Year of movie moments
Movie years are made of moments.
Not awards, not stars, not posturing filmmakers nor three-hour-long would-be masterpieces. Just moments.
In 2005, some of the more memorable moments included …
Steve Carell ripping off his chest hair with wax in “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” … Keanu Reeves holding Rachel Weisz under water in “Constantine” … seeing houses full of moviegoers at River Park Square during February’s Spokane International Film Festival … birds in flight over San Francisco in “The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill” … soldiers rap-performing their complaints in the shadow of Saddam’s former headquarters in “Gunner Palace” … the sight of young Irish boys handling piles of money in “Millions” … Alan Rickman voicing the depressed thoughts of Marvin the paranoid android in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” … the Axe Gang’s version of a Busby Berkeley-type street dance in Stephen Chow’s “King Fu Hustle” …
Mickey Rourke as Marv trying to avenge the death of Goldie in “Sin City” … Matt Dillon struggling to save Thandie Newton from a burning car in “Crash” … fifth-graders dancing the merengue in “Mad Hot Ballroom” … Darth Vader emerging from the wreck of Anakin Skywalker’s body in “Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith” … young Bruce Wayne being buzzed by bats in “Batman Begins” … Russell Crowe as Jim Braddock punching his way to ring history in “Cinderella Man” … the circle of life continuing in “March of the Penguins” …
Billy Bob Thornton throwing a baseball with one hand while holding a beer in the other in “Bad News Bears” … Johnny Depp facing his childhood terrors in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” … Chris Evans heating up the screen as Johnny Storm almost as much as Jessica Alba does as Invisible Woman in “Fantastic Four” …
Scott Hogsett playing Quad Rugby in “Murderball” … Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn picking up women in “Wedding Crashers” … Bikini-wearing Jessica Simpson showing off her best (only?) assets in “The Dukes of Hazzard” … Self-styled champion of bears Timothy Treadwell raging at the camera in Werner Herzog’s documentary “Grizzly Man” … Rachel McAdams finding inner strength in “Red Eye” … Philip Seymour Hoffman drunk at the bar in “Capote” … One-eyed hitman Ed Harris confronting Viggo Mortensen in “A History of Violence” …
Jessica Alba (again) and Paul Walker gliding through the water in “Into the Blue” … a bullet traveling from factory to the head of a young man in “Lord of War” … Gwyneth Paltrow discovering herself through math, and love, in “Proof” … Summer Glau clinging to the ceiling in “Serenity” … Jason Statham taking off his suit coat before kicking ass in “The Transporter 2” … David Strathairn filling the room with smoke, and integrity, as Edward R. Murrow in “Good Night, and Good Luck” … Catherine Zeta-Jones swinging a sword in “The Legend of Zorro” …
Claire Danes crying as only she can in “Shopgirl” … Gromit driving his master’s truck in “Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit” … the moment Clive Owen realizes that he has been duped in “Derailed” … Daniel Radcliffe facing the evil Voldemort in “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” … Jake Gyllenhaal doing that all-too-basic duty, burning human fecal matter, in “Jarhead” … Keira Knightley telling off Darcy in “Pride & Prejudice” … Anthony Rapp doing the “Tango: Maureen” in “Rent” …
George Clooney losing his fingernails in “Syriana” … Reese Witherspoon as June Carter taunting Joaquin Phoenix’s Johnny Cash by saying “Baby, baby, baby” in “Walk the Line” … Georgie Henley making friends with James McAvoy’s faun in “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” … the big ape saving his blond prize, Naomi Watts, from dinosaurs in Peter Jackson’s “King Kong” … Zhang Ziyi finally getting into the catfight with Gong Li that we’ve waited two hours for in “Memoirs of a Geisha” … Cassandra Magrath getting a back-seat surprise in “Wolf Creek” … a conscience-stricken Eric Bana retreating to the closet in “Munich” …
But if we are to take 2005 as a whole, we have to list the best and worst films. And truth be told, there were more good films this year than in any of the past several. In my view, the top 10 that played somewhere in Spokane (bearing in mind that, as of press time, I still hadn’t seen “Brokeback Mountain”) are in ascending order:
10. “Kung Fu Hustle”: Stephen Chow takes the martial-arts comedy to another level.
9. “Mad Hot Ballroom”: Nothing’s cuter than kids learning to dance.
8. “Broken Flowers”: Bill Murray glistens as a man trying to discover the life he didn’t lead.
7. “Grizzly Man”: Werner Herzog takes us into the life of a manic bear lover.
6. “The Constant Gardener”: Ralph Fiennes makes his timid character into a self-sacrificing hero.
5. “Pride & Prejudice”: Keira Knightley brings a new spirit to the Jane Austen novel.
4. “War of the Worlds”: In the midst of catastrophe, Steven Spielberg tells the story of a man becoming a father.
3. “Munich”: Spielberg, again, this time telling the true-life story of Israeli assassins hunting down terrorist murderers.
2. “Good Night, and Good Luck”: George Clooney gives us the story of the great news broadcaster Edward R. Murrow in one of his greatest moments.
1. “Crash”: Paul Haggis tells several stories at once, each reflecting on matters of race, class, gender and, ultimately, existence in the early 21st century.
The honorable mentions: “Capote,” “Downfall,” “King Kong,” “Me and You and Everyone We Know,” “Shopgirl,” “Syriana,” “The Wedding Crashers.”
And the worst? The absolute worst was Vincent Gallo’s painful exercise in self-aggrandizement, “The Brown Bunny.” The others, in no particular order, are “The Fog,” “A Sound of Thunder,” “9 Songs,” “The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D,” “The Dukes of Hazzard,” “High Tension,” “The Perfect Man,” “Bewitched,” “Kicking and Screaming,” “Monster-in-Law,” “The Pacifier,” “Man of the House.”
There’s only one thing left to say:
Bring on 2006.