Best of 2009

Today’s Wednesday?  Holy shit.  Uh, I got nothing.

So here’s my best of 2009 list.  Admittedly, it’s an incomplete list because I wrote it in like 15 minutes, so no research was done.  This is just what I could remember off the top of my head.  Which is why the comics section is so short.  Also, I’m pretty shallow, so every one of my favorite movies of the year, with the exception of one, has a shoot out in it.  Derp.

*-*-*

Movies

Sherlock Holmes – Just saw this, a lot of fun with a high IQ under the hood.  Downey is charismatic as always, and since he couldn’t get a job outside of being the villain in a Tim Allen movie five years ago, to now having two franchises under his belt is amazing.  Also, Guy Ritchie’s back with the usual flourishes, but he now has the swagger he was missing when married to Madonna.

District 9 – This is tied for my favorite movie of the year.  Again, an action flick with a brain, the movie makes you care about, or at least invest in, everyone before letting them loose to see where fate takes them.  Body horror, well shot-action, a story you can really bite into, and a truly alien culture all come together into something everyone should have seen.  I wish more sci-fi and action movies would get made outside the studio system, because maybe then we’d see something actually alien, strange, and thought-provoking.

Hurt Locker – I love this movie, but it’s one of those movies I can only watch once every so often because it’s hard to sit through.  I spend the entire movie tensed up and even though I know what’s going to happen, I still worry.  I still hope that everyone makes it.  I still hope that the characters will not only realize what’s trying to kill them out in the field, but how they’re dying by inches personally.  It’s a movie about the calm before the storm, and what those moments do to us.

Up – It’s a Pixar movie about living.  It’s the saddest movie of the year and the most uplifting.  It has talking dogs in it.  Go see it right now.

Inglourious Basterds – This and Kill Bill are my two favorite Tarantino movies.  I realize this is sacrilege, but I didn’t grow up on pulp crime movies and exploitation films.  I grew up on kung-fu, samurai, western, and war movies.  Tarantino’s gift is to bring in influences, make them his own, and then return them to popular culture in a way that seems new and exciting.  If you recognize those influences, then it’s like he’s talking to you in a secret language.  And there’s the word,” language.”  This is a movie about language.  It’s about pop culture.  It’s about culture itself.  I’m a dialogue weenie, and the conversations that take place in this movie, particularly the beginning, the bar, and the one at the end in the restaurant are things I could watch over and over again.  The menace, the double meanings, and the trying to quietly figure out who knows what are nestled in subtext and tone.  Were the trailers misleading?  Yes.  Are the basterds barely part of the proceedings?  Yes.  Should we care?  Yes.  Do we?  I sure the hell don’t.

Star Trek – Everything the new Indiana Jones and Star Wars prequels should have been: new adventures with old friends.  These movies were fun and exciting, marked by tragedy and long odds, but not getting bogged down by it, or trying to get away from it with pratfalls (Star Wars).  It honored the spirit, but found new ways to lure in modern audiences (Kingdom of the Crystal Skull).  If you had told me that after the last round of Star Trek movies that that franchise would be the one to come out on top, I’d have laughed in your face.  As a life-long wannabe Jedi, putting this on my list is killing me, but it’s so damn watchable and the cast is so good, I guess I just have to take one for the team.

Taken – A straight forward action movie.  Well shot, Liam Neeson is simultaneously terrifying and sympathetic, and it just moves.  Once he gets to Europe there’s no drag, no dead weight.  Every action scene, every dialogue, every new clue propels him forward.  It’s like a pulp international spy movie.  Mean, lean, and different enough to stand out, I think time and history will be kind to Taken.

WTF Moments

The bad guy from Avatar was Ike Clanton in Tombstone?! – The biggest badass in the universe in Avatar is the cowardly wretch and one of the supposed leaders of the Cowboy gang in Tombstone?  Wow.  Acting.

The ethnic side kick in Transformers 2 was one of Omar’s lovers on the Wire?! – Holy hell, the screaming stereotype was Omar’s boyfriend in Season five of The Wire.  He was really good in the best crime show ever made.  Not so much in the loudest movie ever made.

Moments

Taken – the dinner scene.  Liam Neeson’s character has ice blood in his veins pumped by a cast-iron heart.  When he says he’ll do whatever it takes to find his daughter, he goddamn means it.

Avatar – Is this a cop-out because I don’t know if I liked it, but I may look back on it and realize it belongs on here?  Yup.  However in the era of jump cuts and extreme close-ups a scene that pulls the camera back, and lets us know what’s happening not only in that exact moment, but also how it relates to the rest of the battle deserves recognition.  Not only is it filled with awesome stuff I’ve never seen before, but I’m pretty sure the entire 20 minute battle at the end has a three-act structure.

Transformers 2 – I know, I know, but the fight in the forest is pretty awesome for the following reasons: twin flame swords; a face is torn in half, and this is what Optimus Prime should always be, a badass who turns the tide.  He spent the entire first movie getting slapped around like a bitch, when really he should be the guy that shows up and gets shit done.  When Prime is there, you know everything’s going to be okay.  Add that to the fact this is only scene in the movie that’s not only coherent, but shows that modern Bay can actually make a well constructed fight scene, but, let’s face, the effects are kind of amazing, and with restrained camera work, they can finally shine.

Hurt Locker – The sniper scene is so tense, that my jaw hurts from clenching it the entire time.  There’s a cameo in this scene that helps illustrate that anyone can die at any time and it adds a huge amount of tension to the proceedings.

Robot fight! — Neil Blomkamp is an action director to keep your eye on, couple the camerawork with the imagination of all the weapons and you have something new and different in District 9.  The weapons and the gore definitely paint Blomkamp as a sci-fi nerd who made good.

Jew Hunter hunts Jews – The first scene in Inglourious Basterds is a direct lift from the the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and it imparts the same menace.  Much like Lee Van Cleef’s Angel Eyes, Waltz’ Landa bides his times, supremely confident in his own abilities, but whereas Angel Eyes authority ends with the six shooter; Landa’s is in his voice, and it is deadly.  It’s like watching a cat play with a mouse.  The quiet menace unfolds as the tension grows.  While the audience and the farmer are left to twist in the wind, the outcome was never in doubt to the Jew Hunter.                                   

Flying House – Up is filled with beautiful moments, but my favorite is when the house lifts up from the balloons.  I love the imagery; I love the joy, it’s simply the most triumphant moment in a movie filled with classic scenes.

 “Buon giorno” – You can make the argument that the entire movie, every beat, every line in Inglourious Basterds is the build-up to Brad Pitt’s punchline.  In a movie about language and the nuances hidden therein, Aldo’s mangling of this word nearly made me snap my own back from laughing so hard.

Running on the Waves – Ponyo is not Miyazaki’s best movie.  Not even close.  It coasts along reveling in its fantastic animation before realizing it needs to wrap up the movie and we get a hurried third act.  However during the coasting and reveling, we’re treated to a young girl running across the waves during the largest storm in history.  I cannot watch this scene and believe we’re done with 2D animation.  There’s no way the colors could be as lush and rich, and the animation so smooth when created by computers, Pixar and Avatar be damned.

Kable never becomes a good man — Gamer is not a great movie, but I’m glad I saw it.  However the part that stuck with me about this movie is Gerard Butler’s Kable never actually becomes a good person and fights for everyone against injustice.  He’s never won over.  He’s still the same guy at the end as he is at the beginning.  It was refreshing to watch  someone just be who they are.  Sometimes you don’t need a hero or even a good man.  Sometimes you just need a killer.

TV

Glee – I’m really into musicals.  Yeah, I know.  Not only that, but I’m really into musicals with no singing ability.  This new show that plays in the conventions of the musical but, more importantly, still manages to find something new and real in a genre that has people spontaneously break into song where no one else can hear them.

Modern Family – The family sitcom is not dead, it just needed more interracial, cross-generational, gay couples, all in the same show.  What really sets this new show apart from everybody else is there are so many “best parts of the show.”  Ed O’Neill, Ty Burrell’s Phil, or Eric Stonestreet’s Cameron could all carry a lesser show, but all in one place, it’s like an entire cast of ringers.

Sons of Anarchy – the first season was pretty good, but the second season was intense and devastating.  There was no easy way outs, no tricks or twists.  Every awful thing that happened had to be dealt with, and with every plot turn there was no going back.  This show is tough, mean, and can get dark as hell.  The characters are violent and crude, but in the world they inhabit, they have to be just to survive.  They’re not good guys, they’re just less awful, but they’re still sympathetic.  Plus, Neo-Nazi Henry Rollins is the scariest goddamn thing I’ve seen all year.

Battlestar Galactica – The series finale wasn’t great, and would not stand up as great television on its own, but with the impetus of the entire series behind it, it was a nice payoff for fans.  However the real reason this show is on here is because of the two-parter Mutiny episode.  Gritty, harsh, it was storyline that reopened every wound, slashed every scar, and bravely undid every small bit of healing and moving on the show did in the previous seasons.  It was unforgiving and unrelenting, but it had to be done so the series could be wrapped up.  Edward James Olmos continued to be a stone cold hardass, but Mary McDonell’s President Roslin really showed up.  Her character arc throughout the series came screaming to the forefront as we saw that underneath her sick exterior was steel.  Goddamn, this was great television.

Comics

Hail Lord Daredevil – Ever since Frank Miller’s seminal run on the title, the clan of assassins known as the Hand have been a constant thorn in the side of Daredevil.  But in the last ten years, Murdock has been put through hell by being unmasked, sent to prison, and had his wife forced to go insane.  Then the Hand came back and things got worse.  Through the constant attempts on his life and having his entire world turned upside Daredevil kept going only to find out that at the end of it, all of it was so the Hand would finally have a leader so hard, so unbreakable that this clan of killers and mercenaries would be unstoppable.  Shockingly Daredevil accepts their offer.  Now we find out what happens when a good man is given an organization dedicated entirely to murder.

“Warn everyone!  I’LL DO WHAT I CAN TO PLUG THE HOLE IN FOREVER!” –Grant Morrison’s mind operates on a higher level than ours do.  He exists at different plane of existence.  He has access to better drugs than we do.  All of this shows in Superman Beyond, a tie in to his confusing, but ultimately satisfying Final Crisis mini-series.  Superman Beyond basically pits him against a Cosmic Vampire, come to feed on creation, but more than that, it pits him as the protector of fiction.  Superman’s story is the story of ultimate giving.  It is of hope.  The last son of a dead world comes to our planet with nothing, and still give us everything he has to give, and this vampire is the ultimate story of taking, of having it all and demanding more.  Doug Mahnke’s art is visceral and iconic all at the same time and makes the story really pop.  “To Be Continued,” indeed.

Wonder Woman Animated movie was really, really, really good.  Green Lantern settles for merely good.  Wolverine sucks. – The Wonder Woman animated movie is really good.  Diana’s strong, smart, and regal, but still makes her naiveté to the world of man believable.  Plus, it’s shockingly violent.  Not gory, but they really push the envelope for an animated movie ostensibly aimed at children.  The Green Lantern movie is good, but it tried to fit in way too much for the first story.  The moral of the story is that these two lower tier characters had movies that worked.  They were watchable and faithful to their spirit.  There is hope that all superhero movies can be good.  However, everything Wolverine touched this year (outside of Jason Aaron’s incredible Wolverine: Weapon X comic) turned to shit.  The animated movies fucking blew, and the less said about the movie the better.  How do you fuck up a movie about a guy who’s a fighting machine?  Oh yeah, fill it with nobody characters played by Black Eyed Peas.  Fuck.

*-*-*

The End!  See you in twenty ten! 

That rhymed!

Matt!