Here we are again. At the end of another long year in film. The year may have ended in January, but I give myself an extra month to see the films that don't get released near me until January. This year was pretty good for the movie world, and there are a few on my list that I might love even more later on. I can say, though, that this list has 10 movies I would have no problem sitting down and watching again. The quality wasn't as high, but the entertainment value was still there.
10. Inglourious Basterds
Dir. Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino finally released his much-delayed sixth film (if you count Kill Bill as one) and proved, once again, why he's so damn talented. It's a film that runs 150 minutes and is largely free of violence, relying on words to be the driving force. Brad Pitt stars as Lt. Aldo Raine, who leads a group of jews through Nazi land killing Nazis Apache-style. The violence is gruesome but brief, and Tarantino builds the suspense the old fashioned way: with characters, situation, and an abundance of dialogue. Melanie Laurent stars as Shosanna, the jewish girl who escapes execution to own a movie theater that hosts the premiere of the latest Nazi propaganda drivel. The film deserved the SAG award it won for Best Ensemble, because it really is an ensemble piece and no one character is the star. Brad Pitt is in maybe a third of the film. And it gives us one of the best villains of all time, Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), who makes milk and strudel terrifying.
9. Up in the Air
Dir. Jason Reitman
Jason Reitman has only made three feature movies in his career, and so far I have featured all three on my top 10 lists of their respected years. While this isn't his funniest movie (Thank You For Smoking still holds that title), it is definitely his best, a rich blend of comedy and drama, set against the backdrop of our current economic struggle. George Clooney is Ryan Bingham, who works for a company that loans him out to other companies to handle their layoffs. And business is never better then during this economic hardship. He prefers to be alone, but must show the ropes to an up and coming Cornell grad with an idea of how to fire people most cost-effectively. Clooney's character also dreams of reaching 10,000,000 frequent flyer miles. It's a movie with a lot of ideas that successfully balances all of them, and seems to strike a true chord. In the times we live in, something like this could not be more welcome.
8. Up
Dir. Pete Doctor
For the fourth year in a row, Pixar continues to rank on my list. Up is as spectacular as Wall•E (2008) or Ratatouille (2007), and is more of a throwback to silly children's entertainment. It opens with a five-minute sequence that beautifully says so much about life, love, and loss without a single word of dialogue that will bring you near to tears, and then embarks as a safer, more conventional adventure as geezer Carl Fredricksen lifts his house into the air and sets off to South America with Junior Explorer Russell in tow. Doug, the talking dog, is definitely a winner and everyone sees their dog personified in Doug, but the rest of the talking dogs, while entertaining, are boring, and so is the villain, an old explorer who has spent his life searching for some rare bird. Few Pixar movies have true villains (A Bug's Life, Toy Story, Monsters, Inc., and The Incredibles all have villains) but at least they are interesting. Still, Up will take you away on a grand adventure for the young and the old, and is still a worthy addition to the Pixar canon.
7. Goodbye Solo
Dir. Ramin Bahrani
Ramin Bahrani is another director who supposedly has never made a bad film. I haven't seen Man Push Cart or Chop Shop, but I have seen Goodbye Solo, and this film is one of pure beauty. Solo is a cab driver somewhere in a small North Carolina town who picks up an old man who requests to be taken to certain location. Solo becomes fascinated with the old man, and soon begins driving him everywhere and trying to befriend him, suspecting the old man of wanting to commit suicide. It's a beautiful tale of two very different people and two very different points in life coming together, and Bahrani has a mastery of moving his film along at just the right pace. The performances are also fantastic, as Souleymane Sy Savane radiates as Solo and Red West grumbles as William. The film has a perfect ending, and is really one of the rare joys of the year.
6. The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans
Dir. Werner Herzog
From a film of pure beauty to one that is all kinds of wrong, Bad Lieutenant is a remake of an early 90s film of nearly the same name. But if you are going to remake something, Werner Herzog is the man to do it, putting his unique spin on culture and life. Nicolas Cage has seldom been better as Terence McDonaugh, a New Orleans cop who gets promoted to Lieutenant as he suffers a chronic back pain that leads him to become a massive druggie. Cage infuses his character with a mix of madness and strange rationality, and the movie works because you believe him for every moment of the film. Two scenes will enter the film lexicon, one involving iguanas, the other involving a dancing soul. The movie is unhinged, much like Cage's character, and keeps getting more and more outrageous. Never have I seen a film that made me root for a more obviously wrong character, but this one does it superbly.
5. Tokyo Sonata
Dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Now back to a film that isn't necessarily beautiful, but definitely deserves to be seen in its own right. Tokyo Sonata tells the tale of a middle-class Japanese family that slowly begins to disintegrate, as the father loses his job and can't muster the courage to tell his family, and his youngest son begins exploring his interest in music. It's a tale of roles and where we fit in our society, which seems to be a timeless theme. The father pretends to go to work, and instead meets a fellow unemployee who teaches him the habit of looking important while really being without pay. The film's third act features a rather odd device, as all the characters hit their climax, but it is brought back by a beautifully done piano solo of Claude Debussy's "Claire de Lune," which leaves you sitting in the theater long after the credits have roled.
4. A Serious Man
Dir. Joel & Ethan Coen
A Serious Man was a movie that didn't go down easy on my initial viewing. As soon as it ended and the credits rolled, I sat there with a definite wtf expression on my face. But as the hours passed and I pondered the movie, I realized just how good it was. Essentially it is an adaptation of the Book of Job set in a Minnesota suburb in the 1960s. Michael Stuhlbarg is Larry Gopnik, a college professor who receives a bribe from a failing student, and who returns home to find his wife seeking a divorce for no apparent reason. Everything happens out of the blue, and more and more bad shit keeps happening to Larry. The film is also peppered with strange folk tales, one about a dentist who finds Hebrew on a patient's teeth and tries to investigate the meaning of it. The rabbi who is telling this story suddenly stops, and Gopnik sits there saying, "Why did you tell me that?" People will feel the same way about the movie in general, and that is more or less the point, but it still stands as one of the Coen's best works.
3. Gake no ue nonyo (Ponyo)
Dir. Hayao Miyazaki
Miyazaki is a master of animation and storytelling; his sure hand always guides a project successfully to a finish, and no one seems to have more imagination or balls then he does. Ponyo is adapted from The Little Mermaid (the Hans Christian Andersen story), but it takes that story and makes it so much more innocent and pure. Ponyo is a little fish of some kind who breaks free of her father's rule, and becomes friends with Sosuke. She transforms into a human, slowly, and her breach of the elements causes massive flooding and crazy storm weather to abound. The movie is about the pure joy of being a child, as embodied by Sosuke and Ponyo. The movie has pure exhilarating moments as Ponyo runs across fish waves, and Ponyo makes Sosuke's little toy boat large enough for them to go explore the flooded town. I saw the American voiced version, which is miscast (the kids are too old and Liam Neeson doesn't ring true), and it features the most prime example of a great, cute kid's song being taken and run through the Disney shitmill to create a bastardized Ponyo song (sung by young Cyrus and Jonas). I can't wait to really see the movie in it's original Japanese form, but even some bad voice acting can't keep this movie from being truly spectacular.
2. The Hurt Locker
Dir. Kathryn Bigelow
The Hurt Locker is the first Iraq war movie I have seen that is actually frickin' amazing. This is largely in part due to the fact that it is about the men fighting in the service, and doesn't meditate on why we are there or what we are doing there. The soldiers are there doing what they are ordered, and this film follows one particular bomb defusing nut, SFC William James (Jeremy Renner) and the various bombs he defuses. This is another prime example of tension and suspense that exists because we care about the characters, we care about the situation, and this is also Hitchcock's bomb theory fully embodied into an entire movie. Every bomb-defusion is wrought with tension, as are the various other activities. The cast is uniformly terrific, with Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty as the other two main soldiers of the unit. This movie is right now in a heated battle with Avatar for Best Picture, while Avatar is a fine film, it is nowhere near as awesome as this one. Kathryn Bigelow deserves the Oscar, and this deserves Best Picture. It's obviously not my favorite of the year, but it is number two, and that's pretty damn good.
1. Where the Wild Things Are
Dir. Spike Jonze
While Ponyo is about the joy of childhood, Where the Wild Things Are is about the pain and misunderstanding of being a child. It takes place at that time in a child's life when imagination is venturing out the door and real adult responsibilities begin to set in. It opens with my favorite moment of the year, as young Max (Max Records) barrels down the stairs in pure, unfiltered childhood energy. He escapes into his world where the Wild Things roam, played by a variety of voice actors including James Gandolfini, Chris Cooper, and Lauren Ambrose, and becomes associated with their world. Each of the Wild Things represent an aspect of Max's life, and are beautifully realized as costumes and computer generated images. Rather then creating them in Post, Spike Jonze has real fur and blood characters there the entire time, and animates their face. More so then anything, this movie reminded me of my youth, when I would enter my own worlds and shut the rest out. Many parents claimed that this movie was too scary for children, and I agree kids under 7 may not like it, but kids from 8 - 10 get it, and the rest of us can relate. It's not a movie for kids, it's a movie about kids, and they have as many emotional issues as adults, they are just personified in their imagination. Max Records is also terrific as young Max, who is a little brat at times, but we all were. But I mostly fell in love with the Wild Things, and there crazy world where danger always lurks, but if you have your friends, you'll be just fine.
I like to honor more then just ten films. Those were my ranked favorites, but there are 20 more that were also pretty good. Here they are, alphabetically:
Avatar
Crazy Heart
An Education
Fantastic Mr. Fox
(500) Days of Summer
Food, Inc.
The Girlfriend Experience
In the Loop
The White Ribbon
World's Greatest Dad
In addition, I would like to host my own impromptu awards. Here are my picks for Best Director, Actor, and the like:
Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
Runner-up: Spike Jonze, Where the Wild Things Are
Best Actor: Nicolas Cage, The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans
Runner-up: Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart
Best Actress: Carey Mulligan, An Education
Runner-up: Gabourey Sidibe, Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire
Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
Runner-up: Peter Capaldi, In the Loop
Best Supporting Actress: Mo'Nique, Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire
Runner-up: Vera Farmiga, Up in the Air
Best Screenplay: Inglourious Basterds
Runner-up: A Serious Man
And of course, no year review would be complete without a round-up of the worst this year had to offer. In this final section, I pick the most overrated movie and reveal the 5 worst of the year.
Most Overrated Movie: District 9
5 Worst of the Year:
5. Watchmen
Dir. Zack Snyder
Suposed to be an original take on the superhero story, based off of an excellent graphic novel. It has the best opening titles sequence of the year, no doubt, but with mostly uncompelling characters, this one falls FAAAAAR short.
4. Antichrist
Dir. Lars von Trier
It's just brutal for the sake of brutalities sake. It features some gorgeous cinematography, and clearly has an interesting message, but von Trier is so full of himself that the movie becomes a crazy misogynistic tale, though the roles are reversed briefly. Still, got to give Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg kudos for being courageous enough to try something like this.
3. Terminator Salvation
Dir. McG
Pure, pure shit. The worst of the Terminator films. Shit blows up, things happen, and Christian Bale is probably in one of his worst roles as John Connor. Mr. Avatar Sam Worthington shows up here as a robot thing, but the movie is dramatically empty, and the story is pointless. I hope there won't be too many more of these.
2. Gamer
Dir. Neveldine/Taylor
Another film that takes flashy coolness of substance, Gamer tries to have a cool message about corporations in the evil future and selling your body for money and blah blah blah, but really it's brainless thrill ride, with not thrills. Michael C. Hall is pretty awesome, and Gerard Butler is terrible as always. It must be in his contract to star in shitty movies.
1. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Dir. Michael Bay
Really, I have wasted enough breath on this movie. Definitely one of the worst pieces of shit I have ever seen. Mindless, racist, offensive, it violates every rule of the make a good movie book. I won't be back for Transformers 3, thank you very much.
AND THAT'S IT! 2010 awaits with more interesting, exciting movies. I can't wait to see everything that is in store for us this year, and to kick off a whole new decade! LET THE MOVIES COMMENCE!
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