Commentary: The Top Films of 2009

Here are the ten movies from 2009 that I liked the best:

#10: Summer Hours
This unpretentious, quiet drama from France depicts the tribulations of a family when they must settle the estate of their recently deceased patriarch.

#9: Bright Star
Jane Campion’s film about the Romantic poet John Keats and his almost-lover embodies the oft-quoted line from Keats’ verse: “Beauty is truth, truth is beauty.”

#8: World’s Greatest Dad
This may be the strangest film of 2009, but it’s also one of my favorites. This underrated gem starring Robin Williams as a high school English teacher trying to cover up the less-than-flattering conditions of his son’s suicide is a pitch dark satire about our culture’s obsession with death and celebrity.

#7: Up
Pixar did it again! The first 20 minutes alone make this film worth watching again and again. I will openly admit to having cried while watching this film.

#6: An Education
Actress Carey Mulligan is an absolute revelation as a British teenager torn between the jazz-soaked, swinging London world offered by a suave older man and the academic banalities of Oxford.

#5: Brothers
The most surprising film of the year. By some miracle, veteran director Jim Sheridan gets brilliant performances out of Natalie Portman, Jake Gyllanhaal, and Tobey Maguire. A true “veteran’s picture” in the tradition of The Best Years of our Lives and Coming Home.

#4: Up in the Air
A screwball comedy for our current age. George Clooney proves once again that he is worthy of the much-repeated title of “Cary Grant of our times.” This film strikes the perfect balance between witty dialogue and the dark realities of our troubled economic times.

#3: Inglourious Basterds
Quentin Tarantino wears his love for movies on his sleeve. His geeky cinematic worldview would become annoying if he didn’t execute this film so dang well. At least three scenes in this film are among the best of the past ten years. They will be remembered and studied closely for generations to come.

#2: The Hurt Locker
The most patriotic film I have recently seen, because it tells the story of our men and women in uniform with beauty, simplicity, and truth. This film makes the soldiers’ story come alive by focusing on three men in uniform and the daily confrontation with death they face in an IED squad.

#1: A Serious Man
The Coen Brothers have emerged as the filmmakers of the decade. They repeat the artistic success of No Country for Old Men with this modern-day retelling of the story of Job. Everything falls apart for a suburban physics professor, played with incredible acuity by the stage actor Michael Stuhlberg. Hopefully he becomes a household name someday soon.

Movie Review: Avatar (2009, Directed by James Cameron)

I can’t remember the last time I was more conflicted about a film than I am about James Cameron’s multi-mutli-multi-million-dollar spectacle Avatar. I cannot deny the visceral impact of Cameron’s much-labored-over visuals. I’m not sure if 3-D technology has ever been used more effectively than it is in the film’s first hour. I completely bought into the world of the planet Pandora, where the natives are blue and the plantlife is luscious beyond belief. I felt that I was not merely observing this world, but rather becoming an active participant in it. I have never felt this visceral involvement to the same extent in a previous film.

Unfortunately, Cameron’s incredible visual achievements are in the service of a very mediocre film. While the basic story about a paraplegic marine taken on a Pandorac mission involving a technologically-unbelievable, yet nevertheless impressive avatar interested me early in the movie, the story’s payoff was weak at best; nonexistent might be a more accurate description. The script and acting (with the notable exception of the luminous Zoe Saldana) were lazy, one-dimensional, and bland. There isn’t a single line of dialogue in the film that doesn’t simply serve a functional purpose in the plot. I cared little about the film’s characters in the second half because they are nothing more than cartoons. I would have followed the protagonists of Pixar’s Up, WALL-E, or Ratatouille to the ends of the earth. In contrast, I was indifferent to the tribulations of Avatar’s earthlings and blue people alike. I believe my apathy was a direct result of Cameron’s laziness in screenwriting and character development. As a result, the last forty minutes of the picture were completely wasted on me. I stopped caring what happened to the characters at about the two hour mark.

I could go on and on for pages about the film’s inconsistent and potentially troubling thematic concerns. Let’s just say that Avatar attempts to be a political allegory, and a completely non-subtle one at that. When I tell people that I believe No Country for Old Men to be an allegory about the war on terror, I often get blank stares. It is precisely the Coen Brothers’ subtlety in treating political issues of today that makes it a great achievement in filmmaking. On the other hand, Avatar chooses to conduct its political analysis with a sledgehammer. I have heard both liberals and conservatives attack Avatar on ideological grounds. On one hand, it is a clear indictment of U.S. foreign policy. On the other hand, Cameron undercuts whatever peace-promoting message he might have in mind by filling the film’s entire second half with messy, destructive battle sequences worthy of the latest Michael Bay offering. If Cameron really believes we should “give peace a chance,” why does he fill the entire second half with death and destruction on a grand scale?

The fact that critics from such diverse backgrounds have attacked Cameron’s political themes does not prove the story a nuanced and ambiguous exploration of international concerns. Rather, the criticisms serve to highlight the sloppiness of Cameron’s script. It is clear to anyone who is familiar with Cameron’s life work which direction he leans politically and the values he is hoping to promote in Avatar. His failure in effectively demonstrating those ideals shows how amateurish his writing and vision for Avatar really are.

You may ask whether or not Cameron’s failings on an ideological and literary level diminish the visceral reaction I had to the visuals in the film’s first half. The answer is a resounding “yes.” While I think Avatar will indeed be studied in the future by cinematic technicians to determine how Cameron managed to compellingly create such a fascinating world, I don’t imagine those who care about story and a complete artistic achievement having much use for it. My hope is that a truly visionary director will take Cameron’s visual innovations and figure out how to turn them into a movie worth watching. I’m talking to you Quentin Tarantino, the Coen Brothers, and/or Martin Scorsese!

Movie Review: Brothers (2009, Directed by Jim Sheridan)

What a pleasant surprise was Jim Sheridan’s Brothers. The director who brought us the minor immigration masterpiece In America a few years ago now gives us a tale worthy of the great films of the past like The Best Years of our Lives that document the woes of veterans making the difficult transition to civilian life. Brothers joins The Hurt Locker as one of the few successful military-oriented films made in the shadow of 9/11 and the subsequent events.

Brothers tells the simple tale of Captain Sam Cahill (Tobey Maguire), thought to be dead in Afghanistan. When it is found that Cahill is in fact not dead, but has been captured by the Taliban, the young soldier must contend with the changes that have occurred on the civilian front. Maguire’s alcoholic brother (Jake Gyllenhaal) has formed a complicated bond with Maguire’s wife (Natalie Portman). Maguire must contend with not only the chilling memory of the moral compromises he had to make to escape the Taliban, but also the complex family dynamics that he finds upon his return to the homeland.

I cannot lay enough superlatives on the bold performances of Maguire, Gyllenhaal, and Portman. None of these three actors have proved themselves particularly versatile or subtle in the past. There is nothing in their filmographies to prepare me for the astonishing emotional heights they traverse in Sheridan’s movie. Even more impressive than the intense melodrama seen in the film’s trailer are the moments of subtle emotional truth. In fact, Brothers is overall a rather quiet film. We, the audience, witness quiet times in which characters express so much to one another with glances and knowing nods.

Brothers, much like The Hurt Locker, is powerful because it focuses not on the political complexities of battle, but rather the emotional and psychological effects war has on its participants. We see how, indeed, war can and does turn brother against brother.