The Best Films of 2005...

2005 was a good year for movies, especially if you knew where to look. There were some surprising discoveries and some surprising disappointments. A number of very good directors made mediocre films and there were some remarkably assured debuts. 2005 has seen primarily two critical darlings, Brokeback Mountain and A History of Violence -- both generally well made and both rather overrated (particularly the cult which has arisen around Brokeback).
I know it was a good year because I have had difficulty reducing my list down to the traditional top 10, therefore I prefer a top 25.

So here it goes...

25. A History of Violence
David Cronenberg's latest is his most conventional and impersonal to date. Yet there is something sly about his willingness to indulge the film's violence thereby exciting bloodlust from the audience, only to later implicate the audience, filmdom, and even himself as he reveals the effects and damage of violence. It's not nearly as good as many think it is, because it's not nearly as good as it thinks it is, but it does have ideas worth expressing.

24. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
The latest film about everyone's favorite boy wizard is the best and most imaginative yet in the series. Mike Newell provides visual wit and manages to wonderfully integrate the visual effects with the story. The film introduces some interesting metaphors for growing up as its young cast continues to develop both physically and emotionally. It's also the most morally grounded of the series as Harry is confronted with various tests of character.

23. Land of the Dead
Never content with a mere zombie film, George Romero makes his undead world a biting satire of capitalism with Dennis Hopper at the top of his corporate punching bag. Romero has always been a director whose ideas (however trivial they may be) outweigh his talent as a filmmaker, though this may be his most polished film. He remains, however, the master of horror-as-metaphor.

22. Crash
Paul Haggis' racially themed film has two or three of the best scenes from any movie this year, yet I can't get over the feeling that he must have the impression that every person in Los Angeles is a racist and has nothing to talk about except for that which relates to racial issues. Nevertheless, he manages to get some strong performances from his ensemble cast, particularly the often underrated, Matt Dillon, and he gets his point across however bluntly and even clumsily at times.

21. The Exorcism of Emily Rose
Probably the best exorcism film since Friedkin's, director Scott Derrickson manages to effectively blend horror movie scares, with an aesthetic flair (thanks to Tom Stern's wonderful cinematography) and leaves the audience asking themselves what they believe about the existence of the supernatural/demons/God. Unfortunately, at times, his horror movie sensibilities undercut the seriousness of his spiritual inquest.

20. Land of Plenty
Wim Wender's post-9/11 journey of spiritual renewal is a passionate and well-meaning film for today and now. It has an immediacy that may be irrelevant a few years from now, but one can't ignore its current significance. Even if the brief political ramblings are a bit heavy handed, one has to admire his humanism and his love for the characters.

19. Serenity
Joss Whedon's pop sci-fi adventure is certainly one of the most purely enjoyable films of the year. He fills it to the brim with wit, humor, action, and general rascaliness. I'm not the first to claim that Nathan Fillion may have what it takes to claim the mantle held by Harrison Ford for oh so many years.

18. The Holy Girl
This film plays out like a minor miracle in its exploration of teenage sexual awakening combined with spiritual fervor. Lucrecia Martel is a unique visual stylist with slightly offset compositions that encourage the viewer to see her film from an entirely different perspective. Maria Alche has a wonderful and understated naturalness to her performance as Amalia, the film's young heroin.

17. Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith
George Lucas concludes his epic saga with a bang. Though not without its flaws, it manages to humanize Darth Vader and provides a reasonable motivation for his transition to the Dark Side. Lucas also manages to show that the man who is most responsible for modern special effects is also their chief manipulator. One of the best entries into what is almost certainly the cinema's most accomplished mythology.

16. Last Days
Silently following a drugged out, fading rock star through a lot of non-action straight to the grave might sound both pointless and depressing. Yet with Gus Van Sant's characteristic long, fluid takes, it becomes a haunting meditation of a lost and fractured soul.

15. Melinda and Melinda
Woody Allen, in even his most banal films (this is not one), makes me smile because we have grown so accustomed to his mannerism that you can almost anticipate the joke before it comes. Though Allen was not in this film, his humor was. Here we look at the same story told from two different perspectives: the comic and the tragic. Neither one seems to be the full truth, but when combined, you might get something close to life.

14. Pride & Prejudice
Joe Wright turns in a remarkably assured debut film with this Jane Austen adaptation. It's one of the best "costume films" in recent memory. He gleans excellent performances from his cast, particularly Keira Knightley who is charming as Elizabeth Bennet. He wisely manages to avoid many of the romantic comedy cliche's, and proves a formidably visual stylist through his orchestrations of the ball sequences and his use of the English countryside.

13. King Kong
Peter Jackson may well have tapped into the imagination of this generation. Bold and excessive, Kong throws in the kitchen sink to create in the audience a sense of childlike joy and awe. Whether its a giant ape fighting three T-Rex's or a second rate vaudeville performer doing a dance routine for a giant ape, Jackson finds the action and the emotion. Andy Serkis' work is a revelation.

12. Howl's Moving Castle
Hayao Miyazaki is one of the most consistently overlooked great directors working today, perhaps because he is an animator. Yet even while this may not be one of his towering successes, it is still perhaps the most fantastic and imaginative film of the year. He creates an entire world within his film and a protagonist whose goodness rubs off on everyone around her. Unlike most family friendly animations, he doesn't provide "good guys" and "bad guys", but complex characters with motivations and capable of change.

(tie) 11. The White Diamond
This Werner Herzog documentary finds an eccentric aeronautics engineer who is determined to build a small airship that will fly over the rainforrests of Guyana. His vigor is motivated as a kind of penance for his guilt over the death of a friend and colleague years earlier. As with his best films, Herzog takes that magnificent man and his flying machine, and creates spiritual metaphor for transcending the earthly realm.

(tie) 11. Grizzly Man
Another Herzog documentary, this time about bear activist, Timothy Treadwell whose annual foray's into the Alaskan wilderness led to his being eaten by one of the bears. The combination of Treadwell's video tape footage with Herzog's often contradictory narration, at times creates an almost magical effect. The conflicting worldviews presented engages the intellect, and in some of the quieter moments, Herzog points out how mystical it is to capture the wind blowing.

10. Match Point
Woody Allen's latest film is almost certainly one of the darkest films of his career. It is a film about luck, chance, randomness, and the meaninglessness of life. As Martin Landau in Crimes and Misdemeanors is able to get away with murder because God does not exist (or, at least he believes God does not exist), Jonathan Rhys-Meyers is able to go and do likewise. Wheras in the former, though probably the superior film, exists in a cold, sterile world where God does seem mysteriously absent, for Match Point, in which later scenes takes on elements of Greek tragedy, the meticulousness of Allen's direction undercuts his assertion that the world is governed by chance. As Allen himself is deified in orchestrating the events of his film, therefore they cannot be by chance or luck, so might God's presence be in this world. To see a film is to see a filmmaker, to see a world is to see a worldmaker. Though there may be no justice in this life, with a little luck, there might be in the next.

9. Turtles Can Fly
An equally beautiful and devastating film from Iraq focusing on a group of orphans in a Kurdish refugee camp just before the U.S. invastion of Iraq. It's about the will to survive under extremely harsh circumstances. Its cast of children (many deformed by shrapnel or land mines) are wonderful to watch with their resilience and even contentment.

8. Cache'
Michael Haneke challenges our notions of the nature of film and perception, all while confronting issues of guilt and revenge. We all have our dirty, little secrets, and his bourgeois, Parisian family is no different. Yet as soon as they beginning receiving anonymous video tapes of their everyday activities and they know that they are secretly being watched, they suddenly begin thinking about that one thing that they don't want anyone to find out about. Conflicts erupt and Haneke is almost stubbornly oblique in his refusal to give answers to what it all means.

7. Broken Flowers
Bill Murray is an aging Don Juan looking on his life with nothing to show for it. He receives a letter from an old flame telling him he as a teenage son. He then takes off on a kind of spiritual journey, visiting old girlfriends and evaluating his life through his various romances. This is Jim Jarmusch's finest film to date, mostly because his characters stop talking and begin reflecting.

6. The New World
Just because this may be Terrence Malick's worst film, doesn't mean that it's not still wonderful. Here he tackles the settling of Jamestown and the relationship between John Smith and Pocahontas with his typical poetic naturalism. The opening scene is almost painfully beautiful, and no director perhaps ever has had as profound an appreciation for nature and natural settings. His camera observes and captures with a magical poignancy.

5. Junebug
In yet another startling debut, Phil Morrison captures real, normal people. As red state/blue state tensions flare in our world, he focuses on the humanity and eccentricities of his characters. The film solves nothing, but it does honestly portray a part of America that has rarely seen so truthful and loving a depiction. I may well shed tears if Amy Adams doesn't receive and Academy Award nomination for her infectiously enthusiastic performance.

4. Millions
Danny Boyle continues to prove to be a formidable talent of world cinema with his most light-hearted and family friendly film yet. Here we see the poignancy of having what Jesus called "the faith of a child" as a boy with an encyclopedic knowledge of Catholic saints is tested when he receives a "gift from God" in the form of a duffle bag filled with cast. To be cliche, this film is heart-warming, funny, and very human.

3. Munich
Steven Spielberg has made one of the best films of his career in this impassioned dramatization of Middle Eastern politics and the cycle of revenge/violence. In the aftermath of 1972 Munich massacre, Israel reacts the only way they can... by retaliating. Yet, while they may be justified, Spielberg reminds us that by acting when we act like the terrorists, we become them and only perpetuate the problem. It's messy, complex, and his first film in a long time that follows through with the core of its convictions. The final montage brilliantly places the events of the film into startling context.

2. Saraband
Though Ingmar Bergman's final film will never be remembered as one of his finest, it just goes to show that even a mediocre Bergman film is better than almost anything anyone else has to offer. Here his 40+ year relationship with actors Liv Ullman and Erland Josephsson concludes as their silent chemistry is almost palpable. This examination of a broken family, which is an indirect sequel to his Scenes From a Marriage, is penetrating and often painful, yet the final moments in which Ullman speaks directly to the camera as a tear rolls down her cheek has the kind of quiet poignancy that a master like Bergman can finally say goodbye with.

and...

1. 2046
Not only is this the best film of the year, but it may also be Wong Kar-Wai's best film, which also means that it is probably the best film to ever come out of Hong Kong. It is a haunting meditation on lost love, memory, and the inability to escape one's past. Christopher Doyle once again proves why he may be the best cinematographer in the world today with his lush imagery. And in one single moment, when she realizes that she is in love with Tony Leung's playboy-like character, the beautiful Ziyi Zhang outacts every other great performance of this year. Wong's combination of images, music, and voice over allows this to become one of those rare films which begins to take on a life of its own in the viewers head, even as the film is still playing. Wonderful.


Honorable Mentions:

Bad News Bears - Richard Linklater's remake is easily the funniest and best comedy of the year and Billy Bob Thornton is in top form as the boozing coach.

Batman Begins - Christopher Nolan directs one of the best superhero/comic book movies ever. Christian Bale is the complex and human Dark Knight. Though the actions scenes seem strangely out of place in film which does so much to create compelling characters.

Kings and Queen - Half comedy and half tragedy, this French film follows two characters with different demons to overcome and numerous emotional ambiguities along the way.

Nobody Knows - One of the most original coming-of-age stories in recent memories follows four abandoned Japanese children who must learn to take care of themselves.

Oliver Twist - Though disappointing considering how much I love Roman Polanski, it is neverthess a very satisfying Dickens adaptation.

Eros - Three short films one by Wong Kar-Wai, one by Steven Soderbergh, and one by the nearly 100-year-old Michelangelo Antonioni all about eroticism. Though Antonioni's may be painfully inscrutable, as Andrew Sarris put it, "...at this point, I can be content that he knows more about what it means than I do."

Or (Mon Tresor) - An Israeli film which sits and observes as a beautiful teenage girl begins to accept the only path left for her (presumably because of a flawed society) as she attempts to protect her aging, prostitute mother.

Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist - Though Paul Schrader's film may be the most theologically challenging horror film since Ferrara's The Addiction, it is painfully marred by an almost aesthetic indifference.

Red Eye - Though a very conventional thriller, it also represents the consummation of Wes Craven's career in which his heroin retains her humanity by refusing to become the killer at the end.

Kontroll - Hangarian film which journey's through one man's personal hell as represented by the Budapest subways system.


Unfortunately, this list isn't as authoritative as I might like it to be because I haven't yet seen all of the noteworthy films that I was interested in, therefore, as I watch more films from this year, I may periodically update this list.

The following are films that I have yet to see:

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
Good Night and Good Luck
Capote
March of the Penguins
Nine Lives
The Weather Man
The World
Cafe Lumiere
Paradise Now
The Weeping Meadow
Wheel of Time
The Best of Youth
Pulse

The White Diamond

Once again, Werner Herzog takes an eccentric subject for what could be a conventional documentary -- in this case a passionate aeronautics engineer -- and turns it into a spiritual journey about overcoming guilt and transcending the earthly realm into the unkown... literally. Graham Dorrington is determined to build one of the smallest air ships ever constructed and fly it over the dense, unexplored rainforrests of Guyana. One of the natives, named Mark Anthony Yhap, who provides some of the more humbly profound observations throughout the film, describes the craft as looking like a "white diamond". As in his recent Grizzly Man, Herzog also provides some useful voice over narration which complements his film. The aerial footage is majestic.

Funny Ha Ha

Director Andrew Bujalski would seem to be the logical successor to Richard Linklater (Slacker era) with his use of pseudo-naturalistic dialogue and his (as some have claimed) Cassavetes-like insistence on "reality" and capturing the ordinary of everyday life and people. He is neither as articulate or philosophical as Linklater, nor does he have the artists eye and ear of Cassavetes (but then again, who does?). His characters are almost embarassingly non-confrontational, seem very unsure of themselves, never saying what they think until prodded into a corner, and constantly apologizing for creating awkward moments. It's actually very interesting, and though I know exactly what Bujalski was trying to accomplish, I can't say that I've ever met people who talk the way these characters do as consistently as they do. The ulta low budget, black and white, 16mm photography has a look similar to the films of Larry Fessenden. Bujalski seems to have an interesting idea with an eye and ear worth developing, but he doesn't quite pull this film up to where it could be.

3-Iron

This Korean import is an odd little film. First we meet a strange young man who breaks into the homes of people who are away and indulges himself for a night or two. Then, rather than stealing anything, he replaces and cleans everything he used, fixes broken objects in the house, and tidies up for the absent owners. He then moves along. One of the houses he breaks into is home to an equally silent young house wife who has been battered by her jerk of a husband. The two run off together on a silent journey (neither of the two leads says a word to each other in the entire film). While reaching for the sublime, this film becomes ridiculous. There are some truly funny scenes, that I am not convinced were entirely intentional, such as when the male protagonist uses the titular golf club to hit a ball which flys through the windshield of a car, killing a woman (trust me, the scene ends up much funnier than it sounds). It just goes to show than in an era of sound films, one cannot develop a convincing relationship by visuals alone. Speech, however minimal it may be, is a necessary part of reality and therefore, cinema.

Syriana

Stephen Gaghan's fascinatingly complex political thriller takes us through the labyrinthine world of oil politics in the Middle East. The focus is corruption -- not of any one person or political party, but of everyone. In this sense, the film is a success -- its complexities and the mystery of discovering how everyone and everything relates is compelling. The ensemble cast also helps to provide recognizable faces to the numerous characters that come and go. The problem is that we never get to stay with any of the character long enough to really get to know them or discover any of their true motivations. The performances, however, are good enough to almost make you forget that the characters are fairly shallow, and the story is compelling enough to almost make you forget that you never really learn anything.

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981)

Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange star in this disappointing remake from James M. Cain's classic, hard-boiled novel. The imposing level of talent both in front of and behind the camera make it all the more disappointing (directed by Bob Rafelson, written by David Mamet, photographed by Sven Nykvist). It certainly captures the seedy, crime novel atmosphere with an animalistic passion unlike any other film I've ever seen, but despite it all, it just isn't very compelling. See the original John Garfield/Lana Turner version instead, or better yet, the unoffical early Luchino Visconti version, Ossessione.

Kontroll

Kontroll is a Dante-esque (or perhaps Kafkaesque) journey through one man's hell, symbolized by the subterranean corridors of the Budapest subway system (which I have traveled through). The entire film takes place in this underground world, and Bulcsu, the main character seems to be living down there. It is hinted that he was once a successful architect, a vocation which he has since abandoned (for unknown reasons), to become a subway controller -- a person who checks for passengers tickets. He and his motley crew play for dark humor as they fluctuate between harassing and being harassed by passengers. In their off time, they play deadly games of running through the tunnels trying to make it to the next platform before they are run over by the train behind them. Meanwhile a hooded figure (not dissimilar from the red cloaked dwarf of Don't Look Now) roams the corridors pushing people off of the platform to their deaths. The films allegory seems to be all to obvious or a bit too confused, nevertheless, as a debut film from Nimrod Antal, it seems he may be a director worth following in the future.

High Tension

A few things become immediately apparent after watching Alexandre Aja's French slasher flick: (1) while certainly a very violent film it is not as gory as I was expecting (which may say more about me than the film itself), (2) Aja is a competent and even slyly effective craftsman of terror, and (3) twist endings have become far too stylish. In fact, the utterly ridiculous ending of this film ruins an otherwise solid slasher film. The film's dyke-ish heroine, Alex, is unusually resourceful for a horror film lead, as crafty, in fact, as the brutish killer whose face is always concealed in shadow cast by his fedora. Aja's direction is often so efficient in its rising tension, that one may be quick to forget just how little actaully happens in the film. The entire film feels like a silent (there is very little dialogue), slow build up which is occasionally broken up by some brutal and cathartic death scenes. But damn that ending. Who the hell comes up with this stuff and thinks that it will ever work?

Turtles Can Fly

This heartbreaking film is the first made in Iraq since the fall of Saddam. It takes place in a Kurdish refugee camp near the Iraq-Turkey border and primarily focuses on the large number of orphans at the camp. The leader of these children, and in fact the entire village really, is a resourcefull 13ish-year-old named Satellite who gained his position thanks to his ability to install antennas and satellite dishes for the village elders to watch the news about the upcoming U.S. invasion of Iraq. He also speaks English and can translate for them. The children spend much of their time disarming land mines around the area which has left many of them without arms, legs, or hands. An armless, clairvoyant boy and his beautiful young sister arrive in the village, they have with them a blind baby which is presumed to be their younger brother. It is later revealed that it is the result of the girl's rape by and Iraqi soldier. She hates her child and what he represents. It's a devastating, yet beautiful film about life and survival in unimaginable circumstances. Director Bahman Ghobadi gets some wonderful performances out of his non-professional cast of children, and he gives us a behind the scenes look at the lives of orphans in a behinds the scenes world. Like Born Into Brothels, these are the children without a voice (who probably don't even realize the gravity of their own situations), and without a future, yet somehow many of them still manage to endure and survive.

Kings and Queen

Director Arnaud Desplechin weaves together a complex array of emotions in this personality drama. It centers around two primary characters, Nora, a single mother about to be remarried whose father is on his death bed, and Ismael, her ex-lover (we come to discover) and a slightly neurotic violinist who is accidentally put away in a mental institution. Desplechin juxtaposes the comic and the tragic elements of life with an almost theatrical understanding of the terms. The scenes with Nora are high drama and inevitably tragic, whereas the Ismael's institution antics are decidedly comic. Of course the two intertwine as the paths of the two characters meet again. There is a confession scene in which the dying father tells his daughter what he really thinks that borders on Bergmanesque, and a wonderful scene in which Ismael takes Nora's son through an art gallery and explains his ideas about life. It's a complex film, much of which, no doubt, I probably missed, yet a stirring example of life's emotional ambiguities and our ever changing perceptions of them.

The Holy Girl

Lucrecia Martel's pseudo-religious Argentinian drama seems in some ways to be a small miracle. With an almost Bressonian sense of casting and a slightly off-kilter sense of image framing, she unfolds her story of a 14-year-old girls sexual awakening (without any actual sex) intertwined with her Catholic ferver. She lives in a hotel owned by her mother. The hotel is hosting a medical convention. One afternoon she joins a crowd in watching live music, one of the doctor's stands uncomfortably close behind her, close enough to make pelvic contact for a few moments before scurrying off. After this encounter, she devotes herself to saving his soul. Maria Alche, who plays the girl, has a beautiful inscrutability about her, as does Martel's narrative. At times it is subtle and understated to a fault, one can quickly begins to lose focus of what's going on. Yet her visual sense and the mood she creates actually manage to carry the film whether you're following it or not. Jim Hoberman says that it is "characterized by agnostic irony," which is probably true, yet it still feels like a minor miracle.

Nobody Knows

This Japanese familial drama centers around four siblings, headed by 12-year-old Akira. Their mother is a sympathetic, though immature twit who seems scarcely more capable than her two oldest children, she just happens to have the advantage (or disadvantage) of age. She makes all but Akira stay in the house at all times. She works, maybe, and they don't go to school. One day she leaves on a trip, gives them some money and returns a few weeks later, just after the money has run out. Later she leaves again, and when she will return, I suppose nobody knows, because she doesn't. The children learn to take care of themselves, despite the fact that the water, gas, and electricity has been turned off. It's a coming of age story featuring some magnificent performances from the mostly prepubescent cast. Watching Akira try to hold things together as they gradually grow more and more desperate, is a heartbreaking sight. Director, Hirokazu Koreeda doesn't pull at the heart-strings, because he recognizes the potency of the material. He keeps it straightforward and un-manipulative. Events unfold slowly and naturally, leaving one with a sense of everyday life in an unusual situation.

5x2: Five Times Two

After the undwhelming debacle of Swimming Pool, I decided to give French director, Francois Ozon another chance with this marital drama. The gimmick of the film is that it tells of the marriage Marion and Gilles from end to beginning. It takes five significant events in their relationship -- first love, the wedding night, birth of their child, a dinner party, and divorce -- and begins the film with the divorce and ends the film with the moment they first fall in love. It's an intriguing premise filled with possibilities, yet as far as I can see, Ozon fails to utilize any of them. The idea alone, the development of their relationship, and the understated execution of it all is worthy of making this a good film, but its lack of insight into the characters or the idea of marriage, keep this from becoming a better film. Perhaps it is the fact that prior to their initial encounter, both Marion and Gilles were either recovering from or on the downard slopes of previous relationships, and the fact that they seem to need to be in relationships in their often selfish quests to make themselves "happy" that dooms them from the start, leaving the postcard perfect final image to be a bittersweet heralding of failure.

The Steamroller and the Violin

This is worth watching if for no other reason than to see Andrei Tarkovsky's thesis film from film school. It's a 45 minute look at the life of young boy who plays the violin and the friendship he strikes with a steamroller operator. Perhaps the film is commenting on the relationship between artist and worker in Soviet Russia. Actually, there is little that distinguishes this as a Tarkovsky film, he is clearly developing his ideas and style, yet there is an unmistakably Russian lyricism to the images and tone of the film.

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

Pedro Almodovar's first major international success is not his best film, but it may be his most light-hearted and funny. There are a number of women, a lot of misunderstandings, a terrorist subplot, and wackiness ensues. It also has a young Antonio Banderas. It's only slightly surreal and not nearly as strange as some of his more recent films, but neither does it has the subtlty or depth of a film like Talk to Her. It does work well as a farce, however, filled with Spanish 80's clothes and all.

Five Fingers of Death

Considered to be the original, classic kung fu movie, and according to Quentin Tarantino, one of the ten best films ever made. That may be overstating it, but it does have the joy and thrills of a low-budget, genre trash film, bad dubbing and all. Actually, the dubbing isn't that bad. The film has plenty of fighting (which is why you're watching it in the first place), and something of a plot to justify all of the fighting. To watch this film is to come to a better understanding of such recent films as Tarantino's own Kill Bill (he steals a music cue from this film), and Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Hustle. If you find yourself drawn to this kind of film (you know who you are), then you won't be let down.

Grizzly Man

Timothy Treadwell must have been a complex human being. Werner Herzog's documentary combines some of the footage that Treadwell shot over the 13 summers he spent living with grizzly bears in Alaska (before they ate him), with various interviews with people who knew him. Like many Herzog protagonists, Treadwell seemed to be a lonely man with an obsession for something that's a little bit ridiculous, in this case protecting the bears by living with them, but unlike the characters of Aguirre or Fitzcarraldo, Treadwell was real -- the self-appointed protector of nature. It's a fascinating film, not the least of which being Treadwell's footage, which at times, Herzog correctly points out, has some unusually poetic moments. What elevates this film, however, is Herzog's ongoing narration, which often finds itself contradicting and debating Treadwell's oft stated beliefs. Herzog avoids discussing what could amount to being the politics of the situations, and instead focuses on the aesthetics of Treadwell's "filmmaking" and their respective philosphies of life and nature. In his review, Michael Atkinson makes a perceptive observation: "Regarding the bears as deus ex machina within Treadwell's bizarre saga, Herzog asserts again one of modern moviedom's wisest, plainest humanistic sensibilities, sympathetic to man's never ending war with the planet but aware that the struggle will always draw ambiguous blood. Treadwell is simply another lost foot soldier, killed in the ongoing collision between human obsession and untamed reality. " A wonderful documentary.

Munich

For over a decade now, Steven Spielberg has been trying to prove to the world that he's grown up by making more adult themed, "important" films. Except one problem, he hadn't, at least not until now. With Munich, he finally has the courage to hold true to the core of his convictions and not water them down with sentimentality and cheap emotional manipulation. This film deals with a secret Israeli squad assigned to track down and assassinate the 11 Palestinians responsible for kidnapping and murdering the Israeli athletes at 1972 Olympics in Munich. The film is an international thriller (I feel like paying a travel agent after watching it), and thrilling it is. But more importantly, it is about the moral ambiguities of returning violence for violence. It neither condones nor condemns the actions (of either side), merely presents them and asks the audience to decide what they believe. There are no easy answers and the film offers none. It is, however, incredibly fair. There are some wonderfully executed scenes including the opening scene at the Olympics, a scene at a French villa where Eric Bana (the leader of the squad) converses with a French contact, and the climactic montage juxtaposing the death of the Israeli athletes with a morally confused Eric Bana making love to his wife -- the juxtaposition of life and death, a bit heavy-handed perhaps, but effective. While the films deals with the complexities of the situations in the Middle East, much has been made of its current relevance in America. Actually, I think that the questions this film poses are relevant as much in peace time as in war, and for any nation. Though I suppose it is no coincidence that the film concludes on an image of New York City with the Twin Towers in the background. This is the best American film of the year.

My Neighbor Totoro

If in describing the films of Hayao Miyazaki I consistently repeat myself, it is because all of his films have left me with an inexplicable kind of joy. Even though each of his films are distinct and different, they all make me feel the same. For what it's worth, My Neighbor Totoro may be my favorite yet of his films. It is utterly delightful, and no one captures the expressions of a child like the animation of Miyazaki. In this film, two young girls move to the country with their father as their mother is sick in the hospital. In the nearby woods, the girls meet a Totoro. Now, I'm still not entirely sure what a Totoro is (a forrest sprite, is the closest I've come), all I know is that if I were a child, I would want to find a Totoro in the forrest. The film is filled with magic and awe and imagination, and is probably one of the best of its kind.

Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven

This film constitutes perhaps Fassbinder's most politically coherent film. Mother Kusters is an aging housewife who receives news that her husband for many years has just murdered his boss at the factory and then killed himself. The film seems to be about a couple of things: the way that various organizations attempt to explain these kinds of actions through their jobs (the media claims that he was tyrant at home -- a violent man waiting to snap; the communists claim that he was a heroic revolutionary fighting back at those would seek to exploit him after years of capitalist oppression), and the way that people and organizations opportunistically use tragedies to further their own ends. Mother Kusters is a slightly naive woman (like many Fassbinder protagonists) who, at first, merely wants to clear her husbands name. The media hounds them, her daughter uses the publicity to start a second rate singing career, a reporter uses it to write a sensationalistic story, the communist party uses it promote their agenda and bring Mother Kusters into the party. Fassbinder, it seems, is clearly fighting explotiation from all sides. It's one of his best, and in some ways, one of his saddest films.