Top 5 Films of 2009

As the first decade of the new millennium is coming to a close (Again, I understand that technically 2010 will be the last year of the decade, but no one seems to recognize that so I join in with the rest of the herd), 2009 has proven to be a pretty decent year for movies. Decent, not great. Some critics call it the best year of the decade. Not even close. 2007 was the best year, bar none. There Will Be Blood, Michael Clayton, Assassination of Jesse James, Before The Devil Knows You're Dead, No Country For Old Men, Zodiac, the list goes on and on...

That's not to say 2009 didn't see its share of masterpieces. After the usual crap fest released during January and February, the studios' dumping ground post-Oscar season, the year started strong in March with a surprisingly faithful adaptation of "Watchmen", the first and (probably only) truly adult superhero movie. The summer season, full of tent pole blockbuster fare, was a sore disappointment to say the least (With one glorious exception), especially considering 2008's one-two punch of The Iron Man and The Dark Knight, arguably two of the best superhero films ever made.

This year's impressive big budget fare? We unfortunately saw McG Double Whopper Jr.'s abhorrent Terminator: Salvation (It's bad news when your film makes Terminator 3 look like T2). We watched Hugh Jackman cash in his gigantic check for two hours with X-Men Mediocrities: Wolverine. And we had our senses obliterated, our common intelligence significantly lowered, and lost all hope for humanity with Transformers 2: Revenge of The Sub Woofer, one of the worst movies of the decade. The only saving point was scored by JJ Abrams and his fresh take on Star Trek, the aforementioned glorious exception.

After the mind-numbing summer, we again hit a dry patch with September, the studios' second dumping ground. Then, we hit the ground running with the start of the awards season and we haven't slowed down since. An Education, Up In The Air and Invictus were welcome surprises (Especially Up In The Air, considering I hated Juno). At this point, I still haven't seen Bad Lieutenant, Crazy Heart, Me and Orson Welles and Moon, which I predict might have a shot at The Top 10, if not The Top 5.

So here it is, The Top 5 Films of 2009:

5- The Hurt Locker:

The fact that The Hurt Locker takes place during the current Iraq war is almost an afterthought. It could have taken place during the crusades and it probably would be just as effective.

Katherine Bigelow's powerful film about the lives of an elite bomb squad in Iraq is fully immersing and empathetic with its characters, without plunging too much into unnecessary exposition.

We practically live with these soldiers for two and a half hours, yet we never really know who they really are. We never find out anything really specific about them, much like the way personal relationships must be between soldiers in the field.

This was one of those rare war films that examine the soldiers' state of mind during the war rather than the politics of the specific war itself. It does what many other lesser films try to accomplish: It throws a controversial quote at us at the beginning and actually manages to fully examine the meaning and the ramifications of that quote through the rest of its running time. Yes, to some people war is a drug. It doesn't matter what side they fight and why. After a while, as crazy as it sounds, it becomes the status quo.

The Hurt Locker was the most visceral and horrifying movie going experience of the year. Bigelow handles the many bomb threat scenes with adequate suspense and bravado, yet they are never showy or arrogant.

"The Curse of The Iraq War Movie", which guarantees any fictional film made about the Iraq war will fail at the box-office, inevitably caught up with The Hurt Locker, but there is at least a good chance it will receive a best picture and director nomination. One can hope.

4- Where The Wild Things Are:

How you react to Where The Wild Things Are depends a lot on your personality. The film is, quite simply, what it is. It is a journey into a child's imagination, a wondrous and carefree land created by the child as an escape from the real world. Of course, that's not to say it is perfect. The real world always finds a way of creeping inside even our most seemingly carefree fantasies.

There is no forced plot, or a hero's journey. Max, the boy, and the wild things, are not sent away to retrieve a powerful ring, or a pair of magical shoes needed to bring Max back to his real world. Max can return any time he wants. There is no manufactured antagonist, an evil wizard, or a bad wild thing, strayed away from the pack, swearing to exact revenge. There is only Max, and his imagination.

Since the film is stripped of all conventional plotting or narrative, we are given freedom to delve into our imagination alongside Max's. Therefore, like I mentioned above, unlike many other films, your personality will determine whether or not you'll enjoy Where The Wild Things Are.

Either you think it's a wondrous and endlessly creative land full of fun and imagination, or you think Max is a brat who needs to suck it up and face his responsibilities. Both reactions would be correct in their own way. And some, like me, will not really know how to feel but will acknowledge it as one of the most unique and daring children's films to be made in ages, and one of the best films of the year.

3- Avatar:

Yes, it is a somewhat condescending white male fantasy driven by white guilt. Yes, it is Dances With Wolves in space. Yes, it is simplistic and cliched at times. And yes, we complain way too much.

What happened? Is it that classic American tradition of "all or nothing" creeping back in? Are we forgetting that the highest grossing film of 2009 before Avatar was Transformers 2, one of the dumbest films ever made? Here are a couple more yes':

Yes, it is an exhilarating adventure in the most classic sense. Yes, it restored my faith in big budget event film making. Yes, it is endlessly entertaining and breathtaking. Yes, it raises the bar in special effects in previously unimaginable ways. Yes, every frame is a wonder to behold. Yes, it creates individual characters and gives clear, universal motivations to them and then lead us into grand action set pieces where the end result actually matters, instead of randomly banging a bunch of CGI metal together. Yes, it creates a brand new world with its own set of rules and sticks to those rules instead of reinventing itself as it goes along. And yes, is it fun to watch, from the first moment to the last. Keep complaining, Transformers 3 is around the corner.

2- A Serious Man:

This was a hard choice. Is A Serious Man the best film of the year, or is it the second? The only way I was able to make up my mind was to remind myself how arbitrary list making can be sometimes. In many cases, just because we put a number on something does not necessarily mean it's better or worse than the numbers before or after it. So, A Serious Man is the "second best" film of the year. But I will not argue with anyone who claims it's the best. In many ways, it is.

Here's what I wrote about it in a previous post: "What an amazing film this was. In the middle of this shit storm of mediocrity full of bland superhero movies, bad toy/video game adaptations, sequels, franchise re-boots, unapologetically benign cutesy indie flicks, A Serious Man is truly a breath of fresh air.

Every single minute of this film is unpredictable, honest, genuinely funny, genuinely sad and original, a word that couldn't be used to describe an American film for a long, long time."

Still true.

1- Up:

I've written so much about this miracle of a film in both Turkish and English, that I'll let my blurb from the Top 10 Best Films of The 2000s (In which it placed 7th) do all the work:

"The decade ends with 2009's Up, a true animation classic. One that not only presents an endlessly exciting and breath taking adventure, it also accomplishes something seldom seen in American animation: It has real characters, with real feelings, dreams and motivations. Even though it is part of a format generally marketed to kids, not one frame of it has even a speck of that familiar pandering and condescension observed in countless animated films, especially ones that were released during the 00s.

Underneath the delightful fantasy of Carl Fredericksen, a cranky septuagenarian, voyaging to Paradise Falls with his flying house to fulfill a promise to his wife Ellie, lies a beautifully told story about a man's personal journey into dealing with his own grief and finding new purpose in his life, executed with endless empathy and compassion.

Directors Pete Docter and Bob Peterson go out of their way to crush every children's film cliche known to man. Russell, Carl's unwanted child companion, is not treated as an adult in a child's body, the way children are depicted in almost every family film, but as a real child, confused, goofy and sometimes even annoying. The talking dogs don't have human characteristics or mannerisms, they simply articulate a dog's thought pattern. Balls are good, squirrels are bad. This is, quite simply, a wonderful film."