Awards

January 31, 2006, the Academy for Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will announce the nominations for this year's academy awards which will air on March 6, 2006. Although regularly I only do reviews on this blog, I thought I'd make some comments both now before the nominations and once more after the nominations are made.

According to the Academy website there are 311 eligible films (http://www.oscars.org/78academyawards/reminder/reminder_list.html) for 2005. I saw 86 of them. There are also five eligible films currently on my "want to see list". So I in no way saw every film or even all of the so called "Oscar Buzz" movies. Here is a list with a short explanation of what films, which I saw, I thought were the best of the year. In alphabetical order.

Batman Begins - Comic book turned movie done right

Good Night, and Good Luck - Strong performances, evokes the feel of the fifties and does modern commentary right.

Hustle and Flow - Terence Howard stands out as an incredible actor with a phenomenal story.

Munich - Spielberg finally earns my respect back after The Terminal (2004) and War of the Worlds (2005), powerful suspense with a powerful message

Pride and Prejudice - Funny, Sad, Moving and Romantic without missing a step

Serenity - Rock rolling fun space epic that reminded me of my first viewing of Star Wars, it had humor, heartache and plenty of action without any god awful Lucas style dialogue

Sin City - Film noir and graphic novel. Beautifully weaved together, amazingly faithful to the comic with strong performances.

Walk The Line - Biopics are pretty standard fair but this one is done well and has Johnny Cash music throughout, I was harsher on it in my review but I've had second thoughts.