Top 10 of 2009 (subject to change*)

*not really

So, I was just telling TFP non-contributor Matt Lingo, following a belated viewing of Up in the Air, how much I hated making top 10 lists, and that I'd probably never even create a top 10 of 2009.

Lucky for you, I'm a big fat liar, because right after that I proceeded to look at the notepad file I had with most of the movies I saw in 2009 written down in it, and I found that arranging them in an order I liked was actually easier than I thought.

Still, I hasten to add that I am notoriously nitpicky (I probably have OCD), and my rankings over the course of the year often change at the drop of a hat. What's important is what I write about the movie, because even if my ranking of the movie changes, the things I like and dislike about the movie itself don't -- I just, as I mentioned, hate making lists. I mean, there are several movies I saw this year that I fleetingly considered number ones at the time I saw them that aren't even on the list anymore. I also don't care about star ratings, which are equally susceptible to my mood, so there's also the possibility that you look at the linked reviews and they don't quite mesh with the placement on the list. But the point of publishing the list in the first place is to try to combat my incessant need to rearrange the movies on it, so rest assured, this is the list that's going in the books; if any movies I missed turn out to be the missing link in the best of 2009 food chain, it'll be too little, too late.

Note: My personal system is that anything that has some sort of wide availability in America in the year in question qualifies for the year-end-list. Sometimes, that means a limited theatrical run, but often, "wide availability" means a DVD release. In any case, this is why there are films from 2008 and 2007 on the list -- it was my first real chance to see them.

10. The Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
[Pre-order it on Blu-Ray or DVD]
Pathos and darkness have their place, but fantasy and joy are almost a relief these days, with everything going "dark" in an attempt to be more realistic. Thus, while the year was filled with wonderful animated films like Henry Selick's masterfully creepy Coraline and the underrated and underseen seriocomic wonder Mary and Max, I have to rank them under The Fantastic Mr. Fox, director Wes Anderson's breezy, hilarious adaptation of Roald Dahl's popular book. Anderson's style and company of actors all fit right into the meticulous stop-motion world of the film, and there are well-written characters despite the lack of doom and gloom. Hotbox!

9. The Hurt Locker (2008)
[Buy it on Blu-Ray or DVD]
I've seen The Hurt Locker twice, and I don't feel like I've taken it all in. I probably owe it (and several other movies on this list) one more viewing before I publish, but it's already the middle of January, so I should also just suck it up and post it, because I doubt anyone will live and die by the movies I choose. In any case, while I wasn't quite as taken by it as my fellow OFCSers, who awarded it Best Picture and Best Editing in addition to Best Actor and Best Director in our year-end awards voting, I agree that Jeremy Renner paints a perfect picture of all-consuming, desperate dedication to living on the edge, and director Kathryn Bigelow effortlessly summons up stomach-churning, sweaty, cold-palm tension.

8. Moon (2009)
[Buy it on Blu-Ray or DVD]
I love a good slow, atmospheric film, and I love it even more when it contains weird, slightly creepy science fiction. At the front and center of Moon is a multi-faceted performance by Sam Rockwell, but the picture is really completed by Duncan Jones' gorgeous, desperately lonely lunar visuals, and the sad, slightly haunted score by Clint Mansell. These three elements combine into an experience that alternates between dreamlike head trip and hallucinatory paranoia. The presence of Kevin Spacey as the voice of an awesome computer-slash-robot that uses emoticons to communicate is just icing on the cake.

7. Away We Go (2009)
[Buy it on Blu-Ray or DVD]
When I first saw the trailer for Away We Go, I thought it essentially looked like a sequel to Garden State: a similar blend of comedy and romance, a plot that might have picked up where that film left off, and even including "The Office" star John Krasinski as a parallel to "Scrubs" star Zach Braff. I also wasn't particularly grabbed by the choice of Sam Mendes as director; I liked Jarhead plenty, but his other films have left me cold. In execution, however, Away We Go, is a vibrant adventure that feels like it's about real people in real places, deftly avoiding boring relationship roadblocks and too much "quirky" humor. The film's greatest strength, however, is the palpable chemistry between Krasinski and Maya Rudolph; it's intimate, devoted, funny and sweet, and it easily turns Away We Go into everything I've ever wanted from a modern movie romance, only better.

6. Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex (2008)
[Pre-order it on Blu-Ray or DVD]
On one hand, it's hard for me to rank a movie as cold as Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex above a movie as warm and wonderful as Away We Go, but Uli Edel's direction is so visceral it's impossible not to. The movie couldn't have been going for ten minutes before a group of protesters are sprayed down by police using fire hoses, and it feels so real you want to run for your life. Since the RAF were corrupt, evil people, the movie is hard to relate to, in a way, but the stark violence of their actions is compelling. Every bit the equal of Inglorious Basterds when it comes to depicting the atrocities of war.
(read my DVDTalk theatrical review here)

5. District 9 (2009)
[Buy it on Blu-Ray or DVD]
I saw District 9 the day it opened and didn't quite know what to make of it. I watched it again on DVD and was seriously blown away. The sad truth of the matter is, when I saw it in theaters, I don't think I knew how to process such a startlingly original movie; District 9 is made out of familiar pieces but feels unlike any movie I've ever seen. The potent combination of thrilling, psuedo-documentary action, body horror, romance, and political drama packs more pure cinematic energy than most of the other movies I saw this year put together, and Sharlto Copley's performance as Wikus van de Merwe is genuinely Oscar-worthy. This is definitely one of the films on the list that I'm in danger of ranking higher, as it's a perfect blend of big ideas and popcorn escapism.

4. Where the Wild Things Are (2009)
Movies like the awful (500) Days of Summer (review here) have ruined the word "quirky" for the modern moviegoer, but Where the Wild Things Are is better described with words like "wit" and "whimsy", deftly illustrating the tale of Max (played knowingly by young Max Records) and his desire to escape to a world where he can do what he wants. Director Spike Jonze effortlessly juggles the movie's many tones while roving around a stunning landscape painstakingly crafted by production designer K.K. Barrett and beautifully photographed by Lance Acord. There's also the vocal performance by James Gandolfini, which in a fair and perfect world, would have a legitimate shot at a Best Actor nod.
(read my DVDTalk theatrical review here)

3. Up (2009)
[Buy it in a Blu-Ray/DVD Combo Pack (same price as the DVD by itself)]
There is better direction and heart-wrenching emotion in the first ten minutes of Up than there is in the majority of movies released in a given year, and yet this intro is just a tiny piece of a soaring, colorful adventure that works just as well in carefully crafted Disney Digital 3D as it does in a more standard set of two dimensions. The movie's villain seems slight, but the wise minds at Pixar, never ones to hinge a film on its plot mechanisms, bring it back around to emotion in the end, with just the faintest touch of bittersweetness. As a comedic bonus, Up also contains some of Pixar's best side characters ever in Dug the Dog and Kevin the Bird, which are both masterful observations of real-life animals.
(read my DVDTalk theatrical review here)

2. 12 (2007)
[Buy it on DVD]
Most viewers probably missed 12 in 2009, but this 160 minute, Russian-language remake of Sidney Lumet's classic 12 Angry Men is every bit the equal of its inspiration, using the same story -- 12 jurors determine if a young man is either innocent or guilty of murder -- as the backbone for an original, entirely different story. The only other thing the two movies have in common is a whole table's worth of phenomenal performances, who make those 160 minutes feel like 20.
(read my DVDTalk DVD review here)

1. Inglourious Basterds (2009)
[Buy it on Blu-ray or DVD)
It's hard to summarize all of the things that are great about Inglourious Basterds, but Quentin Tarantino's latest is bursting with pent-up energy, expertly biding its time before rattling the screen with jaw-dropping, bloody intensity. They ought to teach the bar scene in film schools as an entire course on how to create and increase dramatic tension in films. On top of this, Tarantino has several of his best performances to fall back on, from Mélanie Laurent (a delicate, thoughtful wave of righteous fire and brimstone), Brad Pitt (brick-to-the-face comedy) and Christoph Waltz (an embodiment of the word "sinister"). It's ridiculously good, the kind of movie you can't believe someone made while reveling in every detail. In one scene, a terrified Nazi yells at Pitt's Lt. Aldo Raine: "You'll be shot for this!" I think of Tarantino, the rules he's breaking, and the executives he's working for. "Nah, I don't think so," responds Raine. "More like chewed out. I been chewed out before." Sounds about right.
(read my DVDTalk theatrical review here)

Note: Since, once again, I hate making lists, I didn't wait to add it, but I'm pretty sure, having recently seen most of In the Loop, that it would have made this list. Do with this information what you will.

Armond White and Pixar's Up

Armond White, NY Press film critic and constant source of debate, gave Pixar's Up a fairly negative review, and for the sake of debate, Tyler and Matthew decide to break down Armond's nitpicks on one of the year's most critically acclaimed films.

Note: Some spoilers for Up follow, so if you haven't already seen the movie, read at your own risk.

Matthew Lingo: Armond is f---ing horrible. He can't have a soul if he didn't like Up. At the very least, it’s possibly Pixar's funniest movie, which at least merits a recommendation.
Tyler Foster: Armond was pretty clear that he hated Pixar as a company, and wasn't limiting it to Up in any way, he thinks the studio is the death of animation and that their style is a horrible trend.
Matthew Lingo: ....why? Why does he think this?
Tyler Foster: Because he feels Pixar panders to moviegoers.
Matthew Lingo: What the f---, how can he say that, with the state of the rest of animated films right now? WALL-E's first half hour has no dialogue. That is not pandering. I think sometimes Armond just looks at what everyone else said and picks the opposite view.
Tyler Foster: Well, basically I think the gist of it is that he thinks Pixar takes an idea, and tricks the audience into thinking it's a much more elaborate idea than it is, so the audience sort of feels like they're dumb or lagging behind the idea, and then the movie gently brings the idea back around to its logical conclusion in a way that makes the audience feel like they've gotten smarter.
Matthew Lingo: Eh, that is a little silly to me. I don't think Pixar sets out to trick people.
Tyler Foster: Well, as a fan, of course you don’t think that.

Up’s uninteresting story of an old widower who attaches his home to helium balloons and floats off to Venezuela with an overeager kid in tow follows the same formula as the previous nine Pixar movies. This rote whimsy is as dispiriting as a production-line gas-guzzler. But artistic standards get trumped by a special feature: sentimentality.

Pixar’s price sticker includes enough saccharine emotion to distract some viewers from being more demanding; they don’t mind the blatant narrative manipulation of a sad old man and lonely little boy. They buy animation to extend their childhood like men who buy cars for phallic symbols.
Matthew Lingo: I see what he is saying, but I don't think it’s some bad thing. I mean, If I understand what he is saying correctly, my response would be it's more that Pixar’s movies occupy a weird middle place between conventional animated movies and what we as a culture associate with that style.
Tyler Foster: Or, actually, this might be the heart of Armond’s Pixar criticism right here:

Critics who forget that movies should be about people defend this reduction of human experience.
Matthew Lingo: It's not a reduction of the human experience.
Tyler Foster: When Up trivializes Carl and Russell’s loneliness —- treating it to the same Journey/Rescue/Return blueprint as Finding Nemo, Cars, WALL-E, .Monsters, Inc, A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 1 and 2 -— the predictability becomes cloying. And the inevitable shift to anthropomorphism -— Carl and Russell float to South America, encountering a prehistoric bird and mysteriously “talking” dogs —- is very nearly depressing. Up drops its emotional elements for chase mechanics and precious comedy.This way, Pixar disgraces and delimits the animated film as a mushy, silly pop form.

After ripping-off Albert Lamorisse’s classic The Red Balloon, dispersing it into Carl’s thousands of colorful orbs, Pixar then literalizes the meaning of flight as a commercial icon: Up. Here, it’s simply the means to “adventures” and not an ecstatic elevation of individual identity.
Matthew Lingo: Ugh, he seems to presume that for flight to work as a metaphor it has to be a metaphor for what he specifically said it is.
Tyler Foster: Well, I mean, he's sort of right: the balloons themselves are almost like a MacGuffin, they don't mean anything to Carl. He used to sell them, which is why he has them, but the act of taking off is just Carl like escaping things coming down on him, like being labeled a public menace and the potential of being dragged to a nursing home. They aren't a personal statement about Carl in any way.
Matthew Lingo: So? At that point in the narrative, he's still an unhappy, bitter old man.
Tyler Foster: I'm just saying, that if that's what Armond needed, then he is theoretically correct that the movie does not offer what he wanted.

Pixarism defines the backward taste for animation. Refuting Chuck Jones’ insistence that he didn’t create his great Warner Bros. cartoon for children, Pixarism domesticates and homogenizes animation—as if to preserve family values. The only exceptions have been Brad Bird’s Pixar movies The Incredibles and Ratatouille — both sumptuously executed in Bird’s belief that animation should show “how things feel rather than are, indulging in the human aspect of being alive.”
Matthew Lingo: Well, Armond is being unfair if he brings in specific wants or demands.
Tyler Foster: Whoa, what kind of statement is that? I can’t go to a movie with expectations of what I’ll see? Armond didn't offer any specific meaning, he just wanted it to have meaning, and not just be means to an end. He just wanted it to mean something to Carl: something, anything. I'm not criticizing Up myself, I liked it, but I am trying to illustrate that even if Armond is crazy, at least he can articulate his stance in a way that makes sense, and may even occasionally be true. I guess you could say he's talking out of the smart end of his ass.
Matthew Lingo: Well, my reading of it from what you have sent is that Armond wanted Up to be something it isn’t, and he even compellingly explains why it wasn't that, but he seems to not acknowledge or consider the things that Up actually is, the ways it succeeds on its own terms.
Tyler Foster: What I see is Armond saying someone tying more than a thousand balloons to their house should be motivated by the character who does it and not by the plot, and I can see why he feels that Carl's escape from the city in his flying house is dictated by outside forces instead of something personal within Carl. Carl hitting that dude over the head and getting targeted as a public menace is an accident, not Carl deciding to bail on a world that doesn't want him and rigging the balloons in an act of specific defiance.
Matthew Lingo: Yes, but to me at least, one of the successes of the film is how it starts as just a way to escape going to the retirement home, but as the film goes on the escape and the house grow in meaning. I wonder if it was their intent to have the escape seem initially like a deus ex machina that wasn't motivated by character. I think perhaps at the end of the film he is the character that Armond wanted the movie to start with.

Tyler Foster: I agree, I guess. I was wondering if Armond would have had a different reaction if that late breaking discovery of what's in the Adventure Book had occurred at the beginning instead of the end.
Matthew Lingo: Perhaps. I mean I respect Armond and all, it’s just that I think Pixar has been on a steady path toward what Armond wants from a Pixar film.
Tyler Foster: Well, he seems to think Up is going in the wrong direction, that they have been closer before and this is not as good.
Matthew Lingo: Well, he seems to want...I don’t know, an art film with animation...
Tyler Foster: Yes, but right in there, though, that’s entirely his point. Why in the world would you hesitate at Armond wanting an animated art film?
Matthew Lingo: Well, art film isn't exactly what I meant. He seems to hold them to the standard of like, a Scorsese film or something.
Tyler Foster: Sure, but it doesn't matter. His point is that there should be no standard on what animation is and can be, and if people think Pixar is as clever as it's going to get, it sort of backhandedly hurts the art form. It’s sort of indirect. That’s where the flaw in his criticism lies, he's mad at Pixar for being popular, basically.
Matthew Lingo: Yeah. And I don't think Pixar is to blame, especially when they seem to be committed to increasing complexity and nuance as they go on. If anything, I would almost blame the other lazy studios, they are just letting Pixar monopolize everything as far as art and popularity go. If there were other studios giving Pixar a serious run for its money, then people might not just assume Pixar is the pinnacle and leave it at that. The frustration is none of the others really want to even try to do what Pixar does. Everyone else is still doing Monsters vs. Aliens and such, nothing that tries to advance what can be done in a popular animated film. That's the thing about Pixar that really sets them apart, they have always tried to convey that animation is a medium and not a genre, which is why it excites me that a Pixar movie has a miscarriage in it. They're showing that you can make an animated film and do these things. Yes, they still make concessions to younger viewers in ways but it doesn’t change that they’re making advances.
Tyler Foster: Of course, Armond also praises Teacher's Pet and Chicken Little which, regardless of their potential qualities, are likely not some magical reinvention of cinema.
Matthew Lingo: I suppose I would need to see Chicken Little but I just don't understand how it could be.
Do you think the world Armond envisions will ever happen? I mean, when it comes to, say, a Taxi Driver, there’s no real reason to spend the money and do it with computer animation.
Tyler Foster: Actually, i think it already has, I believe he mentions people's ignorance of films like Persepolis [although the Oscar nomination would suggest it’s less ignored than Armond implies].
Matthew Lingo: That's true. Waking Life is another good example. Waltz With Bashir.

Up is now playing in Disney Digital 3D and standard 2D theaters across the country. Forget what Roger Ebert says and see it in 3D, or at least forget what Armond White says, and see it at all.

3D

James Cameron's Avatar isn't even here yet and I've already seen the future of 3D in movies. Just this morning I was wondering if it could be more than a gimmick, but of course, Pixar gets it right.



Up opens on Friday. See it in RealD 3D (note: I didn't enjoy seeing Monsters vs. Aliens in IMAX 3D, although I saw it at a "fake" IMAX theater, and I saw Up in RealD, so I'm vouching for that). Check out my DVDTalk review as well, right here.