My 15 Fave Films of 2009 (Picks 1-5)

Slap your hands rapidly on your knees in a drum roll fashion… Presenting, in alphabetical order, the first five of my fifteen favourite movies of 2009.

Anvil!: The Story of Anvil

Sacha Gervasi

Spinal Tap-style rock clichés are hilarious, underdog stories are compelling and documentaries that get this close to their subjects are rare – that’s the winning formula here. After influencing a load of bands, including Motorhead and Metallica, nearly making it big, and then struggling in obscurity for 25 years, Steve “Lips” Kudlow and Robb Reiner, childhood best friends and founding members of Toronto metal band Anvil, were perfect documentary subjects. Director Sascha Gervasi, a former Anvil roadie, captured some slices of true hilarity (e.g. Lips' less than glamourous day job, Robb’s turd painting) and knife-twisting heartbreak (notably the band getting screwed over during an Eastern European tour and Lips and Robb fighting) while surveying the life of a good-natured but pretty clueless working class Canuck band, including the guys' somewhat bewildered yet touchingly supportive families. Damn, I can’t recall ever rooting so hard for anyone in a film, as did for these hard rock hosers. It's like watching FUBAR twenty years later, but it's real and the subjects are genuinely motivated! The fact that you don’t have to like rock, know who Anvil is or even be Canadian (although it helps!) to appreciate Anvil!: The Story of Anvil means that this doc has transcended its niche like few others. Translation: it rawks.

Avatar

James Cameron

If you read my somewhat negative last post, you’re probably surprised to see this here. I stick by it, as, yes, there’s plenty to complain about in James Cameron’s Smurf Cats, notably the storyline ripped off from Pocahontas, the bad dialogue and kinda cheesy aliens, but, BUT, when the unparalleled 3D sequences featuring the fantastically realized flora and fauna of the Pandorum planet are making sweet love to your eyes, it’s forgivable. So, as much as I cringed at the clichéd dialogue and New Age clap-trap, I went to the film twice just to take in all the cool 3D critters and landscapes. Plus, Sigourney Weaver, as resident egghead Dr. Grace Augustine, and Stephen Lang as the heavy, Colonel Miles Quaritch, are both solid in the film, especially considering that they have to compete with all that eye candy. And, who doesn’t like seeing a neat gunship or mech suit, too? Or what I should say is: who doesn't like seeing a neat gunship blowing things away from the air or a mech suit blowing things away from the ground, too? Like many a Hollywood blockbuster, technology wins over narrative, but this time it wins in such a big way, you can see that you're watching more than just G.I. Joe for epic stoners. You're watching the best possible ever G.I. Joe for epic stoners, and that's sayin' somethin'!

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans

Werner Herzog

Herzog is my main man, an enigma with the power to make Nicholas Cage not just not suck, but deliver one of the most unhinged, entertaining performances since, well, maybe Nicholas Cage in Wild at Heart. The fact that this in-name only sequel to Abel Ferrara’s 1992 Bad Lieutenant actually got made, by one of the world’s greatest European arthouse directors/documentarians, with a cast that also includes Val Kilmer, Eva Mendes, Fairuza Balk, Jennifer Coolidge, Brad Dourif and Xzibit, seems like some sort of drunken bet that turned out better than anyone could’ve expected. Sure, there’s enough of a police procedural plot to qualify as a cop story, but the real fun is watching Cage’s character perform an operatic downward spiral in the most darkly comedic way possible, all while Herzog is thrusting random lizards, hallucinatory break dancers and enough onscreen self-abuse into the frame to make Keith Richards join the priesthood. Only a mad cinematic genius could pull this off with such aplomb, and I can’t think of another director who could come close. (I gotta say it again: the filmmaker actually uses Cage's tortured mugging, creepy mannequin hair and baffling line deliver for good, instead of evil!) There isn’t a film this year that I’ll be revisiting as much as this BL. I shudder with anticipation at how absurd the commentary will be on the DVD.

District 9

Neill Blomkamp

James Cameron had something like $250 million to create the world of Avatar, and first-time feature director Neill Blomkamp $30 million to create the world of District 9. While the former is an eyegasm of 3D goodness, the latter is light years more intelligent. Using photorealistic effects and a documentary realism style, D9 tells an surprisingly original story, in which aliens landed on Earth decades ago, in South Africa, only to be herded into ghettos and abused by the military-esque powers that be (a private security company interested in harnessing the alien weaponry). Yes, sci-fi can have a meaningful subtext and killer special effects; computer animation that both looks good and serves the story. Plus, star Sharlto Copely, as a dimwitted company man accidentally exposed to a DNA-altering liquid, deftly balances the mix of horror and humour in his character. Producer/mentor Peter Jackson obviously knows an artist with original ideas when he sees one, and this is just crammed full of imagination, from the look of the grubby, tentacled aliens to the sweet intergalactic weaponry that blows things up in the most fun, video game-style possible. It’s a good-strange feeling to come out of a sci-fi film, knowing that you watched something that stimulated both the brain and the senses equally. Now, if Blomkamp would only get to make to that Halo movie he was originally tapped for…

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Wes Anderson

I’ll see anything Wes Anderson does, as he’s one of the great filmmakers of the past decade, although his last effort, The Darjeeling Limited, was probably his least effective film. Well, Fantastic Mr. Fox is one of his best, however, there’s just no way to properly market this one, so it’s already almost gone from theatres and has been unfairly overlooked despite critical acclaim. Part of the problem is that this classic stop-motion animation-style adaptation of the famous Roald Dahl tale about a cunning fox that starts a war with some very determined farmers, is not a kid’s film at all. Rather, Anderson puts his droll dialogue, a resigned hero who lets down his family, sibling rivalry and a hip soundtrack in the mix. The filmmaker also likes bright colours, neat little props and bold gestures – all of which work really well in animation. The film is much funnier that I expected, as well, with the idiosyncratic dialog making a nice counterpoint to the stop-motion mayhem. George Clooney as the title character, Meryl Streep as his wife, plus Anderson staples such as Bill Murray (as a law-practicing badger!), Jason Schwartzman and Owen Wilson, all get solid laughs. And, although, this isn’t a “kids” movie per se, I know I’d have loved all the zany antics of the forest creatures, even if I didn’t understand dialogue such as, “Why a fox? Why not a horse, or a beetle, or a bald eagle? I'm saying this more as, like, existentialism, you know? Who am I?”

-Dave Alexander