JAA's Awards For 2005

BEST FILMS OF 2005 (Year of commercial release in US)

1. NOBODY KNOWS (Kore-eda Hirokazu, Japan)

2. PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (Joe Wright, USA)

3. THE SQUID AND THE WHALE (Noah Baumbach, USA)

4. GRIZZLY MAN (Werner Herzog, USA) [Herzog's documentary of environmental activist Timothy Treadwell is an unforgetable character study, proving perhaps once and for all that truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction. If your documentary experience is limited to MARCH OF THE PENGUINS and FARENHEIT 9/11, you simply must watch this if only to understand that a documentary can be more than a) an ambling nature doc (although MARCH OF THE PENGUINS does this perhaps better than any other) or b) political agitation, but c) a deeply personal work of art that, in its respectful yet critical exploration of the specific, becomes a statement about humanity's universal search for meaning. Treadwell's footage is jaw-dropping, and Herzog's dark empricism finds a home within this material, and better still, brings us into this worldview, if only for a brief time].

5. DOWNFALL (Oliver Hirschbiegel, Germany) [This epic recreation of the fall of Berlin to the Russians in World War II is among the greatest war films ever made. The unspeakable horror of the front lines is on full display, to be sure, and yet it is the kind of movie where the most horrific moment happens in near perfect silence, broken only by gentle sighs. The acting up and down the ensemble is superlative--Bruno Ganz's Hitler and Ulrich Matthes' Goebbels have an eerie perfection about them, and the leading ladies, Alexandra Maria Lara as Hitler's personal secretary and Juliane Kölher as Eva Braun, give the film an unexpected warmth in the midst of a cold, lifeless chaos. If I shuffle things around in this list later on, this film will surely be moving up, not down, as its image seem to grow in strength in my mind.]

Next Five (In No Particular Order):
CAPOTE (Bennett Miller, USA); 2046 (Wong Kar-Wai, Hong Kong); MUNICH (Steven Spielberg, USA); CINDERELLA MAN (Ron Howard, USA); MILLIONS (Danny Boyle, UK).



AWARDS

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: 2046. Honorable Mention: MARCH OF THE PENGUINS.

BEST ACTOR: Bruno Ganz, DOWNFALL. Honorable Mention: Russell Crowe, CINDERELLA MAN.

BEST ACTRESS: Reese Witherspoon, WALK THE LINE (James Mangold, USA). Honorable Mention: Keira Knightley, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMER: Paul Giamatti, CINDERELLA MAN. Honorable Mention: Catherine Keener, CAPOTE.

BEST SCREENPLAY: THE SQUID AND THE WHALE. Honorable Mention: MILLIONS.

BEST DIRECTOR: Kore-eda Hirokazu, NOBODY KNOWS. Honorable Mention: Werner Herzog, for GRIZZLY MAN.