During 2005 I went to the movies for 47 times, which is probably is a lot more movie-going than most people do, but still not much for me, since it's the first time in recent years I drop below the once-a-week average. Anyway, here are my favourite movies of the year:



Crash, by Paul Haggis, was absolutely astounding in every way, and features one of the best-written scripts I've ever seen. I just can't understand why didn't Hollywood hype this (it went through theatres with discretion, even though it stayed there for months) - it's the best movie to come out of California in 2005.



Rois et Reine / Kings and Queen, by Arnaud Desplechin. One of those cases I went to see a movie without a clue of what it is about, and it took me completely by surprise. The first few minutes of the 2,5 hour are awkward and seem to invite people to leave the room, but suddently the whole character of the movie changes and you're in for a very extravagant mix of drama and comedy. Features some of the funniest onscreen situations of 2005 as well as what might be one of the hardest blows to the stomach in film history. The fact that I've seen Kings and Queen in a recent trip to Lisbon but it is yet to premiere in Porto is a criminal example of the mismanagement of portuguese movie theatres.



Alice, by Marco Martins. A portuguese movie done right is already big news, even bigger when that movie is this good. The story of a father looking for his missing daughter in a claustrophic vision of Lisbon is flawless.

Other five star movies I've seen in 2005 were:

- Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Twelve
- Mike Nichols' Closer
- Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby
- Alexander Payne's Sideways
- Park Chan-Wook's Oldboy
- Fernando Meirelles' The Constant Gardener

There were also a number of movies that are worth taking note, some of each could have gotten to the 5-star pantheon had I woken up the right side of bed:

- Zach Braff's Garden State
- Niels Muller's The Assassination of Richard Nixon
- Oliver Hirschbiegel's Downfall
- Benoit Delepine and Gustave Kervern's Aaltra
- Jacques Audiard's The Beat that my Heart Skipped
- Pavel Pavlokovsky's My Summer of Love
- Spike Lee's She Hate Me
- Kim Ki-Duk's 3-Iron

Aaltra and She Hate Me sharing the title of Weirdest Movie of the Year, in a funny kitschy kind of way. There were also disappointments, and as far as I'm concerned three great directors failled miserabily: War of the Worlds proves canned crap is the best to expect from Sunday Afternoon Spielberg (but I'm hoping that Munich will prove Monday Night Spielberg is still a good filmmaker when it premieres here); The Brothers Grimm, rather than being Terry Gilliam's triumphant return, totally sucked; and Last Days closed Gus van Sant's Trilogy of People Dying in a complete boring and irrelevant fashion. Of course, the final chapter of that other set of two trilogies is not even worth mentioning, such a bad unplayable videogame it was. ¶

Public domain movie torrents, most being B-movie or old cartoon stuff. But wait! Don't buy that deluxe German Cinema DVD box set - classics such as Fritz Lang's Metropolis and M, or Murnau's Nosferatu are also freely available at the Archive.org film collection. ¶