2009 Film List (Reviews, Discussion & Tracking) (2 Viewers)

[Michael Reuben]

Added Just Another Love Story (Kærlighed på film), the latest from Danish director Ole Bornedal, whose original Nightwatch (not the poor English-language remake with Ewan MacGregor) I still want to see. An entertaining, stylish noir, with creative borrowings from many sources. Narrated by a dead man, featuring an amnesiac femme fatale with a mysterious past, punctuated by spooky scenes in hospitals and morgues, and featuring a soundtrack that knows the shock value of sudden silence.

 

[Michael Reuben]

Updated to add foreign language Oscar nominee Waltz with Bashir. I've only seen two of the nominees, but I wouldn't be surprised if this one wins, because it's powerful, disturbing and uses animation in ways I doubt anyone's ever seen before.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Updated to add W., which I finally caught tonight at an old movie palace (still one massive, ornate auditorium) in Schenectady. Just dreadful. Some actors are parodying the people they play, others are valiantly trying to create a genuine performance from a hackneyed script. Scenes set before his presidency show promise and Josh Brolin creates a complex, nuanced portrayal of Bush: a smart man spoiled by a priviledged upbringing who looks at the work through a stark, black and white lens. His portrayal deserves a better movie. The intercutting serves no discernable purpose, the presidential scenes are hamfisted at best, and it just sort of peters out at the end. Either a vicious satire or a serious, well-researched exploration would have been preferable to this middle-of-the-road mess.

 

[Michael Reuben]

Updated to add Donkey Punch, a nasty little sex-and-gore fest from Britain. Did my liking for it just go to prove Stephen Fry's claim that Americans think anything's better with an English accent? I don't think so. I liked that there was some obvious thought behind the script, and that when people behaved stupidly (as they must for such films to work), it was credibly stupid behavior instead of the usual contrivances. And in place of the typical motiveless psycho, we get panicked people reacting without thinking. I've seen plenty of those.

The title refers to an alleged sexual practice that is either an urban legend or was invented for the film. Even in the telling, it makes no sense (which is pretty much the point).

 

[Michael Reuben]

Updated with this weekend's viewings. I would normally skip a film like Taken, but it has three things going for it:

1. it's from the Luc Besson factory, which makes superior pop junk food;
2. it's directed by Pierre Morel, who did a nice job with District B13; and
3. its unlikely lead is Liam Neeson, and the surest way to revitalize a formula is to cast an unlikely lead, especially if he's a real actor.

One or more of the local arthouses shows the Oscar-nominated documentaries at this time of year, even if it's on a limited schedule. Trouble the Water has only one showing a day, but it was worth it. The Oscar nominating process may not be perfect, but it's come a long way if something like this can make it through. It's nothing less than an eyewitness account of surviving Hurricane Katrina, complete with terrifying home-video footage of rising waters as the subjects of the movie -- Kimberly and Scott Roberts and their friends and family -- climb to their attic, then the roof of a neighboring building, and finally escape to higher ground. Interwoven with archival clips and footage of the Roberts' return to New Orleans in 2006, this documentary's triumph is to make you feel the force of Katrina's devastation through the experience of particular individuals without ever once losing sight of the scale of the disaster.

 

[Kristian]

Last Updated: 12/26/09

Latest Seen:
/ 04/26/09
Edited by Kristen - 7/4/2009 at 02:57 am GMT
Edited by Kristen - 8/3/2009 at 01:07 am GMT
Edited by Kristen - 8/16/2009 at 01:25 am GMT

 

[Michael Reuben]

Updated to add Coraline. Lovely animation; beautiful use of 3D. Hilarious voice work from Ian McShane, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders and Keith David.

 

[Edwin-S]

How did the story go over for you? Where I live, it hasn't reached the theatre yet.

 

[Michael Reuben]

It's a kid's story, but the animation gives it scale. I didn't know the book; so I came to it fresh. But the story has so many familiar elements (old house, lonely child, tempting world with dark secret) that you slip right in, as if it were an old tale from childhood.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Coraline's on my must-see list before it leaves theaters, but it's on the backburner right now because Regal doesn't accept passes for 3D movies.

Update with Push, the other Dakota Fanning movie that came out Friday. What a frustrating experience. Both Dakota Fanning and Chris Evans do a really good job, and Peter Sova's cinematography operates a very unique place. I even admired Nicolas Trembasiewicz's editing, which is unconventional but effective. The film is smarter than it looks, but there's just too much story for the running time. Without ruining anything, it feels like The Third Man would have if it'd cut to credits just before the Ferris Wheel scene: Oh man! We just got to the good part!

 

[Edwin-S]

I'd like to see this one as well. Hasn't opened here yet.

 

[Michael Reuben]

Added Notorious. Probably the most sanitized portrait of a rap impressario ever put on film (I'm referring to Derek Luke's portrayal of Sean "Puffy" Combs, as he was known at the time; he's also one of the film's exec. producers). But the lead performance by newcomer Jamal Woolard feels authentic, and Woolard puts across some of the charisma the real Biggie Smalls had to have to become so successful in such a short time. Angela Bassett, who knows a thing or two about musical bio-pics, gives the film its emotional center.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Added Taken, which is the quinntessential action movie enhanced by a protagonist full of gnawing emptiness and, later, blind fury. But if I can help it, I'm never going to that theater again.

 

[Michael Reuben]

Updated with The International, on which my thoughts are here, and Gomorrah, the Italian film about the other indigenous criminal organization that never made it into American popular culture.

My father never cared for the modern gangster film. His one-line review of The Godfather went like this: "They sure glorified those hoodlums, didn't they?" I don't think he would have enjoyed Gomorrah, but he wouldn't have disapproved of it either. There isn't a trace of sentimentality or romance in this intense docudrama about the Camorra, the northern Italian equivalent of the Mafia, and its present-day control over drug trafficking, the garment industry and, perhaps most alarmingly, toxic waste disposal. In its scale and unsparing pessimism, Gomorrah most closely resembles The Wire, but it lacks the latter's redeeming sense of humor. It also lacks any real presence of law enforcement. At most, they come to clean up the bodies.

Everyone who ever claimed that The Sopranos had lost its "edge" should go sit through this. This is what real "edge" feels like.

 

[Michael Reuben]

Added Must Read After My Death.

As is so often the case, a documentary provides the appropriate response to charges that a fictional film's depiction is "unrealistic". For those who couldn't accept the marriage or the characters in Revolutionary Road, I give you Allis and Charley, who were a helluva lot stranger and who recorded their letters to each other on dictaphone tapes while Charley traveled abroad for business, leaving Allis with their four children. One of Allis' grandchildren found the tapes, along with written notes and other materials, in a box marked "Must Read After My Death" and constructed this film entirely from the tapes, family photographs and home movies.

An unsettling reminder that no outsider can really know what goes on within a family or a marriage.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Added Låt den rätte komma in (Let the Right One In) a Swedish vampire drama that was released last year but finally made it to the local arthouse for a one week engagement after much pleading by yours truly and others. A lonely film about lonely people set in a desolate Nordic expanse on the outskirts of Stockholm. Every beat was exactly right, and the special effects were both photorealistic and sparingly (often subtly) utilized. It is a love story, and yet (depending on how we are to understand Eli's relationship with her "guardian") there is an entirely different interpretation of everything that we have seen. That ambiguity feeds into the depth the film carries with it. Highly recommended, to horror fans and non-horror fans alike.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Finally added Coraline; with other 3-D movies moving into theaters I figured it was now or never if I wanted to see this one in 3D. It's a tough movie to reduce to a star rating. Right now I have it as a very strong 3 out of 4. Henry Selick's visual invention drives the film and makes it a very unique part of 2009 cinema. However, as far as adaptations go I was less than impressed. I don't mind changes from the source material, if those changes add rather than detract from the experience. But most of the changes here water down the story, robbing it of risk in key places and handing moments carefully plotted out by Coraline in the book to other characters, most problematically the newly invented Wybie. I enjoyed the subplot with his grandmother, but I think having no one but the cat, mice and Coraline know exactly what's going on in the house is more effective. And the ending her feels pat instead of unsettlingly incomplete. Still definitely worth seeing, though.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Added Watchmen: The IMAX Experience, which (unlike Coraline) I went into completely fresh, except for having the villian spoiled for me. This movie will be remembered as one of the great movies period, and certainly one of the cultural touchstones of 2009. It tries to do so many things at once—alternate history, period piece, generational story, superhero story, mystery, war film, philosophical debate—and does them all good to great. The film is the densest thing I've seen in years, so that I was fully engaged for the entire 2 hour, 45 minute running time. It's so tight that I would have been afraid to take a bathroom run. After seeing the movie, I read up on the original ending. And I have to say, I like this ending better. Unlike Coraline, the unnecessary changes add rather than detract to the overall experience. And like Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings adaptation, the necessary omissions are hinted at via visual clues or through other outlets.

 

[Michael Reuben]

Fell behind in updating, but just added a few films.

 

[Michael Reuben]

Added Watchmen: The IMAX Experience. Appalling.