Best Movies of 2009

(Disclaimer: Although I have seen more movies in 2009 than I have in other years, there are still noteworthy movies that I have yet to see mainly because they have yet to show in the Philippines and are not yet available in DVD form. So I can’t comment on Invictus, Precious, Where the Wild Things Are, or The Princess and the Frog yet. I will try to see them in 2010, and if I liked any well enough I might update this list. Oooh, number 10 is in danger! Fanboys will not be too happy!)

10. Avatar

Although Avatar claimed a spot in my top 10, it will never belong in my all-time faves, or get the same reverence that I reserve for earlier James Cameron works, such as Terminator 1 and 2. Why?

There’s no getting around the hackneyed plot, and there’s no way my coworkers will ever shut up about it being Pocahontas on a different coat of paint (blue?), which gives me goosebumps every time, because that’s what happens when I hear the name of Disney’s most cloyingly sentimental movie (no small feat for Disney). I agree, though. Predictability is Avatar’s major, vexing flaw.

A pity for that, then. Everything else about it reminds me why Cameron is my favorite director of Hollywood action movies. Yes, a movie’s story has to be good, and Avatar is predictable, but it’s still reasonably well-told and well-acted. More importantly, movie is a visual medium, which means aesthetics matter too, and to put it mildly, Avatar is a spectacle. The choreography at the last act ranks among the best war fights in movies, surpassing Lord of the Rings.

Cameron said he intends to make Avatar a trilogy. If it means I get to see more breathtaking sceneries from its fictional world, I’m all or it, as long as he also promises a better script.

9. 500 Days of Summer

People often compare 500 Days of Summer to Eternal Sunshine on a Spotless Mind, and while there are similarities, like the way both are told out of chronological order, I think 500 Days and Annie Hall are more alike. Both start with the lead male character telling the viewers that they just split up with the women they loved, and you knew right then that he was regretful. Then both flashes back to the better times of his relationship with the girl, in hopes that from looking at the past he (and we) could find out what went wrong, in hopes of finding ways to reconcile. Where they differ is the personalities of their characters: in AH, the guy is the jaded one, while in 500DoS, it’s the girl.

I make it no secret that romantic comedy belongs to my least favorite of movie genres. My friends know this and they know not to invite me in whenever they see the latest rom-coms because they know I’d be the most indifferent person in the theater. So then, I’m quite surprised by how much I enjoyed 500 Days of Summer (and it may be because I’m also partial to Annie Hall; Eternal Sunshine, not so much).  The performance by Joseph Gordon-Levitt helped and so did my unbridled crush on Zoey Deschanel, but the strongest pull is how much I related to the characters. We don’t live in a perfect world, and when we fall in love it’s not always boy-meets-girl-happily-ever-after. Anyone who has had affection for someone and hoped the feeling is mutual can relate to the trouble that befell Levitt’s character.

8. Up

Pixar knows how to get in touch with what we used to imagine back when we were kids. We all wondered what toys might live like, and we got Toy Story. Many of us had longed to venture to a faraway unknown land. Up is about that, with an ornery old man who finds his calling by taking his house up to the sky. Great premise? It sure is, but that would make a solitary tale, wouldn’t it? By accident, a visiting boy scout had stowed away, and joined the ride that could only be the envy of other kids. What, you know anyone who has been on a flying house before?

Aside from the heartbreaking first 5 minutes of the movie, it’s the interaction of the old man and the boy scout where the movie shined the brightest. I liked how their motivations contrasted – the old wants to do what he has wanted to do since he was a kid, while the boy wants to be prepared to take the responsibilities of grown-ups. On a lesser movie, the director would try to get his/her point across by forcing humor and making the characters excessively chatty. Up is above doing that, though. Sometimes it gets silent, and yet it says so much. This is why I begrudged the director for putting in those dog sidekicks in the middle of the movie.

It’s not my favorite Pixar movie but I can say that it’s the only Pixar movie that nearly made me cry.

7. The Hurt Locker

War is grim. So why doesn’t it look that way in movies about war? Instead, we see Hollywood treating it as nothing but uber-macho alpha male fantasy, failing to realistically portray what being in the battlefield is like, and serving no purposes other than giving American troops a pat in the back.

It’s disappointing to me that The Hurt Locker, the first movie about Dubya’s Iraq War, doesn’t subvert patriotism. But although it lacks in depicting the lives of Iraqis amidst the chaos, I admire it for showing they way soldiers are really like. This is not a story that pontificates about courage or valor or whatever values Uncle Sam wants to inculcate. Instead, it presents war as it is, where people involved are tense, desperate, and at a constant fear of dying. Watching its soldiers deactivate bombs will leave you breathless, and even if they survive, you know that they’re going to lose part of themselves. An emotionally-draining movie, and that’s how looking at war should make you feel.

6. Moon

Moon resembles the shorts stories that emerged from the golden age of science fiction. It also is reminiscent of 2001 Space Odyssey’s middle part, where a psychological drama happens. Like the Kubrickian film, much of Moon involves the interaction of an astronaut and an almost-sentient computer. Also, it will screw with your mind, though not quite as badly as 2001. Me? I have soft spots for serious sci fi, and that’s why I loved this film, but even those without sci fi inclinations can see that the acting is solid. By the way, the lead actor plays two characters, which look alike but are subtly different in dispositions. I will speak no more, as this movie is at its best when seen with no prior knowledge of its story.

5. District 9

I’d go so far as to say that before District 9 and Moon (no idea which came first and I’m too lazy to research), the only great sci fi movie of this decade is Wall-E, and maybe Minority Report. Before all the marketing ploys made people drunk in anticipation for Avatar, District 9 was the much-discussed movie of the year, and there were many praises about it being an allegory of apartheid. Although, it is also allegedly racist. Is it? Well, that I’m undecided on, although I can say that I’m not too thrilled about the over-the-top Nigerian gangsters.

That flaw aside, District 9 did more to me than Avatar in nearly every way I could think of, barring the fight scenes. A few of you may give action more weight than plot, but I’m the opposite, which explains why I prefer District 9. You might be baffled by the comparison, but they’re not as dissimilar as you might think. Both movies are about a guy marooned in a hostile territory. D9 does it more effectively, though, because it has more gray areas, and is more grounded on reality. For one thing, I’m quite sure most of us will despise the movie’s human characters in the end, and yet when we try to put ourselves in their shoes, we know we’d probably act the way they did. The aliens much of the humans were hostile to were also better portrayed here. Avatar made its alien race genuinely good and altruistic, which I thought was a cheap manipulative way to draw our sympathy to the “good” side. In District 9, the aliens had many undesirable traits and were not above committing atrocities. I thought that that’s a more plausible scenario if we met up with aliens, because there’s so little we know about them.

So to sum up, Avatar = good. District 9 = better.

4. Thirst

If you’re as sick as I am of how the media has been turning vampires into glamour fashion mags icons, watch Thirst by Park Chan-Wook, acclaimed director of Oldboy. Look, life as a bloodsucker is miserable. Vampires do not shimmer in the daylight; they get burnt to crisp by it. Also, being that they consume bloods to survive (and they like them fresh), they have a tough time abiding to some moral code. We should know this, and yet thanks to a certain craze, we are now populated by teenagers who beg for bite marks.

Thirst is vampire story as it should be: sensual, illicit, and immoral. While Twilight (finally mentioned that name, huh?) does the two in spades and only in the most perfunctory and gentrified way, Thirst is what urbane types will call OG. Which stands for Original Gorefest! I would not call Thirst a horror movie, though, and it’s more like a psychological drama with a horror twist. In it, a priest becomes a vampire, and he does sinful deeds against his will. It’s not a story of the weak of heart, but if you want a fresh take on the whole vampire lore, this is worth sinking your teeth in.

3. Red Cliff

You know, when John Woo exerts efforts, he makes a damn good action movie. Red Cliff, a war epic, is his interpretation of Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history, with a few elements from the novelization. It’s delightful to watch for the stratagems, for how the two sides of the war try to outwit another. And when fights break, there is no one that does it better than John Woo.

2. Ip Man

Before this movie came out, it’s been a long time since I liked a kung fu movie. The last one was Hero and Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon, but then all those that came after were average at best, and I blame Jet Li for losing enthusiasm (although I respect his decision to devote more time to Buddhism) and Jackie Chan for wanting to be taken as a serious actor. Kung Fu Panda doesn’t even count as my kind of kung fu movie because it’s all digitized, and don’t even get me started on House of Flying Daggers. In short, the genre was stagnating. But then there’s one overlooked martial artist who emerged from other’s shadow. He’s Donnie Yen. He played the villain of Once Upon a Time in China 2, was the star in Fist of Fury TV series, re-battled with Jet Li in Hero, and fought with Jackie Chan in Shanghai Knights. Somehow people forgot that he, too, can kick ass hard. And while I can’t guarantee that Ip Man will propel him into his long-overdue superstardom, I will guarantee that fans of action movies will love Ip Man.

There’s no other way of putting this: Donnie Yen rocks. Whatever I say about this movie will not do its fight choreography any justice, so I won’t go into details, but I love the way Donnie Yen fights. Here, he uses Wing Chun, which is a martial arts style that is more defensive than offensive. He exposes openings from opponents by punishing them with flurry of punches, and he kicks only when necessary. There are no wasted extra movements, and it looks elegant that way.

While the story has never been a priority for martial arts film, Ip Man’s was pretty good.

1. Inglourious Basterds

Inglourious Basterds finds Quentin Tarantino still being Quentin Tarantino, so make of that as you will. Like all his films, it is spaghetti-western influenced, meaning it’s low budget and has copious amount of shooting, but nothing fancy. I have just recently seen Pulp Fiction, loved it, and I can say that Inglourious Basterds ranks with Pulp Fiction as being his best movies.

You may get the impression of it being a war movie, since it takes place on WWII and Nazi is clearly the antagonist here, but it’s only a war movie in the loosest sense. It’s more like a secret agent movie that just so happen to be in WWII era. Inglourious Basterds refer to a secret group that has been killing off Nazis.

Except, you know, the movie doesn’t spend so much time on the secret group. Confused yet? Well, that’s just QT screwing with your head.

Inglourious Basterds earns my top spot because of good directing and good acting. I’ll say right now that Brad Pitt gives a solid performance, but Christopher Waltz stole the show with his act as a cunning hunter of Jews. The rest of them also suited their roles perfectly. No one sets up scenarios quite like QT: one wrong word or subtle gesture could mean death, and death happens to anyone no matter how cool he or she appears. It’s this attention to detail that makes QT a great director. And, yes, he’s still self-indulgent and likes to reference movies.