2005 Official Movie Rankings

At long last, the time has arrived. 2005 was a banner year for Tom. I have seen more movies this year than any other. At the moment I have seen 58 2005 movies. I plan to sneak a couple more in tomorrow morning before the big show. The Superbowl for movie makers. So, at long last, I have made my official list. Here goes.

The first step is to determine the bad movies. In Baseball we have something we call The Mendoza Line that seperates the Bad hitters from the fair or good hitters. It is based how low a player's batting average can be before it negates that player's good defense. We have a line in the movie world too. It is the point at which poor filmmaking quality can no longer be tolerated in spite of fun or entertainment levels. Or vice versa. I should come up with a name for this line. Hmmmmmm

So I went through the whole list and decided which movies I would say are simply Bad movies. I came up with 12. These I ranked in order from worst to least worst.

The next step was to go through the list and determine which movies are top ten worthy. I usually do this and come up with about 15. This year it was 13. 13 movies that were legitimately top 10 movies.

The next step, of course, is to eliminate 3 movies from the top ten. That was also pretty easy. There were three that were just not quite there for me.

Here is the catch. I made the list today right before I went to see one last movie....and guess what. Its a top ten movie no doubt. Which means there is one movie that was a top ten one and got nudged out at the last minute. And its a biggie too.

The next step is the big deal. To rank the top ten. The first thing I did was to determine if they were in the top or bottom of the top ten. I came up with 3 bottoms and 7 tops. I ranked the bottom 3 then moved on to the other 7.

After all of that, I took the other 32 movies and broke them up in to top middle and bottom of the rest. I did not rank them all, just put them in general groups.

So here we go.

The Top Ten
1. Munich
2. Brokeback Mountain
3. Goodnight and Good Luck
4. Revenge of the Sith
5. Hustle and Flow
6. Walk the Line
7. Elizabethtown
8. TransAmerica
9. Capote
10. Cinderella Man

I think that Munich and Brokeback mountain stand out above the rest. Flawless filmmaking and both very compelling stories. Munich edges out Brokeback, but not by much.
Now lets talk Star Wars. Seriously. I know that few will support this, but they don't know as much about film as I do. This movie was flawless. Oh, not just flawless for an average movie either. Never before was there a movie with more work to do. George Lucas put himself into a place where no filmmaker has been. Tying two movies that were made in the last 6 years seemlessly to 3 movies that were made more than 25 years before. It does this, and does it brilliantly. To be honest, for a long time I thought it was truly the best film of the year. I decided, however, that it doesn't have quite enough punch in the What does it mean? department. After all, it is still a fantasy adventure. But if anyone says that its anything less than brilliant, they are film snobs and pretenders.

The rest of the Top 10 was pretty easy. Hustle and Flow and Elizabethtown are two you might not see on other lists, but they were incredible. These, while very different in most ways, are films about life, what it means and what is important.

You might notice that Crash is missing. Well, it made the top 10. Only for a minute. Because I saw Transamerica tonight and...forget it. Sorry Paul Haggis. Crash is a very good film. It packs quite a punch in the What does it mean? department, but is sorely lacking in the Does anything that happens make sense? department.

So it was a great year. I belive I will see North Country and Enron tomorrow, so I will edit them in later. For now... here is the Official Tom list of 2005.

1. Munich
2. Brokeback Mountain
3. Goodnight and Good Luck
4. Revenge of the Sith
5. Hustle and Flow
6. Walk the Line
7. Elizabethtown
8. TransAmerica
9. Capote
10. Cinderella Man

11. Crash
12. War of the Worlds
13. The Island
14. Rent
15. The Jacket

Best of the Rest (no particular order)
Upside of Anger
March of the Penguins
House of Wax
Bad News Bears
Constant Gardner
Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants
Fever Pitch
Must Love Dogs
Skeleton Key
Chronicles of Narnia
Wedding Crashers
Batman
Mr. And Mrs. Smith

Middle of the Rest (no particular order)
Ice Princess
Murderball
Junebug
A Lot Like Love
Wallace and Gromit Were Rabbit
Red eye
Sky High
Guess Who
Monster in Law
40 year old virgin
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Hitch

Worst of the Rest (no particular order)

Pretty Persuasion
Bewitched
Herbie
Are We There Yet
Fantastic Four
Madagascar
King Kong

-------------The Bad Line------------

Flightplan
The Longest Yard
Dukes of Hazzard
Sin City
Miss Congeniality 2
Dark Water
White Noise
The Ring Two
Man of the House
Dirty Love
Boogeyman
Cursed

There it is, in all its glory. Man, I love my job.

-Tom