RIX DAZZLING DOZEN PIX FOR 2005

I saw 70 theatrical releases in 2005 -- identical to the number I saw in 2004. Contrary to the dismissive comments of some critics, I believe that filmmaking scored landmark achievements last year, particularly in the areas of social and political commentary. I’m also gratified by the increasing number of superior documentaries and public response to them. Documentaries represent one-quarter of my “dazzling dozen” list for 2005. That list has been whittled down from at least twice that many truly outstanding movies. Of the 70 films I saw last year, only four failed completely in my estimation. Eight of the 12 “dazzlers” were reviewed by me earlier, and those reviews already appear on this blog. However, because I didn’t see it until January 6, after I had posted my last batch of reviews for 2005, my number one pick for the year also includes a comprehensive critique.

1 BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN
This unprecedented and uncompromising film, told with artistic eloquence, unerring insight, and unflinching candor by director Ang Lee, is a lyrical love story for the ages and a pivotal cinematic statement about male sexuality and the complex forces of nature. At minimum, it knocks the idealized American cowboy myth, promulgated by Hollywood and embraced by so many in this society as their gold standard of manliness, on its swaggering macho ass. The bones of John Wayne, whose screen characters epitomized the emotional one-dimensionality and hardheadedness of Hollywood western heroes, even when he wasn’t actually playing a cowboy, must be clattering fitfully in his coffin every time a reuniting Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, as itinerant ranch hand Ennis Del Mar and aspiring rodeo jock Jack Twist, lock lips and hips rapturously under a porch landing, beneath the moon and stars, in pup tents, and in motel rooms over a 20-year period that begins in 1963, when they meet by chance in a drab, dusty town named Signal and sign on for a summer of sheep herding in the ruggedly beautiful high country of Wyoming. If the prospect of watching these two virile dudes -- who speak without a sibilant “s”, walk without a fey swish, smoke without a limp wrist, guzzle without an upraised pinky, and never utter the word “fabulous” -- give full vent to their affection for one another, is more than you think your sensibilities can handle, you’d best stay away from the rocky slopes of Brokeback Mountain. Not that Lee ever sensationalizes the subject matter with anything remotely prurient or pornographic. “Brokeback Mountain” doesn’t titillate. Its characters don’t indulge in gratuitous acts. Their intimate scenes together are, in turns, explosively raw, achingly tender, and joyously playful. But above all, perfectly natural.

Unfortunately, “Brokeback Mountain” is far from a romantic idyll. It could easily have been called “Heartbreak Ridge”, clouded as it is by the sinister, persistently looming specter of homophobia. The ballad of Ennis and Jack may well be a refreshing new take on the cowboy movie, heretofore populated by a larger-than-life assortment of stoic, stalwart, next-to-invincible loners toiling on the side of harmony and justice, and ruthless outlaw thugs shooting up the landscape, plundering and pillaging their way into the annals of western movie lore, where sexuality has never before been an issue. But the ballad turns into a lonely anthem, and finally a mournful dirge.

Ennis and Jack are neither heroes nor villains, neither bullies nor sissies. They’re ordinary guys trying to eke out an existence in the great outdoors when the improbability of falling in love with each other jars their own sense of the law and order of things. Instinctively, they realize that the perils of such a liaison outweigh its pleasures. Ennis, because of something he witnessed as a boy, is particularly skittish and conflicted. The morning after their first intimacy, nursing a hangover as well as feelings of guilt, he utters a stern disclaimer: “This is a one-time thing -- I ain’t no queer.” Jack is quick to chime in, “me neither.” Clearly, in their minds, they need to disassociate themselves from the ugly label, even if they know in their hearts there is nothing ugly about how they feel about each other or what they do to express it. The two try hard to be “normal”. They marry, sire children, have a strong sense of family obligation, and manage to stay away from each other for four years. But when they meet again, at Jack’s initiation, their passion for one another flares even mightier, and a reckless moment occurs that is witnessed by Ennis’s wife.

Like the legions of other essentially gay men from small-town and rural America hiding out in loveless marriages, Ennis and Jack continue their trancelike journey through life, relieved only by fleeting interludes with each other on Brokeback Mountain. The bottom drops out of their insides every time they part company. Eventually, Ennis and Alma divorce, and alimony and child support payments keep him broke and working longer hours, which lengthens the intervals between rendezvous with Jack.

After that first summer, Ennis never stops worrying about a tragic outcome of their affair -- a good, old fashioned western lynching. When Jack presses for more time together, for working a small ranch together where “it could always be like this,” Ennis barks back -- “this thing grabs hold of us in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and we’re dead.” When Jack pronounces “it’s nobody’s business but ours”, Ennis knows that’s wishful thinking -- that others will make it their business to know, then act accordingly. And we know that even though more than 20 years have elapsed since Ennis’s worst fears ultimately came to pass, and America professes to be more enlightened and less spooked about sexual orientation, there will always be those who snap us back to reality -- like Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania who says he wants to preserve and protect the integrity of the American cowboy movie -- marked by its century-long history of gratuitous bloodbaths -- by banning the future inclusion therein of gay characters -- presumably only those who make love, not those who are bashed.

“Brokeback Mountain” deserves Oscar nominations in just about every category. The film is exquisitely photographed, stunning vistas in the Canadian province of Alberta standing in magnificently for Wyoming. Gustavo Santaolalla has written a haunting score, featuring solo guitar and orchestra. Heath Ledger’s performance as Ennis ranks with the the finest in recent memory, as a tightly contained man of few words, uncomfortable in his own skin, who can’t bring himself to break out of the bounds of convention even if it means leaving behind an unfulfilled life of frustration. Many of Ledger’s lines are mumbled haltingly under his breath, so difficult is it for him to unlock his emotions. In that sense, I suppose he is more like the caricature of Hollywood’s sullen, stolid cowpoke.

Michelle Williams, as Alma, embodies the disillusion and disaffection of a “little woman” giving her all to just one man who’s giving his all to just one man. Alma’s loneliness and bewilderment are palpable. Jake Gyllenhaal eclipses fine performances this year in “Proof” and “Jarhead”, particularly late in this film when he and Ennis have an angry confrontation about fidelity -- Ennis rightfully suspects that Jack is having sexual encounters with other men -- and how differently each is dealing with the agony of being apart so much of the time as middle age approaches. By then, Gyllenhaal’s Jack has lost most of his youthful zest; he’s a drawn, dispirited shell of the playful, rakish man he was when they met. In tearful exasperation, he cries out to Ennis, “I wish I could quit you.”

The final scene, Ennis alone in his spare trailer with the only tangible remnants of their relationship, tests Ledger’s ability to take three words of dialogue -- Ennis’s usual economy of utterance -- and convey a waterfall of emotional content with his facial muscles and eyes, and, man, is he up to the challenge. “Jack...I swear.” It’s the closest he can come to expressing the love that dares not speak its name.

2 CAPOTE
An emotional barnburner of a film featuring a towering performance from Philip Seymour Hoffman as enigmtic, self-serving author Truman Capote, whose life and career are seismically rocked by his pursuit of the facts in a sensational Kansas mass murder case, during which he becomes infatuated with one of the killers, almost as brilliantly portrayed by Clifton Collins, Jr.

3 JUNEBUG
The smallest film on this list has one of the biggest hearts and a great deal to say about the widening cultural chasm between America’s North and South without sounding judgmental or condescending. It also addresses the accommodations and philosophical adjustments human beings make in order to circumvent discord and sustain their imperfect unions and lifestyles.

4 GRIZZLY MAN
Werner Herzog’s riveting documentary about Timothy Treadwell, a misguided and quite mad manchild, who fancies himself sole protector of the endangered Alaskan grizzlies, is constructed of video Treadwell shot himself over 13 summers in the wilderness and interviews with friends and associates after he is mauled and devoured by one of his beloved beasts. Treadwell’s footage succeeds in systematically tarnishing his own image, as he descends year-by-year from eccentric boyish charmer to raving maniac.

5 MUNICH and 6 WALK ON WATER
These two explore similar themes and do so with rare objectivity, getting into the heads and hearts of two Israeli assassins -- Avner (Eric Bana, “Munich”) and Eyal (Lior Ashkenazi, “Walk on Water”) -- who mow down terrorists with cool, dispassionate precision 30 years apart. Avner and a team he heads up are on “unofficial” assignment to track and take out the plotters and perpetrators of the 1972 Olympics massacre in Steven Spielberg’s superb thriller, “inspired by actual events”; Eyal works solo to pick off the honchos behind today’s Hamas suicide attacks in Eytan Fox’s multi-layered drama. Trouble is, thier professions and the endless cycle of violence they engender are taking a numbing toll on the psyches and souls of Avner and Eyal, distancing them further and further from nurturing relationships. Both becme politically disaffected and personally disillusioned by the mindlessness of their missions, and, though, plot circumstances differ, both opt out for a return to humanity.

7 THE SQUID AND THE WHALE
The monster here is neither the squid nor the whale, but Bernard Berkman -- literary elitist, sexist, womanizer, and control freak -- who uses his impending divorce to try to drive a wedge between his two sons and their quirky, but well-intentioned mother. He almost succeeds in crippling the social development of the older son and corrupting the morals of both before a tennis pro, the squid, and the whale intervene. Jeff Daniels has the misfortune of delivering the finest performance of his film career in a year in which Philip Seymour Hoffman and Heath Ledger rule.

8 KING KONG
Master storyteller Peter Jackson has created a hugely entertaining retro 30’s film, wrapped in awesome 21st century computer graphics, and given a compassionate soul to history’s most famous and fearsome ape and a poignant viewpoint to his demise.
9 DOWNFALL
German actor Bruno Ganz is electrifying as a mentally disintegrating Adolf Hitler in a docudrama based on the recollections of der Fuehrer’s secretary Frau Traudl Junge that verify once and for all what went on in the subterranean Chancellery bunker and the Berlin neighborhoods above ground in the last chaotic weeks of the Third Reich.

10 WALK THE LINE
What could have been your garden variety biopic is elevated to a distinguished level by an intelligent script, insightful direction, bold cinematography, and stirring performances. Joaquin Phoenix reaches new career heights as legendary country singer Johnny Cash and, unlike Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles a year ago, does his own singing. Reese Witherspoon delivers her most mature, multi-faceted performance to date as June Carter.

11 MATCH POINT
If Woody Allen’s name didn’t appear in the ads for this film or in its credits, you’d have no clue whatever of his participation, and that’s a good thing. Absent from the fabric of this taut, tingling, sexy thriller are Allen’s signature brand of Jewish shtick and nebbish angst, and the peculiarly neurotic New York milieu his films usually inhabit . Replacing these elements are a London locale, a predominantly UK cast, a tennis metaphor, carnal excesses, a web of deceit, and a double homicide -- a powerful cinematic brew that captivates and satisfies.

12 ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM
If this film were fiction it would be chilling enough, but it’s all too real and full of men in high corporate places behaving abominably.


HITS THAT JUST MISSED

Batman Begins
The Beat that My Heart Skipped
Hustle and Flow
North Country
A History of Violence
Thumbsucker
Layer Cake
Jarhead
Beautiful Boxer
Crash
Oliver Twist


BEST ACTOR (MALE)

Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote)
Heath Ledger (Brokeback Mountain)
Jeff Daniels (The Squid and the Whale)
Joaquin Phoenix (Walk the Line)
David Strathairn (Good Night and Good Luck)
Terrence Howard (Hustle and Flow/Crash)


BEST ACTOR (FEMALE)

Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain)
Charlize Theron (North Country)
Rachel Weisz (The Constant Gardener)
Maria Bello (A History of Violence)
Reese Witherspoon (Walk the Line)
Amy Adams (Junebug)


WORST FILMS (in no particular order)

War of the Worlds
The 40-Year-Old Virgin
The Aristocrats
Millions
The Producers