We open the New Year with a look back at the films of 2005. Here are the Top Ten lists of B&C regulars Roy Anker and Peter Chattaway.

While we're on the subject of what to see, don't miss David Sutherland's documentary, Country Boys, which will air on PBS in three installments on January 9, 10, and 11. You may recall Sutherland's 1998 documentary, The Farmer's Wife, one of the best pieces I've seen on the fate of the small farmer and the state of rural America. Country Boys is equally powerful, focusing on two teenage boys in Appalachia. One of the boys is transformed by his faith in Christ and the support of the church he joins.

Roy Anker's Top Ten

Not in ranked order, though #1 really is number 1.

1. Capote. The title says it: a chilling look at the means and person of author Truman Capote (1924–84) as he develops In Cold Blood (1966, and in 1967, a much–praised film), his best–selling nonfiction novel on the 1959 murder of a Kansas farm family. The wonderful, even eerie performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman as the flamboyant Capote dissects his deviousness, narcissism, and guilt as he extricates all he needs to know from too–trusting killer Perry Smith (Clifton Collins, Jr.). Moral compass comes from Harper Lee (Catherine Keener), Capote's childhood friend, later his research assistant, and then herself best–selling author of To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), in which Capote appears as the character Dill. What script and acting don't display, stunning cinematography does. The year's best film, it is also the best in years on how individual evil happens.
2. Good Night and Good Luck. Another period piece, directed and co–written by actor George Clooney, this spare, haunting treatment of the founders of CBS news and journalist lodestar Ed Murrow not only gets the feel of the Fifties right but displays what guts and grace look like, the occasion being the McCarthy communist–conspiracy hubbub. David Strathairn, age 56, finally gets the lead that shows his stuff. And Clooney exercises more intelligence and passion behind the camera than he ever displays in front of it.
3. The Constant Gardener. Director Fernando Meirelles (City of God) is the first to nail John Le Carre's elusive tone—this time prophetic nightmare—since the BBC's 1980s version of spymaster George Smiley (Alec Guinness). As a British diplomat posted to a pestilent Africa, a splendid Ralph Fiennes is diffidence perfected, until his wife dies for her curiosity about multinational pharmaceuticals' use of Africa for lab testing. Here, as in the novel, Le Carre's once–rueful moralism has gone furious and dire.
4. Syriana. The global oil trade occasions still more international skullduggery, this time fostered by American corporate greed and its CIA servants who murder and generally foment Mideast turmoil in order to foster American oil dominance. Regardless of the accuracy of the tale, writer (Traffic) and director Stephen Gaghan's storytelling is elegant and searing visually, and the cast is really good.
5.  Saraband. Flawed but still magisterial (and somber), the aged (87) Ingmar Bergman's film is analytic, ruminative, and haunting. As usual, Bergman inspects what people do to each other unto the third and fourth generations for God only knows what reasons. Against all odds, though, God waves still at a truculent humanity. Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson reprise their roles from Bergman's 1970s Swedish TV series, Scenes From a Marriage.
6. Millions. Full of visual wit, directed by rowdy Brit Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later), and the freshest Christmas story in a very long time, Millions tells the story of a motherless, mystical eight–year–old (sees saints) who comes upon a huge bag of cash. Dead–serious respectful while avoiding the least bit of preachiness, the story delivers a cogent reading on blessing and generosity.
7. The March of the Penguins. Indeed, in the year of the documentary—Grizzly Man, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, and Darwin's Nightmare—this is the one that hit it really big, and rightly so, though the artic feathery ones come off looking nobler than most people. Elegant photography and editing do their magic.
8. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Against all odds, director Andrew Adamson serves up a very good version of Lewis' novel. An entertainment for children, one that hones the soul, it is just about pitch–perfect.  Sets and computer graphics are great (without overkill), the narrative flies, the actors suffice, especially Georgie Henley as Lucy, and the story, well, feels like Lewis himself.
9. Munich. Dressed up as thriller on Israeli revenge after the 1972 Munich Olympics debacle, Steven Spielberg's latest is in fact a searing meditation on responsibility, terrorism, revenge, and guilt in global politics. Deft, efficient, and powerful, the film is free of its maker's habitual operatics until the end, and by then one hardly cares.