My Top 25 Films of 2005

Reserving the right to make a few alterations once I've caught up with the films I missed at the cinema on DVD, below are my Top 25 Films of 2005. It's been another good year for films based on real events, be they dramatisations (Hotel Rwanda, Downfall, Ray, Vera Drake) or documentaries (DiG!, Beautiful Dreamer, Guerilla, Inside Deep Throat, Tarnation, In The Realms of the Unreal). The UK managed to keep its end up with an impressive range of dramas (Bullet Boy, Pride & Prejudice, Vera Drake and Wallace and Gromit's first big-screen outing) whilst mainland Europe produced it's statutory three outstanding films (The Edukators, Downfall and The Beat That My Heart Skipped). Even Hollywood managed to tackle some potentially thorny topics with some aplomb (Hotel Rwanda, Crash, The Woodsman). Anyway, enough waffle, here's the list...

1. The Edukators (dir. Hans Weingartner)
2. DiG! (dir. Ondi Timoner)
3. Sideways (dir. Alexander Payne)
4. Hotel Rwanda (dir. Terry George)
5. Downfall (dir. Oliver Hirschbiegel)
6. Crash (dir. Paul Haggis)
7. A History of Violence (dir. David Cronenberg)
8. Ray (dir. Taylor Hackford)
9. Wallace and Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (dir. Steve Box & Nick Park)
10. Silver City (dir. John Sayles)
11. The Beat That My Heart Skipped (dir. Jacques Audiard)
12. Everything is Illuminated (dir. Liev Schreiber)
13. Million Dollar Baby (dir. Clint Eastwood)
14. Beautiful Dreamer: Brian Wilson And The Story Of Smile (dir. David Leaf)
15. Guerilla: The Taking Of Patty Hearst (dir. Robert Stone)
16. Bullet Boy (dir. Saul Dibb)
17. Inside Deep Throat (dir. Fenton Bailey & Randy Barbato)
18. The Woodsman (dir. Nicole Kassell)
19. Tarnation (dir. Jonathan Caouette)
20. Vera Drake (dir. Mike Leigh)
21. Broken Flowers (dir. Jim Jarmusch)
22. Closer (dir. Mike Nichols)
23. Lower City (dir. Sergio Machado)
24. Pride & Prejudice (dir. Joe Wright)
25. In The Realms of The Unreal (dir. Jessica Yu)