By Daniel Supanick

Staff Writer

Looking back on 2009, it’s clear that it was a mixed bag in terms of the films it saw released. The year started out surprisingly well, but gave way to a summer release schedule that contained both big surprises and huge disappointments, and a fall selection that ended the year on a very good note. In all, though, it was a year for surprises and innovation.

The following list of films is my top ten favorite films of the year. These aren’t necessarily the year’s best films, but ones that I loved and that stuck with me the most as the year went on. First, my honorable mentions, films that didn’t make the cut:

Coraline

Watchmen

Observe & Report

Adventureland (The first comedy this year starring Jesse Eisenberg to have “Land” in the title)

Star Trek

Angels & Demons

Bruno

(500) Days of Summer

Food, Inc.

Ponyo

The Informant!

World’s Greatest Dad

Zombieland (The second comedy this year starring Jesse Eisenberg to have “Land” in the title)

The Princess and the Frog

Up In the Air

10. The Hurt Locker- The first great film about the War in Iraq, The Hurt Locker chose to avoid making political messages and instead chose to tell a story about the men fighting the war. It is an unflinching portrait of the adrenaline rush of combat, and the sort of distorted addiction the soldiers develop fighting. Here, we see men dealing with death at every corner. Every pedestrian they run across could be the enemy, and every abandoned car could yield a deadly explosive. They hate Iraq, and they hate fighting, but it becomes a part of their nature, a part they ultimately cannot escape. The Hurt Locker delivers a compelling story about men in a situation they can never mentally or emotionally leave behind, and it speaks more to the state of affairs in Iraq than any political diatribe ever could.

9. Fantastic Mr. Fox- Wes Anderson’s first foray into animation isn’t a completely surprising success. Anderson’s always been good with color and atmosphere, and that is evident in Fantastic Mr. Fox. What also makes Fox such a great film is that in it, Anderson uses his trademark quirk and dry humor to create something that is unabashed fun and also severely hysterical. In a year of entertaining and innovative animated films, Fantastic Mr. Fox also proved that animation doesn’t have to be cutting-edge to work. The stop motion techniques that Anderson uses are very primal, yes, but the simple quality of it all makes it more endearing and humorous. It is odd to great effect, and also reinvigorates Anderson’s style and running themes. Fantastic Mr. Fox is good, old-fashioned fun, and makes for a rich cinematic experience.

8. District 9- Just one of the few notable science fiction films this year was District 9. In the film, we are presented with a society of aliens, stranded on Earth for no other reason than their ship ran out of fuel and they are out of supplies. They need shelter, and so they are given their own shantytown in South Africa where the human citizens and government officials manipulate, discriminate, and abuse them. It is an excellent allegorical portrait of a culture being held into submission by its social betters, one that, despite its best efforts, is not allowed any leeway to lift themselves from their horrible conditions. Keeping them down allows the human population to keep things just the way they are, so why let them change that? The film uses an excellent mix of video documentary style and narrative film style to illustrate its bleak environment, and also accomplishes the difficult task of making the aliens’ problems the human element of the story. District 9 may not prove to be a timeless film, but it is extremely engrossing in its relevance to our age and in its execution.

7. Avatar- James Cameron’s return to narrative filmmaking promised innovation, and a step forward for filmmaking the likes of which have never been seen before. This was exactly what Cameron delivered. The world in Avatar is a completely immersive one, rich and detailed to the point that it passes for real. Its surroundings and its inhabitants breathe like no other computer-generated creation seen on film to this point. In terms of story-telling, Cameron does nothing new. It is the hero’s journey told as it has been told before, but with a different approach to its presentation. Instead of making the audience observers to the story, he includes us in it with the total richness of its setting and its cultures, immerses us in its unfolding, makes us a participant. Cameron was right. This film is a game-changer, and is beautiful, grand, and inclusive in its presentation. Welcome back, Jim.

6. Moon- One of the smaller science fiction films released this year, Moon starred Sam Rockwell as a man living alone on the moon harvesting energy for the population back on Earth. After experiencing a near-fatal accident on the lunar landscape, he discovers a terrifying secret about the truth of his solitary existence there. Moon is science fiction as it was done in the past. It is quiet, atmospheric, and meditative, something that gives it more of a chance to really fully delve in its meaning. It is science fiction that is gripping and thoughtful all at the same time, a provocative piece that ends with existential questions worth contemplating.

5. The Road- In my original review of The Road, I said I thought it was as good as the book. After revisiting the book, I’ve decided I was wrong, and that the film couldn’t possibly recreate the beauty of its rich prose. Despite this, the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece is a beautiful film in its own right. It perfectly captures the relationship between the father and the son, and knows that the story is one of this relationship, not of a post-apocalyptic future. That’s only the setting. Director John Hillcoat may not have recreated McCarthy’s prose, but film is not a medium of prose. It is a medium of image and sound, and what The Road manages to muster in both of those areas is truly wondrous.

4. A Serious Man- This film is the Coen Brothers in top form. It is dark, bitingly funny, and suspenseful all at once, something only the Coens have ever been able to achieve. In A Serious Man, one could say they unfairly torture Larry, their semi-unwitting protagonist, and put him through a hell he does not deserve. Then again, though, isn’t life the player that’s being unfair to Larry, and aren’t the Coens just letting life go through its motions with him? With A Serious Man, the Coens make one of the best films they’ve ever had their name on, one that doesn’t just fit in their rich repertoire but one that also stands out. It is an example of their writing, visualization, and execution coming together almost perfectly to create a hilarious, thought-provoking picture of life taking its toll on a man who may or may not deserve the problems rushing down upon him.

3. Where the Wild Things Are- In his adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s ten-sentence storybook Where the Wild Things Are, Spike Jonze took the core theme of the book, one of growing up, and expanded it to be a truly engaging portrait of childhood. Where the Wild Things Are is not a fun film to sit through. It runs the gamut of emotions, and goes from one place to another almost at random. This only serves to better portray the film’s protagonist, though, a young boy who is having trouble accepting that he is not the center of the world in the lives of those around him. He creates this world of imaginary monsters in his mind to cope with growing up and to cope with the change occurring around him, and these monsters change as he begins to see how things really are. Where the Wild Things Are is a moving and endearing film about childhood and growing up, one that hopefully will find the appreciation it deserves in the future.

2. Inglourious Basterds- Let me get this out of the way: Inglourious Basterds is a great film about myths and truths, and how these things can mar each other or take the place of the other completely based on who is relaying the story. That said, I loved every minute of this film. I loved the tense, twenty-minute conversation that opens the film. I love the introduction to the Bear Jew. I love the David Bowie-set scene with Shosanna preparing for the film premiere. I love the scene where Michael Fassbender talks about there being a special rung in Hell for those who waste good scotch. And I love, totally and completely, the final shot of the film. Inglourious Basterds is Tarantino at his best since Pulp Fiction. His mixing of film styles and his message don’t get muddled here, and actually serve each other well. Here, he creates his own version of history that paints the picture he wants to paint. Everything that is and has ever been great about Tarantino is in this film, and is also great on its own. Also, to talk about this film and not mention Christoph Waltz’s searing and grand performance in the role of Hans Landa is a crime. Inglourious Basterds is one of the year’s few must-see films.

1. Up- Pixar has always had a way with making heartfelt stories with characters who audiences would follow to the ends of the Earth. Up is probably their best effort at doing that to date, and is quite possibly their best film, period. It isn’t simply a film about an elderly man living up to his younger promise, or living up to a promise made to his late wife. It’s about an elderly man seeing the adventure that was always before him, the adventure he was experiencing before but never knew it. Up is silly at times, yes, but to no fault. Its light-heartedness is only there to make its characters more endearing, and doesn’t take away the emotional core of the film, probably the heaviest and most affecting Pixar has ever crafted to date. It is funny, exciting, and touching all at once, a film that is as beautiful to look at as it is to witness. Up is a true classic, and one that won’t be so easily forgotten.

That’s my top ten. Now for my five least favorite films of 2009.

5. Couples Retreat- Couples Retreat is not a horrible film, but I’m including it on this list because it is not the film it clearly wanted to be. It seemed like it wanted to be a film that analyzed and explored relationships in all their facets. Instead, it took a less risky route and decided to be just another mainstream comedy. It isn’t shot very well, the story isn’t remarkable, and the jokes are really quite standard. Couples Retreat could have been an insightful and fun film. Instead, it turned out to be bland and forgettable.

4. The Twilight Saga: New Moon- I think I’m beginning to understand the appeal behind the Twilight series. It’s wish fulfillment. It’s a story that many see as the ideal love that they look for and can’t attain. The problem is, the ideal love they look for in the story isn’t there. The fact is, the story itself is empty of meaning. Bella is an empty character with more fake baggage than one would ever want to live up to, and Edward is really a mentally abusive person. New Moon did nothing to give me any more meaning as to their wanting to be together, and really only made it more ridiculous and unlikable. How do I get behind a character who manipulates another person the way Bella does Jacob, or even Edward does Bella? How do I get behind characters if I don’t know the reasons for their actions? New Moon is a film that plays out with empty meanings, one that tries to give itself meaning at times, but draws from sources that only make it come off as pretentious. The next film could improve upon it, but it won’t. That kind of film wouldn’t sell.

3. X-Men Origins: Wolverine- You know what’s a good idea? Making an X-Men prequel that tells Wolverine’s origin story. You know what’s a bad idea? Making the film look like a children’s playset when it’s clearly going for a dark, gritty tone, stuffing the film full of unnecessary and unimportant characters while telling an uneven story, and holding the film to lazy production values. Seriously, if someone told me three years ago after the disaster that was X-Men: The Last Stand that the next stab at molding the legacy of the X-Men characters on film would tell Wolverine’s origin story poorly, I would’ve stuck with the hints we had gotten during those cutaways in X2: X-Men United.

2. Paranormal Activity- Many films end up being all hype and no delivery. Paranormal Activity is a prime example of this phenomenon, even though it has made back well over 5,000 times its original budget of $15,000. How this movie is being sold as one of the scariest movies ever made escapes me. The scares are all cheap, and are based simply on loud thumps and objects moving by themselves. The characters, whose dialogue was improvised throughout, are poorly realized, and give the audience no reason to want them to survive. The film itself is poorly structured, and alternates between scenes of night time scares followed by the characters reiterating what we just watched happen and then arguing about it. Think about it though. Could we expect anything more from a film that had to depend on night-vision footage of a considerably young audience reacting to it rather than showing actual discernible footage? This film did not deserve the hype surrounding it, nor the success it received.

1. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen- There are some movies that are made for the audience to leave their brain at the door so that they may simply enjoy the ride. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was such a movie, but in the end, it still failed to entertain even with its brainlessness. It is a film that is quite literally without a plot, and therefore is without any entry point for the audience to invest itself in the subsequent action beats. Even if an audience is to leave their brains at the door, they should at least have reasons to invest in the film’s characters. Instead of a plot, it gives us characters who have no traits and go through no development during the film, and are simply meant to move to different locales for the sake of advancing the film towards bigger, badder explosions. The humor is tasteless in a way that is offensive to anyone’s intelligence. It is simply a film of clashing metal and explosions. The problem here is that despite the focus being on the action, the framing is focused so tightly on it that it simply becomes bright metallic colors flying at each other and making loud noises. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a film without any substance, and it made nearly $400,000,000 at the box office. This is the highest grossing film of the year. Let’s hope for a better victor in 2010.

Comments may be sent to daniels7@umbc.edu