Published: December 25, 2009
The Year In Movies 2009: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
By Prairie Miller
While the news media sometimes gets a well deserved public spanking for playing with the truth, but not often enough, movies really went to town this year when it came to reorchestrating history, or indulging in giddy icon smashing. And we're not just talking movies possibly on acid, though there were plenty of those too, from Watchmen to Sherlock Holmes.
And in some cases, films touching on the same historical topic could have just as well been viewed from alternate realities, and in serious need of reality checks. Take District 9's South Africa descended into dismal social anarchy, in contrast to the kiss and make up racial politics of Clint Eastwood's take on apartheid, Invictus. Or Kathryn Bigelow still seemingly sparring with her long hibernating famed ex, James Cameron, incidentally juxtaposing in 'he said, she said' opposition her thrill-a-minute US imperialist war porn The Hurt Locker, with former spouse's anti-US military subversive animated shockfest, Avatar.
In any case, while male characters continued romancing starry eyed babes on screen young enough to be their granddaughters, as in Crazy Heart and Antichrist, one female (Robin Wright Penn) did manage to escape that sour sexist label 'cougar' in The Private Lives Of Pippa Lee. That is, while breezily bypassing her faithless geriatric spouse (Alan Arkin) for younger model, Keanu Reeves.
But once again this year, it seems impossible to figure out what's Good and Bad about movies, without considering three categories instead of two, along with the Ugly stuff that made it into the theaters. In other words, films that may look great but feel awful, and even creepy. Kind of like a horrible person decked out in elegant designer duds. Then there are a few Odds & Ends boutique categories worthy of mention too. So here goes.
THE GOOD...
1. AMERICAN VIOLET: In no way a Disney extravaganza, though Walt Disney happens to be the great uncle of American Violet director Tim Disney, this raw and heart wrenching film uncovers the sort of discomforting, concealed when not buried history that is more likely to make its way to the big screen than the news headlines these days. Young African American actress Nicole Beharie is radiant in her first starring role, based on the actual case of Regina Kelly, a Texas waitress and struggling single mother, who along with many of the African American youth residing in her low income housing project, is framed and swept up in a fake drug raid, but ultimately triumphs.
2. AVATAR: Futuristic identity theft meets anti-US imperialist military mutiny in James Cameron's long gestating revolutionary vision of a better world minus superpower greed, corruption and genocide. Though the accent on innovatively awesome hi-tech fantasy visuals tends to allow the mystique to preempt the subversive message. But nobody seems to be noticing anyway, what with that make-believe, anything goes alternate sci-fi screen universe.
3. BRUNO: A brilliantly nasty, deliriously insane closeted sexual politics on steroids mockumentary, and boasting Sacha Baron Cohen's Bruno as the anointed White Obama. Along with waxed rectums, defense moves against multi-hued dildos, and Ron Paul as peeved gotcha object of erotic desire.
4. CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY: Though Michael Moore is on less solid ground when mulling vague solutions to US economic woes in this unrequited romance, his message for the masses while encircling Wall Street with crime scene tape over this national 'robbery' in progress as their jobs, health care and homes go up in smoke, is loud and clear: You've been had.
5. GOOD HAIR: A wise and wacky dye-laughing doc about black female high maintenance hair that is no laughing matter, Good Hair finds a reinvented PG-13 Rock channeling Michael Moore as muckraking investigative funny guy, while nearly tumbling into a jumbo vat of hair processor goo. Rock turns nomadic comedic commentator while on a serious local and international mission, and going to great lengths, no pun intended, to solve this intricately surprising murky mystery.
6. INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS: A glourious rude mix 'n match of subtitles, nazi scalps, guerrilla cinema and testicle blood-soaked subterranean French cellar saloon shootouts, the film is a vintage QT Western European western. And a literally explosive finale titled Revenge of The Giant Face and featuring of all things a female war movie hero (Melanie Laurent), elevates Tarantino into fresh territory as a maturing filmmaker who has lots of surprisingly profound stuff to say. That is, when the hip noir mood strikes him. In other words, Tarantino's WWII heartfelt warsploit rocks.
7. THE MESSENGER: This richly conceived powerhouse military drama about life and death is ultimately about the search for a sense of family, whether in peace or war, and what binds humans together despite the most unendurable horrors at hand. A kind of odd couple male bonding road movie about damaged soldiers assigned to deliver news to families at their doorsteps about the death of loved ones as casualties of war, The Messenger with its own muted yet implosive brutal psychological intensity, may have more to convey about the toll of warfare, emotionally and otherwise, than combat on screen crafted in the heat of battle.
8. MY ONE AND ONLY: George Hamilton's combo coming of age biopic and tribute to his free spirit ditzy mom (Renee Zellweger), is a kind of stinging screwball blend served up raw, And a magnificent memoir, warts and all, dedicated to a pre-feminist womanchild who was no Thelma & Louise, but hardly the coy shrinking violet eventually busting out her mid-20th century gilded cage, that she was pressured to be either.
9. UP IN THE AIR: A sharply honed script that doesn't mince words, while sticking it to George Clooney's servile corporate hitman. Along with the genius move of hiring real people who've actually been fired, to play workers screwed by Clooney's outsourced specialist pink slipping workers for big business, so that they don't have to. Proving that you don't have to be an actor to both dazzle and devastate audiences in a movie.
10. WHATEVER WORKS: An out of the closet long shelf life marinating script liberated from three decades of mothballs, Whatever Works finds vintage Woody Allen shining through. Woody, via eloquently grumpy male muse Larry David, thankfully sidesteps the woefully depressed funny man's nearly always artificially induced panderings to the Waspy upper crust in movies, as the raw unplugged, get-even with the cosmos Woody here shines through instead.
THE BAD...
GHOSTS OF GIRLFRIENDS PAST: A sex addiction revenge comedy with some quickie laughs that retool the basics of A Christmas Carol, but comes off instead like a commitment challenged Scrooge on Viagra. Miscast in the extreme and not feeling at all like the conniving chauvinist he's claiming to be, is laid back Matthew McConaughey, whose character believes action in movies refers to the sex scenes. And what's with the PG-13, is this meant as a manual for underage two-timers in training?
THE INFORMERS: In the buff naughty boobs 'n buns bad parenting sex and drug addiction romp. And a weird cry for help cinema courtesy of Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho), probing wasted LA youth without adult supervision in sight. Though with sly hints on where all those hallucinatory Hollywood plots arise. The Informers eavesdr
ops on the mostly trust fund patrician, perpetually high lowlifes ferociously into doing the wrong thing on a daily basis in 1980s LA. Well, actually one protagonist does the right thing. But only after stuck in pause for a week or so, as an accessory to child sex slave racketeering. So much for socially redemptive second thoughts in a movie.
SPREAD: Ashton Kutcher's stud for sale does a glum gigolo making sex look like awfully hard work, while his current high price tag prey Anne Heche checks into a hospital for genital rejuvenation, don't ask. A soft porn cinematic peep show in family values clothing, and even more calculating in lame seduction of movie audiences, than Kutcher's perpetually underwhelmed and underwhelming crafty predator.
YEAR ONE: Jack Black's biggest idiot in the village, overly flirty heathen turned moronic messiah, tries to hunt and gather copious hairy bodied babes who really know how to stroke their spears. While a shackled and endlessly whining, too much information Michael Cera pees upside down through his collar.
THE UGLY...
ANTICHRIST: A self-flagellating sado-masochistic matrimonial weepie employing arty gore, and dubious therapeutic kinky when not satanic sex remedies. Willem Dafoe in the course of this back to nature perverse psychodrama, transforms from New Age sexorcist into a deranged hubby with homicidal tendencies, as rambling, pointless small talk aims for mystically trendy. And hopefully no animals or human genitals were harmed in the making of this movie.
THE HANGOVER: A strictly geek bonding, beyond crude guy movie about grown males who run away from home, while in pursuit of living out their wannabe vice fantasy daydreams badly. The raunchy humor is never in short supply, but the intermittent over the top tastelessness just about spoils all the fun. Like is it really a barrel of laughs when one of them on the sex offender registry performs, let's just say, manual libidinous moves on a lost and found infant, even if he's just pretending? And sorry, joking about the Holocaust and butt naked octogenarians, or playing pass the hot potato with a used condom as a leisure time activity, just doesn't add up to a blast at the movies.
THE HURT LOCKER: A kind of 'Dr. Strangelove: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb' - but for real, this thriller is basically about a military explosives expert in Baghdad who gets a huge rush out of his job, and he's not kidding. Which is to say that The Hurt Locker and its war is fun mantra - move over videogames and those second hand vicarious homicidal thrills - is just about as irresponsible as can be. Quick fix US military danger junkies go at it with Iraqis who range mostly from predators to ingrates, and not a single word about how or why we ended up there. The Hurt Locker: War is never having to say you're sorry.
PRECIOUS: Baby Mama Dearest minus the coat hangers and Hollywood mansion, this bad parenting ghetto horror movie boasts exceptional performances, but is social pornography at its worst, festering in racial self-loathing and class contempt, while oblivious to a system that ignores its neediest. And one of a number of subliminal anti-choice movies this year including Disgrace, that promote the incest and gang rape motherhood option versus abortion. The Bad Mommy Oscar goes to Mo'Nique.
ODDS 'N ENDS:
JOCK WATCH: BEST SPORTS MOVIES
Move over, The Blind Side and Invictus....
BIG FAN: A Taxi Driver style moody yarn about your basic Big Apple bottom feeder schlemiel moping his way through existence, the movie touches on the darker side of sports geekdom and living life as a spectator sport through others. Written and directed by Robert Siegel, who also penned the brilliant and brutal The Wrestler last year, Big Fan stars Comedy Central standup Patton Oswalt as a Verrazano Bridge booth attendant still living with Mom and obsessing day and night about his favorite football team, the New York Giants.
SUGAR: A more bitter than sweet tale told with uncommon sensitivity and uncanny scrutiny of race and class, about exploited immigrant ball players in a game that has evolved into ruthless baseball capitalism. And in stark contrast to Hollywood sports movies like The Blind Side, and their celebration of star power and those who make it, while rarely pausing to examine the many more who are discarded, exploited, and more often than not ultimately destroyed human beings.
WORST FULL FRONTAL MALE NUDITY: OBSERVE AND REPORT: Randy Gambill's deviant comedic flabby mall flasher. Ha Ha.
Ending On A Positive Note....
BEST MOVIE LINE: ME AND ORSON WELLES: Orson (Christian McKay)flipping out over water damage in his theater on opening night: "That's all we need, critics with wet asses!"
Prairie Miller is a multimedia journalist online, in print and on radio. Contact her through NewsBlaze.
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