Favorite Movies of 2009

Well since it’s the time of year when everyone puts up their top 10 list of the year I thought I would put together my 10 favorite movies I saw in the theater this year. The list is hardly inclusive, as I think I went to the theater far less this year than any other year in memory. (I saw 46 movies at the theater this year, not counting revivals). Part of it is middle age ennui, part of it is I just don’t care for a lot of the movies coming out these days, and a large part of it is realizing I have oodles of TCM titles I’ve taped and I’d much rather watch those than make a trek to local Cineplex, which is becoming more of a crapshoot with each year. Also, I do tend to see titles at the second run shows for $3, so there’s none of the big holiday openings here. With that in mind, here are my top ten favorite movies of the year.

Ten Favorite Movies of 2009

10. “Just Another Love Story”. Modern day film noir from Denmark about an unhappy husband and father who causes an automobile accident and puts a woman in a coma. She wakes up with no memory. He takes the identity of her boyfriend, falls in love with her and ingratiates himself in her family. Bad things begin to occur when the real boy friend shows up. A unique twist on a Cornell Woolrich-type situation. While some explicit nudity and violence are present, the central plot and characters are strongly reminiscent of many great noir pictures from the 1940s and 1950s.

9. “Extract”. The latest from Mike Judge, writer and director of “Office Space” (1998) with a similar vibe. I love these workplace comedies showing the affection (tinged with a bit of irritation) at the foibles of some of these characters. Mila Kunis continues to fulfill the promise she showed in the otherwise dreadful “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” (2008). Hilarious support from scene stealers David Koechner (great as a way too-friendly neighbor), .J.K. Simmons and Clifton Collins Jr. Collins gets my vote for favorite cinema find of 2009 (See “Sunshine Cleaning” entry below).

8. “The Informant!” Director Steven Soderberg’s latest, and I’m surprised it didn’t connect more with viewers. Matt Damon does it again in a spectacular performance. Is there any actor working today with a more consistent streak of good movies? I also love the Marvin Hamlisch score, and hope it’s remembered at Oscar time.

7. “Sunshine Cleaning”. One of the year’s sleepers, a slice of life picture with Amy Adams and Emily Blunt struggling to start the title business, a service that cleans up after crime scenes. Amy Adams is one of our most likeable actresses; you can’t help but like her, even when her character here is being totally irresponsible. There’s an excellent supporting performance by Clifton Collins Jr. as the owner of a cleaning supply store who helps Adams with her son that is one the year’s most overlooked, and probably my most favorite. He’s a talent to watch.

6. “Pirate Radio”. The year’s most pleasant surprise and a very agreeable slop of a movie. It reminds me a lot of those anarchic, anything goes comedies that Paramount produced in the 1930s, such as “The Big Broadcast” (1932), “Million Dollar Legs” (1932) or early Marx Brothers. Little vignettes, off the wall characters, satisfying pay offs and a great song soundtrack. Like Matt Damon, Philip Seymour Hoffman continues his hot streak of selecting strong properties. It may not have been very successful at the box office (I don’t know how it did overseas), but I have a feeling this will be a cult film. I will continue to happily support screenwriter/director Richard Curtis. His work is a glorious oasis in the current ocean of comedic mediocrity.

5. “Knowing”. I have to go along with Roger Ebert on this one by giving it four stars. Based on the trailers, I feared for the worst – a Nicolas Cage apolocalyptic thriller loaded with CGI. Instead I got a thoughtful and nail biting suspense thriller with some truly stunning imagery. I like Cage going unhinged and think he gets a bad rap for it. I appreciate that much more than some actor mumbling under his breath thinking he’s getting to the root of the character. No, he’s just mumbling under his breath and being irritating. The final images are among the year’s most haunting. Speaking of haunting, how about those strange figures following Cage’s family wherever they go? They invoke more uneasiness and dread than most horror movies. One of the year’s most unexpected surprises.

4. “The Hurt Locker”. Director Kathryn Bigelow’s apolitical look at an ace bomb disposal expert in Iraq (Jeremy Renner) who lives on an adrenaline rush of danger, this was nail biting from beginning to end. Another film that will live on long after it leaves the theaters.

3. “Inglourious Basterds”. Director Quentin Tarantino’s WWII fantasy film may be the most enjoyable movie experience I had all year. I think Brad Pitt has been severely underrated here, as I think his performance is an absolute jewel. I loved the slow buildups to the action scenes which are very cleanly shot and edited. No uber-hyper editing here, thank God. Two caveats: There should have been more of the great Rod Taylor (as Winston Churchill), and Tarantino’s use of already existing film music. I hope one day he’ll hire a composer to write an actual score for one of his movies.

2. “Adventureland”. I loved every minute of Greg Mottola’s intimate, bittersweet and lovely evocation of growing up, summer temp jobs and romance. Sold as a whacky comedy, this is much deeper and touching. Wonderful performances from Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Ryan Reynolds and Martin Starr. I especially liked Starr’s performance as the sad sack, perpetual stoner. This has been a strong year for under the radar supporting performances.

1. “Up”. Far and away the year’s most emotionally enriching experience. Pixar does it again, and was there any greater sequence this year than the first 15 wordless minutes showing joy, happiness, love, death and sadness over the course of a man’s life. Just glorious. Special kudos to composer Michael Giacchino’s glorious score, featuring – gasp - actual melody and musical devleopment. Easily the best score of 2009, which means it doesn’t stand a chance of winning the Best Score Oscar. I would dearly love to be wrong.

Honorable Mentions:

“Coraline”. A wonderfully weird 3D stop motion-animated feature with some hilariously deadpan sequences.

“State of Play”. Strong thriller about investigative reporters, a Washington D.C. scandal, and a prescient look at the declining newspaper industry. As one who loves newspapers, this one really got to me. Strong cast headed by Russell Crowe and Rachel McAdams. Ben Affleck is good too, and he was good in “Extract” too, a small gem of a comedic performance. I never cared for Affleck as a leading man at all, but maybe he’s found his niche as a supporting actor.

“Taken”. Exciting B movie actioner with retired agent Liam Neeson going after the scum who kidnapped his daughter for a sex slave ring. Clocking in at 90 minutes, this reminds me of the Charles Bronson-type action flicks from 1970s. It sets up the premise, and you’re in and out with a minimum of fuss. I could do with less frenetic cutting in the action scenes, but this is hardly the worst offender out there.

Worst Films of the Year:

“Angels and Demons”. Another Dan Brown adaptation, this one louder and stupider than “The DaVinci Code.” Do Tom Hanks and Ron Howard really need the money this badly?

“The Proposition”. Another bad Sandra Bullock movie. Is there any actress who is so consistently likeable yet makes so many bad movies? That’s a star.

“Public Enemies”. The year’s biggest disappointment, as director Michael Mann, in discovering the “joys” of digital filmmaking, forgot about writing a good script.

“Year One” I saw this at a second run theater with about 30 people attending and there was not one laugh throughout the entire film. Not one. Painful beyond all endurance.

“Couples Retreat”. A so-called comedy about testing adult relationships at a beautiful Caribbean resort. No laughs, no drama and a cast full of characters in real life I would stay far, far away from. In other words, it’s like a Judd Apatow movie except it’s shorter.

“The Fourth Kind”. Probably the worst movie I saw this year. Supposedly based on a true story, as people re-enact their alien abduction experiences. So we get split screens of people re-enacting their events while under hypnosis while dramatic re-enactments are shown alongside of it. Awful beyond belief. Mila Jovovich does the best she can. I think she’s a pretty decent actress but there’s no redeeming this movie.

Most overrated:

“Star Trek”. Sometimes a movie comes out and everyone raves about it and you go to see and for the life of you can’t figure out what everyone is raving about. For me this year it was “Star Trek”, which I found a perfectly excrutiating experience. Director J.J. Abrams overdirects every scene, complete with irritating lens flares throughout (not once or twice, but through the whole movie), tilted camera angles for no discernable reason (even on normal conversations on the bridge, maybe the lens flares blinded ol’ J.J. on the set and he had no idea his camera was all askew) and over-edited frenetic action scenes (my big bugaboo). I found it about as exciting as watching cupcakes being sold at a bake sale and was mighty glad when it was over.

Most underrated:

“Pirate Radio”. See above.

Movie I couldn’t bring myself to see even if my life depended on it: “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.”

Inglourious Basterds

I deliberately did not read anything about “Inglourious Basterds” and initial impressions were based solely on the trailer. So imagine my surprise when director Quentin Tarantino’s latest is nothing like I expected it to be. While a tad disappointing in some ways, it’s also far better than what I was expecting. I really liked it and think I will like it even more when I see it a second time. High praise from me, as this is one of the very few movies I’ve seen in the theaters this year that I would consider seeing a second time.

I won’t go into specifics so as to not spoil the surprises in store. All I’ll say is I was expecting a movie detailing the experts of a group of men on a dangerous mission, ala “The Guns of Navarone” (1961), “Where Eagles Dare” (1967) or “The Dirty Dozen” (1967). We get that, but it’s not the central part of the film, and for a film titled “Inglourious Basterds”, the title characters do not dominate the film.

Who does dominate the film is Austrian actor Christoph Waltz, who plays Col. Hans Landa, an SS colonel who can be charming, sly, witty, clever, brutal and treacherous in the blink of an eye. It’s a standout performance, and Waltz is sure to be remembered at Oscar time.

Waltz shines in all his scenes, especially in the film’s tense opening sequence when, early in the war, Landa and his men come to a farmhouse in the French countryside looking for Jewish refugees. It’s all dialogue, but written and acted so well that, in its own satisfying way, it’s the best action scene in the film. The way Landa relishes his glass of milk in this scene is unforgettable.

Shoshanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent), one of the refugees, escapes from Landa and makes her way to Paris. Several years later, she’s operating a cinema in Paris, where she will again unexpectedly cross paths with Landa.

Waltz is so good (deservedly so) and is garnering so much attention, that I hope Brad Pitt isn’t overlooked.

Pitt plays the Basterds’ leader, Lt. Aldo Raine (one of the films many homages) and I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a performance so much. Pitt gives us what has sorely been lacking from movie screens of late, and that’s a real joy of performance. I’m so tired of contemporary actors being so serious all the time, muttering their lines in a sorry attempt to convey importance, and striving ever so hard to get to the “truth” of a character. Yawn.

Of course that’s important, but it also means we’ve missed the joy of actors giving us larger than life performances. Pitt does so here, and thank you very much. I missed the Lt. Aldo Raine character every second he was off screen, and if there should be a sequel, I hope Tarantino gives us more of this character.

The Basterds are on a mission and that mission is simple – to kill Nazis. Raine goes better and asks each men in his squad to deliver 100 Nazi scalps.

A big disappointment in the film is the lack of characterization given to the Basterds. We only get to know a couple of them, with prominence given to “Hostel” director Eli Roth as Sgt. Donowitz. Roth is a simply terrible actor and sinks every scene he’s in.

I also intensely disliked a cameo appearance by Mike Myers as a British general. He wears this stupid grin throughout, as if he’s Austin Powers impersonating a British officer. If Myers wants to be taken seriously, he has to learn to play his roles straight. Fortunately, in that scene we get a cameo from the great Rod Taylor as Winston Churchill. He’s only in the film a few minutes, but if I had known Rod Taylor was in it, I may have gone opening night. I truly appreciate that Tarantino has such a healthy apprecaition of cinema's past.

But such appreciation can be carried too far. I wish that Tarantino would stop raiding his LP and CD collections in compiling scores for his movies. In interviews, Tarantino has said he’s very protective of his films and doesn’t want to turn them over to a composer who may put a completely different spin on his movie. So instead of an original score, we get lots of cues here from the likes of Ennio Morricone and Charles Bernstein, not to mention the head-scratching inclusion of Dimitri Tiomkin’s great “The Green Leaves of Summer” from “The Alamo” (1960).

While I appreciate Tarantino the Film Nut in rescuing great neglected film music, these cues came from films where the directors were likely very appreciative of the extra dimension the composers provided for their films. Would Tarantino’s beloved Sergio Leone be the revered figure he is today without the original scores from Ennio Morricone? Not likely.

There’s not as much action as I thought, and it’s much more dialogue-driven than I expected, but “Inglourious Basterds” is still an absolute winner, despite my small reservations. There was a lot of applause at the Saturday afternoon matinee screening I saw, and it’s been a long time since I heard that. I can’t wait to see it again.