In 2005:
Saddam Hussein was tried for crimes committed against humanity during his time in power;
YouTube launched;
Prince Charles married Camilla Parker Bowles;
Former FBI agent Mark Felt publicly identified himself as Deep Throat;
Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans;
The Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published twelve controversial drawings of the prophet Muhammad;
Angela Merkel was elected Chancellor of Germany;
Logo debuted;
Lost won the Emmy for Best Dramatic Series;
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI;
Alma Deutscher and Noah Jupe were born;
While Johnny Carson, Arthur Miller, Hunter S. Thompson, Teresa Wright, Johnnie Cochran, Terri Schiavo, Pope John Paul II, Saul Bellow, Anne Bancroft, Luther Vandross, James Doohan, Peter Jennings, William Rehnquist, Robert Wise, Rosa Parks, Eddie Guerrero, Pat Morita, and Richard Pryor died.
The following is a list of my top ten movies released in 2005:
10) Me and You and Everyone We Know
Shoe salesman Richard (John Hawkes), a recently divorced father of two boys, begins a tentative relationship with Christina (director Miranda July) a cab-driver and amateur video artist. His oldest son, fourteen-year-old Peter, experiments sexually while six-year-old Robby, starts an innocent, but awkward chat room relationship with an older woman.
Focused on the detachment and isolation of the modern world and the way sex and intimacy function in it, this feels like a more explicit version of the fantastic Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Single mom Josey Aimes (Charlize Theron) takes a job at the iron mines and fights for acceptance from her mostly male coworkers. Her father, Hank (Richard Jenkins), is torn between a desire to protect his daughter and his own sense of right and wrong, while her struggle awakens long dormant feelings of neglect and disenfranchisement in her mother, Alice (Sissy Spacek).
A movie about a class action sexual harassment lawsuit doesn’t sound entertaining, but it was because of the stellar cast.
Frances McDormand is exceptional as Glory Dodge one of Josey’s coworkers suffering from ALS and Jeremy Renner’s brief turn as asshole misogynist Bobby Sharp effectively underscores the dramatic tension.
Woody Harrelson was so effortless as Woody Boyd, it’s hard not to associate him with the role, but since Cheers ended he’s been in projects as diverse as Natural Born Killers (1994), The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996), Kingpin (1996), The Messenger (2009), Zombieland (2009), and True Detective. His talent and versatility shouldn’t be doubted and he’s great as Bill White, Josey’s reluctant attorney.
It’s impossible to imagine someone could smear feces in a women’s bathroom without facing immediate consequences, but this was not always the case. Thirty years ago, attitudes about the role of women were markedly different and efforts to change those attitudes were met with hostility. Movies like this help us remind us how far we’ve come.
A funny thing happened about halfway through this ironic, slightly bitter satire; the characters were so engaging and the heartbreaking realities of divorce so genuine, it became a tragedy about the pain of broken families.
Laura Linney hits it out of the park as Joan Berkman, the long-suffering wife of a once respected author who wants to stretch her wings.
Jeff Daniels is perfectly cast as Bernard Berkman, who arrogantly inflates his own value as a writer. He doles out unsolicited wisdom to his children, especially his oldest son, Walt (Jesse Eisenberg), but fails to connect with them on an emotional level, turning everything into a distant abstraction.
A tragedy about the pain of divorce and a satire of the broken family films of the late twentieth century, this is an effective look at relationships in a postmodern world.
7) The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
I first read and fell in love with C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when I was seven years old.
Having spent twenty-five plus years with the characters, this film is a perfect encapsulation of what I wanted a film adaptation to be. The effects are beautiful and the casting is great, especially Tilda Swinton as the White Witch and Liam Neeson as Aslan.
Unfortunately, the middle books in the series, closer to medieval allegory than twentieth century fantasy, dragged and never connected with me in the same way. The film series has suffered a similar fate.
Wealthy retiree Don Johnston (Bill Murray) plans to spend his twilight years in relative anonymity, until he receives a letter from an unnamed former girlfriend informing him he has a nineteen-year-old son. He ignores the letter, but his neighbor, Winston (Jeffrey Wright), hypothesizes the most likely authors of the letter and prods Don into visiting them.
Searching for more information about his son, Don visits Laura (Sharon Stone) Dora (Frances Conroy), Carmen (Jessica Lange) and Penny (Tilda Swinton).
It’s a melancholic look at relationships, and, in a world where Maggie Gyllenhal is too old to play the love interest of a man twenty years older than her, a rare opportunity for middle-aged actresses to take center stage in a semi-romantic film.
My love of Bill Murray and the wry comedy of his mature years helps make this a personal favorite.
5) Junebug
While on a business trip to recruit a client for her art gallery, Madeleine visits her new husband’s family in North Carolina.
The amazing performance of Amy Adams as Madeleine’s sister-in-law, Ashley, elevates this quirky family drama / culture clash into a delightful rumination on life and purpose. She breathes life and vitality into a nervous, small-town girl who naively believes a baby will solve her problems, turning this potential caricature into heartbreak.
4) Caché
When Georges Laurent receives videocassettes of his home under surveillance, his otherwise successful life spirals out of control. While the film never concretely answers the question of who sent the videotapes, they set in a motion a chain of events which forces people to come to terms with long-buried secrets and consequences of past actions.
As he considers who might have a motive to harm or threaten him, Georges recalls an Algerian orphan, Majid who briefly lived with his family after his parents were killed in the Paris massacre of 1961. A jealous Georges convinced his parents Majid had tuberculosis so they would send him away and his guilt over this behavior poisons his relationships with his son Pierrot and wife Anne (Juliette Bincohe).
Director Michael Haneke’s coldly rational film pointedly reminds us our past trails just behind and often catches us, no matter what convoluted path we take to avoid it.
3) Brick
As Brendan Frye (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) investigates the death of his ex-girlfriend (Emilie de Ravin), he uncovers a wicked plot of deception which places him in the middle of a power struggle between a local drug dealer, The Pin (Lukas Haas), and his enforcer, Tug.
Lukas Haas gives a fine supporting performance and Emilie de Ravin does her best work since getting off the island, but the reason to watch is Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Already well-known for his work as Tommy Solomon, his performance as Brendan Frye catapulted him into the upper echelon of Hollywood.
Rian Johnson self-financed this hardboiled detective story in the mold of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe set in a contemporary California high school. It’s a spiritual cousin to the pseudo noir, Veronica Mars, but while Mars is a tongue in cheek homage, while this is a serious entry to the genre.
Like the best noirs, the plot borders on ridiculous, but it entrances with indelible characters and crisp dialogue; the question, “what’s it about?” is as superfluous as asking what a Jackson Pollock painting is about. The story is secondary to the dangerous, paranoid atmosphere.
2) Sympathy for Lady Vengeance
Mr. Baek murders a young child and blackmails Lee Geum-ja into taking the blame by threatening to murder her daughter.
When Geum-ja is released from prison, she unleashes an elaborate plan of revenge using the favor she’s carefully curried from other recently released inmates (including Baek’s wife).
When she discovers Baek was responsible for the murder of other children, Geum-ja alters her plans and arranges for each of the families affected by his actions to share in her vengeance.
I love Oldboy (2003), but this is my favorite film in Park Chan-wook’s Vengeance Trilogy; the final thirty minutes are among the most compelling of any film released in the last twenty five years.
This film asks very difficult questions about the ability of vengeance to heal and mitigate grief. Just thinking about the scene with the family members of the deceased children sitting in an abandoned room debating the fate of their tormentor gives me chills. Park argues a collective decision, with shared responsibility and consequence, is preferable to the actions of an individual, suggesting the fine line between justice and vengeance may be predicated on the number of people involved in the decision.
Writer Jonathan Foer (Elijah Wood) travels to Eastern Europe to find Augustine, the woman who saved his Jewish grandfather during the Holocaust. He’s guided on his journey to Trachimbrod by an eccentric, anti-semitic grandfather, his English-speaking grandson, Alex (Eugene Hutz), and their bizarre dog, Sammy Davis Jr.
As Jonathan uncovers the truth of his grandfather’s past, he inadvertently unearths long buried family secrets for Alex and his grandfather.
Adapted from the semi-autobiographical novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, this is a powerful film about the echoes of our ancestors. We are the sum of the actions of an incredibly complex and long line of people, a link in a chain which stretches before and after. Understanding the past, and our connection to it, illuminates the future.
The first half is a frenetic farce, but midway through the film turns into a poignant tale of identity, and first time director Liev Schreiber does a great job of switching gears without stripping gears. It’s not obvious the film has undergone such a one hundred and eighty degree turn until the final act, when you realize the early energy has been absent for at least fifteen minutes. The history of Augustine and Jonathan’s grandfather is so compelling, I forgot the early fun of Sammy Davis Jr., the inappropriate, curmudgeonly grandfather, and lovable, slightly clueless Alex.
Ostensibly, Elijah Wood is the star of the film, but Eugene Hutz, leader of a gypsy rock band, Gogol Bordello, is the highlight, and his outstanding work is the soul of the film. His performance is most affected by the tonal change; he has to grow from a goofy, American-obsessed Ukrainian (oddly reminiscent of The Festrunk Brothers) to a thoughtful young man who understands and accepts the burdens life has placed on him. It’s a phenomenal and illuminating transformation.