Not Coming to a Theater Near You | 2005 in review
by Leo Goldsmith
New Movies
Around these parts, we don’t talk much about films that come (or have come) to theaters near you, but 2005 was an exceptional year for cinema all over the world. I am loath to create top-tens, so instead here’s a top nine of the best new films I’ve seen this year, at least two of which (Caché and 2046) may well be among the best films I’ve seen.
- 2046
- Broken Flowers
- Caché
- Grizzly Man
- The New World
- Saraband
- Three Times
- War of the Worlds
- The World
New (to me) Movies
And lest I forget this site’s statement of purpose, here are some musty old films that it was my pleasure to (re)discover in 2005.
- Derek Jarman’s Blue
- Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
- News from Home
- No. 12: Heaven and Earth Magic
- Muriel
- Speaking Directly
- Springtime in a Small Town
- Stray Bullet
- Zorn’s Lemma
Silent Hitchcock
Also new to me this year were the (extant) films that Hitchcock made at the start of his career. Ranging from banal genre exercises ( The Farmer’s Wife) to masterful early thrillers ( The Lodger) to fully realized, if uncharacteristic films ( The Ring, The Manxman), these films provide a fascinating look into the career of a director who is the reason many of us got into cinema in the first place. And fortunately for us, most of these films are available in very good home video editions from Studio Canal and the BFI.
- The Blackguard
- The Pleasure Garden
- The Lodger
- Downhill
- Easy Virtue
- The Ring
- The Farmer’s Wife
- Champagne
- The Manxman
- Blackmail
The Avant-Garde on DVD
Between Kino’s collection of avant-garde classics and Anthology Film Archives’ typically idiosyncratic 7-disc, 19-hour collection of Unseen Cinema, 2005 was a great year to catch up on all that classic experimental cinema you haven’t seen since college. Now if only someone would just do the same for avant-garde cinema from the 1960s onwards, we’ll all be up to speed.
Peter Watkins on DVD
2005 also saw the first release of what will hopefully be a full library of Peter Watkins films on DVD. Watkins’ work is incendiary, witty, heartfelt, gripping, challenging, and even occasionally hilarious. Most of all, it is a hugely important and under-credited body of work that needs a wider audience and further exploration.
Some Memorable Moviegoing
• Weeping openly at a screening of Los Incréibles on a rainy day in a well-chilled multiplex theater in Santo Domingo. Call me sentimental.
• Sitting behind Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, and three red-robed Tibetan monks at a screening of War of the Worlds.
• A loud, collective scream at the New York Film Festival screening of Caché.
• A loud, collective snore at a Brooklyn screening of King Kong.
• Snoring and screaming at The New World.