Better-Than List 2009

Don’t talk about 2009 movies unless you’ve seen Jan Troell’s comeback film. Everything that makes movies matter is in Everlasting Moments, but its virtual blackout and small (New York only) distribution by IFC proves how difficult it has become to survive Hollywood’s juggernaut—especially if you claim you love movies. Alienated from our own affections this way, we all become avatars.

Everlasting Moments > Every other movie of 2009 All else pales next to this marital memoir, a confirmation of Jan Troell’s mastery. Sweden’s nature poet also captures human nature through fundamental mysteries: love, family, politics, the personal creative urges that parents hide from their children. A mother’s discovery of photography explains the basis of our need for cinema. The family story Hollywood avoids turns out to be everyone’s story.

Revanche > An Education Gotz Spielmann’s debut American import evokes the forgotten grandeur of European spiritual cinema from Dreyer and Bergman to Fassbinder while Anglophilia was never more hateful than Lone Scherfig’s anachronistic material-girl drama.  

Of Time and the City > Crude Terence Davies’ Liverpool memoir investigates nostalgia and uncovers the politics behind beauty and destruction, memory and art, while the green movement clichés of Crude missed every opportunity to make a distinguished documentary.

Coraline > Precious Henry Selik made the year’s best stop-motion animation, a dazzling adolescent girl’s fantasy that explored psychological and cultural fears while Lee Daniels’ racist fantasy contradicted political reality with a laughably pornographic view of black female pathology.

This Is It > Me and Orson Welles Kenny Ortega structured Michael Jackson’s rehearsal footage into a postmodern movie-musical that revealed facts of protean showbiz genius that Richard Linklater kept deflating in his humdrum quasi-bio-pic.

Anvil: The Story of Anvil > The Hangover Sacha Gervasi doesn’t enable boys as men but delves deeply into how real-life boys become men through love and dedication, art and family. The Hangover offers boys-will-be- pigs tautology.

Next Day Air > Up in the Air Benny Boom disinfects The Wire’s pathology into an August Wilson-rich comedy about what greed does to the working class; it has truth and beauty where Jason Reitman told white-collar lies about labor, vocation and lack of community.

Crank 2: High Voltage and Gamer > Avatar Neveldine/Taylor, avant-garde filmmakers consigned to B-movie obscurity, are sharp stylists who satirize the responsibilities of the digital era that James Cameron turns into insipid escapism.

Gentlemen Broncos >Inglourious Basterds Jared Hess goes to the roots of the sci-fi genre for its pathos. Removed from exhibition, its day will come. It is the 2001 of 2009. But Q.T. traipses through the war movie genre without touching on anything remotely personal or amusing.

Ricky > Drag Me to Hell François Ozon’s original parable finds hope in family life and unorthodox sexuality. It turns the divine into real-life, Emily Dickinson poetry. But Sam Raimi’s horror pastiche is lowbrow, low-down and unedifying.

Brothers > The Hurt Locker Jim Sheridan finds the emotional substance of our Iraq War years while Kathryn Bigelow hides behind genre skill. By avoiding a moral or political stand, Bigelow’s movie says nothing to anyone—especially liberals.

A Serious Man > The White Ribbon The Coen Brothers redefine Jewish paranoia as existential anxiety. It beats Haneke’s art-house Nazi fetishism any day.

Tyson > Invictus James Toback’s monologue doc, a fallen angel’s confession, challenges our capacity to comprehend Mike Tyson (and ourselves) while Eastwood merely deifies sports fan Nelson Mandela.

Bandslam > Nine Todd Graff’s high school musical understands pop and showbiz better than Rob Marshall’s Fellini-botch. Too bad mainstream Hollywood doesn’t know the difference.

Cherry Blossoms > Up Doris Dorrie’s strange, sweet tale of a widower challenging the sexual mores he grew up with is exactly what Pixar’s corporate-formula widower’s tale evades.

Where the Wild Things Are > District 9 Spike Jonze realizes the liberating, introspective possibilities in pop while Neil Blomkamp reclaims apartheid for geeks who don’t know what that was, yet enjoy the comforts of pop idiocy.