A first cut, anyway. This list is of the top 25 films released commercially in Boston in 2009. This list was harder to make than I expected - it's not that this was a bad year (or an especially good one) - but looking at the films I saw, a lot of the good ones seem, now, smaller than I remember them. And some of the films that seem to be growing larger with memory, I'm not really sure how good they are. They just feel important - they demand your attention - even if there are other films better... difficult. We'll see...
1. Che - Steven Soderbergh - the first of three he got released this year. And that's counting this 2 parter as one - count em as 2, and that's 4! Criminy!
2. Tokyo Sonata - Kiyoshi Kurosawa
3. Thirst - Park Chan-wook
4. 24 City - Jia Jiang-ke
5. Bad Lieutenant, Post of Call New Orleans - Werner Herzog - and actual 09 film
6. A Serious Man - Coen Brothers
7. Hunger - Steve McQueen
8. Inglourious Basterds - Tarantino - this is exhibit A in those films that loom larger in memory than fact. I'm still not sure if it is a great film - but it feels like it should be - it has heft and power, even if it is a bit emptier than it should be. I reserve the right to upgrade this severely - or downgrade it. I don't know. It will take a couple more viewings at least - except - other than Waltz's parts, I don't know if I care enough to sit through it.
9. The Limits of Control - Jarmusch - another one I can't quite place. I loved it, but don't know, without seeing it again, whether it's much more than a cool looking trifle (with great music - I do love Earth and Sunn O)))))
10. Antichrist - Lars von Trier - exhibit B in films looming larger etc...
11. The Hurt Locker - Kathryn Bigelow - the anti Inglourious Basterds? I think I've downgraded it from when I saw it - but that seems wrong. It's a bit too slick sometimes, but it's still masterfully made, haunting, attentive to detail, a classic war film, and truly worthy of the best of the genre.
12. 35 Rhums - Claire Denis
13. Moon - Duncan Jones - Exhibit C - this time, with none of the hype...
14. Revanche - Gotz Spielmann - I resisted this a bit, watching it, but was almost completely convincing by the end - reminds me of the arc of Head On - starting out rather sensationalistic, and getting smarter and more moving as it went. I don't know now if I am overrating or underrating it.
15. Gomorrah - Matteo Garrone - this has shrunk in my memory, but I think it might deserve to stay high on the list...
16. Beaches of Agnes - Agnes Varda - so light seeming it almost flits away from you - though it's not quite so light as it seems... and masterfully made.
17. Beeswax - Andrew Bujalski - probably better than this...
18. Fantastic Mr. Fox - Wes Anderson - this is a good bet to ascend when I see it again
19. Il Divo - Paulo Sorrento
20. Summer Hours - Olivier Assayas
21. Julia - Erick Zonca - god I love Tilda Swinton
22. Bright Star - Jane Campion
23. Treeless Mountain - So Young Kim
24. SIta Sings the Blues - Nina Paley
25. The Informant! Soderburgh #2... though now that I'm at the end of the list, things look a bit different. I didn't think this was a great film year, but there are a lot of films to go that are every bit as good as a lot of the ones above. It's been that kind of year - lots of decent films, not a lot of really overpowering ones. Though I suppose the first 10 or so might make it. What might be more surprising is that a lot of these decent films were from 2009 itself - for January, this list feels like it has more than the usual number of real 2009 films...
And another thing - last year, the only film I managed to get on any of my lists directed by a woman was Lucretia Martel's The Headless Woman (though I had it down as the best film of the year.) This year - there are 6 on the list; since I don't go out of my way to include them, that's a good sign - that's a bunch of really good films made by women; a couple of them in fact with very strong careers shaping up - Denis, Campion, even Bigelow...
And a quick shot at the best films made in 2009:
1. Thirst
2. Bad Lieutenant...
3. A Serious Man
4. Inglourious Basterds
5. The Limits of Control
6. Antichrist
7. The Hurt Locker
8. Moon
9. Beeswax
10. Bright Star
And - some other notables -
Actors:
1. Christophe Waltz - spectacularly good.
2. Nic Cage
3. Denis Lavant in Tokyo
4. Benicio del Toro
5. Michael Stuhlbarg
Actresses:
1. Tilda Swinton - Julia
2. Gainsbourg - Antichrist
3. Abby Cornish
4. Tilly & Maggie Hatcher - Beeswax
5. Kim Ok-vin - Thirst
Directors:
1. Soderburgh - Che
2. Kurosawa - Tokyo Sonata
3. Herzog - Bad Lt...
4. Von Trier - Antichrist
5. Coens - A Serious Man
Scripts:
1. Inglourious Basterds - Tarantino
2. A Serious Man - Coens
3. Extract - Mike Judge
4. Beeswax - Bujalski
5. In the Loop - Iannucci, Armstrong, Blackwell, Roche
Cinematography:
1. Antichrist - Antony Dod Mantle
2. A Serious Man - Roger Deakins
3. Che - Soderbergh
4. 35 Rhums - Agnes Godard
5. Inglourious Basterds - Robert Richardson
Moments? since I never actually got around to doing this last year, I will do it for everything I saw this year, new:
* The karaoke job interview in TOKYO SONATA
* The girl discovers the thrills of vampirism in THIRST
* The long central conversation in HUNGER
* Iguanas and Nicholas Cage
* The realization that his girlfriend is dead, in the Austrian contemplative noir, REVANCHE.
* The cameraman moving on the bridge in ANTICHRIST - Von Trier's (and Mantle's) integral use of the handheld camera
* "I don't want, Santana, Abraxis!"
* Everything Christophe Waltz does in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, though especially that opening scene.
* The stink monsters in BIG MAN JAPAN - and the final confrontation, so to speak - when things get strange...
* The narration, especially, in SITA SINGS THE BLUES
* The beginning, especially, of Leos Carax' section of TOKYO, with Denis Lavant running amok on the streets of Tokyo.
* "Squirrel!"
* Ben Affleck's marriage advice in EXTRACT - probably not a good source of marital counseling there
Showing posts with label moments. Show all posts
Showing posts with label moments. Show all posts
Thursday, January 07, 2010
Sunday, January 06, 2008
Moments of 2007
I am getting to the end of my Year in Review Posts. I'll have to start coming up with real content again... Hopefully, the second annual Contemplative Cinema blogathon will inspire - it should... Anyway, in honor of the old Film Comment "moments in time" feature, currently living at MSN movies, here are a few of mine - I'll stick to a simple list of 10 or so...
1. The little kids rolling a tire in the background of the shot of the brothers chasing a train in Darjeeling Limited. Though of course Wes Anderson makes films that come as close to being one long moment of the year....
2. Anton Chigurh flips an ordinary quarter in No Country for Old Men.
3. The Beatles in Walk Hard: the Dewey Cox Story.
4. The end of Syndromes and a Century - a lamp, then a cut outside, to a city full of people - a kind of inversion of the end of Antonioni's L'Eclisse: the characters gone, but the city alive and well...
5. Anton Ego's flashback in Ratatouille
6. Margot chasing the bus at the end of Margot at the Wedding.
7. Pretty much every minute Philip Seymour Hoffman is on screen in either Before the Devil Knows You're Dead or Charlie Wilson's War. I couldn't work up the courage to see The Savages, but guessing from the trailers, he's just as good in that. If I had to single something out - the way he goes in and out of the room the first time he meets Wilson...
8. "I'm Finished" - There Will Be Blood.
9. Zoe Bell hanging on for dear life in Grindhouse.
10. "why don't you do some of your older stuff?" in I'm Not There.
Meanwhile - great moments don't all come from good films: consider - Peter Dinklage signaling his intention to blackmail in Death at a Funeral; or Jesus Christ, living it up in Mexico in The Ten (bet you all forgot that existed, didn't you? unless you saw it, in which case you probably just wished you could forget it) - Justin Theroux demonstrating his comedic chops. Or John Malcovich making Colour Me Kubrick worth seeing, or Eddie Izzard doing his thing in Across the Universe...
And finally, as a bonus - some particular moments from older films I saw for the first time in 2007. It was a really good year for that - bunches of Bela Tarr films, Rivette, Pedro Costa, etc. I'll try to keep myself to one per filmmaker, so this doesn't turn into a shot by shot description of Satantango or Vanda's Room.
1. Celine and Julie disrupting the old melo and saving the girl in Celine and Julie Go Boating.
2. The Dance in Satantango.
3. Alberto Sordi, paying back his debts to the mafia in Mafioso - meeting Hugh Hurd on the street in New York.
4. The African western, with Danny Glover, in the middle of Bamako.
5. The execution of the Hungarian who was talking with the nurse in The Red and the White - the most intense of the long takes, with their depth of field, multiplane compositions and stagings, people moving between planes, and so on.
6. The not quite dying paterfamilias, getting up from his sick bed to go to the bathroom, trailing farts, in Ozu's End of Summer.
7. "You aren't a man - you aren't even a very good sample!" - Barbara Stanwyck telling off her useless husband in Ten Cents a Dance.
8. In Douglas Sirk's There's Always Tomorrow - a particularly magnificent shot after Barbara Stanwyck leaves Fred MacMurray, Fred staring out a rain streaked window while Rex the walking talking robot boy tramps across the frame.
9. Vanda offering medical advice in Vanda's Room.
10. Karloff seduces/murders Lugosi in The Body Snatcher (one of a bunch of Val Lewton films I finally got around to watching this year. In time for next week's blogathon!)
And I suppose I should note one more thing - a long immersion in WC Fields films providing more quotable lines than I know what to do with: from all the names, to the phrases he builds routines around ("stand back and keep your eye on the ball" or "ain't a fit night out for man nor beast!") to the dialogue ("is this a game of chance?" - "Not the way I play it") - right up to the great catch phrases: "You can't cheat an honest man - never give a sucker an even break, never wisen up a chump." I had a good year of movie watching...
1. The little kids rolling a tire in the background of the shot of the brothers chasing a train in Darjeeling Limited. Though of course Wes Anderson makes films that come as close to being one long moment of the year....
2. Anton Chigurh flips an ordinary quarter in No Country for Old Men.
3. The Beatles in Walk Hard: the Dewey Cox Story.
4. The end of Syndromes and a Century - a lamp, then a cut outside, to a city full of people - a kind of inversion of the end of Antonioni's L'Eclisse: the characters gone, but the city alive and well...
5. Anton Ego's flashback in Ratatouille
6. Margot chasing the bus at the end of Margot at the Wedding.
7. Pretty much every minute Philip Seymour Hoffman is on screen in either Before the Devil Knows You're Dead or Charlie Wilson's War. I couldn't work up the courage to see The Savages, but guessing from the trailers, he's just as good in that. If I had to single something out - the way he goes in and out of the room the first time he meets Wilson...
8. "I'm Finished" - There Will Be Blood.
9. Zoe Bell hanging on for dear life in Grindhouse.
10. "why don't you do some of your older stuff?" in I'm Not There.
Meanwhile - great moments don't all come from good films: consider - Peter Dinklage signaling his intention to blackmail in Death at a Funeral; or Jesus Christ, living it up in Mexico in The Ten (bet you all forgot that existed, didn't you? unless you saw it, in which case you probably just wished you could forget it) - Justin Theroux demonstrating his comedic chops. Or John Malcovich making Colour Me Kubrick worth seeing, or Eddie Izzard doing his thing in Across the Universe...
And finally, as a bonus - some particular moments from older films I saw for the first time in 2007. It was a really good year for that - bunches of Bela Tarr films, Rivette, Pedro Costa, etc. I'll try to keep myself to one per filmmaker, so this doesn't turn into a shot by shot description of Satantango or Vanda's Room.
1. Celine and Julie disrupting the old melo and saving the girl in Celine and Julie Go Boating.
2. The Dance in Satantango.
3. Alberto Sordi, paying back his debts to the mafia in Mafioso - meeting Hugh Hurd on the street in New York.
4. The African western, with Danny Glover, in the middle of Bamako.
5. The execution of the Hungarian who was talking with the nurse in The Red and the White - the most intense of the long takes, with their depth of field, multiplane compositions and stagings, people moving between planes, and so on.
6. The not quite dying paterfamilias, getting up from his sick bed to go to the bathroom, trailing farts, in Ozu's End of Summer.
7. "You aren't a man - you aren't even a very good sample!" - Barbara Stanwyck telling off her useless husband in Ten Cents a Dance.
8. In Douglas Sirk's There's Always Tomorrow - a particularly magnificent shot after Barbara Stanwyck leaves Fred MacMurray, Fred staring out a rain streaked window while Rex the walking talking robot boy tramps across the frame.
9. Vanda offering medical advice in Vanda's Room.
10. Karloff seduces/murders Lugosi in The Body Snatcher (one of a bunch of Val Lewton films I finally got around to watching this year. In time for next week's blogathon!)
And I suppose I should note one more thing - a long immersion in WC Fields films providing more quotable lines than I know what to do with: from all the names, to the phrases he builds routines around ("stand back and keep your eye on the ball" or "ain't a fit night out for man nor beast!") to the dialogue ("is this a game of chance?" - "Not the way I play it") - right up to the great catch phrases: "You can't cheat an honest man - never give a sucker an even break, never wisen up a chump." I had a good year of movie watching...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
