Top Ten of 2009 amongst other things.

The Young Victoria

November 28th, 2010 and I've started wondering, where are all the Oscar contenders? With a little more than a month to go in the year I would have expected a few worthwhile films to start showing up, but either the contenders aren't getting a lot of support or they're still coming. 2002 saw the majority of Oscar contenders released extremely late, I believe three of the five best picture nominees were released in the final week of the year. Perhaps 2010 is shaping up to be a similar year. That said I'm still far ahead of schedule in terms of total films seen than I was this time last year. Now that doesn't mean I'm an expert this year, but probably speaks more to how little I saw last year until well after the year was over. Claire Denis' new film is at the Music Box and perhaps I should go this week. I can't seem to wrap my brain around her work. Every so often I see a film of hers that impresses me for reasons hard to explain and other times I leave feeling nothing and wondering what all the fuss was about. Even my favorite Denis films don't seem to coincide with established tastes, I wonder if anyone else out there thinks Friday Night is her best film.

For the last several years I've been relying on the year end Film Comment list, which usually features a top 20 and sometimes even a top 50. The films are much more auteur based and rarely reflect the award season favorites, although there is occasional overlap. Last year's best picture winner The Hurt Locker topped Film Comments' list so again sometimes great films don't even escape the Academy despite it's reputation. Might not be surprised to note that Avatar wasn't on the top 50. The list can be found in it's entirety here. Which brings me to another topic, the best films of 2009. I know that 2010 is nearing its conclusion and it might seem silly to dredge up yesterday's papers, but I do recall months ago promising to deliver my top ten of 2009 and well I still haven't. Amongst all these various lists of the decade it's sort of slipped my mind, and ironically enough the list itself was finished months ago, I just never published it here. So that said I'll post my list, and get back to rambling:

10. In the Loop / Armando Iannucci
9. District 9 / Neill Blomkamp
8. The Girlfriend Experience / Steven Soderbergh
7. Police, Adjective / Corneliu Porumboiu
6. Antichrist / Lars Von Trier
5. Fantastic Mr. Fox / Wes Anderson
4. Two Lovers / James Gray
3. Paranormal Activity / Oren Peli
2. Up / Pete Docter
1. The Young Victoria / Jean-Marc Vallée

Well some familiar faces on that list I'm sure, and a few films that you might scratch your head at, and perhaps a few that you might not have heard of. Now typically I would justify each entry, but I'd rather overview the list at once. For the majority of the year I didn't have a lot of front-runners for my list. Up was a clear front runner for the best film of the year, a title it held for quite a while, but from reading the list I did find one film better, but more on that later. Paranormal Activity is certainly not "critic" faire, and one film that seemed noticeably absent from many best films of the year lists. A sequel came out this year which didn't soil the legacy of the first but did little to do anything but remind me how amazing that film was. I've seen a LOT of horror films, most of them pretty damn bad. I don't watch every slasher that comes out, and don't even get me started on the Saw films, from Caligari to Paranormal Activity I haven't missed pretty much any of the "important" horror films. In that long lineage there are an extremely few films that actually scared me. Now as a young kid a film like It traumatized me for weeks on end, but can't say in my adult years any film had actually scared me. Paranormal Activity did just that and for that reason alone I had to have it on my list, great genre films are hard to find, and ones that good are nearly impossible.

Now it might seem petty that in a year with 10 best picture nominees from the Academy that I would agree with only two of them. I could argue that it's more the result of Academy oversight than elitism on my part. The Academy has had a long history of ignoring films released early in the year, which I'll use as the excuse for the snubbing of The Girlfriend Experience and Two Lovers. Truth be told I'm not sure The Girlfriend Experience would have gotten much attention anyways, although I doubt any film from the past year could possibly sum up the state of the nation more aptly. Soderbergh had mysteriously floated under the radar since winning an Oscar for Traffic, although I'm certainly in favor of his King Vidor approach to cinema. James Gray's film was released in winter of 2009 which is a dark abyss for any potential award contender. The subsequent meltdown of its lead actor Joaquin Phoenix may have tarnished what he professes to be his last screen performance. Damn shame because although no one seemed to notice it, the film is incredible, and Phoenix and Paltrow could have easily been given nominations at least. No amount of arguing will ever convince me Sandra Bullock was better in the Blind Side or that Meryl Streep needed her 50th best actress nomination for Julie and Julia. Oh well politics still rule the day I guess although they're certainly worth hunting out if you'd like a few honest films that may actually move you.

Lars Von Trier was in rare form with Antichrist which was perhaps the most baffling film I saw from 2009. Willem Dafoe is always worth watching no matter how ridiculously over the top he sometimes gets, and in the hands of a master of melodrama like Von Trier he's brilliant. Unfortunately my American dominance continues, with only one foreign language film. There are some great things happening in Romanian cinema lately, and for my money Police, Adjective might be the best film yet. If you're looking to do some quick catching up, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu; 12:08 East of Bucharest; and 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days. The films dry humor and slow pace might not be fit for everyone, but for my money it was the best foreign language film of the year. The Dardenne's film Lorna's Silence nearly made the list as well, so feel free to hunt that out as well.

In the Loop was for my money the funniest film of the year. It's dialogue was great and as a political satire it's pitch perfect. Fans of Wes Anderson won't really need justification for Fantastic Mr. Fox whose unique animation style went well with a very clever fable. Any other year it would easily be the best animated film of the year, but damn it if Pixar doesn't strike again. I'm still yet to see The Secret of the Kells, which didn't even hit theaters here until this year, but shared a best animated feature nomination with Fox and Up.

So how about that number one? The Young Victoria was something of an afterthought for me. It got some good reviews, but was relegated to a few technical Oscars. I typically loathe period costume dramas particularly Victorian era and with royalty as main characters. With that said The Young Victoria was facing a severe uphill battle, the fact that I liked the film was amazing, but I wouldn't have guessed it would be the best film of the year. Perhaps 90% of all films are essentially boy-meets-girl stories. There are always variations of this theme, perhaps the love story is secondary but well if decades of pop music and films have taught us anything, there is nothing more powerful than a REALLY good love story. I was sold on these characters, prisoners of their class in some ways who build ever so slowly a real, solid love. In terms of the look of the film it is without peer and deservedly took home an Oscar for it's costumes. For me this is the period film that could, one to triumph over the typically pedestrian constraints of its well known subjects. Maybe I'm more romantic than I let on, but I cant' think of a higher recommendation for the film than saying it was the best 2009 had to offer. Emily Blunt and especially Rupert Friend are outstanding in their roles, and as the above picture would indicate, they looked quite good in their roles to boot.

So hopefully it won't take me until next November to post my ten best of 2010, so come on Hollywood bring out those Oscar hopefuls already.