Flashback 2009: Year In Film article

Share

Before the countdown of my ten favourite releases of the year begins, I feel it necessary to make a note of some of the movies I haven't yet seen. This list is a pretty arbitrary exercise considering the sheer amount I've missed, so consider this something of a starting point ahead of eventually catching up with some of my blind spots. One film I'll definitely catch when it's on DVD is Halloween II, Rob Zombie's follow-up to the underpraised Halloween revamp he directed in 2007, while alien contact film The Fourth Kind looks interesting (not sure about any authenticity behind its production, but the trailer brought to mind - for me - the purported Kelly-Hopkinsville Incident). I wanted to get a DVD copy of The Hurt Locker in time for this, but couldn't do so, while a lot of the films I missed in cinemas (a place I barely visited this year) aren't available on DVD until February or so. Still, all the films included below are ones I consider to be very good, though I wouldn't give any the masterpiece credit I gave Water Lilies and The Tracey Fragments in 2008. As ever with my year-end lists, the selections are organised according to release dates in the UK.

 THE TOP 10

1. In a year of technical excess, the deceptively minimalist Rage sees Sally Potter accomplishing a lot with a little, utilising simple to-the-camera interviews to create a layered plot and fleshed-out characters without allowing the action at its controversial fashion show to escape the periphary, events surrounding these soul-bearing people experienced by an audience given freedom of interpretation. It's the antidote to the year's overpraised studio nothingness.

2. Appreciative of Halloween as a time when horror legend comes to life, Trick 'r Treat embraces its host holiday with all the passion and wit a genre aficionado might devour Romero's similar-in-spirit anthology Creepshow, which director Michael Dougherty's film also invokes in its filmmaking craftsmanship and engaging fun factor. It's masterful at both delivering upon and upending audience expectation.

3. Witness life being lived in Lake Tahoe, a winning film through which director Fernando Eimbcke suggests great filmmaking credit, utilising fades to black in establishment of time passing, his film as a whole existant as a palpable day experienced with its main character that's simultaneously relatable and eye-opening. It's a film with a rich understanding of the grieving process and the subtle comfort that comes through the best friends and acquaintances - without a dishonest bone in its body.

4. Perfect timing and humane characterization personify Kelly Reichardt's superb Wendy and Lucy, a film that doubles up as a triumphant, considerate measurement of our cultural values and a perfect vehicle for the oft-overlooked, never less than exceptional and frequently misused talents of Michelle Williams.

5. The line between detachment and connection is drawn as worryingly thin as that between passion and obsession in Jose Luis Guerin's intoxicating, intricate In the City of Sylvia, a film wherein characters sat metres apart might be whispering in each other’s ears and where background graffiti hints at the profound feeling out primary observer might never have found himself able to utter. A subtle artistic triumph.

6. A warts-and-all representation-cum-breakdown of one messed up family dynamic, Jonathan Demme's latest gem, the intense Rachel Getting Married, is certainly too great in its own right to be dismissed for any of its evident Altman reminders. Truly, it and star Anne Hathaway earn their stripes.

7. Aided by a great (double?) performance from a Sam Rockwell, Duncan Jones's debut film Moon imagines the astro experience as a nightmare of intense longing, coupling up its often heart-wrenching dream and base sequences with a "life-as-fallacy" revelation that sees the film wind up both a outer space answer to the great Truman Show and one of the decade's best sci-fi films.

8. It isn't uncommon for mainstream films to shun historical facts in the name of the product, but the difference between junk like 300 and Inglourious Basterds is that, unlike a Zack Snyder, Quentin Tarantino replaces actuality with something worthwhile - genuinely entertaining. An act of wish fulfillment for its characters more so than anyone in the audience, QT's latest is less than the sum of its parts (and, thus, less than Pulp Fiction), but is often a convergence of sublime visuals, pitch-perfect musical choices and that special something we can all count on this filmmaker for: great dialogue. So it's worth it.

9. Threats of shin-related murder and similar outragousness abound throughout In the Loop, yet Armando Iannucci's political satire betrays a great sense of maturity as it shows off its outlandish wit and crazed characters, actually ending up a more mature and, indeed, preferable to its more overtly serious-minded brethren.

10. Only rivalled in the fun department by In the Loop, Land of the Lost is a near-masterpiece of glib structure and snazzy one-liners ("It's okay. He has poor depth perception.") that proves both the most consistently funny work of Will Ferrell's career and one of modern cinemas few examples of bodily functions providing actual laughter.

Honorable Mentions: Coraline, Let the Right One In, The Wrestler, The Fattest Man in Britain, The Last House on the Left, Orphan, Partly Cloudy, Joshua, The Damned United and Splinter

The Ten Worst: Marley & Me, B-Girl, Confessions of a Shopaholic, Notes from a Scaresmith, Watchmen, Slumdog Millionaire, Friday the 13th, Kitaro, The Final Destination and Wonderful Town