Movies 2005, Part 1 of 5

For the last several years I've kept a running list with mini-reviews of all the movies and/or TV-on-DVD I watched during the year. In addition to a moderately interesting review of personal media history, it's also diary-esque on re-reading.

This year I watched at least 68 movies.* The first 13:

Mean Girls
My first of 2005! Better than I expected, but I expected a turd with short skirts. My girlfriend wanted to watch it because it’s based on the book, Queen Bees and Wannabees. I groaned when it got preachy, but still, happily less vapid than I thought.

I, Robot
More vapid than I thought. A hillbilly of a movie: ugly, violent, stupid.

Hero
Though others disparage, I think this has a rare edge, a movie with subtlety, but not so subtle that I lose my way.

Grosse Point Blank
This movie too, is subtler than the last time I saw it. This is the third time, and I got it more this time than ever before. I don’t think it’s because I necessarily know the bittersweet 10-year reunion feeling. Among other things, I didn’t go to mine.

I think 1) I’m a more sophisticated movie watcher than I used to be, and 2) I’m less bamboozled by the comedy having seen it twice already. But all of John Cusack’s silent behavior and streams of thought, they ring better this time. The movie had a couple of moments I noticed where they didn’t take the stupid road -- showing the audience things that they didn’t need to see, for instance -- but let the movie unfold without clubbing you over the head.

Appleseed (2004)
I liked this movie, but it wasn’t a good movie. Great animation, though.

Magnificent Butcher
Sammo Hung is an oafish butcher... who knows kung-fu! Pretty fun.

Infernal Affairs
All would-be “taut thrillers” can judge their tensile strength against this Hong Kong wonder.

The Woodsman
Really good.

Hitch
This will probably forever be a movie I associate with a Valentine’s Day that turned out poorly. It had two points of interest besides that though. 1) Kevin James is a funny comedian. 2) The movie was a boy-meets-girl, girl-loses-boy, girl-finds-boy again story. A welcome twist!

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Why do so many movies slow down when they get a plot? And if involving a plot is so detrimental, can we just do without it? Can we just not do slow and dumb? I’ll sacrifice plot for a movie that’s well-paced and expects me to be smart.

Maria Full of Grace
I liked this movie, and I didn’t think I would. I kept waiting for something to go wrong, and it never really did. Maria didn’t seem to change much. Maybe that’s part of the grace.

Infernal Affairs
Once again! Saw it at Circle movie night. Better the second time, because I could tell the leads apart better.

Guess Who
What if you threw a comedy and nobody laughed? Ashton Kutcher = not a funny actor.



*I might have watched more but sometimes I forget to write them down, see.