Hollywood hasn't learned. That's the predominant thought running through my head as 2005's year in film goes bye-bye and 2006's cinematic offerings rear their heads. Whether these heads are ugly or not has yet to be seen, but if the past twelve months were any indication, Hollywood is in desperate need of a creative recharge. Weekend box office receipts plummeted fairly consistently from their year-ago levels, and taking a look at the list of releases, it doesn't take a molecular physicist to figure out why.

With seemingly ever other movie being an unnecessary remake ("The Longest Yard," "Yours, Mine & Ours," "The Fog," "The Amityville Horror"), an unneeded adaptation of an old television series ("Bewitched," "The Honeymooners," "The Dukes of Hazzard"), a pointless sequel ("xXx: State of the Union," "Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous," "The Transporter 2," "Son of the Mask," "Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo"), sequels of remakes ("Cheaper by the Dozen 2," "The Ring Two"), and even a remake of a stage musical that was a remake of a film ("The Producers"), originality was in short supply. If a film did have a big opening, it was because of the initial name value. Time after time, however, they would dramatically drop off the radar and be forgotten about a week later, because few were good enough to get people excited and achieve any sort of long-term durability.

As usual, some great motion pictures slipped through in 2005, though, in this writer's opinion, they weren't always the widespread popular choices that captured the attention of other critics. Compared to 2004, my number of four and three-and-a-half-star picks was dead-even—17. Unfortunately, the amount of truly bad films—those that rated one star or lower—continued their dismaying downward spiral. In 2001, there were 9. In 2002, there were 13. In 2003, there were 14. Last year there were 16. And this year, there were 21. Since the amount of reviewed movies has not differed of any consequence in the last five years, those statistics can only mean one thing: Hollywood is churning out turkeys at a higher rate with each annual change of the calendar.

The format of my "Year-in-Review" essay is the same as usual. First, I pinpoint the best performances of the year, both in the leading and supporting categories (think of them as themovieboy.com's Acadamy Awards, minus the little gold man and with more than five nominees). Next are my picks for the most overrated and underrated releases of the year. And finally, there will be a complete rundown of the ten best and worst motion pictures of 2005. Until next year, let's cross our fingers that the major film studios get a clue soon that creative thought and intelligence still hold some credence in this world. Otherwise, "Punky Brewster: The Movie" and a remake of "Ishtar" may not be far behind.