After the past few months of complete noneventness hereabouts, I have no right to expect anyone to care what I liked reading/viewing/hearing in 2005, but I do have the right to shout loudly in this empty hall of a blog and admire the echoes. Unfortunately, I can’t repeat last year’s list extravaganza, but you might still find something new here.
Apart from the Hitchhikers preview (because it was a rare chance to get in first) and Revenge of the Sith (because I had to write about it right away, before over-analysing it) I haven’t reviewed any movies here this year. There are two reasons: one, I told Paul and Nic I’d do some reviews for nofreelist.com, which meant not doing them here first (but kept getting side-tracked to the point where it was getting embarrassing); and two, I haven’t actually been to a lot of movies this year.
So in an effort to address both, I’m going to sweep up all the remnants of my 2005 movie-watching into one big review here, and see what sticks out in the way of useful-sized lint-balls to send to mino and pearly. Then if I see any more I won’t just be adding to the backlog. Here we go...
What a strange experience that was.
I’ve just come back from Episode III, after spending half of yesterday reading huge amounts of Star Wars analysis at Andrew Rilstone’s site (and Lord of the Rings analysis, and Doctor Who analysis, &c.), which if you have any interest in the subject I’d urge you to read: his conclusion is one of the best things I’ve read about the whole phenomenon in the past twenty-seven years. I don’t think it’s a betrayal of the 12-year-old self who was overwhelmed by The Empire Strikes Back in 1980 to agree with his argument that all of the sequels and prequels, even that one (which improved on the original in so many respects), have undermined the power of the original Star Wars—not A New Hope, not Episode IV, but Star Wars—a movie that might otherwise stand tall today as the greatest B-movie ever, styrofoam sets and styrofoam acting and all. Not as badly as The Matrix was undermined by its sequel, mind you (I still haven’t even seen the third one), but undermined nonetheless.
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20 May 2005 · 
Now that The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie has opened, I’d better get my early bird review out there before the worms get it. Thanks to The Observer’s free preview screenings, I’ve known whether all the other reviewers were right or wrong for a full 42 and a bit hours. And the answer is... [scroll seven and a half million years down for spoilers].
Film in 2004