2009 Films Ranked
Submitted by auto_matt_ic on Sat, 02/21/2009 - 13:38
Tags:
- A
- A-
- B+
- Inglourious Basterds (Tarantino)
- Two Lovers (Gray)
- Bright Star (Campion) [* Jane throws away her po-mo hokey-ness, tells beautifully straightforward - but still memorably poetic - love story. Sometimes these things just don't work out ... queue Keats coughing to death. Cornish is stunning.]
- B
- Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea (Miyazaki)
- Fantastic Mr. Fox (Anderson)
- Up in the Air (Reitman)
- Up (Docter & Peterson)
- B-
- In the Loop (Iannucci)
- The Bad Lieutenant - Port of Call: New Orleans (Herzog)
- Coraline 3D (Selick)
- Julia (Zonca)
- District 9 (Blomkamp)
- Tyson (Toback)
- Valentino: The Last Emperor (Tyrnauer)
- C+
- Antichrist (von Trier)
- The Limits of Control (Jarmusch)
- The International (Tykwer)
- Whatever Works (Allen)
- Moon (Jones) [* Does a lot with very little, but I wish it wasn't so damn derivative.]
- C
- Lorna's Silence (the Dardennes)
- The Hangover (Phillips)
- The Hurt Locker (Bigelow)
- Crank: High Voltage (Neveldine/Taylor)
- Public Enemies (Mann)
- The Girlfriend Experience (Soderbergh)
- A Serious Man (the Coens)
- World's Greatest Dad (Goldthwait)
- 24 City (Jia)
- Anvil: The Story of Anvil (Gervasi)
- Rumba (Abel, Gordon and Romy)
- Watchmen (Snyder)
- The Window (Sorin)
- Goodbye Solo (Bahrani)
- The White Ribbon (Haneke)
- Sugar (Boden and Fleck)
- C-
- Frownland (Bronstein)
- Il Divo (Sorrentino)
- Adventureland (Mottola)
- Duplicity (Gilroy)
- An Education (Scherfig)
- Martyrs (Laugier)
- Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (Hartley)
- Still Walking (Kore-eda)
- Tokyo! (Bong, Carax, Gondry)
- Zombieland (Fleischer)
- Avatar 3D (Cameron)
- Drag Me to Hell (Raimi)
- Angels & Demons (Howard)
- D+
- Bronson (Refn)
- He's Just Not That Into You (Kwapis)
- Brüno (Charles)
- Observe and Report (Hill)
- (500) Days of Summer (Webb)
- Sin Nombre (Fukunaga)
- Terminator Salvation (McG)
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Yates)
- You, the Living (Andersson)
- Where the Borderline Things Are (Jonze)
- Knowing (Proyas)
- Humpday (Shelton)
- Star Trek (Abrams)
- D
- Lake Tahoe (Eimbcke)
- Monsters vs. Aliens (Letterman and Vernon)
- À l'aventure (Brisseau)
- Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (Saldanha and Thurmeier)
- Taken (Morel)
- Taking Woodstock (Lee)
- Transformers: Rise of the Fallen (Bay)
- The Brothers Bloom (Johnson)
- The Great Buck Howard (McGinly)
- Funny People (Apatow)
- Easy Virtue (Elliott)
- Away We Go (Mendes)
- Little Ashes (Morrison) [* Pattinson screams to the heavens, "TAKE ME SERIOUSLY" and he voice cannot be heard over the screaming of teenage girls. His Dali is painful; Morrison pays little mind to the fact that these two guys were artists.]
- D-
- I Love You, Man (Hamburg)
- Is Anybody There? (Crowley)
- Sunshine Cleaning (Jeffs)
- Year One (Ramis)
- Gigantic (Aselton)
- 2012 (Emmerich)
- F
- Dream (Kim)
Author Comments:
Last list of the decade (can you believe it?)! As always, super awesome thanks to the usual buffs (Mr. Dayfornight, Mr. Dread Pirate, Mr. Kza and Mr. Ephender) for their support and insight. In case you didn't know already, the capsules for these won't be up on the main site for a while (meaning: the next decade), so don't be surprised to see grades change ever so slightly. I like to re-order, shuffle, etc.
Yeah, I was definitely crestfallen when Coraline slipped into American-Girls-Meets-Myst territory. That spiderweb was pretty o_0 in 3-D, tho.
I can't believe some people are saying it's better than Nightmare Before Christmas.
It is
Any non-spoiler thoughts on DUPLICITY? I didn't read your blurb, because I plan on seeing it next weekend.
The structure is out-of-whack: constant flashbacks that keep flip-flopping time - it just can't seem to build up momentum. Also Gilroy's too aloof for cat-and-mouse espionage.
See, I dunno -- I dug the structure. Thought it was well-handled. As for the ending... well, consider that both parties were Guv'mint Spooks. I think there might be a bit of subtle political humor on the part of Mister Gilroy.
You're in good company and almost everyone likes it. I just ... I dunno, so much of it left me cold. I can't even say I was ever on the fence.
Muriel Moment: the slow-motion fight between TW and PG. Second most awesome credit sequence of the year (so far).
Have to agree with you on TYSON. One of Toback's better films, for sure.
His best since Fingers, I guess. It's been a while.
So RUMBA is basically the same end result as L'ICEBERG? 'Cause I liked that overall, but I'd like to see these guys work the kinks out of their modus operandi someday.
It's even MORE lightweight than L'Iceberg and runs thin at ~70 minutes. Once the filmmaking trio figure out how to make a movie that doesn't end in some weak cutesy manner like a kids book they are very capable of crafting something praiseworthy (though I doubt they can ever approach the Chaplin-Keaton-Tati tier).
Knew I could count on you for a negative review of THE HURT LOCKER. ;)
Somebody had to do it! No ... really.
Oh boy, spam on Listology. Time to check out.
I reported it, but it's still there. Maybe I'll just move it to the main site, although there's no forum for discussion. And I'm mixed on Twitter. Damn you internets and spammers!
Yeah, I agree with you about Twitter: I think it has its place, but I'm not sure if that is a place I want to occupy anymore. You could always add a commenting system like Disqus to the lists on your site.
Hmmm ... I'll get my tech department to look into it. ;-)
I see the Basterds have marched upwards in the world... :-)
It grows in the mind. And it's so ... disarming, I didn't know what to make of it at first!
It's certainly an odd duck, but it's also a clear and marvelous cinematic achievement. Best part is, it really holds together - maybe even improves - on a second viewing.
Oh, BTW: but it has the mentality of Maxim Magazine: tacky, homophobic, gratuitous, infantile.
You say that as though that were a bad thing... ;-)
You ain't kidding about YEAR ONE. What a bunch of lazy crap.
I think I laughed half-heartedly ONCE. I don't even remember at what.
A well-edited collection of various extreme scenes from lousy Australian movies.
But look at it this way: Now you'll never have to see those movies! That should be worth an extra half-grade alone, right?
Also: Wow, you were depressingly kinda right about LAKE TAHOE. There is nothing going on in this film in my opinion.
Tarantino makes that 'documentary.' He's so energetic, I just want to see and feel what he sees and feels.
I'm so glad you agree with me on Lake Tahoe. I loved Duck Season, but it might be a fluke.
A Serious Man (the Coens) [* Glib as usual. Beats the living tar out of its lead, and ends with a natural disaster, then mutters some Jewish wisdom about nothing having solid answers, and nothing being understandable. I guess we're all fucked, then. Thanks buds, I know the way to the exit, etc.]
All I can say is I tried to warn you... I... I tried to warn you....
That said. I know it makes me sound like an artless philistine, but goddamn did I enjoy me some AVATAR.
You're right ... I do trust in the Dread Pirate, I swears it. I just wanted to like this one. And it let me down.
Plenty of people like "Avatar," so you're in good company. It looks ... ridiculously good in 3D, but that script! Argh!
I'm not really the kind to defend the script in total - it is pretty dopey - but I think it was a wise decision to keep it at the level of archetypes. Because when you're trying to show an audience exactly what it looks like in your head, I can understand if subtlety gets lost along the way.
I was still on the fence, by the by, until the big action climax rolled around. It's... it's an extraordinary hunk of visceral cinema, frantically alive yet clear-eyed and unwilling to resort to the blurry quick-cut hijinx that plague modern action cinema. Cameron may not be much of a writer, but he might have just confirmed himself as this generation's finest kineticist.
generation's finest kineticist
Second finest, actually ... you're forgetting Michael Bay. :D But the notion of going to a movie to experience a technical feat bothers me: at least with "Titanic" there was some semblance of a heart in there (aided tremendously by Ms. Winslet & Co.).
But the notion of going to a movie to experience a technical feat bothers me
So what of avant-garde cinema (i.e. Michael Snow)? Or, for that matter, motherfuckin' Jia?
(That's actually how I rationalized my growing affection for AVATAR in cinema, believe it or not - telling myself, "If this had been done by some obscure German film theorist, high-falutin' types would be creaming themselves.")
You know me: if I think it's a soulless technical affair, regardless of the filmmaker, I have no qualms expressing my concern (Jia, Hou, etc.). I don't mind it having some technical innovation, but I think it should have some soul, too. Experimental art - in museums, galleries, in limited screenings - is different from a blockbuster aiming for mass appeal.
But you can't compare what Snow's doing to what Cameron's doing.
Yeah, I know it's an unfair comparison (Snow is playing with how we view cinema, as opposed to Cameron who merely wants to change what we can see in cinema). It was kind of a devil's-advocate move. But I think, in a weird way, that's the level upon which AVATAR is valuable - it's a pure-cinema experience. That's why the screenplay woes didn't bother me as much as they would under normal circumstances; in light of the immersive visuals, it seemed less like awkward cliches and more like base, easily-understood archetypes.
(Awful lot of thought I'm doing here just to justify my unexpected position standing with the rabble on this one...) :-)