2005 Film List (1 Viewer)

[Adam_S]

Yeah it's actually playing in the background right now, my sister is watching it, just listening to the film, it's brilliant. The scene between the locksmith and his daughter is pure magic, one of the best of the year, the ludicris stuff is damn funny, it's a very good film, I like it more I think about it. Also really like Ryan Phillipe.

 

[Brook K]

I was impressed with the first part too, but the 2nd part is so bad that it killed any interest I would have in ever seeing it again and I would always rather see a film that starts poorly and ends well than the other way a round.

For me Crash is the worst film of '05. Incredibly contrived, striving to be oh-so-important, while actually being completely empty and full of roles rather than real human beings. The dialogue never feels natural and is full of speeches and ponderous pronouncements. I've avoided most anything that looked stinky this year so I haven't seen a number of films that probably are truly bad, but Crash irritated the hell out of me.

Four Brothers (2005) - Once one gets past the plot conceit of 4 interracial brothers coming together to avenge their mother's death with some old fashioned vigilante justice, John Singleton's latest is a pretty good action film. The actors are not exceptional, but fit their roles and deliver plenty of fun action dialogue. The film provides a detective type hunt for the killers through a web of crimes and conspiracies along with more visceral thrills, the best of which is a killer car chase on the ice-slicked streets of Detroit in Winter. - B

 

[Adam_S]

Bewitched - :star::star::star:

much better than I'd been led to believe, I laughed consistently throughout. The film is actually quite charming and I enjoy the high-concept of the film, probably a much better idea than yet another tired adaptation. Really a straight adaptation would be they get married and Darren finds out and Endora plays a bit prank to try to separate them which works for a while and then they realize they have to get back together and happy ending. This approach of 'remaking' Bewitched is much more charming and original.

The big detriment to the film is Will Ferrell's endless parade of mugging and overacting--it's much worse than Jim Carrey ever was. While appropriate for films like Elf, it just needs to be dialed back here at most moments. Nicole Kidman is an utter delight and just perfect here. Shirley Maclaine and Michael Caine do wonderfully but Kidman's supporting friends are just annoying and poorly written. Carrell as Arthur is outstanding.

standard comedy programmer but just enough charm to make it quite enjoyable.

Adam

 

[Adam_S]

I wish instead of top twentys instead of top tens at the end of the year, there's too many excellent films that always get left off.

 

[Adam_S]

Must Love Dogs - :star::star::star:

Charming film that's overwritten but in a sort of a delightful way. It's no great romantic comedy, not even in the league of Forget Paris (also overwritten), but it has great chemistry and is a lot of fun despite the drawback of being aware of the writers just off screen (so to speak).

 

[Seth Paxton]

The Producers
7.5 of 10
(at the Arclight which gets a 10 out of 10 as a theater, my 2nd visit was even nicer than my first during HTF 2004)

I hadn't seen the musical but this was mostly what I expected, just the original with some roles condensed and a bunch of filler songs to make it into a musical. Some of the songs/scenes are great, others feel forced in, and generally the running time is just too long.

I don't get the Broderick love as he was far below the Wilder effort, but Lane is strong in his part. The rest of the cast is good, though Ferrell is exceptional and the main reason for seeing this version.

In the end it wasn't enough new and special vs. filler and drawn out to really excite me. Fun to watch, but the original delivers most of the best gags and Wilder is the better neurotic accountant.


Mr. and Mrs. Smith
6 of 10
At its best this is a funny tongue in cheek action film, but too often it feels forced and struggles to move along naturally. I didn't buy into the chemistry between Pitt and Jolie, despite apparent real emotions beginning during filming.

Some of the best parts are Vince Vaughn who is in top "relationship advice" form.

March of the Penguins
9 of 10
Even if you don't think about how difficult the filming itself must have been, this is nature documentary filmmaking in top form. The narrative is clear and the film editing to present the story is impeccable, so much that it flows like a scripted and acted film. It's impossible not to be fascinated by the behaviors and motions of the penguins, and of course the environment itself makes for some spectacular cinema.

I need to see Grizzly Man and Murderball, but this is right up there with Inside Deep Throat for my favorite documentary of the year. Quite a strong batch of docs in 2005.

 

[Adam_S]

rewatched Family Stone today and it bumped up to number four in my year, it was at five

also rewatched Mad Hot Ballroom, excellent film, but best on a first viewing, no real reason to see it a third time unless introducing it to someone, still it's charming and worth watching again.

 

[Jason Seaver]

Updated for the first time in 11 months.

Yikes. I had no idea I'd let it go that long.

 

[Brook K]

The Exorcism of Emily Rose: Unsuccessful mesh of courtroom drama and horror film. Utterly fails as horror with zero atmosphere or discernible style. The courtroom scenes are formulaic but more successful due to the earnest performance of Campbell Scott and a solitary knockout scene between Laura Linney and Colm Feore. - C+

Memoirs of a Geisha: A somewhat pretty package holding a generically told melodramatic story arc. Perhaps compromised by being told through a Western viewpoint and saddling Asian actresses with hammy English dialogue. Still, the charm of Ken Watanabe and seeing Gong Li vamp it up, even in a one dimensional role, makes the film watchable. - C+

King Kong: The Kong effect is outstanding and the CGI NYC is certainly an achievement, but I found nearly every action scene in the film either utterly ridiculous or overloaded. Jack Black has some nice moments as Denham and I generally liked the additional backstory, but every character in the piece and the story itself, are overwhelmed by the effects and Jackson's tendency to overstuff the frame with visual material. The love story never worked for me for a second and generated additional stupidity like the vaudeville act and "ice skating" scenes. And why are the Skull Islanders portrayed as murderous, inhuman savages with no culture or civilization? - C+

 

[Adam_S]

Not only that, they had BAD TEETH, pretty much every negative and false stereotype is nailed. I challenge anyone to find any tropical island culture that had no contact with civilized man that had bad teeth. it's a virtually impossible occurence when there's no access to refined carbohydrates and most of the diet is sea based.

Also agree on your Memoirs of a Geisha assessment.

Adam

 

[Elizabeth S]

I presume Jason Whyte's not around the forum? (He hasn't updated his first post since May.)

Does someone want to start the 2006 Film List?

 

[Adam_S]

Cinderella Man - :star::star::star::star:

Really excellent and well made film. it's basically Rocky and not quite as compelling, but still a damn good story very well told. More impressed with Reese Witherspoon and Paul Giamatti than Russell Crowe who has been better, but is still excellent here. Good script from Goldsmith, good direction all around. Excellent editing on the fights, very nicely done. Strong but very bland flawless film, at least the ending doesn't go off into lala 'the audience is retarded' land that Million Dollar Baby chose, on the other hand its still not as compelling as that film.

Upside of Anger - :star::star::star:

Solid film with a bit of a surprise ending, mostly its all about the script and performances but well made all around I was just never really interested nor did I care about any of the characters though I found Costner charming and funny, it's clear why he is an A list star and none of the other participants are.

Adam

 

[Travis_S]

Yeah, last year the 2005 film list and Track the Films you Watch in 2005 threads co-existed. It should be the same thing this year. I was thinking about starting a 2006 list but was waiting for someone else to. I'll start one now.

 

[Seth Paxton]

King Kong
7.5 of 10
One word - overwritten.

There are too many extra characters, too many redundent scenes, too many non-essential scenes, and what is there often runs on 2 minutes too long.

The original is McKee template at its best. You're on the boat with the girl in just a few minutes, the entire opening premise laid out. Here there must be about 30 minutes of character background spoonfeeding that it utterly pointless. Did we need to meet this grandpa type in the girl's background? Is her plight not enough just as a girl on the street stealing food just to live, instead we must know the details of how she got that way and how far she's almost willing to go?

Get on with it already. Really AWFUL screenwriting there. The second the plucky young shipmate and the rugged veteran sailor who found him as a stowaway make their appearance you're hard pressed not to groan.

On top of that just edit some of this stuff down. The action scenes run on and on and on at times which kills the "pop" of a great action moment. And the "Bronto run" features some dreadful green-screen work and yucky CGI.


Kong on the other hand is brilliantly created. The CGI for him is a big reason this film remains a 7.5 and it will make you wonder why Jackson wasn't in a bigger hurry to get to him in the first place.

I did feel for Kong and the film got increasingly better as it went along, with less and less pointless scenes showing up. That's not to say that a certain "skating" scene in the park won't feel like needless extra emotional manipulation in the last act, but at least its not 80% waste like the first act is full of.

So Kong = great. Jack Black is pretty impressive despite having his own character rewritten in a rather silly way. Watts is okay, but rather bland by the standards of her other work.

This should have been a 4 character piece ala Closer, that tight. Just some extras to take up space with zero development. All the emotional dynamics should be with Kong, Watts, Black and Brody. EVERY other character introduced in Jackson's film is completely overwritten and distracting.

Pry them out, trim a lot of the story/action scene fat off, and in there you have a pretty good remake of a classic film.

Very frustrating to see it turn out like this. At least the original is out on a fantastic DVD and displays what great, crisp storytelling is like.

 

[Seth Paxton]

I didn't get why there was so much spin off onto the "Films you watch" thread in the first place. I'm all for people documenting that stuff, but I need a place that is only talking about the films of THIS YEAR.

Mentioning things here is fine, and mentioning the current year views in the other thread is appropriate. But do a copy and paste of entries on your "track the films you watch" into the thread for just the current year's films.

I don't want to sift through people's feelings about seeing Halloween, Citizen Kane, This is Cinerama, or Sixteen Candles for the first time just to find out what they thought of Brokeback Mtn or Syriana.


One thread is a group diary of film viewing in general, the other is about the crop of films for a given year. Just like the AFI or S&S challenges wouldn't be folded into the "track the films you watch" thread either.

 

[Brook K]

I'll continue participating in both threads, in the same way.

I agree with the jist of your Kong comments Seth, the backstory was additional bloat not necessarily needed in a 3 hour+ film, but I found that material (at least the Jack Black moviemaking stuff) more worthwhile than a lot of the utterly ridiculous Skull Island stuff.

I liked Upside of Anger more and Cinderella Man less than you did Adam, but agree with a good deal of what you wrote. Maybe I'd like Cinderella Man more if I could see this Reese Witherspoon cut.

 

[Adam_S]

another fabulous example of why posting in the AM (before dawn) is bad for me.

Thought of a good description for Crash today, "it's the best Max Fischer production ever made!"

I read the American Cinematographer article on Walk the Line, just patheticly poor, Phedon Papamichael comes across as bland and uninteresting as his bland cinematography. Cinematography is part of the film arts, use it to help your movie, Sideways managed it, Capote managed it, you're not trying to make Tommy Boy here, but damn if that's about the level reached.

Now I'd say Walk the Line is overall a little better than Ray, but Ray was a compelling film to watch, I can't say that I'm constantly compelled by Walk the Line, rather occasionally bored (and this still when I'm really interested in the subject!). It's no wonder the film is getting no awards notice, there's nothing visually memorable about the film outside of its advertising.

A damn shame for a well constructed film.

There are a lot of good movies out there, but not many I'm interested in rewatching often. I think that's a problem, many well made films, but few that people are connecting to passionately (still need to see mountain and munich)

Adam

 

[Jason Seaver]

Added Munich, which is excellent, and In My Country (under its original title of Country of My Skull), which I probably would give more than two stars if I saw it today, but that's how it struck me when I saw it way back in April '04 (it got swallowed when I switched to an automated list-file-generator and forgot to put it in the database).

 

[Seth Paxton]

Adam, agree with the Ray-WTL comparison in terms of script (better with WTL) vs look (better with Ray). Ray had great musical sequences that worked better than the story set up for them. WTL's great musical moments are completely created by the story (not talking about the actors, who were great) rather than the photography.


I have Island in, Dukes on the way, and I'm going to try to dig in to the meat of the Oscar flicks missing from my list in the next 3-4 days. I'm going into hardcore movie mode to get on track.

Then I need to apply that to the S&S stuff with 2 discs just sitting here waiting on me week after week.

 

[Brook K]

Had Wednesday off from work and found a theater that started showing at 10 am so I was able to squeeze in 2 movies before picking the kids up from school. Still have a lot of work to do with Walk the Line, Munich, Brokeback, The Producers, and a number of smaller releases to see.

I have 2046 and Broken Flowers coming from Netflix after seizing the queue back from my wife who took it over while I was out of town. The first 20 spots on my queue are now taken up by 2005 films as I'm putting off older movies, my Miike festival and a blaxploitation retrospective in a catchup effort.

Wolf Creek (2005) - Had seen some raves about this recent Australian horror flick that had me excited, only to be let down yet again. Two of the three main characters are somewhat likeable but it's your basic young people stuck in the wilderness get kidnapped, tortured, escape from, hunted, etc.... by your basic crazy killer who attempted and failed to become a compelling horror villain. - C

Syriana (2005) - Technically well done and strongly acted but a bit too stuffed and abstract with it's multiple storylines. It could have stuck to a more central theme and driven that home better and more directly than diluting its focus by having to deal with so many characters and situations in 2 hours. I never really found it confusing as others have complained about; just too overwritten and manufactured for its own good. If you're going to attack the government and the abuses of misdirected capitalism, just go ahead and do it rather than trotting out easy targets like villainous middle managers, an oil exec, and the always reliable greedy corrupt lawyers.

Thought it also erred in detailing all this corruption and 'world's a terrible place stuff" for pretty much the entire running time and then still try and have an uplifting ending that doesn't address any of the points of the film. Delivers drama and the pleasure of watching a collection of very good actors ply their trade, but ultimately unsuccessful as a "message" film. - B-

You make very good points about the flippant and disingenuous treatment of religion in the film, Adam.