Welcome back to The Best Picture Expansion Project, where we imagine that the newly reinstated Oscar rule of nominating ten films for Best Picture applied from 1943 to 2008.
Today I’m taking us back to 2005, the year that produced one of Oscar’s greatest disappointments.
(To visit the rest of the Project, please go here.)
Here’s a list of all the films released in 2005.
Actual Best Picture Nominees
Brokeback Mountain
Capote
Crash (winner)
Good Night, and Good Luck
Munich
In Retrospect: Four of these films are really good, though some, like Good Night, and Good Luck, are more respectable than enjoyable. Making an admirable debut as a director,  George Clooney frames elegant black-and-white shots of cigarette smoke blowing just so, and he suggests several layers of newsroom politics just by lingering on the dubious expressions of Patricia Clarkson. Still, I remember thinking the movie was kind of dull, and it certainly hasn’t stuck in my mind like Capote, which boasted Philip Seymour Hoffman’s brilliant performance, or Munich, which benefitted from Steven Spielberg’s knack for building tension.Â
Of the five nominees, I’d vote for Brokeback Mountain. Maybe it isn’t the Most Important Movie Ever Made, as so many of us in the media insisted at the time, but it can still take credit for casting major stars in physically expressive gay roles. That trend has continued in Milk and I Love You Philip Morris, which suggests Brokeback did make a real impact.Â
More importantly, Brokeback is a beautiful film. It’s nuanced, challenging, and full honest emotion. So… you know…. it’s the opposite of Crash. Whereas all four of the other nominees are really thinking about their themes, Crash is just telling us what we already know. It’s making cliche statements on racism in America and encouraging us to feel enlightened when we agree.
I predict that in twenty years (if not ten), people will just assume that Brokeback won Best Picture.
The Expansion Pack
6. Transamerica — Unfairly dismissed as a trifle that was only saved by Felicity Huffman’s performance, Transamerica is actually a shrewd comedy about outsiders and their uncomfortable relationship to dicks.
If you haven’t seen the movie in a while—or haven’t seen it at all—I encourage you to watch it with that perspective in mind: You’ll see not only a pre-operative transsexual trying to get rid of her penis, but also a young gay hustler who can’t get his penis to work and a sanguine Native American man who thinks white fellas use their penises all wrong. The movie suggests that traditional concepts of American masculinity have screwed everyone up, and that if we want to survive, we may need to abandon dicks altogether. I don’t personally think that’s the answer (nervously adjusting myself), but it’s a wild premise for a  comedy.
7. A History of Violence — Was Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) a gangster before he became a quiet restaurant owner in Middle America, or is Creepy Ed Harris just shouting lies? And now that Stall’s young son just shot Creepy Ed Harris, trying to protect his father, does the truth even matter? And what about the fact that the son was empowered to kill because his dad became a national hero after shooting two burglars at his restaurant? Does that mean there are consequences to our cultural hierarchy of “good violence” and “bad violence?”Â
These are great questions, and just asking them makes me realize that A History of Violence could kick Crash’s butt. Not that I’m endorsing movie-on-movie crime.
Fun Fact: This was the last major motion picture to be released on VHS.Â
8. Match Point — Thanks to this intricate tale of obsession and murder, I forgave Woody Allen for The Curse of the Jade Scorpion.Â
9. The Squid and the Whale —  It got a screenplay nomination, but Noah Baumbach’s dysfunctional family picture deserved much more Oscar love. For one thing, it avoids self-conscious quirkiness. For another, it features amazing performances from Laura Linney and Jeff Daniels.Â
p.s. — How do you know you’re watching a movie about sad white people? Follow this link to discover the eight major signs.
10. The 4o Year-Old Virgin — As I wrote last year, I didn’t expect to love this movie, but I did.
The Snubs
Syriana almost made my list. So did Batman Begins and Walk the Line. And what would happen if Roll Bounce got a Best Picture nomination? Would the world implode?
13 responses so far ↓
1 Madge // Aug 5, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Hilariously, it hasn’t been 10 years yet but I totally misremembered that Brokeback had won!
2 Roommate Joe // Aug 5, 2009 at 12:31 pm
I always found this year to be a relatively weak one, all things considered. Oddly enough, the Oscars tend to do better (“better” being purely subjective, of course) in weak years because the better movies stick out more. So 3 of the Best Pic noms would make my top 10 — Brokeback (my #1), Munich, and Good Night… — plus “Capote” as a worthy honorable mention.
I’d add:
“Cache” (Michael Haneke sneers at white folk in the most dazzling ways; my #2 of the year, and if you haven’t seen it, do so now)
“The Constant Gardener” (smartly put together and buoyed by a stellar Rachel Weisz)
“A History of Violence” (what Mark said, though I really hated that William Hurt performance that got nominated)
“The Upside of Anger” (wholly ignored and egregiously underrated; possibly the best Joan Allen has ever been, and the movie comes awfully close to living up to her standard)
“Junebug” (delightful and unexpectedly kind; Amy Adams deserved her Oscar nod, but dig that Ben McKenzie performance)
“Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” (smart, funny, and slick in a good way)
“The 40-Year Old Virgin” (everything it’s cracked up to be)
Honorable mention: “In Her Shoes,” which was written off as a Cameron Diaz vehicle (and a box-office bust besides) but which is totally charming and engaging and honest and wonderfully acted.
3 Roommate Joe // Aug 5, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Argh! And “Grizzly Man”! Which probably bumps off “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” to make my top ten. Okay, so maybe 2005 wasn’t so weak after all.
4 ferretrick // Aug 5, 2009 at 1:37 pm
I didn’t catch Munich or Good Night and Good Luck, so I can’t speak to them, but Crash should crash right off the Oscar ballot, over a cliff, hit some rocks below, explode, and then all the little flaming pieces can fall in the ocean. HATE.
So, after dropping it off, I say replace it with Serenity, or the Descent. Serenity might just be Joss Whedon’s best work-over and above anything on Buffy. *ducks* Fine acting, direction, an epic story, its like the film medium forced Joss to filter out everything that didn’t work in Firefly as a TV series (and I love it, but there’s a lot) and really focus on the storylines and characters that made it great.
The Descent scared me probably as much as any film I’ve ever seen. I’m having trouble thinking of a better horror film this decade.
5 InfoMofo // Aug 5, 2009 at 1:41 pm
GRIZZLY MAN! I loved that movie.
Ummm, I think you have it covered. Ugh, Crash was such a terrible movie. And I can watch Transamerica over and over.
6 Mark Blankenship // Aug 5, 2009 at 1:47 pm
@Joe — Junebug! Yes! Damn… I forgot that one. I loved it.
7 Doug // Aug 5, 2009 at 6:11 pm
I’m so glad to finally know a bunch of people, even if just online, that share my utter disregard of Crash, a forgettable film that the Academy has now forever forced me to remember. I personally still revere Brokeback, but not for any political or social reason. If Ang Lee had filmed a movie about earwax with the same visual acuity and thematic grace, I’d have clamored for that to win too.
As for that year’s other nominees, I think Good Night and Good Luck is overrated — it’s a solid film but nothing spectacular. I think people who knew nothing about Murrow before seeing it were far more impressed than those who already knew about him. I do think Munich is outstanding, though, and think Capote is far more evocative than it gets credit for.
My 10 would be:
Brokeback
Munich
Capote
A History of Violence
Cache
49 Up
Junebug
Grizzly Man
The Squid and the Whale
The Matador
Snubs: Down to the Bone, Murderball, Oliver Twist, Serenity, Transamerica, The Weather Man, and Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (kidding!)
8 Bunting // Aug 5, 2009 at 6:39 pm
@rick: God, The Descent. SO SCARY. Excellent call.
I thought HoV was overrated from soup to nuts, honestly, especially that Hurt performance (and the pompous-ass interviews he was giving around Oscar time — shut up, Billy). But next year’s Eastern Promises was some underrated Viggo for sure.
9 katy // Aug 6, 2009 at 7:29 am
Crash = worst best picture of 2000s. I actually disagree with Doug on this one. It was worse than forgettable, it was memorably bad: cringeworthy, eye-rollingly bad. I will never understand the awards season swooning over this one.
I had a baby in 2005, so it was a weak year for the breadth of my film viewing. But throw in my vote for 49 Up and Junebug. I was rooting for Brokeback too, and admired Good Night/Good Luck and Munich.
10 josh // Aug 6, 2009 at 9:35 am
I would encourage someone to make a mash-up of Crash and Mystic River so I could not watch both of those ridiculously overrated films at the same time.
11 Doug // Aug 6, 2009 at 9:44 am
Out of curioisty, Katy — where do you stand on Gladiator?
12 david // Aug 10, 2009 at 5:05 pm
Of those mentioned, my other five would have been “A History of Violence,” “Junebug,” “The Constant Gardner,” “Cache” and “The Squid and the Whale” — all of which I think could’ve bumped off “Crash,” probably “Good Night, and Good Luck” and even “Capote” in my book. I don’t think my taste is upping the hoped-for quota of pop-success films, however.
13 Michael // Aug 11, 2009 at 1:18 am
Funny how I can sometimes just be hemmed in by immediate reactions: Capote was for me the slowest film I’ve ever sat through–lots to praise, but the pace was sub-glacial and I felt my blood pressure dropping to dangerous levels. Brokeback? Maybe I took too long to see it, but by the time I got there, it was in Italo Calvino’s category of “books read before having been written”–I found it beyond predictable, and I felt I was being told what to feel every single frame. I know–I should wear a sign and ring a bell for this. But it’s how I felt–
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