Chris Garcia's top 10 movies of 2005

Welcome to the animal safari. Grizzlies, parrots, turtles and an agitated ape roam my best movies of 2005.

(So do a pair of films with the word "hustle" in them. Read into that what you will.)

It was a good year for movies and, save for a clot of political films, an eclectic one. There were several fine documentaries — the fastest-rising genre at the arthouse — and an unusual number of expert action pictures, both serious and delirious. Many of my picks come from those two camps.

Listing my top 10 in alphabetical order (which I almost never do) is done not out of laziness but sincere frustration at the equal merit of so many titles. All of the movies had a deep impact on me, leaving my head reeling and emotions roiling for days, even weeks, after. They do what movies should do, and for that they are tops.

"The Beat That My Heart Skipped" — This French remake of James Toback's 1978 "Fingers" does the original better with contemporary verve. The stellar, wiry Romain Duris plays a Paris thug trying to escape his father's felonious footsteps for the world of classical music that his mother instilled in him. His struggle, by turns violent and poignant, creates a compassionate, deeply felt noir that makes your heart skip, and ache.

"Grizzly Man" — Some would call Timothy Treadwell crazy. One big grizzly bear would call him dinner. The great Werner Herzog's unconventional biography/nature film chronicles the strange life of self-styled grizzly protector Treadwell through his own video footage shot in Alaska, where, after 13 years, a bear finally got — and consumed — Treadwell. With chilling understatement, Herzog challenges the dead man's ideals for a spellbinding essay on the desire to commune with nature, especially when the real world has rejected you.

"Hustle & Flow" — If its main character wasn't a slow-burn pimp scrabbling for salvation through Southern hip-hop, this low-decibel showbiz fantasy could have been a grab-your-dreams melodrama from golden-age Hollywood. Instead, it's an ingratiating street study that's as unlikely as it is emotionally fulfilling. As the rapping hustler who dies a little bit every day, Terrence Howard turned in one of the year's great performances. And the music is all hook.

"King Kong" — The ape is great, but Peter Jackson gets the crown. The director's thundering fusion of action and romance gave the most bang for the buck all year. Epic-scale violence has never thrilled so much, and not since Koko the sign-language gorilla has an ape pulled so many heartstrings. Waves of superior action and genuine emotion wipe you out.

"Kung Fu Hustle" — Hyper-stylized and hyperactive, Steven Chow's martial-arts pastiche was the most exuberantly fun film of '05. Chow, who also stars, tosses kung fu, slapstick, MGM musicals, Looney Tunes, special effects and explosive action-comedy into a blender and punches puree. Going too fast with too much, the blender breaks, stuff flies and the walls get splattered. Audiences were happy to lap up the zesty mess.

"Munich" — Steven Spielberg's masterful political drama about Israeli secret agents hunting Palestinian terrorists plays like a throwback to the dirty thrillers of the 1970s by Sidney Lumet, William Friedkin and Alan Pakula. It's that good. Everything about it is top-notch, from the precision character acting to Spielberg's effortless control of action chaos. For once, the director doesn't smother us in schmaltz.

"Oldboy" — South Korean cinema flexes its growing muscles with Park Chan-Wook's feverish revenge noir. A man falsely accused of killing his wife is held hostage in a cryptic prison for 15 years. Just as mysteriously, he is released. Hair long, face craggy and soul beaten, the man (Choi Min-sik) becomes an avenging devil who hijacks the screen. The film's a marvel of violent action, with several memorable scenes, including an incredible long take of the man fighting dozens of men that seems to last 15 minutes. This neo-noir knockout is getting an American remake in 2006.

"The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill" — When a hapless loner adopts a ragtag flock of big green parrots that call San Francisco home, a true story of compassion, tragedy and finally love takes flight. As I wrote last fall, "Judy Irving's gently insinuating documentary blindsides unsuspecting viewers with its poignant depiction of human-animal communion. It's as delightful as it is heartbreaking, as uplifting as it is bittersweet." Almost perfect.

"Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story" — The prolific and protean Michael Winterbottom returns to the anarchic, self-reflexive comedy of his "24-Hour Party People," down to its star, the arch Steve Coogan, who plays a version of himself. Laurence Sterne's 18th-century novel "Tristram Shandy" is as unfilmable as the phone book, but this riotous film-within-a-film shows what happens when it's tried. Dashes of Truffaut's "Day for Night," Christopher Guest's comedies and obscure British humor sustain a barrage of tiny verité moments, glances, gags and in-jokes that hit you like a Fizzy Lifter drink. Shown at this year's Austin Film Festival, the movie should see an Austin release.

"Turtles Can Fly" — Set in a Kurdish refugee camp just before the American invasion of Iraq, Bahman Ghobadi's drama is deceptively intimate. Like so many Iraqi films, including Ghobadi's "A Time for Drunken Horses," its protagonists are precocious and utterly unselfconscious children, plucky victims of political folly. The kids survive by disarming land mines planted by Saddam Hussein, hence the name of one child, The Boy with No Arms. Politics are all backdrop and subtext. Rippled with humor, love and woe, this devastating picture of our world seethes humanity. See it.

Also worthy

"Funny Ha-Ha," "Brokeback Mountain," "The Constant Gardener," "Syriana," "The War Within," "Good Night, and Good Luck," "Sin City," "Head-On," "Reel Paradise," "Be Here to Love Me," "Bad Guy," "War of the Worlds," "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang," "Downfall," "A History of Violence," "The 40 Year-Old Virgin," "Rock School," "Batman Begins."

Most overrated

•"Broken Flowers" — Bill Murray does his comatose, self-pity routine — he yearns to be the world's most tragic narcissist-defeatist, the sad clown of indie-film chic — in an implausible but gently amusing road movie that's too malnourished to mean much. The final shot of Murray's forlorn face aims for profundity but smacks head on into pretension.

•"Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" — Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, two kids in a gigantic candy store, shovel mounds of sugar down our throats. We gag.

•"Cinderella Man" and "Capote" — Both films are fine — "Capote" is by far the better picture — yet wobble under the phony gravitas of Hollywood "prestige pictures." Their strenuous dignity, restraint and predictability work as embalming wax.

•"Crash" — Possibly the most ham-fisted message movie ever made boasts uniformly brilliant acting, sharp, feverish direction and beautifully structured writing. What's wrong? Its bazooka message-mongering about modern race relations begs and browbeats like a PSA for hearing-impaired teenagers. Every scene, every line is a lesson delivered via megaphone.

•"Junebug" — Nice, with its heart in the right place, but ultimately an aimless and remote family portrait lacking a point of view. A big so-what.

•"Me and You and Everyone We Know" — Pretentious preciousness mistaken for precocious poetry. Cloying and annoying. A must for art-school students.

•"Murderball" — The guys who play wheelchair rugby are slightly more interesting than the sport itself. Would have worked better as a short feature.

•"Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic" — Many of the critics raving about Silverman's soggy comic act are of an older generation. Saying they like her makes them feel cool and up-to-the-minute.

•"The Wedding Crashers" — Too few laughs to support the two-hour running time. Wasn't it Woody Allen who said the perfect comedy should run a crisp 85 minutes?

cgarcia@statesman.com; 445-3649