Because there just aren't enough movie reviews on the web already...
Yeah, well, hardly original but here are my utterly inconsequential thoughts on the movies I've seen in 2005.
Favourite Movie in 2005: A History Of Violence
Cronenberg was back with his best film since Dead Ringers. I always enjoy his work but the films he put out in the last ten or fifteen years - Naked Lunch, Crash, Existenz, Spider - were all a tiny bit undercooked as if he struggled to find stories that fully engaged his intellectual and artistic faculties. A History Of Violence, on the other hand, hit the bullseye. Read my review (if you like).
Other Favourite Movie in 2005 if only some bugger would distribute it to UK cinemas: Mirrormask
Dave McKean's and Neil Gaiman's beautiful and surreal fairytale. Why hasn't anybody put this onto cinema screens in Britain where it belongs? Why do we have to suffer crap like Fantastic Four but we don't get a chance to see genuinely inventive films like this in our multiplexes? Read my review (if you like).
Runners Up
There were plenty of worse films knocking around than the League's first full blown cinema outing but Apocalypse was disappointing because the Gents are capable of so much better. Their three wonderful television series - and their feature length Christmas Special - are littered with movie references and filmic flourishes in amongst the wonderfully macabre comedy so for them to make the transition to the big screen was a logical thing to do. Sadly, they opted for the tired old postmodern premise of fictional-characters-stumble-into-real-world-and-meet-their-creators. A real shame. Like I said, not an awful film by any standard but it should have been so much more.
Movie That Will Be The Source Of Baffled Ambivalence Until The Day I Die: Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith
Why do I like this? It is rubbish on so many levels. Admittedly, it is better than the first two Star Wars prequels... but I still kinda' like them as well... OK, maybe I only bother to watch two scenes from The Phantom Menace and I skip the excruciating love scenes in Attack Of The Clones... It's no good: I can't justify liking these dreadfully scripted, woodenly acted, CGI-soaked, pumped up video-game trailers but...
What's wrong with me?
Worst Film Of 2005: Sin City
Quite how I have the audacity to condemn Sin City for being a mind-numbingly shallow sequence of film noir clichés after admitting that I like Revenge Of The Sith, I don't know. I realise that I am in the minority by disparaging Frank Miller's and Robert Rodriguez's movie and am expecting an enraged comic-book fanboy lynch mob to kick down my door any second to inflict a little of the old ultravoilence to my person; but that will not prevent me from categorically stating that Sin City is shite - wonderful looking shite, I admit, but shite nonetheless.
Coming as soon as I can be bothered to write it... Films I am looking forward to in 2006...
Favourite Movie in 2005: A History Of Violence
Cronenberg was back with his best film since Dead Ringers. I always enjoy his work but the films he put out in the last ten or fifteen years - Naked Lunch, Crash, Existenz, Spider - were all a tiny bit undercooked as if he struggled to find stories that fully engaged his intellectual and artistic faculties. A History Of Violence, on the other hand, hit the bullseye. Read my review (if you like).
Other Favourite Movie in 2005 if only some bugger would distribute it to UK cinemas: Mirrormask
Dave McKean's and Neil Gaiman's beautiful and surreal fairytale. Why hasn't anybody put this onto cinema screens in Britain where it belongs? Why do we have to suffer crap like Fantastic Four but we don't get a chance to see genuinely inventive films like this in our multiplexes? Read my review (if you like).
Runners Up
- Sideways - Funny, smart, painful, brilliantly acted; it felt like a movie from the 1970s or the sort of film that Barry Levinson used to make where people sat around and had funny, smart and painful conversations.
- Batman Begins - The best of the summer blockbusters... Batman regains his cinematic dignity after the Schumacher neon nightmares of Batman Forever and Batman And Robin.
- Kung-Fu Hustle - just... mad.
- Serenity - A curious beast in that it felt like more than simply an expanded episode of its television progenitor (Firefly) but not quite a fully cinematic piece of work. Not that it really matters: it was bloody good fun, well written, well acted and looked marvellous despite its relatively small $40 million budget.
There were plenty of worse films knocking around than the League's first full blown cinema outing but Apocalypse was disappointing because the Gents are capable of so much better. Their three wonderful television series - and their feature length Christmas Special - are littered with movie references and filmic flourishes in amongst the wonderfully macabre comedy so for them to make the transition to the big screen was a logical thing to do. Sadly, they opted for the tired old postmodern premise of fictional-characters-stumble-into-real-world-and-meet-their-creators. A real shame. Like I said, not an awful film by any standard but it should have been so much more.
Movie That Will Be The Source Of Baffled Ambivalence Until The Day I Die: Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith
Why do I like this? It is rubbish on so many levels. Admittedly, it is better than the first two Star Wars prequels... but I still kinda' like them as well... OK, maybe I only bother to watch two scenes from The Phantom Menace and I skip the excruciating love scenes in Attack Of The Clones... It's no good: I can't justify liking these dreadfully scripted, woodenly acted, CGI-soaked, pumped up video-game trailers but...
What's wrong with me?
Worst Film Of 2005: Sin City
Quite how I have the audacity to condemn Sin City for being a mind-numbingly shallow sequence of film noir clichés after admitting that I like Revenge Of The Sith, I don't know. I realise that I am in the minority by disparaging Frank Miller's and Robert Rodriguez's movie and am expecting an enraged comic-book fanboy lynch mob to kick down my door any second to inflict a little of the old ultravoilence to my person; but that will not prevent me from categorically stating that Sin City is shite - wonderful looking shite, I admit, but shite nonetheless.
Coming as soon as I can be bothered to write it... Films I am looking forward to in 2006...
posted by Steve Kane at 10:28 PM
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