Back when Reverse Shot polled its staff writers for our annual best-of article on indieWIRE in late December, many of 2005’s most anticipated films had yet to be released. As is the case with every year, the studios believe that Oscar voters have such short-sightedness that they only can recall movies that emerged in the year’s waning months; that they would never get votes if they had been released pre-December. Thus, films that initially seemed award-baity, like Match Point, Munich, and The New World were held until the last possible moment. Regardless of the Academy success of those titles (Munich only really capitalized, though arguably it would have received more nominations had it come out earlier than Christmastime and had time to get past kneejerk responses), most of our writers hadn’t had a chance to see them. In response, we re-polled our critics in February, and lo and behold, Terrence Malick’s The New World shot like a bullet into the top spot, everything else remaining in order, just moving down one slot. Our previous number one, Arnaud Desplechin’s Kings and Queen, now sits heartily at number 2. Reverse Shot simply couldn’t resist Malick’s staggering artistic accomplishment, apparent to anyone who chooses to actually see with their eyes. Read our Top Ten, then check out the rest of our year end coverage—our picks for the most over- and underrated, and our annual “2 Cents”-worth of notable bits on the rest.

Our best of 2005 this year coincides with our complete director symposium on Neil Jordan, a filmmaker who we feel has been severely underappreciated. Even when not factoring in his breakouts (Oscar-winning The Crying Game, the Hollywood hit Interview with the Vampire), many films in his oeuvre have very simply been haunting us ever since we first saw them: the extraordinary, sociologically acute The Butcher Boy, the electrifying New Wave homage The Good Thief, the icily cloaked yearning of The End of the Affair, the indelible fairy-tale experiment of The Company of Wolves. And this year, his Breakfast on Pluto delicately re-appropriated so many of this auteur’s politics and fetishes into a wonderfully breakneck picaresque. The question of course, as always, is: What unites these films and is there a connecting thread from something as politically and socially perceptive as The Crying Game to a work as glossily, memorably ridiculous as In Dreams? The responses from our writers varied from bemused outrage (Leah Churner on High Spirits) to spiritual inquiry (Elbert Ventura on The End of the Affair). We also offer two takes on Michael Collins—one from Jeannette Catsoulis on the film’s irreligious stance, the other from Michael Joshua Rowin on the political denials of the standard biopic form—in order to tease out its ultimate success or failure. Add a Shot/Reverse Shot on Spielberg’s divisive-by-nature Munich, an exclusive reprint of an interview with the late, great Emile de Antonio, and a focus on Our Brand Is Crisis’s Rachel Boynton, and there’s a lot for you to sift through, and enjoy. Big changes are afoot at Reverse Shot, which we hope to unveil for our loyal readers in the very near future.
—MK & JR