2005 World Poll – Part 1

Editors’ Note
As readers may seek and search entries, rather than read from beginning to end, full titles, director credits and years of release have been included with each reference.

Several authors have added details about countries of origin. As these are hard to verify, given the complexities of international financing, no attempt has been made to standardise the information.

Finally, authors did not always supply the original film title, so they have been added by the Editors. Despite diligent efforts, inadvertent errors may have occurred.

Grateful thanks to all those who sent in entries.

Acquarello

A NASA Design Engineer and author of the Strictly Film School website.

Perhaps subconsciously a sign of the times of living in an age of “war or terror” America, the first film to make my list this year, Claire Denis’ waking dream on the notions of foreignness, assimilation and rejection, L’Intrus (The Intruder, 2004), set the intrinsically political tone for my end-of-the-year list for 2005: from the myth of asylum and integration of La Blessure ( The Wound, Nicolas Klotz, 2004), to the psychological terrorism of Caché (Hidden, Michael Haneke, 2005) and State of Fear (Pamela Yates, 2005), the bureaucracy of social health care in Moartea domnului Lazarescu ( The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, Cristi Puiu, 2005), the unravelling of the May ’68 halcyon days in Les Amants réguliers (Everyday Lovers, Philippe Garrel, 2005), the götterdämmerung of Emperor Hirohito in Solntse (The Sun, Aleksandr Sokurov, 2005) and the silence of history endemic in contemporary Taiwan in Zui hao de shi guang (Three Times, Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2005).

My Top Ten (in preferential order):

La Blessure (The Wound, Nicolas Klotz, 2004)
Zui hao de shi guang (Three Times, Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2005)
Caché (Hidden, Michael Haneke, 2005)
Solntse (The Sun, Aleksandr Sokurov, 2005)
Les Amants réguliers (Everyday Lovers, Philippe Garrel, 2005)
Moartea domnului Lazarescu (The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, Cristi Puiu, 2005)
Me and You and Everyone We Know (Miranda July, 2005)
L’Intrus (The Intruder, Claire Denis, 2004)
Geuk jang jeon (A Tale of Cinema, Hong Sang-soo, 2005)
Une Visite au Louvre (A Visit to the Louvre (Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub, 2004)

Honourable mentions:

State of Fear (Pamela Yates, 2005)
Tian bian yi duo yun (The Wayward Cloud, Tsai Ming-liang, 2005)
Seoul Train (Jim Butterworth, Aaron Lubarsky and Lisa Sleeth, 2004)
The Squid and the Whale (Noah Baumbach, 2005)
L’Enfant (The Child, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 2005)

Favourite Retrospectives:

The Beauty of the Everyday: Japan’s Shochiku Company at 110, and 2005 New York African Film Festival (both at Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center, NYC)

Julien Allen

Film enthusiast and Editor of www.orsonwelles.co.uk.

1 A History of Violence (David Cronenberg, 2005)
2 Caché (Hidden, Michael Haneke, 2005)
3 2046 (Wong Kar-wai, 2004)
4 Der Untergang (Downfall, Olivier Hirschbiegel, 2004)
5 Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood, 2004)
6 Heimat 3 – Chronik einer Zeitenwende (Heimat 3 – A Chronicle of Endings and Beginnings, Edgar Reitz, 2005)
7 De Battre mon coeur s’est arrêté (The Beat That My Heart Skipped, Jacques Audiard, 2005)
8 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Tim Burton, 2005)
9 Sideways (Alexander Payne, 2005)
10 Kung Fu (Kung Fu Hustle, Stephen Chow, 2005)

(Release dates are UK/France)

Michael J. Anderson

Contributed an essay on James Benning’s 13 Lakes for Senses of Cinema issue no. 36. He resides in New York.

First-run theatrical and festival premieres:

Sud Pralad (Tropical Malady, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004)
2046 (Wong Kar-wai, 2004)
Solntse (The Sun, Aleksandr Sokurov, 2005)
A History of Violence (David Cronenberg, 2005)
Los Muertos (Lisandro Alonso, 2004)
Innocence (Lucile Hadzihalilovic, 2004)
Zui hao de shi guang (Three Times, Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2005)
L’Enfant (The Child, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 2005)
Rois et Reine (Kings and Queen, Arnaud Desplechin, 2004)
13 Lakes (James Benning, 2004)

Rarely-screened silent, classical and post-classical Japanese repertory (from “The Beauty of the Everyday: Japan’s Shochiku Company at 110”, “Early Autumn: Masterworks of Japanese Cinema from the National Film Center, Tokyo”, “The IFC Center’s Weekend Classics” and “Naruse: The Unknown Master”):

Ukigumo (Floating Clouds, Mikio Naruse, 1955)
Ninjo kami fusen (Humanity and Paper Balloons, Sadao Yamanaka, 1937)
Shonen (Boy, Nagisa Oshima, 1969)
Tsuma yo bara no yo ni (Wife! Be Like a Rose!, Mikio Naruse, 1935)
Yama no oto (Sound of the Mountain, Mikio Naruse, 1954)
Arigato-san (Mr. Thank You, Hiroshi Shimizu, 1936)
Midaregumo (Scattered Clouds, Mikio Naruse, 1967)
Aikbiyori (Late Autumn, Yasujiro Ozu, 1960)
Hataraku ikka (The Whole Family Works, Mikio Naruse, 1939)
Kanzashi (Ornamental Hairpin, Hiroshi Shimizu, 1941)
Nagareru (Flowing, Mikio Naruse, 1956)
Yogoto no yume (Every Night Dreams, Mikio Naruse, 1933)
Yoru no onnatachi (Women of the Night, Kenji Mizoguchi, 1948)
Tonari no Yae-chan (Our Neighbour Miss Yae, Yasujiro Shimazu, 1934)
Minato no nihon musume (Japanese Girls at the Harbor, Hiroshi Shimizu, 1933)

Geoff Andrew

Senior Film Editor of Time Out London magazine, Programmer of London’s National Film Theatre and the author of numerous books on the cinema, the most recent being a monograph for the BFI Modern Classics series on Abbas Kiarostami’s 10.

In terms of films released in the UK, 2005 was not that strong a year, with the exception of some wonderful revivals, ranging from Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975) and the ‘director’s cut’ of The Big Red One (Samuel Fuller, 1980 and 2004) to Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Jacques Demy, 1964) and L’Eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962). But in terms of films I saw premiered at festivals during 2005, it was actually pretty good. Because of this unusually clear split, I offer two separate lists and a note concerning two pieces of work by Abbas Kiarostami.

A. Best Films Released in the UK in 2005:

1. Saraband (Ingmar Bergman, 2003)
2. Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood, 2004)
3. A History of Violence (David Cronenberg, 2005)
4. Factotum (Bent Hamer, 2005)
5. Familia Rodante (Pablo Trapero, 2004)
6. Whisky (Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll, 2004)
7. Last Days (Gus Van Sant, 2005)
8. Le Conseguenze dell’amore (The Consequences of Love, Paolo Sorrentino, 2004)
9. Broken Flowers (Jim Jarmusch, 2005)
10. Yes (Sally Potter, 2004)
11. 2046 (Wong Kar-wai, 2004)
12. La Nuit de la Vérité (Night of Truth, Fanta Régina Nacro, 2004)
13. Cidade Baixa (Lower City, Sérgio Machado, 2005)
14. Le Promeneur du Champ de Mars (The Last Mitterand, Robert Guédiguian, 2005)
15. Inosensu: Kôkaku kidôtai (Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, Oshii Mamoru, 2004)
16. Innocence (Lucile Hadzihalilovic, 2004)
17. Trilogia I: To Livadi pou dakryzei ( Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow, Theo Angelopoulos, 2004)
18. La Niña santa ( The Holy Girl, Lucrecia Martel, 2004)
19. L’Intrus (The Intruder, Claire Denis, 2004)
20. Silver City (John Sayles, 2004)

B. Best Films Premiered in 2005:

1= L’Enfant (The Child, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 2005)
1= Caché (Hidden, Michael Haneke, 2005)
3. Moartea domnului Lazarescu (The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, Cristi Puiu, 2005)
4. Bubble (Steven Soderbergh, 2005)
5. A History of Violence (David Cronenberg, 2005)
6. Zui hao de shi guang (Three Times, Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2005)
7. Factotum (Bent Hamer, 2005)
8. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (Tommy Lee Jones, 2005)
9. Geuk jang jeon (A Tale of Cinema, Hong Sang-soo, 2005)
10. Last Days (Gus Van Sant, 2005)
11. Keane (Lodge H. Kerrigan, 2004)
12. Gisela (Isabelle Stever, 2005)
13. Broken Flowers (Jim Jarmusch, 2005)
14. Lemming (Dominik Moll, 2005)
15. Lonesome Jim (Steve Buscemi, 2005)
16. A Perfect Day (Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, 2005)
17. Cinema, Aspirinas e Urubus (Cinema, Aspirins and Vultures, Marcelo Gomes, 2005)
18. Niu pi (Ox-Hide, Liu Jiayin, 2005)
19. La Neuvaine (Bernard Émond, 2005)
20. MirrorMask (Dave McKean, 2005)

C. Special Mention:

Tickets (2005): the second segment by Abbas Kiarostami is a small masterpiece, and somewhat overshadows the enjoyable but comparatively very conventional first and third segments by Ermanno Olmi and Ken Loach. Also Kiarostami’s Five Dedicated to Ozu (2003) gained a limited UK release; it’s quite wonderful, but clearly belongs in a different generic universe from the other titles listed.

Martyn Bamber

Provides English subtitles and audio description for a variety of films and television programmes, and is a writer for 6 Degrees Film and Close-Up Film. He has also contributed several articles to CTEQ: Annotations on Film, including analyses of The Virgin Spring and Gone to Earth.

Top ten favourite cinema releases seen in the UK in 2005 (not in order):

Alexander (Oliver Stone, 2004)
2046 (Wong Kar-wai, 2004)
Closer (Mike Nichols, 2004)
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson, 2004)
Der Untergang (Downfall, Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2004)
Mysterious Skin (Gregg Araki, 2004)
Kung Fu (Kung Fu Hustle, Stephen Chow, 2004)
Stander (Bronwen Hughes, 2003)
Broken Flowers (Jim Jarmusch, 2005)
Oliver Twist (Roman Polanski, 2005)

Paolo Bertolin

A contributing writer to newspaper Il Manifesto and film magazine Cineforum. His writings in English include articles for The Korea Times, The Jakarta Post and on www.koreanfilm.org.

Best in 2005:

Ebolusyon ng isang pamilyang Pilipino (Evolution of a Filipino Family, Lav Diaz, 2004)
Sanctuary (Ho Yuhang, 2004)
Zui hao de shi guang (Three Times, Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2005)
Shijie (The World, Jia Zhang-ke, 2004)
Moartea domnului Lazarescu (The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, Cristi Puiu, 2005)
Xing xing xang xi xi (Star Appeal, Cui Zi’en, 2005)
17-sai no fûkei – shôned wa anani o mita no ka (Cycling Chronicles, Wakamatsu Kôji, 2004)
Masahista (Brilliante Mendoza, 2005)
Tian bian yi duo yun (The Wayward Cloud, Tsai Ming-liang, 2005)
Idol (Khavn, 2005)
O Espelho Mágico (Magic Mirror, Manoel de Oliveira, 2005)
Operetta tanuki gotten (Princess Raccoon, Seijun Suzuki, 2005)
Nekam Achat Mishtey Eynay (Avenge but One of My Two Eyes, Avi Mograbi, 2005)
Dalkomhan insaeng (A Bittersweet Life, Kim Ji-woon, 2005)
A History of Violence (David Cronenberg, 2005)

Ten début or sophomore films by directors I look forward to seeing more from in the near future:

Orzu ortida (The Adolescent, Yolkin Tuychiev, 2004)
Hat mua roi bao lau (Bride of Silence, Doan Minh Phuong and Doan Thanh Nghia, 2005)
Sulanga Enu Pinisia (The Forsaken Land, Vimukthi Jayasundara, 2005)
Chemman Chaalai (The Gravel Road, Deepak Kumaran Menon, 2005)
Leo-beu-to-keu (Love Talk, Lee Yoon-ki, 2005)
Falscher Bekenner (Low Profile, Christoph Hochhäusler, 2005)
Yu ni tongzaide xiatian (One Summer with You, Xie Dong, 2005)
Piteopaeneui gongshik (The Peter Pan Formula, Cho Chang-ho, 2005)
Parapalos (Pin Boy, Ana Poliak, 2004)
Impian kemarau (The Rainmaker, Ravi L. Bharwani, 2004)

Retrospective discoveries:

Wadjah Seorang Laki-laki (Ballad of a Young Man, Teguh Karya, 1971)
Batang West Side (Lav Diaz, 2002)
Prae dum (Black Silk, Ratana Pestonji and Ratanavadi Ratanabhand, 1961)
Kiga kaikyo (A Fugitive from the Past, Tomu Uchida, 1965)
Gwiro (A Road to Return, Lee Man-hee, 1967)
Tinimbang ka ngunit kulang (You Were Weighed and Found Wanting, Lino Brocka, 1974)

Most overrated:

Chetyre (4, Ilya Khrzhanovsky, 2004)
Be With Me (Eric Khoo, 2005)
Mang zong (Grain In Ear, Zhang Lu, 2005)
Me and You and Everyone We Know (Miranda July, 2005)
Yongseobadji mothan ja (The Unforgiven, Yoon Jong-bin, 2005)

Burning disappointments:

Batalla en el cielo (Battle in Heaven, Carlos Reygadas, 2005)
Hwal (The Bow, Kim Ki-duk, 2005)
Gie (Riri Riza, 2005)
Chinjeolhan geumjassi (Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, Park Chan-wook, 2005)
Geuk jang jeon (A Tale of Cinema, Hong Sang-soo, 2005)

Worst in 2005:

Italian cinema in 2005. These past twelve months might well be labelled as the darkest year in Italian film history, not only for the abysmal overall level of national output, but also for the new laws approved by the Berlusconi government, which may prove a consistent deterrent and impediment for future creative development and financial investment in the whole cultural sector.

Journey from the Fall (Ham Tran, 2005). Who really feels the need of such an embarrassing relic of Cold War-era Manichaeism to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of Saigon?

Most Eagerly Awaited Film of 2006:

Heremias (Lav Diaz, 2006), as estimated from the enrapturing three-hour work-in-progress screened at Torino Film Festival.

Pamela Biénzobas

Chilean film critic living in Paris, where she is beginning a doctoral thesis on Peter Watkins. She is Vice-president of FIPRESCI, and founder of its Chilean branch and its publication Mabuse.

“The best” is too hard to define. I therefore prefer to draw a non-exhaustive list of a few films, not necessarily the “bigger” titles, which marked 2005 cinematographically for me (although most are officially 2004). In alphabetical order:

Adieu (Arnaud des Pallières, 2003)
This film opened in France in 2004, but I only got to see it in 2005. An astonishing creation that explores the possibilities of sight and sound – and narration.

Darwin’s Nightmare (Hubert Sauper, 2004)
Devastating.

Edvard Munch (Peter Watkins, 1974)
Watkins’ beautiful and intense portrait of an artist finally had a theatrical release in Paris in 2005. It was also the excuse for a retrospective of some of his films.

Estamira (Marcos Prado, 2004)
An outstanding documentary that excels in its form and in its humble and respectful approach to its subject. And – what’s very rare – in the use of form according to the subject.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson, 2004)
I’m among those who still prefer The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), but this is still a wonderful product of Anderson’s extraordinary universe.

Private (Saverio Constazo, 2004)
One of the most original recent fictions about the Palestinian conflict, though its accomplished depiction of the armed invasion of innocent people’s everyday lives applies to many other realities.

La Sagrada Familia (Sebastián Campos, 2004)
A lot is being said about young Chilean filmmakers. Sebastián Campos’ film is refreshing in its processes, and in its approach to film and to reality. It has definitely become Mabuse’s favourite.

Whisky (Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll, 2004)
Here I’m cheating because it’s a 2004 release. But in Chile it opened in 2005, and it was chosen the best of the year in a poll held by Mabuse. Rebella and Stoll’s sense of humour and sense of life are two of the best things that have happened to Latin American cinema.

Workingman’s Death (Michael Glawogger, 2005)
Compelling and visually impressive, this documentary is also disturbing because of the political issues it raises, although its author doesn’t necessarily vindicate them.

Alexander Bisley

Chief film critic for The Dominion Post in Wellington, New Zealand, and Associate Editor of Lumière.

It was another good year, with plenty of stimulating content (albeit it sometimes taking a while for films to get to New Zealand.) While there are lots to be happy about, it’s disappointing something as brilliant as L’Intrus (The Intruder, Claire Denis, 2004) can slip below the radar.

I would particularly like to mention Moolaadé (Ousmane Sembène, 2005). It was exceedingly popular at the Wellington Film Festival and should be distributed in New Zealand. It’s facile to make a depressing film that just allows privileged audiences to confirm their predetermined moral superiority and capacity to pity. Ousmane Sembène’s aim is more ambitious and nuanced: a provocative, unpredictable, ultimately uplifting movie about female genital mutilation. Moolaadé is full of life, vibrancy, girl-power and optimism. Like Abouna (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, 2002), it looks gorgeous, gently complemented by African music. Sembène affectingly proves one can at once be a patriarch and a feminist.

Looking forward, Vincent Ward’s beautiful River Queen (2006) strikingly conveys Maori animism and spirituality.

Bin-Jip (3-Iron, Kim Ki-duk, 2004)
The Aviator (Martin Scorsese, 2004)
L’Enfant (The Child, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 2005)
Der Untergang (Downfall, Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2004)
Hauru no ugoku shiro (Howl’s Moving Castle, Hayao Miyazaki, 2004)
L’Intrus (The Intruder, Claire Denis, 2004)
Rois et Reine (Kings and Queen, Arnaud Desplechin, 2004)
Il Gattopardo (The Leopard, Luchino Visconti, 1963)
Little Fish (Rowan Woods, 2005)
Comme une image (Look at Me, Agnès Jaoui, 2004)
Look Both Ways (Sarah Watts, 2005)
Moolaadé (Ousmane Sembène, 2005)
My Architect (Nathaniel Kahn, 2003)

Stephen Brower

Works in A&R and Marketing for Vanguard Records in Santa Monica, California. In his spare time, he is an amateur filmmaker, critic and, above all, avid cinéphile

As always, I’ve some catching up to do, but, from what I’ve seen, these are the cream of 2005’s considerable crop:

1. Caché (Hidden, Michael Haneke, 2005)
Haneke, along with Bruno Dumont, is an absolute master of the cinema of dis-ease, and Hidden might well be his masterpiece. Revisiting ground he’s tread before – Funny Games (1997), Benny’s Video (1992), Der Siebente Kontinent (The Seventh Continent, 1989) – Haneke here boils down his consumer-culture allegory into a real-world nightmare of the highest order.

2. La Niña santa (The Holy Girl, Lucrecia Martel, 2004)
Martel brings to fruition the promise she exhibited in La Ciénaga (2001) with this languid, sun-drenched re-imagining of the ‘Lolita’ trope.

3. Junebug (Phil Morrison, 2005)
Morrison’s folk-art fish-out-of-water tale gets the South, and more specifically North Carolina, just right.

4. Broken Flowers (Jim Jarmusch, 2005)
Jarmusch is in fine form here and Bill Murray’s catatonic Casanova is something to behold.

5. Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog, 2005)
Herzog crafts another endearing yet scatological portrait of … himself. And there’s that Treadwell guy, too.

6. Hustle & Flow (Craig Brewer, 2005)
A Rocky for the Dirty South. Brewer, actor Terrence Howard and hip-hop guardian angel Mannie Fresh managed to make a Hollywood movie without Hollywood. You’ve might seen this tale before, but rarely have the characters so earnestly compelled you to root for them.

7. Brøde (Brothers, Susanne Bier, 2004)
The most exciting director in the stale, post-Dogme cinema world of Denmark, Bier avoids trouble at every turn to take a melodramatic beyond-belief premise to the land of the real and earnest.

8. Gegen die Wand (Head On, Faitah Akin, 2004)
Akin’s début is overwrought at times, as “love in the ruins” stories most often are, but maintains enough energy and momentum to skate deftly along the edge of that rut.

9. A History of Violence (David Cronenberg, 2005)
Ultimately flawed, Cronenberg’s at-times-very-magical yarn has a hard time deciding whether to cast its lot as a pot-boiled pulp drama or a high-minded social satire.

10. 2046 (Wong Kar-wai, 2004)
Romantic as ever, Wong Kar-wai’s latest is lyrical, head spinning, ambitious, frustrating and ultimately worthwhile.

Colin Browne

Was raised in the province of Newfoundland Canada, world-renowned for its seal pelts and unique gene pool. Currently living in Montréal, he spends many of his hours on the phone earning money and, in his free time, enjoys films and arm wrestling.

10. The 40 Year Old Virgin (Judd Apatow, 2005)
One of the few truly smart comedies made these days. Actor Steve Carell is by turns hilarious, vulgar and charming.

9. Saraband (Ingmar Bergman, 2003)
First film in thirty years from one of the masters, revisiting the characters from one of his best works.

8. A History of Violence (David Cronenberg, 2005)
Yes, English Canada also has a voice when it comes to films and, luckily, Cronenberg is one of the loudest. Complex and compelling.

7. Broken Flowers (Jim Jarmusch, 2005)
Jim Jarmusch and Bill Murray help convey the fragility of relationships without droopy sentiment and with track suits.

6. Rock School (Don Argott, 2005)
A slightly crazed ex-rocker puts a group of children through the rigours of the rock-band rehearsal process, then takes them to Germany to play in a Frank Zappa music festival. And they play Inca Roads!

5. Innocence (Lucile Hadzihalilovic, 2004)
Did I spell that right? [Eds: No, but it’s correct now.] Dreamy.

4. Manderlay (Lars Von Trier, 2005)
Since, and not including Breaking the Waves (1996), he has done no wrong.

3. The Squid and the Whale (Noah Baumbach, 2005)
Well-acted and never cheesy, this film seems determined to show what can happen when emotion is replaced with knowledge. Also very funny with a twist of gross.

2. Palindromes (Todd Solondz, 2004)
Ironing out the bugs from his other major works, Solondz has finally delivered in a major way, a film about life.

1. Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog, 2005)
Herzog, well into his fourth decade as a filmmaker, makes perhaps the greatest documentary of his career, while using almost no original footage. It was a film waiting to be made exactly in this way and the intimate scenes with the animals are uniquely fascinating.

Overrated film of the year:

Last Days (Gus Van Sant, 2005)
His new approach to film is inspiring and, at times, downright overwhelming in composition and style, but not in this case. Well intentioned but lazy.

Funny line (Palindromes):
“Would you mind waiting for me for 5 minutes. I’ve got to pick up some zip discs.”

Thomas Caldwell

Melbourne-based freelance writer specialising in film criticism and film education. He is the author of Film Analysis Handbook (Insight Publications, 2005).

Although I confess that for a part of 2005 I gave up on going to the cinema and shut myself in with Alfred Hitchcock DVDs, this year did see the release of some great films and was probably the best year for Australian cinema since 1994.

My top ten films that received a first-run theatrical release in Melbourne, Australia, in 2005 (in preferred order) are:

1. The Proposition (John Hillcoat, 2005)
2. Mysterious Skin (Gregg Araki, 2004)
3. Birth (Jonathan Glazer, 2004)
4. Broken Flowers (Jim Jarmusch, 2005)
5. OldBoy (Park Chan-wook, 2003)
6. Der Untergang (Downfall, Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2004)
7. Ong-bak (Prachya Pinkaew, 2003)
8. Sideways (Alexander Payne, 2004)
9. Closer (Mike Nichols, 2004)
10. Look Both Ways (Sarah Watt, 2005)

There were many high quality films not too far behind but I have restricted myself to the following ten honourable mentions:

2046 (Wong Kar-wai, 2004)
La Mala educación (Bad Education, Pedro Almodóvar, Spain, 2004)
De Fem Benspænd, (The Five Obstructions, Jørgen Leth and Lars von Trier, 2003)
Good Night, and Good Luck.(George Clooney, 2005)
Gegen die Wand (Head On, Fatih Akin, Germany, 2004)
King Kong (Peter Jackson, 2005)
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Shane Black, 2005)
Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood, 2004)
Al-Jenna-An (Paradise Now, Hany Abu-Assad, 2005)
Tarnation (Jonathan Caouette, 2003)

As well as the Australian films I have already listed, I would also like to mention Little Fish (Rowan Woods, 2005), The Magician (Scott Ryan, 2005), Three Dollars (Robert Connolly, 2005) and Wolf Creek (Greg McLean, 2005) for further demonstrating the diversity and quality of Australian cinema this year.

Other highlights during the year were screenings of Bin-Jip (3-Iron, Kim Ki-duk, 2004), Caché (Hidden, Michael Haneke, 2005) and Saraband (Ingmar Bergman, 2003) at the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF), and Inosensu: Kôkaku kidôtai (Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, Oshii Mamoru, 2004).

Extra special mention to Forgiveness (Ian Gabriel, 2004) Kôhî jikô (Café Lumière, Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2003), both of which screened at MIFF and both are two of the best films I saw this year.

Although 2005 also saw the release of several films that I found to be mediocre or disappointing, I am not going to give in to the (admittedly highly enjoyable) indulgence of further running them into the ground. However, I do feel compelled to list three extraordinarily well-received films that I found to be very average.

So, the overrated films for 2005 are:

Frank Miller’s Sin City (Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, 2005)
Crash (Paul Haggis, 2004)
Me and You and Everyone We Know (Miranda July, 2005)

On a more positive note, thanks to the many outstanding programs by ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image), the typically excellent annual program by the Melbourne Cinémathèque and the dedication to screen culture demonstrated by independent cinemas such as The Astor Theatre, I was able to indulge in many fantastic retrospective screenings throughout 2005.

My top retrospective films to be screening for 2 weeks or more are:

2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) at The Astor Theatre
Modern Times (Charles Chaplin, 1936) and The Great Dictator (Charles Chaplin, 1940) double at The Astor Theatre
Chelovek s Kinoapparatom (The Man with a Movie Camera, Dziga Vertov, 1929) at Cinema Nova
Giù la testa (A Fistful of Dynamite, Sergio Leone, 1971) at The Astor Theatre
The Big Red One (Samuel Fuller, 1980 and 2004) at The Astor Theatre

Instead of listing all the high-quality films that received one-off screenings in Melbourne during 2005, I am simply listing the films that I had never seen before that made a major impression on me:

Blowup (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966), screened by the Melbourne Cinémathèque
Code Inconnu: récit incomplet de divers voyages (Code Unknown, Michael Haneke, 2000), screened at the Melbourne Cinémathèque’s Michael Haneke retrospective
La Planète Sauvage (The Fantastic Planet, René Laloux, 1973), screened by the Melbourne Cinémathèque and the Melbourne International Animation Festival
Shadows (John Cassavetes, 1959), screened at ACMI’s Jim Jarmusch retrospective
There’s Always Tomorrow (Douglas Sirk, 1956), screened at the Melbourne Cinémathèque’s Barbara Stanwyck retrospective

Finally, extra special mention to Tasogare Sakaba (Twilight Saloon, Tomu Uchida, 1955), which was screened as part of MIFF’s Tomu Uchida retrospective. Seeing this film was the cinematic highlight of my year and affirmed everything I love about films.

Michael Campi

Has been under the spell of the cinema for half a century. He was involved with the film society movement, assisted with the former National Film Theatre of Australia and was a committee member of the Melbourne Film Festival in the 1970s.

Ae Fond Kiss … (Ken Loach, 2004)
Cinévardaphoto (Agnès Varda, 2004)
Días de campo (Raúl Ruiz, 2004)
Gegen die Wand (Head On, Fatih Akin, Germany, 2004)
Le Chiava di Casa (The Keys to the House, Gianni Amelio, 2004)
Influenza (digital short work, Bong Joon-Ho, 2004)
La Maison des bois (Maurice Pialat, 1971)
Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood, 2004)
Moolaadé (Ousmane Sembène, 2004)
Lu cheng (Passages, Yang Chao, 2004)
Kong que (Peacock, Gu Changwei, 2005)
The Proposition (John Hillcoat, 2005)
Aru asa, Soup wa (The Soup, One Morning, Takahashi Izumi, 2004)
Frakchi (Spying Cam, Whang Cheol-Mean, 2004)
Tony Takitani (Jun Ichikawa, 2004)
Whisky (Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll, 2004)

Other works to delight, enlighten and satisfy in many ways were, in no special order:

Mrs. Henderson Presents (Stephen Frears, 2005)
Wae chui (April Snow, Hur Jin-Ho, 2005)
Geuk jang jeon (A Tale of Cinema, Hong Sang-soo, 2005)
Mysterious Skin (Gregg Araki, 2004)
Tokyo Magic Hours (2005), The Year of Living Vicariously (2005) and four short films, all by Amir Muhammad – potent, witty essay works from a unique Malaysian talent
10e chambre: instants d’audience ( 10th District Court: Moments of Trials, Raymond Depardon, 2004)
Sorceress of the New Piano (Evans Chan, 2004)
Songhwan (Repatriation, Kim Dong-won, 2003)
Kekexili (Kekexili: Mountain Patrol, Lu Chuan, 2004)
Al-Jenna-An (Paradise Now, Hany Abu-Assad, 2005)
Vietnam Symphony (Tom Zubrycki, 2005)
Kung Fu (Kung Fu Hustle, Stephen Chow, 2004)
Mon père est ingénieur (My Father is an Engineer, Robert Guédiguian, 2004)
Shijie (The World, Jia Zhang-ke, 2004)
Winter Solstice (Josh Sternfeld, 2004)

In Melbourne, we continue to experience a wide global view with the programming of the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) and the nationwide Cinémathèque circuit.

In 2005, MIFF showed (along with an extensive range of new international films) five marvellous works by Tomu Uchida, while we must be very grateful for the voluntary persistence of the Cinémathèque organisers, whose efforts brought us the first Australian season of works by Manoel de Oliveira, along with tributes to Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, Kenji Mizoguchi and many more. Its weekend screening of Pialat’s masterly La Maison des bois is included above.

On the DVD front, special mention must be made of the long-awaited release of Yamanaka Sadao’s masterpiece, Ninjo Kami-fusen (Humanity and Paper Balloons, 1937), from the enterprising Masters of Cinema people; the discs from Gemini of Oliveira films, with so many subtitled supplements; the boxset of three films by Hong Sang-Soo, including finally a letterboxed version of Kangwon-do ui him (The Power of Kangwon Province, 1998); and the Flemish release of the early André Delvaux film, De Man die zijn haar kort liet knippen (The Man Who Had His Hair Cut Short, 1965). Not only is the last title presented in a beautiful monochrome copy, but the disc also includes a documentary made by Delvaux during the making of Jacques Demy’s Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (The Young Girls of Rochefort, 1967). Essential viewing, indeed. Finally, the local DVD releases from Madman are adding many important titles to the catalogue. Of special recommendation is their release of Luchino Visconti’s Il Gattopardo (The Leopard, 1963) not only because it is an exceptional transfer, particularly compared to some illustrious international versions, but also because it has an insightful commentary by Rolando Caputo, a respected authority on Italian cinema in general.

Lesley Chow

Australian writer who has written for The Times Literary Supplement, Salon, Bright Lights and The Age.

1. Rois et Reine (Kings and Queen, Arnaud Desplechin, 2004)
2. Buongiorno, Notte (Good Morning, Night, Marco Bellocchio, 2003)
3. Birth (Jonathan Glazer, 2004)
4. Hotel Rwanda (Terry George, 2004)

5. Kung Fu (Kung Fu Hustle, Stephen Chow, 2004)
This film is a splendid large package being offered to American audiences. It travels. Yet it also shows that Chow is no longer interested in being what he was: a man at the forefront of one of the world’s great, buzzing languages. Hong Kong is a strange city: a place where expressions date within a couple of months and the culture shifts based on a comment on talk radio or the way someone puns in an ad. Even sixty-year-olds speak faddishly; they’re always injecting something into language. In the early ’90s, Chow was a master, so verbally astonishing that teenagers would build and script on top of virtually everything he said. In Zheng gu zhuan jia (Tricky Brains, Wong Jing, 1991), actor Chow cultivated a neutral tone where he could throw in casual allusions to prostitution, to queasy feelings and perversity of all kinds. Those “twistings” are missing from Kung Fu Hustle; even a “tossed-off” phrase is clearly calculated. There’s a low-down feel you don’t get here, or anywhere else, for that matter – except maybe in African American films, like Booty Call (Jeff Pollack, 1997) or Barber Shop (Tim Story, 2002). Good as Hustle is, what I miss is the energy – a script that hasn’t been passed around the boardroom ten times.

6. Bewitched (Nora Ephron, 2005)
7. Moolaadé (Ousmane Sembène, 2004)
8. Innocence (Lucile Hadzihalilovic, 2004)
9. Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood, 2004)

10. Prime (Ben Younger, 2005)
Like any other genre, the romantic comedy can be revived by a director satisfied with its parameters, someone who makes fresh connections between key scenes. Prime has it all: defined character arcs, lovable sidekicks, a wander through the streets of Manhattan. Yet it carefully chooses each of these elements and spaces them out. Rather than being a narrow exercise, the movie seems open to new behaviours, gestures and, especially, a rediscovery of the city. There’s an abundance of air in this film, with its flying New York shots, its scenes of recalled sex and its characters shaping the wind as they breeze by in a car. Younger has a wonderfully light editing style (Boiler Room, 2000) and his images come in streams. Quick shots of strangers and potentially interesting art float in between close-ups; every detail is incidental rather than throwaway. At the beginning, it feels as if the camera could alight on any face and start from there. Even the lovers’ first glance occurs during the previews for a film instead of its story section. In this, Younger is a more delicate portrayer of evanescence than, say, Richard Linklater. From its vanishing director credit, to the transformation of character at the end, the film leaves a subtle but definite trace.

Matthew Clayfield

An independent filmmaker and freelance writer soon to based in Melbourne, Australia. You can visit his website at www.esotericrabbit.com.

2005:

I Am a Sex Addict (Caveh Zahedi, 2005)
Serenity (Joss Whedon, 2005)
Tian bian yi duo yun (The Wayward Cloud, Tsai Ming-liang, 2005)

I also really liked 2046 (Wong Kar-wai, 2004), Melinda and Melinda (Woody Allen, 2004) and The Proposition (John Hillcoat, 2005), though none of them made my personal canon or anything.

Clearly, I have more to see!

Catching Up With 2004:

13 Lakes (James Benning, 2004)
The Big Red One: The Reconstruction (Samuel Fuller, 1980 and 2004)
Birth (Jonathan Glazer, 2004)
John Safran vs. God (Craig Melville, 2004), written by John Safran and Mark O’Toole
Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood, 2004)
Yeojaneun namjaui miraeda (Woman is the Future of Man, Hong Sang-soo, 2004)
Yes (Sally Potter, 2004)

Seen for the First Time:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (various, 1997-2003), created by Joss Whedon. I particularly like the episodes “Hush”, “The Body” and “Once More, With Feeling”, all written by Whedon
The Falls (Peter Greenaway, 1980)
Faust (Jan Švankmajer, 1994)
Jour de fête (Jacques Tati, 1948)
Love Streams (John Cassavetes, 1984)
Masculin Féminin: 15 faits précis (Jean-Luc Godard, 1966)
Motion Painting No. 1 (Oskar Fischinger, 1947)
Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)
Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985)
Tout van bien (Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin, 1972)

And the films of:

Abel Ferrara: Ms .45 (1981), King of New York (1990), Snake Eyes (1993), Body Snatchers (aka Dangerous Games, 1993), The Addiction (1995), ’R Xmas (2000)

Alfred Hitchcock: The 39 Steps (1935), Rebecca (1940), Foreign Correspondent (1940), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Stage Fright (1950), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), The Birds (1963)

Owen Land: On the Marriage Broker Joke as Cited by Sigmund Freud in Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious or Can the Avant-Garde Artist Be Wholed? (1977-9), Wide Angle Saxon (1975)

Joseph L. Mankiewicz: All About Eve (1950), Sleuth (1972)

Henri-Georges Clouzot: Le Salaire de la peur (Wages of Fear, 1953), Les Diaboliques (1955),

… and so on.

WWW:

Chasing Windmills (videoblog) (Cristina Cordova and Juan Antonio del Rosario)

Criticism, Writing, etc.:

“The 400 Blow Jobs” by Helen Bandis, Adrian Martin and Grant McDonald, from Rouge 7
Abel Ferrara: The Moral Vision by Brad Stevens
Digital Poetics (blog) by Nicholas Rombes
Elusive Lucidity (blog) by Zach Campbell
Hitchcock at Work by Bill Krohn
A Long Hard Look at ‘Psycho’ by Raymond Durgnat
Phantasms by Adrian Martin
Theory of Film Practice by Noël Burch

And almost anything by Nicole Brenez or Adrian Martin.

Aurelio Nieto Codina

A geographer, he teaches in a high school and is doing a Master at Santiago de Compostela University.

Four excellent films released in Madrid in 2005, in no particular order:

Saraband (Ingmar Bergman, 2003)
A cathartic movie, in the Greek sense of the word. Bergman continues making masterpieces.

Trilogia I: To Livadi pou darkryzei (Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow, Theo Angelopoulos, 2004)
Passion, pain, transgression, vengeance, exile, loss, oppression, loyalty, resistance … the European history of the 20^th century.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Tim Burton, 2005)
From the main title sequence until the end, Burton gives us an unexpected surrealist musical comedy. The film is full of human warmness.

A History of Violence (David Cronenberg, 2005)
A film about American culture of violence, with very intelligent references to Westerns (Anthony Mann), and subtle humour and a superb end. The best Cronenberg.

Retrospectives and classic films in Spanish Film Museum (Filmoteca Española):

Chantal Akerman: Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1976)

Roberto Rossellini: La Paura (Fear, 1954), Vanina Vanini (1961), La Prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV (The Rise of Luis XIV, 1966), Socrate (1970), Cartesius (Descartes, 1974), Il Messia (The Messiah, 1976)

John Huston: Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1956), Freud (1962), Fat City (1972)

Abel Gance: La Dixième Symphonie (1918), J’Accuse (1919), Napoléon (1927), La Vénus aveugle (Blind Venus, 1941).

On DVD, the reconstruction of The Big Red One (Samuel Fuller, 1980 and 2004) and Jean Vigo films.

Jesús Cortés

Writes for El Unicornio, a Spanish magazine about cinema and culture, and for the Rotten Tomatoes website.

These are the best films that I have seen in 2005 (commercially released in my country, including film festivals):

1. Histoire de Marie et Julien (The Story of Marie and Julien, Jacques Rivette, 2003)
2. Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood, 2004)
3. Cantando dietro I paraventi (Singing Behind Screens, Ermanno Olmi, 2003)
4. Sud Pralad (Tropical Malady, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004)
5. Match Point (Woody Allen, 2005)
6. À tout de suite (Right Now, Benoît Jacquot, 2004)
7. Los Muertos (Lisandro Alonso, 2004)
8. No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (Martin Scorsese, 2005)
9. S21, la machine de mort Khmère rouge (S21: The Khmer Rouge Death Machine, Rithy Panh, 2002)
10. Demain on déménage (Tomorrow We Move, Chantal Akerman, 2005)
11. Bin-Jip (3-Iron, Kim Ki-duk, 2004)
12. La Demoiselle d’honneur (The Bridesmaid, Claude Chabrol, 2004)

Some notes about this year:

Thanks to friends, internet orders and DVD re-editions, I have had the opportunity to review many great movies: Anthony Mann’s The Tall Target (1951) – it seems a tiny piece, but it’s a masterpiece; Mark Robson’s The Seventh Victim (1943); Luis Buñuel’s Las Aventuras de Robinson Crusoe (The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, 1954), the most underrated of his maximum works; Marcel Pagnol’s La Femme du boulanger (The Baker’s Wife, 1938); George Cukor’s Love Among the Ruins (1975); John Ford’s Gideon’s Day (1958) and The World Moves On (1934), which is the movie I like the most among the ones that he despised; Marc Donskoi’s Detstvo Gorkogo (The Childhood of Maxim Gorki, 1938); Kenji Mizoguchi’s Shin heike monogatari (1955) and Otto Preminger’s Saint Joan (1958): they seem to me two of the greatest political films ever made.

I’ve also seen for the first time wonders such as Frank Borzage’s Lucky Star (1929), perhaps his milestone in the silent period; Abram Room’s Tretya Meshchanskaya (Bed and Sofa, 1926), a unique and audacious melodrama, radically different from all other Russian silent cinema; Renato Castellani’s I sogni nel cassetto (1957), probably his best; Eugenii Bauer’s Sumerki zhenskoi dushi (1913), Posle smerti (1915) and Umirayuschii lebed (1917); Francesco Maselli’s I delfini (1960). I also enjoyed Mauro Bolognini’s Imputazione di omicidio per uno studente (1971), the definitive evidence, if it was necessary, of this director’s huge talent; almost everyone else would fail with this material.

The recovery of Martin Scorsese – after the total defeat of The Aviator (2004), his worst movie ever – with No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005). He proves his skill when music is the subject of his cinema.

In a year of too many insubstantial new releases, David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence (2005) and Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers (2005) only offer further testament to the banality of American cinema.

After the extraordinary Tiovivo c. 1950 (2003), director José Luis Garci couldn’t reach the same state of grace and narrative maturity with Ninette (2005), and yet nobody seemed to care a lot, which is a real disaster in a rickety cinema industry like Spain’s.

In addition, Julian Marías, one of the greatest film critics, died in Madrid and those who loved his comments feel miserable, orphaned and lonely.

Doug Cummings

Co-founder of MastersofCinema.org and publishes a blog at Filmjourney.org.

Alphabetically:

1. La Meglio gioventù (The Best of Youth, Marco Tullio Giordana, 2003)
2. Darwin’s Nightmare (Hubert Sauper, 2004)
3. L’Enfant (The Child, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 2005)
4. Hauru no ugoku shiro (Howl’s Moving Castle, Hayao Miyazaki, 2004)
5. Mutual Appreciation (Andrew Bujalski, 2005)
6. The New World (Terrence Malick, 2005)
7. Parapalos (Pin Boy, Ana Poliak, 2004)
8. Les Amants réguliers (Everyday Lovers, Philippe Garrel, 2005)
9. Solntse (The Sun, Aleksandr Sokurov, 2005)
10. Tony Takitani (Jun Ichikawa, 2004)

Adrian Danks

President and Co-curator of the Melbourne Cinémathèque (co-curator of the National Cinémathèque).

Best ‘new’ films screening somewhere in Melbourne (in order of preference):

1. Welt Spiegel Kino (World Mirror Cinema, Gustav Deutsch, 2005)
In many ways, this was the most profound new film I saw in 2005. It was certainly the film that had the most to teach and show me about film history. Proceeding, somewhat fancifully, from three street scenes outside of cinemas in Vienna, Surabaya and Porto, respectively, at three different points in time between 1912 and 1930, the film provides an extraordinarily novel approach to the fragmentary nature that defines the remnants and common experience of early cinema. Rather than insisting upon the melancholy singularity of individual films, or the wreckage of fragments of decaying footage that dominates early cinema’s legacy, World Mirror Cinema stiches together early film history and its artefacts as a massive force of historical continuity, a web of pictorial and social connections. In Deutsch’s great, but gently dissolving montage of early cinema footage he points towards both our connection to, rather than separation from, the past and the possibilities offered by actually looking at the images of the past as images rather than just images of things and events. One can perhaps now only dream of a cinema – like that in Surabaya, Java, now Indonesia – that would show Fritz Lang’s Die Nibelungen (1924) and Tod Browning’s The Unholy Three (1925) side-by-side.

2. Víctor Erice’s “Lifeline” from Ten Years Older: The Trumpet (2002)
It screened for the first time in Melbourne this year. A relatively poor film overall, the less said about the sections directed by Wim Wenders, Chen Kaige and Aki Kaurismäki the better.

3. The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear (Adam Curtis, 2004) – television version
A film of ideas and provocative, sustained argument. Great use of Sabu, too.

4. El Cielo gira (The Sky Turns, Mercedes Álvarez, 2004)
5. Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (Ken Burns, 2004)
6. Birth (Jonathan Glazer, 2004)
7. No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (Martin Scorsese, 2005)
8. Rois et Reine (Kings and Queen, Arnaud Desplechin, 2004)
9. Girl in a Mirror – A Portrait of Carol Jerems (Kathy Drayton, 2005)
10. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (Alex Gibney, 2005)

Bubbling under:

War of the Worlds (Steven Spielberg, 2005), Uso Justo (Scott Coleman Miller, 2005), The Devil and Daniel Johnston (Jeff Feuerzeig, 2005), Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine (Peter Tscherkassky, 2005), Innocence (Lucile Hadzihalilovic, 2004), Z-Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (Zan Cassavetes, 2004), Ryan (Chris Landreth, 2004), Caché (Hidden, Michael Haneke, 2005), Saraband (Ingmar Bergman, 2003), Phantom Limb (Jay Rosenblatt, 2005), Be Here to Love Me: A Film about Townes Van Zandt (Margaret Brown, 2004), Vera Drake (Mike Leigh, 2004), 10e chambre: instants d’audience (10th District Court: Moments of Trials, Raymond Depardon, 2004), Sideways (Alexander Payne, 2004), Tony Takitani (Jun Ichikawa, 2004), Les Modèles de Pickpocket (The Models of Pickpocket, Babette Mangolte, 2004), O Espelho Mágico (Magic Mirror, Manoel de Oliveira, 2005), Museum Piece (John Smith, 2005), Shijie (The World, Jia Zhang-ke, 2004)

10 Worst ‘new’ films of the year seen in any context:

1. Tarnation (Jonathan Caouette, 2003)
2. Los Muertos (Lisandro Alonso, 2004)
3. Chain (Jem Cohen, 2004)
4. Satellite (Ben Speth, 2005) – sorry
5. Operetta tanuki gotten (Princess Raccoon, Seijun Suzuki, 2005)
6. Punk: Attitude (Don Letts, 2005)
7. Reikusaido mada kesu (Lakeside Murder Case, Shinji Aoyama, 2004)
8. Clean (Olivier Assayas, 2004)
9. Die Andere Frau (The Other Woman, Marguerite von Trotta, 2004)
10. Special mention also goes to the Experimenta Vanishing Point opening-night session run in conjunction with the Melbourne Cinémathèque (poor films overall with no coherent curatorial vision); the screening of Stanley Kubrick’s shorts and first feature, Fear and Desire (1953), at the Melbourne University Film Society (I think that’s what they were but I can’t say for certain due to the quality of the “prints” shown) – I’ll be attending the Australian Centre for the Moving Image’s screening of the shorts in January as I’m sure I won’t recognise them as the same films; the Melbourne International Film Festival’s screening of the patently absurd and ludicrous hagiography, Stranger: Bernie Worrell on Earth (Philip Di Fiore, 2005), which is definitely the worst thing I saw all year, but I’m not really sure it actually constitutes a film (and the quality of the source was truly appalling); and the embarrassing Le Temps qui changent (André Téchiné, 2004) that opened the Catherine Deneuve season at ACMI.

Overrated and Major Disappointments:

Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood, 2004)
Probably the most overrated film of the decade so far, full of over-blown (posing as understated) and -studied melodramatics (it is not enough for critics to acclaim Eastwood as the last of the no-frills “classical” American directors; so what?)

Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride (Tim Burton and Mike Johnson, 2005)
The Proposition (John Hillcoat, 2005)

Land of the Dead (George A. Romero, 2005)
To be celebrated for the fact that it was willing to offer a bare-bones critique of contemporary America (but, ultimately, this wasn’t very deep, satisfying or all that insightful)

Walkabout (2005)
Sadly botched multi-media performance with Richard Frankland

Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Kôhî jikô (Café Lumière, 2003)

L’Enfant (The Child, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 2005)
A good but hardly great or novel film (they need to get the camera off the shoulder of their central protagonists; a technique that could also be seen, seldom to all that useful effect, in numerous other films this year, including Lodge Kerrigan’s Keane (2004))

2046 (Wong Kar-wai, 2004)
Unfortunately the most self-conscious, pretentious and overly “posed” film of the year (had some great moments though, of course)

5X2 (François Ozon, 2004)

Undertow (David Gordon Green, 2004)
Sub-Terence Malick, sub-The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955). Great credit sequence, but when are critics going to tumble to the fact that Green actually doesn’t have anything much to offer or make a film about except atmosphere (and that’s getting pretty stale)

Hauru no ugoku shiro (Howl’s Moving Castle, Hayao Miyazaki, 2004) Watching this during MIFF with an audience who were all over 18, and most of whom wouldn’t be caught dead in a contemporary Disney film (its obvious structural model; similar in its very limited abilities in terms of rendering human characters as well), was a very odd experience

Look Both Ways (Sarah Watt, 2005)
An okay film but suffering from the same schematic and over-determined plotting that is a virtual disease in contemporary Australian narrative features

Jabe Babe: A Heightened Life (Janet Merewether, 2005)
All Tomorrow’s Parties (Yu Lik Wai, 2003)

L’Intrus (The Intruder, Claire Denis, 2004)
Perhaps most disappointing of all … along with …

Le Fantôme d’Henri Langlois (Henri Langlois: The Phantom of the Cinémathèque, Jacques Richard, 2004)
Exhausting rather than exhaustive

Catherine Deneuve retrospective at ACMI (2005)
A disappointment, less for the quality of the films (though it was, understandably, missing several key works by François Truffaut and Jacques Demy) than for what it revealed about her very limited, brittle appeal and range (so I guess it was oddly useful) – the Garbo of post-war French cinema (not a compliment)

Je Vous Aime (I Love You All, Claude Berry, 1980)
Unrelentingly tricksy and a particular lowlight (despite a characteristically weird performance by Serge Gainsbourg and the very odd sight of Gérard Depardieu trying to play a saxophone in a punk band while festooned in animal fur).

Retrospective Highlights:

Tomu Uchida retrospective at MIFF
Especially Tasogare sakaba (Twilight Saloon, 1955) and Naniwa no koi no monogatari (Chikamatsu’s ‘Love in Osaka’, 1959)

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger retrospective
Particularly the audacious Technicolor virtuosity of Gone to Earth (1950) and The Tales of Hoffmann (1951), as well as the tortured domestic intimacy of The Small Back Room (1949)

Eric Rohmer season
A special mention goes to the late 1960s and early ’70s films, still revelatory on the big screen. L’Amour l’après-midi (Love in the Afternoon, 1972) has some claims to being Rohmer’s most underrated and most devastating work

Manoel de Oliveira spotlight
The shorts, the final passages of Viagem ao Princípio do Mundo (Voyage to the Beginning of the World, 1997) and some images from ‘Non’, ou a vã Glória de Mandar (No, or the Vain Glory of Command, 1990)

Screenings of Akira Kurosawa’s Tengoku to jigoku (High and Low, 1963), Sam Peckinpah’s Major Dundee (1965) and Maurice Pialat’s monumental La Maison des bois (1971) at the Melbourne Cinémathèque; Wong Kar-wai season, Once Upon a Time in America (Sergio Leone, 1984), Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Jacques Demy, 1964), Bande à part (Jean-Luc Godard, 1964), In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950), and Kubrick exhibition at ACMI; Ryan Larkin films at the Melbourne International Animation Festival and the 35mm print of Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks’ Plane Crazy (1928) – a revelation; the release on DVD of Looney Tunes: The Golden Collection Vol. 3 (focusing more on Robert Clampett and Frank Tashlin – hooray!); the Criterion DVD versions of Heaven Can Wait (Ernst Lubitsch, 1943), Le Samourai (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967), The Tales of Hoffmann (Powell and Pressburger, 1951) and Les Yeux sans visage (Eyes without a Face, Georges Franju, 1959); Unseen Cinema (despite some muddiness about its notion of what constitutes avant-garde cinema); Avant-Garde: Experimental Cinema of the 1920s and 1930s; The Jean Vigo Collection; Francesco, giullare di Dio (Roberto Rossellini, 1950); Wild River (Elia Kazan, 1960); From Keynes to Chaos (Adam Curtis); and last, but not least, The Big Red One (Samuel Fuller, 1980 and 2004).

Brian Darr

A cinéphile with a penchant for wearing the colour orange. He started a blog entitled Hell on Frisco Bay in mid-2005.

Werner Herzog recently said in an interview in Index Magazine, “Fitzcarraldo [1982] is my best documentary and Little Dieter Needs to Fly [1997] is my best fiction film.” In a perhaps similar spirit, I present two lists of films first shown in San Francisco/Berkeley cinemas in 2005.

My favourite documentaries of the year:

A History of Violence (David Cronenberg, 2005)
Moolaadé (Ousmane Sembène, 2004)
Harmony (Jim Trainor, 2004)
One Night in Mongkok (Derek Lee, 2004)
Yes (Sally Potter, 2004)
Dare mo shiranai (Nobody Knows, Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2004)
Pulse (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2001)
Frank Miller’s Sin City (Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, 2005)
Me, You and Everyone We Know (Miranda July, 2005)
The Syrian Bride (Eran Riklis, 2004)

My favourite fiction films:

The Joy of Life (Jenni Olson, 2005)
The White Diamond (Werner Herzog, 2004)
Ten Skies (James Benning, 2004)
13 Lakes (James Benning, 2004)
Into the Picture Scroll: the Tale of Yamanaka Towika (Sumeka Haneda, 2004)
Poetry and Truth (Peter Kubelka, 2003)
Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog, 2005)
I Am a Sex Addict (Caveh Zahedi, 2005)
Phantom Foreign Vienna (Lisl Ponger, 2004)
Tokyo Magic Hour (Amir Muhammed, 2005)

Dustin Dasig

A training director and film reviewer for three Philippine-based magazines. His anthology of film articles and critiques, Reel Reviews, will be released in March 2006.

It is hard to make a reverential Top 10 list every time another year in cinema ends, especially if you have seen 211 films. Here are the films that influenced my daily living this year, the ones that made me love cinema and movie-going even more:

Guizi lai le (Devils in the Doorstep, Jiang Wen, 2000)
The fact that it was banned in its native country proves that this well-acted satire on the ravages of war was piercing, shattering and moving on a cinematic and personal level.

Dare mo shiranai (Nobody Knows, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan, 2004)
Yûya Yagira’s Best Actor award in Cannes last year is one of the highlights of this unsensational, emotionally gripping drama. Who says family dysfunction should be blamed on kids only?

La Niña santa (The Holy Girl, Lucrecia Martel, 2004)
I have yet to see Argentine filmmaker Martel’s début feature, La Ciénaga (2001). But the first time I saw this Cannes Film Festival contender on DVD, I was fascinated by its fluid dialogue, effective and meaty characterization, and effervescent tone and mood.

Sud Pralad (Tropical Malady, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004)
It is unfair to brand this new film from Thai cinema wunderkind Weerasethakul as an obscure gay movie. It deserves to be recognized as a “mythical love story that transcends sexual orientation, race, time, space, and language”.

Sideways (Alexander Payne, 2004)
True, the dearth of well-written, sensitive and humane comedies featuring character thespians in America is an alarming sign of creative famine, but 2004’s most over-praised film offered a ray of hope.

A History of Violence (David Cronenberg , 2005)
Even if I haven’t started reading the graphic novel on which this film was based, I was drawn by John Olson’s inventive script and the powerful, well-acted cast.

Moolaadé (Ousmane Sembène, 2004)
The best African film to be shown in Cannes, Cinemanil and Toronto Film Festival last year, period. Women’s issues need not be sensational or shocking for it to be made into a film just like Moolaadé.

Lilja 4-Ever (Lukas Moodysson, 2002)
Moodysson’s gripping character study gets its high points from the uncompromising, fluid storytelling and Oksana Akinshina’s chiselled performance in the title role.

Bin-Jip (3-Iron, Kim Ki-duk, 2004)
Korean auteur Kim Ki-duk continues to bedazzle critics and audiences with his unique narrative device of transposing conventional storytelling elements of time, dialogue and space. 3-Iron is his latest masterpiece.

Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1945)
This elegantly shot, heartbreaking film makes the romantic-drama sub-genre poised for imitation, but to do it with a David Lean classic is impossible.

John Demetry

A sometime contributor to Cinedrama.de, First of the Month and Revolution to Revelation.

Twelve Best Movies of 2005 (preferential):

1. (tie) Munich and War of the Worlds (both Steven Spielberg, 2005)
2. Nine Lives (Rodrigo García, 2005)
3. Le Clan (Three Dancing Slaves, Gael Morel, 2004)
4. Kung Fu (Kung Fu Hustle, Stephen Chow, 2004)
5. 2046 (Wong Kar-wai, 2004)
6. (tie) Buongiorno, Notte (Good Morning, Night, Marco Bellocchio, 2003) and L’Ora di religione (Il sorriso di mia madre) (My Mother’s Smile, Bellocchio, 2002)
7. Breakfast on Pluto (Neil Jordan, 2005)
8. Garçon stupide (Lionel Baier, 2004)
9. Country of My Skull (aka In My Country, John Boorman, 2004)
10. The Family Stone (Thomas Bezucha, 2005)

Runners-up (preferential):

Hustle & Flow (Craig Brewer, 2005), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Tim Burton, 2005), Palindromes (Todd Solondz, 2004), Fever Pitch (Bobby and Peter Farrelly, 2005), Crustacés et coquillages (Cote d’azur, Olivier Ducastle and Jacques Martineau, 2005), Pretty Persuasion (Marcos Siega, 2005), Transporter 2 (Louis Leterrier, 2005), Danny the Dog (aka Unleashed, Louis Leterrier, 2005), Loggerheads (Tim Kirkman, 2005), Lords of Dogtown (Catherine Hardwicke, 2005).

Jorge Didaco

A Brazil-based teacher and writer in theatre, performance and film.

The highlights (in no particular order):

Cinema, Aspirinas e Urubus (Cinema, Aspirins and Vultures, Marcelo Gomes, 2005)
The sertão revisited: it still remains oppressive, arid, archaic, mythic even, but, through its director’s generous eyes, it becomes also warm, intimate and funny. It subtly connects themes of expatriation and the dislocation of mind and body with the coercive power of images and sounds. And then there’s the vulture that lies ahead, waiting for the smallest fall.

Other significant titles from Brazilian cinema, past and present: O Fim e o Princípio (Eduardo Coutinho, 2005), Bens Confiscados (Carlos Reichenbach, 2004), News from a Personal War (João Moreira Salles and Kátia Lund, 1999), SuperOutro (Edgard Navarro, 1989), A Queda (Ruy Guerra and Nelson Xavier, 1976), Um Homem Sem Importância (Alberto Salvá, 1971) and Viagem ao Fim do Mundo (Fernando Cony Campos, 1968)

Odete (João Pedro Rodrigues, 2005)
Ronda nocturna (Edgardo Cozarinsky, 2005)
Xing xing xang xi xi (Star Appeal, Cui Zi’en, 2005)
Blush (Wim Vandekeybus, 2005)
Mondomanila: Institute of Poets (Khavn, 2005)
A History of Violence (David Cronenberg, 2005)
Rois et Reine (Kings and Queen, Arnaud Desplechin, 2004)
Bab el shams (The Gate of the Sun, Yousry Nasrallah, 2004)
Ryan (Chris Landreth, 2004)

Other strong current and recent releases:

My Dad is 100 Years Old (Guy Maddin, 2005), Tian bian yi duo yun (The Wayward Cloud, Tsai Ming-liang, 2005), Manderlay (Lars von Trier, 2005), O Fatalista (João Botelho, 2005), Le Promeneur du Champ de Mars (The Last Mitterand, Robert Guédiguian, 2005), Les Artistes du Théâtre Brûlé (Rithy Panh, 2005), Le Filmeur (Alain Cavalier, 2005), Dealer (Benedek Fliegauf, 2004), Mysterious Skin (Gregg Araki, 2004), Shijie (The World, Jia Zhang-ke, 2004), Dare mo shiranai (Nobody Knows, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan 2004), Bin-Jip (3-Iron, Kim Ki-duk, 2004), La Niña santa (The Holy Girl, Lucrecia Martel, 2004), Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood, 2004), Melancholian 3 huonetta (The 3 Rooms of Melancholia, Pirjo Honkasalo, 2004), Exils (Exiles, Tony Gatlif, 2004), Notre Musique (Jean-Luc Godard, 2004), Clean (Olivier Assayas, 2004), Comme une image (Look at Me, Agnès Jaoui, 2004), Chats perchés (Chris Marker, 2004), Birth (Jonathan Glazer, 2004), Kinsey (Bill Condon, 2004), 9 Songs (Michael Winterbottom, 2004), The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson, 2004), Lakposhtha hâm parvaz mikonand (Turtles Can Fly, Bahman Ghobadi, 2004)), Moolaadé (Ousmane Sembène, 2004), The Brown Bunny (Vincent Gallo, 2003), Son frère (Patrice Chéreau, 2003), Un homme, un vrai (Arnaud and Jean-Marie Larrieu, 2003), Pornography (Jan Jakub Kolski, 2003), Buongiorno, Notte (Good Morning, Night, Marco Bellocchio, 2003), Une minute de soleil en moins (A Minute of Sun Less, Nabil Ayouch, 2003), Satin Rouge (Raja Amari, 2002), Heremakono (Waiting for Happiness, Abderrahmane Sissako, 2002), The Secret Lives of Dentists (Alan Rudolph, 2002)

Notable visions from the past:

Ganhar a Vida (João Canijo, 2001), Trouble Every Day (Claire Denis, 2001), La Fidélité (Andrzej Zulawski, 2000), Ivans xtc. (Bernard Rose, 2000), The Boy Who Saw the Iceberg (Paul Driessen, 2000), Le Chapeau (Michèle Cournoyer, 2000), De Grote vakantie (The Long Holiday, Johan van der Keuken, 2000) Chronicle of a Disappearance (Elia Suleiman, 1997), Perfect Blue (Satoshi Kon, 1997), Délits flagrants (Raymond Depardon, 1994), Mimi wo sumaseba (Whisper of the Heart, Yoshifumi Kondo, 1995), L’Ours renifleur (The Sniffing Bear, Co Hoedeman, 1992), Emma Zunz (Benoît Jacquot, 1992), Paprika (Tinto Brass, 1991), El Evangelio según Marcos (Héctor Olivera, 1991), Badis (Mohamed Abderrahman Tazi, 1989), 4 Aventures de Teinette et Mirabelle (Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle, Eric Rohmer, 1987), Rosa la rose, fille publique (Paul Vecchiali, 1986), God’s Country (Louis Malle, 1986), Bez konca (No End, Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1984), Invitation au voyage (Peter Del Monte, 1982), Return of the Secaucus 7 (John Sayles, 1980), Metsurit (Erkko Kivikoski, 1980), Amor de Perdição (Manoel de Oliveira, 1979), Baara (Souleymane Cissé, 1978), Omar Gatlato (Merzak Allouache, 1976), Maa on syntinen laulu (The Earth is a Sinful Song, Rauni Mollberg, 1973), The Visitors (Elia Kazan, 1972), Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble (Maurice Pialat, 1972), Cuadecu, Vampir (Pere Portabella, 1970), Pas de deux (Norman McLaren, 1968), Bice skoro propast sveta (It Rains in My Village, Aleksandar Petrovic, 1968), Play Dirty (André De Toth, 1968), Ich war 19 (I Was Nineteen, Konrad Wolf, 1968), Ein Tag – Bericht aus einem deutschen Konzentrationslager 1939 (One Day: A Report from a German Concentration Camp 1939, Egon Monk, 1965), Manji (Yasuzo Masumura, 1964), Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam (King, Queen and Slave, Abrar Alvi, 1962), La Notte brava (Mauro Bolognini, 1959), Une Vie (Alexandre Astruc, 1958), Celui qui doit mourir (He Who Must Die, Jules Dassin, 1957), The Halliday Brand (Joseph H. Lewis,1957), Trooper Hook (Charles Marquis Warren, 1957), Pyaasa (Guru Dutt, 1957), Les Jeux sont faits (Jean Delannoy, 1947), La Nuit fantastique (Marcel L’Herbier, 1942), Dance of the Weed (Rudolf Ising, 1941), The Wedding Night (King Vidor, 1935), Taki no shiraito (Cascading White Threads, Kenji Mizoguchi, 1933), Otona no miru ehon – Umarete wa mita keredo (I Was Born, But …, Yasujiro Ozu, 1932), Love Me Tonight (Rouben Mamoulian, 1932), Raffles (Harry d’Abbadie d’Arrast and George Fitzmaurice, 1930), The Cameraman (Edward Sedgwick and Buster Keaton, 1928), Körkarlen (The Phantom Carriage, Victor Sjöström, 1921)

And, I’ll probably be excommunicated from all cinematic communities, but I found quiet enjoyable, and sometimes even brilliant, Alexander (Oliver Stone, 2004), Domino (Tony Scott, 2005) and Cursed (Wes Craven 2005). Guilty Me!

Wheeler Winston Dixon

James Ryan Endowed Professor of Film Studies, Professor of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and, with Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Editor-in-Chief of Quarterly Review of Film and Video.

Best:
Capote (Bennett Miller, 2005)
Good Night, and Good Luck (George Clooney, 2005)
Broken Flowers (Jim Jarmusch, 2005)
A History of Violence (David Cronenberg, 2005)
My Summer of Love (Pawel Pawlikowski, 2004)
Caché (Hidden, Michael Haneke, 2005)

Worst:
Proof (John Madden, 2005)
Crash (Paul Haggis, 2004)
War of the Worlds (Steven Spielberg, 2005)
Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (George Lucas, 2005)
King Kong (Peter Jackson, 2005)
9 Songs (Michael Winterbottom, 2004)

Hollywood continues to make dull sequels and, at the same time, refuses to import excellent European, African and Asian films, all the better to remake them with American casts in inferior copies. Great films are being made; they just don’t get shown in the United States, other than in New York and Los Angeles. Distribution, as always, is the key issue.

Jean-Michel Frodon

Directeur de la rédaction des Cahiers du cinéma

My favourites for 2005 (the year of French theatrical release), in alphabetical order:

Les Amants réguliers (Everyday Lovers, Philippe Garrel, 2005)
La Blessure (The Wound, Nicolas Klotz, 2004)
C’est pas tout à fait la vie dont j’avais rêvé (Michel Piccoli, 2005)
Le Filmeur (Alain Cavalier, 2005)
A History of Violence (David Cronenberg, 2005)
L’Intrus (The Intruder, Claire Denis, 2004)
Last Days (Gus van Sant, 2005)
Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood, 2004)
Zui hao de shi guang (Three Times, Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2005)
Shijie (The World, Jia Zhang-ke, 2004)

I liked very much the 2005-released films by Amos Gitai, Carlos Reygadas, Lars von Trier, Jim Jarmusch, Masaki Kobayashi, Xavier Beauvois, Avi Mograbi and Olivier Zabat, but I think a list should not be too long. I also loved the new films by Manoel de Oliveira, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Nobuhiro Suwa, Shini Aoyama and Jeon Soo-il, only to be seen in festivals until now. I am sorry most European films are so weak, and was disappointed by Iranian and Argentinean films this year.

Geoff Gardner

Once a film distributor and, 20 years ago, director of the Melbourne Film Festival.

Top Ten Films screened in Theatres:

1. Dare mo shiranai (Nobody Knows, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan, 2004)
2 = Trilogia I: To Livadi pou darkryzei (Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow, Theo Angelopoulos, Greece, 2004)
Frakchi (Spying Cam, Whang Cheol-Mean, South Korea, 2004)
Le Chiava di Casa (The Keys to the House, Gianni Amelio, 2004)
Palindromes (Todd Solondz, USA, 2004)
Mysterious Skin (Gregg Araki, USA, 2004)
Der Untergang (Downfall, Oliver Hirschbiegel, Germany, 2004)
Crash (Paul Haggis, USA, 2004)
Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood, USA, 2004)
Shin Sung-il-eui hangbang-bulmyung (Shin Sung-il is Lost, Shin Jane, South Korea, 2005)

Other films (television, video, etc., in no particular order):

Vibrator (Hiroki Ryuichi, Japan, 2003)
Kioku ga ushinawareta toki (Without Memory, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan, 1996)
Disutansu (Distance, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan, 2001)
No Love for Johnnie (Ralph Thomas, UK, 1961)
Före stormen (Before the Storm, Reza Parsa, Sweden, 2000)
Léo, en jouant “Dans la compagnie des hommes” (In the Company of Men, Arnaud Desplechin, France, 2003)
Saraband (Ingmar Bergman, Sweden, 2003)
Notre Musique (Jean-Luc Godard, France, 2004)

10 Best DVDs:

Pickpocket (Robert Bresson, France, 1955)
Le Journal d’un curé de campagne (The Diary of a Country Priest, Robert Bresson France, 1950)
L’Argent (Robert Bresson, France, 1983)
Le Procès de Jeanne d’Arc (Trial of Joan of Arc, Robert Bresson, France, 1962)
The Girl Can’t Help it (Frank Tashlin, USA, 1956)
2046 (Wong Kar-wai, Hong Kong, 2004)
Judex (Louis Feuillade, France, 1916)
Objective Burma! (Raoul Walsh, USA, 1944)
Les Yeux sans visage (Eyes Without a Face, Georges Franju, France, 1959)
Der Tiger von Eschnapur (The Tiger of Eschnapur, Fritz Lang, West Germany, 1959) and Das Indisch Grabmal (The Hindu Tomb, Lang, West Germany, 1959)

Flora Georgiou

A Melbourne-based independent filmmaker.

1. The Loveless (Kathryn Bigalow, 1982)
2. Ken Park (Larry Clark, 2002)
3. The Brown Bunny (Vincent Gallo, 2003)
4. The Proposition (John Hillcoat, 2005)
5. Young Adam (David Mackenzie, 2004)
6. Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood, 2004)
7. Domino (Tony Scott, 2005)
8. Gerry (Gus Van Sant, 2002)
9. Before Sunset (Richard Linklater, 2004)

To Part 2

To Part 3