My (Obligatory) Top 10 Movies Of 2009

(Note: I am neither a paid critic, invited to advance screenings, nor do I receive advance DVD screeners to review therefore I don’t have the breadth of viewing ‘those’ guys have. Hence my apologies to the makers of Precious, A Serious Man, Up In the Air, An Education and any other potentially terrific movie from 2009 that I didn’t get a chance to see yet.)

60 years ago last year (now) was the greatest year in movie history. We had released (in the same year!), Gone With the Wind, Wizard Of Oz, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, The Women, Ninotchka, Gunga Din…and the list goes on. Was 2009 even close? No. It wasn’t a bad year but when you have to pad your top ten with movies that were merely very good, it’s not a great year. So here’s my list, such as it is, starting with a tie for first (I’m sorry! I just couldn’t decide!):

1) Inglourious Basterds – Quentin Tarantino’s long-awaited Naziploitation epic is everything we have come to expect from this self-proclaimed film junkie, long, tense scenes of dialogue, over-the-top violence, bigger-than-life characters and something to offend almost everyone. This might top Pulp Fiction as my favourite Tarantino movie and if Christoph Waltz as a Nazi colonel doesn’t get an Oscar nomination, I’ll stop watching movies, period.

1) Up – Pixar’s output is uniformly excellent, in fact the last 4 movies, (Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille and Up), have just gotten better and after seeing each for the first time, I have declared that they can’t possibly top it…and they do. In fact, the first ten minutes of Up is, without a doubt, the BEST ten minutes I’ve seen in a movie in years, so much so that the rest of this hilarious, touching and gorgeous contemplation on aging and life tends to let me down a bit, even though it is still astonishing.

The Hurt Locker – Director Kathryn Bigelow is a bit of an outsider in Hollywood. She started out as a James Cameron protege and (thankfully) moved away to make some under-rated minor classics (Near Dark, Strange Days) but in The Hurt Locker, she has made her masterpiece. Shot in a virtual cinéma vérité style, this look inside an American bomb-defusion squad in Iraq has the most tense scenes of the year.

District 9 – Working with a budget that was probably the same as the caterer’s on Transformers 2, South African helmer Neill Blomkamp has crafted a movie that is at once a thoughtful treatise on the horrors of apartheid and a crackerjack sci-fi action extravaganza, not an easy thing to do, to be sure.

(500) Days of Summer – Zooey Deschanel absolutely shines in the best romantic comedy of the year as the titular Summer, the girl who Joseph Gordon-Levitt woos and wins…or does he? I love a movie that approaches romance with all the foibles and difficulties that REAL romance actually has. This is a masterpiece of misperception.

Star Trek – When word came that Lost and Alias creator J.J. Abrams was rejiggering Star Trek and (gasp!) making a prequel about when the original crew meets, Trekkers were all in a tizzy (since I’m not one, I wasn’t). I am happy to report that he has made the best Star Trek movie yet, a movie that is Trek enough for the fans yet very accessible for the non-fan (I can’t tell you the number of people who have told me that they loved it even though they knew nothing about Star Trek).

Sugar – It’s a good year when a baseball movie gets released but it’s a great year when a good baseball movie shows its face. Sugar is that movie. From the writing and directing team of Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, who plumbed the depths of drug addiction in Half Nelson, comes this behind-the-scenes look at life for Dominican Republic ball players trying to make it to ‘The Show”, the Majors. It’s alternately heartbreaking and heartwarming and demonstrates the many hardships that these ‘strangers in a strange land’ have to endure. If you like baseball, you’ll love this one.

Away We Go – Sam Mendes once again proves his directorial abilities in disparate genres with this charming indie comedy starring John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph as a thirty-something couple, newly pregnant, who wander the country, touching base with friends and family, to find the perfect place to raise a family. Along the way they find out much about each other and themselves, in very funny ways. It’s the supporting cast that shines here, especially Jim Gaffigan as a tired-of-life husband and Maggie Gyllanhaal as a new age mother. Mendes’ next challenge: he’s been tapped to direct the next Bond opus…wow!

Nine – Okay, so the critics panned this. I don’t care! How could I not love a big bold musical about two of my favourite subjects, Italy and filmmaking, based on a Fellini film to boot? Sure, it doesn’t hold a candle to 8 1/2 and sure, the songs are somewhat forgettable and sure, some of the roles are somewhat miscast but this worked for me. I had fun and left the theatre in a great mood. Besides, Daniel Day-Lewis and Marion Cotillard’s performances are worth the price of admission alone. This one is my guilty pleasure.

The Informant! – Steven Soderbergh is either a community of several different artists or the most talented single man on earth. He makes the afore-mentioned Sam Mendes seem genre-bound. This year alone saw the release of the small Girlfriend Experience, the epic (4 1/2 hour!) Che and The Informant!, a comedy so wacky, it could only be based on a true story. That story is about a corn production executive (Matt Damon) who squeals on his company’s price-fixing but begins to lose control of the situation, creating all sorts of difficult but hilarious situations for the FBI. Damon handles this one perfectly and the story is so incredible, I checked the internet when I got home to verify it. Yep, it’s true!

“The next person who says Merry Christmas to me, I’ll kill ‘em.”: Alternate Christmas Movies

I love Christmas movies.  Every winter, as the season approaches, I feel a battle begin to rage within me, two sides fighting over when it is too early to start watching Christmas movies (the same battle is fought over Christmas music but that’s another post).  Some years November wins, others I survive until December.  There is also a battle over which movies to view each year.  I don’t want to tire of them but there a few, some mentioned on this list, that I find it infinitely difficult to avoid every year, they give me so much joy.  I know, many of you are saying, “Man, Dave, you need to get a life.”, to which I reply, “Any life lived is a life, even if it’s not what you would do with yours.”  But I digress.  I don’t want to talk about what many call ‘the classics’ (although there are many here I would not call that), Christmas Vacation, Miracle On 34th Street, Home Alone, It’s a Wonderful Life (which I do love watching…often), you get the idea. Although there are many ‘alternative’ Christmas movie lists in this crazy internet tube, I have laid out one ground rule for my list:  the piece being watched has to have the December/January holidays as its theme or take place during this period for more than half of its running time.  That way, unlike Warner Brothers, who released a Christmas collection a few years ago with Boys Town included even though only the first few minutes take place at Christmas, mine are TRULY holiday movies.  Of course this will in effect remove some of my favourites from the list, Holiday Inn and Christmas In July, to name two (okay, Christmas In July takes place in JULY but anytime I can give props to a Preston Sturges movie, I will).  Well, let’s see what this fool watches (almost) every year.

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service – “Really?  A Bond movie?”, you may ask.  Well, as a Bond fanatic, and more the books than the movies (Roger Moore almost singlehandedly destroyed the series), On Her Majesty’s Service is my favourite book and was my favourite Bond movie until the new Casino Royale.  The book shows Bond at his most vulnerable, in love, and at his most angry, when that love is threatened, and the movie manages to stick closely to the book.  James Bond becomes Sir Hilary Bray, genealogist,  and spends his Christmas holidays at a ski resort/clinic in beautiful Switzerland trying to finally bring down the elusive Blofeld, played smarmily by Telly Savalas.  Even though, I’m not fond of John Glen’s erratic fight scene editing and George Lazenby, in his only Bond appearance, isn’t Sean Connery (but he’s miles better than the stiff Moore), this one has lots of holiday cheer, skiing, figure skating and Diana Rigg.

The Thin Man – Now I’m really stretching, you may say, but the fact is that the first Thin Man movie takes place almost entirely over Christmas eve and Christmas day and has much holiday cheer, in the form of copious amounts of alcohol consumed by William Powell and Myrna Loy as the mystery-solving Nick and Nora Charles, a rich couple who have some unseemly connections (his, actually).  As in the novel by Dashiell Hammett, the mystery is simply a cover for a romantic screwball comedy, with Powell and Loy throwing around wisecracks like a drunk spilling their drink.  In many ways, it’s the anti-Christmas movie because there’s not a lot of goodwill to men, just murders to solve and this is never more clear than when Nora says, after a few too many Merry Christmases are bandied about, “The next person who says Merry Christmas to me, I’ll kill ‘em.”  By the way, there were 5 sequels, all with the Thin Man moniker, even though the titular Thin Man was a victim in the first movie only.

3 Godfathers – This might be the least known movie on the list.  A John Ford/John Wayne western, 3 Godfathers is a Christmas parable about three outlaws on the run through the desert.  They come upon a pregnant woman who, with the help of the three men, gives birth before dying and her last wish is that the men take care of the baby so they head to the town of New Jerusalem where they find her family but also reparation for their crimes.  This is a terrific movie with strong Nativity themes running throughout and takes place entirely during the Christmas week.  If you haven’t seen this lesser-known gem, search it out.

Remember the Night – Okay, I managed to squeeze a Preston Sturges movie on to the list.  Sturges wrote the screenplay but Mitchell Leisen directed (even though Sturges was very blunt about his less-than-exemplary opinion of Leisen’s skills).  Barbara Stanwyck plays a thief in New York, court-ordered to spend Christmas week with lawyer Fred Macmurray, whose plans to visit his family now have some excess baggage.  The requisite crazy Sturges dialogue and oddball characters keep the laughs coming but the standout is the heart-tugging scene when Stanwyck makes a stop at her childhood home, to find she’s neither welcome nor wanted.

Elf – Every year the studios try to catch lightning in a bottle by releasing a couple of Christmas movies, hoping they catch the public’s fickle attentions.  Usually we get a Deck the Halls or Surviving Christmas (if you haven’t heard of these, be happy) but every once in a while we get an Elf.  Although this one has been catching some speed the last couple of years, Elf is still a bit of an outsider and the most enjoyable Christmas movie in years.  Will Ferrell is a human adopted as a baby by Santa and raised as an elf but realizes he’s not like the other elves so he travels to New York to find his father, curmudgeon book publisher James Caan.  This one successfully mixes some edge with some sweet scenes (especially with sort-of romantic interest, Zooey Deschanel, who shines here) to create very big laughs.  My only complaint is that the movie is almost derailed by a silly (even within the context of this movie) finale in Central Park. 

Die Hard – This is my favourite Christmas movie.  It is actually my favourite movie, period, so by virtue of that, it has to be my favourite Christmas movie.  You may think that this movie is about New York cop John McClane fighting terrorists in a Los Angeles highrise, an action-packed thrill ride filled with violence and inappropriate language and you would be right, but it is also chock-a-block with Christmas music, decorations, holiday cheer, faith in your fellow-man, a negative predilection towards greed and consumerism and family togetherness.  Think about it.

Honourable Mention: Saturday Night Live, December 8, 1990 – I know.  This is an episode of a television comedy sketch show and so, it really doesn’t belong on this list…that’s why it’s an honourable mention.  Saturday Night Live has had a spotty success rate and I’m not patient enough to slog through the crap to find that golden kernel of comedy, however the night this aired, I was otherwise engaged and I heard Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians were the musical guests and I was very into them at the time so I taped it.  Thank you to myself for that prescience.  This was one of the only SNL episodes that worked (for me) from start to finish.  Tom Hanks hosted and once again, brought back my favourite SNL character, Mr. Short Term Memory in a skit that after dozens of viewings still makes me roll on the floor (“Hey!  You’re Tony Randall!”).  ‘The Five Timers Club’, ‘Carl Sagan’s Global Warming Christmas Special’, ‘Sabra Shopping Network”, all absolutely hilarious.  And, oh yeah, Edie Brickell was good, too.

To all my friends, family and readers, may the joy of the season be made manifest in your lives.