411 Movies Zone Staff Awards 2005
Posted by Scott Rutherford on 01.16.2006
Find out who and what was the best for 2005!
It is that time again when the writers of 411 Movies/TV get together and bring you our Year End Awards! I know they aren't as prestigious say The Oscars, but we have the Golden Globes and the Sag Awards in our pockets dammit! These awards hold real value because they are voted by the people that have very little else to do other than watch movies and talk about them. We are the elitist snobs of the movie world…and proud. What you have below is an eclectic and interesting list of winners and losers from the movie world during the year 2005.
I need to thank Matthew Craggs, Tim O'Sullivan and Cris Murphy for helping me out with the comments below and all the writers that voted.
Enjoy.
Movie Of The Year
17 Movies got mentioned during the voting process this year and as always (for the most part) there was very little separating the majority of films in the voting but one film did stand out head and shoulders above the rest garnering over twice as many votes as the second placed film. It is…
Batman Begins
In a world where Hellboy's are too camp, foursome's are ironically not so Fantastic and the Super one is still readying his cape for action - you need someone or something to fill the superhero void with style.
Step forward Christopher Nolan, step forward Warner Bros, step forward Christian Bale, and ultimately, step forward Batman. Without the colourful gloss of Spiderman and the legacy of Superman, Gotham's premier crime fighter often escapes the plethora of media and fan attention that the aforementioned undoubtedly do, and will. Hence the mediocre box office, for a film that really did re-invent both the franchise and the modern day blockbuster. Batman had brains, when he began again last spring. All of his gadgets were plausibly introduced, his mind set was more human and affable, and his training allows his power to look more realistic.
That aside, it's just a fantastic movie. Sublime direction, ingenious casting (take a bow Sir Michael), clever story telling and explosive action. Messrs Superman, Spiderman and the X-Men crew have a lot to live up to in the next eighteen months.
Runner Up: 40 Year Old Virgin. Every year a diamond in the rough emerges and this low-budget, low-brow comedy reached more than it's fair share of funny-bones this year.
Honourable Mention: Sin City, Munich, Crash
Actor Of The Year
Usually the domain of the indie film, the lead actor awards usually go to a stand out actor in a lesser seen film but this year showed a marked shift to roles in studio and main stream films. A hotly contested vote this year saw the winner shade second place by just 2 votes. He is…
Joaquin Phoenix – Walk The Line
Joaquin Phoenix deserves this honor for his dedication to the craft of acting, and not necessarily for the excellent final output. Before taking on the role of country legend Johnny Cash, he couldn't hold a guitar correctly. In the end, he imitated the man in black so accurately that it is almost eerie. In comparison, it took me three years to learn the recorder in elementary school, and I couldn't come close to imitating any famous recorder players with this type of accuracy.
Take, for example, the scene where the trademark Cash sound comes to fruition. Phoenix as Cash perform for Sam Phillips of Sun Studios. They strum along to a Gospel standard for a bored Phillips, who in turn tells them to sing the song you would sing if you only had one left. Cash flies by the seat of his pants and breaks into "Folsom Prison Blues." Phillips obviously loves it and Phoenix's eyes light up like he is evoking the spirit of Cash. It is chilling, inspiring, and just plain impressive. The amount of effort and care that went into Phoenix's performance far exceeds the effort and care of any other actor this year.
Technically speaking, Phoenix does everything right. He holds beats for just the right amount of time, he knows just the right tone to put on the character's lines , and he does a marvelous job of not overacting, but not underscoring, Cash in his darker days. He played the guitar, he sung the songs, believe it or not, and left the majority of 2005 movie goers asking themselves, "How much of that was Cash and how much was Joaquin?"
Runner Up: Mickey Rourke – Sin City Always one to play outside the box with his movie choices, Rourke struck a chord this year with his turn in Sin City as Marv . While you hardly say it's a comeback for the former boxer you could say he has made a few people take noice once again.
Honourable Mention: Viggo Mortensen, Russel Crowe, David Straithairn
Actress Of The Year
Unlike the Best Actor, the woman are playing more to type with a mixture of studio, low budget and little seen films offering a wide array of choices this year but two roles stood out above most others. Like the men only two votes was the difference between 1st and 2nd but there is no doubting we have a worthy winner. She is…
Reese Witherspoon – Walk The Line
Just when you thought Reese may have forever been trapped in "chick flick" hell she burst forth this year in what you would have to consider her first really serious mainstream stab at an adult feature drama. She couldn't have picked a harder role than that of June Carter-Cash, the much loved singer and wife to firebrand country legend Johnny Cash. Perhaps the smartest thing she did was take the "Reese playing June" route instead of trying to completely copy Carter-Cash because she invested enough of that renowned Witherspoon charm and magic into the role to completely win over audiences. While there is Oscar talk around, you just never can judge what they will do but for now she has the best of the year that was.
Runner Up - Maria Bello – A History of Violence. Maria has been around for a while now building an impressive resume since leaving ER many years ago. She attracted much positive attention for her turn in The Cooler last year but has really come to attention for this role.
Honourable Mention: Rachel Weisz, Toni Colette, Asia Argentino
Director of the Year
Usually Best Director picks go to well know and established movie makers with a track record of great films. This years winner while being a respected director of many classic underground films, he has never really broken into the mainstream conscious like he did with A History of Violence. He is…
David Corenberg
David Cronenberg is one of the most influential Canadian filmmaker ever. The way he explores the relation between technology, the body, and identity, can be traced throughout following Canadian pictures. For example, in Understanding Movies: Canadian Edition Jim Leach argues that David Wellington's I Love A Man In Uniform borrows heavily from Cronenberg. In the film, a TV cop uses wears his uniform on the street, and "gradually loses the ability to distinguish fiction from reality." The connection is a little ambiguous, but the way Wellington forces us to share the characters disorientation is very Cronenbergian. (yeah, I know it isn't a word)
That description does a rather good job of summing up what Cronenberg means to me. His ability to draw us into these worlds that seem so out there, but so real, is a talent shared by an elite few. Rather it is a world where gynaecologist twins abuse women with bronzed surgical equipments, men turn into flies, and stomachs transform into vagina-like VCRs when you watch pirated snuff films, Cronenberg creates worlds that are real enough to seem touchable, but weird enough that you can't believe what you're seeing. It's a very uneasy feeling. These settings are so effective that the audience has no choice but to feel the main character's gradual descent into madness.
The accomplishment of his latest, A History of Violence, is that he stepped out of that Cronenberg uneasiness far enough to produce something marketable and multinational. A History of Violence is as easy to take as any Hollywood film, but maintains the intangible "really real but really weird" Cronenberg feeling that Dead Ringers and Videodrome are famous for. The mix of the Hollywood accessibility and Cronenbergian skill (yeah, yeah, not a word) results in a really good movie. And for that really good movie, David Cronenberg is 411 Movie's choice for best director of 2005.
Runner Up: Robert Rodriguez – Sin City It was a huge year for Rodriguez with many projects either being released or announced but it was his particular brand of movie magic with Sin City, turning a hard story into one of the movies of the year, that really got peoples attention. What's more 2006 promises to be just a good.
Honourable Mention: Christopher Nolan, Steven Spielberg, George A. Romero
Best Supporting Actor
The domain of some the greatest actors of all time. These men are the building blocks of great films who's portrayals of the more interesting men make our movie going experience one to love. Very often a great supporting role can make a movie seem much better than you think because of the light they bring when onscreen. This years winner is no different and is one of the finest character actors of the past ten year. He is…
Paul Giamatti – Cinderella Man
An overrated film, perhaps plagued by Howard's insistence to detail the lead character so intricately and the true story's ending that doesn't follow the structure of the usual "boxing classics" sombre finales, but we did get some world-class performances. Zellwegger's brief moments in the film were a testament to her ever-growing repertoire and Crowe was as reliably excellent as ever, but it was Paul Giamatti that stole the show.
Both American Splendor and Sideways showcased the man's talent as a genuinely exceptional actor, and this was his real mainstream break. Long gone are the memories of Ben Affleck's quirky pal in the painful Paycheck and the dude that seemed reluctant to obey Ed Harris's morbid weather orders in The Truman Show. What we have now is an exceptional actor at the peak of his game. You believed everything he was telling Crowe and you were air punching every moment along with him. He didn't get an Oscar nod for Sideways, so I doubt he'll receive any recognition for this either, but for us here at 411 he was the best actor in a supporting role, during 2005.
Runner Up: Mickey Rourke – Sin City Ahh, The quirkiness of the 411 voting system. We put no boundaries on our voting so things like this tend to pop up. I don't know if he would have won either category this year if he was contained to just one, but there is no doubt Rourke made an indelible impression in Sin City.
Honourable Mention: William Hurt, Michael Caine, George Clooney
Best Supporting Actress
This category always attracts much interest since the best female roles invariable are the supporting kind and is always a hot field. This year was no different with a very eclectic range of roles and actresses getting votes. In the end however an actress who has been creating a stir for a while finally broke out with a role in a very different type of film. She is…
Rosario Dawson – Sin City
I guess it's somewhat surprising that this is the only first place directly related to Sin City since it's a movie that appeals to the particular sensibility of the 411 movie writer, mind you Rosario appeals the sensibilities of the 411 writer as well. It really is an achievement that in a movie PACKED with as much female talent as Sin City Dawson managed to stand head and shoulder above the pack. While she may lose a few points for her performance in Alexander, it was a big year for Rosario after also being a stand-out in the recently released Rent.
Runner Up: Isla Fisher Welcome another of the Aussie brigade of actors to the Hollywood mainstream. While most Australian's would never have picked Fisher to be a stand-out in any film she's in, there is no doubt she was a highlight of this box-office smash comedy. The trick will be what she does for a follow-up.
Honourable Mentions: Ellen Barkin, Michelle Monaghan, Dakota Fanning
Worst Film Of The Year
Amongst movie snobs such as ourselves calling a film bad or even the worst should always be taken with a grain of salt. However most of us always are unanimous in our displeasure when it comes to certain films and the film that "won" Worst Film was certainly frowned upon by most. It was…
The Dukes of Hazard
Dukes of Hazzard: I love Super Troopers. I quote the film all the time...making some people question my mental status. I waited with baited breath when Club Dredd came out. I was disappointed, but still saw a lot of funny stuff in it. However, it was The Dukes of Hazzard that made me see the glaring truth: Broken Lizard had jumped the shark (or couch, depending on your world-view). It was awful. For some reason, they decided to abondon everything that made the TV show a success and concentrate on Jessica Simpson's boobs (not that I'm complaining). I'm still trying to figure out why anyone thinks Johnny Knoxville is anything more than a glorified stuntman without protective equipment. We found out that Willie Nelson and Jessica Simpson can't act out of a wet paper bag. And the scene where the General Lee get's pulled over by campus cop versions of Thorny and Rabbit almost made me chuck my Super Troopers DVD into the garbage disposal. Sure it had boobies, but I can get that cheap on the internet. It shouldn't have to pay $8 to see it on a theater screen (along with Farva's tighty-whities).
Runner Up: The Son of the Mask Not only did Jaime Kennedy suck, the movie sucked as well. Not much more than that you can say really.
(Dis)Honourable Mention: Fantastic Four, bad News Bears, Paparazzi
Worst Actor of The Year
A few years ago the winner of this award this year was lambasted for his lack of talent in such a huge blockbuster film seen by millions. Many hoped he would improve with age once the next installment was filmed but alas it was not to be and thus he is still branded a questionable talent in the acting world. He is…
Hayden Christensen – Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith
The funny thing is that Hayden, when in the right setting, can be a very effective actor but when you put him on the set of a Star Wars movie and put George Lucas in the directors chair that's when things get a little dicey. In fact it can almost get un-watchable. Hayden needs the hand of a strong director that can help him find his way and Lucas is a notoriously bad director of the human elements of his films. Maybe it was the whinging, the painful looking fascial expression that made him look like he hadn't had a good bowel movement in about a month or the zero amount of chemistry he had with not only the "love of his life" Natalie Portman but his main co-star Ewan McGregor (who was hardly a help running on auto-pilot). Maybe Christensen will break out into something else and not be remembered for his Anakin Skywalker but today, he's nothing but a poor mans Mark Hamill…and that is a scary thing.
Runner Up: Jaime Kennedy. Oh Jaime, how the mighty have fallen. Remember when he was talked about as the next big comedy star? Doing a Jim Carrey knock-off isn't going to get you any closer.
(Dis)Honourable Mention: Johnny Knoxville, Adam Sandler, Sean Scott William.
Worst Actress of the Year
Is such a dubious distinction really necessary in movies? I think so. This year saw the rise of the actress who won her role for being famous, not an actress achieving fame on their talent. It's no surprise that the winner is more know for being a reality TV star than an actress. She is…
Jessica Simpson – The Dukes of Hazzard
Is there really any surprise? I guess if there was one it would be that she didn't finish second to the runner-up but they really are pretty interchangeable. While bad movies are always bound to be made the casting of the vacuous Simpson in this movie left many heads being scratched and when the final result was seen, it was with good cause. The original Daisy Duke was a curvy brunette who didn't have to try to be sexy while Jessica was pretty much everything the opposite. Producers will hopefully file this under "Failed Experiments – Do Not Repeat" and leave it at that.
Runner Up: Paris Hilton – The House of Wax Words cannot begin to describe…Paris Hilton….acting…no.
(Dis)Honourable Mention: Jessica Alba, Anna Farris, Jennifer Aniston
Breakout Performance
Every year someone comes from obscurity and grabs the opportunity to make the world realise that they are one of the best things going. In an eclectic field of actors, this years breakout star helped make one of the most anticipated films of the year a pretty damn good movie. This man is…
Nathan Fillion – Serenity
Nathon Fillion: Mr. Fillion's performance as the "smuggler with a heart of gold" is nothing new to those fans of the incompetently cancelled "Firefly". But to those uninitiated in Joss Whedon's epic Sci-Fi western, Fillion became a new name to watch for in the future. Fillion brings it all to the table in Serenity. He's daring, funny, serious and stubborn as hell. In one scene, you're laughing at Mal's antics. In another, you're jaw drops at his ferocity. And in the end, you wouldn't want anyone else captaining your ship. Fillion's performance made you believe that his future is bright.
Runner Up: Isla Fisher – The Wedding Crashers As was stated above, no one really suspected Isla to do much of anything but she grabbed this role with both hands and launched at it full speed.
Honourable Mention: Steve Carrel, Rosario Dawson, Kevin James
Biggest Disappointment
To want a film to be good is the very essence of the movie watching experience. Every year we hear about films that will leave you breathless and wanting more. On more than one occasion hype fails to live up to expectation and thus there is need for this category. While it is hard to say if this film was a "worthy" winner, there is little doubt that it meets the criteria to even be considered. This film is…
The Fantastic Four
This film wasn't really that bad but it definitely falls into the "wasted opportunity" basket. The casting was good, the story was pretty solid and the action passable but that was the problem…nothing was great. The film was a financial success and a sequel is already well past the planning stage so hopefully bigger things are to come. Let's just hope this movie doesn't fall into the heap of films that were misguided adaptations of a popular comic.
Runner Up: Doom The funny thing about this movie is that no one really expected that much from it but when you take The Rock and put him in an out-and-out action film people were probably expecting much more.
(Dis)Honourable Mention: Walk The Line, The Chronicles of Naria, War of the Worlds
Most Satisfying Blockbuster
They are often looked upon as being the bastard child of real film making and to admit you liked a blockbuster film while calling yourself a movie fan can see you ostracized in some sections of society. This year however there was a good reason to visit your local multi-plex as a slew of studio films brought the goods. It will be no surprise which blockbuster gets high praise this year considering this film also took Best Film honours this year as well. It is…
Batman Begins
It's not often when your Film of the Year also happens to be a big budget offering but this is one of the rare occasions. It's even more surprising that it belongs to a movie from a franchise that was flogged to death not many years ago. Someone said not to long ago that the way to make these films good is to put it in the hands of people that are fans. This is a perfect example. Great casting, great storyline and great directing make this the perfect blend of popcorn and good film.
Runner Up: Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith It took him three attempts but George Lucas finally got one of his Star Wars prequels about right. While it still had some cringe worthy moments (NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!) it was a great way to set up the trilogy that follows.
Honourable Mention: Harry Potter , Sin City, War of the Worlds
Surprise Film of the Year
This category always throws up an eclectic range of films and is always hotly contested because the nominee pool is so large. While there are many worthy films to this category, one film stood out as a surprise hit in 2005. It was…
40 Year Old Virgin
This was the true breakout comedy smash of the year taking the world of a man who is still a virgin at 40 years of age and turning his world upside down when his workmates find out. The reason why it works so well is that the makers approached it with equal amounts respect and due slapstick. But what really made it something special was lead Steve Carrel who parlayed the promise he showed in Bruce Almighty and Anchorman and puts it all on the line in his first lead role.
Runner Up: Serenity Usually it's the other way around, cult movies getting made into TV shows and having decent success, Serenity reversed the formula. The brainchild of Buffy creator Joss Whedon, he took his cancelled TV show to the big screen and impress most with his efforts.
Honourable Mention: History of Violence, Murderball, Sin City.
