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A History of Violence (#1)
“The great thing about this movie was the
experience it invited. To watch the visceral violence
unfold and listen to the audience cheer only to
soon begin moaning and then go silent brought
the theme of this movie to life in a way few films
can ever achieve.” - Hans Morgenstern,
Miami
“Radically re-envisioning
elements of High Noon and Out of
the Past, violence metastasizes outward from
the initiating diner bloodbath, igniting the destructive
impulses swimming just below placid surfaces,
finally contacting the viewer through a classicist’s
fusion of the visceral and the suggestive.”
- Josef Braun, Toronto
“I would be shocked to learn
that David Cronenberg hadn’t seen Dogville
before filming Vince Locke and John Wagner’s
graphic novel. Cronenberg’s vitriolic (although,
remarkably, never cruel or unfair) portrait of
small-town America corrupted by Urban Outsiders
feels uncannily engaged in a sort of dialogue
with Trier’s polarizing masterwork. The
only answer I can come up with as to why History
proved far less divisive is Cronenberg’s
ingenious inside-out game plan. New Line even
marketed it as a straight-ahead genre picture!
(‘Brechtian Our Town’ pull-quotes
just don’t sell as many tickets as ‘tense
psychological thriller.’) This is one Trojan
horse of a movie.” - Josh Timmermann
“The most overrated film of
the year. Cronenberg, a director whose career
has made fetish out of sadism, points a finger
at small-town USA’s proclivity for violence.
This is like George W. Bush lecturing the world
about democracy.” - Jim Kernochan, New
York
2046 (#2)
“Another masterpiece by the world’s
greatest living filmmaker. A ravishing vortex
of barely graspable memories, the many inflections
of loneliness, urban ennui, visionary, almost-sci-fi,
cruel romance, and visual spectacle.” -
Jacob Hovind, Atlanta
“Vibrant cinematography, the
mishmash of Japanese plus Mandarin plus Cantonese,
surrealistic storyline, allusion to the eve of
the end of China’s promise to leave Hong
Kong alone... and Tony Leung.” - Vianne
Orr, Vancouver, Canada
Good Night, And Good Luck.
(#3)
“After Confessions of a Former
TV Doctor, it seems nothing short of amazing
that George Clooney, in a second stab at directing,
has manage to produce a film so formally tight
and assuredly unostentatious. Good Night,
And Good Luck is everything that Clooney’s
muddled debut wasn’t. Aside from a certain
fascination with the dynamics of the television
industry, they scarcely feel as if they were helmed
by the same filmmaker.” - Josh Timmermann
Grizzly Man (#5)
“How could Hollywood ignore Herzog’s
Grizzly Man for Oscar’s consideration?
Clearly the Timothy Treadwell story is every bit
Hollywood’s story as well. And maybe that’s
the problem. Maybe Hollywood recognizes itself
all too well, in the story of an all-American
youth, innocent and misguided, seeking re-invention
and redemption in the wilds of Alaskan grizzly
country. For Hollywood, like Treadwell, is ego-driven
to the point of isolation and just as out of touch.
Maybe stories of actors gone crazy are a dime
a dozen in Tinseltown.” - Odell Waller,
Detroit
“I questioned its validity
(as a documentary) throughout, yet it was the
most emotionally authentic film I saw all year.”
- Paul Iannone, Phoenix, AZ
“Death as a found object.”
- Sarah Nichols, Bristol, CT
The New World (#10)
“Malick’s masterpiece has been, I
think, misunderstood by both those attacking and
exalting it. It is neither frivolous melodrama
masquerading as art, nor is it a powerful reconstructing
of myth. It is an annihilation of history and
myth, proving that history and myth intertwine,
and can almost never be separated. His discontinuous
editing, his sensual cinematography, his ethereal
voice-over narrations, and his use of classical
music evoke the sense not of a reverie, but of
a dream. History is little else, mythologized
in the mind of the beholder, and can never be
truly known. The New World juxtaposes
historical accuracies and inaccuracies—in
tandem with the aforementioned visual techniques—to
exude the wondrous, dreamlike quality of discovery
and establishment of history. The epic American
filmmaking has been needing for many years.”
- Evan Davis, Bronxville, NY
“Long live the anti-Spielberg!
Please give me three hours!” - Roger
Lonak, Chicago
Match Point (#8)
“How anyone could consider this to be anything
other than a travesty is beyond me. Yes, it’s
likely better than anything Woody has done since
he last did this film, and yes, the tension of
the climax is potent, but did anyone ever bother
to look at the turgid script and lack of any sort
of character development? Is the concept of luck
worth considering when there’s no basis
for choice? Or is everything in the world really
as thinly conceived as Woody maintains? The whole
film smacked of insincerity and a complex lack
of grounding. Please, oy vey, and give me back
the beat my heart skipped.” - Ivar Zeile,
Denver
Land of the Dead
“As far as social commentary goes, this
pathetic gorefest is about as clever as an episode
of Diff’rent Strokes.”
- Steve Lennart, Warrenville, IL
Munich (#9)
“This year, it was the ‘prestige’
Spielberg that outshined the ‘popcorn’
Spielberg (War of the Worlds). Not perfect
by any stretch, but when it finds its grooves,
this film really pops. Has Hollywood’s whiz
kid finally grown up?” - Daniel Wible,
West Chester, PA
The Squid and the Whale
(#7)
“No other film comes to mind that so rawly,
honestly, and devastatingly portray the effects
of divorce. Often, I thought that Noah Baumbach
was ripping off elements of my own life for his
screenplay! Every character bleeds and causes
bleeding, even Jeff Daniels’s tyrant, failed
writer Bernard Berkman. Jesse Eisenberg and Owen
Kline are like my brother and me, too precocious
for our own good, and acting out the rage we don’t
understand on our parents, and the world.”
- Evan Davis
Tropical Malady (#29)
“Both unobtrusively heavy and deceptively
light, the most inventive love story, or even
plainly work of art, to come out of cinema in
recent years. Weerasethakul once again proves
to be a master of a kind of sensuous cinema, conveying
the feeling of the sun on one’s skin, the
sound of trees in the mid-afternoon, the sight
of a friendly face from a moving bus.” -
Jacob Hovind
War of the Worlds
“While North American leaders began to stumble
due to different forms of arrogance, corruption,
and idiocy, it wasn’t at all unexpected
that the most prominent theme at the movies was
that of the problematic patriarch. Throughout
2005 viewers were represented with masculine incompetence
or indifference, often when dealing with family
dynamics. It was fascinating reflection of our
times to witness the difficulty fathers encountered
while attempting to protect their offspring, occasionally
being most responsible for the harmful circumstances
that surrounded their children. Quite often paternal
immaturity and awkwardness were center stage,
as in Spielberg’s occupation allegory, War
of the Worlds. Patriarchal deceit, deception,
and delusion were the primary focus of both A
History of Violence and Caché,
as Cronenberg included an unsettling expression
bestowed from father to son, while Haneke
left us wondering what the kids would do next.
From Noah Baumbach’s honest depiction of
his pitifully insecure elitist father, to the
charmingly catatonic Don Juan who was justly abandoned
by his potential progeny in Jarmusch’s Broken
Flowers, to the childish morality of first-time
father Bruno in L’Enfant, to the
foolish splendor of Richard Swersey’s hand
set ablaze as a ceremonial conclusion to his dissolved
marriage in Me And You. Last year’s
cinematic landscape was littered with father figures
who are inept and adrift.” - Chiranjit
Goswami
The 40-Year-Old Virgin &
Wedding Crashers
“News flash: Sex is comedy! And not in the
talky and humorless, Catherine Breillat kind of
way. These two are keepers, comedies that actually
bring the funny. In spades. Check your guilt at
the door.” - Daniel Wible
No Direction Home (#27)
“Further evincing television’s rising
competition with the official film industry, the
year’s best film debuted on PBS and was
shortly followed by a DVD release. Martin Scorsese’s
doc is nothing short of astonishing. Scorsese’s
greatest film since Goodfellas not only
has the ability to renew interest in Dylan, it
can create it. The film is just as much about
the Sixties as it is about Dylan. How could it
be any other way?” - Lucas Stensland,
Brooklyn, NY
The Beat That My Heart Skipped
(#24)
“This proves Europeans are better at remaking
American films better than vice versa!”
- Tilly Gokbudak, Cloverdale, VA
Crash (#17)
“This movie wasn’t so much about an
ensemble of characters as it was about the prejudices
that fester in all of us. One of only a handful
of movies that truly makes the audience feel like
they are looking into the mirror that is the cinema
screen.” - Hans Morgenstern
“A laughably contrived melodrama
riddled with grandstanding performances and stereotyped
characters marching around in clichéd scenarios.
A wretched film that insults their intelligence
of its viewers.” - Paul Iannone
The Intruder
“Denis’s film deals innovatively with
tropes of borders: interior/exterior, spiritual/corporeal,
the familiar/foreign. A metaphor for pregnancy
and/or miscarriage can be applied to the issues
explored. Louis is feminized by the impotency
revealed by his over-determined action/violence
that occurs only (seemingly) within his own mind.
Considering the film’s larger trope of death
and intrusion within one’s own body, a comparison
is aptly allowed for that of a woman who has felt
a child inside of her die. Louis’s dissociative
violence and psychosis allows for a filmic way
to utilize a male figure to incorporate singularly
female experience.” - Jessica Felrice
Harry Potter and the Goblet
of Fire
“The difference between a critic and an
audience member is that criticism must retain
its credibility, whereas an audience member can
like a film for all the ‘wrong’ reasons
and still feel glad of it. I loved the book so
I loved the film, all right?” - Johnston
Connelly, Palmerston, New Zealand
Alexander
“The director’s cut: Stone’s
best! Flawed, but the future will avenge this
work. Jolie does a great Polish accent.”
- Roger Lonak
Syriana (#14)
“Why did so many people call this film complex?
Are four interconnected storylines really that
hard to follow?” - Steve Norwood
The Holy Girl (#25)
“Worst picture of the year: Not only was
it a most contrived and immature use of visual
setups, the way it evoked sexual paranoia in the
audience at its screening at the 2004 NYFF was
truly bizarre.” - Amos Perrine, Charleston,
WV
Hustle & Flow
“A Rocky for the dirty South. Brewer,
Terrence Howard, and hip-hop guardian angel Mannie
Fresh managed to make a Hollywood movie without
Hollywood. You might have seen this tale before,
but rarely have the characters so earnestly compelled
you to root for them.” - Stephen Brower,
Santa Monica, CA
In My Country
“Boorman brings together two diametrically
opposed ideologues in a generically contrived
narrative that somehow addresses global concerns
with depth and charisma. A poet and journalist
together covering South Africa’s Truth and
Reconciliation Committee hearings is bound to
cause conflict. But seeing past difference is
what the film successfully posits as the best
way to avoid oppression. Boorman’s cinematography
has become so subtle, graceful, and revealing
that this film could be a helpful tutorial for
many modern directors of mindless excess.”
- Lucas Stensland
The Power of Nightmares
“Adam Curtis uses the medium as skillfully
and imaginatively (and as entertainingly) as anyone,
to posit breathtakingly provocative ideas that
can haunt a viewer for months.” - Randall
A. Byrn, New York
Me and You and Everyone
We Know (#13)
“Now I know why people blame film for inspiring
people to kill other people without reason or
thought.” - Roger Lonak
Head-On (#21)
“One legitimately bipolar movie. The scene
where Cahit and Sibel jump up and down exhorting
that ‘punk is not dead!’ is the year’s
most ecstatic movie moment.” - Josh
Timmermann
Saraband (#28)
“The aging of the actors (two of the world’s
finest) offscreen and the ease with which they
re-embody their characters disarmingly merges
reality with fiction, contributing movingly to
the sense of time’s passage. Bergman emphasizes
our inability to predict life’s sea changes
or the (re)appearances of the people who change
us. Yet rather than resign ourselves to inertia,
he also urges us to honor that voice inside that
compels us to fearlessly reach out.” -
Josef Braun
Capote (#6)
“Of course Philip Seymour Hoffman gets due
credit for grabbing the public’s interest.
Still, all aspects of the movie—from the
subtle score to the gloomy lighting and the tight
editing, not to mention the quiet but pregnant
interludes—call attention to the craftiness
of underrated director Bennett Miller.”
- Hans Morgenstern
Junebug (#23)
“Morrison’s folk art fish out of water
tale gets the South, and more specifically, North
Carolina, just right.” - Stephen Brower
Look at Me
“Agnès Jaoui again assembles an eccentric,
neurotic, and often pretentious group of hopeless
romantics. She’s the French Alan Rudolph.
Look at Me is a colorful look at complicated
Parisians who cannot help but judge people by
their appearance. It’s not as simplistic
as it sounds. Her film is so honest and perceptive
that the monumental defiance in its climax is
impossible to dismiss and wholly justifiable:
it should give us all pause.” - Lucas
Stensland
Tony Takitani
“Possibly one of the single most beautifully
crafted, poetic, and haunting films of the year.
This deceptively simple tale should be remembered
as one of the decade’s finest works of cinematic
art.” - Steve Norwood
The World
“The greatest statement in recent cinema
of how we’re living in this world right
now, with great sadness and small joys, in a small
world with a miserably ironic epic scope.”
- Jacob Hovind
Jarhead
“Sam Mendes’s film is either the most
shamelessly cliché-ridden war movie ever
made, or a deeply troublesome meditation on war
movies and their cultural digestion. Sam Fuller
famously contended that all war movies are, inadvertently,
recruitment films. Jarhead is the best
evidence yet.” - Josh Timmermann
Breakfast on Pluto
“Critics have condescendingly stated that
the world of the film was too harsh for delicate
Kitten. Again people are blinded by naive and
boring prejudices. When Kitten stood up to terrorists
in a farewell-to-arms scene, he did not arrive
at this point because of a lack of courage or
insight. Forget Batman, Kitten is 2005’s
real action hero: the one of pacifism.”
- Lucas Stensland
Constantine
“Didn’t you guys list this as one
of the must-see movies? Why?” - Johnston
Connelly
“That we Americans are reportedly
losing interest in world cinema at this time in
history is calamitous. Now especially is not the
time to retreat further into our cultural bubble.
Never has it been more crucial for us to comprehend
that we share the globe—and fuckin’
revel in it.” - Redbeard Simmons
“2005 was the best year I
can remember for movies. Most of the films that
ranked #11-20 on my list would easily have made
my top ten in 2004. How could anyone complain
about a year that gave us strong work by Wong
Kar Wai, Tim Burton, Werner Herzog, Todd Solondz,
Nick Park, George Romero, Park Chan-wook, David
Cronenberg, and Ingmar Bergman?” - Will
Sloan, Toronto
“I can barely come up with
ten 2005 movies that I moderately liked. So you’ll
forgive me if there’s a decidedly underwhelmed
feel to this list. This was not a fun year-end
list to compile.” - Michael Pielocik
“We seem to be on the
verge of something special. In fact, here’s
my prediction: 2006 is the new 1966. Think about
it.” - Eric Allen Hatch, Baltimore
© 2006 by the Film Society of Lincoln Center
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