Release Year: 2005
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Batman Begins
There’s a reason Batman Begins keeps resurfacing in conversations about the best action films of its era: it simply refuses to be dated. The film’s own tagline — “Evil fears the knight.” — tells you almost everything about the tone it’s going for. Strip away the craft and the premise is simple — Driven by…
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Corpse Bride
Every so often an animation film comes along that refuses to be filed away neatly, and Corpse Bride is exactly that kind of stubborn, memorable outlier. “There’s been a grave misunderstanding.” That’s the line the studio chose to sell the film, and it doesn’t oversell it by much. The story kicks off from a clean,…
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Grave of the Fireflies
Not every drama movie needs to reinvent the wheel, but Grave of the Fireflies manages to feel fresh anyway, thanks largely to Tōya Satō’s confident direction. The story kicks off from a clean, almost deceptively simple place: Hisako loses her home in Tokyo to Allied bombing. With her husband fighting somewhere in Asia, she and…
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Pride & Prejudice
Few things separate a forgettable night of scrolling from a night you actually remember, and “Pride & Prejudice” (2005) lands firmly in the second camp for a specific kind of viewer. That reputation, as it turns out, is well earned. “Sometimes the last person on earth you want to be with is the one person…
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Brokeback Mountain
If you have been putting off “Brokeback Mountain” since 2005, this is your sign to finally move it to the top of the queue. It does not take long to understand why people keep bringing it up. The marketing leaned on the line “Love is a force of nature.” — and once you are a…