I was sittin' at a crummy movie with my hand on my chin...

I have been aiming to write about movies for months and months now. I’ve started and stopped, started and stopped, but mainly I’ve just had other distractions like relocating our office at work. Now it’s the last two weeks of the year and I have some free time. I could do a best of 2005 in movies but I just haven’t seen enough movies that were released this year to make it that interesting. I still watch a lot of movies, just not a lot of new movies.

When I first got the urge to write about movies I was going to try to determine why there just weren’t that many great movies anymore (for a better take on this read here). Then I saw Elizabethtown and decided that indeed that was a good topic. I started going back through the movies I’ve seen and really loved then I narrowed that list to movies only released since the year 2000. I realized that there have been a lot of great movies released in the past 5 years; it’s just that I watch a lot more crappy movies than good movies. A good reason for that is that more crappy movies are made than good movies, but that's a good reason and not a very good excuse. I should know better. I knew I wouldn’t care for, uh, let’s say The Whole Ten Yards but I watched it nonetheless. That’s my fault. I could go with the proverbial ‘I wish I had that two hours back’ but do I really? Granted the movie sucked but I knew that before setting the TiVo. I read the reviews. I saw the previews. I knew that it was a happy accident that The Whole Nine Yards was entertaining in the first place. Truth is I’ll watch anything. I won’t actually go to the movies to see just anything but if it’s to where I don’t have to leave my couch, my standards are lowered considerably. Perfect example: Presently I have a made-for-TV movie taking up TiVo space that stars Bob Newhart, Olympia Dukakis, and Noah Wyle where Dr. Carter plays some bumbling librarian that has to save the world. What the hell is wrong with me?

That question will not be answered today. Instead I’m going to concentrate on the good things I’ve watched over the last five years. I’ve broken the movies down into different categories and we’ll start off with the best documentaries of the 2000s...so far.

Documentaries

5. Jazz (2001) – Say what you will about the Ken Burns style but the man has a passion for his subjects. Maybe he over romanticizes but there’s a lot of information passed along in the process. If you still aren’t convinced that this is a good documentary you should try watching it and The Blues which also aired on PBS. Despite The Blues being directed by Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood, Wim Wenders, etc. I’d bet most people would find Jazz a more satisfying documentary. I know I did.

4. Comedian (2002) – Comedic theory is neither comedic or a theory. There’s nothing absolute when it comes to making people laugh, but analyzing it is fascinating…at least to me. The go-to guy when it comes to overanalyzing the funny died last year, but don’t let Alan King’s passing fool you into thinking that you won’t have to put up with comedians talking about what makes funny funny anymore. If you like that kind of talk (and chances are you don’t) Comedian is a good thing to watch even if you don’t like Jerry Seinfeld or his new material.

3. Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport (2000) – It has been said that the year there’s no holocaust documentaries is the year that the Academy Awards will do away with the documentary category. I think Spike Lee said that or maybe it was me. I don’t know. The point of that is that there are a lot of holocaust documentaries and it would be hard to make one that wasn’t both important and moving. This one just happens to be one of the most moving and also very important.

2. Startup.com (2001) – If they’re looking for a film to capture the late 90s dot.com startup phenomenon to add to the national film registry, this should be it.

1. Capturing the Friedmans (2003) – I still haven’t been able to shake this story from my mind. It’s a frightening story that’s masterfully told. The questions raised by the Friedmans’ story go beyond the details of their family and its undoing. There were times while watching this that I wanted to convince myself that part of the movie was staged and made up even though I knew that it was not.

Next category coming soon.