Found in my email archive: my movie lists for 2005. The “most forgettable” category near the bottom was a primary reason for starting this movie journal. I was annoyed that there were movies I’d watched less than a year earlier which I already couldn’t remember having seen. As much as I love making lists, collecting things, completism, I started wondering what’s the point in having watched movies only to immediately forget them.

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Best New Movies In Theaters:

1. 2046
2. A History of Violence
3. The New World (150-minute cut)
4. Land of the Dead
5. Sin City
6. Million Dollar Baby
7. Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit
8. Munich
9. Kung Fu Hustle
10. Grizzly Man

11. The Devil’s Rejects
12. King Kong
13. 3-Iron
14. The Real Dirt on Farmer John
15. Henri Langlois: Phantom of the Cinematheque
16. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
17. Broken Flowers
18. Serenity
19. March of the Penguins
20. Mirrormask

Runners-up: 40-Year-Old Virgin, Howl’s Moving Castle, Three Extremes, Yes

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Best Old Movies Seen In Theaters:

1. Phantom India (Louis Malle, 7-part documentary on video at Emory)
2. Yumeji (rare seijun suzuki, beautiful color, on film at Emory)
3. Charisma (kiyoshi kurosawa, film at Emory)
4. The Freshman (part of the damaged Harold Lloyd retrospective, hilarious)
5. Mother Joan of the Angels (film at Emory)
6. Out of the Past (film at Emory
7. Kenneth Anger Series (at Eyedrum, his newest one and three classics)
8. Elevator to the Gallows (Louis Malle, amazing B&W photography)
9. The Conformist (Bertolucci, only Italian movie I enjoyed all year?)
10. His Girl Friday (Nashville Film Festival)

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Top 25 Movies Seen On Video (for the first time):

1. The Compleat Tex Avery (67 cartoon shorts on laserdisc)
2. The Big Red One: Reconstruction (samuel fuller)
3. The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek
4. Spalding Gray: Terrors of Pleasure / Monster in a Box
5. Fixed Bayonets (samuel fuller)
6. The Same River Twice
7. The Man Who Fell To Earth
8. The House is Black
9. House of Bamboo (samuel fuller)
10. Not on the Lips

11. New Rose Hotel
12. The Red Shoes
13. Drowning by Numbers
14. The Kid (charlie chaplin)
15. I Am Cuba
16. Day of Wrath
17. Naked (1993)
18. Straw Dogs
19. The Village (m. night)
20. Nazarin (bunuel)

21. Tropical Malady
22. Prospero’s Books
23. Closer (2004)
24. Rivers and Tides
25. Bird

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Most Forgettable Movies of 2005:
(maybe it’s not the movie’s fault, but I barely remember watching these)

1. Exorcist: The Beginning
2. Crossfire
3. Unknown Pleasures
4. Chronicles of Riddick
5. Live Flesh

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Worst Movies Seen In 2005:

1. Richard Kern Collection (neither sexy nor funny nor anything)
2. The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things (xxxtreme “squid/whale”)
3. 9 Songs (lots of sex + lousy concert footage = not a good idea)
4. Godzilla: Final Wars (where’s godzilla? why all this kung-fu?)
5. Zombi 2 (amazing shark scene plus 85 tedious minutes)
6. Bad Guy (a movie that hates you and itself)
7. Melinda & Melinda (woody allen is terrible now)
8. The Edukators (politically idiotic, just standard indie fare)
9. Incident at Loch Ness (felt embarrassed for Werner Herzog)
10. Haute Tension (didn’t see the point in all this)