...to the finish line (pt. 6)

2005

Forty Shades of Blue

A History of Violence

Last Days

Head-On

Grizzly Man

Nobody Knows

3-Iron

The New World

Cache

Keane

10. Tropical Malady (n/a)

9. Grizzly Man (6)

8. Cache (2)

7. Oldboy (n/a)

6. 3-Iron (4)

5. Nobody Knows (5)

4. Head-On (7)

3. A History of Violence (9)

2. Keane (1)

1. The New World (3)

I still love Ira Sachs’ Forty Shades of Blue but needed space for both the wondrous, sensuous, rich Tropical Malady and Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy and while it was easy to relocate Van Sant’s Last Days to runner-up-ville as without the weight of immediacy, it was considerably tougher to lose Sachs’ flick and Dina Korzun’s performance therein. Fuel to the fire of our decade-end conversation, consider that Oldboy was released in its native South Korea a full two years before finding footing on North American shores. I confess that I was completely ignorant of its charms, and those of director Park, until that time as well causing one to wonder how many gems are never brought to the United States at all. There’s something irretrievably broken about a system that has Slumdog Millionaire playing on thousands of screens while 800 native-made Indian films aren’t granted any kind of North American distribution whatsoever. Easy to say just stream it on the Internet – but without subtitles…

And into that conversation comes sideways a chat about films like Precious and The Blind Side where one says that sure this might represent one facet of Black life in the United States – but where are the other 359 degrees? Without them, you’d be left thinking that all our own industry cares to do with this minority is create the same kind of poverty porn as Slumdog. Drop trou, lotion up the palm, and let’s sit in the dark with our socio-economic brethren before the cavitation of the lower classes. We used to call it feeding Christians to lions – way to turn the tables, ruling class.

Grizzly Man loses ground though it loses nothing in delight upon repeat viewings and Haneke’s Cache slides a few slots as I become more familiar with the auteur’s tricks. Cronenberg’s A History of Violence gains several slots as it grows in my estimation and the remarkable Keane, remarkable still, is nonetheless less remarkable than Malick’s incandescently brilliant The New World. Fatih Akin’s visceral Head-On is just so cool from start to finish it had to move up and the list as it is at this moment begins to take on this real sense of perverse, romantic ennui.

Another great year, another tough list.