Top Ten of 2009

I'm gonna just go ahead and say that the reason this is up so unbelievably past the point of being relevant is because it's a reflection of how I felt about the overall quality of 2009's batch of films. Yeah ok, that works for me. The bizarre thing is I had a whopping total of 30, that's right THIRTY, films that I rated to be 3.5 stars or better. For those keeping score at home, that's the highest number since 2002. So what this means is, the mid-2000s were a very cynical time for me and 2009 represented a sort of renewed optimism for not just film, but life overall. Um, no. Ok ok, so it means that 2009 was a phenomenal year for film and I couldn't post this sooner because it would be irresponsible of me to try and evaluate such greatness right away. Nope again. The correct answer is, who the fuck knows. I call 'em as I see 'em and at the end when looking back, I can tell you how I felt the overall quality was and I maintain that it was down dammit. In yet another exciting twist, for the previous year of our lord 2008, I had only 19 films rated 3.5 stars or higher, BUT of those films, we got 2, possibly 3 bona fide classic films in The Dark Knight and Synecdoche, NY (The Wrestler is the third "potential" classic) and maybe that's why I view 2008 in a more favorable light. Maybe I'm just a top-heavy kinda guy. Let's get this over with.

10) Star Trek - Leave it to J.J. Abrams to deliver a summer blockbuster in the way the good lord intended. I suppose it's semi-relevant that I've never seen a single episode of Star Trek or any of the movies because I like to get laid and can only take so much big ships fighting with lasers in space shit in the span of one lifetime. I'm not entirely sure how this reinvention came across to the die-hards, but for a noob like me, I was exceedingly pleased with how much fucking FUN this film was. Chris Pine made for a charismatic, captivating lead and I'll be damned if Star Trek wasn't the best time I had at the ol' picture show all year.

9) A Single Man - Now that we can call Colin Firth an "Oscar winner" for his work in the tremendously overrated A King's Speech, you might want to hold back on the venom until you've seen his work in A Single Man because then you can go, "Oh THAT'S why it's okay he won!". Not exactly feel-great-about-life material here, but a very well-choreographed and nuanced character study of a man struggling to cope after a painful loss. Very moving stuff.

8) 500 Days of Summer - Stylistic feature film debut for the man responsible for the fate of my beloved Spider-Man series, Marc Webb. At times, it can be a little too cutesy for its own good, but overall, it hits the nail on the head as a compelling study of a failed relationship. Plus, haven't we ALL known that girl.

7) District 9 - So of the 4 films I've listed so far, all but one are feature film debuts for their respective directors, the lone exception being J.J. Abrams and even then, Star Trek was his second film, so maybe 2009 was the year of the promising neophyte. Good job, 2009, you're not so worthless after all. Oh yeah, so District 9 took me by surprise. One of the things that jumped out at me was how the film used a pretty much thoroughly unlikeable protagonist and yet, still made us give a shit. See, world? You CAN have a film set in the future with weird aliens and spaceships and all that other shit you like and not have it be unbelievably stupid! Amazing.

6) Watchmen - I'll admit I was never worried that Zack Snyder could capture the aesthetic of Alan Moore's groundbreaking graphic novel, but pardon me if the director of 300 wasn't exactly a guy I felt confident in grasping the thematic depth of a dense piece of work like Watchmen. Thankfully, he succeeded marvelously and frankly, it was kind of fun watching people go into this film like it was yet another run-of-the-mill superhero film only to walk out going, "What the fuck was that? Gimme my money back." The de-mythologizing of the superhero has never been so fascinating.

5) Moon - Sam Rockwell remains one of his generation's most underrated actors for whatever reason. He's an absolute chameleon and Moon is no exception as he has to play multiple clones of himself. Questions of identity and morality abound in yet another feature debut on this list. Not that I'm putting this in the class of a film like 2001 at all, but echos of it were certainly there.

4) A Serious Man - I'm starting to think that the Coen brothers simply have a pipeline to my soul and I just need to learn to live with it. In a darkly comic study of one man's quest to find the meaning of life and the impact of religion on his own existence, the Coens give us one of their least accessible films (although I'm just happy to live in a world that a directing/writing/producing team as brilliant as the Coens actually somewhat get the recognition they deserve), but yet, one of their more profound, thought provoking ones. But ain't that how it always goes?

3) The Hurt Locker - Taut, intense and brutal. I'm not big on war films, not because they all by and large have the same goal (war is hell, duh), but because they all tend to go about them in similar ways (seriously, we don't need any more films about how the Vietnam war was fucked up). The Hurt Locker succeeds in that it takes overall familiar subject matter and finds a way to make it engaging and thought provoking in a way that doesn't just beat the audience to death with some form of battle sensory overload. Oh and Jeremy Renner, where the fuck have you been hiding?

2) Two Lovers - If Joaquin Phoenix had actually quit acting after this, he could have done a whole fuck of a lot worse. Not only is he great, but the entire cast is in James Gray's expedition into the fucked up male psyche. Devastating on multiple levels and brutally honest. A film that deals with human emotions in a way that it's impossible for you to watch and not see some of yourself in some way, shape or form through the characters. Why do we love who we love or want who we want? Two Lovers explores this in a manner armed with a thesis that suggests there is no formula or logic to it. Maybe this one should have been number one.

1) Up in the Air - When I first saw this, I assumed it was your standard "no man is an island" claptrap bullshit and therefore, I spent 30 of the last 45 minutes just kind of rolling my eyes waiting for the inevitable conclusion until it threw me a curveball and made me realize that this film had higher goals than I originally thought. That's what I get for thinking I'm so smart. While superbly written and acted, I thought we were on familiar ground, but the mere fact that this film had the courage to actually say that, yes things can change but you still have to deal with the life you've lived and lie in the bed you made (plus subsequent viewings), really threw me for a loop and surprised me, in a refreshing way. While Up in the Air would normally be a standard top ten film in any other year as opposed to number one doesn't diminish that it's still a terrific piece of work.

Runners-Up: Inglourious Basterds, Drag Me to Hell, Up, World's Greatest Dad, Red Cliff, The Road, The White Ribbon

Individual Awards:
Best Actor: Colin Firth - A Single Man: This was tough. Jeff Bridges was absolutely phenomenal in Crazy Heart and may have single-handedly elevated that film above mediocrity, but Firth WAS this film. He embodied everything and kept everything remarkably grounded and nuanced and heartbreaking.
Runners-Up: Jeff Bridges - Crazy Heart, George Clooney - Up in the Air, Jeremy Renner - The Hurt Locker, Matt Damon - The Informant!, Tom Hardy - Bronson

Best Actress: Tilda Swinton - Julia: If you want an example of an actor/actress baring it ALL (literally and figuratively), look no further. While I'm not the most easily swayed when it comes to histrionic, bombastic performances, Swinton takes it to another level and deserves recognition.
Runners-Up: Abbie Cornish - Bright Star, Carey Mulligan - An Education, Helen Mirren - The Last Station, Gabourey Sidibe - Precious, Sasha Grey - The Girlfriend Experience

Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Waltz - Inglourious Basterds: Menacing, yet innocent. Give Tarantino credit, he knows how to wring tension out of any scene and he finds the right guys to do it. Waltz is phenomenal in every scene he's in and projects a grave threat that belies his diminutive stature.
Runners-Up: Peter Capaldi - In the Loop, Woody Harrelson - The Messenger, Tsutomu Yamazaki - Departures, Stanley Tucci - The Lovely Bones, Alfred Molina - An Education

Best Supporting Actress: Anna Kendrick - Up in the Air: Displaying a potent combination of precociousness and vulnerability, Kendrick appears at first sight like your typical ingenue, but the more you watch her, especially in this role, you get the sense that there's more sincerity and that she's here to stay.
Runners-Up: Patricia Clarkson - Whatever Works, Blanca Portillo - Broken Embraces, Samantha Morton - The Messenger, Imelda Staunton - Taking Woodstock

Other Miscellaneous Awards (Or Lack Thereof):
Worst Film of the Year: Going through the list of films I watched from 2009, I found very few candidates for such a prestigious honor and I'm beginning to now think that I really must have just shut it down in 2009. I clearly wasn't on point and bringing my A game, so I apologize retroactively for how I digested that year's crop of films. Unacceptable. BUTTTTT...the good news is I still was able to sift through all the stuff I found to be acceptable or even GOOD and stumbled upon this little gem. It made a lot of money and even got nominated *shudder* for awards. I'm speaking of course about the John Lee Hancock-directed masterpiece, The Blind Side. Let's just throw away the notion that I can't stand these heartfelt sports-based movies for the most part, let's just forget we know that fact. Then all you're left with is a movie that is cheesy and maudlin and thoroughly unbelievable and atrocious in every regard. I mean, Michael Oher, the guy who this movie is all about, doesn't even endorse the film. Of course, if someone made a film that made me appear completely inept in almost every conceivable fashion including being borderline retarded, I probably would disown it too. The fact that this gobbled up tons of cash at the box office and has been well represented during awards season is all the evidence you need to understand what state our nation is in.

Most Underrated/Underappreciated Film of the Year:
It's always nice to get pleasant surprises from the comedy genre seeing as how it's such barren wasteland full of disappointments and unfulfilled potential. I really enjoyed the dark, but hilarious humor courtesy of Observe and Report and World's Greatest Dad. Gentlemen Broncos got lambasted by critics, but I found that this film had echos of Napoleon Dynamite (which I happen to consider a good thing) and breezed by with frequent laughs. All three of these were pretty much overlooked and disregarded, but for me, they like movie rental ninjas...popping up out of nowhere to give me a lovely evening unexpectedly. I went on a big Steven Soderbergh kick that year and found The Girlfriend Experience to be compelling and moving in its own strange way. However, the number one most underrated/underappreciated film of the year I saw was John Woo's sprawling war epic, Red Cliff. Although the action/narrative momentum slows down in the second half (the only thing that kept me from giving this the year's only 4 star rating), Red Cliff is by and large a hugely entertaining piece of Chinese filmmaking. Epic, dramatic, compelling...I'm amazed this film did not catch on. I'll just assume it's because most Americans are cultural elitists who are subtitle-phobic. Yeah, that sounds about right.

The Proof That Seeing Something Twice Is Sometimes Necessary Award:
Inglourious Basterds. I'm not a Quentin Tarantino apologist or superfan, but I was pretty psyched for this one. The first time through, I thought it to be an ambitious, but unfortunately tedious slog of a movie. I thought it had individual moments/performances that were excellent (i.e. the opening scene and Christopher Waltz), but had wayyyyy too many dead spots and pointless character interactions (kinda like 75% of Death Proof). I decided to give it a second try because too many I respect found it to be one of the best of the year and I felt like it had the elements to succeed, it just never came together. The next time around, I found everything to be much more intense and some of what I had previously thought to be "pointless" now felt a lot more organic. I guess I was just in a stupid mood the first time.

The I'll Keep Seeing Your Stupid Movie Franchise Because I Can't Help Myself And I'm Not Proud Of It Award:
Fast and Furious.

Movie Quote Of The Year You Won't See Appearing On Good Morning America:
"I performed fellatio her." - Mike Tyson in James Toback's documentary Tyson

The Most Awesome Sam Raimi Scene That Only Sam Raimi Could Do Of The Year Award:
The gypsy fight in the car in Drag Me To Hell.

The I'm Not Embarrassed To Admit That I Got Legitimately Scared For A Good 20 Seconds Award:
Paranormal Activity.

The I Dare You Not To Get At Least A Little Choked Up Or You're A Soulless Heathen Scene Award:
The prologue to Pixar's Up. Good lord, I can't watch.



Most Disappointing Film(s) "Award":
Public Enemies and Extract. Neither were "awful" per se, but I expected much more than what I got considering the pedigree/subject matter involved.

The Embracing This Nerd Shit Has Gone Too Far Award:
Paper Heart.

The Most Fun At The Movies All Year (Star Trek notwithstanding, of course) Award:
Zombieland. (also winner of the Best Celebrity Cameo Award, but I can't have a single film win twice...that would violate the rules)

The "That's How You Do A Fuckin' Sports Movie" Award:
The Damned United.

The Most Cartoonishly Evil Character Ever Award:
Mo'Nique in Precious.

The I Just Love This Scene So I Want An Excuse To Post It Award:




The Most Disturbing/Disgusting Scene Of The Year Award:
The genital mutilation scene in Lars Von Trier's Antichrist. It's not even fucking close. Just be glad I didn't post THAT scene. It is the holidays after all, Merry Christmas!