Fingernail on 12/1/2010 at 00:10

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Also the first season features now-disgraced-but-actually-good Chris Langham as the central spineless minister.


EDIT: and the third page features this post.

Morte on 12/1/2010 at 08:53

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Yeah, there's so much stuff I haven't gotten around to yet that making a list always seems premature.

Right now my top three looks like it's going to be Up, A Serious Man, and District 9, but I'm going to watch Chanwook Park's Thirst tonight, and I'm going with a mate to see The Road on thursday, so that might still change.

Morte on 15/1/2010 at 11:58

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I still need to catch up with In The Loop, Moon, and Sherlock Holmes, the latter opening next week in theatres here, but here we go:

1. Up - The opening montage and the scrap book were absolutely devastating, and made me cry like a baby sob manly tears of manliness. Plus, I can't help but approve of anything that teaches little children disillusionment.

2. A Serious Man - It seems like such a sharply observed portrait of a particular community I feel like I missed out on a lot of stuff, but there's so much else there to love, it's ok if some things went over my head. The encounters with Sy Abelmann were so excruciating to watch, he ended up being the most memorable villain of the year. "Larry, we're gonna be fiiiiine"

3. District 9 - The setup's pretty much flawless, and even though the third act falters a bit, having pig-based weaponry does make up for a lot of mis-steps. And frankly, I find the seamless way the aliens were integrated a lot more impressive than Avatar, both on a visual and a story level. To be fair, Avatar integrated the human characters with the landscape as well, but it did is by making the people look animated rather than making the CGI characters look real.

4. Thirst - "How does someone turn into a vampire? Can you catch it through sex?" Chanwook Park shows Stephanie Meyer how to do a vampire romance. That is, you have some actual pain and fleshy consequences. And this being a movie from the man who gave us Oldboy, the consequences are quite horrible and darkly funny. It's goes too far over the top at times, particularly when it deals with the characters' guilt, but it did result in one of the most disturbingly hilarious images of the film, so I forgive it.

5. Inglorious Basterds - There's sequences in here there that are utterly brilliant, in particular the opening farmhouse scene. I love the way that it subverted what looked like pandering to the subtitle-phobic, and how the movie uses language to isolate and confuse characters throughout. However, in the end all those bits never fit together quite as they should. The Basterds and Shosanna are separate threads instead of connecting in any meaningful way. And Tarantino really needs someone who can twack him on the nose and tell him "NO! You absolutely cannot have Mike Myers in your movie. Or Eli Roth." The good does outweigh the bad by quite a lot, but it should have been brilliant.

6. The Hurt Locker - It's extremely well put together and acted, the set-pieces are nifty and tense as anything. It could have been in the top three if I didn't feel like there was a fundamental disconnect between the out-there set pieces and the style it the movie was told in. If something looks as gritty as The Hurt Locker and there's no fucking huge Saucer hovering over Johannesburg or similar device to put things context, I expect certain things. So the taxi not getting shot to fuck the minute it got close and the lack of air support during the sniper duels pulled me out of those scenes to some degree.

7. Star Trek - There's a pretty dense chunk of terribleness on the ice planet, but otherwise this was a surprisingly great reinvention of the franchise. I was never big on Star Trek even though I have a big soft spot for the original series from when I was a wee lad, but this actually made me want to spend more time with those characters, which is something I couldn't imagine going in.

8. State of Play - The plotting spins out of control a bit by the end, and Ben Affleck's stiff as a board and his character's a cipher, but otherwise it's a solid thriller. The amount of tension they got out of moments like the meeting with the military contractor was quite something. I also have a weakness for the Journalist Hero figure. It feels so quaint these days.

9. Drag Me To Hell - Sam Raimi goes back to Looney Tunes horror -- there's even a dropping anvil! -- and even if it isn't Evil Dead 2 it's a jolly good time. When the old gypsy started gumming the bank clerk, my stomach was actually hurting from laughing too hard. Great use of a goat in a movie too.

10. The Road - About as faithful an adaptation of the book as could be imagined. The kid didn't work for me, he seemed a bit too old to be that passive and ineffectual, but Viggo Mortensen's performance and the cinematography won me over. That scene on the highway will stay with me for quite a while.

Just missed out:

Vinyan - Apocalypse Don't Look Now. If you can accept its fever-dream logic, it's a captivating and beautiful horror movie people failing to come to terms with their own insignificance. I can see why the way the characters act could get on someone's nerves though.

The bland:

Public Enemies - Too uneven to recommend wholeheartedly. Great performances like Marion Cotillard's are mixed with the dullest Christian Bale's been outside Terminator: Watching Paint Dry Would Be Salvation. The ultra digital style sometimes works -- the race track scenes come to mind, but just as often it throws you out of the scene. And I'd never thought Michael Mann would've given us as poor a shootout as the one in cabin. But even if it's lesser Mann, it's still watchable.

The Brothers Bloom - Woo! A new movie from the guy who made Brick! Convoluted tale of crime? Check. Anachronistic pulp aesthetic? Check. The signs were good. Great acting to boot, especially from Rachel Weisz and Rinko Kikuchi. Sadly it completely fell apart in the third act for me, when I got fed up with Stephen Bloom jerking everyone, including the audience, around.

Avatar - One good hour, one bland hour, 40 risible minutes translates to a resounding "eh". It's a pretty world, but the cringeworthy script ensures it'll be forgotten the moment its technical achievements are eclipsed. The characters are bland, and the story and happy ending feels dishonest. It never has the courage to explore any of the implications it raises, and the noble savage stuff is infantile. But the scenery is very pretty.

Watchmen - Facile take on a fantastic comic. It's about as faithful as could be imagined, but you can't translate all that into three hours. If it was to be turned into a movie, it should have been done by someone more ruthless, and not such an unabashed fanboy.

Taken - Creepy and excruciating first act gives was to action that's pretty competently assembled, albeit pandering to francophobic Americans that masturbate to 24.

Duplicity - He's a spy, she's a spy. But aha! He's really a...but aha! She's...but aha! He's really...a...I forgot because when I can't trust anything half an hour in from all the doublecrossing, I find it really hard to care, despite the amount of scenery Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti are chewing in the background.

The ugly:

Crank 2 - Grotesque, misogynistic, inane. But it pins you to your seat, so hypnotic is its terribleness.

Terminator: Salvation - ZzzzzzzzzzzZZzzzzzzzzzzzZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Why do filmmakers assume I care about things I already know happened? Why the fuck is nothing new happening? Why the fuck has SkyNet turned into some sort of camp Transformers? What is Christian Bale doing? Why does McG get to direct movies?


Transformers 2:

Transformers 2 - Michael Bay. Beaten with rubber hoses. Until he wets himself and promises to never do it again.

Vivian on 15/1/2010 at 20:21

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Much as I loved District 9, it's probably Up. I hear The Hurt Locker is brilliant though.

Fafhrd on 17/1/2010 at 00:42

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Alright, let's do this.

10. A Serious Man. Already I skirt controversy ranking it this low, and on re-watch I'll probably bump it up a couple spots, but honestly I keep forgetting that I even saw it this year. Which is not to say that it is a forgettable film, as when I do remember it there are so many memorable things: The Mentaculus, 'Culture clash,' 'Are those sirens?' the way the son and his friend swear like they've just discovered swearing, Sy Ableman, etc. But then two days later it just vanishes from my brain until I'm reminded of it again.

9. Where the Wild Things Are. Probably the best movie about a shy lonely kid growing up that's ever been made. Beautifully shot, and wonderfully acted. One that I need to revisit, but it doesn't come out on blu-ray until March.

8. Coraline. Another amazing 'kids' film in a year full of them. And probably the best usage of 3D in a film ever. Yes, better than Avatar. Pay attention to the depth of field between the real world and the Other world to understand why.

7. In the Loop. Everything that Scots said and more. Absolutely fucking scathing political satire, and the most hilarious dialogue in any film this year.

6. District 9. Awesome, awesome, awesome movie. The third act consistently thrills the hell out of me, Sharlto Copley somehow manages to carry the film despite not having any acting experience, and the most seamless 'big' effects work of the year. Yes, even more than Avatar.

5. The Hurt Locker. The only genuinely great movie about Iraq War II that's been made so far. There are a handful of movies that have tried, but they all come up lacking in some way. Hurt Locker's apolitical storyline, and focus on the casualties that come home completely in one piece physically, and apparently mentally, is what sets it apart. Probably Jeremy Renner's career defining role (though he was pretty fantastic in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. But then nobody really gets their proper due from that.)

These last four were probably the hardest for me to sort. If they'd each come out in seperate years they'd probably be the number one for those years (unless one of them came out in 2006).

4. Up. The best family film of the year, if not the decade. Pixar's finest work, etc. Everybody's heard the plaudits for it, and it earns every single one in the first ten minutes. Which make me weep manly tears of manliness as well. Strong men may also cry, sir.

3. Inglourious Basterds. Tarantino's best film. Hands down. A WWII men on a mission movie that's only tangentially about men on a mission, containing what should be breakout work for Chrisoph Waltz, Melanie Laurent, and Michael Fassbender. Eli Roth is probably the only weak link in the cast, and even then, only for one line. Some masterfully tense scenes (that unfortunately don't play quite as well on repeat watches, mainly because the tension comes from knowing that something is going to go horribly wrong at some point, but not knowing when or how), and possibly the single most incredible shot in a film last year. And I love that the Basterds and Shosanna threads only connect by accident. It almost turns the entire thing into a con movie, but one where only the audience is really in on the con.

2. Moon. I might've ranked this lower until I rewatched it this past week. And even then I was thinking 'maybe number 3.' But then Sam Bell makes the phone call, and the movie just punches me in the gut, hard. And then, just as I'm catching my breath, Sam Bell watches the recording of the phone call, and the movie punches me again. Rockwell's finest work, by far. A brilliant character study of two men in different stages of their life. Sparse, quiet, and beautifully shot. It would've been my number 1 if not for...

1. The Brothers Bloom. This one I was almost afraid of re-watching. I saw it three times theatrically (twice with Rian Johnson in attendance), and loved it just as much, if not more, each time. But when I picked up the blu-ray I thought 'maybe I won't love it this time. Maybe the final act won't play for me this time. Maybe...' But then Nathan Johnson's band starts warming up over the Summit logo, the sun jumps above the horizon, Ricky Jay starts narrating in verse, and I'm grinning like a fool. I love every single frame of this film. I could probably write a fairly lengthy essay about how St. Petersberg is absolutely necessary for Bloom as a character, and how the groundwork for it being part of the main con starts being laid during the after-party, but to do that here would be to thoroughly spoil the film for anyone that hasn't seen it. I've probably gushed too much over it as it is. I don't think enough good can be said about Mark Ruffalo (an actor who I'd never really more than 'liked' before) and Rinko Kikuchi's work in this.

I also totally want Stephen's coat.

Stuff that didn't quite make it: Fantastic Mr. Fox, Drag Me to Hell, Zombieland.

Stuff I really should have seen but didn't: Away We Go, Antichrist, Up in the Air, Star Trek, (500) Days of Summer, Thirst, I think The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus was in limited release last year.

Stuff that you probably deserve a slap for having on your list if you have it on your list: Avatar (It is the BioShock of the movies of 2009), Watchmen (I realize that I was almost a staunch defender of this in the thread, but as I time went by I liked it less and less, and I can't even watch it on HBO now.), Public Enemies