01:00 AM EST on Friday, December 30, 2005

BY MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal Arts Writer

Quality was down. Production costs were up. And fewer people were going to the movies.

The year that's slipping away won't go down as one of the best in Hollywood history. For the first time in years the box office numbers were less than the preceding year, sometimes dramatically so.

Hollywood tried to shrug it off at first -- too many big openings in 2004; the surprise box office tidal wave caused by Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, which brought lots of people who hadn't been to the movies in years out to see a movie about Christ's final hours . . . and in Aramaic yet!

But when a late-season poll discovered that young men, the prime demographic that powers America's movie ticket sales, had gone on to other pursuits -- video games, DVDs, the Internet -- times seemed to be a-changin' indeed.

An end-of-year $101-million opening weekend boost from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and the $60-million opening for The Chronicles of Narnia offered hope that the boom times were on their way back.

But the merely good $50-million opening for King Kong, the most hyped movie of the year, gave one pause. Had audiences become immune to the hype, even though Kong had garnered much praise from influential critics?

I wasn't among them, however. I felt that although the new King Kong was technologically amazing, it didn't live up to the 1933 original, either in heart or daring adventure, despite the earlier film's far clunkier stop-motion animation.

So you won't find King Kong on my 10-best list. And sadly, neither will you find two films that should have been on the 2004 honors list, but didn't make it because they weren't seen by me until January 2005 when they were released in Rhode Island.

Belated praise goes to Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby (last year's Oscar winner) and Hotel Rwanda, the harrowing tale of genocide in that unhappy African nation.

Nor will you find Bewitched, a movie that must have bewitched me when I reviewed it, because a later viewing on video made me wonder what I could have been thinking.

On second viewing, it seemed a trifle, with charming performances by Nicole Kidman as Samantha, a witch who wanted to be mortal, and Michael Caine as her magical father, but flawed by Will Ferrell's overblown playing of the mortal man Samantha marries.

On the other hand, a second viewing on video of Batman Begins made me wonder why I hadn't liked this detailed epic about the origins of the Caped Crusader more the first time I saw it.

Perhaps I had been expecting more of a comic-book adventure than this dark and brooding introspective examination of Bruce Wayne/Batman's psyche. So, add Batman Begins to the list.

Here are my choices for the best films of 2005, in an imperfect list that nevertheless mirrors the imperfections of so much of the movie year.

March of the Penguins. This surprise hit documentary about family love and devotion in a huge flock of penguins living in sub-zero conditions at the bottom of the world was told straightforwardly and without sentimentality.

Yet it managed to touch audiences with its surprising tale of survival as adult emperor penguins traveled far to gather at the exact spot in Antarctica where they were born so they could mate, produce an egg and hatch it on the father's toes while the mother penguin left to find food for her chick. Lovely in every respect.

Cinderella Man. Another tale of family devotion was found in this never-got-off-the-ground-at-the-box-office film about 1930s boxer James Braddock. Floored by an injury just as his career was taking off, he rose to the top again thanks to a lucky break and the help of his long-suffering wife. A terrific boxing drama directed by Ron Howard, it never found the big audience it deserved.

Brokeback Mountain. Scheduled to open here Jan. 6, this is "the gay cowboy movie" that has been causing a buzz and taking critical prizes left and right, mainly because, as one critic put it, it was one of the few films of 2005 that everyone could agree on.

A solid film about a pair of ranch hands who found love in the mountains of Wyoming, only to be pulled apart by circumstances, Brokeback Mountain goes way beyond its modest origins in its final 20 minutes, which are still heartbreaking and haunting weeks later.

Here it transcends "the gay cowboy movie" to become a film that can touch the hearts of anyone who has been in love.

Good Night, and Good Luck. George Clooney was behind the camera (and in a small but pivotal role in front of it) in this gripping docudrama about TV newsman Edward R. Murrow's daring assault on the Cold War rantings of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who destroyed lives as he tried to ferret out Communists in the U.S. government.

David Strathairn was compelling as Murrow, while Clooney cleverly had McCarthy play himself in old newsreel footage.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Tim Burton's dark whimsy colored this confection about an impoverished boy who wins a ticket to visit Willy Wonka's mysterious chocolate factory and, through his pure heart, becomes heir to the Wonka business.

Johnny Depp, who seemed to be channeling Michael Jackson as Willy Wonka, and an army of nut-loving squirrels sparked the film, not to mention actor Deep Roy turning up as all the Oompa-Loompas, Wonka's handy helpers.

Roy was a screen presence to contend with, whether dancing in a Busby Berkeley-style chorus line, being all the dozens of rowers on a dragon boat, or just playing Wonka's psychiatrist. Ingenious!

Batman Begins. Director Christopher Nolan put a darker, more somber spin on the beloved comic book character as Batman travels on a journey of self-discovery, first in the Himalayas and then back to Gotham City, where he was traumatized as a child by the murders of his parents.

Returning to a corrupt city run by a crime boss, he sets out to "seek the means to fight injustice." The film is played deadly seriously for the most part, unlike the increasingly jokey aspects of its four predecessors. Christian Bale starred as a tortured hero who must use his wits and physical prowess, not magical superpowers, to save the day.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. A beloved children's book series is transformed into a magical movie in which four children, sent to the countryside during the Nazi air assault on Britain during World War II, discover a snowy land ruled by a wicked Ice Queen, entered by walking to the back of a very large wardrobe.

There are fauns, talking animals, Santa Claus and even more wonders as the children, who are seen by the wicked queen as the seeds of her destruction, try to free Narnia from her evil spell.

Beautifully done, the success of the film promises to spawn a series of its own, continuing the adventures found in author C.S. Lewis' series of books.

Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith. George Lucas wrapped up his outer space saga, which began in 1977, in a rousing grand finale that dotted all the i's and crossed all the t's. Finally we discovered how Darth Vader became the Dark Prince of the Evil Empire and it wasn't pretty. Exciting, though.

The Family Stone. A tragi-comedy about an uptight young woman hoping to break into the inner circle of a family of liberal, outgoing characters, none of whom like her very much, save for the son who intends to marry her.

A film with which audiences could easily identify, it parallels the foibles and goofiness found at a real family gathering, presented winningly by a strong ensemble cast in top form.

Fever Pitch. Strictly a sentimental favorite, this delightful Farrelly Brothers comedy with heart revolves around a workaholic woman who tries desperately to accommodate her tightly scheduled life to the whims of a young man who, six months out of every year, becomes the biggest Boston Red Sox fan of all time.

Johnny Damon may not be back wearing Red Sox in real life next year, but he'll forever be enshrined as the guy who tries to make a play around Drew Barrymore who's racing across the Fenway field.

In the end, the film had to be rewritten to fit in the Red Sox winning the 2004 World Series. Magic indeed.

ALONG WITH the good, there was the bad.

Here are some of the worst movies of the year. I haven't chosen films that seemed to have been dogs before they got out of the starting gate. These are films made by high-paid stars with big budgets and good intentions. But somewhere something went desperately wrong.

Are We There Yet? The inimitable Ice Cube, who seemed to have a new film in theaters every week for a while this summer, stars as a bachelor trying to win the heart of a single mother by taking her two bratty kids on a l-o-o-o-o-ng road trip from Los Angeles to Vancouver.

Unfortunately, we were along for the ride. The funniest moment came when Cube boxed a deer.

XXX: State of the Union. It's Ice Cube again, this time taking over for Vin Diesel after the bald star and the studio couldn't agree on his salary. So Ice Cube, the hip-hop-artist-turned-actor-turned-director-turned-producer, rushed into the breach to try his hand as an action star.

Unfortunately, the lumpish, squat Cube didn't fit the role. Whether he was outracing exploding scenery or tossing himself over a railing to catch the rung of a hovering helicopter, one was never sure whether he'd make it or the Grim Reaper would get him first.

The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3-D. Director Robert Rodriguez got the idea for this special-effects-filled adventure-fantasy from his 7-year-old son, known as Racer Max. It looked like just what it was, a film cooked up from a little boy's dreams and sketches.

As for the 3-D, this candy-colored action film looked very dark when you put on the 3-D glasses and there was little character depth.

Constantine. Another one of those "between-heaven-and-hell" horrors that seem to be concocted to give religion a bad name.

Keanu Reeves was an exorcist and everyone was after "the Spear of Destiny" which, of course, came with the promise that "He who holds it, holds the world in his hands." Too bad the filmmakers didn't have a real Spear of Destiny to fix their film.

The Cave. Deep in the Romanian forests a group of attractive young American explorers, searching for an undiscovered ecosystem far inside an ancient cave, uncover . . . EEK!

No, it wasn't Dracula, despite this being Romania, but several monsters that emerged from the dark at regular intervals to feast on one of the cast members.

Despite that, The Cave was amazingly suspenseless and the explanation for the monsters was ridiculous. Where's Dracula when you really need him?

House of Wax. Or Paris Hilton Gets Skewered. A more gruesome spin on the old tale -- first filmed in 1933 in an early form of Technicolor and then again in 1953 in 3-D -- about a madman who uses corpses as bases for his wax museum figures. Hilton, who had a small role, is strictly a 2-D actress, and the grisly film owed more to Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies than to creepy Vincent Price in the '53 hit.

Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo. Rob Schneider starred as a dimwitted fish tank cleaner who inadvertently became a male prostitute in 1999's Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo.

If ever there was a film that didn't call for a sequel, that was it. Yet here was Schneider again, trying to make the bawdy, leering, smirky gags in this sequel work. More often than not, they didn't.

Kingdom of Heaven. Who would have guessed that the Crusades of the 12th century, when Christian knights in armor battled Muslims for control of the Holy Land, were really, really boring? Director Ridley Scott's overblown epic, with the charmless Orlando Bloom at its core, provided the proof.

At the start of the film, Bloom's character is distraught because his child has died, his wife has killed herself, the gravediggers have cut off her head and a knight rides in to tell him that he is his real father and urges him to join the Crusades. After that, things really go downhill.

George A. Romero's Land of the Dead. Pittsburgh filmmaker Romero scored with Night of the Living Dead, about zombies who come out of their tombs to feed on the living, back in 1968, and has been making the same movie ever since. This latest one attempted social commentary by having the survivors holed up in a luxury shopping mall. But it was still the same movie.

Elektra. Although Elektra, played by Jennifer Garner, was killed off two years earlier at the end of the surprise hit Daredevil, the magic of the box office resurrected her as a mysterious professional assassin who is assigned to kill a neighbor and his 13-year-old daughter.

There was lots of freaky mumbo-jumbo involved, but the film never seemed more than contrived.

DO YOU AGREE? What were the best and worst movies you saw this year? Answer the survey at

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