The shortcomings of my random rewatching of #1s, combined with a non-random reverse order listing of my year-end rankings from 2007 back to 1996, are being revealed to me this month, as I just watched and posted about Hustle & Flow a few weeks ago. Then again, I'm not really here to talk about Hustle & Flow today. I'm here to record my 2005 film rankings to the permanence of the internet.
Before we get to that, though, I'll just say that this list felt like a bit more of a stroll down memory lane than the two I've posted previously. Two thousand five was the first year I dated my now-wife (we met just before Christmas in 2004), so I remember a lot of these titles being things I saw with her pretty soon after we started dating. And since that dating experience obviously had a very happy ending, it makes me very fond of those movies, even the ones I didn't like very much.
Here is the best-to-worst list I released in January of 2006, for 2005 movies:
1. Hustle & Flow
2. Good Night, and Good Luck.
3. The 40-Year-Old Virgin
4. Kung Fu Hustle
5. Munich
6. Proof
7. The Squid and the Whale
8. Batman Begins
9. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
10. The Matador
11. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
12. Brokeback Mountain
13. Match Point
14. Bride & Prejudice
15. Everything Is Illuminated
16. The Family Stone
17. Paradise Now
18. King Kong
19. The Constant Gardener
20. Melinda and Melinda
21. Broken Flowers
22. Guess Who
23. Walk the Line
24. Ellie Parker
25. Aeon Flux
26. Grizzly Man
27. Cache
28. Diary of a Mad Black Woman
29. March of the Penguins
30. War of the Worlds
31. My Date With Drew
32. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
33. Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
34. Millions
35. Syriana
36. Thumbsucker
37. Beauty Shop
38. The Ringer
39. The Aristocrats
40. Shopgirl
41. Crash
42. Layer Cake
43. Constantine
44. Son of the Mask
45. High Tension
46. Thirtyfive Something
47. Junebug
48. Wedding Crashers
49. The Ballad of Jack & Rose
50. The Jacket
51. Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous
52. Dark Water
53. D.E.B.S.
54. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
55. Coach Carter
56. Lords of Dogtown
57. Robots
58. Sin City
59. Are We There Yet?
60. Fun With Dick and Jane
61. White Noise
62. Racing Stripes
63. It's All Gone Pete Tong
64. 2046
65. Hide and Seek
66. Herbie Fully Loaded
67. The Dukes of Hazzard
68. A History of Violence
69. The Pacifier
70. Smile
71. Fever Pitch
72. The Upside of Anger
73. Saw II
Just glancing at this top ten, it doesn't have a lot of huge favorites that I watch over and over again. Only four of the movies in my top ten have I seen more than once, and strangely, Batman Begins is not one of them. Yep, even though I rank this as the highest of the Nolan Batman movies, I haven't seen it again after that first time in Paris (!). So I guess I've never seen Batman Begins without French subtitles on the screen. (I saw the English language version, not the dubbed version, thank God. That wouldn't have worked because there certainly would not have been English subtitles.)
Let's see where these movies find themselves ranked today according to my Flickchart. The number is its ranking on Flickchart out of 5807 films, followed by the percentage of that ranking out of 5807 films. That's then followed by the number of spots it went up since 2005 (a positive number) or down since 2005 (a negative number):
1. Hustle & Flow (196, 97%) 0
2. The 40-Year-Old Virgin (268, 95%) 1
3. Batman Begins (316, 95%) 5
4. Good Night, and Good Luck (332, 94%) -2
5. War of the Worlds (335, 94%) 25
6. Munich (478, 92%) -1
7. The Squid and the Whale (597, 90%) 0
8. Brokeback Mountain (602, 90%) 4
9. Everything Is Illuminated (638, 89%) 6
10. Proof (649, 89%) -4
11. Kung Fu Hustle (658, 89%) -7
12. The Matador (681, 88%) -2
13. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (966, 83%) -2
14. Paradise Now (1115, 81%) 3
15. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (1179, 80%) -6
16. Melinda and Melinda (1552, 73%) 4
17. The Family Stone (1567, 73%) -1
18. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1584, 73%) 14
19. Bride & Prejudice (1585, 73%) -5
20. Grizzly Man (1623, 72%) 6
21. King Kong (1675, 71%) -3
22. Star Wars - Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (1835, 68%) 11
23. Match Point (1873, 68%) -10
24. Walk the Line (1922, 67%) -1
25. Guess Who (1985, 66%) -3
26. The Constant Gardener (1988, 66%) -7
27. Aeon Flux (2026, 65%) -2
28. March of the Penguins (2079, 64%) 1
29. Millions (2237, 61%) 5
30. Ellie Parker (2323, 60%) -6
31. Broken Flowers (2477, 57%) -10
32. Cache (2480, 57%) -5
33. Beauty Shop (2504, 57%) 4
34. My Date With Drew (2505, 57%) -3
35. Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2835, 51%) -7
36. Layer Cake (2941, 49%) 6
37. Constantine (3016, 48%) 6
38. Sin City (3252, 44%) 20
39. Thirtyfive Something (3491, 40%) 7
40. Dark Water (3574, 38%) 12
41. The Aristocrats (3626, 38%) -2
42. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (3662, 37%) 12
43. The Jacket (3735, 36%) 7
44. Son of the Mask (3754, 35%) 0
45. Wedding Crashers (3932, 32%) 3
46. Syriana (3938, 32%) -11
47. Thumbsucker (3954, 32%) -11
48. Robots (3972, 32%) 9
49. Shopgirl (4024, 31%) -9
50. High Tension (4027, 31%) -5
51. Are We There Yet? (4049, 30%) 8
52. The Ballad of Jack and Rose (4127, 29%) -3
53. Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous (4211, 27%) -2
54. Fun With Dick and Jane (4308, 26%) 6
55. A History of Violence (4309, 26%) 13
56. Crash (4363, 25%) -15
57. Junebug (4365, 25%) -10
58. Lords of Dogtown (4593, 21%) -2
59. Racing Stripes (4724, 19%) 3
60. Herbie Fully Loaded (4747, 18%) 6
61. D.E.B.S. (4798, 17%) -8
62. The Ringer (4840, 17%) -24
63. White Noise (4841, 17%) -2
64. Coach Carter (4872, 16%) -9
65. It's All Gone Pete Tong (4982, 14%) -2
66. The Dukes of Hazzard (5072, 13%) 1
67. 2046 (5161, 11%) -3
68. Hide and Seek (5237, 10%) -3
69. Smile (5342, 8%) 1
70. Fever Pitch (5447, 6%) 1
71. Saw II (5562, 4%) 2
72. The Pacifier (5612, 3%) -3
73. The Upside of Anger (5641, 3%) -1
Five best 2005 movies I've seen since closing the list (alphabetical): The Baxter, Confetti, Nine Lives, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, Transamerica
Five worst 2005 movies I've seen since closing the list (alphabetical): Alone in the Dark, Asylum, Chaos, The Island, Just Friends
Biggest risers: War of the Worlds (+25), Sin City (+20), Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (+14)
Biggest fallers: The Ringer (-24), Crash (-15), Syriana/Thumbsucker (-11)
Average percentage on Flickchart: 49.10% (3 of 3)
The obvious big mover here is War of the Worlds, which I apparently received somewhat middlingly the first time I saw it. Obviously it has grown in leaps and bounds in my estimation as I have rewatched it several times with my wife (having seen it solo originally). She also loves it so that helps. I just find this film unbelievably tense, and it doesn't lose me even though I know that the final 30 minutes are considerably weaker than the rest.
Among the risers and fallers I have a number or examples where I'm surprised they could rise/fall so much, because I already thought I had felt enthusiastically about them in the direction they have risen or fallen. Take Crash, for example. (Take it, please.) Crash was a very weird example of a movie where, when I walked out of the theater, I reluctantly admitted to my wife (then girlfriend) that it was probably the best film I'd seen that year, though I remember feeling confused about that assessment because I knew something was wrong with the movie. As soon as I thought about it for half a second and read some reviews, those wrong things became crystal clear. The epic backlash against the movie did not really ramp up until it won best picture, after I closed off my list, which helps explain my initially kinder ranking. Let's just say that although the backlash didn't sway me from one way of thinking about the movie to another, it did increase the vehemence of those negative feelings.
The Ringer puzzles me because I don't remember liking this movie even at the time I saw it. Johnny Knoxville and co. never overcame the problem of the movie being about an abled man who pretends he's disabled in order to dominate the Special Olympics, though I guess at the time I must have felt it redeemed itself near the end. I have forgotten that entirely by now, and it dropping 24 spots proves that.
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is the surprise riser for me, since I always thought I felt pretty positively about it and haven't even seen it again to have that assessment confirmed or strengthened, as a comparative rise would imply. Only a second viewing should significantly boost its standing relative to the others, you would think. Meanwhile, it was indeed a second viewing that caused me to decide I had been too harsh on A History of Violence (+13) the first time, though I still don't really like that movie. I don't think I've seen Sin City again, but I think I've just decided over time that it must have been better than I initially gave it credit for, just for the use of its groundbreaking techniques.
This is a very middle-heavy group, nothing in either the top two percent or bottom two percent of my Flickchart. But it leans a little toward the lower half of that middle, which is why the average Flickchart percentile is easily the lowest of the three years I've looked at so far. (I should point out, though, that I'm only consider the percentage of the movies I ranked at that time, not the ones I have seen since. However, 2005 probably doesn't fare very well in that regard either, as I had to leave a bunch of stinkers off my list of the five worst I've seen since the list closed.)
Two thousand four in April.
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