It seems that the Cannes film festival got things right this year, even if audiences seemed to not quite get the quality of the competition. After consideration of a wealth of films from around the world, big and small, I find my end of year top-10 list peppered with films of heady considerations tackled with both visual bombast and narrative elegance. While 2007 will likely be remembered as the strongest year of the aughts for cinema, 2009 is one of sheer variety. There be lots of surprises and pleasures of both the cerebral and visceral kind.
10) The Limits of Control - Jim Jarmusch's deliberate ode to architecture, form and patient viewing is bumped into masterpiece territory by the wonderful cinematography of Christopher Doyle and the handsome (dude can WEAR a suit) figure of Isaach De Bankolé.
9) Mr. Nobody - Has quantum physics and romantic love ever been successfully combined in a large-scale science fiction epic? It has now. The arrow of time points forward, but it is thorny and messy and vague (with more choice and tangent universes than Donnie Darko). The resulting film is delightfully confusing, sublime and above all else visually impressive.
8 ) The Hurt Locker - Wages of Fear white-knuckle filmmaking from the director of Point Break. Suspense and adrenaline addiction are combined like chocolate and peanut butter. The films starring turn from Jeremy Renner and a sneak-up-on-you supporting cast are icing on the cake, but it is Katherine Bigelow that keeps this sleek war-action film chugging along. Mercifully free of political posturing or subtext, why this was not a huge mainstream hit is completely beyond me, as it is the type of big action movie that Hollywood used to excel at delivering to a wide audience.
7) The White Ribbon - A slow burn film that can bury you on first viewing, it is vintage lizard-like drama that one comes to expect from Michael Haneke. Nazi allegory meets crisp black and white cinematography with characters and story sprawling across the screen. A second viewing is mandatory.
6) Up In The Air - George Clooney lays on the effortless charm which echoes classic Cary Grant or Marcello Mastroianni, where Jason Reitman directs the mainstream movie of our times (even moreso than either of the great 9/11 reflections in The 25th Hour and The Dark Knight). Smoothing out the rough edges of the directors previous Thank-You for Smoking and Juno the result is a high-wire act and he most unlikely comedy of 2009. Laughs and head nodding abound while Reitman tackles aspects of the 21st century economy and late decade recession, along with digital manners and the growing isolation of people at a point in human history when electronic connectivity is at its most ubiquitous.
5) Fantastic Mr. Fox - Wild and civilized and cartoony and sophisticated, Fantastic Mr. Fox blows Pixar out of the water by giving us the auteur filmmaking of Wes Anderson and a handcrafted stop-motion package. It takes animals pretending to be people to show just how much people are nevertheless animals.
4) A Serious Man - Theology and science are present but beside the point in this yiddish everyman tale. The Coen Brothers remain at the top of their game even with the high-bar of No Country For Old Men set less than a year ago. A Serious Man is bleak, funny, and quietly stylish with an honest (serious?) streak down the middle. Heaven is the Hell of Larry Gopnik. Or the already classic Cy Ableman.
3) Mammoth - Here I am. Where are you? I love you. I miss you. Lukas Moodysson puts the theory and practice of a globalized economy under the telescope with a startling (and sobering) clear-eye. Money is the path to the future, but the root of all evil, but nothing is ever simple. When we have the need or choice to work on the other side of the world, the intimacy and warmth of family (and most definitely our mothers) is perhaps more vital than ever. As a multi-threaded melodrama Moodysson is operating easily as the peer of P.T. Anderson, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Robert Altman.
2) Inglourious Basterds - As a whole lotta historical fantasy, the real fun with Quentin Tarantino's latest film is its blind devotion to the power of reputation and cinema. That self-reflection of its rock-star director is never too obvious is a marvel! Playing very comfortably to his strengths, Inglourious Basterds underscores Tarantino's love for both the arthouse and the grindhouse by its gloriously realized scenes of epic suspense stemming from character, pure dialogue and cinematic craft - eventually and patiently realized by action. Handsome to look at with some of the finest performances of the year: We Have A Bingo!
1) Enter The Void - I now know what it must have been like for audiences to experience 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time on a massive screen in all of its humbling glory! Enter the Void is entirely too long, yet still left me hungry for more! more! more! It wears its simple philosophical mantra right out in the open, but slathers it with stunning visuals and camerawork to show Avatar for the kindergarten exercise that it is. Weird, sticky, and thrillingly voyeuristic, films like this do not come by often. See it on as large a screen as possible. And wait with baited breath for the 3D Imax re-release that will happen only in my dreams.
...And so many honorable mentions (any of these could be #11): Where The Wild Things Are, Antichrist, Symbol, In The Loop. Agora, Deliver Us From Evil, The Road, Moon, Collapse, The Informant!, Drag Me To Hell, The Class, Soul Kitchen, The Sky Crawlers (viewed in 2008 released in 2009), Ponypool (viewed in 2008, released in 2009), Vinyan (viewed in 2008, released in 2009), Splice, My Dog Tulip, Summer Hours (viewed in 2008 released in 2009), Public Enemies, An Education, The Girlfriend Experience, Black Dynamite, District 9, Visage, Grace, Three Monkeys, Valhalla Rising, Stingray Sam, House of the Devil, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.
Except for Hurt Locker (we've been through that) and that I haven't seen The White Ribbon because I don't like Haneke at all, this is one of the more agreeable top tens I've seen so far this season. Good job.
I can't remember if you've seen The Clone Returns to the Homeland. I hope not. I haven't seen it yet either but I would hate to know that you've seen it and it didn't even get honorable mention. I'm so wanting to love that film.
That's it: I am hereby assuming that no one on Twitch has watched DISTRICT 9 or they're those people who are above putting too many "blockbuster" movies in their top 10's.
I myself would usually classify myself as one of the latter and tend to be "that guy" who would be more prone to make a list of all foreign and arthouse flicks to his list before he would even recognize something that has had the financial success of something like DISTRICT 9, but c'mon people... PONYO??! Really?! Can we stop petting Ghibli's dick once in a while and give credit where credit is due?
I think it has more to do with us wanting to mention films that not allot of other sites put on their lists. District 9 is probably on 98% of the best of the year lists out there.
Actually, I do think that District 9 is painfully conventional in its second half, and doesn't live up to the promise of the first half -- Trying a bit to hard to be James Cameron (and actually is better than Avatar, but that is another story.) The list has nothing to do with Blockbusters, and admittedly I found Star Trek, District 9 and Avatar to be ho-hum in the plot department (even if the former two have great characters, and the latter looks frighteningly expensive)
I've not seen The Clone Returns to the Homeland (nor for that matter, Shane Acker's 9). Ponyo was great, but not into the sublime territory that Miyazaki has hit in the past.
I'm hoping to bang my list out tomorrow and while I don't know whether it'll make the cut or not I definitely rate District 9 higher than Ponyo.
Clone Returns is great but probably won't make my list.
And I HATE Enter the Void.
A year of variety and breadth, this list certainly refelcts that. I really wanted to see Mr. Nobody but it didn't make any NYC fests.
I suppose I could follow the crowd and put up a list as I do have one. I need to get back in the swing of things for the new year. Maybe this will be a good way.
And oh yes, Clone Returns Home is on the list.
I absolutely love The Fantastic Mr Fox. Cartoony, yet smarter and wittier than 90% of "grown-up" movies I've seen this year. I quite liked Hurt Locker as well, but I can see people having a hard time wrapping their heads around that one. Didn't the Wrestler come out this year? No honorable mentions for that?
Yes, there were many great films this year, but I put ENTER THE VOID, on top as No 1. I was lucky, very lucky to see it at the TIFF festival in Toronto, in all its splendor on the big screen (the only place to see it!) and I left the screening with my head somewhere else, thinking I would have seen it all over again in the next minute - so much to absorb. ENTER THE VOID is a complete cinematic experience, a true marriage between picture, sound, and music. One cinephile after leaving the screening, told his friend 'just imagine seeing the film with your eyes closed!'. The film stayed with me for days afterwards... Second choice is Haneke's THE WHITE RIBBON, shot in a mesmerizing black and white.
here's to another great year in films