December 31, 2009–Every year, it is any critic’s “duty” to put together a list of the “ten best” films of the year. I find year after year that this is a time-consuming and difficult task. How is one who truly loves film supposed to narrow down a list to a mere “top 10″? I’ve tried every way I know how to list, number, and/or categorize my favorite films of the year – a lengthy list, indeed – and it never feels as though I’m doing true justice to those films that don’t fit in a list of ten.
So: I have listed my “top 10″ alphabetically below, preceded only by my two favorite films of the year, then my “Eleventh Place tie” for the films every bit as good that don’t quite fit in those 10 slots.
So: I have listed my “top 10″ alphabetically below, preceded only by my two favorite films of the year, then my “Eleventh Place tie” for the films every bit as good that don’t quite fit in those 10 slots.
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The Top 10: |
1. Passing Strange |
The year’s best film was Spike Lee’s delightful, deeply observant, inspiring and, above all, entertaining slice-of-life in the form of a filmed Broadway rock musical. The story, written and narrated by Stew, is that of a privileged black youth in South Central, L.A. in the mid-1970s, growing up loved to the point of suffocation at the hands of his overbearing mother. Falling in love with drugs and punk rock music, aided and abetted by an astonishing supporting cast, he takes off for first Amsterdam and then Berlin, looking for “the real” in art rather than in life. His journey of self-discovery is not to be missed. An overlooked must-see, and one of the best films yet from one of our greatest and most puzzlingly underrated directors.
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2. Inglourious Basterds |
Unlike any World War II film anyone could ever have seen or even made, writer-director Quentin Tarantino’s cinematic pastiche is both an homage to various forms of genre cinema and a wholly original reinvigoration of them. A three-act epic with a meandering but masterfully-controlled structure, the film centers on first a monstrous but oddly amusing S.S. officer (Christophe Waltz in an award-worthy performance) hunting Jews in Nazi-occupied France in 1941. One of his targets (Melanie Laurent, lovable and heartbreaking) escapes and, four years later, is operating a cinema in Paris. When a Nazi film premiere is scheduled to play her cinema, she hatches an explosive revenge plot. Unbeknownst to her, the title characters, a ragtag group of Jewish-American U.S. soldiers led by a redneck Lt. Colonel (Brad Pitt), have hatched their own brutal form of revenge. An exercise in stretching tension to the breaking point. The way the three storylines intertwine and, in the end, collide is a work of bloody-minded, often darkly hilarious whackadoo genius. It’s not the deepest film of the year, but I’ve seen it four times as I write this and I’m still noticing new things in it every time I see it – the mark of any truly great film.
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3. Antichrist (alphabetically): |
When was the last time a major director scored a “Worthless” rating from French critics at the Cannes Film Festival? That’s just what the latest misanthropic jaunt from Danish writer-director and all-around provocateur von Trier did this past summer. Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg star as a couple grieving after the accidental (?) death of their baby – he falls out a window while they’re having (unsimulated) sex. Tortured by their loss, He (Dafoe), a psychiatrist, takes She (Gainsbourg), working on her thesis on “gynocide” (the killing of a particular gender – male or female), to their foreboding cabin in the woods, “Eden.” Once there, it becomes increasingly clear that not only is nature exacting some kind of bloody revenge, but so is She. Lots of debate about the alleged misogyny in this film, as well as the merits of the film that contains it, to say nothing of the symbolism throughout. Visually stunning and hypnotically entrancing, yet painful to watch. You decide. “Admired” is something critics say when they can’t call a film “entertaining,” but really liked it for whatever it does. Let’s just say I admired the heck out of von Trier’s film.
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4. Away We Go |
From one form of domestic hell to another, the sunniest film yet from the director of American Beauty (1999) and Revolutionary Road (2008), this one stars John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph as a young couple expecting their first child while still barely grown-ups, existing in a modified student lifestyle. When they find themselves untethered from family obligation, they go searching for the perfect home to raise their baby, and discover domestic hell along the way in the form of many fucked-up marriages. The results are alternately very funny, somewhat sad and profoundly moving.
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5. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans |
You probably won’t quite know what to make of this one-of-a-kind corrupt cop thriller, a sorta remake, sorta sequel (to Abel Ferrara’s 1992 film starring Harvey Keitel, sans definite article and ungainly subtitle), sorta stand-alone effort from the visionary German director of films like Fitzcarraldo (1982) and Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972). Never fear, neither do I. Nicolas Cage gives one of his trademark over the top performances, spewing scenery as a fairly corrupt cop in New Orleans who gets injured saving someone during Hurricane Katrina, only to become hooked on pain killers, cocaine and heroin, descending further into a web of corruption and impropriety than ever before. Hilarious and sad at once, this is like nothing you’ve seen before.
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6. Crazy Heart |
An astonishingly assured directorial debut of bit TV and movie actor-turned-screenwriter Scott Cooper, who adapts the novel by Thomas Cobb. The lyrically meandering, quietly powerful and, ultimately, profoundly moving story of a has-been country recording star, also a downward spiraling alcoholic, named “Bad” Blake (Jeff Bridges, in a career-high performance worthy of all its awards buzz). He’s 57 years old, he’s broke, being forced by his agent (Paul Herman) to play shitty gigs in small-town bowling alleys and low-rent dives, and is begrudgingly being pushed by that same agent to ride the coattails of his one-time acolyte turned star Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell, subtle and moving). The future is not too bright until he meets an admiring reporter/single mom (Maggie Gyllenhaal) who could become his road to salvation…if he doesn’t fuck things up too badly first. A touching story of regret and redemption. Great music, gorgeous widescreen cinematography by Barry Markowitz (Sling Blade, The Apostle), another nice supporting turn by Robert Duvall (also one of the lead producers) as Blake’s bartender and true friend, all centered around a gorgeous performance by Jeff Bridges. This year’s The Wrestler.
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7. An Education |
In 1960s London, an impressionable, bright young Oxford candidate (Carey Mulligan, in an astonishing breakthrough performance) enters the sights of an older, caddish con man (Peter Sarsgaard), who seduces both her and her parents (Alfred Molina and Cara Seymour), much to the chagrin of her devoted teacher (Olivia Williams) and headmistress (Emma Thompson). A delightful, moving and sometimes funny coming of age film based on the memoir of Lynn Barber, adapted by Nick Hornby (About a Boy, High Fidelity). A film so perfect moment-by-moment that I wanted to not only see it again immediately after it finished, but repeat each scene again one-by-one as they ended. A stunningly terrific effort from Lone Scherfig, the director of Italian for Beginners and Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself.
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8. The Hurt Locker |
Another exercise in tension from star female action director Kathryn Bigelow (Strange Days, Point Break), this powerful, award-worthy war drama could’ve been stocked on the overlooked shelf were it not for the heaps of (deserved) awards and critics’ praise being bestowed upon it at. A unit of bomb-defusing specialists (including Anthony Mackie) in Baghdad is in the middle of a tour of duty. The new leader (Jeremy Renner) is a bit reckless, seemingly addicted to the controlled chaos of his job. Why? The film begins with a clue: a title card reads “War is a drug.”
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9. A Serious Man |
The 14th film from the brothers Coen (No Country for Old Men, Fargo) is their most seemingly autobiographical work yet, a sardonically-amusing take on God, fate and the quirky whims of the cosmos, conspiring against a Job-like college professor (Michael Stuhlbarg) in 1960s Minnesota. His life is falling apart: his wife is leaving him for his best friend (Fred Melamed), an irritatingly smooth-talking and comforting older man; a student is attempting to bribe him for a good grade; he’s awaiting his superiors to grant him tenure; his son is obsessed with the TV receiving F Troop; and his no-account deadbeat brother (Richard Kind) is sleeping on the couch and hogging the bathroom. It all makes for a hilarious tragicomic portrait of the old notion that it’s all fun and games till it happens to you.
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10. Sita Sings the Blues |
In a year chock-full of great animation, my favorite was the one Roger Ebert championed that few have probably heard of let alone seen. San Francisco writer-director-editor-animator-voice actress Nina Paley’s portrait of a lovelorn young woman left high-and-dry by her husband without so much as a word of explanation is interwoven with a couple of different styles of animation to recount and interpret Valkimi’s Ramayana, a story eerily similar to Paley’s. Add in some Annette Hanshaw musical numbers animated in Betty Boop style and you’ve got a unique, funny and moving animated film like nothing else anyone’s seen before.
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