2009 top 23 films
December 26, 2009
Since the end of the year is upon on us, and the lists are starting to pop up in all sorts of media, here is my list of favorite films of 2009. I have included links to buy on Amazon where appropriate, so you can support this blog in an easy way (Note: some links are pre-orders or pages where you can sign up to be notified when a release date for the item has been announced).
1. (500 Days) of Summer
An omniscient narrator sets the film up early on by noting “this is not a love story,” but few films ever capture the feeling of falling in love as well as this movie. Director Marc Webb proves himself a deft craftsman of the stale genre of romantic comedy, which too easily becomes formulaic. The couple in (500) Days of Summer share some beautiful, subtle moments of tenderness as well as heart-rending moments of disconnectedness that never comes across as heavy-handed. The movie constantly reminds you that these are two different people with different ideas of a relationship, yet they stubbornly continue dating while remaining lovable all the same thanks to the wit of the script and the strong chemistry between Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel.
2. Inglourious Basterds
Buy: DVD or Blu-ray or 3-Disc Collector’s Edition Blu-ray
Inglourious Basterds is a true film lover’s film. Quentin Tarantino has always shown a deft ability to exploit the tools of cinema for maximum effect on the nerves through action and suspense while showing a true affection for movie-making. I’ve come to feel that whenever he is fully involved in a movie (not just writing a script), he can do no wrong. I saw this movie toward the end of its run in theaters, and even in a small movie house with a sparse audience, when the final scene ended the audience broke out in applause. Great writing, performances and pacing throughout Inglourious Basterds shows a movie’s run time matters little when the director can make it entertaining throughout.
3. The Fantastic Mr. Fox
No one does awkward as artistically as Wes Anderson, and his foray into stop-motion generated story-telling raises his lovable, damaged characters to a new level. In the strange alternate world of Fantastic Mr. Fox, the characters’ self-conscious struggles with their own shortcomings never fit more comfortably into an Anderson-directed flick. The challenge of appreciating Anderson’s work depends on how willing the audience is to acknowledge their own faults in the self-deprecating humor that drives his movies. With Fantastic Mr. Fox, he ingeniously disguises that premise behind fuzzy animals with human qualities. However, the film never sugar coats their animal behavior with innocent cuteness. The sharp delivery of dialogue between the characters sometimes slips toward wild unpredictable primal behavior, which wittily treads the line of silliness and danger. Unlike so many movies for kids, this movie felt organic and authentic, and what do kids need most but true, heart-felt honesty, even if that truth might have its dark places? As Fantastic Mr. Fox continually reminds us, “We’re wild animals.”
4. Syndromes and a Century
Buy: DVD
My only regret about this film is that I had to catch on DVD to experience it. It must have looked amazing on film. Still, the movie rises above most other films on DVD through its transcendent use of sound and vision. Never have I seen a film capture the sense of observing as strongly as Syndromes and a Century. The film lingers on landscapes, objects and people in a trance-like manner that compels the viewer to activate their internal eyes.
5. Broken Embraces
I really think Pedro Almodovar can do no wrong. His twisting tales wind from comical situations to deep insights into humanity while stopping at interesting and entertaining detours in-between. Broken Embraces, a story about family connections hidden in a near Hitchcockian-mystery is one more in a series of recent masterpieces by Almodovar. It’s hard to say if I think it is better than Talk to Her, Bad Education and Volver. He is one of the few directors currently working whose only competition is himself.
6. Avatar
George Lucas must be crying. His much-hyped Star Wars prequels fell short of their supposed revolution in digital filmmaking, and now James Cameron’s Avatar comes along to swoop down and take the recognition. Where the new Star Wars films felt like nothing more than live action and animation clashing together, Avatar feels absorbing and nearly organic (still missing in these digital characters is the actual sense of physical weight. Even in this movie, the digital creatures feel as if they are floating in the frame, instead of weighted to the ground by gravity). With Avatar, we again have the recycled hero-myth story, as also seen in the original Star Wars movie from 1977. The difference in the effects utilized to tell the story in Avatar, however, are so absorbing (especially in 3-D) that it’s enough to make anyone who saw the original Star Wars in the theater suffer a heart attack.
7. Star Trek
I had grown tired of the Star Trek films years ago. I think part of the problem of these film adaptations was that they were TV shows given the high gloss of cinematic re-envisioning. They were just fancy TV shows with the same cast members. With a new cast of actors and a springboard originating in the movie house, this movie felt like a true blockbuster worth repeated viewings in the cinema and now on DVD and Blu-Ray. I think credit lies in director JJ Abrams’ lack of preciousness for the TV series. During interviews for the movie he was quick to note he had never been a fan of the TV show, and it shows, as he breaths new life into the stale series with a newfound tension among shopworn characters.
8. District 9
Buy it: DVD or DVD Special Edition or Blu-ray
This sci-fi film felt like something done by the matured audience of the E.T. generation. It’s E.T. with a social conscience, not just a romanticized kids’ adventure film. Director Neill Blomkamp asks deep questions through the notion of aliens landing on earth, subsequently adding deeper stakes to the action sequences, which made for one of the more harrowing sci-fi films in the genre’s history.
9. Up
Buy it: DVD or DVD Special Edition or Blu-ray
I think the opening prologue of Up, yet another Pixar success story, was one of the greatest set up pieces in cinema. A marvelous bit of character development unfolds almost wordlessly, and you soon know what is at stake when old Mr. Fredericksen takes flight to South America in a floating house. You can tell the movie has a talented group of animators with true pumping hearts, unlike so many kiddie films cooked up by committees whose low brow attempts to humor their young audiences so often falls flat, cold and dumb. Up is one of those rare cartoons that transcends its digital images to reveal a living, breathing soul.
10. Tokyo Sonata
Kiyoshi Kurosawa took his filmmaking to a higher level with this family drama that unfolds during these economically crippling times that affected all corners of the globe. There are no surreal, supernatural elements to lean back on here (as much as I love his strange, unrealities that speak to the deeper core of our realities), just true family drama and crippling repression (both psychological, not to mention financial) .
11. Moon
Like District 9, Moon feels like a sci-fi film looking for something more than simply flash and entertainment. It fits best among the sci-fi dramas of Solaris and 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is a terrific achievement by newbie feature director Duncan Jones (who got his degree in philosophy and then went into advertising). Jones has a lot to offer as a young sci-fi director. He seems much more focused than the much-hyped Richard Kelly, who serrendiptously stumbles through his convoluted plots. High hopes abound for this young, new talent who is already at work on his next sci-fi film entitled Escape From the Deep.
12. Ponyo
Buy it: DVD available now or DVD preorder or Blu-ray preorder
The revered Hiyao Miyazaki returns with another animated fable that deals with man’s ecological impact on the planet couched within a love story at its most innocent: a boy fascinated by a weird-looking goldfish that wants to be human. Miyazaki and his team at Ghibli Studios indulge in their talents of hand drawn animation that eschews technology with just as much sincerity and pure love as that between the boy and the fish. The results are amazing and beyond what digital work can capture. In one scene, the waves in the angry sea undulated with incomparable organic rage that most likely would be lost in cold computer algorithms.
13. The Headless Woman
Buy it: DVD
Lucrecia Martel proves herself a master of upper crust alienation with her latest film, the most focused of her career. The extreme situation of a hit and run that may or may not involve a little boy is a catalyst for the title character’s actions or, better put, inaction. Actress Maria Onetto does an amazing job portraying a woman who tries to carry on her routine despite the mystery of her actions gnawing at her psyche. Martel’s distant and purposely unfocused manner of storytelling never found a subject more apt to her style.
14. Antichrist
I came away from this movie thinking I saw an attempt at something deeply probing into the psychology of marriages. It felt a bit like the same feeling I had when I saw Eyes Wide Shut for the first time (I’ve seen it countless times since and count it among Kubrick’s masterpieces). I’m still figuring out Antichrist. I got stuck with a bad screening plagued by technical difficulties during the film’s digital projection, which did not help matters. But I have a feeling this film could have been a rich experience into the dark well of the unconscious.
15. Watchmen
Buy it: DVD Director’s Cut or DVD Ultimate Cut or Blu-ray Director’s Cut or Blu-ray Ultimate Cut or the graphic novel
If anything, no matter how much director Zach Snyder tried, this movie proves you cannot make a faithful film interpretation of a comic book masterpiece. There are just too many key elements in this story that are so grounded in the comic book medium to effectively translate to a movie audience. Still, there are some excellent characters and ideas in here that came from a genius mind: original comic book writer Alan Moore, who rightfully refuses to attach his name to the cinematic version. Ironically, it is his ideas that give the movie its deeper quality, hence why I am including a link to buy the book, which truly is the best way to experience this story.
16. I Love You, Man
I Love You, Man was a hilariously uncomfortable bromantic comedy out of Hollywood for men who are not afraid of feelings. Yes, these jokes are nothing new or groundbreaking, but they had never been committed to celluloid with such genius comic timing, thanks mostly to the performances by Paul Rudd and Jason Segal, who did none too shabby as the apple of Rudd’s eye. But, make no mistake, this is a true love story among straight men, the only kind of relationship that could come out of a mutual appreciation of Rush’s music, mind you.
17. Julia
Buy: DVD
Director Erick Zonca and actress Tilda Swinton do a remarkable job at creating a hero out of a self-absorbed, even psychopathic alcoholic. Julia takes the idea of the deluded alcoholic and enhances the mal-perceived invulnerability, not to mention the paranoia and desperation, of the afflicted lush by throwing her into an extreme situation involving a kidnapping. The situation inevitably goes awry, taking her over the border to Juarez, Mexico where things go from bad to worse, forcing her into some kind of redemption. Besides the deftly wound story, the powerful performance at its core by Swinton will undoubtedly and criminally go over-looked during awards season.
18. Where the Wild Things Are
This much-hyped kids movie even went so far as making it to 3-D and IMAX screens and topped the box office during its opening. But, man did it disappoint people, ultimately losing close to $25 million (see box office mojo). When I saw it, I overheard a man sitting behind me, who brought a pack of rowdy kids with him, declare: “That was the worst movie I’ve ever seen!” God forbid a kiddie film actually holds up a mirror to the savage nature of children. Director Spike Jonez and writer David Eggers’ take on Maurice Sendak’s children’s classic Where the Wild Things Are is a collision of darkness, adventure, wonder, fear, aggression and mystery. With its few famous words (338), the book can only lend itself to interpretation. What you put into it, is what you get out of it. The movie is the product of two clear lovers of the book (a film sanctioned by Sendak), and with its spare story and the raw reactionary behavior of its characters, it continues to ask the audience if they are in touch with the wild thing within them.
19. A Serious Man
Hyped as a personal film by the Cohen brothers, supposedly the closest they have come to producing a movie based on their childhood, this film proves to be one of their more puzzling works of art. I recall being accosted on the way out of the movie by a group of elderly Jewish people who asked me “What does it mean?” Mind you, I am not Jewish, nor do I look it (though when I worked at the Miami Jewish Film Festival, people thought I was an Ashkenazi Jew based on my Latin looks). Two women lead the questioning, looking at me like I was keeping some secret. As they continued to ask “What does it mean?” the older men just stood behind them. All I could think was how this made an even better ending to the great, cryptic ending of the actual movie. I’ll keep my answer to the ladies between them and me.
20. Away We Go
This movie felt larger than the funny notion of putting a pregnant couple into a road movie in search of the ideal place to raise their family while visiting their dysfunctional relatives and friends across North America. Away We Go shows how we live in our own realities and dreams and how uncertainly they fit into the
world. The best anyone can do to cope is by finding the true self, in the Jungian sense. The greatest home one can find is within the partner one chooses to share a home with. The final scene is transcendent in the way it captures these characters taking their realities into a dream, as a family unit. It felt surreal and powerful and much deeper than some witty road movie.
21. Up in the Air
This is probably Jason Reitman’s tightest film yet. I think the power of it lies in the humanity of his characters. They are less cartoonish than those of his other acclaimed works, Juno and Thank You For Smoking. Reitman not only handles the cold downsizing of today’s corporate environment with an evenhanded yet emotional quality, he also peers deeply into the soul of a man who can deliver the notices without feeling any guilt about it while continuing to enjoy the hollow experience of travelling between assignments.
22. Paranormal Activity
Buy: DVD or Blu-ray or DVD Limited Edition
I have to give Paranormal Activity its due for its technical merit in creating a nerve-wracking horror movie without the cheap, in-your-face gore. It wasn’t only in the bedroom scenes that unfold in the dark, as you see the effects of the things that go bump in the night. The set-ups were brilliant with a so-called expert in the paranormal showing his wariness to enter the house and the simple scan across images from a demonology book, hinting at what this entity might look like. Paranormal Activity was a fun, creepy ride that proves nothing is scarier in the movies than what you cannot see.
23. The Road
An exercise in desolation that puts you in the uncomfortable philosophical and psychological position to consider the question “What would you do?” On what appears to be a dying planet Earth, God has seemingly abandoned man both spiritually and physically. Nothing can thrive on the planet except man. All the vegetation has somehow ceased to grow and the animals have all died off, leaving the few human survivors to cannibalize their fellow man or scavenge for any edible scraps left from the previous society. As a father and son (played with melancholy desperation by Viggo Mortenson and Kodi Smit-McPhee) search for some hope at the coast, one cannot help but wonder what lies at the core of human nature: good or evil. Probably the most hopeless movie ever made.
* * *
In many ways, this is not a definitive list for 2009. It’s a personal favorites list. Also, there are so many movies from 2009 that have yet to play in Miami or I missed opportunities to see: Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Jane Campion’s Bright Star, Lorna’s Silence from the Dardenne brothers, Tulpan, Police Adjective, Black Dynamite, The House of the Devil, An Education and on and on, so this list is bound to change or, better yet, grow.
Everyone will have his or her own list. If you feel passionate about something I have not included or included, do share. Also, share your own lists, while you are at it. They can be mere top 10s, too.
Open letter to IFC: send 35 mm to UM’s Cosford Cinema!
December 15, 2009
In my last post I had dreaded yet another digital presentation of a movie at the University of Miami’s Cosford Cinema. The inherit problem with digital projection is that the images lack the warmth of those captured on 35 mm. Colors seem flatter and colder. Also, I have sat through too many digital presentation with glitches that take you out of the movie. A second of pixilation can destroy minutes of getting back into a cinematic experience.
The projection of Antichrist, however, was the worst experience I had yet with digital projection. God bless the Cosford for taking chances and showing works like Antichrist, which, judging from the size of the crowd on a Saturday night, has a small audience. But, curses to IFC for giving them only hi-def computer files to project the films they distribute, especially one with technical difficulties.
The opening sequence unfolded nicely. But when the dialogue finally began a line that is obviously a flaw in the source file and certainly looked like a computer glitch, displaced the image as if you were looking at something over the surface of water in a glass. It slowly ran down the image and the speaking fell out of synch with the images.
I wondered whether this was an artistic flourish, as up to that point, no character had spoken on film yet. It went on for a couple of minutes, taking me out of the dialogue and concerning me with the image. Then the projectionist brought up the house lights and fumbled with the file, going to the opening logo and the first scene. Of course there was no time to sit through the first 10 minutes of the movie again, so he flipped through the file until we were back in the middle of the first scene of dialogue again.
After that horrifying jolt out of the movie experience, the “line” that ran down the screen returned, like a badly tuned TV channel and would recur at least three more times in the movie, and I dreaded the sound falling out of sync with the images again. I think it might have become off by some barely perceptible split second, but then I was lost in the movie again. I’m sure Von Trier would have been enraged to hear about this.
After the screening, I went over to the projectionist who stopped the end credits early to fumble with the file. I asked him what happened, and he blamed the file. I asked where is 35 mm projection, and he said, the theater has put in a request to IFC to send 35 mm films but so far they have not been granted the prints. So, let this be an open letter to IFC: send 35 mm film to the Cosford Cinema at the University of Miami. The fans who attend those screenings are true film aficionados who want to see their movies on film.
A problematic screening does not make for an ideal setting for a proper, thoughtful review of a movie, so I do hope to somehow see this again and provide that.
Antichrist: Shock movie comes to Miami
December 10, 2009
I am familiar with Von Trier’s work in a sporadic way. I loved Breaking the Waves. It had an intense power behind the story. I felt insulted by Dancer in the Dark when I saw it in the theaters, but have come to appreciate it over the years. I have not seen many of his films (I own Europa on DVD, but have yet to watch it), but my curiosity in his latest work is beyond any interest in the Von Trier catalog.
I hated Requiem For a Dream when I first saw, but slowly grew fond of it after repeated viewings. I met director Darren Aronofsky at a press screening for The Wrestler and told him about my response to the movie, and he said, “That just means you’re normal.”
I also had the privilege to see Irreversible with Director Gasper Noe present at the Miami Film Festival a few years back. I have not forgiven him, however. I thought the film was pure malice toward the audience and a gimmicky, hackneyed job to top it off, and I thought the young fans fawning over his work and feeding his ego at the screening were a bunch of robot drones with stunted emotions.
Not too long ago, I sat through Taxidermia, a Hungarian movie that played at the Cosford this past month. It dwelled on bodily functions in practically every other scene. Then it ended with a close-up of a self-evisceration and taxidermy that felt like it went on for 10 minutes (it may have been longer). That movie is still stewing in my mind before I can give it any kind of credit or just dismiss it, but I hear the director, György Pálfi, is being considered for directing a Hollywood film already.
Either way, movies that shock and disturb have inspired me to think and pass judgement on their qualities either way, and I look forward to offering a thoughtful commentary on Antichrist over the weekend. The fact that the film has so far scored a 50% on the Rotten Tomatoes website is telling on how divided the audience is on this latest work by Von Trier.
Independent Ethos 