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Locke's Favorite Films of 2009

In an effort to catch up on all the stuff I intended do right off the bat in 2010, I’m officially declaring February the new January. And, um, the second week of February is now officially the first. Got that? All of which is to say, here is (finally) my personal list of 25 (okay, 26) favorite films of 2009. (If I’m lucky, I’ll get to my favorite films of the decade before St. Patrick’s Day!)

I still haven’t caught up to everything I wanted to see in 2009—some glaring missing pieces are Big Fan (with Patton Oswalt as an obsessive Giants fan), Red Cliff (John Woo’s epic Chinese historical action film), and The Damned United (about the early-‘70s Leeds United football (soccer) team). Also, I want to see Crazy Heart again before I add it to the list, so let's just count that one toward 2010 since it's only now getting a wide release.

Honorable Mention – First, some interesting films from the year I think were underrated, under-seen, I had mixed feelings about but still impressed me, or just deserve yet another mention/plug:

(Alphabetical)

Adventureland – On a second viewing I realized it was more the ‘80s alternative music than the movie that won me over, but it still wins me over--a sweet, sentimental ride, well acted by Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, and Martin Starr. My original review. Rent at redbox.

Antichrist – Not an easy sell, and not an easy film to watch, as a damaged couple (Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg) try to cope with loss. But despite some art-house pretension and brutal shock value, Lars Van Trier's deeper, darker ideas and themes about grief, gender, and chaos have stuck with me all winter.

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans – Werner Herzog and Nicolas Cage’s corrupt-cop boogie is a weird, wild fantasia that turns out at heart to be a terrifically made film. Expect this one to become a cult classic.

The Box – Okay, I admit, I’m just putting Richard Kelly’s brooding sci-fi mind-bender in here to be ornery. But I really did like it a lot more than most critics and audiences, and I hope it gets some sort of redemption on DVD. My original review.

Bronson – Tom Hardy is the new Mad Max and you can get a sneak peak at his crazy, brutal chops in this biopic of Britain’s most violent prisoner. A stylized, almost cartoonish film anchored by Hardy’s mesmerizing performance.

The Informant! – This one baffled me a bit at first in the theater, but has grown on me in subsequent viewings. A tale of corporate espionage, embezzlement and whistle-blowing, I wasn’t initially sure what its point was, but I’ve come to appreciate it’s about the fact that real life doesn’t always have a neat, soapbox point. Or sane heroes. This is what Matt Damon should have gotten his Oscar nom for—he’s fantastically nuanced and strange. (His Supporting Actor nod for Invictus is really just a stand-in for The Informant!, since the Best Actor category was full up.) I’m an unabashed Soderbergh fan and between this, The Girlfriend Experience, and Che, 2009 was a fascinating year for the director. My original review.

Pirate Radio – I adore this film, flaws and all. It’s full of easy clichés and shameless manipulation, but throughout it all the joy and energy of ‘60s Brit rock blasts through. My original review.

The Road – This unrelentingly grim post-apocalyptic fable is not an easy film to “love,” but thanks to compelling performances by Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee and the richly bleak visuals and direction by John Hillcoat, it succeeds in grabbing you and holding you. My original review.

Sherlock Holmes – The opposite of some films here, Holmes has slipped a bit in my estimation on repeated viewings. But its core strength remains—the spot-on buddy-banter dynamic between Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law. That’s what will bring me back for repeated viewings and has me very hopeful for the sequel. My original review.

Where the Wild Things Are – I still like Spike Jonze’s adaptation, especially its rough and wild look and feel, and the vocal performances of the monsters. But in the end, as wonderful as it all was, it just didn’t get me deep down emotionally the way it seems to have grabbed so many other critics and viewers. My original review.

Special Mention: Passing Strange – This one may not count as a theatrical film, depending on how you measure such things. Spike Lee’s video preservation of musician Stew’s autobiographical Broadway musical never had a real theatrical release and so it was completely off my radar until recently. With a clue as to it's topic or backstory, I popped it in one Saturday night, wondered what it was all about for the first few scenes, and then was completely drawn in and won over. Filled with up-out-of-your seat music and songs, Passing Strange is part nostalgia over what self-absorbed, pretentious idiots young artists are, and part exuberant, joyful celebration of just how exciting it is to be that self-absorbed, pretentious and idiotic.

Follow over the jump for the 10 runners-up and my top five favorite films of 2009.

Paranormal Activity DVD Review

A good horror film is like a good joke, or a good magic trick; first, the story being told is almost always designed not just to distract but to divert, to focus your attention elsewhere while the punchline -- or poltergeist -- comes out of nowhere. Second, the more you explain it, the less enjoyable it is; we want to be fooled, and telling us how we've been fooled always negates some, if not all, of that pleasure. And with that, the people who make horror DVDs have a careful balancing act -- if DVDs made for anything, it's for explaining (and, for that matter, over-explaining) films.

Paranormal Activity, Oren Pelli's writing-directing debut, was a sensation in theaters, backed by a carefully-calculated marketing campaign so carefully designed to look natural it was more Astroturf than grassroots. As Locke pointed out in his theatrical review of the film here at redblog, it was a piece of showmanship that P.T. Barnum would have been proud of, a calibrated series of slow rollouts designed to build buzz with a series of midnight screenings that made the buzz into a roar. But how does Paranormal Activity play on DVD? And does the disc over-explain the pleasures of the film?

The Rocchi Files: The Top Ten Films of 2009, Part Two

Yesterday, I shared the first half of my list of the top ten best films of 2009; without much more ado, here's the remainder of the countdown. ...

5) A Serious Man (Director: Joel and Ethan Coen)

The latest film from the Coen brothers seems to offer it all -- the strange surrealism of Barton Fink, the quotability of The Big Lebowski, the social satire of Burn After Reading and the slice-of-life close-up view of Fargo -- but it's still unlike anything the Coens have done before, following physics professor Larry Gopnick (Michael Stuhlbarg) as his professional, personal and spiritual lives all ... melt ... down. Based in no small part on the Coen's own experiences growing up in Minnesota, A Serious Man isn't just a great comedy of suburban manners; it's a sincere look at the benefits -- and curses -- of a spiritual life, as God moves in mysterious ways and Larry Gopnick is Job in horn rims, wondering why the universe seems to be picking on him and never wondering if, in fact, it's because he deserves it.

4) Anvil! The Story of Anvil

Director Sacha Gervasi tracked down his favorite band from his youth to find out what happened to them; the answer wasn't some sob story about breaking up or packing it in, but, rather, the slightly sadder, and scarier proposition that 20 years after the peak of their success, Canadian heavy-metal band Anvil were still plugging away. Gervasi joined them for a tour (disastrous) and the recording of a new album (contentious) and got past the real-life Spinal Tap absurditity to show us two friends and, yes, artists who refused to give up in a world that says "quit." Gervasi knows and loves his subjects -- drummer Robb Reiner and guitarist/singer Steve 'Lips' Kudlow -- but that doesn't mean they get off easy in his film, and that honesty -- painful at times -- is what makes Anvil! The Story of Anvil more the story of a friendship than the story of a band, more a story of hard work than the story of an idle dream.

3) The White Ribbon (Director Michael Haneke)

Why would anyone want to watch a 144-minute story of repression, sadness and man's inhumanity to man, shot in black-and-white and unfolding in a small German town before the outbreak of World War I? The simple answer is: Because it's fascinating. Michael Haneke's unblinking eye has always made his films hypnotizing works of cruel genius, but even with all of The White Ribbon's more tense and unhappy moments (the children of the town turning on each other is chilling and yet never phony or fake), the movie's methodical, precise pace makes it a magnetically glowing thing of stark wonder. Yes, there are explicit parallels to history-- the kids we see lashing out at each other will, inevitably, grow up to make Hitler possible -- but Haneke's story works like an x-ray, showing us the stark bone-white truths that lie under the happy flesh of any town at any time.

2) Fantastic Mr. Fox

The biggest, brightest piece of pure comedy and joy at the movies this year - and, at the same time, a serious look at family, at friendship, at community, at being true to who we are. There are at least three vocal performances (Jason Schwartzman, Meryl Streep and Wally Wolodarsky) that put 90% of the Oscar-nominated performances you're going to see this year to shame with their heart, soul, timing and warmth. Director Wes Anderson's fuzzy, controlling ways have strangled some of his films -- see, for one example, the claustrophobically micro-managed and airlessly art-designed The Life Aquatic -- but here, they serve him and the audience extraordinarily well as a talking fox (George Clooney) shoots for a better life by pulling one last job. ...

1) The Hurt Locker

Following a team of bomb-disposal technicians in Iraq (and written by journalist Mark Boal, who spent time embedded with a real Army EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal) unit in the field), Kathryn Bigleow's movie isn't just a hurtling, tightly-coiled thriller that pushes you to the edge of your seat; it's also a portrait of why both men and nations go to war. Superbly shot, surprisingly funny (A superior officer asks about bomb disposal: "What's the best way to go about disarming one of these things?" Jeremy Renner's Sgt. James answers quietly: "The way you don't die, sir ...") and startlingly engaging, The Hurt Locker shows us men who choose to face death in the name of duty, and more importantly actually asks why they do it.

Runners-Up: Moon, The September Issue, Up, Inglourious Basterds, Where the Wild Things Are, The Missing Person, Every Little Step, The Escapist, Humpday, Adventureland, Funny People, The Girlfriend Experience, Tokyo Sonata, Police, Adjective and The Informant!

The Rocchi Files: The Top Ten Films of 2009, Part One

Making a "Top Ten Films of the Year" list is always an exercise in frustration and futility -- what about the movies you didn't see? Who cares about this stuff, really? Isn't it silly to judge movies, a shifting and quicksilver art form, in such a hard-hearted and mathematical fashion? And yet, I read through the "Top Ten" lists of critics and writers I admire to get a sense of what I may have missed, or what I may have overlooked, or what I may have misjudged, and it's in that spirit -- not that of a harsh judge who claims to know it all, but rather that of a helpful guide who knows he knows a few things-- that I present my picks from 2009, a year full of so many good movies that, frankly, narrowing a list down to ten is an exercise in and of itself. ...

10) The Brothers Bloom (Director: Rian Johnson)

Rian Johnson's follow-up to Brick twists and turns the con game flick just as skillfully as his debut shifted and twisted the private eye film -- turning what could have been a purely mechanical exercise in genre-bending into a truly funny and, more importantly, truly touching look at the similarly-complex challenges of family and storytelling. Rachel Weisz steals scenes as a meek heiress who discovers love and life through conning and being conned, and Adrian Brody and Mark Ruffalo's work as the title brothers has warmth and heat; add in Rinko Kikuchi in the sassiest supporting performance of the year, and you get a funny, frantic tale about what the stories we tell say about us.

9) The Maid (Director: Sebastian Silva)

Of all the films on this year's best-of list, The Maid may have had the most limited distribution -- a pity, as it's a knockout drama that, literally, had me on the edge of my seat because I had absolutely no clue what was going to happen next, and also because I needed, desperately, to know what was going to happen next. In an upper-class home in Chile, Raquel (Catalina Saveedra, in one of the year's best performances) has been serving her employers for almost 20 years -- and, breaking under the strain of exhaustion (and being exhausting), refuses to take on any help or call a truce in the long-running passive-aggressive struggle she's trapped in with her employers. I can't say much more for fear of ruining the film, but I didn't know what The Maid was going to be -- a thriller, a comedy, a family drama, a personal story, a romance -- and The Maid's carefully-drawn performances and impressive sense of realism had me desperatley waiting to find out what was going to come next.

8) The Messenger (Director: Oren Moverman)

You could play The Messenger in sequence with the next two movies on this list, and you'd have a great triple-bill. Like Up in the Air, The Messenger is about doing difficult work; like In The Loop, The Messenger is about language and society in the face of war. But for all its big ideas, The Messenger is a movie of small moments, as Ben Foster and Woody Harrelson play soldiers on notification detail who deliver the bad news to families that their loved ones have fallen in war. Some critics call The Messenger overly showy and mannered, but I found it immensely engaging -- and a movie that's real, raw and honest about the challenge of our present moment in a way that few other movies dare to be, bolstered by impressive acting work from both Foster and Harrelson.

7) Up in the Air (Director: Jason Reitman)

If you wanted to demonstrate to some hypothetical future citizen what life felt like in mainstream America in 2009 within the space of two hours, you could do much, much worse than sitting them down to watch Up in The Air. Jason Reitman moves past the hip cynicism of Thank You for Smoking and the easy-breezy glibness of Juno to make a real film, with George Clooney as a high-flying consultant who fires people, but when facing the axe himself squirms and dances to hang on to the gig while realizing everything else he's lost his grip on. Dry, funny and invisibly smart, Up in the Air is a breezy, light movie about some heavy stuff that dances along with grace and charm until it socks you in the jaw.

6) In the Loop (Director: Armando Iannucci)

Another little-seen import, but well worth tracking down -- if only because no other comedy this year literally hurt until you laughed with such brute blunt force, bad language and battered brilliance. A low-level British public servant gets on the radio and actually says something ("War is unforeseeable. ...") and then has to not-quite-recant what he said, because as the Prime Minister's snapping, snarling right-hand man (Peter Capladi, in the knockout supporting performance of the year) explains, the war may be inevitable or unforeseeable but that's neither here nor there and definitely not something that needs to be said on the public record. ... Full of unprintable insults, whip-crack sarcasm and very real points about public service, the power of lies and how political maneuvering can, regrettably, lead to troop maneuvers, In the Loop plays like an episode of The Office written by George Orwell.

Tomorrow: The final countdown!

District 9

One of the surprise pleasures of the year in theaters, Neil Blomkamp's District 9 worked in theaters (as Locke's excellent review at the time pointed out) as a brave and bloody sci-fi adventure, and in large part not because of any great subtlety but, rather, because of how maddeningly on-the-nose it was about its symbolic agenda; depicting a parallel now where an alien ship crash-(not-quite) landed over Johannesburg, South Africa and the ship's captive passengers were shunted into shantytowns and kept apart from the human population by wire fences, written laws and wicked prejudices, it was baldly, boldly a perspective on South Africa's Apartheid political process and the pain and agony of their years. District 9 is to South Africa what Godzilla was for Japan -- a way to look at a nation's painful past and political culture through the lens of fantasy.

And, on DVD, District 9 works even better -- as director Neil Blomkamp's fascinating commentary demonstrates, the decision to put science-fiction themes and visuals in the grit and grimness of South Africa's past makes for a punch as powerful as it is obvious. And, as Blomkamp's commentary explains, when he and his crew recreated images of the South African riots, a week later, mass rioting and mass murder broke out in the same slums and communities he was putting his aliens in; District 9's sci-fi doesn't just look at a distant past but, more interestingly, a problematic present. (In fact, you could make a compelling case that District 9 says a lot more about Apartheid's consequences and South Africa in the here-and-now than Invictus' crowd-pleasing look back at a happy moment of triumph. ...)

Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel

The first Alvin and the Chipmunks movie did what it was supposed to do -- it brought that trio of singing chipmunk brothers, Alvin, Simon and Theodore, into the 21st century and the age of computer-generated graphics with a minimum of surprises and a certain sweetness that almost made up for the flatulence jokes. With Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, though, almost everything to like from the first film -- which was not much, but more than enough to make it an agreeable time-waster for your kids -- is squeezed out by stuffing the film with new characters, new surprises, new plotlines until what was originally a nice, friendly big-screen machine designed to make cute animals into money loses a lot of the little luster it had as the clankier, clumsier second film clatters and clamors across the screen.

Jason Lee -- who played the chipmunk's mentor and guardian Dave Seville in the first film -- is barely on-screen in The Squeakquel, laid up by calamity while the boys are on-tour in France; guardianship of the chipmunks, and the moral lessons that come with it, pass to Zachary Levi's Toby. Toby is a little spacey and distracted (he's a video-game nut), so he's not exactly ready when the three mammals in his care not only have to deal with the blows and buffets of high school (you may ask why three six-inch talking chipmunks jump ahead to high school instead of a less dangerous environment, but if you start asking one logical question about The Squeakquel, so many of them soon pile up in your mind that your head explodes) but also with the arrival of three singing female chipmunks, the Chipettes, who are not only enrolled at the same school but also singers, managed by the nemesis of the first film, slimy music manager Ian Hart (David Cross).

It's Complicated

Movie theaters are normally jammed with wish-fulfillment fantasy for 18-to-22-year-old boys; when a film opens up that's clearly a piece of wish-fulfillment fantasy aimed at 40-plus-year-old women, does that go up on the board as a victory for diversity? When a character is clearly wealthy, does that help the set design but hinder the dramatic development of the storyline? Do we change with time, and is that for the best? Why is Alec Baldwin so fluorescently, Oompa-Loompa orange in this movie?

These questions, and more, were whipping through my head when I saw It's Complicated, the latest comedy from that mistress of mega-comedy Nancy Meyers (Something's Gotta Give, The Holiday), whose films may be based on original scripts but look suspiciously like they were adapted from the Crate and Barrel catalog. Jane (Meryl Streep) lives in California; she runs her own café. She and Jake (Alec Baldwin) split several years ago --- he took up with a younger model (Lake Bell), she took care of the kids. But at a family gathering in New York for the graduation of one of their three children, Jane and Jake wind up reconnecting over a few drinks ... and, not to put too fine a point on it, under each other. Jane, who was once left for the other woman is now the other woman; this throws her life into a tizzy of great, if ill-advised sex and makes her neglect everything from her indistinguishable kids to her principles to the nice, nerdy architect, Alan (Steve Martin) who's working on the dream addition to her perfect home. ...

Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging

There is a very specific kind of entertainment made for young people that they love, as it reflects the messy complications and swirling emotions of their times -- and that parents loathe for almost entirely the same reason. This is the case with Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging, based on a popular series of British young adult novels that follow 14-going-on-15 Georgia Nicholson (Georgia Groome) as she navigates the rough and swollen hormone-oceans of early adolescence with only an innate sense of decency and three best friends (the 'Ace Gang Girls') to guide her. Georgia is in a substantial rush to grow up, and is going to make many, many mistakes along the way in pursuit of love and affection; this, in fact, is one of the things that makes Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging as enjoyable as it is; your early-teen daughters will enjoy Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging, but you may want to watch it alongside them so as to better moderate, discuss and deal with the issues it raises, a prospect you will find to be as necessary as they find it to be mortifying.

Director Gurinder Chahda previously put the 'pow!' in 'teen empowerment' with Bend it like Beckham, and the light, bright touch she brought to that film is very much in play here; adapting two of Louise Rennison's popular books, the screenplay, credited to four different writers, sails along on a series of likable performances and ace soundtrack selections that keep the episodic, event-driven story-line from moment to moment. And yet, those moments are nicely-put, and nicely-shaped; for all of Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging's talk of boys and sassy behavior (at times, the film plays like nothing less than a teen version of Sex and the City), the film also contains nice messages: be yourself, be decent, be good.

It Might Get Loud

The central premise of It Might Get Loud -- the Davis Guggenheim documentary that puts Jimmy Page, the Edge and Jack White in the same room with a bunch of guitars and a camera rolling -- is somehow both more and less than that idea. It's not just about those three men in that room; it's about how those men got to that room, how they went from listening to music that inspired them to making music that inspired others. And, at the same time, for all of the attendant rock legend mythmaking that's crammed into the room where Page, Edge and White gather, there's the essential bare-bones fact in the air that these guys are not there because they're lucky; they're there because they're good, and watching three men whose albums have sold millions and inspired millions simply play music is truly exciting.

Guggenheim directs cleanly and clearly. Yes, there's archival footage (a shot of the Edge's first band playing an early '80s TV show is a fairly hilarious moment-of-the-moment), but it never feels like Guggenheim is just making his movie out of previously existing material. And there's plenty of original material shot solely for this doc, but the original footage -- even during the meeting of the minds, where the trio jam and interact -- is fairly choice, whether it's Jimmy Page reflecting on the blues or White and the Edge breaking into huge smiles as Page tears through the familiar chugging intro of "Whole Lotta Love." And at the same time, the idea never feels too faked or forced.

Did You Hear About the Morgans?

Science has been, for years, getting us closer and closer to one of the grislier prospects of a brave new future: Harvested meat. Advances in genetic engineering, we're told, mean that soon we'll be able to grow steaks and chops and cutlets as huge independent slabs of flesh, separate from an actual surrounding animal, ready for cutting and cooking as easily and tidily as you'd measure a yard off of a bolt of cloth at the sewing supply shop. I mention this in regard to Did You Hear About the Morgans? because it, with Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker as troubled married New Yorkers exiled to Wyoming as part of witness protection after they visit a mob hit, is the romantic-comedy equivalent of one of those hypothetical farmed slabs of meat, an over-engineered counterfeit whose marketing tells us a lie every instinct we have disputes.

And that's fairly harsh language for Did You Hear About the Morgans? , a film so superbly mediocre I actually forgot about it not later in the week or later in the evening but rather while I was, in fact, watching it. There's a double-edged sword in play here, and it cuts Did You Hear About the Morgans? to the bone: It is easy to imagine worse romantic comedies, but, worse, it is hard to imagine the clearly talented people involved giving us something so bland and bleary.