ON FILM: Sun, Solo, Up the best films of 2009 thus far

By Philip Martin

Posted: July 31, 2009 at 4:14 a.m.

Disney/Pixar's computer-animated Up is in the top tier of movies released during the first half of 2009.

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LITTLE ROCK — With 2009 rapidly slipping away from us - if it doesn't feel that way to you, you're either too young or too underemployed - the last day of July seems a good place to pause for a moment and review. I've already started pulling together the material for the annual fall movie preview. If I'm going to do a "Best Movies of 2009 So Far" column I'd better get it done this week.

First off, I'm writing this on Sunday, so I don't yet know whether I'll see The Hurt Locker - which according to my best information opens in Little Rock today - before this column runs. Everybody says it's very good, and I've enjoyed all of Kathryn Bigelow's films, from Point Break to The Weight of Water, so my best guess is that it ought to beon this list. But even if I do get to see it in advance, it'll be too late to make any changes in this piece. (I'm saying this just so you'll understand if my rave review of the movie is elsewhere in this section.)

Also, you should understand that this is just my first pass through this list. It's kind of the starting point for a worksheet I'll use from now to the end of the year, as I try to organize my thoughts on the year in film. I've only seen a couple of these more than once (not that I'll watch them all again) and I reserve the right to change my mind. I've put them in a rough order - although I can't really separate the top three in my mind, the rest of the movies aren't on the same level as that trinity. Any previously awarded grades don't matter, and the fact Waltz With Bashir opened in New York and Los Angeles on Christmas Day 2008 didn't exclude it from consideration.

This is what I've got so far:

1. That Evening Sun - Scott Teems' first feature, which opened the Little Rock Film Festival in May, is a movie about an old man who runs away from a nursing home and returns to his farm to find it has been rented out to a man he loathes. It's not about explosions and car chases, it's not about the struggle between good and evil, but about how hard it can be to live as a decent person in the world. Anchored by a monumental performance by Hal Holbrook, and a remarkable ensemble cast.

2. 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.

3. Up - If only live action adventure movies were as well written, subtle and painstakingly realized as this, we might be willing to renew our almost expired belief in the transporting powers of what Pauline Kael called "movie movies." While there was always a hipster backlash against such seamless excellence, let it be said that Pixar almost always gets it right - they make popular entertainments that don't condescend to the audience or apologize for being smart.

4. Public Enemies - Michael Mann's sleek gangster fantasy is alternately rigorous and fanciful, and Johnny Depp's Dillinger seems to be lacking the ballast of a soul, but I'm not sure that's not the point. Anyway, it's beautiful, stylish and rich in textures.

5. Sugar - While writer-directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (the team behind 2006's Half-Nelson) play close attention to the baseball details (none of the players throw like actors), but the visually enthralling Sugar is not your typical sports movie. It's an immigrant's song, a story about cultural dislocations and human connections that happens to be one of the year's best movies.

6. Star Trek - For complicated reasons, I've yet to see the end of this pure product of Hollywood. I can't wait for the DVD (Blu-ray, please.)

7. Tyson - In James Toback's documentary, we get dragged into the dark morass of the mindof a man who was once the baddest dude on the planet. It's not exactly a pleasant trip, but if you stick it out you'll emerge with, if not a better understanding of what makes Mike Tyson run, at least a deeper appreciation for the relative sanity of your circumstances.

8. Waltz With Bashir - An animated, autobiographical documentary (with re-enactments) by Ari Folman, an Israeli director who, as a young man, was a soldier on the periphery of the massacre in the Sabraand Shatila refugee camps near the end of Israel's 1982 war with Lebanon.

9. Coraline - This Tim Burtonesque - it was actually directed by Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas) - stop-motion animation scary tale represents the best use of modern 3-D technology to date.

10. Two Lovers - A peculiar movie, but a nice one that gives us Joaquin Phoenix in what's being called his last movie role. It's a romantic melodrama, predictable yet compelling, with things about this movie that make it better than it might sound. The performances are excellent, tuned to the same key. Phoenix, it's sometimes easy to forget, can act. Gwyneth Paltrow has never been so well-used - her off-kilter looks work here. She seems vaguely ethnic, the sort of pale eyed girl Lou Reed might have written a song about in the long ago.

Two films I will have to catch up on: Olivier Assayas' Summer Hours, which slipped past me on its way to Market Street Cinema, and Duncan Jones' Moon, which intrigued me for 40 minutes before the screener DVD went blooey.

A couple I've arbitrarily assigned to 2008: The Class, Wendy and Lucy.

And the worst so far? Year One, The Informers, Bruno and Paul Blart: Mall Cop.

E-mail:

pmartin@arkansasonline.com

MovieStyle, Pages 33, 38 on 07/31/2009

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