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I started writing this column because I was unimpressed with the typical Calvin Award for Best Overlooked Film and its very loose interpretation of the word overlooked. Typically, it gives our writers leeway to vote for films that actually did pretty well at the box office and got considerable attention, if not from the mainstream, then at least among most movie fans.

However, when looking at the choices that the BOP staff came up with for the 2006 Calvin Awards, it's hard to argue with any of them. Hustle & Flow scored over $20 million as well as a couple of Oscar nominations (including a very deserving Best Song win), but all of the rest of the films on the list richly and sadly deserve the title "overlooked." Several of them were critically acclaimed but were completely ignored by audiences, including this audience. I'll admit that I haven't seen Murderball, Grizzly Man, El Crimen Perfecto, Junebug, Downfall, or Land of the Dead. That's more than half of the nominees, and I'm a little embarrassed about that.

So when I set out to make my list of the best overlooked films of 2005, it was not with the intention of critiquing the stellar group that made the original list. Rather, it is just me putting forth what my ballot would have been had I voted for the award back in 2006. And of course, I am working under my new, much stricter for parameters for what constitutes an overlooked film. None of the nominees can have made more than $5 million at the domestic box office or have won an Academy Award in a major category (i.e. not Foreign Language Film or Documentary). This would eliminate Hustle & Flow, Shopgirl, Millions, and Land of the Dead.

It's gonna be really difficult to kick this article off without making a pedophile joke, but I will try and avoid it. At number ten is Roman Polanski's adaptation of Charles Dickens' classic tale of young orphan boys on the streets of London, Oliver Twist. Not the usual dark, edgy fare for which Polanski is known, this is a straightforward and beautiful period piece, excellently adapted by The Pianist scribe Ronald Harwood. Polanski recreates Dickensian London in superb detail, but the man who really steals the movie is Ben Kingsley, as Fagin. Kingsley is delightfully creepy as the leader of the orphans, and his performance shows why he is one of the best film actors working today.

Of the films on the original list that fit within my rules of "overlooked," I've only seen one, and that one comes in at number nine. Mysterious Skin marked the moment when Joseph Gordon-Levitt went from being that kid from 3rd Rock from the Sun to being the crowned prince of the independent film world. Gordon-Levitt stars as a gay prostitute in a small town in Kansas trying to escape his history of sexual assault. Costarring is Brady Corbet, who is trying to find the truth behind what he believes to have been an alien abduction in his childhood. Mysterious Skin is a difficult film to watch, but it's worth the effort as it is a beautiful character study featuring some fantastic performances.

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