My Top 25 Movies of 2009

Whilst pulling stuff from the various websites where my work is hosted to archive here I came across my ‘end of year’ lists that each contributor was asked to compile. What follows is my Top 25 movies of 2009 that I submitted at year’s end to the website I was working for at the time.

Because I can’t see every single thing, some movies that I’d otherwise been very excited about seeing have slipped by the wayside but there is every chance in the world that they would have occupied a place on this list if I’d made time to check them out. So quick mentions go to the following first of all:

Wendy And Lucy, Where the Wild Things Are, Thirst, The Time Traveler’s Wife, The Men Who Stare At Goats, The Girlfriend Experience, Shifty, Rachel Getting Married, Paper Heart, Le Donk and Scor-zay-zee, Jennifer’s Body, Carriers, Che – Part One, Che – Part Two, Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, Bronson, Away We Go, American Teen, An Education, A Serious Man, Adventureland, (500) Days of Summer and Harry Brown.

Furthermore, I’ve REALLY tried to put a lot of thought into this and make sure that I’ve created a list that I would fight the good fight for and stand by each and every one of my choices. I’m pretty damn happy with the selection and the running order, but to get there a fair few worthy films had to fall by the wayside. So, before we hit the list, honourable mentions deserve to go to – very quickly – the following (and in no particular order):

Land of the Lost, Red Cliff, The Damned United, Terminator: Salvation, Religulous, Observe and Report, Outlander, Milk, Hush, A Christmas Carol, Bolt, Bruno, Coraline, 2012, Gran Torino, Last Chance Harvey, Monsters Vs. Aliens, Valkyrie, The Wrestler, Watchmen, Public Enemies, Role Models, The Informant! and Looking For Eric.

Now, without further ado, I give to you my top twenty-five favourite movies of 2009!

25. 12 Rounds

Okay, so it’s clearly “uncool” of me to put forth a WWE produced action movie, directed by spent-force Renny Harlin and starring the charisma-vacuum that is John Cena but, well, what the hell, I thoroughly enjoyed it. In a summer when nearly ever single blockbuster was a total let-down or criminally overblown (and overlong), here was this utterly ridiculous, immensely silly bastardisation of Die Hard With A Vengeance that just dropped itself into the release schedule without any pomp or circumstance and just got on with delivering a solid piece of brainless entertainment. Taking the stupid helicopter-climax aside (which is exactly what you’d come to expect from a WWE production), the film is ripe with some fantastically well-staged action sequences (the fire truck chase is stupendously well-done and the car-versus-tram set-piece was just sublimely engaging!) that make it recommendable. Let’s just not pay mention to the acting or script, yeah?

24. Paranormal Activity

Hype should’ve killed this film dead the minute it went into wide release. After all, what was attached to this film wasn’t “hype”, it wasn’t even “excessive word of mouth”. It was the second coming of Jesus Christ if you’d believed the media outlets going crazy for it. Is it the “scariest film ever made”? No. But is it scary? Yes. Immensely so in certain places. Is it “better than The Blair Witch Project”? Yes, in my opinion. Is it worthy of your time? I would say so. Paranormal Activity is a much more accomplished “product” of its type then The Blair Witch Project. The lapses in logic don’t help the film, and I can’t imagine they’ll serve it any better when/if repeated viewings come into play, but as a night at the movies go, I had an absolute blast with this film.

23. Synecdoche, New York

I tried to stay away from this film simply because the marketing led me to believe it was one of those “up-its-own-backside” sort of arthouse follies with a respectable “acclaimed” cast. My attempts to ignore it worked so well that a review screener arrived on my doorstep nearly seven months before its UK release and it was still sat unwatched up until roughly five weeks before its UK opening weekend. A bout of illness pushed me to put it on to fall asleep to and, man, it just blew me away. It’s a film that is way less pretentious than you’d think, acted to a standard that will just blow you away and it is, more than everything and anything else, just a thoroughly interesting and intelligent piece of cinema.

22. Drag Me To Hell

Flying the flag for the notion that sometimes the best cinema experiences are a good, solid B-movie made with A-grade sensibilities, this film was just one of the most enjoyable old-school viewing experiences I’ve had this year. I was always a fan of renting the bottom shelf VHS schlock from my local video shop that no one else would give the time of day to, and Sam Raimi’s “return to horror” gave off an incredibly strong nostalgic vibe that returned me to those days. I’m still a little uncertain about both Alison Lohman and Justin Longs’ capabilities as ‘straight-up’ dramatic actors but this really isn’t the sort of film where matters like that are all that important. What I am certain of is that I want Sam Raimi to pull himself out of the blockbuster big leagues and get back to making films like this and A Simple Plan. This is an incident-heavy, hugely grotesque, thoroughly enjoyable rollerocoaster ride through the horror genre!

21. The Good, The Bad, The Weird

Ji-Woon Kim, the man that gave us the under-rated little gangster/action/romance/thriller hybrid A Bittersweet Life, delivers the story of three Korean outlaws in 1940s Manchuria and their rivalry to possess a treasure map while being pursued by the Japanese army and Chinese bandits. It’s insanely well-paced with a plethora of fantastic and somewhat fantastical action set-pieces and, to bring it right down to no other point then this, I had an absolute blast watching this. John Woo’s Red Cliff is a superb film winning all the acclaim as the best piece of Asian cinema of last year. It is an unarguably great piece of cinema, and it very nearly made this list, but for me I’m pushing for each and every one of you to check out this film instead. It’s Indiana Jones meets Saving Private Ryan by way of a Tex Avery cartoon!

20. Fantastic Mr Fox

When every animated film for the last few years has been a big bells-and-whistles CGI-driven affair and, in the last eighteen months especially, had to come wearing a massive “in 3D” sticker stuck under its title (whether necessary or not), who’d have thunk that one of the most joyous and infectious pieces of animated cinema would be one carved from one of my favourite ever childhood books, and told in the form of crude stop-motion animation that most likely has kids today texting their mates next to them during the film saying “WTF?!?” Wes Anderson takes a form of cinema he has absolutely no experience in and just knocks it out of the park by realising that if he stays committed to his own “style” (see his previous films!) and lets the ‘type’ of film catch up with him instead, whilst loading the voice-over cast with one of the coolest ensembles you’ll see this year, then the film will find its own way. And that it does. Too cool for kids, this is a Fantastic Mr Fox told for those who read it the first time round.

19. Funny People

Many of you will remember that I made my prediction on first sight of this movie’s trailer, that it would quite possibly end up atop of this very list. I stand corrected. I loved it, don’t get me wrong, but it didn’t chime with me the way Apatow’s first two films did. And that’s despite the fact that, as someone who has done (and still does the occasional bit of) stand-up, I can honestly say it is one of the most accurate movies about the life a stand-up comedian leads that you’re likely to get. As a comedy, it is surprisingly dramatic and yet, as a drama it is incredibly funny. It’s “alleged” failure to connect with audiences may have come from the fact that they weren’t expecting the presence of this “dramatic” element but… Come on, if Apatow had delivered something still in the vein of his previous two movies he’d have been slated for having “no range”. This is a thoroughly enjoyable, considered and surprising film with a startlingly solid performance from Adam Sandler. Between this and Punch Drunk Love, you can’t help but think that the man has the “chops” to act!

18.Sherlock Holmes

Who’d have thought it eh? Seriously? You knew Robert Downey Jnr was going to be the “mutt’s nutts” in the lead but Jude Law? In an immensely watchable performance? Guy Richie knocking it out of the park and swinging fists with the big boys in the Blockbuster league? What an immense surprise! Thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish, this was a real revelation in terms of how the Conan Doyle property was treat; those that harped on about it being a betrayal of the character have clearly never read the source material in the first place. With repeated viewings this will probably rise past a few films that are ahead of it on this list but, after just the one viewing so far, it sits pretty here as probably the most surprising and surprisingly enjoyable of all the blockbusters I’ve seen this year. It’s also more than worthy of sliding comfortably in alongside Young Sherlock Holmes and Murder By Decree on a triple-bill. Roll on the sequel. ASAP.

17.The Hangover

Let’s keep it straight and to the point; “funny” is subjective, there’s no doubt about it. However, what you find funny on a level personal to yourself is funny, plain and simple, and trying to explain why it is so to those not seeing it how you see it is just utterly pointless. There’s those that didn’t “get” Tropic Thunder. There’s those that don’t understand It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia (and if the sight of Danny De Vito being “birthed” naked from the inside of a leather sofa in the Christmas Special didn’t do anything for your laughter muscles then… you’re dead!) and now there’s those that, in less than a year, have started to turn their nose up at this film for no other reason then its obscene success at the box office. Why let that cloud you or your opinion? The movie is a comedy. It is funny… nay, hysterical! Why complicate things?

16. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Full review no longer available!

15.Frost/Nixon

Full review no longer available!

14. Avatar

Full review no longer available!

13.Star Trek

As someone who has never seen a single minute (hell, not even a single second!) of anything relating to the Star Trek franchise – not an episode of TV, not one of the movies – I had zero interest in this film and the trailers and pre-release “Trekker’s Hype” left me completely cold. The stellar reviews for it just had me thinking that they were addressing it as a “great Star Trek” film, not necessarily a “great film” in its own right. However, I was dragged to see this (and boy do I mean dragged!) and how wrong I was. It was brilliantly cast, directed with an assured tone that JJ Abrams had no right to possess what with this being only his second big-screen feature (I may be wrong!), set-piece heavy without being detrimental to the plot and just an absolutely sublime piece of summer blockbuster fare. Whilst not ‘grand’ enough to have me suddenly purchasing plastic pointy-ears or DVD boxsets of the rest of the canon that proceeded this, it does make me yearn to see a sequel!

12. State Of Play

This had no right being this good – plain and simple! Thrown together amidst casting turmoil that lingered right up until six days before shooting (Edward Norton out! Ben Affleck in! Brad Pitt out! Russell Crowe in!) and culling six hours of utterly magnificent British TV (you all know how head-over-heels I am for Paul Abbot’s BBC series!) into just over two hours in standard American genre fare for the big screen, what emerges is a well-crafted, intelligent, thoroughly-engrossing piece of cinema that, regardless of the occasional misstep (Helen Mirren didn’t work for me in her role, if I’m honest – but then who could better Bill Nighy’s performance in the original?) is just enormously worthy of your time; Russell Crowe delivers what needs done, Rachel McAdams and Robin Wright Penn are as sturdy and dependable as you’ve come to expect and Jason Bateman is great going against type in a small role. The revelation is Ben Affleck who takes this role, works against all accusations that he is “too young” for the part, and knocks it completely out of the park! A major shout-out has to go to Jeff Daniels too, who is revelatory in his blink-and-you’ll-miss-him role and exists long enough within the film’s parameters for you to yearn for him to act more!

11. Inglourious Basterds

I’d read the script that leaked online for this film and went in kinda knowing that it wasn’t going to be what Tarantino had been selling it as to us over the last few years (it’s about as far to the opposite of a “men on a mission” movie as you can get unless you’re looking off in the background of the film itself!) but what I never expected was that it would be just a thoroughly joyous piece of energetic and enjoyable cinema – in which performance, script, direction, design and music converge into this rapid-beating slice of off-kilter, masterful filmmaking with one central piece of acting (Hello to you Mr Christopher Waltz) so unbearably magnificent that the rest of Inglourious Basterds has to hold on to him for dear life in order to not get left behind! … Still think Eli Roth stinks things up with his role though!

10. Zombieland

Since he emerged out of that TV bar in Boston mid-90s, I’ve always thought that Woody Harrelson had “something” about him that lent itself extremely well to the movies but I’d be damned if I can think of a single role he’s taken that has done him the justice I’ve always thought he could. The People Versus Larry Flynt is over-rated in my opinion, as is he in it. White Men Can’t Jump is a great little film and he’s good in it, but he’s not doing anything that any other actor couldn’t have accomplished. Money Train? Let’s not go there! But here, in Zombieland, he’s found that “iconic” movie role he most definitely deserves. The film takes something that should be stale as hell by now (and the previous films in this subgenre before it well suggest it is a subgenre that was burning out!) and reinvigorates it with a sense of pace and visual articulation that you’d not necessarily expect. It’s fun. It feels fresh. It has quite possibly my favourite ‘cameo’ in the history of movies and, I assure you, it deserves better then being written off as an “American version of Shaun of the Dead”.

9. District 9

If, as many a critic has thrown out there now, Avatar is “the new Star Wars” then District 9 is our Blade Runner. Like Zombieland, it takes a genre that you can’t help but question what else can be done with it that we’ve not seen already, and it just runs off with it into areas so goddamn cool to experience that they are too plentiful to list here. Directed with a sense of confidence that I don’t think I’ve ever seen from a debut features director (Oh… hang on a second… See #7) and driven along by an overwhelmingly fantastic lead performance by Sharlto Copley (keep in mind that every single bit of his dialogue is improvised!) this is a film that you could write off as a “mockumentary Black Hawk Down with aliens” but is so much more. It’s so damn good that I don’t want it to be sullied by sequels and there’s not a lot of films I can say that about. A truly great piece of genre cinema!

8. Let The Right One In

What can you say about this that hasn’t been said already other than to urge you to see it before the US remake hits later this year? It is a horror movie that is just too damn good for the genre it is fenced into. But, if that is what it must be pigeon-holed as then let it be known that this is the absolute best ‘horror’ film of 2009!

7. Moon

Between Duncan Jones’ (is it wrong that I prefer his birth name of Zowie Bowie?) sublime debut as a director and Sam Rockwell absolutely blowing you away with his performance(s), with the old-school effects design that the film holds at its centre, this is the very definition of a modern masterpiece that didn’t just deserve to be seen, it should’ve been heralded to the point that it was put on some sort of blacklist preventing it from ever appearing in a ‘bargain bin’ at a sale near you in a few months time! A must see!

6.The Hurt Locker

Believe the hype! Believe every word of it! Every single word! This film is absolutely as good as what you are reading and hearing about it. Kathryn Bigelow delivers the first truly GREAT film about our modern war and pulls, from Jeremy Renner (what do you mean you don’t remember him as the bad guy from S.W.A.T?), a performance that drives the film into you subconscious – forcing you to engage it and ask questions of yourself and what you would do in similar situations or with a guy like Renner’s character. The film is no where near as ‘set-piece heavy’ as you’d expect from something with a descriptive line as simple as “following a bomb-disposal team around during the war in Iraq” but it is never anything less than utterly captivating. A genuinely great piece of cinema with a devastingly strong final image.

5.The Chaser

Full review no longer available!

4. In The Loop

Quite possibly the funniest, most quoteable film of 2009! Fresh, interesting and just extremely hilarious! This film will show you yet another side to the god-like figure that is James Gandolfini but, more than anything, if you are someone of any discernible taste whatsoever it will make Peter Capaldi your new Messiah! Taking the leap from its TV show origins (it is grounded within the much-cherished, cult gold that is BBC’s The Thick of It) it is a cult movie in the making that takes the “every 60 seconds” gag-ratio established by Airplane! and applies it, by dialogue alone, to itself! Hunt it down as fast as you can – this is the best comedy of the year!

3. Slumdog Millionaire

Full review no longer available!

2.Up

Cinema the way cinema should be – and it falls on the might of Pixar once again to show us the way it should be done! The first ten minutes pulled tears from me that no other film (bar the documentary discussed below) has EVER been able to do. Yet what follows is quite simply the most brilliantly realised, fun and engaging piece of animation you’re likely to see in some time. It’s Indiana Jones the way Indiana Jones IV should’ve been. It’s a buddy movie that no studio would ever have commissioned in a live action form. It’s got talking dogs flying planes and… If nothing else let it be known that the sheer wonder of Pixar’s Up is that you cannot even start talking (or typing) about it without an enormous grin breaking across your face and an inability to write properly about it without what you’re putting forth being just a list of all the great little moments in it from start to finish! I seem to say this with every single Pixar film (bar Cars!) every year but, well here we go again: Not just the best animated film of the year, but one of the best films full stop!

1. Dear Zachary: A Letter To A Son About His Father

Still criminally unreleased outside of the US, to my knowledge, this brilliant documentary from Kurt Kuenne exists only on import for those with a Region 1 player. I urge anyone to consider upgrading their player just to get their hands on the chance to see it. From Wikipedia:

Kuenne and Bagby are childhood friends, and when aspiring filmmaker Kuenne begins making home movies, Bagby frequently appears in them and, as they became more professional in quality in later years, invests in them as well. Bagby is a 28-year-old medical student when he meets Shirley Jane Turner, a twice-divorced Canadian American general practitioner who is thirteen years his senior. Bagby’s parents, friends, and associates are wary of the relationship, but initially Turner seems to keep Bagby grounded and relatively free of stress as he pursues his career.

Eventually, the relationship crumbles and Bagby ends it. Turner relocates to the Midwestern United States but apparently is consumed with anger strong enough to prompt her to drive 1,600 miles overnight to Latrobe, Pennsylvania, where she shoots Bagby numerous times in the parking lot of a local park on November 5, 2001 before returning home.

Bagby’s family and friends immediately urge police to investigate Turner, and after a lengthy investigation in which extensive evidence is accumulated, she is arrested. When she is released on bail, she flees to St. John’s, Newfoundland to avoid prosecution. Soon after she discovers she is pregnant. Thus begins a long legal battle waged by Bagby’s parents David and Kathleen, who move from Sunnyvale, California to Canada, determined to gain custody of their grandson and Turner’s rendition for a Pennsylvania trial while she fights extradition to the United States in the Canadian courts while free on bail.

Turner eventually is returned to prison, only to be released again by Justice Gayle Welsh, who feels she has exhibited no behavior that suggests she poses a threat to society. Turner thus regains custody of Zachary.

… And I urge the unknowing to not seek any further details and go into the documentary from there. What follows is one of the most devastating and devastingly awful acts a human could do. The documentary presents the viewer with a feeling of inner pain that you never thought yourself capable; probably because in most circumstances you’ve never had to process what this film requires you to.

What it will do though is present you with the reality of absolute human evil in the form of Shirley Turner, yet counter it with showing you the polar opposite byway of total human good in the form of David and Kathleen Bagby; two parents / grandparents that are forced with an unbearable amount of pain and suffering at this woman’s hands and still come out the other end with a selfless attitude to helping others from ever going through what they have encountered.

This film is not just the best documentary of the year. It’s the best film of the year. In fact, pushing Paradise Lost from my top 25 of all time favourites, it is one of the best documentary features I have ever seen! I cannot urge you enough to find and acquire this film.