda July, U.S.) (19)
14. Syriana (Stephen Gaghan, U.S.) (20)
15. The Constant Gardener (Fernando Meirelles, U.K./Germany) (32)
16. Kings and Queen (Arnaud Desplechin, France) (3)
17. Crash (Paul Haggis, U.S) (—)
18. Last Days (Gus Van Sant, U.S.) (16)
19. Batman Begins (Christopher Nolan, U.S.) (37)
20. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (Nick Park & Steve Box, U.K./U.S.) (34)

21. Head-On (Fatih Akin, Germany/Turkey) (15)
22. King Kong (Peter Jackson, U.S.) (48)
23. Junebug (Phil Morrison, U.S.) (29)
24. The Beat That My Heart Skipped (Jacques Audiard, France) (31)
25. The Holy Girl (Lucrecia Martel, Argentina) (12)
26. Mysterious Skin (Gregg Araki, U.S.) (26)
27. No Direction Home (Martin Scorsese, U.S.) (50)
28. Saraband (Ingmar Bergman, Sweden) (13)
29. Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand) (8)
30. Nobody Knows (Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan) (33)

31. Land of the Dead (George Romero, U.S.) (14)
32. Oldboy (Park Chan-wook, South Korea) (36)
33. Sin City (Robert Rodriguez, U.S.) (41)
34. The World (Jia Zhangke, China) (9)
35. Howl's Moving Castle (Hayao Miyazaki, Japan) (27)
36. Downfall (Oliver Hirschbiegel, Germany) (40)
37. The 40-Year-Old Virgin (Judd Apatow, U.S.) (—)
38. Café Lumière (Hou Hsiao-hsien, Japan/Taiwan) (22)
39. Walk the Line (James Mangold, U.S.) (—)
40. Kung Fu Hustle (Stephen Chow, China/Hong Kong) (23)

41. Pride and Prejudice (Joe Wright, U.S./U.K.) (46)
42. Breakfast on Pluto (Neil Jordan, Ireland/U.K.) (28)
43. The Intruder (Claire Denis, France) (18)
44. March of the Penguins (Luc Jacquet, France) (—)
45. 3-Iron (Kim Ki-duk, South Korea) (—)
46. The Best of Youth (Marco Tullio Giordana, Italy) (43)
47. Paradise Now (Hany Abu-Assad, Netherlands/Israel/Germany/France) (24)
48. Look at Me (Agnès Jaoui, France) (42)
49. War of the Worlds (Steven Spielberg, U.S.) (47)
50. Jarhead (Sam Mendes, U.S.) (—)