Daily Southtown

Plenty were good, few were great

Sunday, January 1, 2006

By Josh Larsen
Movie critic

If 2005 offered no clear masterpieces (trust me, "King Kong," as fun as it is, won't hold up as well as the original), the year delivered enough very, very good movies to make picking the top 10 something of a random process. I'd say at least 30 pictures from the past 12 months qualified as must-see viewing.

In other words, you could easily substitute the likes of "Crash," "Batman Begins," "Dark Water," "The Aristocrats" and, yes, even "The Ringer" for any of the films mentioned below. As you hunker down for the long, post-holiday winter, consider putting all of these titles on your movie to-do list.

1. 'The Weather Man'

After two viewings, one last spring when it was initially to be released and another before its official debut in the fall, director Gore Verbinski's mental strip search of a divorced father of two (Nicolas Cage) still resonates as the most honest, assured and accomplished movie of the year.

The film's gun-shy release pattern suggests Paramount Pictures didn't quite know what to do with such a bracing tragicomedy, and most audiences and critics didn't quite know what to do with it, either. The knee-jerk response was to dismiss Cage's David Spritz, who repeatedly blunders in his attempts to connect with his family, as an unlikable character — not worthy of our attention, perhaps because his failings too closely resemble our own.

2. 'Brokeback Mountain'

Equally misunderstood, though infinitely more praised, is Ang Lee's gay cowboy epic. In its raw, yet never pandering, evocation of the sort of emotions that ripple through star-crossed lovers of all kinds, the movie is at once achingly introspective and universal.

It also features the best male performance of the year from a revelatory Heath Ledger. As Ennis Del Mar, a Wyoming sheepherder who falls in love with a fellow ranch hand (Jake Gyllenhaal), Ledger woundingly reveals how Ennis' unrequited passion will haunt him through a false marriage and conflicted fatherhood, and the movie's wrenching final scene suggests every one of his lonely days on earth.

3. 'Tim Burton's Corpse Bride'

With his second stop-motion feature, Burton further cements his reputation as our modern Brother Grimm, weaving wondrous contemporary fairy tales out of the bizarre and macabre.

At a time when computer-generated graphics appear to achieve new wonders with each passing blockbuster, the old-fashioned charm of stop-motion animation has never been so refreshingly quaint. Like Burton's "The Nightmare Before Christmas" or this year's other stop-motion delight, "Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit," "Corpse Bride" has the magical tactility of something crafted by human hands.

4. 'Sin City'

"Sin City" is a provocatively explicit, visually brilliant updating of film noir fatalism, drawn from Frank Miller's series of graphic novels about shady cops, cruel murderers and vengeful prostitutes. Robert Rodriguez, who shares a directing credit with Miller, uses computer imagery to illustrate something other than rampaging dinosaurs. He captures the fruitlessness of trying to do the right thing in a world overrun with cruelty and avarice.

5. 'Last Days'

Director Gus Van Sant's loose interpretation of the final hours in the life of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain is a think piece to be sure, but one that is deserving of your patience and contemplation.

Van Sant's camera seems to aimlessly meander, until you realize he manages to capture some sort of beauty in even the most mundane of moments. And the startling final image, which suggests we've been witnessing all of this through the eyes of a waiting angel, delivers an emotional wallop equal to that of "Brokeback Mountain" (a project to which Van Sant once was attached).

6. 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'

This latest take on Roald Dahl's children's story may not surpass the 1971 version when it comes to weirdos — Johnny Depp is still no Gene Wilder — but it is an almost pitch-perfect translation of one of our classic contemporary fables.

No surprise, then, that Tim Burton is behind it, lending his usual talent for evocative production design to a production designer's dream project. I don't know if the movie year offered a lovelier image than little Charlie's squashed, dilapidated house, which is moved for the finale from its sparse and forlorn lot right into the factory itself.

7. 'The 40-Year-Old Virgin'

In the year that the sex comedy went soft ("The Wedding Crashers"), writer-director Judd Apatow's spoof of our coupling-obsessed society managed to be both moving and crudely hilarious.

It's all there in the pitch-perfect lead performance from unlikely star and co-writer Steve Carell. Carell plays the fool just fine — his chest-waxing torture session is the year's funniest sequence — but he also manages to make a convincing and romantic argument for establishing a relationship before a sexual position.

8. 'March of the Penguins'

This French documentary is considered kiddy fare, and it's certainly one of the better children's movies of 2005, but that undervalues the many pleasures it also offers for adults.

The landscape cinematography beautifully captures a place that is at once harsh and serene, while the story line that traces the arduous efforts of penguin parents to conceive, give birth and raise their chicks will wring more emotion from you than "The Family Stone" and "Rumor Has It" put together.

9. 'The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe'

C.S. Lewis' children's fantasy gets the cinematic treatment it deserves, and then some. Director Andrew Adamson's few liberties only expand upon the novel's primal themes of family, sacrifice and the way our imagination can save us in times of turmoil, while his use of computer animation is discreet and delicate. This is the rare special-effects extravaganza that may only look better with each passing year.

10. 'Roll Bounce'

This is the year's biggest box-office tragedy. The commercial failure of this sunny and honestly uplifting coming-of-age drama, set among a bunch of roller-skating friends on Chicago's South Side during the summer of 1978, rankles most because it is one of the few African American-themed movies that doesn't feature drugs or gunplay.

I didn't want to emphasize that point in my initial review because the movie has far too many other qualities worth lauding, including Bow Wow's delightfully gangly lead performance and the hilariously dated musical numbers. But its failure to find an audience makes the issue unavoidable.

You can't tell me this isn't the sort of thing mainstream moviegoers want to see. At least, in 2006, they can see it again and again on DVD.

Josh Larsen may be reached at jplarsen@scn1.com or (630) 416-5206.