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2005 was a year of mediocrities. There were a dozen or so very good films and hardly any genuinely awful ones. Drawing up the 10 best list was easy - Wallace And Gromit is the only film I regret leaving off it. Drawing up the 10 worst list was tough. There was no Fat Slags or House Of The Dead this year. The notorious Uwe Boll"s latest offering, Alone In The Dark went straight to DVD. Most films were somewhere in between, not good enough to get excited about but not exactly bad either. "Blah" might be the word I"m looking for. It"s the first year for a long time I"ve questioned whether I should go to the cinema so much. Not that I"d ever give it up completely but I see more than anyone I know - on average 2 or 3 films a week and I"ve been wondering if I should maybe find something else to do for a couple of those hours. It"s not so much the lack of great films that bothered me as the lack of fun. There were so few guilty pleasures this year that I haven"t even bothered making a list. Everything seemed second hand, predictable. There were an awful lot of sequels, remakes and films based on television series, popular novels, video games and comic books. Originality seems to have well and truly gone out the window. The reason for this is economics. Major films these days cost so much money that they have to be marketable and the most reliable marketing tool is a recognisible brand name (Harry Potter, Batman, Doom, Dukes Of Hazzard, The Producers). Unfortunately the failure of the few costly films based on original scripts (if you can call The Island and Stealth original) has only made matters worse. So what can we expect in 2006? More of the same. Let"s take a quick look at next summer"s major releases: Mission: Impossible III (sequel, TV adaptation) Poseidon (remake) The Da Vinci Code (book adaptation) Over The Hedge X-Men 3 (sequel, comic adaptation) Cars The Omen 666 (remake) Garfield 2 (sequel, comic adaptation) Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift (sequel) Click Superman Returns (sequel, comic adaptation) Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man"s Chest (sequel) You, Me And Dupree School For Scoundrels Lady In The Water Miami Vice (TV adaptation) Talladega Nights The few non-sequels are either computer-animated films (Over The Hedge and Pixar"s Cars), "frat pack" comedies (Adam Sandler"s Click, Owen Wilson"s You Me And Dupree, Billy Bob Thornton"s School For Scoundrels - which incidentally has nothing to do with the old Terry-Thomas comedy - and Will Ferrell"s Talladega Nights) and M Night Shyamalan"s mermaid picture, Lady In The Water. I"m looking forward to the Shyamalan movie, which has a knockout trailer, the Pixar flick and the frat pack comedies and I confess also that I"ve enjoyed the Mission: Impossible films, including John Woo"s under-rated sequel, and I"m up for number III. Otherwise... I believe the term the youth are using today is "meh". My problem is I can have most of these experiences without waiting for next summer. I own the original Omen and Poseidon Adventure on DVD along with the previous Mission: Impossibles, X-Mens, Supermans and Pirates Of The Caribbean. I haven"t read The Da Vinci Code - I found it so badly written, I returned my friend"s copy after a couple of pages - but I know its secret. The book"s had so much press, I bet there are lost tribes in New Guinea that know its secret. It probably reads a lot better translated into their language too. I"ll watch these films but I can"t get excited about them. Superman fans will no doubt tell me that Bryan Singer"s new film about the Man Of Steel will be the best thing ever but will it really? His X-Men films were good but hardly great. Even X-Men fans have their doubts about Brett Ratner"s third installment. I"m not a snob. I love good mainstream Hollywood entertainment. God knows it"d be a miserable hobby for 10 months of the year if I didn"t. Nearly all the serious-minded films are now crammed into January and February so they can benefit from the Oscar hype. From March till December it"s light entertainment all the way. But let"s not be so negative. What is there to look forward to? There are some welcome new trends. The "frat pack" comedy has already produced some real classics (I have two in my top ten for the year) and it"s made big stars out of some gifted comedy actors, including Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson and Steve Carell. We can expect them to provide more laughs in 2006. There"s also a revival of the good, old-fashioned, star-driven thriller on its way: Harrison Ford in Firewall, Bruce Willis in 16 Blocks, Michael Douglas in The Sentinel, Denzel Washington in Inside Man. If the genre does get revived however, perhaps they"d better find some younger stars because Willis and Washington have both passed fifty and Ford and Douglas are well into their sixties. Despite the odd disappointment like Madagascar, Hollywood"s animated efforts have been of a consistently higher quality than its live action films, which is good since a lot of animated films are coming our way in 2006, the most eagerly awaited being Pixar"s Cars. And among the more serious films on the immediate horizon, I have high hopes for Munich, Jarhead and Walk The Line. So even if this isn"t the most exciting time to be going to the movies, there"s always something to see and there"s always a reason to love the cinema. Like, did you know the next "Orange film board" advert will feature Steven Seagal? top 10 films of the year 1. Sideways Okay, everyone is picking this as the best film of the year. There"s a good reason for that though. Alexander Payne"s warmest and funniest film to date uses a simple premise - two middle-aged buddies celebrate one"s impending marriage by going on a wine tasting holiday - to affectionately skewer the habits and morals of the contemporary man. Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church (who"s landed the villain part in Spider-Man 3) are unforgettable as the two pals while Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh provide sterling support as a couple of women they hit on. Like last year"s Lost In Translation, this works so well on so many levels, it"s slightly breathtaking. 2. Million Dollar Baby Maybe Sideways should have won the Best Picture Oscar but I don"t begrudge it to Clint Eastwood. This unassuming boxing movie is arguably his best film to date. It"s a quiet, slow-burning masterpiece, starting as a wry, low-key comedy and ending with scenes of devastating emotional power. The final scenes created quite a controversy in the States, earning Eastwood, one of Hollywood"s most famous Republicans, the moral wrath of the religious right. Somehow I think Clint sleeps at night. In fact I can imagine him putting on a mean squint and telling them to shove their moral wrath right up their ass. 3. Closer Yes, the three best films of the year opened within a fortnight of each other in January. Blame the new, truncated Oscar season. Closer, Mike Nichols" return to form is a merciless dissection of contemporary sexual relationships. Sometimes hilariously funny, sometimes too painful to watch, it features sensational performances from its quartet of big stars, in particular our own Clive Owen. 4. Sin City I"d never been a huge fan of Robert Rodriguez until Sin City. Desperado and The Faculty were great fun but I found the rest of his films over-rated. This is sensational by any standards, a deliriously blood-soaked and politically incorrect tribute to the pulp fiction of days gone by. It"s certainly not for the sensitive but those with stronger stomachs and a little of the male adolescent still in them will be in heaven. And damn, does it look good! Mickey Rourke and Bruce Willis have never been cooler. 5. The 40-Year-Old Virgin A warm-hearted and frequently hilarious look at sexual dysfunction in generation X, this made a star out of Steve Carell, previously best known for his pant-wettingly funny supporting turns in Bruce Almighty and Anchorman. A great comedy and not nearly as dumb as the ads might make you think. And do you know how I know you"re gay? Because you"d sooner watch the remake of The Producers. 6. Wedding Crashers Another great comedy and the surprise hit of the summer. No wonder - David Dobkin"s explosively funny film had the biggest laughs of any film this year. Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson made a great team, Rachel McAdams continued on her rise to stardom and Isla Fisher (a former Aussie soap star) all but stole the film as a "stage five clinger" who"s every man"s fantasy and every man"s nightmare all rolled into one. The dinner table scene is a scream. 7. Crash Million Dollar baby screenwriter Paul Haggis made his directing debut with this powerhouse drama exposing racial tensions in modern day Los Angeles. A top-flight cast did justice to Haggis"s scorching script, with the little-known Terrence Howard giving an eye-opening performance. This was one of the surprise box office hits of the year, in Britain as well as America, proving that there"s still an audience for good adult movies when Hollywood bothers to make them. Even in August. 8. Corpse Bride Tim Burton"s gothic comedy of errors was the year"s best animated film. Painstakingly shot using stop-motion models, Corpse Bride is truly beautiful to look at but it"s so short and sweet that you scarcely have time to take it all in. There"s a great voice cast headed by Johnny Depp but mostly made up of British talent. The Fast Show"s Paul Whitehouse gets some particularly big laughs. 9. War Of The Worlds The best special effects blockbuster of the year, this adaptation of HG Wells" alien invasion story saw Steven Spielberg unleash his dark side for the first time in years to sensational effect. As giant tripods exterminate mankind, Tom Cruise and daughter Dakota Fanning find themselves under threat as much from their fellow survivors as from the invaders. A visceral thrill-ride with some surprisingly chilling turns. Just one serious complaint - enough with the negligent father theme Steven, please. 10. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang Shane Black, the gifted writer of Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout and The Long Kiss Goodnight returned from a nine year absence to direct his first movie and the result was one of the best entertainments of 2005. It"s an action movie yes, but a smart, bitingly funny action movie for grown-ups, not special-effects craving kids. Stars Robert Downey Jr and Val Kilmer (who plays Hollywood"s first gay action hero) can both consider their careers well and truly revived. And try not to miss... 1. Red Eye This fast-paced, white-knuckle thriller saw Wes Craven back at the top of his game after the disappointing Cursed. It"s basically a two-hander with Rachel McAdams proving herself a star and Cillian Murphy a splendidly scary villain but there are also good supporting turns from Brian Cox and Jayma Mays - now there"s a new face to watch. Carl Ellsworth"s clever script and Wes Craven"s tense direction help make this the best thriller of the year. 2. Kinsey Bill Condon followed up Gods And Monsters with this unusual and highly enjoyable biopic of Alfred Kinsey, the professor whose groundbreaking study on human sexuality sent shockwaves through American society in the 1940s. It"s much more fun than it sounds. Excellent work from Liam Neeson as Kinsey, Laura Linney as his wife and Peter Sarsgaard as a research assistant. 3. Friday Night Lights The best of the recent crop of Hollywood sports movies, this US hit was given only a very quick and limited release in Britain due to its subject matter - American football - being the kiss of death at the box office here. Even if you"re as clueless about how the game works as I am (Americans must have a unique gene which enables them to understand it), Peter Berg"s high school football flick is still well worth seeing for its perceptive examination of what the game means to a small town in Texas and for Billy Bob Thornton"s understated performance as the team coach. 4. Mean Creek My one, nagging problem with Mean Creek is that its central scene. the crucial scene the film is based around is poorly done. I don"t want to spoil things but people who"ve seen the film will know the scene I"m referring to. What happens simply isn"t convincing and it reveals the film as a (too obvious) cautionary tale. That complaint aside, this is for the most part a highly absorbing look at the darker side of teenage life, in the same mould as River"s Edge and Bully. 5. The Perfect Catch Like Friday Night Lights, this was a casualty of British indifference to US sports, baseball in this case. The Farrelly Brothers" Americanisation of Nick Hornby"s novel Fever Pitch (which was its title across the pond) is a thoroughly charming romantic comedy, indeed the best rom com of the year. Former Saturday Night live star Jimmy Fallon puts the dodgy remake of Taxi behind him and shines as the lifelong Boston Red Sox fan who loves Drew Barrymore, just perhaps not as much as he loves his favourite team. 6. In Good Company Paul Weitz"s follow-up to About A Boy is another feelgood movie that doesn"t condescend to its audience. It"s the story of advertising executive Dennis Quaid who is passed over for promotion and forced to work for a university graduate (Topher Grace) who is soon chasing his daughter (Scarlett Johansson). It sounds like an obvious farce but Weitz likes these characters and he finds the human story underneath. 7. We Don"t Live Here Anymore A kind of companion piece to Closer, this independent movie shows how infidelity gnaws at the marriage of two couples who think they"re too cool to be bothered by a little cheating. Naomi Watts has rarely been better but Mark Ruffalo, Laura Dern and Peter Krause are all impressive too. 8. The Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants Four sixteen year old girlfriends split up for the summer and keep in touch by sharing a pair of jeans. Don"t stop reading! This drama may be ostensibly aimed at pre-teen girls but it"s made with such conviction and charm that it should appeal to anyone who isn"t ashamed to enjoy the occasional chick movie. Definitely one of the pleasant surprises of the year. The young cast are all exceptional. 9. Dreamer Dare I nominate two movies made for twelve-year-old girls? Well I"d love to list some action-packed guy movies but the sad fact is this year"s testosterone-fuelled offerings weren"t all that and this old-fashioned tale of a little girl and her racehorse was more exciting than any of them. The presence of grizzled old pros Kurt Russell, Kris Kristofferson and David Morse might make Dreamer a bit more palatable to male moviegoers. The star however is undoubtedly Dakota Fanning, who gets her best role to date here. 10. Sky High Kurt Russell again in an agreeable superhero comedy that comes off as a cross between The Incredibles and a 1980s John Hughes high school movie. While it isn"t quite in the same league as the Pixar movie, it"s still solid entertainment and there are some very big laughs from a supporting cast that includes Bruce Campbell (given a rare good part) and Kevin Heffernan from Super Troopers. 10 worst films 1. Spanglish James L Brooks has made some fine films in his time - I"ll defend As Good As It Gets against all comers - but despite good work by Adam Sandler, Paz Vega and Tea Leoni, Spanglish irritated me more than any film I"ve seen for years. It"s the story of a poor, Mexican maid who comes to work for a rich, white family in Beverly Hills and, wouldn"t you know it, changes their lives. It"s even more trite and patronising than it sounds. Next time some Hollywood liberal is feeling guilty about being rich and white, maybe he could make a donation to some charity or other rather than subject moviegoers to navel-gazing crap like this. Instead see: Broadcast News. 2. The Family Stone If anything, this annoyed me more. A man brings his shy girlfriend (Sarah Jessica Parker) home to meet his family... a bunch of horrendously snobbish bohemians who proceed to either patronise her, treat her like dirt or steal her from him. And they"re supposed to be the ones we sympathise with! The low point must be the dining table scene. The subject of conversation is Parker"s boyfriend"s deaf, gay brother who is about to adopt a child with his black lover. Talk about laying it on thick. The fatuous mother played by Diane Keaton claims she"d always wished for a gay son and Parker says she finds this difficult to believe. She also casts doubt on the existence of the "gay gene". In many homes, this would open up an interesting, spirited dinner table debate but no, The Family Stone regard political correctness the way orthodox Jews regard the Talmud and they all stare at her like something they found on the soles of their expensive shoes. The film only escapes the number one position on this list because Sarah Jessica Parker somehow manages to find a couple of laughs in the dire script. Instead see: The Ref. 3. Revolver There are those who claim to understand Guy Ritchie"s fourth film although curiously none of them seem eager to share their explanation with the rest of us. Until someone clears things up, we"ll continue scratching our heads at this bafflingly arty gangster film and wondering what the hell Ritchie was thinking of. Instead see: Snatch. 4. xXx: The Next Level Ice Cube takes over from Vin Diesel as the surly action hero. Unfortunately the flabby hip hop star is hopeless as an action hero but boy, has he got the surly part down to a tee. Cheap, idiotic, badly made tat that might have gone straight to video if it wasn"t the sequel to a hit film. Say what you like about Diesel"s recent career choices but at least he had the sense to steer clear of this. Instead see: Under Siege 2. 5. Boogeyman It was a boom year for horror films with even more in the pipeline for 2006 but how many have been any good? This Sam Raimi-produced shocker scrapes the bottom of the barrel. It takes a completely unscary premise - a real live monster in a child"s closet for god"s sake - and plays it completely straight in the style of an Asian ghost story, removing the possibility of it even working as cheesy, unintentional fun. Instead see: Monsters Inc. 6. The Cave Rating slightly higher than Boogeyman only because it had half decent monsters (not that it did anything with them), The Cave is another overdirected PG-13 "horror" film lacking scares, gore or any good reason to watch it. The immensely likeable Piper Perabo deserves to be getting better scripts than this. Instead see: Tremors. 7. Mrs Henderson Presents Please British film industry, spare us any more movies in which stuffy Brits learn to let their hair down by becoming male strippers / letting their kids take up ballet / making boots for trannies / opening nude revues. This one had the potential to be interesting - you wouldn"t think a film featuring naked women and the Blitz could be boring - but the result is predictable, melodramatic and appallingly pleased with itself. "Just hand over the BAFTAs now dear." Instead see: Showgirls. 8. Hide And Seek Robert De Niro and Dakota Fanning together. What a cast. What a waste. Fanning is young enough to have an excuse but didn"t De Niro feel that one bad scary child movie (Godsend) was enough? Didn"t he read the script for this one and think, "Hello, this has been done before and better"? Did he really think John Polson, the director of Swimfan, would be able to make anything worthwhile out of it? Instead see: The Shining. 9. The Legend Of Zorro I still haven"t figured out what went wrong here. The Mask Of Zorro was one of the best swashbucklers of recent years. The sequel, from the same cast and director, is dead in the water. Where the first film was high spirited and fun, this is morose and boring. Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta Jones, two of the most appealing stars in Hollywood, are unable to save it. Instead see: Pirates Of The Caribbean. 10. The Amityville Horror Despite everyone"s misgivings, mine included, the Texas Chainsaw remake wasn"t bad, the Assault On Precinct 13 update was quite good and the new Dawn Of The Dead was terrific. We were right about this one though. The 1979 original isn"t exactly a classic of the genre but it"s streets ahead of this duff remake in which a miscast Ryan Reynolds is driven unconvincingly batty by a haunted house. Not scary. Instead see: Poltergeist. 10 disappointments 1. King Kong Okay so it has a great first hour and some of the scenes with Naomi Watts and Kong were wonderfully done but has there ever been a film so damaged by over the top action scenes? In his Lord Of The Rings trilogy, Peter Jackson did a great job of combining action, special effects and drama but with King Kong he goes over the top as soon as the ship reaches Skull Island and he doesn"t know when to quit. Dinosaur stampedes, giant bugs, a ludicrously overdone Kong vs T-Rex fight scene! The middle hour and a half is just about non-stop action, all of it done with the most cartoonlike CGI imaginable. It felt like the movie was taken over by Stephen Sommers (The Mummy, Van Helsing) on a caffeine buzz. The story couldn"t hope to compete. When Kong tumbled off the Empire State, I was too numb to care and I"m a sucker for big, sad-eyed gorillas - the Mighty Joe Young remake made me cry like a little girl. 2. Land Of The Dead A lot of people have convinced themselves George A Romero made a great comeback with this but I"d recommend they go back and watch his original Living Dead trilogy to see what this is missing: namely scariness. Sure there was always satire in Romero"s zombie flicks but it was underneath, in the background, subtle. Here he"s shifted it clumsily into the foreground to make a sledgehammer commentary on western society. To push his points, he establishes an absurd community ruled over by the wealthy (But why? Why would money have any meaning? Wouldn"t the people with the guns make the rules, as in Day Of The Dead?) and about to be overrun by zombies that have apparently developed political consciences. The film"s big budget (by Romero"s standards) did little to help. 3. Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith It looks great but chocolates taste great and pigging out on them for two and a quarter hours doesn"t leave you feeling very satisfied. Ditto George Lucas"s final installment of the Star Wars saga, which throws special effects at you until you want to start throwing them back. The human story - the fall of Anakin Skywalker and his transformation into Darth Vader - is lost amidst all the sparkle. Hayden Christensen"s actual defection to the Dark Side is ridiculously easy and Darth Vader"s introductory scene is embarassing. Easily the worst of the Star Wars films, no matter how much money it made. 4. Team America: World Police Not a bad film by any means and funny enough in places to be worth seeing (that Rent parody"s a howl!) but shouldn"t a Parker / Stone send-up of Jerry Bruckheimer movies and the War on Terror have been much, much funnier? Shouldn"t it have been more ambitious, like their brilliant South Park: Bigger, Longer And Uncut? The duo aim for an awful lot of easy targets here - Pearl Harbor, actors with political causes - and they miss many of them. Example: Michael Moore is simply begging to be taken down a peg or two but portraying him as an America-hating terrorist is unfair and dumb. 5. Elizabethtown Cameron Crowe"s first major flop has enough good things in it that it can be dismissed as a minor blip in a fine career - the main good thing being the lovely Kirsten Dunst. However there are enough bad things in it to suggest Crowe needs to seriously re-evaluate his feelgood formula. How on earth did he think Orlando Bloom"s neverending road trip would ever work, with its pitstops at the locations of Martin Luther King"s assassination and the Oklahoma City bombing? Thank god the trip didn"t go anywhere near New York so we didn"t have to endure Orlando learning any life lessons at Ground Zero. 6. Serenity Maybe you had to have watched the TV series. A lot of people have rated this attempt at space opera in their top tens for the year but it did nothing for me. I have to admit I"m not a big Joss Whedon fan. One episode of Buffy was enough. His blend of melodrama and sitcom-style wisecracking just doesn"t float my boat. To a non-fan, Serenity is about an unlikeable spaceship crew (who look suspiciously similar to the crew of the Betty from the Whedon-scripted Alien Resurrection) who trade wisecracks while having the same sort of adventures spaceship crews used to have in 1980s Star Wars rip-offs like Spacehunter and The Ice Pirates. Except those films were a good deal less self-important. 7. Mr And Mrs Smith I took some heat back in June for my bitchy remarks about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie"s lack of chemistry. I may have been a bit harsh on the stars but I was right about the film. More and more people are agreeing with me that this is a poorly scripted, overproduced and depressingly soulless action comedy. 8. Be Cool When it"s good, it"s very good. The Rock, Cedric The Entertainer, Andre 3000 and James Woods are all very funny in the sequel to Elmore Leonard"s Get Shorty. Even John Travolta, in a generally lazy performance, has some good moments. Unfortunately they"re all let down by a script which dumbs down Elmore Leonard and fails to recapture the brains, confidence and cool of the original. 9. Ocean"s Twelve Steven Soderbergh follows his highly entertaining 2001 heist comedy with a rather smug, post-modern sequel that seems to be saying, with some disdain, "I"m way too cool to be making sequels to commercial blockbusters". Except if 2002"s Full Frontal is the sort of thing he"d sooner be making then maybe he should take the studios" money, do his job properly and be grateful he"s allowed to direct anything. 10. The Producers A great 90-minute comedy bloated out to two and a quarter hours with added mugging and songs of variable quality. Supposedly this worked nicely on the stage but it certainly doesn"t on film. The cast try hard (too hard in some cases) without ever rivalling their predecessors in the 1968 film. And whatever possessed them to drop the hippie actor Lorenzo St DuBois, whose drug-inspired performance as Hitler prompted one of the great lines in cinema - "The Führer never said "baby"!" Top 10 at the box office 1. Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire Is it just me or are the Harry Potter movies becoming more of a chore to watch as the series continues? I enjoyed the first two, particularly Chamber Of Secrets but since the stars have entered adolescence and the tone has darkened, the fun has drained away somewhat. Do we really want to watch a dark, gritty drama about magic kids at wizard school? The formula is becoming wearying too. Every time it"s the same - Harry meets up with Ron and Hermione, they arrive at Hogwarts, the plot is set up, Harry and friends go to wizard classes, the various regulars (who now include every well-known British actor alive) do their usual turns, the plot thickens, Voldemort turns out to be behind it (this was a surprise the first two times!), Harry defeats Voldemort, Harry learns valuable lessons, roll credits. Can maybe something a bit different happen next time? 2. Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith See under disappointments. 3. The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe Now this was more like it: a splendid children"s adventure that provided as much excitement and spectacle as Star Wars and Harry Potter but also had the heart they sorely lacked. Shrek director Andrew Adamson made a very fine live action debut. 4. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory Apart from a few annoying (and unnecessary) anachronisms, like characters spending dollars in an English newsagent, this was a thoroughly enjoyable adaptation of the classic Roald Dahl tale, benefiting from some very strong performances and Tim Burton"s idiosyncratic direction. 5. Wallace And Gromit in The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit Nick Park finally brought his best loved creations to the big screen and they made the transition with all their quirky charm intact. Tremendous fun for all ages and it only just slipped outside my top ten films of the year. 6. War Of The Worlds See under films of the year. 7. Meet The Fockers Disappointing, overlong, obvious sequel to Meet The Parents pitted anal conservative Robert De Niro against airheaded liberal Dustin Hoffman. The liberal came out on top but conservatives can take comfort from observing which father raised a normal, happy adult and which raised a neurotic basket case. 8. King Kong See under disappointments. 9. Madagascar See under disappointments. 10. Hitch Pleasant enough date movie which for once allowed Will Smith room to be his charming self instead of burying him under millions of dollars worth of special effects and explosions. Unfortunately it goes on autopilot in the last half hour but till then it"s one of the year"s better entertainments. In Fading Light (1989/Amber Collective) Irrespective of the above rules, In Fading Light would still make it as my pick of 2005’s releases. It takes an obscure feature, the Amber Collective’s 1989 anti-Thatcher drama set in a small North Shields fishing community, and breathes new life into it courtesy of DVD"s little additions. All the more remarkable was the fact that it was Amber themselves who released the disc – and solely through their website at that. As such you’d expect nothing more of them than to simply issue the film unaccompanied and be done with it. Yet what we found was a film in splendid condition and combined with a pair of retrospective documentaries (one of which was over an hour long), a wonderfully evocative photo gallery and a lovingly produced 30-page booklet which let us into the collective’s history. Of course, it helped that the film itself was one of the finest achievements of eighties British cinema, a gritty working class tale about the spiky relationship between a skipper"s daughter and the father she"s rarely seen, not to mention the tensions amongst his crew that her arrival brings. As with all of Amber’s films it came with a semi-professional but utterly believable cast – you could practically taste the saltwater as you took in the beauty of the surroundings. For those yet to sample In Fading Light, I’ll include a link to their website once more - www.amber-online.com - whilst my original review can be accessed by clicking on the sleeve image above. Nighthawks (1978/Ron Peck & Paul Hallam) Second Run were perhaps the standout label of the year, arriving on the scene with a clutch of little seen films eagerly awaiting new audiences. We had Shirley Clarke’s Portrait of Jason, for example, a searing piece of underground documentary filmmaking and a plethora of excellent Eastern European titles. The discovery for me, however, was Ron Peck and Paul Hallam’s 1978 masterpiece Nighthawks, Britain’s first major gay film. As with In Fading Light it came with a documentary veneer and an air of improvisation, but this only served to enhance its qualities. Our lead character, geography teacher Jim (played by Ken Robertson) who cruises the gay club scene by night vainly looking for long-term love, became all the more real as a result. He may have been on a bit on the miserable side, but gone was the self-loathing homosexual of A Taste of Honey and Victim and in their place came ordinary, everyday people. The disc itself, available at a budget price of just under a tenner, hosted a 31-minute retrospective documentary fronted by Little Britain’s Matt Lucas, plus a piece in which Peck discussed his methods and a booklet of new liner notes. Also released by Second Run was Peck’s 1991 companion piece, Strip Jack Naked, an often astonishingly honest autobiographical documentary essay which also allowed for fresh insight into Nighthawks. Gallivant (1996/Andrew Kötting) Package of the year, and just one of a number of outstanding releases from the BFI in 2005, Gallivant collected not only Andrew Kötting’s oddball 1996 documentary of the same name, but also his entire cinematic oeuvre save for his follow-up feature, This Filthy Earth (which in all fairness is available elsewhere). As such we were able to witness such fascinating rarities as Diddyköy, a Super-8 glimpse at gypsy culture, and Jaunt, a semi-comic ferry trip down the Thames, without having to be members of film societies or a personal friend of the director. There were thirteen films in total, including the main feature, and they added up to one of the more eccentric visions of British culture that you’re ever likely to see. Gallivant itself played out like an avant-garde pre-cursor to this year’s BBC series Coast: the director scooted off around Britain’s coastline with his grandmother and disabled daughter (she has Joubert Syndrome and can only communicate through sign language) in tow, on the way collecting sea shanties and recording lewd graffiti in his own inimitable style. Indeed, the film may be firmly experimental in its remit, but it was also terrifically funny and immediately accessible. One in need of a much wider audience than it currently enjoys. Electric Edwardians : The Films of Mitchell & Kenyon (1900-1906/Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon) Another BFI release and in all honesty the entire list could have been made up of their titles this year. The "Blackworld" allowed for superbly put together releases of Horace Ové"s Pressure and Baldwin’s Nigger, Menelik Shabazz"s Burning an Illusion and, pick of the bunch, Isaac Julien’s Looking for Langston. Then there were the welcome arrivals of more recent titles such as the twin-pack of Patrick Keiller’s London and Robinson in Space and Carine Adler’s excellent Under the Skin. Plus they finally began issuing their British Transport Films collection onto disc via three eminently desirable volumes: Geoffrey Jones: The Rhythm of Film, On and Off the Rails and See Britain By Train. Electric Edwardians narrowly tops all of these, however, by showing us a completely new world, even if it was from the past. Documented in the three-part BBC series The Lost World of Mitchell & Kenyon (also released on disc by the BFI), this compilation allows us to sample the recently discovered M&K collection without the interruptions of an over-excited Dan Cruickshank. It may have only been footage of working folk leaving factories or attending football matches, yet every frame of this, in some cases, 100-year old film was utterly beguiling. Moreover, if we also wanted a history lesson then Dr. Vanessa Toulmin was on hand for individual commentaries and a brief introductory featurette. And if that wasn’t quite enough then we were also afforded an insight into discovery and restoration process, whilst a handful of Easter eggs added another five titles to the 34 shorts already featured on the disc. Rubber Johnny (2005/Chris Cunningham) Starting life as an Aphex Twin music video, this delightfully odd little short offered our latest glimpse into the warped mind of Chris Cunningham. Having previously disturbed and astonished in equal measure with his promos for Bjork and Squarepusher, he continued in the same vein with Rubber Johnny. A deformed child sits in a darkened room with only his pet Chihuahua for company. It’s a seemingly miserable experience, but he – and the film – come alive when the Aphex Twin track ‘AFX237V’ blares from the soundtrack resulting in some of the strangest dancing you’ll ever see. Part comedy, part horror and part art film, Rubber Johnny was at once both uplifting and grotesque – plus it came with the finest sleeve art of the year. As for the disc itself, no extras were present, but the film came packaged as a hardback book chock full of Cunningham’s photographic art works. Needless to say, they’re as demented as his celluloid efforts. Life Is A Miracle - Emir Kusturica, 2004 (Artificial Eye, UK Region 2) Even Emir Kusturica’s biggest fans were a little disgruntled at him trotting out the same themes and using the same techniques as many of his earlier films, but Life Is A Miracle, portraying the effects of the Bosnian war on the crazy inhabitants of a Serbian village, is nevertheless an absolute delight and a cinematic tour de force for the director – displaying his typically energetic, freewheeling imagination and a wonderful sense of humour, while at the same time retaining a heart and soul. Artificial Eye, certainly picking up their game this year with several wonderful 2-disc sets, include a great extended documentary on the long making of the film and give the feature itself a fine transfer. There is something wrong when a film like A Very Long Engagement gets more acclaim and attention than this, so Life Is A Miracle is surely deserving of a larger, more appreciative audience. Spione - Fritz Lang, 1928 (Eureka/Masters of Cinema, UK Region 2) With their range of classic early, silent and influential Asian horror films, Eureka with their ‘Masters of Cinema’ range also proved themselves to be a force to be reckoned with this year with an attention to quality and fabulous extra features comparable and occasionally, as in the case of Onibaba, superior to the Criterion Collection. With re-editions this year of Metropolis, Sunrise and the lesser known Humanity and Paper Balloons or The Naked Island, I would expect to see at least one of their titles in most of the DVD Times crew’s best of the year summaries. For me, their best and most surprisingly enjoyable release was their edition of Fritz Lang’s Spione. Admittedly, there are not a great amount of extra features on this particular release, but the restoration of the 1928 film - restored to its full length and correct running speed - is simply astonishing. The film itself – a seemingly run-of-the-mill spy-thriller that has none of the social relevance of Lang’s Mabuse films (Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler, The Testament of Dr Mabuse) is nonetheless a revelation, Lang continuing to develop filmmaking techniques and set a template that would have considerable influence on espionage thrillers like the Bond films. On top of that, it is perhaps the most accessible way into Lang’s early films and silent cinema in general. Café Lumière - Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2003 (Sinomovie, HK Region 0) I have to admit to being distinctly underwhelmed and disappointed with Hou Hsiao-hsien’s tribute to Yasujiro Ozu when I caught it at a film festival showing earlier in the year. There didn’t seem to be really enough of either enough of Ozu or Hou in the film and it seemed to just languish in a no-man’s land with no drive or theme. Images and scenes from the film stuck with me however and when I came back to re-watch it on DVD, I felt immediately connected with the film’s natural rhythms and was suffused with the warmth and familiarity of the characters, who had made a greater impact on me than I had realised. Because of its origins as an Ozu tribute it might still not be pure Hou, but it’s a marvellous film to admire while we wait on what may perhaps be a Hou masterpiece in Three Times out next year. There are a number of editions out there and the MK2 French 2-disc edition with deleted scenes amongst the extra features may possibly be the best version out there, but it does not include English subtitles. The advantage of the Hong Kong edition over the ICA edition – both non-anamorphic – is an excellent hour long documentary in the extra features. 5x2 - François Ozon, 2004 (Pathé, Region 2) Not everyone is convinced by François Ozon’s flitting between high-camp, shock-cinema and relationship melodramas, but the young French director continually demonstrates his versatility with a prolific output. Not everyone will be convinced either by his extremely harsh outlook on traditional married relationships or by the now familiar backward storytelling technique employed in 5x2, but Ozon brings something new to this Bergman-esque exploration of a marriage break-up, told in reverse order from divorce through to first meeting - keeping the film within a tight but purposeful structure, yet allowing room for interpretation and extrapolation. The quality of Pathé’s output this year has decreased alarmingly with editions which at their best could only be described as adequate and at worst simply unwatchable. 5x2 gets better treatment than most, with a reasonably good image transfer (but fixed, large subtitles) and with a number of Deleted Scenes and a Making Of, though neither are particularly illuminating. It’s still a reasonably good way to see what I think is one of the best films of the year. And for those still unconvinced about Ozon’s talent, his latest film, the just released Le Temps Qui Reste should, judging from the reaction of the French press, put any remaining doubts to rest. Taste of Cherry - Abbas Kiarostami, 1997 (Artificial Eye, Region 2) The films of Abbas Kiarostami work on a different level from any other, working resolutely against straight narrative and continually striving to remove the visibility of the director’s hand, in an attempt to approach an objective kind of reality. Nowhere is the mastery and brilliance of his approach more evident than in Taste of Cherry, where a man drives around Tehran in an attempt to find someone to assist him in carrying out a particularly grim task. Using unconventional means of expression and storytelling with minimal dialogue and fixed static camera angles, Kiarostami nevertheless manages to keep the viewer both mystified and intrigued for a long period of time before revealing the full power of the film. This undoubted masterpiece is presented in an appropriately fine 2-DVD edition by Artificial Eye which includes Kiarostami’s documentary ‘10 on Ten’, an indispensable examination of the working methods of one of the finest directors in the world. Comments Please login to post comments or replies.