This has actually been an annual event for the past six or seven years. I put together my own, completely arbitrary, list of the 10 best films I saw in the past year and send it out to a few friends. This year, the R&R Blog allows me to regale thousands more with my opinions about the year’s films. Nice.
First, some thoughts about 2009. A pretty solid year. Any time I can compile a list with films by the Coen Brothers, Quentin Tarantino, Werner Herzog and Pixar Studios, it’s been a good year. In fact, I had a hard time narrowing the list to 10.
But since it’s my list, I also give myself the opportunity to present an Honorable Mention list, for films that were really good, but not quite Top 10. There is no limit to the number of films on that list. Like I said, it’s my list.
Now, a disclaimer. As you read on and say, “But what about…?” or “How could he leave out…?” remember that I see a lot of films, but I don’t see them all. So, before you get upset, here’s a brief list of the films that received positive buzz this year that I just haven’t seen yet. I’m sure they’re all very good: Sin Nombre, Sugar, Tyson, Somers Town, In the Loop, The Cove, An Education, The Messenger, Me and Orson Welles, A Single Man, Crazy Heart, The Young Victoria and The Last Station.
One last note (I promise): I don’t present the list in any order. I don’t have a No. 1 and a No. 6. I find it almost impossible to rate a small documentary against a big-budget special effects extravaganza, for instance. So, a film makes the Top 10, or it doesn’t. That’s it.
Here we go.
A Serious Man – The Coen Brothers make different types of movies. There are the funny Coens – Raising Arizona, Brother, Where Art Thou? Big Lebowski; the dark Coens – Blood Simple, Barton Fink, No Country for Old Men; the dark and funny Coens – Burn After Reading, Fargo. A Serious Man is dark and funny and great. Put simply, it’s a version of the Book of Job set in mid-’60s Minnesota. This time, Job is Larry Gopnik, a Jewish everyman with a family and a position as an as-yet-untenured professor at a Midwestern university. The fact that the Coens grew up the sons of professors in mid-’60’s Minnesota is, I’m sure, entirely coincidental. Anyway, as poor Larry tries to cope while being visited by every conceivable trial, tribulation and tragedy, we sit and wonder how things can get any worse. And they do, right through the film’s downbeat, and perfect, ending. The funny thing is, it’s funny. A lot of people I know didn’t like A Serious Man. Too dark, too Jewish, no recognizable stars. That’s OK. It’s certainly not everyone’s cup of tea. I don’t think the brothers meant it to be. At this point, they’ve earned the right to make the films they want to make. I’m glad they made this one.
Every Little Step – One of life’s little pleasures is finding a small movie that I didn’t know much about and wind up happily surprised. Every Little Step is one of those. It’s a documentary that follows the nearly yearlong process of auditioning for and casting a Broadway revival of A Chorus Line. The cameras were allowed to record it all: the auditions; the private discussions with the producers, choreographer and others; vintage footage of the original Broadway production; interviews with some of the performers from the original (one of whom is choreographing the revival) and of course, the thoughts, hopes, dreams, fears, aspirations and trepidations of the actors trying to win the roles. I learned a lot. How tough, and long, the process of choosing a cast is. How difficult it is to win a role, because all of the actors competing are so good. I saw the intense pressures of the callbacks, along with the joys of winning and the disappointment in coming close and missing out. I discovered the groundbreaking importance of this particular play to those who make a living on Broadway. I’m not a big Broadway musical guy, but I was fascinated every step of the way. It was easily my favorite documentary of the year.
Up – I don’t think I’ve ever had a year without a Pixar film in my Top 10. No exception in 2009. Up is superb, just like WALL. E, Cars and The Incredibles before it. Cool story, great images, excellent jokes – I still smile when I think of the voice-synthesizers that give us insight into how dogs think (“Squirrel!”). And the still-photo montage that covers more than 50 years of Carl and Ellie Frederickson’s life together in about four amazing minutes is virtually perfect. It should be shown to every student in every film school in America as a lesson in how to use a montage effectively and emotionally while avoiding all the clichés. It is wonderful. Finally, how can I not like an animated film that includes an extended visual homage to Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo? That they would even include homage to Fitzcarraldo is further proof that Pixar exists on a level above the rest of us.
Bad Lieutenant – Port of Call, New Orleans – Speaking of Werner Herzog, in 2009 he blessed us with this delightful descent into madness. The original Bad Lieutenant, released in 1992, was directed by Abel Ferrera and starred Harvey Keitel. It is still one of the grimmest films I’ve even seen, as it chronicles one police lieutenant’s downward spiral into drugs and depravity. Herzog’s film is not really a remake as much as a (to use the current Hollywood cliché) re-imagining. This one is set in New Orleans, right after Hurricane Katrina. The lieutenant is played by Nicolas Cage. Not the silly National Treasure/Ghost Rider Nicholas Cage. He’s no fun. This film features the crazy, unhinged Leaving Las Vegas Nicolas Cage. Much better. As in the original, the lieutenant is really bad. He takes an alarming amount of street and prescription drugs, is not above shaking down young couples outside a nightclub for reasons I won’t go into, and has no qualms about storming into an assisted living facility and cutting off the oxygen of an elderly patient in order to extract information. But he’s also very kind to his girlfriend (who happens to be a prostitute) and is willing to care for his father’s dog. The film takes the original’s premise and renders it with an ironic smile, right up to the ridiculous ending that ties up every loose end in about three jaw-dropping minutes. Herzog is having fun. So is Cage. And so will you, as you try to figure out if the iguanas are really there.
Inglourious Basterds – It’s not perfect. It’s about 40 minutes longer than it needs to be. It has holes in its logic you could drive a truck through. And there are times when Quentin Tarantino indulges his joy for his own dialogue just a bit excessively. But here it is on my Top 10. Because it’s fun! A roving band of Jewish Nazi scalp-hunters under the command of a brash, Southern-accented lieutenant who has no idea how ridiculous he sounds when trying to speak Italian. A beautiful French theater owner with a lifelong grudge she has one great opportunity to settle. Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler and the rest of the Nazi high command, together in one place at one time – to watch a movie! And at the center of it, the evil, brilliant, cunning SS Colonel Hans Landa, who conducts interrogations, uncovers plots and generally messes with the good guys while effortlessly slipping in and out of four different languages. He is one of Tarantino’s most interesting and compelling bad guys – ever. He’s played by Christoph Waltz, a German actor whose performance, in my opinion, towers above all others in the film. Inglourious Basterds has all the great Tarantino stuff: serpentine plotlines that eventually intersect; quick splashes of brutal violence; an esoteric and interesting soundtrack; and, of course, the dialogue. No one but Quentin Tarantino could have made this film. No one else would have even thought of it. I’m glad he did.
District 9 – There were two pretty big “aliens vs. humans” films released this year. District 9 is the one that didn’t cost $300 million. The film was produced by Peter Jackson (the Lord of the Rings guy) and directed by a young South African named Neil Blomkamp. The two had originally been signed to do a big-budget production based on the video game Halo. That deal fell through and Jackson suggested that instead they do a feature based on a short film Blomkamp had made about aliens stranded in Johannesburg. District 9 was born. It’s about a group of aliens who landed in Jo-Burg, got stuck due to mechanical issues on their ship and have remained segregated inside a ghetto for 28 years. They look like giant shellfish (the humans call them “prawns”), speak in a language of clicks and pops and are clearly the intellectual equals of their human captors. Any parallels drawn between their situation and the past apartheid policies of the South African government are obvious and highly encouraged. But that’s enough about politics. Let’s get on to the cool stuff. All the aliens really want to do is fix their ship and get outta Dodge, but the humans have a reason to keep them there. They want to learn how to use their weapons. You see, in that other movie, the aliens use their DNA, and some cords in their ponytails, to communicate with animals and plants. How nice. In District 9, the aliens use their DNA to fire their kick-ass weapons. How cool. Anyway, the humans are trying to figure out how to fire the alien guns, a resourceful alien does manage to fix the ship, a human turns into an alien, an unbelievably violent battle ensues and the ship finally flies away, leaving many aliens behind – including the new human/alien hybrid guy – but promising to return. Hello, sequel. I see a bunch of films every year, and rarely do I leave one saying I’d never seen anything like that before. I did after District 9. It’s raw, gritty and – even though it’s about aliens who resemble shrimp – incredibly real. For about a tenth of the cost of a trip to Pandora.
Up in the Air – The press and the critics have been saying that this film is a reflection of the zeitgeist of our time, a seriocomic look into the world of corporate downsizing and the emotional pain of losing one’s job. Well, yeah. The film has all that. And its use of real people who have actually lost their jobs is very poignant and effective. But, ultimately, I think it’s about something else. I think it’s about connections. The main guy, Ryan Bingham, is a road warrior who spends 325 days a year on the road firing people and leading them into “career transition counseling.” He’s really good at making travel connections, airline connections and racking up his frequent flier miles. He’s not so good at human connections. In fact, he has a second career as a motivational speaker, telling people to get rid of their connections – empty their backpacks, he says – and keep moving forward. His world of airports, VIP lounges and Hilton Hotels is where he finds comfort, surrounded by others yet isolated at the same time. Enter a young Ivy League grad – Natalie Keener – with an idea to pull everyone off the road and start firing people via teleconference. Of course, she and Bingham become the ultimate odd couple, thrown together out on the road as he shows her the realities of informing people their world is about to collapse. They both learn a great deal. She concludes that firing people might not be her best career choice. And Ryan, seeing the empty capsule his life has become, begins efforts to actually connect with his family and the woman who has become his sometime hookup. He succeeds, and he doesn’t. The film is emotional, without being overly maudlin. It’s also funnier than I expected, with most of the good lines given to Natalie and her observations on Ryan’s miles-obsessed lifestyle. George Clooney is a bona fide MOVIE STAR. He’s good in bad movies. He’s great in this one. Anna Kendrick is cute, vulnerable and, at the same time, bitingly sarcastic as Natalie. And special props to Danny McBride, who leaves the insanity of his Tropic Thunder and Pineapple Express characters behind and brings a nice believability to a small role. There’s also a great cameo from Sam Elliott.
So make a connection with your son, daughter, parent or significant other and see Up in the Air. You can bond over it.
The Hurt Locker – Who are my friends? Who are the enemy? Who wants to see me die, or see me live? Who doesn’t care? In the streets of Bagdad, and in The Hurt Locker, the answer to all of those questions is the same: “Who knows?” For the three-man bomb disposal unit at the center of this film, not knowing those answers could literally kill them. A number of films have tried to capture the stress and madness of the war in Iraq. Most have fallen short. Not this one. To say the film is intense is an understatement. Watching it is physically draining. You learn in the first five minutes that any IED can blow at any time, and you keep that knowledge with you through every run the unit makes. You hold your breath along with Sgt. William James as he surveys each bomb and tries to decide which wire to cut. You scan the crowds that always gather, right along with James’ partners, trying to find the man, woman or child in the group who might be holding the cell phone that will detonate the device before James can disarm it. And just like them, you don’t know. Sgt. James is very good at what he does. He’s also a little bit crazy. Jeremy Renner plays the part in a way that shows us James is as exhilarated as he is stressed by his job. He takes chances that he probably shouldn’t. But he does so with an arrogant belief in his own skills that makes him confident he can pull it off. The rest of us aren’t so sure. This is a tight, simple movie that deals with a big issue by keeping it small. We spend most of the film with James and his unit. The film doesn’t ask us to judge anything. It just shows us what it’s like to do a horrible job under horrible conditions in a horrible place. The script was written by Mark Boal, a journalist who spent time in Iraq embedded with this type of unit, so it’s no surprise that it feels totally real. Kathryn Bigelow directed it in the straightforward, economical style that she showed in films like Point Break, Near Dark and Blue Steel. Some better known – and higher paid – action directors out there could learn some things watching her films. We all learn some things watching The Hurt Locker.
Precious – Most films I see because I want to. But every year there are a few that I feel I have to see. They have the critical buzz, I know they’ll be big at awards season and/or they deal with an “important” issue. So I go, approaching it like a school assignment. That was my attitude about Precious. Wrong. This is a great film. Granted, the story of a virtually illiterate, pregnant 300+-pound teenage girl named Precious Jones who is already the mother of a Down Syndrome child and is trying to survive on the mean streets of Harlem in the mid-’80s isn’t necessarily one that’s going to set your heart soaring. Oh yeah, did I mention that both of her kids were fathered by her father, who has now left Precious and her mother living together in their walk-up tenement apartment? Total downer, right? Well, yes … and no. True, things look bad for Precious, but throughout the film we realize that she is resilient, smarter than we originally believed and in possession of a vivid imagination that can literally take her away to beautiful places when the situation in her real world gets too awful. The cool thing is, the audience gets to see Precious’ flights of fancy as she is adored as a movie star or Queen of the Prom. It’s a great way to learn that her mind has not succumbed to the darkness. By the end of the film, Precious has come a long way and seems to have a least a shot at a better future. Will it pan out? Maybe. We don’t find out, but at least she has a chance. In her world, that’s the most one can expect. A young actress named Gaboury Sibide plays Precious. She’s great, letting us see the quiet dignity beneath the sad, silent surface. But the true revelation is comedienne Mo’Nique, who plays Precious’ mother. It has become something of a cliché to call portrayals of negative characters “brave.” But Mo’Nique’s performance is completely fearless. To call her character a monster is an insult to monsters everywhere. She is much worse. And Mo’Nique holds nothing back. It’s a frighteningly good portrayal of a frighteningly bad human being. The rest of the players are solid as well, with a special mention for Mariah Carey, of all people. With almost no makeup and a full-on New York accent, she is almost unrecognizable as a tough but empathetic welfare office counselor. She’s only in the film for about 10 minutes, but she is an integral part of the film’s key scene. She’s surprisingly good. You’ll also see Lenny Kravitz in a role you wouldn’t expect. If you’ve avoided Precious because of the dark subject matter, think again. It can be tough to watch, but the total effect will leave you feeling better for having made it to the end.
(500) Days of Summer – I know I’m going to get raked over the coals for this one, but I can’t help it. I really liked it. Yes, it’s a lighter-than-air romantic comedy that doesn’t deal with any of the big issues a lot of other films on the list take on. Yes, it includes a mid-story song-and-dance number set to a cheesy Hall & Oates song. Yes, it is polarizing. I know as many people who hated it as liked it. Maybe more. And yet, here it is. The thing I liked best was the structure. It’s the story of a 500-day relationship between Tom Hansen and the adorable, and adorably named, Summer Finn. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Tom and the adorable Zooey Deschanel plays the adorable Summer. The twist is, we don’t see the relationship in chronological order. In fact, we learn fairly early that, as a couple, Tom and Summer aren’t going to make it. We then view, somewhat randomly, a number of their 500 days together. We may see Day 56, then Day 348, then Day 12. It’s interesting to see the two of them in the doe-eyed thrall of new love on Day 16 when we know full well that they’ll be totally on the rocks 400 days later. It’s a little too cute in parts, and the ending is a bit pat for my taste. But I left the theater with a smile on my face, having seen a romantic comedy with two thoroughly likable stars presented in a way that I found refreshing and original. I even liked the Hall & Oates dance video. Sorry, but I did.
Close, but no cigar – Beyond the Top 10, but there were a number of other films I enjoyed a lot. Here’s the Honorable Mention list:
Coraline – Great animation and a wonderfully dark story. Scared a lot of six-year-olds in the theater.
Adventureland – Ahhh, the ’80s. Weren’t they great?
State of Play – Came and went quietly. Underrated.
Star Trek – The best of the big-ass summer movies.
The Hangover – For so many reasons.
The September Issue – Fascinating look at the creative process.
Paranormal Activity – Best use of $15,000 in the history of film. Scary, real and real scary.
Zombieland – Give me zombies, and I’m happy.
Drag Me to Hell – Give me a Sam Raimi horror film, and I’m happy.
Fantastic Mr. Fox – A Wes Anderson film through and through. It just happened to be animated.
The Princess and the Frog – Old school 2D Disney animation. Great story. Great songs. Great film.
Food Inc. – Documentary about the dirty secrets of the American food industry. Eat before you see it.
