Mike B's Top 10 of 2009

Been awhile! I wanted to kick off 2010's first blog post with a top ten list from a friend of mine. His musings are always fun to read and I agree with many of his selections. I'll be posting Mike B's top ten of the decade list this week.

Oh, and if you find any typos or made-up words that's his fault, not mine. Let's see you edit this beast. Without further ado...

Mike B.'s Top 10 Films of 2009:

Overview: The 10 Best Picture nominees thing has people tripping over each other to call this a weak year. They hate the change so much that they’re willing to say there aren’t ten films worth nominating not because it’s true, but because it helps their case. Last year was a weak year. This year was anything but. Not only did I see 10 films worthy of the term “great” (including one everlasting masterpiece), but I have an unusually high 29 honorable mentions. Any year that gives us 39 films worth checking out cannot be called weak. Not to mention films like Drag Me to Hell, Up, Sin Nombre, Adventureland, Bronson, That Evening Sun, Watchmen, and a few others that I enjoyed very much but don’t necessarily think are definitely worth two hours of your time. There were also a few films where the parts were far greater than the sum: the first half of Funny People (the second half is one of the most self-indulgent hours of film you’re likely to ever see), the first third of The Lovely Bones (due mostly to Saoirse Ronan’s exquisite performance), and the humbling final scenes of Gomorrah.

Honorable Mention: Anvil! The Story of Anvil, Big Fan, Broken Embraces, Brothers, An Education, Goodbye Solo, The Hangover, Hunger, The Hurt Locker, I Love You Man, In the Loop, The Informant!, Invictus, Julia, Julie & Julia, The Maid, Me and Orson Welles, The Messenger, Michael Jackson’s This Is It, Moon, Notorious, Paranormal Activity, A Prophet, Revanche, Rudo y Cursi, A Serious Man, A Single Man, Up in the Air, Zombieland

Note: If I had room for an 11th film it would be Me and Orson Welles. I walked into this one solely to kill some free time and I’m obviously glad I did because it’s probably the most unapologetically corny film (in a good way) I saw this year. Some movies I’ll be talking about below are refreshing in the way they avoid formula at all costs, but this one is just as refreshing in the way it perfectly executes its formula. It’s 1937, and a 17-year-old aspiring actor charms his way into a production of Julius Caesar directed by Orson Welles. As the lead, Zac Efron is mediocre at best, but the script is so damn solid that not even his mild acting talents can trip this vehicle up. We meet everyone you’d expect to: the unattainable love interest, the pig-headed womanizer, the veteran producer who’s seen it all before, etc. But everything is so immediately whimsical that it wins you over before you’ve even had a chance to contemplate resisting its appeal. The best thing about the film is Christian McKay’s towering, madcap performance as Welles. He’s brilliant at showing us the layers of the man who was the epitome of confidence and the purveyor of insecurity. His Welles is much more than just a voice (but wow does he have the voice down). It’s an engaging little film about theater and the draw of acting, and you don’t need to know a single thing about Orson Welles to savor every moment. A homerun from Richard Linklater.

10.) CRAZY HEART: If The Wrestler made my list last year, then this one sort of has to make my list this year since they’re the same fucking movie. This thing might as well have been called The Country Singer it’s so similar. From the aging superstar performer battling an addiction to the single mom love interest who will never be his wife to the estranged kid who wants nothing to do with him, the parallels are all too apparent. Randy “The Ram” puts on a show in front of a handful of people in a high school gym; Bad Blake puts on a show in front of a handful of people in a bowling alley. But don’t let my snide tone mistake you. Crazy Heart, like The Wrestler, is a helluva character study. The day Jeff Bridges gives a bad performance is the day I stop caring about movies. There are a few points in the film where the character has to curb his pride and while a weaker actor would let the character’s outrage rule the screen, Bridges allows Bad to also be humored by it all. The character is so defeated he expects nothing less than to be dealt these cards and can only smirk and shake his head. Another small moment of defeat I absolutely love is when he’s being interviewed by Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character. He’s wearing an unbuttoned shirt and when it suddenly dawns on him that this woman is attractive he drapes the sides of his shirt over his exposed gut. He’s so conquered that he can’t even be bothered to button his shirt. The script doesn’t really explore any new terrain, but I did appreciate that Colin Farrell’s former protégé turned megastar character isn’t the cliché it could’ve been. You’re expecting some sort of unappreciative egomaniac, but he’s anything but and it makes way for some really fresh, surprising conversations. It also gives us greater insight into Bad’s own frustrations, both with how he’s perceived by others and with the music business in general. And in a final note, I should say the music in the film is actually good. Really good in fact. I’m not above saying I sat there through the final credits, comforted and just a little but touched by the gift my ears had been given. Crazy Heart won’t change your life, but for two hours it’ll make you forget about it.

9.) WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE: I would love to live in a room where all four walls are covered with framed images from this film. I think what I appreciate most about Where the Wild Things Are is that it weeds out moviegoers who can’t find beauty in the untamable. It’s a film for people who don’t mind a little paint on their clothes; for people who can cry at the beauty of a lightning storm. It tethers itself to the idea of showing us a fantasy from the mind of a child living on the emotional edge and in doing so forces us to confront the terrifying, yet comforting reality that all children ride on the edge of sanity. And it’s not methodical. There are no obvious tricks up its sleeve. Max doesn’t come in and put a broken family back together like most films would demand. If anything, he leaves them even more broken. It’s a film of staggering beauty and nuance. And I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: I don’t care if she has 1 line or 100 lines, Catherine Keener can do no wrong.

8.) THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL: The trailer for this one really caught my eye (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHvSkTDWFfk) and it had a good amount of buzz in the horror community, but I still wasn’t prepared for just how good this wound up being. The comparison to Polanski is spot on. Like Rosemary’s Baby, this is a study in tone. A girl answers an ad for a babysitter and most of the film focuses on her lounging around a big house watching TV, listening to music, and doing pretty much nothing. It’s horror at its most bare, and shows how more jolting simple scares are than extravagant ones. Director Ti West really knows his shit when it comes to the genre. Not only does it take place in the 80s, but the film has this beautiful washed out graininess to it that makes it feel like a lost gem from the John Carpenter/Tobe Hooper horror boom. Plus it gives us the fantastically creepy Tom Noonan delivering the second great terrifying performance of his career (his Francis Dollarhyde from Manhunter still gives me nightmares). Not only is this one of the ten best films of the year, but it just might be one of my ten favorite horror movies of all time.

7.) INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS: I’m glad this movie came out in August. Had it come out in the last few weeks it probably wouldn’t have made this list (let alone in 7th place). I hold Tarantino to the highest of standards and expect nothing short of greatness every time I watch one of his films. Anything less than a masterpiece is a disappointment. Though I liked Basterds very much upon my initial viewing, I had quibbles with it and thought that though it was a very good film, it was not a great film. Jesus was I wrong. The first time I walked in ready to love the film I thought it would be, and it hindered my enjoyment to a degree. But I watched it again recently open to the film it is, and I can only judge it for what it is not what I wanted it to be, and it was like watching a completely different movie. All the issues I had seemed insignificant when planted amidst these sardonic five chapters. It’s mistitled for starters. It’s not about the Basterds (years of expecting one thing and getting another certainly delayed my ability to embrace it). It’s an engaging, astonishingly multi-layered 3-way dance between the good (Shosanna), the bad (Hans), and the ugly (the Basterds). It has scenes of such great tension where you feel uneasy with the knowledge that anything can happen in this moment. The opening scene is one of the five greatest scenes in Tarantino’s entire filmography. A later scene between Hans and Shosanna (an interrogation that takes place, once again, over a glass of milk) is just as powerful. The three lead performances from Christoph Waltz, Melanie Laurent, and Brad Pitt are all outstanding: one terrifies us, one garners our pity, and one makes us laugh our fucking ass off (yes, I’m STILL laughing over the face he makes when he realizes their plan is thwarted). I still have some problems with it: Eli Roth and Mike Myers are a waste and I don’t completely buy the Jew Hunter’s final about face. But neither of those things dampens my growing love for this film. It’s so delightfully Peckinpah, so romantically Bertolucci, and so vintage Tarantino. And all due respect to Life on Mars (the BBC version), but there has never been a better use of Bowie in any scene, EVER.

6.) FANTASTIC MR. FOX: Though I see all his movies, I’m not what you’d call a Wes Anderson fan. Aside from The Royal Tenenbaums, I hate all his movies. But I love Tenenbaums so much that I keep going back hoping some day he would once again hit that note I found so sweet some years ago. With Fantastic Mr. Fox, he’s done it, and it may even be his best film. This thing is so charming, so adorable, and so clever (as a fox…get it?), I can’t imagine anyone being able to resist its magical spell. I read in a rave review of this film (by someone who also wasn’t a fan of his) that it made him realize Wes Anderson has always been making cartoons and that he just now got the idea to animate one. Sounds about right to me. I’ve grown tired of looking at the snarky faces of Jason Schwartzman, the Wilson Bros., and the rest of the Anderson gang, but when claymated animals, I think they’re all aces. This film also brought about the added bonus of seeing many children disappointed because they didn’t get any of the jokes.

5.) TYSON: I really, really hate James Toback. It pains me to put one of his films on one of my best of lists, but the power of Tyson is undeniable. Any time you put a microphone in front of Mike Tyson you’re guaranteed gold. But put a microscope on him, and the results are effervescent. Mike Tyson is and always has been, in my opinion, the most compelling figure in modern American history. A battle rages in this man’s head between an eloquent genius and unintelligible child. Sometimes we get one, sometimes we get the other, and sometimes they both find their way into the same sentence. You just want to put on metal armor and give him a hug. Like Me and Orson Welles, you don’t need to be interested in the man to get engrossed by this in-depth tracing of his life. You don’t even need to like boxing. It works as an examination of what happens when we create a monster for a sole purpose and then that purpose no longer needs fulfilling. Toback uses a few too many split screens (we get it, there are many sides to him), but the material is so good you look past it. Tyson is the best documentary of the year.

4.) BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS: When I first heard about this project, I groaned. When I saw the trailer, I vomited all over my keyboard. When I saw the actual film, I just threw my arms up and accepted that it was either one of the best or one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. This movie is out of its mind, but its craziness is carefully constructed and it’s one of the year’s most refreshing experiences. The acting is bad. Really bad, all around. But Werner Herzog is no idiot. It’s intentionally bad, and when you give actors the freedom to be awful it sort of breaks down any self-consciousness they have and lets them explore areas they never knew existed. And when you’re in need of someone to give a bad performance, a performance so bad it can carry a cast of awfulness onto the battlefield of preposterousness, there is but one actor you turn to. Nicolas Cage is perfect in this film. And by perfect, I mean he’s absolutely atrocious. His complete lack of talent creates moments so shocking and ridiculous that you find yourself clapping and cheering simply because of the way he laughs or raises an eyebrow. It’s not many films that can make an audience reverberate with chuckles because the main character (as he comes down from a 3-day coke binge) puts a gun to the head of an old woman in a nursing home. BL: POCNO is so bad it’s good, and it’s a risk only a veteran like Herzog would be willing to take. An instant cult classic with an endless number of lines to be quoted by the cinema-savvy for years to come. It must be seen to be believed.

3.) PRECIOUS: This film definitely lays it on (maybe too) thick. Our main character is 16, morbidly obese, illiterate, and pregnant with her second child (both of whom were created from her being raped by her AIDS-ridden father). Add to this the monstrous, venom-spewing mother she lives with and we get the point pretty immediately that life ain’t easy for Precious. The film’s only real overt weakness is a series of intermittent daydreams in which Precious takes her mind to a safer place anytime she encounters one of her many daily horrors. Early on they work on a comedic level, but as we get deeper into the story they serve only to delay us from seeing the end of involving, urgently dramatic scenes. Lee Daniels suffers from that disease which plagues most directors during their first and second films where they feel an urgent need to prove their talent. They overdirect, and it hinders their story rather than serves it. But good acting can make you forgive a lot. And great acting can make you forgive everything. Precious is overdirected alright, but I’m telling you the acting is so fucking good that you just don’t give a shit. Gabourey Sidibe has a blunt stoicism which finds the right mix between a woman who never got to be a kid, and a kid who doesn’t know how to be a woman. And Mo’Nique charges her way into film history, giving us one of the 50 great screen villains of all time in what is certainly the performance of the year. Precious is a saccharine film with simple messages, but sometimes it’s the sweet and the straightforward that makes the hardest grab at your soul.

2.) STAR TREK: If you told me last year that this list would be comprised of a Wes Anderson cartoon, a James Toback film, and the remake of The Bad Lieutenant, I’d have called you a fool. But if you had told me it would also include Star Trek, I’d know for certain you were lying. I had no intention of even seeing this film. I know nothing about Star Trek. I’d never seen any of the movies and had only ever seen one episode of the TV show. But my love for J.J. Abrams, the kick-ass trailer, and the stellar reviews were enough to make me check this out and, well, here it is. It’s the rare big budget action movie that gets everything right (and that’s not even something The Dark Knight can claim). I had the same feeling watching it as I did the first time I saw the Star Wars trilogy as a little kid. It’s the birth of a franchise, creating characters you adore and can’t wait to follow for years to come. I love every moment of this silly space movie.

1.) THE WHITE RIBBON: The year, is 1913. The place, is a small German Village. The film, is a masterpiece. Four years after the enthralling Cache the great Michael Haneke brings us The White Ribbon, a twisted fable about a series of mysterious, violent crimes that propel us into the black heart of one small, pre-World War I community. A doctor is injured when his horse trips over a wire someone has stretched between two trees. A worker dies after falling through a faulty floor panel. A child is tortured and hung upside down. Everyone is a suspect, but no one dares to vocalize their suspicions. They keep their fear internalized, because acknowledging the existence of such an evil presence walking among them is more hideous than the crimes themselves. The film works as both an Agatha Christie-style whodunit and as a story about what happens to one’s character when there is no longer such a thing as certainty. There are upwards of 40 characters in this epic film and the fact that you never once forget who any of them is speaks to the pure talents of the veteran Haneke. So assured is his direction here that there isn’t a single wasted moment in any of the film’s 144 minutes. At its core, the film beautifully explores the way in which children and adults communicate with each other. Some critics are describing this film as a modern day Lord of the Flies and to an extent that’s true. The children are referred to by their names while the adults are known only by their occupation (and in a story with so many characters it helps that we need only to remember names like The Teacher, The Doctor, The Pastor, The Baron, etc.). This also sets up a running commentary on how we are, at least to our peers, defined more by what we do than we who are. I’ve long resisted the acting of children but I think maybe it’s just the acting of American children which I find subpar. The children in the story match wits with their elders in every way possible. There’s a scene early on between a 4-year-old boy and his older sister about what exactly it means when someone is “dead”, and the emotional balance between the two is revelatory. In a later scene that I just need to highlight, a woman questions her lover as to why he no longer finds her attractive. His answer starts off surprisingly funny, but as his reasons become more hurtful and precise, and as we take note of the lack of any remorse in his stone cold face, our heart breaks. Each time he pauses the woman asks him through her tears to continue and with each request we feel smaller and smaller in our own penetrable shells. So lonely is this woman that she’d rather endure vile criticisms simply because, to her, anguish is a better feeling than no feeling at all. I envy all of you for getting to experience this moment for the first time. Something remarkable happened when the film ended. Instead of shuffling hurriedly out of the theater, people remained in their seats and talked with those around them. The film leaves you with just enough answers so that you think you’ve solved it and just enough mystery so that no matter what you think you will still have some small measure of doubt. I found myself theorizing with a group of strangers because we all needed to compare stories and because none of us, despite the raising of the lights, wanted the experience to end.