A certain critic says that

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A certain critic says that 2005 "was a fairly crappy year at the movies" and "while every year I seem to come up with more than 30 movies that I really cherish...this year 20 seemed like a bit of a reach." That seems gruff and unduly dismissive to me. I came up with 41 films -- 15 creme de la creme and 26 that were pretty damn okay. In any event, 2005 ends at midnight Paris time (6 pm in Manhattan, 3 pm in Los Angeles) and here they are again: Creme de la Creme: Brokeback Mountain, Capote, The Constant Gardener, A History of Violence, Hustle & Flow, In Her Shoes, Match Point, The Family Stone, Walk the Line, Crash, Cinderella Man, The Beautiful Country, Last Days, Grizzly Man, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (15). And Pretty Damn Good: Good Night and Good Luck, The Wedding Crashers, Syriana, The Aristocrats, Batman Begins, Broken Flowers, Bob Dylan: No Direction Home, Cache (Hidden), The Interpreter (for the bomb-on-the-bus scene alone), King Kong (if you can excuse the first 70 minutes), Nine Lives (for Robin Wright Penn alone), Cronicas, The Beat That My Heart Skipped, The Squid and the Whale (Noah Baumbach has an assured place at the table), The Upside of Anger (for Kevin Costner's performance), The Thing About My Folks (for Peter Falk's performance), Mrs. Henderson Presents, Kung Fu Hustle, Kingdom of Heaven, Rent, Broken Flowers, Brothers (for Connie Nielsen's performance and the austere and upfront tone of Suzanne Bier's direction), The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, War of the Worlds, Casanova, My Date With Drew (a good-humored rendering of a metaphor about youthful pluck and persistence and team spirit), My Summer of Love, Paradise Now. (26)