Maybe it's time to abandon the idea of a Top Ten for 2005. I mean, Manohla Dargis just listed every single movie that didn't suck (37 -- and that includes "Red Eye"!). A.O. Scott added 20 to his top ten, for a nice round 30 films. That left Stephen Holden looking like the soul of restraint for putting just 20 films into his "top ten."

As for themes, maybe we should junk that concept too. A.O. Scott did not find, "as far as I can see, any important trends in world cinema," though Stephen Holden, more in love with categorization, managed to come up with the theme "Anxiety" / "Ominous portents", a natural disaster-inspired theme that his top picks fit into like a Procrustean bed.

My own theme was Determining How Good The Movies Are Without Actually Seeing Them.

Herewith, my imaginary top ten cluster. I have only seen one of these, so take the list with a grain or more of salt: 

The Best of Youth
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
Mysterious Skin
Downfall
The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
The Power of Nightmares
The Squid and the Whale
Grizzly Man
2046
Darwin's Nightmare

A list of movies I did see that just were not Top Ten material:
The Wedding Crashers - amusing diversion
The 40 Year-Old Virgin - amusing diversion
The Aristocrats - sometimes extremely amusing diversion
Batman Returns - this had some good things in it but was not "good"
March of the Penguins - pretty good, but come on!
Capote - good, but you know
Serenity - laughed and cried, but you know
King Kong - enjoyed thoroughly, but you know
Good Night, and Good Luck. - well-respected but slow and limited scope

Unseen movies that may end up on my final list, and were on other people's lists:

Junebug (85% Cream of the Crop)
The Constant Gardener (82% Cream of the Crop)
The New World (Terrence Malick - rel. 2006)
Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee)
Cache (Michael Haneke)
Murderball
L'Enfant (the Dardenne brothers, won at Cannes, not released here)

And, lastly, a placeholder for all the movies that I meant to see.  So here they are:

Look At Me (8.5, French, 93% Cream of the Crop)
Intimate Stories (8.3, Argentine, 100% Cream of the Crop)
Turtles Can Fly ("Lakposhtha h�m parvaz mikonand " 8.1, 89% Cream of the Crop)
Rize (87% Cream of the Crop)
The Holy Girl (7.9, Argentine, 85% Cream of the Crop)
Kung Fu Hustle (7.4, silly fun, 84% Cream of the Crop)
Millions (7.0, Danny Boyle -- you know, for kids!, 90% Cream of the Crop)
Crash (6.4, conversation fodder, 72% Cream of the Crop)
Palindromes (5.2, Todd Solondz, maybe not: 48% Cream of the Crop)
Shake Hands With The Devil (documentary on Rwanda, 100% Cream of the Crop)
The Ninth Day (Volker Schl�ndorff, 86% Cream of the Crop)
Tell Them Who You Are (documentary, 84% Cream of the Crop)
Howl's Moving Castle
Nina's Tragedies (I already saw in 2004!)
Me and You and Everyone We Know (78% Cream of the Crop, and rising)
We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen (100% Cream of the Crop)
Wallace and Gromit: the Curse of the Were-Rabbit (97% Cream of the Crop)
El Crimen Perfecto (81% Cream of the Crop)
Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (81% Cream of the Crop)
The Goebbels Experiment (80% Cream of the Crop)
Forty Shades of Blue (Sundance winner) (71% Cream of the Crop)
Thumbsucker (67% Cream of the Crop)
Reel Paradise (62% Cream of the Crop)
Happy Endings (Don Roos) (47% Cream of the Crop- ow!)
Nine Songs (Michael Winterbottom - 29% Cream of the Crop: ow ow ow!)
Nine Lives (a TOTALLY different movie - dir. Rodrigo García)
Idiocracy (Mike Judge)
Art School Confidential (Terry Zwigoff) -- BUMPED TO APRIL 2006
Elizabethtown (Cameron Crowe)
Jarhead (Sam Mendes)
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Tristram Shandy (Michael Winterbottom again!)
The Promise (Chen Kaige)
The Dying Gaul (Craig Lucas)
Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic
Walk the Line
The Ice Harvest (could be awful)
Boys of Baraka
Ushpizin (not sure re: quality)
Shopgirl (supposed to be not good but memorable)
New York Doll
The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till
I Am a Sex Addict (Caveh Zahedi!)

SPECIAL BONUS: IAN PREDICTS THE WORST MOVIE OF 2005!
(sorry, this movie seems to be MIA!)
Okay, I am going to say that the absolute worst movie of the year is "Goose!" for the following reasons:
1: exclamation point rule
2: kids' movie about a silly animal rule
3: Tom Arnold rule
4: Chevy Chase rule
4: Bonus stinky points for Tom Arnold being the voice of the talking goose.
Top that, Pluto Nash!
["Goose!" opens Dec. 2 and comes out on DVD two days later.]
[where did it go?????  I want my "Goose!"]

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