My Favourite Films of 2005

My Favourite Films of 2005 (at least that's when I saw them)

1. A History of Violence (David Cronenberg, Canada): Cronenberg strikes again! This time there’s no exploding heads or rabid zombies, but just a tense tale of a seemingly ordinary man (Viggo Mortensen) living in a small American town (in reality Millbrook Ontario) whose gangster life comes back to haunt him in the person of Ed Harris. The film is about how quickly people can slip into violence, and how the consequences of that violence can’t be escaped no matter how hard we try. There’s not a single wasted shot in this film. Cronenberg’s somewhat dry, clinical style is perfectly suited to the story. Its failure to be nominated for an Oscar only goes to show what idiots Hollywood industry hacks are. Stephen McHattie is good in a small role, that of a traveling killer.

2. The Best of Youth (Marco Tullio Giordana, Italy): This sprawling six-hour epic wraps around you like a Tolstoy novel, combining rich personal stories with historical facts. As Roger Ebert says, most films are short stories; this is a novel. Sweet, humanistic, and sad, The Best of Youth tells the story of two brothers: the easy-going explorer Nicola, who winds up as a psychiatrist, and the hard-nosed and introverted Matteo, who starts off studying literature, but winds up in the army and later in the police. We see the student protests of the sixties, the Red Brigades terrorists (Nicola marries one!), de-industrialization, the Florence floods, a sexy Norwegian, an Italian madhouse, and lots more. Don’t miss it, it’s a cinematic delight!

3. The Constant Gardener (Fernando Meirelles, Britain/USA): Lots of interesting edits and panoramic shots of Kenya populate this story of the low-key British diplomat played by Ralph Fiennes whose wife Tessa (Rachel Weisz, solid as always) is murdered by African thugs in the pay of a multi-national drug company doing experimental testing on the locals. As Fiennes’ Justin Quayle learns more about Tessa’s attempts to expose the drug company after her death, he falls in love with her more – her imagined affairs turn out to be just nasty rumours, while her real passions were noble to the end. The last scene is a tear jerker. Written by John Le Carré. In the fine tradition of British class-based cinema (though directed by a Brazilian) where the snotty upper crust get their comeuppance at the end (see A Very British Coup).

4. Crash (Paul Haggis, USA): Directed by an ex-Londoner, Crash is a sensitive, striking and multi-layered portrait of race relations in Los Angeles. Haggis doesn’t give us cardboard cutout characters – Matt Dillon’s racist cop does his duty and saves a black women he formerly harassed, while his young partner (played by Ryan Phillippe), who has ultra-liberal views, winds up shooting a black hitchhiker. Sandra Bullock is especially good as a jumpy bourgeois wife of a district attorney. Haggis offers no easy solutions.

5. A Very Long Engagement (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, France): Director Jeunet and Audrey Tautou pick up where Amelie left off, presenting us with a cross between a fractured postmodern comedy, a historical drama, and a murder mystery. Tatou's fiance, a Breton soldier drafted into the French army in World War I and subjected to the horrors of trench warfare, wounds himself to return home. He's court-martialed for his efforts, and sent "over the top" to the tender mercies of the German Army. Did he survive the ordeal? You'll have to see it to be sure. Warning: beware the albatross!

6. Sideways (Alexander Payne, USA): A buddy picture with Paul Giamatti as the depressive failed writer Miles and Thomas Haden Church as the more upbeat small-time actor Jack which follows their adventures in wine country in California in the week before Jack's marriage. Jack decides that they're both going to drink lots of wine and get laid, and most of the understated but tremendous humour of the film comes from these two quests. Virginia Masden and Sandra Oh co-star. For once, all the main characters in an American film are reasonably intelligent and emotionally realistic!

7. Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood, USA): Clint's done it again! Made a fine film with a straightforward story focusing on the very human drama of Frank Dunn, an aging gym owner and trainer played by Eastwood himself, who is cajoled into training the feisty boxer Maggie Fitzgerald, played with great verve by Hilary Swank. The film doesn't indulge its audience by playing to typical Hollywood expectations: Maggie usually knocks her opponents out with one punch, thus making most of the fight sequences anti-climatic; and there's no happy ending, no feel-good catharsis. Right up there with The Unforgiven.

8. Sin City (Roberto Rodriguez and Frank Miller, USA): A daring attempt to transfer Miller's avant-garde graphic novel to the big screen which largely succeeds. Filmed mostly in black and white against a blue screen with the backgrounds and splashes of colour added later, we get lots of decapitations and tough guys blasted at point black range and surviving. An almost unrecognizable Mickey Rourke as Marv the vengeful thug stands out; Rosario Dawson is appropriately slinky as the queen of a gang of rather violent hookers, with Bruce Willis and Clive Owen solid as leads in their own segments. An aesthetic revolution with some rather typical film noir narratives.

9. The Motorcycle Diaries (Walter Salles, USA/UK/Germany/Argentina/etc.): The story of the young Che Guevera and his amigo the affable Alberto Granado as they try to travel from Argentina north to Venezuela on a decrepit Norton motorcycle in 1952. There's lots of drinking, dancing (mambos and tangos!) and women, but also a leper colony and a growing awareness of injustice based on the class structure which dominated South America at the time. Che before he became little more than an image on a t-shirt.

10. Kinsey (Bill Condon, USA): Liam Neeson gives a restrained performance as the pioneering Indiana scientist whose reports on male and female sexual behaviour revolutionized thinking about sex in America. Tim Hutton, Chris O'Donnell and Peter Sarsgaard as his henchmen in his attempt to unearth the mysteries of human sexuality are all just right, especially Hutton, who is slightly creepy looking in his black moustache. Kinsey comes across as a quiet hero.

Honourable Mentions

End of the Century (Jim Fields and Michael Gramaglia, USA): A documentary on the history of The Ramones, the seminal New York City punk band. What's interesting here, besides the music, is the degree to which the band members emerge as unique individuals: Johnny the fiscally responsible hard-nosed conservative, Joey the soft-spoken outsider, Dee Dee the drug freak, and Tommy the ordinary solid guy pressed into sitting behind the drum kit. Lots of interviews and grainy footage of the band in the early days.

The Aviator (Martin Scorsese, USA): A big, glizty biopic of Howard Hughes in his younger days that brings silent-era Hollywood to life, not to mention the Spruce Goose and Hughes' obsession with building bigger and faster aerial machines. Scorsese moves from two-tone Technicolor to three-tone then a full palate. Cate Blanchett plays Katherine Hepburn with panache, while Rufus Wainwright shows up as a flamboyant lounge singer. Scorsese uses just the right touch with Leonardo DiCaprio's picturing of Hughes' weird compulsive disorder. Though it doesn't challenge any of our imagined assumptions, an example of Hollywood getting it right.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson, USA): A very odd film with Bill Murray as an American Jacques Cousteau in decline-and-fall mode. Owen Wilson puts in a turn as Steve's long-lost son, who joins the team and romances a reporter played by Cate Blanchett. The best part of the film might be Seu Jorge, a crew member on Steve's boat, and his Portuguese version of David Bowie classics like Space Oddity. Full of deadpan humour.

Hotel Rwanda (Terry George, Canada/UK/Italy/South Africa): Although the film washes out some of the horror of the massacre of the Tutsis in Rwanda, Don Cheadle does an excellent job of playing an embattled hotel manager who saves hundreds of people from one of the greatest humanitarian disasters of the last two decades. The sheer insanity of the massacres, along with the unwillingness of the West to intervene, are made evident.

The Upside of Anger (Mike Binder, USA): A bravura performance in the icy vein from Joan Allen as a suburban housewife whose husband has apparently left her for his Swedish secretary; the film is an extended meditation on the value of anger in such situations. Her four daughters all have their own neuroses to deal with. Features Kevin Costner as a burned out ex-baseball player who woos and wins Joan, and the director as a sleazy radio producer who has a love/hate relationship with the family.

The Woodsman (Nicole Kasell, USA): Kevin Bacon plays a former child molester named Walter who gets out of jail and tries to get his life together in this low-budget, heavy-in-mood film set in an urban working-class neighbourhood. Walter works in a lumber yard, where he meets co-worker Vickie (Kyra Sedgwick), with whom he becomes involved. But he keeps his past secret, leading to complications at work and with Vickie. Makes the list based on Bacon's great low-key performance.