This will be a cry in the wilderness. Let me explain. The club still has an active forum, but no one has touched it since last winter. This blog hasn't been touched by human hands since last July. The chances of anyone -- anyone -- ever reading this are slim to none. So why bother? Because the ICSFiles is long since defunct, and I just can't seem to let go of my annual Top Ten Movies list. Call it a habit, a hobby, call it what you will. I still like doing it.
Once again, I have followed the rule of not listing the movie unless I have seen it in a movie theater in that calendar year. This is why you'll see last year's Best Picture on my list, but you won't see The Hurt Locker, Up in the Air, or assorted other big releases this time around. Yes, I've seen Avatar, and yes, it made the list. Read on to find out where. You'll also see my honorable mentions, my choice for the Dog of the Year (the "Allie"), and my Blu-Ray purchases for 2009. In a separate post, I'll toss in my annual Year in Netflix Rentals. (More a confessional this year than in previous years.)
Here we go, in ascending order to No. 1:
10. DRAG ME TO HELL. Sam Raimi was back this year. No, not the superheroic Raimi; this was the bare-bones, balls-to-the-wall Raimi of his Evil Dead salad days, and what a pleasure it was to see him flex those creep-out muscles once more. The story was basically an extended Night Gallery episode about a loan officer dealing with a horrific gypsy curse, but the fun was in watching Raimi work his magic. He challenged himself to see if he could pull off a creepshow scream-a-thon on a PG-13 rating, and boy, did he deliver. I still get the chills remembering the moment when the dentures fell out.
9. UP. It's Pixar. Need I say more? Honestly, the only animation I even bother checking out in the theater has to have a Pixar label, because these guys haven't stubbed their toes yet. This time, we got an enchanting modern-day adventure story of a senior citizen who attaches a gazillion balloons to his house and floats away to South America, with an eager-beaver Boy Scout as a stowaway. The animation was bright and colorful, the story didn't talk down to anyone, and the opening no-dialogue sequence was one of the best scenes of the movie year.
8. HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE. Once again, Harry has made my list, and with good reason. The penultimate chapter of the series (sort of, since the last movie will be split in two) went darker than any that had come before, but there was still time for plenty of Hogwarts mischief. Once again, the cast was excellent; this time around, the casting gem was Jim Broadbent as Prof. Horace Slughorn, whose memory of Voldemort's school days provides Harry with a valuable clue.
7. SHERLOCK HOLMES. I anticipate this pick will probably raise the loudest howls, especially from Conan Doyle purists who object to director Guy Ritchie's take on the iconic detective. Robert Downey Jr., locking in his second franchise character, plays Holmes as a bare-knuckle brawler, adept with his fists as well as his brain. But his chemistry with Jude Law as Dr. Watson is undeniable; they really make the movie. The film, by the way, looks fantastic. The period detail is spot on, right down to the Tower Bridge as a construction "work in progress." The ending teleports an obvious sequel, which I hope they can make. I think Johnny Depp would make an excellent Moriarty.
6. ZOMBIELAND. Now this was a surprise. I think this is what you might get if you crossed Woody Allen with George Romero. Or maybe 28 Days Later with more laughs. Whatever the case, Zombieland was the funniest movie I saw in theaters last year, no question. Woody Harrelson (who had quite a career resurgence in 2009) plays a hardcore zombie killer who teams up with Jesse Eisenberg's slightly neurotic teenager in order to survive a zombie apocalypse. I thought Shaun of the Dead mined all the laughs that could be mined in such a premise, but Zombieland took off in a slightly different direction. It was hilarious. (And so was the year's most surprising cameo.)
I'll be back soon with the top half of my list.
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Continuing my list for the Best Films of 2009:
ReplyDelete5. SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE. Last year's Oscar winner for Best Picture makes my list because it didn't open in Baltimore until last January, but it was such an exciting burst of energy that it stayed in my mind all year long. Director Danny Boyle crafts an engrossing story of a young man from the poverty-stricken backdrop of Mumbai, India, who makes it onto the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? His life story is told as a series of flashbacks explaining how he is able to answer each successive question on the show. SLUMDOG is a comedy, a romance, an adventure story, a chase film, and most especially, a fascinating look at Indian life that American audiences rarely get to see. Unless it's in the movies, that is.
4. STAR TREK. A remake to end all remakes. Oh, sorry...director J.J. Abrams calls it a "reboot." Whatever the tag, STAR TREK is a thrill ride of the highest order that never forgets its roots. It's absolutely everything one could want in a Saturday matinee blockbuster. The cast is perfection, including Chris Pine as Kirk, Zachary Quinto as Spock, Karl Urban as McCoy, and Simon Pegg as Scotty. (I wish Pegg had been given more to do.) Zoe Saldana, who plays Uhura, scores the rare honor of multiple appearances on my Top 10 List, but more on that later. This was one of the two movies I saw in 2009 that absolutely had to be seen on the big-screen IMAX process.
3. INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS. There's not a dang thing wrong with revisionist history, especially if it's told through the sensibilities of Quentin Tarantino. That's all you need to know about how the story of BASTERDS plays out. Brad Pitt is the nominal star of the film as the leader of a band of Nazi-killing Allied soldiers in World War II. I say "nominal" because the main story of the film doesn't even involve Pitt's boys that much; instead, we're captivated by a cat-and-mouse game played by a Nazi officer (Christoph Waltz) and a young woman (Melanie Laurent) trying to avenge her family. There's plenty of the usual dense Tarantino dialogue, but unlike "Death Proof," it's designed to lead somewhere. A great film.
2. PUBLIC ENEMIES. I just watched this film again on Blu-Ray the other night and was reminded of director Michael Mann's skill at period detail and shot composition. I have come to believe that Johnny Depp is one of the two or three finest American actors working today, a chameleon who literally disappears into a role. Here, as John Dillinger, he channels a cocksure magnetism that really draws us in. There's a remarkable scene late in the film that shows Depp walking straight into a police station and wondering around without being approached. Christian Bale does well in what is essentially a supporting role, as Melvin Purvis, the G-man picked to bring Dillinger down. Marion Cotillard, the Oscar-winner for LaVie En Rose, plays Dillinger's lady, Billie Frechettte, and they have a nice chemistry. But the film belongs to Depp.
1. AVATAR. I have to admit I went into this film expecting failure. It had been 12 years since James Cameron had directed TITANIC, a movie I thought was good, but not great. Well, here we have a great movie. Much has been written about the expense of making the film, but this time I have to think that it's all up there on the screen. A futuristic sci-fi tale with overtones of DANCES WITH WOLVES, AVATAR scores big-time with its immersive alien world of Pandora, populated by the Na'vi, a race of tall, skinny blue people. Motion capture technology is used to create the alien race that one-ups the fake-plastic look of Zemeckis' BEOWULF and POLAR EXPRESS. More than any other film this year, AVATAR demands to be seen in the 3-D IMAX process. A first-rate entertainment, and the best film I saw in 2009.
A few wrap-up comments:
ReplyDeleteHONORABLE MENTION. I saw a number of other films last year that I really liked; there just wasn't room for them in the Top 10. Maybe next year I'll take a cue from Roger Ebert and expand my list to 20. Here are the other films I liked a lot:
GRAN TORINO
TAKEN
WATCHMEN
THE BLIND SIDE
FUNNY PEOPLE
THE ALLIE. It's getting harder and harder to pick a "Dog of the Year" because my movie-going so often seems pre-arranged; the movies I see, I EXPECT to like. I can't remember the last time I saw a crappily-made film with little or no talent behind the camera. My most recent ALLIES have been movies that disappointed me, let me down, sent me home thinking I had wasted my time. Last year's ALLIE had to be X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE, a bloated time-waster if ever there was one. Lots of over-the-top CGI that doesn't really go anywhere, a story that drags, characters I'm tired of, and a hero who looks like he's going through the motions. Blah. I liked Liev Schreiber's villain, but not enough to save this bow-wow.
Still here and still reading. Thanks John!
ReplyDelete--betts