The Best Movies & Shows Released in 2005

This Park Chan-Wook classic is the third part of a trilogy of films around the theme of revenge, following Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Oldboy. While ultimately unique, Lady Vengeance is a thriller set in a prison, in the vein of films such as the Japanese action drama Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion. After being framed […]

Mr. Lazarescu is a widower living with his cats in a small Bucharest apartment. One night when he begins to feel sick and calls for help, he sets in motion a kafkaesque parade of nurses, doctors, and hospitals as he is ferried through a bureaucratic maze unable to get treatment for his rapidly deteriorating condition. […]

From Steven Spielberg, Munich is the sharp and thrilling depiction of Mossad agents on a mission to avenge the Munich Massacre, the killing of 11 Israeli Olympic team members at the 1972 Summer Olympics. Despite being based on real events, it’s a work of fiction. This allows the film to stand on clear yet nuanced […]

War changes the way we view people from the other side. On the most fundamental level, seeing an enemy combatant can mean death, but this eventually bleeds out into anger and hatred towards the enemy, because of the loss, the pain, and the fear war tends to wage. War drama Welcome to Dongmakgol understands this, […]

Robert Downey Jr’s triumphant return to film, this movie is a satirical take on film noir and detective movies in general. The screen chemistry between Gay Perry the private eye, played by Val Kilmer, and Downey Jr’s robber turned actor, Harry Lockhart, is hysterical, and the film’s tongue in cheek nature is witty, smart, and […]

As black a comedy as they come. Nick Naylor (superbly portrayed by Aaron Eckhart) is the chief spokesperson for tobacco and shows the world why smoking is as key to protect as any other liberal value. This movie is funny, smart, thoughtful and raises some good questions about the ego, the morale and what we […]

The best way to watch this movie is to be completely unprepared; it’s a super indie (sub 1 million dollar budget) Canadian thriller that completely wowed critics and audiences, even as it (and we’re being honest here) totally freaked them out. So, no spoilers, we can let you know it’s an internet thriller with shades […]

TRIGGER WARNING: THIS FILM IS NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART. CONTAINS VERY GRAPHIC SCENES. In fact, the movie opens with rape. While definitely not an easy watch, it is an incredible story and it should definitely be seen by more people. Set in the 1970s during the peasant revolts, a group of locals in the […]

Elizabeth: Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a high schooler trying understand his girlfriend’s disappearance. Film noir style with excellent dialogue. Ian: Murder mystery from the perspective of an oddball kid in high school. All of the evidence seems to point him back to one person in town. Karch:  A new-age noir film follows a high-school detective trying […]

Serenity is a futuristic sci-fi film that serves as a feature-length continuation of the story-line from the TV program Firefly (2002-2003). The story revolves around the captain (Nathan Fillion) and crew of the titular space vessel that operate as space outlaws, running cargo and smuggling missions throughout the galaxy. They take on a mysterious young […]

Director Noah Baumbach’s autobiographical film is a strikingly realistic take on divorce and the turmoil it sets on an already-dysfunctional family. Bernard (Jeff Daniels) is a selfish decadent writer who’s splitting with his unfaithful wife Joan (Laura Linney). Their two sons, Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) and Frank (Owen Kline), are taking different sides that reflect their […]

2005 was a banner year for British period dramas, apparently: first, there was Joe Wright’s Pride & Prejudice (still arguably the genre’s crowning achievement), and then came Under the Greenwood Tree, a delightful made-for-Christmas-TV romance loosely based on the eponymous Thomas Hardy novel. Anyone familiar with the author’s typically tragedy-tinged stories — think Tess of […]

The Dardenne brothers deliver one of their characteristic tests of empathy with this social realist tale centered around an apparently irredeemable soul. Bruno (Jérémie Renier) and his girlfriend Sonia (Déborah François) are childish teenagers who have just welcomed their first baby, a boy named Jimmy. But the fact that he’s now a father and jointly […]

You know Anthony Hopkins as the evil Hannibal Lecter, but in this film he gives a warm and heartfelt performance portraying real life New Zealand motorcycle legend Burt Munro who set a land speed record in 1967 on a hand-built 1920 Indian. It’s a story of never giving up on your dream even in the […]

In The Magic of Ordinary Days, a Hallmark movie set in the heartland during World War II, Keri Russell plays Livvy Dunne-Singleton, a college-educated young woman who is forced to marry a simple farmer after her father finds out she got pregnant out of wedlock. If you watch enough Hallmark movies, you can probably guess […]

I was surprised by how dramatically and deeply emotional this film was. While there is a love story included, it is not that of young puppy love. Rather, it the story of a man’s undying and perseverant love for his family. What would you do when given a problem to which there is no solution and […]

The Western had its heyday in the 60s, but the decades have proven that there’s still stories from the deserts that we haven’t heard yet, and gems that twist the genre on its head. The Proposition is a unique Western, being from the East, in Australia where the Brits have started to form colonies. As […]

Regardless of where, when, and why war came to be, war inevitably makes children grow up faster than they ought to. Turtles Can Fly depicts one such boy, a thirteen year old refugee nicknamed Kak Satellite whose limited English and resourcefulness transformed him into a leader for the rest of the children as they scrounged […]

13 Tzameti is a unique suspense movie from Georgia and the debut of director Géla Babluani. This film explores the life of a migrant worker from Georgia working in France, who literally gambles his life in a high stakes game of chance organized by powerful criminals.  13 Tzameti won the World Cinema Jury Prize at […]

Ralph Fiennes plays a mild-mannered British diplomat in Kenya who is stunned by the news of his wife Tessa’s (Rachel Weisz) sudden death while in the company of another man. He sets off to investigate the suspicious death––and secret life–-of his late wife, within a tangle of personal betrayals, political threats, and corporate conspiracies. This […]

C.R.A.Z.Y. is crazy good, so to speak. A portrait of a French-Canadian family in 70’s Quebec that will knock your socks right off, it’s the story of a boy struggling with his identity and his relationship with his father. Featuring a killer soundtrack (including but not limited to Bowie, Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones), it received Best Canadian Film […]

When Brian was eight years old he lost five hours of his life to a black out. Now ten years later he is searching for the truth. His search leads him to Neil, a boy who was on his little league team the summer of the blackout. Brian has always believed he was abducted by […]

Beginning with a great opening shot of townhouse on a side street in Paris, only ti discovers that the shot is actually from a video sent to Anne and Georges Laurent (Juliette Binoche and Daniel Auteuil). The married couple who live in that house have no idea who sent the video. More videos appear and events unfold. […]

Su-ki-da is a Japanese romantic drama about Yu and Yosuke, a girl and a boy studying in the same school. Their odd friendship develops as Yu starts following Yosuke to the meadow, where he goes to play his guitar. As the years go on, Yu and Yosuke grow apart — until a night of coincidence […]

It may look like a cheap TV movie, but this quietly affecting story of a lonely grandmother looking for kindness and meaning at a retirement hotel is an absolutely charming watch for you, your parents, and your own grandparents. The stakes are refreshingly low, as the title character’s quick friendship with a twentysomething writer helps […]

Madeleine (Embeth Davidtz) runs a high-brow art gallery in Chicago and has to take a trip to North Carolina to meet with an artist she wants to sign. She uses this opportunity to also meet her husband’s family, who is originally from there. She is introduced into the small world of rural North Carolina, personified […]

Bree (Felicity Huffman) is an uptight transwoman who gets a phone call from her long lost son who is in trouble. She does not tell him she is his father but bails him out of jail and they end up on a long road trip to LA. Bree’s high strung conservative personality intersecting with a […]

Vivid, sweeping landscapes surround the simple beauty of a Mongolian family navigating the pressures of globalization while still practicing their traditional nomadic lifestyle. Ostensibly it’s about the charming, captivating relationship that forms between a young girl, Nansal, and a dog that she finds. However, the magic of this slow, enthralling film is that it captures […]

The Beat That My Heart Skipped is a remake of 1978 American film Fingers, but reversed– The film brings a debt collector to piano rather than the other way around. As you can imagine, the reversal completely changes how the plot feels. It’s not great that the mom here is dead, but this choice makes […]

Electric Shadows is often deemed something like a Chinese Cinema Paradiso. It has the friendship with an older film projectionist, the small town gathering around outdoor screenings of foreign film, a childhood friendship between a boy and girl that meet again unexpectedly, and of course, it wears its heart for the movies right on its […]

Arguably Werner Herzog’s most renowned film, Grizzly Man is a thought-provoking documentary about Tim Treadwell, a man who, as the title suggests, lived among bears. While he remained only known for how his story ended, by one of the bears turning on him, Grizzly Man is the exploration of the man’s complex mind, unlimited energy and love […]

A documentary about the rise and fall of the Enron Corporation, the energy-trading and utilities conglomerate that gained worldwide attention in 2001 upon its headline-grabbing bankruptcy. Detailing the massive amount of fraud and malfeasance committed by the organization’s top executives, the film delves into the many intricate strategies and “special purpose” entities that were manufactured […]

Tsotsi, a delinquent from Johannesburg, South Africa, realizes after shooting a woman and stealing her car, that her baby is on the back seat. A movie with very few words but which manages to be extremely touching. As you witness the transformation of Tsotsi, through his increasing affection for the baby, you will be astonished by the amazing actor, who manages […]

This documentary follows eight men whose convictions were recently overturned based on exonerating evidence. Proven innocent after many years in the US prison system, they are suddenly free to return to the communities they had been expelled from, without any of the usual obligations (or resources) associated with parole or probation. The exonerations featured in […]

It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that the mix of ideas and aesthetics that gave us Her has roots in Japan. Borrowing from the country’s poeticism, attention to detail and just appreciation for beauty; Tony Takitani is Her’s quiet and delicate elder brother-film, and one of the best this genre has to give. After […]

Not everyone gets to go after their ambitions without any reservations, but everyone is free to dream. Hustle & Flow depicts a unique midlife crisis of a pimp that’s been in the game for too long, but while the premise somewhat seems superficial, the way writer-director Craig Brewer depicts it is not. It takes familiar […]

At an older age, love can feel like it’s overrated, but watching Little Manhattan easily makes you remember the way love felt growing up, starting to explore all the feelings one had of the opposite gender, with childhood imagination and freedom from responsibilities making it seem so much more wonderful than it is now. Admittedly, […]

Picked by Roger Ebert as the fifth best film of the decade. An observant, tender film about the little details in loneliness and then in relationships as we move through life. It’s funny, at times darkly so, and features a great performance by John Hawkes as Richard, an eccentric shoe salesman dealing with an ended marriage trying to turn his life […]

Written, directed and starring the auteur Stephan Chow, Kung Fu Hustle is a distillation of decades of Hong-Kong Cinema’s greatest export : the martial arts comedy. Full of numerous allusions and witty nods to other greats in the genre, this film is nonetheless entirely fresh and new. Equal parts hilarious and breathtakingly action-packed, Kung Fu […]

Directed by Sam Mendes Jarhead is based on the best-selling 2003 memoir of the same title. In the film, Swofford is a 20-year-old soldier in the US Marine Corps during the 1991 Gulf War who is trained to be a sniper. But as the days go by, he doesn’t fire a single shot, given there […]

An extraordinary documentary full of drama, comedy and heartbreak. It follows two penguins, a couple, for a year as they migrate, give birth and face hardships and tragedy. It captures never seen before moments that stand as a perfect illustration of survival in particular and life in general. All in a very well crafted documentary that you will […]

Daniel Johnston sings what is possibly the most heartbreaking song I’ve ever heard about a cow. In this documentary, we’re witness to his childhood in West Virginia (he was always manically filming himself), quasi-fame in the Austin, Texas, the indie-rock scene of the mid-80s, a series of brief appearances on MTV, and eventual spiral into […]

Submitted by: D’Ju D’Ju’s review: A real thug British movie, as we love them. It has a strong British dark atmosphere. Displaying the story and point of view of a group of students in the suburbs, everything begins with the suicide of a young girl who was depressed after being bullied in class. -For the ones who […]