BEST & WORST FILMS OF 2009

It was a year when genre movies trumped “important” prestige films. The best “important” one is number #4 on my list, and it doesn’t conduct itself as a message-laden film – it thrills and exhilarates then respects you to extract the message. Certainly there are a few other important films that deserve a place in the canon of 2009 releases. How do I list these anyway? My method is, the closer you get to number #1, the more exhilarating the movie was to me. In some years the real important movies are the ones that entertain the hell out of you. These are the eternal classics:

BEST OF 2009

1. Paranormal Activity – If you think like I do then you will agree that “The Shining” and “The Exorcist” are on Tier One as the greatest horror films ever made. “Paranormal” can now take the lead at the top of Tier Two. Taking place entirely inside a San Diego home where one boyfriend records infinitely with his video camera toy and a girlfriend haunted by the unknown, the film slowly creeps on you until it builds to unrelieved terror. As a result, the loudest screams in a movie theater you’ve heard in years if you were lucky enough to see this in a packed house. The fact that the best film of the year was principally made for $11,000 goes to say that if you live long enough you will eventually find something to surprise you. Yet there certainly must be a reason why the film rattles your nervous system so effectively. It has a way of tapping into fears that you thought were long dormant, and then extrapolating them. In a word: Primal.

2. Inglorious Basterds – Quentin Tarantino, giving good name to agonizing suspense as well as to stylistic homage, compiled a perfect cast for an awesome assembly of characters in this boyhood fantasy of American G.I.’s kicking Nazi ass in a fictional WWII. The opening sequence between Colonel Landa (Christoph Waltz, the best villain Q.T. has ever created) and the French farmer is the best written sequence this year or perhaps in many years. Never before has there been a movie character that has used ingratiating qualities to such powerful, ironically menacing effect.

3. Observe and Report – Black comedy comparable to Martin Scorsese’s “The King of Comedy,” by some others compared to “Taxi Driver,” one of those films you can’t see its greatness until you’ve seen it two, three, maybe five or six times. As long as you believe that a comedy isn’t required to have likeable characters then you will be knocked punch-drunk by Seth Rogen’s bi-polar mall cop. Here’s a guy who honestly and truly believes that his anti-social behavior is social normalcy. Second endorsement: Tarantino praised it as one of his faves of the year.

4. The Hurt Locker – Authentically filmed in the shrapnel littered conditions of the Middle East, the mesmerizing Jeremy Renner is the leader of a bomb disposal team in Baghdad. The title is symbolic of Renner’s obsession with mementos of his past assignments, but the film digs deeper into his paradoxical compulsion to risk-take for the sake of risk-taking – he’s a field operative who thrives on the adrenaline. The most haunting final shot at the movies this year. Kathryn Bigelow will likely become the first woman to ever win the Best Director Oscar.

5. Bruno –Sacha Baron Cohen is the preeminent avante-garde performer of our time, battery-ramming his character into real world encounters and eliciting shocked reactions from onlookers. It’s not the plot that’s important, it’s the anything goes quasi-documentary method that is which here veers into what should be called borderline documentary. By turns outrageous and side-splitting, then fascinating and intolerable, this is perhaps the only comedy that could be seen as a puke-your-guts-out rollercoaster ride and ask for seconds.

6. Departures – This Japanese film touched my heart more than any other this year, containing scenes that I am forever grateful for. While it initially stirred me upon my first viewing, I had no idea how much I really loved it until I reviewed the similarly themed but vacuous “My Sister’s Keeper” two months later. Failed cellist Diago (Masahiro Motoki, gentle and superb) is a nokanshi, a man who performs ceremonial washing of corpses before their burial. It remains uplifting and spiriting even despite its cadaverous theme possibly because it honors and cherishes the memory of the dead, while soothing the hearts of the living.

7. Up in the Air – George Clooney as a termination specialist who travels nearly every day of the year, embracing his roaming lifestyle. He meets Vera Farmiga, also a woman of non-commitments. Jason Reitman (“Thank You for Smoking,” “Juno”) is once again the director of a smart, devious comedy that this time taking us all over the map, both literally and thematically.

8. Public Enemies – Underrated. Contains some of the most ironically beautiful and evocative cinematography of the year, while seducing you into the art deco texture of the 1930’s. Christian Bale is a stiff as the agent on pursuit, but Johnny Depp as John Dillinger is the embodiment of criminal cool, a bank robber who saw recklessness and exhilaration as one and the same.

9. Precious – For those few people out there who thought “Juno” was too insincere and irresponsible (I don’t know how you could, it’s only a comedy) here’s an honest heartbreaking reel: a portrait of an obese 16-year old Harlem girl who becomes a mother to two children. Gabourey Sidibe turns the title morose inward character into a revelation, but one of the year’s great performances belongs to Mo’Nique who channels short-fuse fury as the abusive, oppressive mother.

10. Invictus – A Nelson Mandela biopic could have existed without giving us the marketing hook of rugby, but still, the two have been honorably integrated. And Morgan Freeman delivers one of his great performances. But highest praise to director Clint Eastwood’s awe-inspiring location shooting.




Overlooked:

Julia – Is she the best living actress today? Tilda Swinton is a pitiless, self-absorbed alcoholic-cum-tramp who commits the hefty crime of kidnap-and-ransom which snowballs into multiple heftier crimes. The year’s best under-the-radar thriller, although it is more of a human wreckage character study. In a sane world she would win the Best Actress Oscar. Erick Zonca, the director, also deserves to be taken seriously. This film reminds one of the Coen's first film "Blood Simple."

Milestones:

Best Documentary: “Tyson”

Best Animated Film: “Fantastic Mr. Fox”

Best Actor and Supporting Actor: Jeremy Renner in “The Hurt Locker” and Christoph Waltz in “Inglorious Basterds”

Best Actress and Supporting Actress: Tilda Swinton in “Julia” and Mo’Nique in “Precious”

Best Cameo: Harrison Ford in “Bruno”

Most Surprising Robert DeNiro caliber classic performance: Seth Rogen in “Observe and Report”

Best Montage: “Observe and Report” exhibiting Rogen’s off-medication nihilism followed by the beatdown of hooligan skateboarders.

Best Artistic use of Black & White: The opening sequence in “Antichrist”

Best Musical Interlude: “(500) Days of Summer”

Best Love Scene: Drew Barrymore directed the underwater tableau in “Whip It”

Best Sex Scene: The Korean vampire movie “Thirst” by Chan-Wook Park

Twenty dick jokes too many: “Funny People”

Two Hundred Eyebrow Twitches too many: Kristen Stewart in “New Moon”

Worst Films of the Year:

1. Miss March – So smutty and juvenile it makes you almost wonder for a moment if Playboy has ever been sexy.

2. Flame & Citron – Danish film replete with the most idiotic WWII clichés in ages. A blockbuster in its native country, this marks proof that the Danish are capable of having just as much bad taste as Americans when it comes to overhyped and shallow action spectacle. Then it takes itself so damn seriously.

3. 17 Again – Pervasively stupid. Characters adamantly act without thinking. Characters react slow when introduced to new surroundings. Characters demonstrate absent memories outside of a two-minute time span. Zac Efron is a "star" but so what.
4. Management – Jennifer Aniston and Steve Zahn comedy that loses its sense of priority. To makes us laugh, to make insightful human observations.
5. Away We Go – John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph are a couple with a baby on the way and obnoxious supporting characters along the way, against director Sam Mendes’ washed-out color palette. The most literate movie on this worst list, yet so dreary it’s soul-crushing.