What I’ve Seen
A History of Violence
Aeon Flux
Batman Begins
Bewitched
Brick
Brokeback Mountain
Capote
Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory
Coach Carter
Constantine
Corpse Bride
Elektra
Enron: The Smartest
Guys in the Room
Escape to Canada
Fantastic Four
Flightplan
Four Brothers
Fun with Dick and Jane
Good Night, and Good
Luck
Guess Who
Hard Candy
Harry Potter and the
Goblet of Fire
Hitch
Hoodwinked
Hostage
Jarhead
Kicking and Screaming
King Kong
Kingdom of Heaven
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Looking for Comedy in
the Muslim World
Madagascar
March of the Penguins
Me and You and
Everyone We Know
Munich
Robots
Sahara
Serenity
Sin City
Star Wars: Episode III
– Revenge of the Sith
Lady Vengeance
Syriana
Thank you for Smoking
The 40 Year Old Virgin
The Ballad of Jack and
Rose
The Brothers Grimm
The Chronicles of
Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
The Constant Gardner
The Fall of Fujimori
The Hitchiker’s Guide
to the Galaxy
The Interpreter
The Island
The Longest Yard
The New World
The Producers
Two for the Money
V for Vendetta
Walk the Line
War of the Worlds
Wedding Crashers
Why we Fight
61 Total
5. Lady Vengeance—I
personally think Lady Vengeance far
superior to Park Chan-wook’s much better known, highly regarded, but sillier Oldboy. Lady finds a better balance of dark comedy, memorable visuals, and
thought-provoking, sophisticated themes and questions. Despite moments of
levity and a fascinating visual palette, this is also one I never need to see
again—the gruesome, disquieting climax is plenty memorable, thank you very
much.
4. Brick—Rian
Johnson’s microbudgeted feature directorial debut, Brick brilliantly shifts a fairly standard noir plot to a high
school setting, tropes and all. With an exception or too, though, it isn’t
played for comedy—lead Joseph Gordon Levitt and Johnson elect to mostly play
the murder mystery straight, and it works splendidly.
3. Brokeback Mountain—Its
sociopolitical importance aside, Brokeback
Mountain is a tremendously affecting and powerful romantic tragedy, one of
the best of the past decade. Its anchored by a quartet of superb performance;
Jake Gyllenhall, Michelle Williams, Anne Hathaway, and (especially) Heath
Ledger are all fantastic. It’s loss to Crash
remains one of the farcical moments in Oscar history.
2. Serenity—A testament
to the quality of this movie comes simply from how much I enjoyed it the first
time I saw it, when I was fifteen. Not only had I never seen, Firefly (the dearly, lamentably departed
show to which it serves as a bookend), but I had no idea that Serenity was anything other than a
standalone sci-fi adventure. And I loved it, even out of context. Having
subsequently seen Firefly, this
strange mashup of Space Opera and Western works even better. A brilliantly
written (Joss Whedon, natch), rousing, and surprisingly dark adventure, it’s
only real issue is how sad it makes me that it will (almost) certainly be the
last time these characters are on screen. Alas.
1. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang—Long
before they worked together on the sporadically impressive but often very messy
Iron Man III, director Shane Black
helped Robert Downey Jr. revive his flagging career in this brilliant, bizarre,
darkly hilarious crime caper. The fantastic blend of show-biz comedy, violent
crime thriller, and mystery, it also features one of the best unreliable
narrators I can remember in a movie. Great stuff.
What I Haven’t Seen
Cinderella Man
Junebug
Tsotsi
Hustle and Flow
Memoirs of a Geisha
Pride & Prejudice
The Squid and the
Whale
Murderball
And that’s about it. I covered 2005 pretty well
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