And for those who requested it...a top ten list.

1. The New World (Malick)
2. The Phantom Limb / Pan With Us (Rosenblatt/Russo)
3. 2046 (Wong)
4. Saraband (Bergman)
5. Funny Ha Ha / Mutual Appreciation (Bujalski)
6. A History Of Violence (Cronenberg)
7. Kissing On The Mouth / LOL (Swanberg)
8. Star Wars: Revenge Of The Sith / King Kong (Lucas / Jackson)
9. Last Days (Van Sant)
10. I'll leave this one open.

Happy New Year! Your blog is a great read, David, I hope 2006 will bring more of the good. :)

Here's my top 10:

1. Gegen die Wand / Head on (Akin)
2. Brokeback Mountain (Lee)
3. King Kong (Jackson)
4. Turtles can fly (Ghobadi)
5. Good Night, and Good Luck. (Clooney)
6. Batman Begins & Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Nolan / Burton)
7. Me and you and everyone we know (July)
8. A History of Violence
9. Million Dollar Baby
10. Kissed by Winter (Norway's Oscar entry - great film!) (Johnsen)

i'm dying to see the new world, hoping it'll show up here in the next couple of weeks. nice to see it perched up top of your list. a good omen i believe.

i've only seen a few films on your list..must get to watching!

I thought Head-On was almost great, but despite its flaws, it's an absolutely electric and important film. I'm actually probably going to watch it again tonight or tomorrow, since the friend whose house I'm crashing at right now has it on DVD.

Head-On is fantastic, not to mention remarkably acted. I was lucky enough to see it on the big screen, twice: once at BIFF, in 2004, and again this year at the University of Queensland.

If I had seen it on the big screen, the issues I had with the film (purely stylistic ones) might have been moot. Unfortunately, I saw it on that most unkind format - a VHS press screener.

I couldn't get over the reckless passion of the film, though - what I described in my (typo-heavy) review as something similar to those ecstatic moments of degredation in Bukowski novels, when the hero transcends the gutter he's falling into.

I disagree, however, with all these folks who say Cahit was a Nick Cave look-a-like. Is a long shock of greasy black hair all it really takes?

I first saw Head-On in a great cinema in Ankara, Turkey. I was neither fluent in turkish or german, but the power of the film struck me on so many levels that I was stunned. Finally seeing the film with subtitles back home in Norway in january 05 it grew even more powerful and it echoes so much of the mentality of today's Europe. So the importance of the story and how it is profoundly adressing difficult issues in a so haunting way makes it unique in my book. Stylistically it is very rough, almost so much that it looks bad, but to me it only reflects so much of the characters that it becomes a storytelling tool in its own. Both cinemas I saw it in projected a film that looked and sounded great - haven't seen it either on DVD or VHS though.

Thanks for the shout out. I feel really honored that you like my films.

Here's to a great 2006!