2009 Bottom and Top 10

Now I come to do something most critics do each year – my bottom and top 10 lists for the movies I saw on the big screen during the calendar year of 2009. If you think I left one out, or have one on the wrong list, do make a comment, but also remember that lists such as these are by nature objective. With the Bottom 10 list I’ll start with the best of the worst and work my way down, and for the Top 10 list I’ll start with the worst (if that can be said) of the best and work my way up. So here we go…

Bottom 10

10. Knowing

For the sheer disappointment of its ending, Knowing reaches this list. The movie started out brilliantly, with fantastic intrigue literally ripping you from one great disaster action scene to the next, but with an ending like that you can’t help but feel cheated. Director Alex Proyas has made some brilliant movies in the past, but I’m going to go ahead and say this one is his allowable mistake. Nicholas Cage is in fine form for once, ably supported by Rose Byrne, but Jaden Smith is as annoying as can be, whinging from start to ridiculous finish.

9. The Tale of Despereaux

This animated feature had me confused. It was made for kids, but would actually terrify some. The animation didn’t impress me for even one fleeting moment. The story was nothing original and the ideas for props in a miniature town were mostly terrible ones. Consider this – in a town for mice, the lampposts are matches, a sweet idea if you think no further, but matches burn out in 10 seconds flat – small elements like this kept distracting me, convincing me the animators never thought further than the first brain-fart anyone on the production team came up with for use in this forgettable animated movie.

8. The Final Destination

This series is not getting any better. I really enjoyed the first one (it was in fact my #8 movie for 2000), but the drivel brought to the screen after that just kept hitting lower and lower. The actors are nightmarishly bad, the entire plot can be summarised in one simplistic idea, and the script is at times laughably bad. It almost seems like, as is the case with #9 on this list, the creators never thought or planned for more than one minute on any horror sequence produced in this movie. This is not entertainment; it is torture, for the viewer that is.

7. Jennifer’s Body

Diablo Cody wrote Juno. And then Diablo Cody wrote this. What a jarring contrast. This did not have the smart dialogue and witty storyline that might have been expected from the same writer as Juno, and it also went right on and demolished quite a few established horror movie rules and boundaries – and not in a good way. The only good things to come from this movie were Amanda Seyfried, who did a pretty good job at playing Needy (her character’s unfortunate name), and the execution of the climactic scene, which was pretty impressively staged and scored. The rest of the movie was just a confusing jumble of unknowns.

6. The Burning Plain

Charlize Theron is a brilliant actress, but she can sometimes make rather strange decisions in terms of the movies she picks. The Burning Plain is a boring movie told about the same people from two different time perspectives, which only becomes apparent close to the ending of the movie – the storytellers trying to be smart by wilfully deceiving the audience. Not for one minute did I care an ounce for anything or anyone in this movie, and I simply wish I hadn’t seen it.

5. Transporter 3

In a series that was pretty entertaining to start with in the first movie, then downright ridiculous to go on with in the second, this third movie was absolutely stupid. Unending talk of food was the filler of choice to try and flesh out the very limited story to feature length, and it really got on my nerves along with the bad love story that was forged under pressure of the events in the movie. Action movies can come dumber than this, as you’ll see later in this list, but it is a very rare phenomenon.

4. My Bloody Valentine (3D)

A very bad reminder that slasher films very rarely work, My Bloody Valentine was a pointless waste of time and money for both the producers and the viewers of this film. The 3D did not make it any better and the use of it as a gimmick should stop – go to Avatar for lessons in 3D. This is also the third movie on this list that has a plot moving from one gruesome killing to the next, showing us that a story actually cannot use that alone as the plot, it needs something more, something My Bloody Valentine sorely lacks.

3. The Haunting in Connecticut

Yet another horror movie on this list, it can be the theme for this year’s bottom 10. The Haunting in Connecticut started out in a similar vein to the brilliant The Amityville Horror, but that’s where it ends. It becomes an awful mash-up of supposedly scary imagery and storyline, which never manages to actually intrigue or scare. Halfway through proceedings you cannot help but wish our characters can realise their not-so-beautiful-anymore home is built on some old burial ground or in fact is some twisted burial shrine or something of the likes because you simply don’t care anymore and just want it to end.

2. Gamer

I spoke earlier about action movies only rarely coming dumber than Transporter 3, and this is it. Even thought this movie tries to be smart in the message it tries to bring across, that purpose is absolutely defeated by the way in which it is done. It seems that the creators have an intense love for what they do, and this is pretty scary, as people who can think up stuff like this should not be roaming society as free men. Gamer felt like a 90-minute trailer for a life of lust, pornography and violence, and there is no justification for this movie. Also, do not let the #2 ranking on this list fool you, as I made a judgement call between this and #1 on this list.

1. Year One

Oh my word. Can a movie actually be this insulting to its audience? And not by why of actually pointing a finger at the audience and insulting them, but by expecting people to find anything in this terribly blasphemous affair even remotely funny or entertaining. I started my review claiming that Year One will be my worst movie of 2009 on August 27^th, and mercifully, I was correct. Year One does not even go back to Year One, but rather some random times before that, as we have cave men and Abel and Cain and Abraham and Isaac and many others who never shared a historical time-frame. It is impossible to think people find this type of pervasive humour even remotely funny, as even one of this kind of gross-out scatological jokes can sometimes almost spoil an entire movie. Year One is terrible. Period.

Top 10

What has been seen cannot be unseen though, and with that I’ll jump directly into the Top 10 in an effort to get all the bad of 2009 behind me: (one movie not on this list deserves honourable mention - (500) Days of Summer. I cannot find a space for it, but feel terrible that it's not in there - as it is a brilliant romantic comedy for people who do not really like romantic comedies)

10. Valkyrie

Leaving behind the superhero movies for now, Bryan Singer brings us a historical piece telling the true story of a failed German Military operation to oust Hitler. Tom Cruise leads a plethora of great American and British actors playing German officials in a film that is almost indescribably tense, which a strange thing, since the story is told to viewers who already know the operation, codenamed Valkyrie (Hitler hated Wagner’s music), eventually failed miserably. Thing is, you don’t know where, when, and how they failed, which as what has you right on the edge of the seat for the entire movie, enjoying every minute of tense will-they won’t-they plotting and scheming.

9. UP

Pixar are giants in the animation industry. Everyone else is simply playing catch-up. And Up continues that grand tradition in fantastic style. Up is the beautiful tale of Carl Fredrickson’s longing to fulfil his wife’s lifelong dream, even after she has passed away. The great adventure that is life can sometimes get you down, but as long as you have someone there to share it with, be it your spouse, or as a matter of fact anyone who comes to mean anything to you, the adventure can be worthwhile, even if you do not at the time identify it as an adventure. The first 10 minutes alone qualify for the most beautifully moving animation ever presented on a screen, as it tells the story of Carl and his wife Ellie, from first meeting as young kids, straight through to Carl being alone in the small home. Up is unforgettably beautiful and entertaining.

8. Star Trek

J.J. Abrams has breathed new life into a series that isn’t all that outdated. First Contact, Nemesis, and others in the more recent Star Trek years were not bad movies; they simply didn’t pull the crowds anymore. With Star Trek, Abrams has everyone involved and interested in the characters again, Kirk and Spock are icons yet again. I’ve always been a fan of Star Trek, be it at the movies or on TV, but this movie truly broke the boundary between simply enjoying it and being a true fan for me. Star Trek has, at least in my mind, left Star Wars far behind as a distant memory in a galaxy far away, and while I’m not keen on ever seeing a Star Wars movie again (sacrilege for some, I know), I’ll watch Star Trek again and again in great anticipation of the next one to come.

7. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

David Fincher and Brad Pitt is probably my favourite director/actor team (with Tim Burton/Johnny Depp a close second). With Fight Club they blew everyone out of the water with a subversive tale of nihilism in the workplace and on the streets. With Benjamin Button they turn the tables yet again, this time investigating something that probably sits a little closer to the heart – how we live our lives. Youth is wasted on the young, I thought just this week while on holiday in Mozambique, and Benjamin Button further elaborates on this for me, claiming that Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. Benjamin Button is a wonderful tale of a man born old who grows younger, taking us on all his journeys as he experiences pieces of life from the opposite side of the age spectrum. A massive tale told with surprising emotion, Benjamin Button will make you think, for a long time.

6. Adam

Adam is probably the movie on this list with the lowest profile – released almost below the radar in art-house cinemas, with relatively unknown (sort of) actors in Hugh Dancy and Rose Byrne playing the leads in a story about a man with Asperger’s Syndrome and a regular woman falling in love. It is probably also the most simplistically beautiful movie on this list. No complex stories or plot, no space-age special effects or epic plot, Adam simply tells a love story, stunningly so. The simply told opening of the movie evokes a real emotion that lasts throughout, creeping into your heart, and making this movie on of those where you remember the feeling of watching it long after forgetting the details of the story. Adam is a fantastic little movie.

5. District 9

A damn cool science fiction action movie made on South African soil, District 9 mirrors some of the atrocious events that transpired in our country in the apartheid years. It does not do this in an overt manner though, as District 9 can simply be enjoyed (a hell of a lot) as a fast-paced sci-fi action movie as well. Wikus van de Merwe became a new Chuck Norris of sorts after District 9, and this is quite understandable, as he is brilliantly portrayed by Sharlto Copley. The attention to detail is fascinating, and the swearing quite funny for South-Africans. District 9 is one of the best science fiction movies to ever grace the silver screen, and I hope Neil Blomkamp can make at least one or two more movies from the same point of view (they need not be sequels to District 9 either).

4. Frost/Nixon

After Watergate, it was the intense interview between David Frost and Richard Nixon that uncovered the truth of the Nixon’s intent through the whole scandal, and even if you find politics boring and irrelevant (I do, for the most part), you will not be able to bash Frost/Nixon, as Martin Sheen as Frost and Frank Langella as Nixon give towering performances in one of the most engaging true stories ever. Told partly as documentary and partly as drama, Frost/Nixon faithfully recreates the interviews between the disgraced American president and the washed up Australian talk-show host. Frost/Nixon is the best political drama I have ever seen, a fascinating look into a saga the American government would rather forget.

3. Avatar

As I write this, Avatar has already become part of an elite list of movies to have grossed over $1 billion worldwide. James Cameron is the King of the World, as he rightly claimed after winning 11 Oscars for Titanic in 1997. No movie can ever come to the screen with sub-par special effects again, as it will inevitably fail against Avatar. This movie has to be seen to be believed, and even then you’ll have to see it again to really believe it. Where The Matrix and Jurassic park were both giant leaps ahead for special effects, Avatar is a giant leap ahead for the entire film industry. Avatar is the motion picture event of the decade, and on this it is only #3 because I made a judgement call on which movies I really liked best this year, which, by a hair’s width, are:

2. Watchmen

A massively complex and gargantuan plot and idea, Watchmen manages to keep everything in line with the main narrative, while effectively engaging the viewer in the smaller bits of the movie as well. The movie is one of the most impressive visual masterpieces I’ve seen, from the great opening sequence featuring Bob Dylan’s song The Time They Are a Changin’ right through to the end credits. The scale of Watchmen is daunting to the point of confusion, as a summary of its plot is almost impossible, with stubborn idealisms and glaring injustice facing off all the way. Watchmen is a monumental movie, both in scope and excellence.

1. Inglourious Basterds

Quentin Tarantino has made some crackers: Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, and Reservoir Dogs (I haven’t seen Jackie Brown). But I think (as one character remarks right into the camera during Inglourious Basterds), that this just might be Tarantino’s masterpiece. Taking history and giving it a back-seat against the story he wants to tell, Inglourious Basterds is the one Hitler/Nazi movie where you do not know the ending. The will-they won’t-they tension I spoke of in the paragraph on Valkyrie earlier is improved on even further in this movie by the excellent dialogue Tarantino provides his characters with. Christophe Waltz is absolutely mesmerising as Colonel Hans Landa, and the two most engaging and terrifying scenes in the movie features him ‘interviewing’ characters from a Jew-hunting perspective. Inglourious Basterds is spellbinding in a way that catches you off-guard, even with a repeat viewing.