LITTLE ROCK — Lots of people told me they were having trouble coming up with a list of Top 10 movies this year.
I understand why - this wasn’t a great year for the flickers, and a lot of the end-of-theyear Oscar-grubbers (Invictus, Nine) have been underwhelming. Most of the best movies I saw this year were ones I saw before Terminator: Salvation and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen began filibustering the multiplexes.
The Little Rock Film Festival was particularly helpful in 2009 - Goodbye, Solo and That Evening Sun (scheduled to open a theatrical run in Little Rock early in 2010) provided me with two of the most satisfying cinematic experiences of the entire year.
Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden’s Sugar showed up in April. Disney/Pixar’s Up was released in May; Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker came out in June. The only December release to crack my Top Five is Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air, which seems to be the closest thing we’re going to get to a consensus movie of the year (unless the movie of the year is actually Avatar, the allegedly game-changing film that I’ve yet to see as of this writing).
In any case, I didn’t have any trouble coming up with my Top 10, though the first five slots are pretty much interchangeable. The list below represents what I turned in on my Southeastern Film Critics’ Association ballot, meaning it’s a snapshot of my ever-shifting opinion taken a couple of weeks ago. I don’t feel compelled to defend it - it’s just a list of movies I admire. I’m still evolving; I reserve the right to change my mind.
The first requisite for any movie critic ought to be a love of movies, so maybe it’s not so surprising I found a lot of movies to like this year. Enough to compile two Top 10 lists, and 30 honorable mentions. That’s just about a movie a week. That’s not so bad.
MY TOP 10
1. That Evening Sun - Based on a short story by William Gay, Scott Teems’ first film is set in the Tennessee of dirt roads and town squares, and it does not represent this milieu falsely or overstate its color. It is insistent on a certain quality of tone that is less frenetic and pushy than the go-go rhythms of the slick (scared) Hollywood standard. That Evening Sun is a patient movie that measures out its horror a drop at a time.
It is not the sort of film to which crowds will flock. It could have been, with just a few adjustments - had it been sexed up or had its violence come in hard spasms. But that is not the kind of story Gay wrote or that Teems wanted to film.
It doesn’t have the lurid sass and pulp energy of Craig Brewer’s Hustle ’n’ Flow or Black Snake Moan. It’s not a carnal black comedy like Elia Kazan’s Baby Doll. It’s not a crowd pleaser that sets us up with someone to root for and someone to boo. It presents us with a very human mess that never resolves in a popularly satisfactory way.
People most often compare Gay’s writing to William Faulkner’s and Cormac McCarthy’s, but he’s more like the late Larry Brown in that he grounds his work in the simple facts of getting by, the things that people have to face, or do or get used to. There’s nothing overtly gothic in his work; his blacks aren’t absolute but marbled with gray and flecked with gold. That Evening Sun affords even its villains a kind of stoic dignity. It is not about the struggle between good and evil, but about how hard it is to live as a decent person in the world.
2. Up - If only live-action adventure movies were as well-written, subtle and painstakingly realized as this animated pleasure, we might be willing to renew our almost expired belief in the transporting powers of what Pauline Kael called “movie movies.” Pixar is 10 for 10.
3. Up in the Air - Possibly the best-reviewed movie of the year, and deservedly so. Jason Reitman is three for three with this gently devastating film of great grace and modest aspirations starring a perfectly cast George Clooney.
4. Goodbye Solo - Ramin Bahrani’s story of an unlikely friendship between a Senegalese cabdriver (Souleymane Sy Savane) working in Winston-Salem, N.C., and a possibly suicidal old man (former Elvis Presley intimate Red West) unfolds slowly and delicately, like the petals of a rare orchid. After Man Push Cart and Chop Shop, Bahrani is likewise three for three.
5. A Serious Man - So grounded in a specific reality that it has the feel of a memoir, A Serious Man is a memory piece populated by filtered versions of actual people and places. These are the Coen brothers’ people - and if they treat them roughly, we might also assume they love them, if grudgingly.
6. The Hurt Locker - Kathryn Bigelow has long been one of our best underrated directors. Now that she’s made a war movie for the ages, maybe we can just think of her as one of our best.
7. Sugar - An immigrant’s song about cultural dislocations and human connections also happens to get its baseball right in a Dominican Republic setting.
8. Lorna’s Silence - This moral tale doesn’t vilify or castigate any of its characters, but through the accretion of significant details, makes a case for the humanity of the people whose eyes we’re afraid to meet in the street.
9. A Single Man - Tom Ford’s resoundingly beautiful adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s seminal gay novel features an immaculate leading performance by Colin Firth.
10. Fantastic Mr. Fox - This is maybe Wes Anderson’s best movie, and I’ve liked them all.
AN ALTERNATIVE 10
1. Inglourious Basterds - Had someone trimmed five to seven minutes of Quentin Tarantino’s self-indulgent fan service from this undeniably impressive film, it would be nearly perfect.
2. An Education- Slighter than it first appears, but immensely enjoyable.
3. White Ribbon - A serious investigation of the roots of terrorism.
4. Summer Hours - A provocative meditation on family and possessions.
5. The Messenger - Bleak and committed, with standout performances by Samantha Morton and Ben Foster.
6. Precious - Elevated expectations made this excellent film seem a little overwrought and forced; it’s still special.
7. District 9 - Engrossing and disturbing, Neill Blomkamp’s feature debut was theclass of this summer’s action features: a speculative fiction with genuine emotional resonance - an action movie aimed at thinking adults rather than perpetual adolescents.
8. Antichrist - An unpleasant film, it got to me in the way that poetry or music or visual majesty can. It hammered that place beyond language and intellect, the animal id of the screaming self.
9. Passing Strange - Spike Lee limns the contradictions implicit in growing up black, gifted and assimilated in his film of rocker Stew’s autobiographical musical revue.
10. The Hangover - I didn’t get around to seeing this until it hit DVD. Funny.
Honorable mention: Crazy Heart, Moon, VJ Burma, It Might Get Loud, The Cove, Coraline, Cook County, (500) Days of Summer, Julie & Julia, Zombieland, Adventureland, Big Fan, The Last Station, The Blind Side, Public Enemies, The Informant, This Is It, Star Trek, Munyurangabo, World’s Greatest Dad, Tyson, The Merry Gentleman, O’Horten, Gomorrah, Pontypool, The Damned United, Cherry Blossoms, Food Inc., In the Loop, Adoration Movie I probably ought to see that I’m not looking forward to: The Princess and the Frog Best Amelia Earhart: Amy Adams in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian Big franchise movies of which I’m blissfully ignorant: The Harry Potter and New Moon films Wish I’d seen: Julia; Everlasting Moments; Skin; Bad Lieutenant - Port of Call, New Orleans Wish You’d Seen: Trucker, for the performances of Michele Monaghan and Joey Lauren Adams Superfluous literary adaptations: The Road, The Lovely Bones, Watchmen Best DVD releases: The Exiles, Private Century Movies the critical establishment got wrong: The Burning Plain, Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant Movie I got wrong: Probably Angels and Demons, which seems a lot worse to me in retrospect, though my review wasn’t exactly a rave Movie I thought I’d like but didn’t: Away We Go Not my thing, sorry: Where the Wild Things Are Bad mall cop movies: Paul Blart: Mall Cop, Observe and Report Really good mall cop movie: Auf der Strecke (On the Line) - an Academy Award nominated Swiss/German short Allegedly bad movies I avoided: All About Steve; I Love You, Beth Cooper Worst movies I actually saw: Dance Flick, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Year One Missing in Action: Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, Edward Norton, Paris H. Martin’s byline
Style, Pages 43 on 12/27/2009