It seems that for at least the past few years, you won't find a year-end movie review that doesn't bemoan the idea that it's been a terrible year for the motion picture. Perhaps this view is influenced by the fact that there has been a steady decline in box office receipts...or maybe it's just that with resources like Netflix it's easier than ever to find and watch movies in the comfort of home, thus decreasing the likelihood that late-year Oscar worthy releases are seen by a large audience in their original theatrical run.

A closer look by the discriminating fan suggests that there remains, as much as ever, an abundance of jaw-droppingly creative (Sin City, Kung Fu Hustle), thought-provoking (Capote, Brokeback Mountain), and wildly entertaining (King Kong, War of the Worlds) films in 2005. And that's just the mainstream fare. 05 might be remembered as the year of the Documentary with the filmmakers of Enron- The Smartest Guys in the Room, Murderball, Grizzly Man, Born Into Brothels and March of the Penguins (among many others) all challenging Michael Moore and Erroll Morris' supreme place in the genre. A look overseas reveals that Hollywood might not be the best first stop in your movie search. A click on the Foreign prompt unearths some absolute gems in 05, from the Danish Brothers to the Japanese Nobody Knows and the Korean Oldboy.

What makes the SOMB a cool resource is that you will find at least one person who loves each of these diverse films...and, better yet, can explain why. So pull back the curtain...or patiently wait for my lazy (but really busy...honestly ) ass to post (at, of course, a much slower rate than the Good Doctor) these, the SOMB TOP 40 Films of 2005.

First, is it too late to vote

"Your list sucks. Not that I'd vote, but still..."

Sincerely,
Tony

Yeah, I don't do this for etc polls.

asshole

hahahaha

"Damaged young boy turns into damaged and embittered adult who seeks refuge in a fantasy land influenced by school books, children's literature, and some classics..."








40. In the Realms of the Unreal

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390123/


From John McMurtrie of The San Francisco Chronicle:

Only three photos of Henry Darger are known to exist. They show a small, mustachioed man, his shoulders hunched, a timid, wary look in his eyes. When the retired janitor, who lived alone in the same rented room for decades, died in 1973, his neighbors discovered something far more revealing about the recluse than the simple black-and-white snapshots: They found journals, an autobiography, a few hundred watercolors he had painted and, most staggering, a 15,000-page, typed, single-spaced novel.
The mystery of who Darger was and what his art is about is at the center of Jessica Yu's absorbing and exquisite documentary, "In the Realms of the Unreal," which takes its title from Darger's novel. The film is a thoughtful and inspired exploration of the man's life and leaves the viewer with a sense of wonder about the lives of countless people with unknown talents that deserve recognition.

Darger's childhood was one of hardship. Born in 1892, he was expelled from a Catholic orphanage for being undisciplined, then was taken to the Illinois Asylum for Feeble-Minded Children. After several years of abuse, he ran away from the asylum, walking the 175 miles from Decatur, Ill., to Chicago. At 17, he got a job as a janitor at a Catholic hospital. It's at this point that he began working on his life's opus, "In the Realms of the Unreal."

"The Realms" is a fantastical epic about the child-slave rebellion of seven Vivian sisters against the godless Glandelinian army. Because Darger had never had formal art training , he clipped photos and artwork from magazines, newspapers and comic books to illustrate his story. He taught himself to copy images, pasting his collage drawings into old phone books. For his narrative, he borrowed story lines from "The Wizard of Oz" and "Uncle Tom's Cabin," among other works.

Darger's crowded, colorful artwork, including some paintings that are 10 feet long, is alternately childlike and disturbing. Fanciful flying creatures provoke smiles, as do the names of Darger's characters, such as Gen. Pighead Boomer (with the evil army) and Gen. Gingersnap (with the Christian brigade).

Other paintings, by contrast, are horrific, showing children being slaughtered in numerous ways. Darger's mother died when giving birth to his younger sister, who was put up for adoption; clearly, he was wrestling with these awful truths in his work, acting as both a protector and punisher. (It also pained Darger -- and caused him to doubt his devout Catholic faith -- that the church denied him the right to adopt any children.)

Through highly creative but respectful animation, Yu brings Darger's artwork alive, with battle sounds and voice-overs fleshing out the scenes. The cut-out, cartoonish characters occasionally make whimsical appearances in old footage of Chicago, giving the documentary a liveliness and originality that many nonfiction films sorely lack (then again, the high production values in this gorgeous film, also beautifully shot, do not come cheaply).

The choice of the child actress Dakota Fanning ("I Am Sam") as the film's narrator is brilliant; her voice is youthful and innocent, yet the material she's reading is mature beyond her years, giving her a precociousness that matches Darger's young, rebellious heroines. Equally strong is the actor Larry Pine, who infuses Darger's voice with weariness and bitterness. The score, composed by Jeff Beal, is appropriately haunting and lilting.

To her credit, Yu makes only limited use of traditional talking heads -- people who speculate as to whether Darger was mentally ill and whether he in fact liked children. For the most part, though, she lets Darger and his art do the talking. And that, alone, is plenty to captivate an audience.

Metacritic Rating- 74

Ranked Highest by:
Yancy- #4

"I don't see the point in living if I can't be beautiful."







39. Howl's Moving Castle

From the 4-star review by Michael Wilmington of The Chicago Tribune:

Hayao Miyazaki's "Howl's Moving Castle" is a great animated feature—and one made, obviously, as much for older audiences as very young ones. But this wondrous movie probably shouldn't be put in age brackets at all. It's perfect for anyone with a youthful heart and a rich imagination.

Though highly reminiscent of Japan's whimsical genius' last two films, 1997's "Princess Mononoke" and 2001's "Spirited Away," it's even more densely virtuosic. This new film transports us to a land of British wizards, witches and radiant countryside, with more wit and artistry, feeling and warmth than the entire Harry Potter movie series. At its best, "Howl" suggests "Alice in Wonderland" crossed with both "The Wizard of Oz" and Kurosawa's "The Hidden Fortress"—a tale of a plucky little girl who enters a world of wonders, realized with such an astonishing mix of humor, imagination and visual grandeur that a lot of it takes your breath away.

The film is adapted from Diana Wynne Jones' 2000 novel about a teenage girl, Sophie (voiced by Emily Mortimer), who works in her late father's hat shop in a British port town that vaguely resembles the French region Alsace. The movie begins with a deceptively languorous air, as if it were a cartoon version of Jane Austen. The city is idyllic, the ocean picturesque and young Sophie falls in love with a handsome wizard, Howl (Christian Bale), who rescues her from boorish local troopers.

But when Howl swoops Sophie into the air and above the clouds and when we later encounter a mysterious door that opens into four kingdoms, the magic begins to kick in—and Miyazaki conveys it with such joy and ease that we're swept right into his new world. Soon, danger enters poor Sophie's previously mundane life and she's bewitched and turned into an elderly woman (voiced by Jean Simmons) by the vindictive, over-dressed and weight-challenged Witch of the Waste (Lauren Bacall). Against the frenzied turmoil of an ongoing air war—in which the King of Sophie's unnamed (but obviously British) country is trying to recruit all British magic-makers, including the reluctant Howl—the now-wizened Sophie flees to the country in search of youth or rescue.

What she does find is Howl's moving castle, an amazing contraption that is an intricate, bulging domicile on crane-like legs that wanders the countryside like a Victorian version of one of the war machines in "The Empire Strikes Back."

With old Sophie inside the castle are Turnip, a mute but endlessly helpful scarecrow, and Howl's crew: the resourceful boy Markl (Josh Hutcherson) and the smart-aleck talking fire, Calcifer (voiced by Billy Crystal, playing the role he was born to play, with fiery wit). Pursuing them are the forces of the Witch of the Waste and the malicious minions of the king's honey-tongued minister, Madame Suliman (Blythe Danner).

"Howl's Moving Castle" is a pacifist/feminist war story. Miyazaki presents the war as a cruel joke, manipulated opportunists who don't give a damn about the orphans caught up in their storm. But Miyazaki also indulges all our appetites for fantasy adventure and action pyrotechnics and, in centering the story on Sophie, a young girl trapped in the body of an old woman, he makes a telling comment on the ways youth and age unite in a healthy personality.

When Sophie becomes old, her personality changes; no longer a sexual object (or target), she's now salty, candid, clear-thinking, generous, direct and wise—and it's implied that when she becomes young again, those traits will serve her well. The English language version of "Howl" has been beautifully dubbed; perhaps the prize casting is Jean Simmons as the old Sophie. The one-time teenaged British beauty of 1949's "The Blue Lagoon" and 1946's "Great Expectations" brings out both youth and age in her role and makes them cozily interact.

"Howl's Moving Castle," a masterwork on many levels, confirms that Miyazaki is one of the most brilliant practitioners of the cartoon feature form ever. He's a cartoon artist who combines the great, hilarious popular touch of a Chuck Jones or an early Walt Disney with the penetrating imagination of avant-gardists such as Czechoslovakia's Jiri Trnka ("The Hand") and Jan Svankmajer ("Jabberwocky" and "Alice"). Miyazaki, who both wrote and directed "Howl," is, at 62, in his prime right now with his talents on full display here: his gift for creating beguiling characters and placing them with eerie believability against fanciful, spectacular fantasy backdrops.

"Howl" is a fascinating cultural hybrid. The early 20th Century villages and radiant landscapes Miyazaki and his crew create suggest classic book illustrations by artists like Tenniel, Cruikshank or E.H. Shepard, while summoning up a Britain embroiled in a fairy-tale World War I of zeppelins and airships. That storybook quality makes "Howl" seem doubly precious, the product of one vanishing art form—old-style illustration and classical hand-drawn movie animation—realized with the resources of the new digital techniques and lovingly shepherded for Miyazaki by the master of computer age cartoonery, Disney and Pixar's John "("Toy Story") Lasseter. The visual style, though, is classic Japanese anime, made by the form's reigning master. Like the great old craftsmen of Japanese art and cinema, Miyazaki entrances us by the delicate mastery of his art, while knocking our socks off with action and spectacle. He gorges our imagination, awakens our minds and ignites our emotions, making a film all ages should enjoy and none should miss.

Metacritic Rating- 80

Ranked Highest By:
TJENZ- #4

Cool start. Like the format.

agreed. very nicely done.

criminally low

Just stellar. Fantastic format, with an especially well-written intro. Geeked for this.

It does look very nice, I will agree.

I will vehemently disagree that 2005 was anything other than the worst year for film in my lifetime. Though this is entirely of my opinion and does not necessarily represent anyone else.

The only thing that's stopping me saying the same are the 2004 US films that didn't come here until this time last year.

Maybe 2005 is the year that lots of people realized what a good movie was, and what a bad movie was (but still worthy of paying 9 bucks for just to get nauseated, or to serve as a babysitter for the kids---hence monstrous openings for movies like Saw 2 and Cheaper By the Dozen 2).

yeah this is real nifty so far. It looks a lot prettier on the new board, for some reason.

Is it fair for me to say that, judging by your list, you didn't see a lot of independent and/or foreign films in 05?

I totally forgot to vote for this. I actually wanted to this time.

"Far better than any CNN or El Jazeera news account possibly could relate, the story of war transcends politics and is written in the soulful faces of parent-less children, many with broken limbs from exploding land mines".









38. Turtles Can Fly

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0424227/

From Roger Ebert's 4-star review:

I wish everyone who has an opinion on the war in Iraq could see "Turtles Can Fly." That would mean everyone in the White House and in Congress, and the newspaper writers, and the TV pundits, and the radio talkers, and you -- especially you, because you are reading this and they are not.

You assume the movie is a liberal attack on George W. Bush's policies. Not at all. The action takes place just before the American invasion begins, and the characters in it look forward to the invasion and the fall of Saddam Hussein. Nor does the movie later betray an opinion one way or the other about the war. It is about the actual lives of refugees, who lack the luxury of opinions because they are preoccupied with staying alive in a world that has no place for them.

The movie takes place in a Kurdish refugee camp somewhere on the border between Turkey and Iraq. That means, in theory, it takes place in "Kurdistan," a homeland that exists in the minds of the Kurds, even though every other government in the area insists the Kurds are stateless. The characters in the movie are children and teenagers, all of them orphans; there are adults in the camp, but the kids run their own lives -- especially a bright wheeler-dealer named Satellite (Soran Ebrahim), who organizes work gangs of other children.

What is their work? They disarm land mines, so they can be re-sold to arms dealers in the nearby town. The land mines are called "American," but this is a reflection of their value and not a criticism of the United States; they were planted in the area by Saddam Hussein, in one of his skirmishes with Kurds and Turks. Early in the film, we see a character named Hyenkov (Hirsh Feyssal), known to everyone as The Boy With No Arms, who gently disarms a mine by removing the firing pin with his lips.

Satellite pays special attention to a girl named Agrin (Avaz Latif), who is Hyenkov's sister. They have a little brother named Risa, who is carried about with his arms wrapped around the neck of his armless brother. We think he is their brother, that is, until we discover he is Agrin's child, born after she was raped by Iraqi soldiers while still almost a child herself. The armless boy loves Risa; his sister hates him, because of her memories.

Is this world beginning to take shape in your mind? The refugees live in tents and huts. They raise money by scavenging. Satellite is the most resourceful person in the camp, making announcements, calling meetings, assigning work, and traveling ceremonially on a bicycle festooned with ribbons and glittering medallions. He is always talking, shouting, hectoring, at the top of his voice: He is too busy to reflect on the misery of his life.

The village is desperate for information about the coming American invasion. There is a scene of human comedy in which every household has a member up on a hill with a makeshift TV antenna; those below shout instructions: "To the left! A little to the right!" But no signal is received. Satellite announces that he will go to town and barter for a satellite dish. There is a sensation when he returns with one. The elders gather as he tries to bring in a signal. The sexy music video channels are prohibited, but the elders wait patiently as Satellite cycles through the sin until he finds CNN, and they can listen for English words they understand. They hate Saddam and eagerly await the Americans.

But what will the Americans do for them? The plight of the Kurdish people is that no one seems to want to do much for them. Even though a Kurd has recently been elected to high office in Iraq, we get the sense he was a compromise candidate -- chosen precisely because his people are powerless. For years the Kurds have struggled against Turkey, Iraq and other nations in the region, to define the borders of a homeland the other states refuse to acknowledge.

From time to time the aims of the Kurds come into step with the aims of others. When they were fighting Saddam, the first Bush administration supported them. When they were fighting our ally Turkey, we opposed them. The New York Times Magazine recently ran a cover story about Ibrahim Parlak, who for 10 years peacefully ran a Kurdish restaurant in Harbert, Mich., only to be arrested in 2004 by the federal government, which hopes to deport him for Kurdish nationalist activities that at one point we approved. Because I support Ibrahim's case, I can read headlines on right-wing sites such as, "Roger Ebert Gives Thumbs Up to Terrorism."

I hope Debbie Schlussel, who wrote that column, sees "Turtles Can Fly." The movie does not agree with her politics, or mine. It simply provides faces for people we think of as abstractions. It was written and directed by Bahman Ghobadi, whose "A Time for Drunken Horses" (2000), was also about Kurds struggling to survive between the lines. Satellite has no politics. Neither does The Boy With No Arms, or his sister, or her child born of rape; they have been trapped outside of history.

Last week I was on a panel at the University of Colorado where an audience member criticized movies for reducing the enormity of the Holocaust to smaller stories. But there is no way to tell a story big enough to contain all of the victims of the Holocaust, or all of the lives affected for good and ill in the Middle East. Our minds cannot process that many stories. What we can understand is The Boy With No Arms, making a living by disarming land mines like the one that blew away his arms. And Satellite, who tells the man in the city he will trade him 15 radios and some cash for a satellite dish. Where did Satellite get 15 radios? Why? You need some radios?

Metacritic Rating- 85

The #1 film of:
helmet52

The Ides of Burgess Meredith as forecast by Easy Reader of The Electric Company









37. March of the Penguins

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0428803/

From the 4-star review by David Denby of The New Yorker:

Are we imitating them, or are they imitating us? The hugely successful French documentary “March of the Penguins” yields itself so readily to anthropomorphic readings that it’s hard to say where bird ends and man begins. With a reassuring smack!, the penguins emerge, one after another, from the ocean and hit the ice. It’s the first stage of what the movie presents as the routine, annual sublime—the trek across seventy miles of Antarctic wasteland to the thick-iced mating ground. As they shuffle across the terrain with bowed shoulders, the penguins look, from the rear, like shtetl Jews heading off to shul. Flopping to their bellies for greater speed, they could be kids taking a wave on a surfboard. When male and female find a partner, they stand with heads bowed before each other in what appears to be silent adoration. If we are moved, are we experiencing what they are feeling or what we are feeling? After some demurely photographed funny stuff, a baby is conceived. The egg is then transferred from mother to father, and, as the dad huddles for warmth with the other dads, balancing his package on his toes, the mom makes the long journey back to the water to eat, returning when she is ready to feed her hungry chick. Such scrupulous and selfless devotion to children would not seem out of place in lacrosse-mom precincts like Glen Cove or Montclair. Yet here’s the miracle: the extreme coldness and clarity of the air, and the translucent blues and searing whites of the landscape, lend the ritual, however mundane, familial, and instinct-driven, an aspect of eternal splendor. And, given the extreme difficulties that the filmmakers (led by Luc Jacquet) must have endured, the entire moviemaking enterprise has an aura of heroism, too. A perfect family movie, a perfect date movie, and one of the most eye-ravishing documentaries ever made.

Metacritic Rating- 79

Ranked Highest by:
JJH- #5

There is a God.











(he doesn't design penguins though.)

Thank god we got that out of the way.

"Thanks for coming, please stay for the end credits, if you're wondering who the best boy is, it's somebody's nephew, um, don't forget to validate your parking, and to all you good people in the Midwest, sorry we said fuck so much."



- "Well, for starters, she's been fucked more times than she's had a hot meal."
-"Yeah, I heard about that. It was neck-and-neck and then she skipped lunch."



"Don't worry, I saw Lord of the Rings. I'm not going to end this 17 times."





36. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0373469/

From the 4-star review by M.E. Russell of the Portland Oregonian:

After Shane Black's "Lethal Weapon," "The Last Boy Scout" and "The Long Kiss Goodnight" screenplays sold for ungodly sums in the '80s and '90s, he was (unfairly) blamed for everything excessive and dumb about the action-movie boom he helped create.
But Black had something most action scribes didn't: a distinctive voice and actual ideas.

Well. After ditching Hollywood for a decade, Black's back -- writing and directing the low-budget comedy thriller "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang."

And it's everything that was great about his earlier work. Only smarter.
This bloody, laugh-out-loud mystery starts like a high-concept comedy: While fleeing a botched toy-store burglary in L.A., an idiot thief named Harry (Robert Downey Jr.) hides out in a movie audition. And gets the lead role.

Soon, he's on a research ride-along with private eye "Gay" Perry (Val Kilmer). But after they see two masked men ditch a body, Black ditches the movie-industry comedy -- in favor of a twisty tangle of murder, frame-ups and lies, with poor Harry weathering bullets, amputations, electroshock torture and rejections from a loopy actress (Michelle Monaghan).

Black seems less interested in his mystery and more interested in his characters, who riddle each other with acid one-liners. He makes wry sport of L.A.'s hopeless dreamers, largely through Monaghan's manic woman-child, a 34-year-old never-been whose career peaked with a beer commercial.

This is one of Downey's most enjoyable performances, and one of Kilmer's funniest. It's a relationship comedy wrapped in sharp talk and gunplay, a triumphant comeback for Black, and one of the year's best movies.



"Shane Black creates a movie that is defiantly smartass and too cool for the room. I couldn't have liked it more"- Peter Travers of Rolling Stone

Metacritic Rating- 74

The #1 Film of:
Elemeno P.T.

shit, was that in theaters? I loved The Last Boy Scout

It came out late summer and had a wide release for only about two months.

Damn I wish I'd seen this. Can't help but think it would go top 10 if more people had seen it.

In which Wes Anderson produces a story about what eventually happens to more than 50% of Honeymooners.








(Scene featured only in the yet to be released directors' cut)

35. The Squid and the Whale

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0367089/

From Roger Ebert's 3 1/2 star review:

I don't know what I'm supposed to feel during "The Squid and the Whale." Sympathy, I suppose, for two bright boys whose parents are getting a messy divorce. Both parents are writers and use words as weapons; the boys choose sides and join the war. In theory I observe their errors and sadness and think, there but for the grace of God go I. In practice, I feel envy.

I would have loved to have two writers as parents, and grow up in a bohemian family in Brooklyn, and hear dinner-table conversation about Dickens. These kids have it great. Their traumas will inspire them someday. Hell, the movie was written and directed by Noah Baumbach, whose parents were writers (the novelist Jonathan Baumbach, the film critic Georgia Brown), and look how he turned out. By the time he was 26 he had already directed "Kicking and Screaming" (1995), about sardonic and literate college graduates whose only ambition was to remain on campus. I felt the same way. Left to my own devices, I would still be a student of English literature, entering my 44th year as an undergraduate.

In the movie the parents, Bernard and Joan Berkman, are played by Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney, and if that's who it takes to play your parents, what are you complaining about? The movie centers on their troubled sons. Joan has been having an affair for four years, their father is moving out, and in theory their divorcing parents will share custody (there is even a plan for time shares of the cat). In practice, Walt (Jesse Eisenberg), who is 16, moves in with his father, and Frank (Owen Kline), who is about 10, stays in the family home with his mother.

Both kids have issues with their parents' sexuality. Walt thinks his mother is a "whore" for bringing one of her lovers into their home, but then his father begins an affair with one of his students, and what does that make him? Walt falls into true adolescent love, but is compelled to deny it to himself, because his father urges him to play the field, and he values his father's opinions more than is wise. "You have too many freckles," he tells Sophie (Halley Feiffer), the girl he likes. I guess he thinks that shows he has high standards. He's so dumb he doesn't know how wonderful too many freckles are.

Frank, his younger brother, has meanwhile discovered masturbation, and taken to distributing his semen here and there around his school -- on library books, for example. This is an alarming breach of school decorum, and leads to a parent-teacher-student conference, during which I kept hoping someone would quote Rodney Dangerfield: "When I was a kid we were so poor, if I hadn't been a boy I wouldn't have had anything to play with."

Bernard, the father, published a good novel some years earlier and is now in a protracted drought season. It doesn't help when his wife sells a story to The New Yorker. He is played by Daniels as a man with wise-guy literary opinions, which his son remembers and repeats; Bernard says A Tale of Two Cities is "minor Dickens," which is correct, and arms Walt with useful terms such as "Kafkaesque." Walt informs Sophie a book is Kafkaesque and Sophie says, "It's written by Franz Kafka. It has to be." Point, match and game. Walt's performance in the school talent show is a great success. Everyone is impressed by his songwriting ability except for a fellow student familiar with the lyrics of Pink Floyd. Life lesson: Okay to steal from your father to impress people, not okay to steal from Pink Floyd.

"The Squid and the Whale" is essentially about how we grow up by absorbing what is useful in our parents and forgiving what is not. Joan may cheat on her husband, but he deserves to be cheated on, and she demonstrates a faith in romance that is, after all, a lesson in optimism. Bernard may be a gold mine of shorthand literary opinions, but in his case he has actually read the books, and sooner or later his son Walt will probably feel compelled to read minor Dickens for himself -- and major Dickens, which is so good all you can do is just helplessly stare at the book and turn the pages.

These kids will be okay. Someday Bernard and Joan will be old and will delight in their grandchildren, who will no doubt be miserable about the flaws and transgressions of Walt and Frank, and then create great achievements and angry children of their own. All I know is, it is better to be the whale than the squid. Whales inspire major novels.

Metacritic Rating- 82

Ranked Highest by:
birdistheword- #4

"We have an unusual problem here, Jane. You obviously want me dead, and I'm less and less concerned for your well-being."







34. Mr. and Mrs. Smith

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0356910/

From Roger Ebert's 3-star review:

There is a kind of movie that consists of watching two people together on the screen. The plot is immaterial. What matters is the "chemistry," a term that once referred to a science but now refers to the heat we sense, or think we sense, between two movie stars. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have it, or I think they have it, in "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," and because they do, the movie works. If they did not, there'd be nothing to work with.

The screenplay is a device to revive their marriage by placing them in mortal danger, while at the same time providing an excuse for elaborate gunfights and chase scenes. I learn from Variety that it was written by Simon Kinberg as his master's thesis at Columbia. If he had been studying chemistry instead of the cinema, he might have blown up the lab, but it wouldn't have been boring.

Pitt and Jolie play John and Jane Smith, almost certainly not their real names, who met in Bogota "five or six" years ago, got married and settled down to a comfortable suburban lifestyle while not revealing to each other that they are both skilled assassins. John keeps his guns and money in a pit beneath the tool shed. Jane keeps her knives and other weapons in trays that slide out from under the oven.

As the movie opens, they're in marriage counseling; the spark has gone out of their relationship. On a typical day, they set off separately to their jobs: He to kill three or four guys, she to pose as a dominatrix while snapping a guy's neck. Can you imagine Rock Hudson and Doris Day in this story? Gable and Lombard and Hepburn and Tracy have also been invoked, but given the violence in their lives, the casting I recommend is The Rock and Vin Diesel. In the opening scene, they could fight over who has to play Mrs. Smith.

Sorry. Lost my train of thought. Anyway, John and Jane individually receive instructions to travel to a remote desert location in the Southwest and take out a mysterious target. They travel there separately, only to discover that their targets are each other. It's one of those situations where they could tell each other, but then they'd have to kill each other. "If you two stay together, you're dead," says Eddie (Vince Vaughn) another tough guy, who lives at home with his mother because it's convenient and she cooks good and on and on.

The question becomes: Do John and Jane kill each other like the professionals they are, or do they team up to save their lives? The solution to this dilemma requires them to have a fight that reminded me of the showdown between Uma Thurman and Daryl Hannah in "Kill Bill Vol. 2." After physical violence which should theoretically have broken every bone in both their beautiful bodies, they get so excited that, yes, they have sex, which in their case seems to involve both the martial and marital arts.

There is a chase scene. The movie was directed by Doug Liman ("The Bourne Identity"), who is good at chase scenes; The Los Angeles Times reports that second unit director Simon Crane also played a key role. They get a laugh by having Jolie drive a van while being pursued by three muscle cars. Liman is able to find a lot of possibilities in the fact that it's one of those vans with two sliding doors in the rear.

The movie pauses from time to time for more sessions with the marriage counselor, during which it appears that professional killing is good for their relationship. After we get our money's worth of action, their problems are resolved, more or less. Although many lives have been lost, the marriage is saved.

None of this matters at all. What makes the movie work is that Pitt and Jolie have fun together on the screen, and they're able to find a rhythm that allows them to be understated and amused even during the most alarming developments. There are many ways that John and Jane Smith could have been played awkwardly, or out of synch, but the actors understand the material and hold themselves at just the right distance from it; we understand this is not really an action picture, but a movie star romance in which the action picture serves as a location.

Recently I've noticed a new trend in the questions I'm asked by strangers. For years it was "Seen any good movies lately?" Now I am asked for my insights into Brad and Angelina, Tom and Katie, and other couples created by celebrity gossip. I reply that I know nothing about their private lives, except what I read in the supermarket tabloids, which also know nothing about their private lives. I can see this comes as a disappointment. So I think I'll start speculating about threesomes enlisting The Rock, Vin Diesel and Vince Vaughn, selected at random. This may be an idea for the sequel.

Metacritic Rating- 55

Ranked Highest by:
Bhickman- #6

Yeah, this layout is really nice looking. Kudos P.T.

My only complaint...damn images are so big they extend "beyond the screen", forcing annoying horizontal scrolling to read everything.

Yeah- I'll try to correct this as I go forward.

Rah Rah! Now I have an even more compelling reason to watch this movie.

Likewise. Baffling that this did not get a wider release. It never came within sniffing distance of a theater near me.

In which Stephen Drozd faces his demons and we all realize that this band is crazy cool.









33. The Fearless Freaks

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0441758/

From Joan Anderman of The Boston Globe:

By the final frame of this heartwarming, heart wrenching documentary, any doubt about the veracity of the film's title has vanished in a haze of smack residue, bloodied limbs, bad gigs, and countless incarcerations. The Flaming Lips are fearless to a fault (musically and otherwise) and unquestionably freaky (musically and otherwise). The fact that they've survived long enough to become the unlikely pride of Oklahoma City and beloved gurus of alternative rock clearly involved improbable quantities of faith, tenacity, and ridiculous good luck.

''Fearless Freaks" is an uncommonly intimate portrait, in large part because the filmmaker, Bradley Beesley, is a longtime neighbor, friend, and collaborator. He's been hanging with the Lips since 1991, directing music videos and low-budget films, shooting footage of live shows and recording sessions, compiling hundreds of hours of interview tapes, and documenting every significant happening in the life of the band. Happening, by the way, isn't too vague a description for some of the Lips' endeavors, among them the Parking Lot Experiment, which involved chief Lip Wayne Coyne conducting an orchestra of 40 automobiles with their tape decks blaring specially composed music at the same time.

The film benefits from an unusual absence of boundaries. Over 14 years Beesley's presence became ordinary and even integral to the Flaming Lips, and there were no limitations on what he could watch, inquire about, or film. In an especially harrowing sequence, drummer Steven Drozd matter-of-factly discusses his death march while preparing and savoring a dose of heroin. It's the only ''Behind the Music" moment in ''Fearless Freaks," which revels less in rock-band clichés than in the real-life experiences of a bunch of Midwestern misfits in all their dysfunction and glory.

''Fearless Freaks" also cobbles together an appropriately whacked-out portrait of the band's surreal and haphazard career trajectory -- from a loud, bad punk band formed in 1983 by Coyne and his football-jock brother Mark (he didn't last long as a Lip) to their current incarnation as endlessly inventive, critically revered art-pop visionaries. Coyne's fondness for the avant-garde is well-known, but it's fascinating to witness the tireless work ethic -- inherited from his father, honed during an 11-year run as fry cook at Long John Silver's, and still unimpeachable as he oversees every detail at mega-festivals and jump-starts Drozd's recovery -- that fuels it.

Plenty of everyday color fills the cracks, literally and figuratively, of the Lips' oddball arc: Coyne and his wife preparing to scare the heck out of the neighborhood kids on Halloween, building sets in his driveway for his many-years-in-the-making sci-fi film ''Christmas on Mars," cleaning fake blood from his signature white suit, and visiting with his mother, who died last year. The film, dedicated to her, seems to want us to know that without her indulgent grin, this whole thing might never have happened.

Metacritic Rating- 78

Ranked Highest By:
Yancy- #2

Suprised that Mr + Mrs Smith made it, can't say It would be in my top 30 of the year and I proabably only saw 40 odd films this year. Guess it's the ubiquity of big box office stuff we will no doubt see high up the list. Oh well.

Good to see FF make the cut.

really? i don't know how other people feel, but i was incredibly let down by howl's moving castle. though probably partially due to my high miyazaki expectations, i never really got into this one.

And who would've guessed in a million years...that our daughter with a face...of an otter in disgrace...would provide our tickets to our rightful place?







32. Corpse Bride

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0121164/

From Peter Traver's (Rolling Stone) 3 1/2 star review:

The Oscar for this year's Best Animated Feature Film belongs right here, even though the ravishing goth romance that Tim Burton has conjured up in Corpse Bride isn't strictly animated in the computer-generated sense. Burton and his co-director, Mike Johnson, use the stop-motion technique, which means taking puppets -- about a foot tall -- and painstakingly moving them half a millimeter at a time to achieve a subtlety of expression beyond the range of CGI. It takes a twelve-hour work day to produce even a second or two of usable footage. Burton used stop-motion in 1993's The Nightmare Before Christmas, but the digital improvements at his disposal now really make it sing.
It took the sweat of multitudes to make Corpse Bride, which wouldn't matter a damn if it lacked inspiration. It doesn't. Guided by a Russian folk tale about a murdered bride's love for a man who happens to be a live one, Burton roughed out a few sketches and gave character designer Carlos Grangel free rein. Screenwriters John August, Caroline Thompson and Pamela Pettler updated the story to Victorian England, and a gifted cast signed on to do the voices.

Heading the list is Burton regular Johnny Depp, who brings a touching tenderness to Victor Van Dort, a timid soul on his way to being a forty-year-old virgin until his parents (Tracey Ullman and Paul Whitehouse) arrange to marry him off to shy Victoria (Emily Watson), the daughter of the titled but penniless Everglots (Joanna Lumley and Albert Finney). Victor is so nervous at the wedding rehearsal that the pastor (Christopher Lee) asks him to leave until he learns his vows.

Big mistake. In the forest, Victor practices by putting a ring on a tree that turns into a dead woman in a wedding gown who quickly accepts his proposal. What's Victor to do? He was getting to like Victoria, but Corpse Bride, voiced with sweet, witty mischief by Helena Bonham Carter (Burton's offscreen love), is the sexiest piece of rotting flesh ever.

It's in the Land of the Dead that the film hits its stride. The visuals are amazing. And if younger audiences freak out when a green maggot crawls out of the Bride's eye socket, screw 'em. Says the maggot to the Corpse Bride, "If I hadn't just been sitting there, I would have thought you'd lost your mind."

You get the picture -- it's warped and wonderfully effervescent. Ditto the songs by Danny Elfman, who sings the role of Bonejangles, the frontman for a skeleton jazz band at a swinging underworld club.

Best of all is the love story. Victor is attracted to both women. In the guise of a family film, Burton evokes a darkly erotic obsession that recalls Edgar Allan Poe and Hitchcock's Vertigo. It would be a test for any filmmaker, and Burton aces it.

Metacritic Rating- 83

Ranked Highest By:
agrimorfee- #5

Why is it so hard to spell this?

Hey -- I saw a promo that Discovery will be showing "Grizzly Man" at 8pm on Friday night. I haven't seen it yet, I'll be tuning in.

"There are two types of people: those that talk the talk and those that walk the walk. People who walk the walk sometimes talk the talk but most times they don't talk at all, 'cause they walkin'. Now, people who talk the talk, when it comes time for them to walk the walk, you know what they do? They talk people like me into walkin' for them."









31. Hustle and Flow

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0410097/

From Roger Ebert's 3 1/2 star review:

Sometimes you never really see an actor until the right roles bring him into focus. Terrence Howard has made 22 movies and a lot of TV (most notably the series "Sparks"), but now in "Crash" and "Hustle & Flow," he creates such clearly-seen characters in such different worlds that his range and depth becomes unmistakable.

In "Crash," he was the successful Hollywood television director, humiliated when his wife is assaulted by a cop. In "Hustle & Flow," he plays a Memphis pimp and drug dealer who yearns to make something of himself -- to become a rap artist. His quest for success is seen so clearly and with such sympathy by writer-director Craig Brewer that the movie transcends the crime genre and becomes powerful drama.

The movie's first achievement is to immerse us in the daily world of Djay, Howard's character. He is not a "pimp" and a "drug dealer" as those occupations have been simplified and dramatized in pop culture. He is a focused young man, intelligent, who in another world with other opportunities might have, who knows, gone to college and run for Congress. He can improvise at length on philosophical subjects, as he proves in an opening scene about -- well, about no less than the nature of man.

He has a childhood friend named Skinny Black (Ludacris), who has become a millionaire rap star. How close of a childhood friend is a good question; as nearly as I can tell, they went to different schools together. Skinny Black returns to the old neighborhood every Fourth of July for a sentimental reunion at the club where he got his start. The club owner (Isaac Hayes) is a friend of Djay's. The theory is, Djay will give his demo tape to Skinny Black, who will pull strings and make Djay a star.

But that's in the third act of the movie. The long second act, in some ways the heart of the film, involves Djay's attempts to meet his various business responsibilities while recording the demo. We get the ghetto version of renting the old barn and putting on a show. Djay picks up an ancient digital keyboard, and enlists Key (Anthony Anderson), a family man and churchgoer, to work with him on the music. Key knows Shelby (DJ Qualls), a white kid with musical skills. They staple cardboard egg containers to the walls to soundproof a recording studio, enlist a hooker named Shug (Taraji P. Henson) to sing backup, and make the recording.

What Djay cannot be expected to understand is that Skinny Black gets countless demos pressed warmly into his hands every day. He does not have the power in the music industry that Djay imagines. Discovering a talented newcomer might be professional suicide. And beyond that is the whole world-view Skinny Black has bought into: his cars, his bodyguards, his image as a menacing rapper. Djay's first approach to him is miscalculated and all wrong. The way he uses his instincts to try again is smart, and brave.

But "Hustle & Flow" is not limited to Djay's rags-to-riches dream, because it is not a formula film. Much more interesting are his day-to-day relationships. Nola (Taryn Manning), the white woman who gets the benefit of his theory of human life, is his most profitable hooker, even though she tells Djay how much she hates getting into the cars of strange men. Shug, who Djay gradually realizes he loves, is pregnant, probably not with Djay's child. Lexus (Paula Jai Parker) has an income as a stripper, which makes her more outspoken and independent.

Djay plays the pimp role and is effective enough, but his heart isn't in it. The dream of the demo record fills his mind -- and also obsesses Key and Shelby, to the dismay of Key's wife, who sees her churchgoing breadwinner spending his free time with a pimp ("What woman wouldn't be thrilled to have her man in a house full of whores?").

What happens is that Djay's horizon expands as his imagination is challenged. It isn't really the hope of stardom that keeps him going. It isn't the dubious connection with Skinny Black that inspires him. What we see in the "Hustle & Flow" is rarely seen in the movies: the redemptive power of art. Djay is transformed when he finds something he loves doing and is getting better at. To create something out of your own mind and talent and see that it is good: That is a joy that makes the rest of his life seem shabby and transparent.

Terrence Howard modulates Djay with great love and consideration for the character. He never cheapens him, or condescends. He builds him inside-out. He is a pimp and a dealer because he is smart and has ambition, and that is how, in his world, with his background, he can find success. The film accumulates many subtle moments to show how his feelings for Shug develop, how he begins by giving her the kind of "love" pimps use as a control mechanism, and slowly realizes that another kind of love is growing.

Shug is played by Taraji P. Henson as so wounded, so vulnerable, so loyal, that we're astonished at the complex emotions developed by the story. Listen to her: "Letting me sing on the demo made me feel real. I know, moving up, you gonna get real good people, so I want you to know, it meant the world to me." What has transformed him has opened room for her transformation.

"Hustle & Flow" shows, among other things, what a shallow music-video approach many films take to the inner city, and then what complexities and gifts bloom there. Every good actor has a season when he comes into his own, and this is Terrence Howard's time.

Metacritic Rating- 68

Ranked Highest By:
musicgurl- #4

#31 seems about right for H&F.

That seems about right for a GDB post.

All the hot topics are still on the way, especially with Penguins finishing so un-controversially low.

In which Tom Cruise takes on forces even more sinister than Matt Lauer.









http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0407304/

30. War of the Worlds

From Michael Wilmington's 3 1/2 star review:

A technological marvel of a movie that blows a chance to be much, much more, Steven Spielberg's new film of H.G. Wells' science fiction classic "War of the Worlds" takes us on a wild journey through two sides of its supremely popular director: the dark and the light.

A first-class pop entertainment packed to the brim with astounding effects and near-non-stop action and suspense -- and laced with painful undercurrents, including numbing portrayals of social collapse and chilling references to 9/11 -- "War" rivets and amazes, even if it falls just frustratingly short of the mind-expanding grandeur it could have had.

Still, Spielberg and company send Tom Cruise through one blood-chilling roller-coaster ride after another, with Cruise as the usual Spielberg common-man hero: Ray Ferrier, a dockworker in New Jersey chased toward Boston by seemingly omnipotent monsters from space in huge tripod walking machines that lay waste to much of the planet.

With all of his apple-cheeked, reckless charm, Cruise looks like a guy who could outrace an extraterrestrial. Spielberg puts him through the wringer, just as he once did Dennis Weaver in "Duel" and the shark-hunters in "Jaws," while screenwriters Josh Friedman and David Koepp ("Jurassic Park," "Mission: Impossible") begin the battle with a broken-family story.

When Ray's newly upper-class ex-wife Mary Ann (Miranda Otto) drops off their children at Ray's messy Bayonne, N.J., house, we get a glimpse of the distance Ray has put between his family and himself. But suddenly, the world begins to radically change: Strange storm clouds gather, a space vessel hovers, lightning blasts strike, and those towering tripods emerge from the ground with their deadly armaments raining down hell on earth.

Soon Ray is on the run, pulling along little daughter Rachel (the prodigious Dakota Fanning), and rebellious son Robbie (Justin Chatwin) from one horrific chase to the next, through a landscape turned into a chaos of fleeing citizens, outmatched military and one loony survivalist named Ogilvy -- played by Tim Robbins in what seems a madder version of his "Mystic River" Dave Boyle role: a broken man turned psycho loner.

As the tripods march, as buildings and cars are fried, ferries upended, cities set aflame and helpless people blasted or scooped from the ground like wriggling prey, Ray tries desperately to shepherd his children to safety. And Cruise keeps him interesting throughout, playing this blue-collar guy with some of the obsessiveness that permeates his more nuanced, offbeat performances ("Magnolia," "Jerry Maguire," "Collateral," "Born on the Fourth of July").

He also plays something more vulnerable: a father who has avoided responsibilities and now, agonizingly, has to make up for it fast. He even has a great moment or two, like the scene where he can't recall a lullaby for Rachel and sings her "Little Deuce Coupe" instead.

Much of the time, though, he's classic pop movie Cruise: cocky (at first), trim, athletic and on-the-go. And the movie works best as a classic Spielberg scare-chase -- like "Duel," "Jaws" or "Jurassic Park."

But what elevates "War" above those movies is its core sentiment: how a family finds its way home. That's also the strongest link to the Spielberg movie that seems its opposite number, 1982's "gentle alien," "E.T."

Yet, though "War of the Worlds" is technically remarkable on almost every level -- including Janusz Kaminski's cinematography, John Williams' score, Rick Carter's production design and, especially, Dennis Muren's effects (including some top-of-the-line death rays) and Michael Kahn's nonpareil editing -- the movie squanders a golden opportunity to give us something deeper and richer.

Spielberg's "War" has its serious side: the broken-family theme and the Sept. 11 references (shots of white dust coating Ray's face and clothes echo the iconic photos of those staggering away from the World Trade Center). But this is a story that could have resonated and revealed our culture in ways similar to Wells' marvelous original 1898 novel and Orson Welles' classically terrifying 1938 radio drama. The new "War" doesn't really expand our vision beyond the Earth and across the universe as Wells did. Nor does it brilliantly parody contemporary media and politics, like the young, feisty Orson Welles.

Instead, Spielberg seems more interested in crafting the best possible update of the second major adaptation of "War": Hungarian puppeteer-producer George Pal's technically ingenious, entertaining but shamelessly kitschy Cold War 1953 "War" -- a film more appropriate these days for kids and people who want to feel like kids. Spielberg hardly references Welles' version at all, but he crams his movie with allusions to Pal's, including cameos by both its stars, Gene Barry and Ann Robinson.

It's as if Spielberg had set aside many of his post-"Schindler's List" ambitions and decided simply to exploit his technical genius, make a lot of money and revisit the past -- of his own "Duel," "Jaws" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," as well as Pal's "War" -- rather than risk the box office disappointment he had with his great, under-appreciated sci-fi adventure "A.I."

Why, for instance, does he choose to omit from the early part of "War" those two keystones of modern American culture -- the cell phone and round-the-clock TV and radio news? You'd think both would be a crucial part of any attempt at a modern "War of the Worlds," especially since pastiche news reports were the terrifying gimmick that enabled Welles to spook a nation with his radio "War."

Here, writers and director contrive a universal electrical breakdown to explain Ray's isolation and they illustrate the media collapse with one lone TV crew wandering like scavengers. But it all seems strained. The thematic justification -- that we're being shown a world from Ray's restricted view, with the modern verities crippled or destroyed -- isn't very convincing either. That idea would be more effective if the cell phones and TV news stations were still going full blast at first and only gradually faded out.

But maybe then they'd let in more of the outside world than Spielberg wants. In his eagerness to isolate Ray and his kids, Spielberg and his writers throw away a brilliant chance to build up suspense and economically convey the mounting social dissolution of the world outside. Midway through, I began to wonder whether if this wasn't deliberate, even a bit Oedipal: whether Spielberg hadn't made some of these choices to sever all possible links with the Welles version and avoid any comparisons..

Maybe Spielberg was planning it all more like a studio head and less like a maverick filmmaker. It's unfair to blame him for not making a different movie from this one -- just as it's unfair to critically dismiss this "War of the Worlds," as some will, because it's a big-bucks project that follows surefire formulas and because Cruise is a superstar of movies, tabloids and weird TV stunts. That doesn't matter; the movie works on its own terms. As a horror-adventure science fiction spectacular, it delivers the goods. But it's not the world-beater it could have been; Spielberg's "War of the Worlds" definitely wins its battle, but not the war.

Metacritic Rating- 73

Ranked Highest By:
Scarymuppet- #6

Good thing this one's out of the way.

Now that seems about right; 2/3's of that film is worth at least an 8 the other third barely scrapes a 6.

Would be interesting to see the Worldwide Box Office figures against the final list.

Wilmington is correct on all points. And the conclusion to Wells' story just can't seem to be interpreted well in any medium beyond the written word.

Elemeno ON FIYAH.

He may be a seriously flawed filmmaker, but he's an incredibly gifted storyteller. Even crap like Jurassic Park 2 has evidence of this.

I think the gal just next to Tom says it all. Sure she's hoping to break into the industry but she stepped on his toe right before the take. Steven yelled "action" just as he whispered in her ear how he's gonna have her killed...

























right after Oprah..