Top 5 Flicks of 2009:
my personal top 5 of the year:
1. Inglourious Basterds - Tarantino's best since Pulp Fiction. Wildly effective movie: funny, brutal, smart, fun. Colonel Hans Landa joins the cannon of all-time movie villians; brutally intimidating without being physically so.
2. District 9 - best sci fi movie since....what....Terminator 2? Alien?
3. Away We Go - sam mendes flick probably hits home particularly well for me as it follows 30ish hipster-leaning profession guy/couple who are trying to find where/how to settle into adulthood. The stereotypes of the people they visited might be labeled a little heavy-handed...but i thought they all worked (and were plausible). And the Krasinski/Rudolph leads are excellent. Didn't get a lot of buzz, but i found it to be a perfect, beautiful little film.
4. Bright Star - this period piece was centers around the three year unconsumated love affair between poet John Keats and the "girl next door" (though she is more the lead). True story. Prospects for marriage cut off by his poverty, illness, and then death at age 25. Beautiful film, very touching. May propose it as a Price & Prejudice stand-in at my family's next christmas.
5. The Hurt Locker - simply a fantastic modern war film, follows a bomb disarming unit in the streets of baghdad (i think). does not gloss over the brutality/madness of war. lead jeremy renner is great, and continues to grow on me.
2009 movies i still need to see, and that could well make this list when i do: a serious man, the informant, bad lieutenant.
good, but getting too much buzz in my opinion: up in the air
your top fives?
1. Inglourious Basterds - Tarantino's best since Pulp Fiction. Wildly effective movie: funny, brutal, smart, fun. Colonel Hans Landa joins the cannon of all-time movie villians; brutally intimidating without being physically so.
2. District 9 - best sci fi movie since....what....Terminator 2? Alien?
3. Away We Go - sam mendes flick probably hits home particularly well for me as it follows 30ish hipster-leaning profession guy/couple who are trying to find where/how to settle into adulthood. The stereotypes of the people they visited might be labeled a little heavy-handed...but i thought they all worked (and were plausible). And the Krasinski/Rudolph leads are excellent. Didn't get a lot of buzz, but i found it to be a perfect, beautiful little film.
4. Bright Star - this period piece was centers around the three year unconsumated love affair between poet John Keats and the "girl next door" (though she is more the lead). True story. Prospects for marriage cut off by his poverty, illness, and then death at age 25. Beautiful film, very touching. May propose it as a Price & Prejudice stand-in at my family's next christmas.
5. The Hurt Locker - simply a fantastic modern war film, follows a bomb disarming unit in the streets of baghdad (i think). does not gloss over the brutality/madness of war. lead jeremy renner is great, and continues to grow on me.
2009 movies i still need to see, and that could well make this list when i do: a serious man, the informant, bad lieutenant.
good, but getting too much buzz in my opinion: up in the air
your top fives?
posted by Huevos McGringo at
10:25 AM
25 Comments:
As I just mentioned on antidisingenuous, this was a great year for genre movies and a pretty bad year for everything else.
Quick list in no particular order:
A Serious Man, Adventureland, Up, District 9, and ...?
For that 5th spot, I'm still not sure. I think that I need to see Inglourious Basterds a second time. I really like the storyline of the Jew Hunter, the French girl, and the movie theater. However, I wasn't crazy about the Basterds themselves. In that regard, the subtext was more interesting than the text. I also think that QT might've ripped too much of his own material for this one. But like I said, I think that I need to see it a 2nd time. Until then, I can't say that there are any other movies that I would definitely put ahead of Basterds.
Honorable Mentions:
Star Trek, Zombieland, Avatar, Hurt Locker, Drag Me to Hell, Up in the Air, Bright Star, Sugar, and Goodbye, Solo
Really wanna see:
Precious, Antichrist, Bad Lieutenant, Funny People, (500) Days of Summer, and An Education
Shit, I totally forgot to mention Crank 2: High Voltage among my honorable mentions. Those movies definitely don't get the attention they deserve.
I really hope that they make a 3rd one and put Patton Oswalt in it.
I'm gonna go with (in no particular order):
Observe & Report, Hurt Locker, Moon and (my personal favorite of the year) Tyson. I'll hold a spot for "Basterds," which is sitting on my coffee table right now. I still need to see the rest of Huevos's list, and Bad Lieutenant as well.
"Informant!" is really entertaining IMO, but it doesn't reach "best of" status.
Huevos, I agree "Up in the Air" is pretty thin. Don't understand all the attention it's getting. I'll check out "Bright Star" on your rec.
Oh, also I'll put "Adventureland" at #5 and see if "Basterds" knocks it off my list.
(1) district 9; (2) the hurt locker; (3)(tie)inglourious basterds / avatar; (4) the fantastic mr. fox; (5) moon
most overrrated / forgettable: an education
movie w/ most buzz that i'll never see: up in the air
best clitoridectomy: antichrist
oh and let me put in a plug for the "no exit," a documentary on nick nolte. he's out of his freaking mind (e.g., he claims that he took GHB every day over one four-year stretch)
pps -- my family watches "planet of the apes" (the wahlberg version) every xmas
not sure I have a list right now, but I can definitely give my pick for most overrated/forgivable/disappionting:Public Enemies. and I would probably pay money to watch J. Depp read from the dictionary.
pc
i do want to see public enemies, but i've basicaly only heard bad things about it. i've always liked michael mann, but after miami vice my confidence in him is shaken.
zig, i agree that the basterds weren't as interesting as the other story lines. obviously "the jew hunter" stole the show. but they didn't necessarily feel like the dominant "text" to me. anyway, i loved that bar shootout scene.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx7GN1DBPfQ
favorite movies i watched this year in no order:
1. star trek
2. not quite hollywood-documentary on ozploitation movies from the 70s and 80s
3. overnight-amazingly hysterical and uncomfortable documentary on this guy named troy who made the boondock saints, which i've never actually seen
4. inglourious basterds-one of his best, though i still love kill bill 2 a bit more i think
5. bad lieutenant-why is there a fucking iguana on my table?
6. tyson-is good
7. antichrist-was memorable, as HC has already noted
8. district 9
have not seen mr. fox, hurt locker, no exit or moon...but probably will at some point
mcsquared
i saw fantastic mr. fox at the dollar theater last night. it was funny and good.
i'm kinda psyched about crazy heart, but it's not playing in atlanta right now. it's got jeff bridges and maggie gyllenhaal and it's about an outlaw country has-been --right up my alley.
i liked extract, too.
away we go is sitting on the coffee table right now, ready to be watched.
i've been catching up on the tv picks from a couple of months ago. the league and it's always sunny are damn funny. i'm still giggling about the season finale of the league. mad men is awesome too. i'd be "in the dark" w/o 4KS.
i liked sugar, too --a movie about an aspiring baseball player from the dominican.
anvil: the story of anvil is in the player right now.
mcsquared
also I Like Killing Flies, about the eccentric owner of nyc's shopsin's restaurant. thanks to hilary's mom and knife and fork for the rec.
mcsquared
Really need to see Sugar, everyone seems to say it's great.
Huevos
No particular order:
Inglourious Basterds, The Hangover, Drag Me to Hell, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, H2, My Bloody Valentine (due to the 3d), Adventureland, and I'm sure I'm forgetting quite a few I liked...
Big downs to Notorious and a big sigh to Moon.
Drag Me to Hell, forgot about that one. Hangover as well
mcsquared
hangover...i haven't laughed that much in a movie theater in a long time.
i oscillated on including the hangover on my list. like the academy, i'm probably a little reluctant to recognize a comedy (even a fantastic one). in the end, it was #6 on my list, and i felt like i needed to stick with a purist's "top 5".
but yes, the hangover was a great.
honestly i probably enjoyed it more than the hurt locker. so it maybe should be at number 5.
I know we may be done with the movie discussion, but had to point out perhaps the funniest movie line of the year (for me) in inglorious bastards. The bear jew, after the baseball bat scene:
TEDDY FUCKIN WILLIAMS HITS IT OUTTA THE PARK, FENWAY PARK ON ITS FEET FOR TEDDY FUCKIN BALLGAME! HE WENT YARDO ON THAT ONE! ON TO FUCKIN LANSDOWN STREET!
I watched that line like five times in a row.
pc
a last note: i feel like there's some hate out there for the road. i really enjoyed it. not quite top5 material, but def worth watching.
I finally got to "Inglourious Basterds" and fuching loved it. "The Jew Hunter" is the performance of the year, in my opinion. I've been completely let down by Tarantino since Pulp Fiction (I thought Kill Bill was totally forgettable), but "IG" was amazing. The bar scene seems to be what everybody is talking about, and I agree it's awesome, but that opening sequence in the farm house blew me away.
That opening sequence was fantastic. And yeah, like I said in the post, the Jew Hunter (Landa) is an all-time great villain. Chigurh caliber.
agree on the opening sequence. he kinda stole that one from good bad the ugly, but his version is even better. pc-i rarely disagree with you but i have to on the bear jew line. for me it was the most annoying set of lines for 2009.
mcsquared
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