11. I Love You, Man

I Love You, Man
John Hamburg, 2009

Peter Klaven (Paul Rudd) has always gotten along better with women than men. In need of a best man for his wedding, Paul happens to meet Sidney (Jason Segal), and they hit it off immediately. But will Peter's new friend jeopardize his imminent marriage (no, it won't. Just saying).

I Love You, Man is probably the most blatant of the new sub-genre of bromances, literally grafting the friendly relationship between Peter and Sidney on to the worn-out romantic comedy plot structure. There's the meet cute, the montages, the break-up, and the reconciliation, all present and accounted for. I suppose that's part of the joke, really, but it hurts the film by saddling it with all of the weaknesses inherent in the genre. I suspect even the filmmakers were only sticking to it out of a sense of obligation, because the break-up section lasts all of seven minutes, and you can tell that no one's heart is in it.

While things suffer on a big picture level, though, they do manage to get pretty much every single thing right on a moment to moment level. It's funny, the actors play off of each other nicely, and it's funny. Did I mention it was funny? Funny enough that I still liked it, even though it didn't add up to much.

6.5/10

PS. It's taken me almost a week to get this review up, for no particular reason. This is my public announcement of failure and shame.

10. Man on Wire

Man on Wire
James Marsh, 2008

The true story of a man (Philippe Petit) who walked a tightrope between the two towers of the World Trade Center.

I'm not generally a fan of documentaries. Well, that's not really true. I generally tend to like documentaries, I just never like them a lot. There's always that lack of design or structure that prevents it from really taking off, because you can't really write a documentary (even though they have writers) and you can only sort of direct them. Man on Wire is the exception to this rule. It's structured and plotted like a well-built thriller, based around the complicated plot to break into the WTC, string a wire between the towers, and pull the stunt. A significant portion of the film is made up of very striking re-enactments of the break-in, which are shot in black and white and become increasingly abstract as we approach the wire-walk. The backstory is interspersed in a way that feels like flashbacks from a narrative film, and it all just flows in a way that documentaries generally don't. Terrific stuff.

8.5/10

9. JCVD

JCVD
Mabrouk El Mechri, 2008

While trying to scrounge up some money to support a bitter custody battle for his daughter, washed-up movie star Jean-Claude Van Damme (Jean-Claude Van Damme) winds up in the middle of a bank robbery gone wrong.

There is a lot to like about this movie, starting with the brilliant opening credits sequence, which is a lengthy single-shot action scene in which Van Damme kills at least a couple of dozen people, using several guns, a giant pipe, and, of course, his own feet and fists. Of course, every movement is blatantly choreographed, much of the timing is off, and many of the punches don't come anywhere close to landing. But then, that's kind of the point.

Then you get to the body of the movie, which is the robbery. The story is nothing particularly novel, but it is solid enough that it would still have worked even if random actor X was playing celebrity action star Y, rather than Van Damme as Van Damme. It just wouldn't have worked as well. What is a little more interesting is the way that the story is presented, with a fractured chronology, scenes shown twice from different perspectives, and a handful of fourth-wall breaking moments including the centerpiece of the film, a six-minute monologue from Van Damme, delivered directly to the audience. It didn't really work, admittedly - but I really appreciate the attempt. Unfortunately, it all kind of falls apart as we move into the (somewhat) action-packed finale, which hurts the film quite a bit. Even then, though, Van Damme's surprisingly strong and naturalistic performance keeps it from going completely off the rails. This is, I suppose, a prime argument for why it's a good idea to let actors act in their native tongue (see also: Cruz, Penelope).

7/10

8. Funny People

Funny People
Judd Apatow, 2009

George Simmons (Adam Sandler), a famous comic, learns that he's dying of cancer. He has no friends at all, so he takes a struggling young stand-up (Seth Rogan) under his wing and reconnects with the love of his life (Leslie Mann). Then he finds out he's cured, and doesn't know where to go from there.

This is certainly Judd Apatow's best effort yet. His two previous movies, The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, are generally lauded for mixing lowbrow comedy with heartfelt emotion. To a certain extent that's true, and it's true of Funny People as well - but there's a critical difference that makes Funny People work so much better. In the first two films, the world presented to the audience is the world of a comedy - it looks kind of bright and plasticky, and more to the point, its filled with funny, quirky characters and everyone makes jokes that are funny because they're jokes. The character development, drama, and emotion are the external element that doesn't quite fit. In Funny People, it's just the opposite. The world of the movie is very grounded, the characters generally feel at home in it, and it's the jokes that feel out of place. This had the dual beneficial effect of putting the whole movie on a more solid footing and also making the jokes much funnier than they would otherwise have been. It also makes the bloated 2 and a half hour running time feel like less of an issue than it was in the other movies.

On the negative side of things, it really feels like two different movies (pre- and post-cure), with largely different supporting casts. There are a few too many musical montages (hey! I have an idea how to tighten up that running time!), and it really does drag, especially toward the end of the first half.

7/10

7. In Bruges

In Bruges
Martin McDonagh, 2008

After Ray (Colin Farrell), a young hit-man, accidentally kills a child during his first hit, he and his mentor, Ken (Brendan Gleeson), are sent to hide out in the tiny town of Bruges.

I liked this one quite a bit. It's sharply written, with snappy dialogue, and manages to swing between comedy, tragedy, and surrealism without ever violating its own tone. Colin Farrell gives the performance of his career (or at least the portion that I've seen) as, essentially, a child in a man's body, and Ralph Fiennes is nearly unrecognizable as the vengeful crime boss. The ending is very interesting, taking a fairly grounded story and recasting it as a sort of fairy tale (as alluded to by several characters), albeit one seen through a fractured lens. The dialogue does at times, particularly when Harry is involved, slip into that maddening Tarantino-esque "repeating myself slowly to sound badass" sort of pattern that I hate so much, but fortunately those moments are few and far between.

8.5/10

6. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Terry Gilliam, 2009

A centuries-old monk (Christopher Plummer) must enlist the aid of a mysterious stranger (Heath Ledger) in order to collect five souls before his daughter's (Lilly Cole) sixteenth birthday. If he fails, the devil (Tom Waits) will come to claim her.

Poor, poor, Terry Gilliam. Every time he tries to make a movie, fate intervenes and tries to stop it by, say, killing one of his lead actors. Parnassus is undoubtedly compromised by Heath Ledger's death and the hoops they had to jump through to get around it, but, as tempting as it may be, we can't really excuse the faults of the film on those grounds. After all, the way in which they integrated Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell into the role is nearly seamless - a triumph of luck and ingenuity. Where Parnassus goes wrong, it does so in unrelated ways. Even if Heath Ledger had finished the movie, it would have been the same basic experience of highs (Everything involving Tom Waits, Parnassus's defeat of Tony and his subsequent surreal journey) and lows (everything involving Verne Troyer, the almost offensively cheap look of the inside of the Imaginarium, and the gratuitously Python-esque musical number). I want to like the movie a lot, especially because Gilliam and Waits have given us what may be the greatest on-screen depiction of the Devil since - well, ever, but the whole thing really just doesn't hang together. It's a particular shame, given Gilliam's gift for imaginative visuals, that nearly everything he devises for the Imaginarium itself is horribly compromised by the awful CGI used to create it. An Imaginarium created with sets and miniatures, even if vastly more modest in scope, would have been much more effective. In fact, the first bit of the Imaginarium that we see, a large indoor forest of cardboard cutout trees, is a perfect example of what I wish we had seen throughout. All in all, it's worth watching for the good stuff, but it's mostly a sad collection of missed opportunities.

6/10

Stuff to See in 2010

There are few things more exciting than the prospect of a new year filled with new movies. After combing the internet, I’ve found fifty-eight movies slated to be released in 2010 that I am interested in, at least based on the minimal bits of information that are available for some of them. Of those fifty-eight, I’ve narrowed down a list of ten that I am particularly interested in. These aren’t necessarily the movies that I expect to be the best of the year – in fact, they almost certainly won’t. There really isn’t any way to make a list like this without falling back on either known properties or following people you trust. Almost all of these fall into one of those categories, but the best movies are oftentimes the ones you don’t see coming. Still, no reason to worry about that yet. Instead, just enjoy my list of ten movies to keep an eye on in 2010.

10. A Nightmare on Elm Street
Samuel Bayer

There’s a possibility that this movie won’t actually be any good, despite the brilliant choice of Jackie Earle Haley as Krueger. In fact, it will probably be the worst movie on this list, and maybe the worst of all the runners up, too. That won’t stop me from being there opening night, with bells on. It’s a Freddy Krueger movie. Everything else is irrelevant.

Hey, look, there's a trailer!

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9. The Adjustment Bureau
George Nolfi

George Nolfi is an unknown quantity to me, but I like Matt Damon and I like Emily Blunt. I suppose I don’t really know why I’m interested in this movie. I guess it is based on a short story by some old science-fiction writer, but even if I knew who that guy was, surely that couldn't explain it.

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8. The Green Hornet
Michel Gondry

I like Seth Rogan, I like superheroes, I like fedoras. . . and yet, this movie held little to no interest to me until they did something really strange and hired Michel Gondry to direct it. I have no idea what he’s going to do with the material, but whatever it is, it’s going to be fascinating.

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7. The Expendables
Sylvester Stallone

Stallone. Schwarzenegger. Willis. Lundgren. Statham. Li. That makes a pretty good start to a list of the greatest living action movie stars. It’s also the cast of this movie. Throw in a couple of great old character actors like Mickey Rourke and Eric Roberts and let them all loose with machine guns, rocket launchers, and knives, and you’ve got a movie the likes of which have never been seen before. Or at least, not since the 80’s.

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6. Kick-Ass
Matthew Vaughn

This.

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5. The Tempest
Julie Taymor

Between her very interesting stage show of The Lion King and her masterwork, Titus, Julie Taymor’s name is enough to get me interested in anything. That interest won’t necessarily maintain itself over time, as demonstrated by the fact that I still haven’t seen Across the Universe, but The Tempest has a lot of other things going for it, including a return to Shakespearean source material and a terrific cast including Chris Cooper, Alan Cumming, Djimon Hounsou, David Straithairn, Alfred Molina, and Helen Fucking Mirren.

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4. Iron Man 2
Jon Favreau

Because, well, because of Iron Man 1. And because you don’t pick Mickey Rourke and Sam Rockwell for your villains unless you’re some sort of genius.

Hey, look, there's a trailer!

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3. Never Let Me Go
Mark Romanek

From the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, who wrote the terrific The Remains of the Day, adapted by Alex Garland, who wrote 28 Days Later and Sunshine, directed by Romanek, the man behind One Hour Photo, and featuring Sally Sparrow herself, Carey Mulligan. I haven’t read the book myself, but I just bought a copy so I’ll know in a couple of weeks whether I’m still interested. What I do know is that it is apparently a moody, melancholic science-fiction story that keeps the sci-fi largely tucked away in the background. Sounds good to me.

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2. Inception
Christopher Nolan

I don’t really know much of anything about this movie. I don’t really want to know much of anything about this movie. I will probably find out a lot about this movie before it opens, and it will probably be my own fault. I’ll probably still love it.

Hey, look, there's a trailer!

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1. Black Swan
Darren Aronofsky

I can tell you why this is my number one pick for 2010 in two words, and I already typed them just under the title up there. This will be Aronofsky’s fifth movie, and the first four represent, in my eyes, a brilliant filmography unmatched by anyone. Pi (9.5). Requiem for a Dream (9). The Fountain (9.5, and I’m contemplating making it a 10). The Wrestler (9.5). No other director has ever come out of the gate swinging quite like that with the possible exception of Rian Johnson, who only has two movies under his belt. Darren Aronofsky is easily the most exciting filmmaker working today, and his name is all you should need. What about the movie? It has something to do with a rivalry between ballerinas. And it might be a horror movie. I dunno.

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There you go – ten movies for 2010, which still leaves out all sorts of exciting, interesting projects including Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World, Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, Paul, David Fincher’s The Social Network, Red, The Last Word, Madeo, Mr. Nobody, Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer, Ben Affleck’s The Town, Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, Toy Story 3, and Sophia Coppola’s Somewhere, not to mention a couple of dozen others. It’s going to be a good year.

5. 9

9
Shane Acker, 2009

A handful of tiny doll-like robots are the only life left on Earth after a terrible war. When the last of these robots, 9 (Elijah Wood), comes online, he inadvertently awakens the machines that destroyed humanity in the first place - but he may also be the key to destroying those machines once and for all.

2009 has really been a banner year for animation, between Up, Coraline, and The Fantastic Mr. Fox. For a while, I was thinking I could count 9 among them - certainly the least of the four, but competitive. Unfortunately, it kind of implodes at the end, devolving into some nonsensical bits of business that don't seem fully thought out. As a result, it winds up not adding up to much, despite some decent attempts at allegory. Still, there's a lot to like about the movie, mostly relating to the design of the world and characters, all of which are creepy as all hell. How could I not enjoy a movie that takes my two favorite things in the whole wide world (monsters and robots) and mixes them together into robot monsters? The animation itself is a tad clunky at times, but the top-notch designs help to mask that. It's also well-paced, exciting, and has some moments with a lot more emotional pull than I would have expected. It may be kind of disappointing, especially when stacked up against the competition, but it's certainly still worth watching.

6.5/10

4. Punisher: War Zone

Punisher: War Zone
Lexi Alexander, 2008

Frank Castle (Ray Stevenson) kills bad guys. He accidentally kills an undercover agent. He kills bad guys. He befriends the agent's family. He kills more bad guys. He eludes the cops. He kills bad guys. Also, he kills bad guys.

Take a heaping bowl full of gleefully over the top violence, mix in a beautifully bleak and twisted deadpan sense of humor and a dash of half-assed political commentary, cook it under a completely unmotivated (and completely awesome) primary-colored lighting scheme (with bonus neon!) and serve it up on one of the most perfect bits of comic book casting this side of Tony Stark, and what do you get? A meal made up completely of abstract metaphors, which is almost as terrific as Punisher: War Zone.

This movie, from a story and character standpoint, is complete trash. But it may well be the best-made trash I've ever seen - completely aware of its nature, but without slipping into the laziness that tends to characterize that sort of thing. That kind of makes it something else entirely. Art? Maybe. The key to all of this, beyond the technical skill of everyone involved, is Ray "Titus Pullo" Stevenson's performance. While everyone else (especially Dominic West) goes completely over the top at every possible opportunity, he plays Castle in a very low-key, almost deadpan fashion. It should be completely at odds with the rest of the movie, the sort of thing that would tend to sink a film, but it works because it actually serves the character. By not playing things up, Stevenson's Castle winds up feeling completely out of step with the world, which, frankly, he is - at least until the violence kicks off. Once that happens, he's shoving chair legs through people's faces and blowing up parkour fanatics with rocket launchers. Suddenly, he belongs. I've got to be honest, it's subtle and abstract enough that I almost wonder if it was intentional, but either way, it works.

Really, though, that's all gravy. It's not why you watch a Punisher movie. Come for the fence-impalements, old man beheadings, face shotgunnings, axes to the chest, and bottle-crushing machine accidents (recycling is dangerous), stay for the potentially unintentional character depth. Then come back for more fence-impalements. At any rate, I'm probably being too kind with my rating for this movie, and may need to re-assess later. But for now, I'm kind of giddy over it, and that counts for something.

8.5/10

3. (500) Days of Summer

(500) Days of Summer
Marc Webb, 2009

Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a lifelong romantic, falls in love with Summer (Zooey Deschanel), a cynic who doesn't believe in love. Happiness and misery both ensue, non-chronologically.

Loved this one, but I'm probably dead center in the target audience, so take that as you will. Even things that I probably should hate, like the overly wise child who talks like an adult and dishes out advice (Chloe Moretz), seemed to work. Most of the success of the movie comes down to the cast - especially Zooey Deschanel, who manages to hint at a lot of depth that we don't fully get to see because the point of view stays squarely with Tom the whole time. It wouldn't be hard to let Summer turn into the villain of the piece, and some people have interpreted it that way as it is - but I don't think Zooey allows that to happen. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is great as well, but he has the easier job, especially with the (for once well-timed and unobtrusive) narration helping with some of the heavy lifting.

This is not to say that the actors salvaged weak material - both the script and direction were top-notch. I particularly appreciated that they continually refrained from overplaying their hand with both the emotional content and the clever structural tricks. A scene late in the movie where Tom's expectation of a certain event and the reality of the event play out in simultaneous split-screen works only because the differences are fairly subtle until the end of the sequence. Actually, let me amend that - they do overplay the last moments of the film just a tad. Fortunately, the movie is pretty much unsinkable by that point.

9/10

2. The Great Buck Howard

The Great Buck Howard
Sean McGinly, 2009

Troy (Colin Hanks) drops out of law school to pursue his dream of becoming a writer and takes a job as the road manager for Buck Howard (John Malkovich), an aging mentalist who performs in small towns across America.

Wow, this one started off badly. Probably the worst opening of any movie in recent memory. The opening credits, which serve as a montage of Troy's life up to that point, complete with first-person voiceover, feel like an extended version of an old sitcom opening, the lazy sort of laying out of the premise that is forgivable on TV, but not so much in a movie. I'm sorry to say I nearly cut and run at that point. Once we got to the movie proper, things picked up a little bit, but it never actually became anything worthwhile. It's a completely standard coming of age story, just like every other one, featuring a completely charisma-free lead in Colin Hanks. John Malkovich does what he can to make the movie work, and Buck Howard is an interesting character - but he can only do so much, because the movie isn't about him. I should also mention Emily Blunt, who manages to bring a bit of a spark to her handful of scenes. Without her and Malkovich working their asses off to salvage it, this movie would have been painfully awful. As it is, they can only drag it up to "pretty bad."

3/10

1. Encounters at the End of the World

Encounters at the End of the World
Werner Herzog, 2008

Herzog talks about philosophy while showing us pretty pictures and interviewing a boatload of eccentrics.

Well, I kicked off 2009 with a Herzog documentary, why not 2010? Unfortunately, no matter how much I love Herzog, I just can't seem to really get into his documentaries. I just went back and re-read my review of Lessons in Darkness from a year ago and there isn't really anything I have to say about this movie that I didn't already say about that. It was okay, and that's all.

5.5/10

104 in 2009: What comes Next

And that's that. One hundred thirty-three movies, twenty-nine more than my goal. I think I can call this year a win - but it did come with a bit of a price. In a typical year, I will have seen approximately 30 new releases by the end of the year, and that bumps up to 50 by about the mid-point of the next year. This year, however, I was so focused on older movies that I wound up ignoring the new releases quite a bit, so 2008 and 2009 look a bit anemic compared to the rest of the decade. So - I'm going to be doing things a little bit different this year. No overall goal this time, and I'll be writing up everything I see for the first time, whether it's new or old. I also plan to write up each movie as I see it, rather than doing a weekly roundup. This is primarily to keep me on track, since waiting too long can result in no review at all, as the end of last year demonstrated. I do have several sub-goals I'll be trying to reach, including filling out under-represented years in my listings (most notably 1954 and 1969) and trying to watch 75 out of the AFI's 2007 top 100 movies list (12 to go), 75 out of Roger Ebert's first 100 Great Movies (12 to go), and 71 of the top 93 movies from Sight and Sound's 2002 poll.

There will also, hopefully, be additional content beyond the basic reviews I've been doing. I'm preparing a look ahead at the theatrical releases on 2010 that I intend to post in a week or so. I also plan to take a look at the top movies of the decade - I was originally going to do this one sometime around now, but I think I'm going to wait until sometime around Oscar time, so that I can fill in some gaps and hopefully get 2008 and 2009 up to snuff. Finally, I'd like to start revisiting movies I've seen before, writing about some of my favorites in a more in-depth fashion.

Of course, only time will tell if all of this will actually happen. For now, I'm off to watch my first movie of the new year.

104 in 2009 Conclusion: The Best

And now, finally, we come to the very best of the older movies that I saw last year. There are 13 movies that I rated an 8.5 or higher, including a 10 (which, you will note, I did not originally rate as a 10). I strongly suggest that each and every one of you reading this (yes, all seven of you) immediately rush out and watch these thirteen movies. They really are that good. Sticking with ascending order, here is number 13:

13. Bicycle Thieves
8.5
This core work of Italian Neo-realism is an exercise in dragging you through the mud of human misery. Sure, it sounds unpleasant, but it looks so good doing it.

12. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
8.5
It's a musical unlike any musical I've seen before, completely lacking in what could reasonably called songs. Instead, the music is infused throughout every word in a way that probably shouldn't work, but does. Audacious and wonderful.

11. The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer
8.5
How can you go wrong with Cary Grant and Myrna Loy (oh, wait . . .)? Hilarious, charming, and a terrific example of Hollywood doing the Hollywood thing well.

10. Last Year at Marienbad
8.5
This movie is utterly terrifying, without ever being scary. The puzzle of the narrative will probably never be solved, but the pieces are completely engaging on their own.

9. The Fall of the House of Usher
8.5
Not my very favorite silent film, but still a tremendous visual feast well ahead of its time and completely engrossing.

8. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
8.5
Take what I said about Usher above and add in the most emotionally compelling drama I've seen in a silent film. It's all built around a deceptively simple story that snuck up and tore out my heart while I was busy snickering at its simplicity.

7. Le Mepris (Contempt)
8.5
The easiest way to justify my love of this movie is to point out that Godard stuck a thirty-minute two-character scene right in the middle of it, and made it work so well that I had no idea it was that long. Couple that with Raoul Cotard's gorgeous cinematography, probably the most beautiful of all his collaborations with Godard, and you have a winner.

6. A Woman is a Woman
9
Hey, look, it's another Godard film. Like the Umbrellas of Cherbourg, this could be considered a sort of atypical musical - in this case, a musical without music. It's an endlessly joyous and energetic exploration of what you can do with the mechanics of cinema.

5. Stardust Memories
9
Woody Allen's only truly cinematic movie (in my limited experience, granted). Charlotte Rampling steals the show, and Allen doesn't even try to stop her.

4. The General
9
Buster Keaton's crowning achievement, this is a spectacle of stuntwork that seems completely inconceivable today. It's completely jaw-dropping from beginning to end, and if that wasn't enough, it's funny too!

3. The Orphanage
9.5
The ending of this movie is so awful (in a good way) that it still kind of hurts to think about it. The rest of the movie is just a competent, slightly above-average ghost story - but when you see what's really going on, everything changes.

2. Ace in the Hole
9.5
Kirk Douglas has never been better than he has here, sympathetic and disgustingly twisted all at the same time. It's also the highlight of Billy Wilder's career, which is saying something. The last shot is a doozy.

And finally, the best of the best:

1. Pierrot Le Fou
10
I originally rated this movie somewhere in the 8 range, and in my review, I even explicitly stated that I didn't like it as much as A Woman is a Woman. Afterward, though, I couldn't get it out of my head, and after a second viewing, I realized I had seen something truly special. It's often interpreted as Godard's final statement on his failed marriage to Anna Karina, or as a look back across his films, and I think to some degree both of these things are true. But it's also something a little more expansive, an exploration of incompatability on several levels. It plays out the beats of a romance and a thriller, but the people inside the story don't belong in either and are destroyed by their insistence on continuing to live out the wrong story. I don't think there's a thing about this movie that I don't love.

Next up: what happens next year.

104 in 2009 Conclusion : The Good

Here comes the next batch. We've reached the point where I can state, flat-out, that I liked each and every one of these, despite whatever flaws they may have. I could recommend any of them, with some caveats. Again, these are in ascending order.

6.5
Les Diaboliques
Q: The Winged Serpent
Farenheit 451
A Story of Floating Weeds
How to Steal a Million
The Illusionist
The House with the Laughing Windows
Stardust

7
The Long Kiss Goodnight
Blast of Silence
Noises Off. . .
Badlands
Persepolis
Holiday
Talk to Her
AI: Artificial Intelligence
My Favorite Wife
Wuthering Heights
The Magus
Adam's Rib
Man with a Movie Camera

7.5
And Soon the Darkness
What About Bob?
In America
Le Doulos
After Life
Sherlock, Jr.
The Quiet Earth
[REC]
Wild Strawberries
The Exterminating Angel
Je T'aime, Je T'aime
Band of Outsiders

8
Dirty Harry
Pickup on South Street
The Devil-Doll
The Adventures of Robin Hood
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Anna
Battle Royale
In the Mood for Love
The Body Snatcher

Well, that list was certainly a lot more pleasing to look over than the other ones so far, especially once I got into the 7.5's and 8's. I should mention that Anna's rating of 8, which replaced the original lack of any rating, came after I was able to get my hands on some subtitles, which both improved and hurt my feelings about the movie. It probably hurt a little more than it helped, but I still liked it a lot. I also have to admit that as I look over these titles, I think the 6.5's probably would have fit in better in the last post. Ah well - we're almost finished with this trip back through 2009. Up next: The top 13 (2007 and earlier) movies that I saw last year. Why 12? Just because.

104 in 2009 Conclusion: The Not-so-Good

Continuing with a look back at the movies I watched this year, here's the stuff that wasn't bad (or at least, wasn't too terribly bad), but wasn't particularly good either. I'm also going to invert the order this time, so here are the movies, in ascending order of preference:

4
Orpheus
Assassination Bureau
Enemy Mine
Asylum
Chinese Roulette
Nines, The
My Neighbor Totoro
Tank Girl
Birds, The
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Curse of the Werewolf
Our Hospitality

4.5
Never on Sunday
Tsotsi

5
Confessions of a Superhero
Peggy Sue Got Married
Muppet Christmas Carol, The
Secret of NIMH

5.5
Sliding Doors
Things to do in Denver When You're Dead
Battleship Potemkin, The
White Zombie
Trouble in Paradise
Murder by Death
Allegro
It Happened One Night
Lessons in Darkness
Mummy's Hand, The

6
Knives of the Avenger
Quai des Orfevres
Big Combo, The
Night and Fog
Seduced and Abandoned
Phantom of the Paradise
West Side Story
Perversion Story
Valerie and Her Week of Wonders
Man Who Never Was, The
Lethal Weapon
Boxcar Bertha
City Lights
Made in USA

Again, not much to say- which makes sense, since these are the ones that didn't really move me much one way or the other.

104 in 2009 Conclusion: The Bad

Now that 2009 has come to a close and I've completed my viewing challenge, I'd like to briefly look back and what I watched, and see what, if anything, I accomplished. I'm going to start here with the movies that one might justifiably refer to as "bad." I should also point out that if you look back at my original reviews, many of these now have different ratings. Sometimes that is due to reconsideration after the fact, but some of it is due to the fact that I re-adjusted my rating scale a few months ago, so that it now runs from 0-10 instead of 1-10. Fortunately, there were no 0's this year, although a few came damn close. At any rate, here are the movies (catalogue titles only) that I really didn't like this year:

3.5
The Most Dangerous Game
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House
Rosemary's Baby
American Scary
Vampyr
Blazing Saddles

3
Baron Blood
On the Town
Woman in Green
300
The Firemen's Ball
Suspicion
The Cat and the Canary
L'Age D'Or
Stolen Face
Putney Swope

2.5
The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi
Galaxy of Terror
Last Laugh, The
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
Son of the Sheik, The
The Sender

2
Passion of Joan of Arc, The
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Monkey Business
Psychic, The
Shock, The
Saturn 3
Johnny Handsome

1.5
Hudson Hawk
Mutant (Forbidden World)
Unseen, The

1
My Favorite Year

0.5
Miracle Mile
Kung Pow: Enter the Fist
Mad Doctor of Blood Island

I should mention that My Favorite Year could easily have fallen into the 0.5 group if Peter O'Toole hadn't been so good in it. Other than that, I don't really have much to say about these movies. Some just didn't work, some I just outright hated and hope never to think about again, especially the very worst of them all, The Mad Doctor of Blood Island, which kind of has to be seen to be believed. And yes, Nate, that means that Kung Pow was not the worst movie I saw all year. But it was close.

Doctor Who: The End of Time, of Davies, and of Tennant (SPOILERS)

It’s New Years Day, 2010, and the Russell T. Davies era of Doctor Who has come to an end, bringing with it the demise of the Tenth Doctor. As an episode, The End of Time was like a microcosm of the Davies era – epic, clever but sloppy, overblown but with its heart in the right place, and buoyed by the occasional moment of true brilliance. There are a lot of things I could say about the episode as a whole, both good (the fact that they remembered to keep a bit of the old goofy adventure spirit and didn’t turn the whole thing into a turgid dirge, which must have been tempting) and bad (Donna’s involvement was a complete waste), but in the end, the episode as a whole isn’t the point (and, as a whole, it was pretty middle-of-the-road anyway). The regeneration is the point – and as it turns out, the Doctor’s death embodies some of the best and the worst aspects of Davies’ writing.

In the Confidential for this episode, Davies said that he always envisioned this end for the Tenth Doctor, at least in rough terms. The idea was to play up the impending death and make it look like the Doctor would sacrifice his life in order to save the Earth/Universe/Reality/etc, then turn it around by having him survive the tremendous confrontation and die for a much less epic reason – to save the life of a single person. I think this was an excellent choice, in that it both plays off of the character arc of this incarnation of the Doctor, who tended to have an awkwardly messianic air about him and had been turning increasingly megalomaniacal over the past year, and also plays off of viewer expectations from five years of excessively epic series finales. The resulting moment, when the rug is pulled out from under the Doctor just as the first wave of relief washes over him, is tremendously effective, doubly so for the fact that it plays out largely without music. The subsequent tantrum also works very well, because it isn’t really a tantrum. The Doctor isn’t actually arguing or protesting anything; he knew full well that he was going to give his life to save Wilf from the moment he saw that Wilf was trapped inside the box. It’s the point that he’s been heading for through the whole story, emotionally speaking: the acceptance that he can’t control everything. The rollercoaster he’s been on (I’m going to sacrifice myself, no, wait, I’m going to live! Oh. Never mind. I’m going to sacrifice myself) has just torn him down enough that we get a peek at what’s really inside (more on that momentarily).

So the Doctor saves Wilf, takes a lethal dose of radiation, and everything is playing out marvelously from my perspective. Then the trouble starts. The Doctor’s death is slow, enough so that he has time to travel around and see all of his recent friends and companions one last time. It’s a solid idea on paper, but on screen it reeks of two of my biggest issues with Davies as a writer – over-mythologizing his characters and refusing to stop milking an emotional moment until the cow is a withered husk. Taken individually, the scenes are actually quite good. Well, some of them, anyway – the Sarah Jane scene is pretty awful, and the Martha/Mickey one is fairly blah. Taken as a whole, though, they add up to a momentum killing slog. The idea could probably have been salvaged by playing it out on a smaller scale, with fewer visits. Quality aside, the Sarah Jane scene should probably have been cut because she never really belonged to THIS Doctor, per se. Jack’s scene could go for the same reason, although he probably has a better claim for inclusion. The scene that ties back into the Human Nature 2-parter from season 3 is also fairly unimportant in the grand scheme of things, although it’s a really nice scene. All in all, it makes the most sense to stick with Martha, Donna, and Rose, the only long-term companions in the bunch. Still, at least Davies put the two weakest entries (see above) first, which got them out of the way, and he did come up with what may be the only satisfying way to have the Doctor visit Rose.

We’re not done there, though- the Doctor stumbles, ever so slowly, to the Tardis. He has a vision of Ood Sigma, who activates the soundtrack for him. At this point, I was starting to wonder if he was ever going to die, and if the end of the Tenth Doctor had been completely botched – but then came the Doctor’s final line, which was so perfectly chosen that it made up for all of (well, most of) the dilly-dallying that had gone on before. As the regeneration energy washes over him, the Doctor says,

“I don’t want to go.”

I loved this at first because I thought Davies had fooled me. The story was blatantly set up to move the Doctor from trying madly to stay alive to making peace with his fate – but it didn’t play out that way at all; he took it in a different direction that I wasn't expecting. That wasn’t it, though – the obvious arc had played itself out. This was something else, a different, more interesting wrinkle - and what made it so interesting and effective was its rather shocking degree of honesty. Looking at it from a broader standpoint, it’s a sharp contrast to the typical portrayal of the noble sacrifice or acceptance of imminent death. Usually, these portrayals (first one off the top of my head is Rachel Weisz in The Fountain) conflate acceptance with happiness. People meet their end with a beatific smile- but that’s not really what acceptance is about. Really, I think we get away with this notion because nearly the entirety of the world believes in either an afterlife or reincarnation, so people in question are probably not really facing the idea of dying, of being no more. And yes, the irony that the Doctor does actually, literally reincarnate is not lost on me. At any rate, the Doctor came to terms with his death, he faced it head on, and even had time to tie up his loose ends. It was about as good a death as one could hope for, and he was probably as prepared as he possibly could be – but at the last moment, when he could feel it happening, he was still scared. He was still sad. He still wasn’t really ready, not completely – after all, who could be? By showing that fear, by demonstrating that emotions are not absolute, Davies muddied the waters a bit, adding a bit of complexity that I don’t remember seeing portrayed before. Of course, as soon as I post this, I’ll probably remember a half-dozen examples. So let’s just say rarely portrayed.

The line was also very well chosen from the standpoint of the Tenth Doctor’s character. Moreso than any other incarnation, the Tenth has built his personality out of layers of pretense. The Ninth Doctor was similar, constantly switching from a sort of manic exuberance to angry depression, but the issues with Ten go deeper. He didn’t switch from exuberance to depression as quickly; the mask stayed on for longer. Worse still, even when the mask came off, it just revealed more layers of pretense, which is evident in the fact that no matter what “mode” he was in, the common thread was bravado and hubris. When he got angry, it was with a god-like fury (Runaway Bride, Family of Blood). When he was scared (The Impossible Planet, The Stolen Earth), or forced to admit his powerlessness (Fires of Pompeii, the first half of Waters of Mars), he lorded his fear and/or knowledge of greater powers over the lesser beings (that would be us humans) that he always had around. Deep down, I think the Tenth Doctor was the most child-like of all his incarnations, in a very literal sense. We saw a little bit of it just before he saved Wilf (told you I’d get back to it), but I think the only time we’ve ever really seen the Tenth Doctor, the only time he wasn’t performing for someone, at least a little, was in the last few moments of his life. There were a lot of things wrong with the final two episodes, but for that moment, I’m willing to forgive an awful lot.

There now. I meant for this post to be an overview of the last five years of Doctor Who, with discussion of the best and worst episodes, but then I went blathering on about the regeneration for who knows how long. The rest of this may be correspondingly briefer than I’d originally intended. We’ll start with the top ten stories from the new Doctor Who series:

10. Utopia/The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords
Russell T. Davies, Season 3

Just to get it out of the way, yes, this is the story with Doctor Jesus floating across the room after everyone prays to him. And yes, I think it was a terrible way to resolve the plot – but Doctor Who is nothing if not inconsistent, and there is so much else to love about this story that it still just ekes out a spot in the top ten. Utopia is nearly flawless, Simm’s performance as the Master is great fun, the reveal of the true nature of the Toclafane is inspired, and, while the Master’s defeat is a low point for the series, his death is one of the highest points.

9. School Reunion
Toby Whithouse, Season 2

Because I love K-9, and the idea of seeing how a companion’s life turned out after leaving the Doctor was a novel one at the time. Sarah Jane’s presence brought a real sense of history (which is pretty much gone now that she’s become tied in so closely to the modern era), which helped the emotional moments affect me more than they often do. Also, this is the episode where Mickey started to become interesting.

8. Human Nature/Family of Blood
Paul Cornell, Season 3

Hey, look, it’s Daisy Steiner! And walking scarecrows! And pictures of past Doctors! And the Doctor is pretty damn scary at the end! It’s really just a good, solid story, with lots of cool little bits (see above) to make it appeal even more to me – not to mention Joan’s utterly devastating dressing down of the doctor when he asks her to travel with him, which is a high point in a strong season.

7. Waters of Mars
Russell T. Davies and Phil Ford, Thanksgiving Special

Most of this episode feels pretty standard, although it ups the creepiness well beyond the level of most episodes. It’s the last fifteen minutes that put it on this list. If you’ve seen the episode, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, I’m not going to ruin it.

6. The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances
Steven Moffat, Season 1

It’s got the creepy gas-mask kid, a well-supported mystery regarding the origin of the creepy gas-mask kid, which totally plays fair with the audience, and a wonderful moment of catharsis for the Ninth Doctor at the end. All this and the introduction of Captain Jack. What’s not to like?

5. The Girl in the Fireplace
Steven Moffat, Season 2

Again with the creepy creatures, this time clock-work robots. The episode makes good use of time travel as part of the plot, rather than an excuse for a new setting, which is always a plus in my book. It’s funny, it’s scary, it’s sad - there’s a little bit of everything here. This is Doctor Who firing on all cylinders.

4. Dalek
Robert Shearman, Season 1

This was the first time we really got to see just how damaged the Doctor was (psychologically speaking) by the time war. He acts completely out of character throughout the episode, all because of the presence of a Dalek survivor. I love the scene where he goes to help the imprisoned alien, and when he realizes that it’s a Dalek, he just completely – loses – his – shit, which is fascinating to see. The resolution of the episode serves as a very fitting farewell to the Dalek race; it’s as good of a final Dalek episode as I could imagine. Too bad that isn’t what it turned out to be.

3. Gridlock
Russell T. Davies, Season 3

I give this episode a lot of credit because, along with Jaynetown from Firefly, it’s one of the few times I’ve ever been presented with a compelling argument or demonstration that religion is (or can be) a good thing. It’s also one of the most emotionally resonant episodes of the series for me.

2. Midnight
Russell T. Davies, Season 4

This is probably the scariest episode of the series, and there is nary a monster to be seen (sort of). It’s a tight little production, taking place almost entirely on one set, and really shows how strong of a writer Davies can be when he’s not threatening the entire planet with extinction or whatnot.

1. Blink
Steven Moffat, Season 3

Hey, surprise, surprise. Blink is my favorite episode. I’m not even going to say anything about it because Blink is everyone’s favorite episode, and it would just be redundant.


And, in descending order (least-bad to worst), here are the worst stories of New Who:

10. Rose (Season 1)
9. Fires of Pompeii (Season 4)
8. The Long Game (Season 1)
7. Idiot’s Lantern (Season 2)
6. The Lazarus Experiment (Season 3)
5. Aliens of London/World War III (Season 1)
4. Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel (Season 2)
3. Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks (Season 3)
2. Voyage of the Damned (Christmas Special)
1. Fear Her (Season 2)

And I think that’s as far as we’re going to take this. Farewell to Russell T. Davies, to David Tennant, to the last vestiges of Christopher Eccleston. Whatever (often perfectly valid) complaints one may have about your time on the show, no one can deny that it’s been a smashing success – and I can’t wait to see, in three months, if Steven Moffat and Matt Smith can top it.

104 in 2009: The Last Few Weeks

Got kind of sidetracked for the past few weeks, but since it is now early 2010, I'm going to quickly mention what I've watched since last time I posted. Sorry, no reviews on these. I'm just posting them for completion's sake:

City Lights
Chaplin, Charles
6/10

The Muppet Christmas Carol
Henson, Brian
5/10

AI: Artificial Intelligence
Spielberg, Steven
7/10

In the Mood for Love
Wong Kar Wai
8/10

Battle Royale
Fukasaku, Kinji
8/10

The Nines
August, John
4/10

Talk to Her
Almodovar, Pedro
7/10

Which brings us to a final total of 133 movies, or Par +31. I think I can call this a success. Over the next few days I'll post a more thorough wrap-up of the year and explain my plans for 2010.