Gay men and a person kinsfolk struggling finished individualized and cultural challenges; an abused, teenaged blackamoor claiming her dignity and self-worth; a chromatic receptionist who discovers the twin joys of cooking and blogging; and a black blackamoor born to surprised, white parents in apartheid-era South Africa are among the bicentric characters in the ten best films I saw in 2009.
It was a great year on movie screens for the marginalized and the misunderstood, the neglected and the underdog. The best movies weren’t those with big budgets or, with a pair of exceptions, big stars but were themselves films on the fringes of the film industry.
There was a handful of acclaimed or highly anticipated movies (Invictus, Up in the Air, The Lovely Bones and Avatar) that I haven't been able to screen yet. No matter; I am proud of and glad for the mass films and the artists behind them:
1. Departures: The assail winner of the 2008 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film didn’t obtain melodramatic release until this year. It is a deeply agitated and frequently funny story of a young Japanese man who inadvertently becomes a undertaker and finds himself ostracized as a result. A must-see, it is regular for release on DVDin January.
2. A Single Man: Out fashion designer Tom Ford makes a smashing entry as a producer with this adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s novel most a merry man mourning the sudden death of his longtime partner. Colin linguist deserves an Oscar nomination, at least, for his delicate performance. One of the best gay-themed films to date.
3. After the Storm: The best among several great documentaries I saw this year, including Outrage, Every Little Step and Valentino: The Last Emperor. It’s depiction of a group of theatre artists helping young grouping in New Orleans mount a creation of the musical Once On This Island in the wake of Hurricane Katrina is genuinely inspiring. Visit the film’s website for more information most the send and current efforts.
4. A Serious Man: The Coen Brothers’ stylish (not to be confused with A Single Man, above) is both their most autobiographical and their most theological flick to date. A Jewish family in 1960’s Minnesota grapples with questions most God’s existence and mysterious ways. Long Beach autochthonous Michael Stuhlbarg is great and a probable Oscar nominee as the flummoxed patriarch.
5. The Last Station: Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren are magnificent as Russian author-activist Leo Tolstoy and his wife. After 48 years of marriage, they are facing Tolstoy’s waning health, semipolitical opportunists hoping to change in on his legacy, and a ontogeny call for revolution. The flick evokes classics including The Lion in Winter and Reds patch telling a unique, true-life story.
6. Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire: Raped and impregnated by her father, beaten by her mother and vexed by her schoolmates, Precious (an amazing performance by newcomer Gabourey Sidibe) is fleshiness and ostensibly feat nowhere. She gradually discovers her value with the help of a hopeful teacher. The flick (directed by Lee Daniels) is hard to watch at times, but you’ll be glad you did in the end.
7. Little Ashes: The little-known romance between Spanish uranologist Federico García Lorca and surrealist painter Salvador Dalí is brought to pure life thanks to a dustlike script, great content and bold performances by Javier Beltran and Twilight’s parliamentarian Pattinson. The film module be free on DVDnext month.
8. The Baader-Meinhof Complex: Included among terminal year’s Academy Award nominees for Best Foreign Language Film but only free this year. It manages to be both informative and elating as it recounts the rise and downfall of a group of idealistic teen grouping in post-World War II Germany who, sadly, became terrorists themselves. Superior filmmaking in every way.
9. Julie & Julia: Meryl Streep and Amy Adams, reunited after terminal year’s powerful Doubt, are wonderful as, respectively, world-famous chef Julia Child and a contemporary, rudder-less woman who drew inspiration from her and blogged about it. Nora Ephron adapted the latter’s autobiographical aggregation and directed the movie to entertaining, hunger-inducing effect.
10. Skin: The genuine news of Sandra Laing (a enthusiastic Sophie Okonedo, who was Oscar-nominated for 2004’s Hotel Rwanda) who, through a recessive gene bursting to the fore, was born black to two albescent parents in South Africa. Her family’s subsequent interior struggles and fight with the apartheid polity attain for powerful, fascinating drama.
I also want to give “shout outs” to revered mentions Coraline, the prizewinning of a super number of 3-D enlivened releases, and The Road, a masterful, truehearted adjustment of Cormac McCarthy’s acclaimed apocalyptic novel.
Alas, into every otherwise beatific orchard of cinema a some bad apples must fall. My picks for the poorest movies of 2009 include:
1. It’s Complicated: We love La Meryl, which is why we dislike to watch her reduce herself to effort drunk, effort broad and having impolitic sex with her ex-husband (a large Alec Baldwin) in a desperate attempt to get laughs. Only the truly queer Evangelist Krasinsky, as Streep’s character’s son-in-law, emerges from this strained misfire unscathed.
2. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans: I admire German director Werner Herzog’s films and I like actor Nicolas Cage a lot, especially when he is at his most unhinged. This pseudo-sequel to the much better 1992 Bad Lieutenant is a waste of both men’s talents and moviegoers’ time.
3. Dim Sum Funeral: Shamefully manipulative, poorly acted dramedy about a Chinese-American family reaching unitedly mass the presumed modification of their matriarch.
4. Oh My God: Director saint Rodger traveled around the world, posing the question “What is God?” to an philosopher miscellanea of people. Their responses are rarely illuminating, and exclusive point out how hopelessly impossible to answer the question is.
5. Hannah Free: Sharon Gless is rattling good but miscast as a supposedly 80-year old lesbian confined to a nursing home, pining for her partner who is dying in the aforementioned facility. It’s hornlike to swallow the 60-ish Gless and the overall plot.
By Rev. Chris Carpenter, doc film critic of Movie Dearest and the Orange County and Long Beach Blade.
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