Best Movies of 2005
Ranked by our critic's grades, best first.
V for VendettaHugo Weaving acts an entire performance through a fixed plastic grin, and it works.Read the review
Brokeback MountainLee's restraint and Ledger's clenched, half-finished sentences make the silence carry the story, even as the second half thins.
Batman BeginsThe origin story done so well it became the template for everyone else's.
JarheadDeakins turns a war nobody got to fight into the most beautiful boredom of the decade, and the film pays for that honesty.
The New WorldMalick trades plot for weather and light, and the trade mostly pays off, though Farrell's John Smith never earns his voiceover.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of FireA seven hundred page book crushed into a tournament highlight reel, plus a superb final twenty minutes.
Wedding CrashersTwo hours of the best comic chemistry of the decade, attached to a third act that forgets what it was.
The 40-Year-Old VirginThe comedy that reset the American studio comedy, sweet where it could have been cruel and twenty minutes too long.
My Father and My SonÇağan Irmak pulls every lever a family melodrama has, and Çetin Tekindor's stubborn patriarch makes most of them work.
ProofThe play's argument survives the transfer intact; the direction never finds a reason for any of it to be a film.