Is it that time of the year yet? I thought I’d post my picks early, with two disclaimers:
1. My list isn’t limited to movies made or released in 2009, but to the ones I only saw this year. (The not-always reliable IMDB seems to date movies according to production and not release (in the US at least), so it looks like Zombieland was my favorite movie of 2009, which isn’t exactly true. It’s a damn fun one though.)
2. I actually didn’t see very many movies this year — got sucked into “The Wire”, some big novels (Mieville, Vollmann and King were to blame) and lots of Xbox 360 time. Revanche, The Road, Invictus, Up in the Air, The White Ribbon, Precious, Moon, Pontypool, Sin Nombre, Anvil!, A Serious Man, Two Lovers, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Messenger — they’ll have to wait. Besides, I kind of have an aversion to watching something next week and pronouncing it “best of 2009″ a few days later.
The links below are to my reviews; one day I’ll write about the others.
In alphabetical order, by title, the best movies I saw in 2009:
- Nagisa Oshima, Boy (1969)
- Nagisa Oshima, Death by Hanging (1968)
- Kazuo Hara, The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (1987)
- Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker (2008)
- Fernando Eimbcke, Lake Tahoe (2008)
- Hirokazu Kore-eda, Still Walking (2008)
- Olivier Assayas, Summer Hours (2008)
- Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Tokyo Sonata (2008)
And some runners-up:
- Denisa Reyes and Mark Gary, Hubad (2008)
- Lee Isaac Chung, Munyurangabo (2007)
- Hayao Miyazaki, Ponyo (2008)
- Koji Wakamatsu, United Red Army (2007)
- Ruben Fleischer, Zombieland (2009)
And some other random tidbits:
Biggest disappointment: Park Chan-Wook’s Thirst
Best short film on YouTube: Bang-yao Liu’s Deadline (YouTube link)
Best exit music: a tie between the Yayhoos’ “Baby I Love You” at the end of James Gunn’s Slither, and Los Parientes de Playa Vicente Veracruz’s “La Lloroncita” at the end of Lake Tahoe
Best movie experience: a three-way tie between the entirety of Masaki Kobayashi’s The Human Condition at the PFA; Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather 1 and 2 at the Castro; and Ken Jacobs’ Nervous Magic Lantern performance, Towards the Depths of the Even Greater Depression, also at the PFA
A movie I kind of conked out to and really wished I hadn’t: Lucrecia Martel’s The Headless Woman
The most overhyped “intelligent” summer film that gets dumb really fast, but I still have very high hopes for the sequel: Neill Blomkamp’s District 9
The absolute worst movie I saw all year, even more terrible than anything with mega-sharks or sword-wielding Immortals that used to be from another planet but are now from a “very long time ago” instead in it: Ron Howard’s Angels and Demons
The movie that gave me a headache: a tie between Jean-Luc Godard’s 2 Or 3 Things I Know About Her (a good headache) and McG’s Terminator: Salvation (a bad one, but that was because of the decibels; see below)
A startling and perhaps indefensible confession: I liked Terminator: Salvation more than I liked J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek
Popularity: 20%
Comments 5
You’re forgiven for your closing statement only because you are the most non-Trekkie fan I’ve ever met.
Posted 04 Dec 2009 at 5:11 pm ¶Totally agree with you about “The Hurt Locker” and I should have read your review of “Angels and Demons” before going to see it — BWAH HA HA HA!
Why does Ewan McGregor, who is such a GOOD actor, get sucked into these roles?
I am quite dismayed by the thought of a “District 9″ sequel. Right after I saw it, I thought it was one of the best movies I’d seen all year. On second thought, didn’t you find it racist?
After I saw “Skin,” I thought: THIS (“Skin”) is the South African movie everyone should be talking about …
Posted 04 Dec 2009 at 10:49 pm ¶I think the fact that I’ve barely seen any of Star Trek had a lot to do with not getting into the movie. I saw the first movie at least, back when it first came out, but I don’t think I’ve watched more than five minutes of the TV show in any of its incarnations. Weird, I know.
Posted 05 Dec 2009 at 10:12 am ¶I think my main complaint with District 9 stems from how the writers had a genuinely intriguing premise (even if the apartheid stuff is a little too labored and obvious), and then proceeds to squander it by making into an action flick. A better-than-average action flick, to be sure, but that’s the way it goes for sci-fi in general — a little sad to think that a movie like 2001: A Space Odyssey could probably never be made in this era of test audiences.
But I’m really keen on the possibility of a sequel — actually, a prequel — which would hopefully explore the initial premise further, in terms of human-prawn interaction. The gift of speculative fiction is to allow its readers/viewers to imagine worlds and possibilities different from ours, and in turn to throw into question our most basic beliefs (about race, class, gender, history, sexuality, religion, life itself). Basically I wanted to see more than just watching shit getting blow’d up.
Posted 05 Dec 2009 at 10:15 am ¶I’m with you on The Wire time and “The most overhyped “intelligent” summer film that gets dumb really fast, but I still have very high hopes for the sequel” getting sucked into being an action flick–or video game. It holds such promise as speculative fiction especially those documentary-like clips. Hope the se/pre-quel lives up to the hopes.
Posted 09 Dec 2009 at 12:54 am ¶Post a Comment