Tuesday, February 21, 2006

2005 - Best & Worst - UPDATED

Long overdue, here's my best & worse of 2005. There's a ton of movies missing, but hey, I've got 2 kids and I miss a lot of movies at the theater. I'm sure if I had seen some of the top contenders they'd be on here, too. I HAVE NOT seen Brokeback, Good Night/Luck, Syriana, History of Violence, and a bunch more. But, based on what I have seen.........

The Best:
1. Jarhead - This movie rocked me.
2. King Kong - Too long? Yep, but still - Wow.
3. The Constant Gardener - Powerful stuff here.
4. Crash - Wonderful.
5. Thumbsucker - Great cast, really well done.
6. Munich - It's no Empire Of the Sun, but still a great film.
7. Batman Begins - Great jumpstart, can't wait to see more.
8. Layer Cake - Daniel Craig owns this!
9. Zathura - See previous post. Terrific movie.
10. Serenity - This is what the Star Wars prequels should have been - Good story & acting, actual chemistry between the actors, etc, etc.
11. Chumscrubber - Great script & direction, and I like where the story goes.
12. Wedding Crashers - Vince Vaughn always makes me laugh. He killed me here.
13. Lord Of War - Excellent direction, eye-opening.
14. Just Friends - I laughed like every 10 seconds. Seriously.
15. 40 Year Old Virgin - Funny as hell.

Honorable Mentions - Sky High - Fun family movie. The teachers deserve their own spin-off.
Also, The Weatherman - What a gem of a movie, directed by Gore Verbinski. Cage scores, and I really liked the script on this one.
The Worst -

**A Lot Like Love - A Lot Like Shit
**Son Of the Mask - I looked up diarrhea in the dictionary and a picture of this movie was next to it. The movie would have been saved, however, if the Tripod Aliens from War Of The Worlds made a cameo and started vaporizing.
**Elizabethtown - Ugh. I love Cameron Crowe. Orlando can be really good. Kirsten Dunst is yummy. But this movie sucked balls. A nice enough concept, but it fails all over the place. Liked the name of the band in the movie though - Ruckus!
**Sith - Yeah, it had some good scenes, but the more I think on it, the better ideas & F/X in the Star Wars prequels are likely thought up by ILM and not Lucas himself. It was the best of the prequels, but that's like saying I'd rather have Cancer than AIDS.
**Kingdom Of Heaven - Kingdom Of Boredom. They took an amazing, fascinating topic and completely drained it of all passion. Orlando Boom's knight was in mourning - so was I, for my 2+ hours back.
**Broken Flowers - I wanted to LOVE this movie. I love Bill Murray, and I thought this was a cool concept. What a waste of a movie. Jesus Christ. Filled with pointless scenes, unrealistic, boring dialogue. And that ending? I thought it might at least pay off at the end. Did I need some Hollywood happy ending? No, but SOMETHING, man. I like Jeffrey Wright as the neighbor, but besides him, this was a complete waste of time. Pointless.

Overlooked, award-worthy performances - Peter Sarsgaard - Jarhead
Also Joan Allen in the Upside Of Anger (Costner was great in that, too).

Movies that were fun/good - War Of the Worlds (yeah, it ended with a fart but there was some excellent stuff before it), Mr. & Mrs. Smith - Brainless? Sure, but a good popcorn movie.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I always think fave movies lists are a great way of getting pedants to harangue you on your blog, so here goes...

SERENITY, GOOD? Are you kidding?? Now I understand why ALIEN: RESURRECTION was such a mess! Characters were all over the place and the narrative logic was every bit as dull as CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK in my view. Ok, it was better than STAR WARS but I hate them too, all of them! Yes it's true, even the first three!!!

I now await hate mail... ; )

Patrick J. Rodio said...

No, no, you're entitled to your opinion, even if it's wrong.

Just kidding, I thought it was a fun romp. So sue me!

Anonymous said...

Hah, nice comeback! I suppose that poe-faced girl had some nice form martial-arts-wise and my husband tells me a nice ass, so maybe that's influencing you too...

Sue you? I'll leave you Americans to the litigation! : )

Anonymous said...

I knew it!!!

taZ said...

My opinions:

The Best is NOT:
9. Zathura

The Worst is NOT:
Elizabethtown
Sith
Kindom of Heaven - one of the best actually.

Mr and Mrs Smith = s u c k

Patrick J. Rodio said...

Taz, I like you and all buddy, but what are you smoking out there in Sweden?

I never said Mr. & Mrs. Smith was a great film, but a good popcorn moie.

Did you even see Zathura? And what made Elizabethtown one of the best? And Kingdom of Heaven? I liked everyone involved and wanted to like the movie, but the story was a big fat snooze (and what a waste, since it's an amazing period in history).

taZ said...

You don't even wanna know what we're smoking!!

I didn't say you said it was good (M&M Smith), but added that it was purely BAD.

Zathura I liked, but... I don't know... didn't give me that nice feeling good movies give. I thought the acting (except the cute boy) was bad, toooo many holes in the plot and so on. As I said, it was good, but not worth mention in the best list.

WOWOWOW. Kingdom of Heaven? Are you kidding me? That is like... blasphemy! It was better than Gladiator! (almost)

And about Elizabethtown, I don't know. Maybe I was smoking something when I saw it. I have a post about it too.

writergurl said...

What?! You DIDN'T see the cowboy movie?

Patrick J. Rodio said...

I will see Brokeback soon.

Kingdom better than Gladiator? We'll just have to agree to disagree.