Wednesday, March 5, 2025

Picks of 2005

The mid point of the Noughties was when we said hello to YouTube, goodbye to Ronnie Barker, and hello again to The Doctor.

A few film picks I enjoyed from 2005, or grown on me since then:

Batman Begins (Christopher Nolan)

Corpse Bride (Mike Johnson, Tim Burton)

The Descent (Neil Marshall)

A History of Violence (David Cronenberg)

Hostel (Eli Roth)

House of Wax (Jaume Collet-Serra)

Lady Vengeance (Park Chan-wook)

Land of the Dead (George A. Romero)

Lord of War (Andrew Niccol)

Sin City (Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez)

S.P.I: Kill Zone (Wilson Yip)

Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (George Lucas)

Transporter 2 (Louis Letterier)

V for Vendetta (James McTeigue)

Wolf Creek (Gregg McLean)

Glaring Blindspots: 

Noroi: The Curse (Kōji Shiraishi), A Bittersweet Life (Kim Jee-woon), Jarhead (Sam Mendes), Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Shane Black), The Proposition (John Hilcoat).

Dada Debaser Notes:

  • Critics list Michael Haneke's Caché as one of the greatest films from 2005 - and of the decade, for that matter. It's too insufferably middle class and uppity for me to ever watch again in one sitting and nowhere near as good as watching Paris Hilton's death in the House of Wax remake.
  • Comic book movies were already oversaturated by this year; well before Disney's MCU came along. However, film adaptations of alternative comic books (History of Violence, Sin City [peak era Rosario Dawson and Jessica Alba!!!] and V for Vendetta) were a refreshing change and examples of not everything needing to be based on recognisable superheroes.
  • The Servants' Cells would feature in both Sin City's trailer and in a scene from The Transporter 2. Fortunately, they're both of the instrumental version and not the one with the horrible singing.
  • The passage of time has made me more accepting of Eli Roth's very early work. Additionally, film critic David Edelstein would first coin the term torture porn when referring to Hostel in a New York Magazine article the following year.
  • Count me in as one of the few persons on the planet who thinks Land of the Dead is George A. Romero's last great film. Great soundtrack, too:
Reinhold Heil & Johnny Klimek - To Canada
Land of the Dead (OST) | 2005
 

8 comments:

Kelvin Mack10zie said...

Also the last year a Hollywood movie was released on VHS.

3 personal classics not included here:

Wallace & Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit
The Business
Lords Of Dogtown

Spartan said...

Genuinely convinced The Business was inspired by the game GTA: Vice City. Even features the same Flock of Seagulls song from it.

There was an old YouTube video where Nick Love and Danny Dyer were slagging off Mark Kermode, and I can't find it in recent years. Closest is their Derek & Clive style pop at unnamed critics off the Outlaw audio commentary.

Kelvin Mack10zie said...

Good point about the GTA inspiration. The sole highlight of Dyer's movie career IMHO.

Looking at 2005 TV shows and 2 of my favourite sitcoms of the 2000s began that year: Everybody Hates Chris and My Name Is Earl.

Spartan said...

Dyer was tolerable in Human Traffic.

He also was in a couple of Brit horrors that were entertaining junk - Severance (2006) and Doghouse(2009). The former was directed by the same guy who made Triangle (2009).

Kelvin Mack10zie said...

Has the Triangle director got any other notable movies?

Spartan said...

Yes, he has.

Big fan of Christopher Smith's debut feature film Creep (2004), about a cannibal that lives beneath the tunnels of the London Underground. It's a quasi-remake to Death Line (AKA, Raw Meat, 1972).

Black Death (2010) was Smith's next film after Triangle (2009). Not seen it in yonks, but I remember it being a very well done folk horror.

With the exception of Consecration (2023), which turned out to be really dull, I've not seen his other films since Black Death.

Kelvin Mack10zie said...

Creeps looks/sounds great. Will track it down, cheers 👍

Spartan said...

Shouldn't be a hard film to find.