Best Films of 2005

Ten Best Films

1. Munich - poignant and brutal, Munich transcends its counter-terrorism story, demonstrating the futility of revenge and the immorality of pre-emptive violence. The best and most important movie of the year.
2. Good Night and Good Luck - beautifully acted, scripted and directed, historically important and profoundly relevant, a brilliant gem from George Clooney
3. Pride & Prejudice - pitch-perfect romance without a false note, could be the best period film in decades.
4. Memoirs of a Geisha - beautifully filmed and acted, Memoirs is a lush, moving love story
5. Crash - an acting tour-de-force, Crash delves into the complexities and contradictions of race and class, surprising at every turn.
6. Revenge of the Sith - the best Star Wars film after the original, Sith’s plot pulls the entire enterprise together, and every wide shot is a dazzling masterpiece.
7. Walk the Line - both entertaining and tragic, the story of Johnny and June Carter Cash is smartly told and wonderfully acted.
8. Kung Fu Hustle - ingenious, hilarious martial arts spoof, unlike anything you’ve seen before.
9. Sin City - groundbreaking film technique brings noir to a new level, creating a surreal underworld filled with villains and redemption.
10. Wedding Crashers - clever and hysterical, the best comedy of the year makes wonderful use of the substantial talents of Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn.

Three Favorite Documentaries

Aristocrats - hilarious gross-out humor from a long list of comedy greats
Enron - tragic, thorough exposé of greed and corporate corruption
Murderball - gritty, hard-hitting look at wheelchair athletes.

Best Foreign Film

Paradise Now - a fascinating, powerful journey into the hearts of suicide bombers.

Finally, The Great Uniter

President Bush has finally become the Great Uniter. Not the way he had hoped, mind you, but through sheer stupidity and ineptitude. By supporting the sale of our port security to the United Arab Emirates, he unwittingly and inadvertently brought both Republicans and Democrats together in shocked, angry protest.

Simply a payback deal to a country we want desperately to stay friends with, and whose foreign investment we covet, the port security snafu exposes the core of Bush Administration policy. Tone deaf, shortsighted, and unable to avoid corporate giveaways and favors at the expense of the American public.

But helping to galvanize the bi-partisan furor, the port situation is only the latest in a string of disasters for Bush and his Radical Right team.

Iraq is on the verge of civil war, and there seems to be no way we can stop it. So much for forcing western-style democracy at the point of a gun (to feed our oil addiction).

Dick Cheney is emerging as the quarterback of the Valerie Plame outing. But we already knew he was a mean-spirited, sleazy, lying, unethical man.

Which brings us to Karl Rove, still in the crosshairs of a Federal Prosecutor.

New stories continue to surface connecting Bush with felon Jack Abramoff, the most recent concerning a meeting between Bush and Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir arranged by Abramoff through Rove. (Rove doesn't recall making the arrangement, which means he is either asleep at the wheel or a bold-faced liar.)

New Orleans and environs are still a disastrous, festering sore, representing an ongoing failure of attention and competence by the Federal Government.

No acceptable rationale has yet been given for why the Bush team failed to use the FISA courts to secretly wiretap, which, despite unsubstantiated administration claims that the wiretapping was narrowly focused, forces the conclusion that too many people were being spied on to use the court.

The most recent Budget Proposal from the President is a disgusting testament to illusion, deception, greed and bloat.

No meaningful attention is being paid to our health care crisis, our open borders, our loss of jobs to low-cost countries, our staggering trade deficit, our staggering debt, or the downward slide of our children’s competence in math and science.

Americans aren’t marching on Washington because they are unconcerned--they aren’t marching because they are shell-shocked by the enormity of the problems. Can you blame them? The way things are going, I should re-title my blog “Bush Disaster Watch.” Each day seems to bring a new tragedy.

The Magoo Touch

Trying to keep up with the tragedies, mishaps and scandals of the Executive Branch is becoming a challenge. And anyone who doesn't believe that the Universe tends toward irony need only consider NRA poster-boy and tough-guy-wanna-be Dick Cheney, who shot a friend in the face while bird hunting.

Yet another chapter in the disastrous tenure of the Bush Administration, the tragi-comic incident overshadowed the real story, which I predicted here weeks ago--that "Scooter" Libby outed Valerie Plame on orders from the Vice President. No wonder Libby concocted an absurd "I don't remember" story to try to keep the world from seeing the real Cheney.

But Cheney is deluded to think that he can forever keep us from seeing his secret deals with the energy companies, his influence on no-bid contracts, his long-standing effort to invade, control and remake the Middle East, his disdain for public disclosure and his burning desire to place the executive branch above the law. Looking at the track record of this incompetent and misguided ideologue, it's no wonder New York Times columnist Bob Herbert called for Cheney to resign.

Like Watergate was to Nixon, Cheney is a cancer on the Bush Presidency. Not that there aren't a host of other malignancies, including Karl Rove and Jack Abramoff, but Cheney's presence has clearly been doing harm. And with the unfortunate shooting incident, Vice is now a solid and irretrievable liability.

Adding to the tragedy of it all, of course, is the fact that Cheney is so arrogant and convinced of his moral superiority and infallibility that he would never resign. And Bush is too rigid, too blindly loyal and too scared of the criticism an admission of failure would bring to consider replacing Vice with someone whose judgment isn't disastrously poor. Remember cartoon character Mister Magoo? The pair resemble Magoo twins, driving through life unwilling or unable to see the avalanche of wreckage they leave in their wake.

And so it goes. Dick and Dubya bumble down the road in their jittery little car while the rest of us hold our breath, waiting to see what they smash into next.

Fitting Funeral Tribute

Comments pointing out the failures of the Bush Administration made by several distinguished speakers at the funeral of Coretta Scott King have angered conservative pundits, who claim the comments were in poor taste.

Conservative hacks Joe Scarborough and Tucker Carlson accused the speakers of having bad manners, and Kate O’Beirne of the National Review called the comments a “cheap shot,” claiming that they were “contrary to the spirit” of the moment. But her claim was entirely wrong, demonstrating how out of touch O’Beirne was with the spirit of King’s life.

Coretta Scott King was dedicated to activism and speaking truth to power. It’s hard to imagine a better way to speak truth to power than to tell the President, to his face, how badly he has screwed up our nation, how poorly he has performed and how disappointing he has been. That the critical comments produced a massive roar of support from funeral attendees tell us all we need to know about their propriety.

No wonder conservatives are pissed. The entire thrust of the Bush Administration has been secrecy, dissembling and silence. They don’t want open discussion or direct confrontation because their failings and incompetence are so manifold.

Supreme Court nominees Roberts and Alito said virtually nothing of substance in answering questions at their confirmation hearings. And Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, testifying before Congress on the subject of Bush wiretapping, erected a smirking wall of silence, refusing to shed any light on how our government has been spying on its citizens.

Don’t ask. Don’t criticize. Just shut up while we take away your liberties, make more bad decisions about foreign policy, do nothing to solve domestic problems except cut programs, support radical social policies that continue to divide America and do everything we can to help our wealthy friends.

Sorry. That’s the way of communism, fascism and tyranny. In America, criticism is the backbone of our political process, and keeps our nation strong. What better tribute to the King family than speaking truth to power. It’s not poor taste--it’s reverence through imitation.