Dark, Windowless Rooms in Review: 2009

I had an emotional crisis over whether or not to share a top ten list this year. Without access to screeners, theaters showing independent (or semi-independent, or faux-independent) films or money enough for essentials I hadn't seen a lot of the supposedly great films that have been released this year, and my Oscar-predicting capacity is diminished by how little Oscarbait I've seen. Not to mention, my friends don't tend to want to see movies that don't have robots fucking and since I'm 19 there's a dreadful social stigma about seeing movies by yourself, made worse since I see almost all the local theater employees socially.

A lot of the films on this list were seen before I became a semi-published sad person and don't have reviews on this blog, or have reviews from before I started taking this shit seriously. I hope that I'll be able to publish reviews for the really excellent films that come up here.

That said, I convinced myself that I had seen enough really great films to make some sort of list out of them, so, lest I keep stalling, allow me to present my list of the best films of 2009, which isn't an authoritative list by any sort of human or animal logic. Also, I'm going to count them down so that you'll have a chance to not read all of this shit.

7. Star Trek
The Action Film of 2009.

A lot of critics are putting Avatar in this position, and I'm inclined to agree, but I must confess a snare that film faces in my critical gauntlet. It's stupid to complain that it's almost three hours long but it seems to exit the title of action film as a result. I don't want to talk too much about it here, because I hope to review it again soon, but suffice it to say it's fun. And it's got some really excellent cinematography, although I can see how you could hate it if you were a formalist fagstone who thinks that a film being self-aware is the same thing as breaking the fourth wall - lens flares and camera tricks are the same thing as the editing tricks introduced so heavily in the early 90s, but we'll get into this more later, I suppose.

6. Up
The Great Story of 2009.

With anything as perfect and heartbreaking and did I mention fucking heartbreaking as Up's opening scenes, it was guaranteed a spot on anyone's top ten, even before you remember it's a film aimed at children but with the emotional poignance of a far more mature film. That may go to show that a lot of the films aimed at older audiences are more interested in jumping through hoops, and where a story matters less, like a children's film that is mostly about colorful visuals and where the story needs not be dictated by what the Academy will find acceptable, a more developed story with a more mature take on mature themes (in this case, aging) can be found. And people wonder why Oscarbait tends to be so emotionally inert. It may not be the unrivaled masterpiece that Pixar has been making recently, but it's a really wonderful script.

5. Coraline
The Visual Experience of 2009.

Combining beautiful stop-motion animation with the most effective use of CGI ever (despite its thematic relevance, Avatar's 3D was still a bit strange and jarring at times). I will forever be excited to see stop-motion films in 3D. Since computer animation is flat and artificial, the depth looks synthetic, like the rest of the film, and doesn't fit the aesthetic very well (one could say that this will change as animated characters get more photorealistic, but I think that argument is laughable after Robert Zemeckis' last three films - square peg, round hole). At the same time, 3D has an inherently cartoony look (observe the opening of Avatar), and fits strangely with a live-action film. It would seem we have a wonderful technology with no practical application until we wander into the realm of stop-motion, a place that uses tangible objects for animation and gives the film real-world depth while keeping the characters and environment perfectly cartoonish, making them the most excellent objects to interact in a 3D environment.


4. Observe and Report
The Character Study of 2009.

This could have easily been a very important film, and it's sad that it was overlooked. I don't expect everyone to really get it, but it's rare to use such an effective, popular form of comedy to get at something deathly serious and without stopping the comedy for a serious, fixed-camera piece of dramatic exposition. Ronnie is a messed up character, and between the cruel, thoughtless things he does and the strange things he says, he becomes a comic figure, but one you might encounter in the real world. Seth Rogen turns his everyman persona up to eleven to play the Ritalin-addled, socially frustrated and self-deluding hero; a Travis Bickle in a satirical environment.

3. The Princess and the Frog
The Loveliest of 2009.

There's really no way for me to describe my feelings for Princess and the Frog without saying exactly what they are: it's like the most beautiful thing in the world was taken away, never to be seen again, and then brought back to you. The idea of ever seeing it again is enough to make you want to cry tears of joy, and seeing it on the screen is enough to make you want to melt with joy. The film overflows with color and excitement and is everything I want to see in a movie. It even shut up for the second act and let me sit there and think about how tap-dancingly great it was before dragging me through a voodoo fever dream for the last fifteen minutes and ending with a shot of flowing, golden beauty that I hardly wanted to move during the credits.

2. A Serious Man
The Oddity of 2009

It's a strange film, which is pretty typical of the Coens. As such a young person who still has so much to learn about film, I feel that this is something I will grow to appreciate more and more as I get older and as I rewatch it. I don't like being told that I'm not entirely grasping a film just because I'm young, but in this case, it's true. I realize watching it that it's a formalist doggie treat, but the whole film is weird as shit, featuring so many jabs at narrative logic and the sort of people we expect (or require) to see in films and the way we expect (or require) their role or arc to be. People have thought of shorter ways to describe the Coen Brothers' current form, but I don't think any of those phrases ("playing with your expectations") do it any justice. They're doing a better job than most critics realize, such as when they complain about how the Coens don't like their characters. As a fifteen-year-old discovering their films, I realized that they think it's disrespectful to the characters to put them through simple conflicts and have them emerge much better people, so when a Coen character goes through a series of epic trials that only ever illuminate hidden aspects of that character or deposit them on the other side, merely confused is the way they show their most profound love. It seems so odd only because we've had a story that's far too realistic for our liking woven in front of us using cinematic language, editing, flashbacks, to take the place of the reactions and thought processes that the characters are experienced.

1. Inglourious Basterds
The Film of 2009.

A film I can't get over. It's incredibly strange and obviously perfect. It replaces action scenes without intense dialogue, perfectly mounted and played immaculately and exquisitely by a cast that never misses a beat and never fails to completely understand their dialogue, character and scene. It's Tarantino's most perfect cast. If making a film so strange and so given to implication, while at the same time keeping your cast perfectly in tune with each other, the dialogue and the character and playing every beat and cue to undercoat the actors isn't the sign of a great director, then I give up. Tarantino will never top this script and he will always try to figure out the exact mixture of ecstasy and Chinese food he consumed that allowed his actors free reign over his film. The more I watch this, the more I realize that it's about the cast. Christoph Waltz is clearly paramount to the film's success, but without the work of Michael Fassbender, Melanie Laurent, Brad Pitt, August Diehl, and Daniel Brühl, their respective scenes would have been unconvincing and boring. The cinematography is even especially functional, lighting characters faces in subtle ways to reveal all facial expressions. So many of his films have been about the words the actors speak, but Inglourious Basterds is Tarantino's achingly genuine love letter to the actors that speak his beloved dialogue and is the last thing to cross off before we welcome him into the big kid's club. He could easily be insane, but his insanity would almost be a natural phenomenon, that his mind is so perfectly in tune with the filmmaking medium and his films make every other film and every other filmmaker seem pedantic and safe by comparison. We're watching a flaming genius stop to prove he's still a genius for a moment before going back to the flaming genius that he engages himself with. Inglourious Basterds is like making eye contact with that genius.

Hail.