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The 10 Best Movies I Saw in 2009, with Alternates and Regrets

The slightly extended, link-happy version of my 2009 top-10 movie list for The Oregonian.....

MY 'TOP 10'

1. In The Loop
2. A Serious Man
3. Star Trek
4. Whip It
5. Drag Me to Hell
6. Moon
7. District 9
8. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
9. Observe and Report
10. The Brothers Bloom

THE BREAKDOWN:

If I had to sum up 2009 in a single sentence, I'd say it was a great year for "What if?" movies -- for science fiction ("Star Trek," "Moon," "District 9," the story-problematic but incredible-looking "Avatar" and "Watchmen"); for horror ("Drag Me to Hell," "House of the Devil"); and for movies dwelling their own movie-mad alternate universes ("Inglourious Basterds," "The Brothers Bloom"). Here's a breakdown of my ten favorites. Links go to original reviews when possible.

1. "In The Loop" -- This brutal satire concerns British and American hawks and spin doctors using secret committees and outright bullying to force the weak, careerist and foolish into a war. Co-writer/director Armando Iannucci (spinning off his own TV series, "The Thick of It") slaps back-door Western politics on a steel table and guts it like a fish while employing some of the most scabrous, foul-mouthed insult comedy I've ever heard onscreen. Hilarious and a little terrifying.

2. "A Serious Man" -- This Coen brothers masterpiece is structured like a joke setup: "A troubled man goes to see three rabbis..." The punchline might be the brothers' bleakest reflection yet on the complete unknowability of anything. Michael Stuhlbarg is incredible as the befuddled professor who's either the unluckiest man in an indifferent universe or the subject of the same wager God and Satan had over Job.

3. "Star Trek" -- An insanely rewatchable pop blockbuster that pulls off something I wouldn't have thought possible until I saw the movie: It injects all the fun, comedy, sex appeal and optimism back into "Star Trek" while force-rebooting the series' history and recasting all its iconic roles.

 4. "Whip It" -- Director Drew Barrymore (!) went and made her own "Breaking Away" with this joyful, funny and deeply humane '70s-style comedy about a young alterna-dork (Ellen Page) finding herself through roller derby. Like the greatest sports flicks, it's as much about failure and humanity as it is about The Big Game.

5. "Drag Me to Hell" -- Sam Raimi makes a glorious return to his "Evil Dead"-era "spook-a-blast" stylings as he tells the story of a home-loan banker cursed by a foreclosed gypsy. Brilliantly staged Looney Tunes set pieces and splatterific housing-crisis and eating-disorder commentaries: This, my friends, is how you make a low-budget horror flick. BONUS: My recounting on "Cort and Fatboy" of the hellish preview screening for this movie.

6. "Moon" -- Sam Rockwell pulled off the year's cleverest acting stunt in this intimate bit of thinking-man's science fiction from co-writer/director Duncan Jones. Rockwell would get an Oscar nomination in any sane universe for his performance(s) as a lonely lunar miner who learns some alarming things about himself. He carries the entire movie on his shoulders, with only himself and Kevin Spacey's voice as backup.

7. "District 9" -- The year's other, better, more psychologically and thematically complex sci-fi movie about humans oppressing aliens while a conflicted hero turns into one of the creatures he's supposed to be exploiting. I even thought this movie's mech-suit was cooler than "Avatar"'s, and I could have watched that space-rifle pop people like balloons for hours and hours.

8. "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans" -- This movie might have made my list solely on the strength of Nicolas Cage's off-the-rails performance as a drugged-out cop trying to solve a murder while lugging the baggage of various personal corruptions; he hasn't been this much fun to watch in years. But director Werner Herzog also builds a surprisingly big-hearted addiction dramedy around Cage as the actor drives off the cliff.

9. "Observe and Report" -- Jody Hill ("The Foot Fist Way," "Eastbound & Down") offers up another brilliant dark comedy about a deluded striver. Seth Rogen's performance as a mentally ill mall cop strays well outside the boundaries of a safe Hollywood laff-fest; the film failed at the box office, but I suspect a cult of fans will be praising its "Taxi Driver" fearlessness (and its take-no-prisoners comic stylings, and its empathetic core) for years to come.

10. "The Brothers Bloom" -- Writer/director Rian Johnson ("Brick") manages another tricky cinematic mashup -- taking an Old-Hollywood screwball comedy story and somehow making it fly with melancholic undercurrents and naturalistic performances.

MOVIES THAT MIGHT HAVE MADE MY TOP 10 LIST IF I'D HAD SOMETHING DIFFERENT FOR BREAKFAST:

"Adventureland," "Extract," "Up," "Fantastic Mr. Fox," "An Education," "Anvil! The Story of Anvil," "Coraline," "The Messenger," "The Hurt Locker" and "Karamazovs."

MOVIES I'D RECOMMEND SEEING (RANGING FROM "REALLY REALLY LIKED" TO "HAD PROBLEMS WITH BUT ADMIRED THE AMBITION / LUNACY / LEAD PERFORMANCE / HANDFUL OF CHOICE MOMENTS OF"):

"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," "Land of the Lost," "Taken," "Zombieland," "Outlander," "Duplicity," "Brüno," "Public Enemies," "Sherlock Holmes," "Avatar," "Inglourious Basterds," "A Perfect Getaway," "Ong Bak 2: The Beginning," "Surrogates," "Jennifer's Body," "The Road," "Funny People," "House of the Devil," "Trick 'r Treat," "Last Chance Harvey," "Watchmen," "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" and "Gran Torino."

MOVIES I REALLY WISH I COULD HAVE WATCHED BEFORE WRITING THIS:

"The Hangover," "Up in the Air," "(500) Days of Summer," "A Simple Man," "The Girlfriend Experience," "Julie & Julia," "The Blind Side," "Ponyo," "World's Greatest Dad," "Big Fan," "The Informant!," "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs," "Paranormal Activity," "Bronson," "Where the Wild Things Are," "Black Dynamite," "Me and Orson Welles," "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus," "Everybody's Fine," "The White Ribbon," "Crazy Heart," "The Lovely Bones," "Knowing," "The Princess and the Frog," "Thirst," "Next Day Air," "This Is It," "Brothers," "Crank: High Voltage," "Gentlemen Broncos," "Bandslam," "The Cove," "Humpday," "Julia," "The Limits of Control," "Tetro," "Bright Star," "Tyson," "Red Cliff," "The September Issue," "The Damned United," "Revanche," "The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard" and "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3."

THE WORST MOVIES I SAW IN 2009:

"Did You Hear About the Morgans?," "Fanboys," the "Friday the 13th" remake, "He's Just Not That Into You," "I Love You, Beth Cooper," "Love Happens," "Old Dogs," "Splinterheads," "The Informers," "The Proposal," "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," "Year One," "Terminator Salvation" and "X-Men Origins: Wolverine."

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Mike Russell's Top 10 movies of '09 (The Oregonian, Thursday, December 31, 2009)

Previous 'best-of' lists: [ 2008 ] [ 2007 ] [ 2006 ] [ 2005 ]

Other Oregonian film-critic 2009 best-of lists:

Shawn Levy
Marc Mohan
Stan Hall

MOVIE REVIEW: 'It's Complicated'

Movie review in the Christmas Day Oregonian....


"It's Complicated" isn't, really: At its core, it's another glossy rom-com about a woman dithering in an unhealthy relationship while another, better, meeker suitor waits in the wings. That said, the movie's anchored by a strong lead performance and a steady sense of humor.

The "complication" is that the unhealthy relationship is a secret affair between a fiftysomething hottie (Meryl Streep) and her ex-husband (Alec Baldwin). (Baldwin's current spouse is the woman he cheated on Streep with a decade earlier, so I guess that makes it ... funny?) The fellow in the wings is an architect played by Steve Martin.

Writer/director Nancy Meyers ("The Holiday," "Something's Gotta Give," the "Father of the Bride" remakes) has cornered the market on magazine-spread filmmaking. As David Poland recently wrote, "She has great taste in actors and furniture." Her movies create comfy Martha Stewart universes that perpetuate a myth of upper-middle-class luxury in which Streep and Baldwin can play hooky from their undemanding, high-paying jobs to meet in a hotel for a lunchtime tryst and room service.

I've become quite allergic to this sort of thing (though I'm fond of the Kate Winslet half of Meyers' "The Holiday"), but Streep makes it fairly palatable with her sexy, relaxed star turn. She's great at zigging when other actors would zag -- for example, bursting into nervous laughter at the sheer ridiculous horribleness of her affair rather than doing more on-the-nose fretting. Baldwin doesn't fare as well; though he's fun to watch, his performance is oddly uncomfortable, like he's trying to shake his Jack Donaghy character but can't.

That said, if you like this sort of magazine spread, this is probably the sort of magazine spread you're going to like.
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(118 min., rated R for some drug content and sexuality) Grade: C-plus

'It's Complicated' (The Oregonian, Friday, Dec. 25, 2009)

CORT AND FATBOY: 'Avatar' and 'Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans'

During the Monday, Dec. 21 "Cort and Fatboy" podcast, we talk about Fatboy's pug-induced facial scar (pictured); the glorious return of Bat-Poop Insane Nic Cage in "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans"; and also a modestly ambitious little film called "Avatar," about which I may have had some mixed feelings.

The podcast returns next year -- and will also be live-streaming at a new home. Happy Holidays.

Cort and Fatboy (Monday, Dec. 21, 2009)

Subscribe to the show via iTunes

MOVIE REVIEW: 'Avatar'

So, short version, I was pretty mixed on "Avatar" -- though I'm probably going to be in the gross minority on this one. 

It's a gorgeous piece of world-building -- it really is as technically groundbreaking as promised. But I thought the storytelling itself was ridiculously thin, with easily the weakest characterization and dialogue of any James Cameron movie. The humans are evil and the savages are noble and the eco-message is 2x4-to-the-head blunt, and there's none of the sharp but quickly sketched character interplay that you'd find in, say, "Aliens" or "The Abyss."

I wasn't going to write about it, but then I got into an IM discussion with my friend Andre Dellamorte, and he encouraged me to turn it into a review. So I kept the instant-message format but expanded my side of the conversation into a long, granular, profane, mega-spoilerific writeup for Aint It Cool News.

As I write in the piece, I certainly don't begrudge anyone their enjoyment. In fact, I'm jealous of it.

Mike Russell Beholds The Power, The Glory And The Ignominy Of AVATAR! (Ain't It Cool News, Friday, Dec. 18, 2009)

MOVIE REVIEW: 'Did You Hear About the Morgans?'

Movie review in today's Oregonian....

Let me give you an idea how monumentally uninteresting "Did You Hear About the Morgans?" is: At my preview screening, they accidentally switched the film reels, showing us about a third of the movie out of order. And -- I kid you not -- it was kind of hard to notice.

The movie's a fish-out-of-water romantic-comedy thriller that forgets to be romantic, comedic or thrilling. The Morgans are New York husband-and-wife Yuppies (Hugh Grant, Sarah Jessica Parker), recently separated after struggling with infertility and infidelity. They see a murder. They go into hiding with the Witness Protection Program. They patch up their marriage in Wyoming while crashing in the guest bedroom of a pair of down-to-earth, meat- and gun-lovin' U.S. Marshals (Sam Elliott, Mary Steenburgen).

Parker is surprised to learn that stores like Costco exist and gets really worked up about not being able to order Chinese food. (The actress is sort of terrible in this.) Fussiness is frequently mistaken for banter, and there are hijinks involving bear repellent and a cow costume.

None of the above unfolds in an even slightly surprising manner, even when watched out of sequence. The dramatic stakes are weirdly low throughout -- the Morgans' marriage never seems like it's in real jeopardy (they seem about halfway to reconciling when they go on the lam), and everyone just kind of ambles politely along, including the murderer (Michael Kelly).

I have no idea why this, of all possible projects, is Hugh Grant's return to movie screens after a two-year absence. It's one of those instantly forgettable affairs that always seems to be pausing for laughter without bothering to tell any jokes first.
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(103 min., rated PG-13, multiple locations) Grade: D-plus

'Did You Hear About the Morgans?' (The Oregonian, Friday, Dec. 18, 2009)

CORT AND FATBOY: 'House of the Devil,' among other things

During the Friday, Dec. 11 "Cort and Fatboy" podcast, we discussed "singularities and Satanism, secret YouTube channels, Peter Travers, Natalie Portman, Zombie Asskicker, that stupid new 'Star Wars' rumor, Rolling Stone's turdy little top-10 lists, the slow death of Director's Cuts, and next Friday's live show at 30 Hour Day."
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Cort and Fatboy (Friday, Dec. 11, 2009)

Subscribe to the show via iTunes

MOVIE REVIEW: 'Serious Moonlight'

Longer version of a review in the Dec. 11 Oregonian....

Before I get into my (considerable) problems with the darkly absurd relationship comedy "Serious Moonlight," I would like to point out that it's a labor of love.

The screenplay was left behind by the late Adrienne Shelly, a talented actress ("The Unbelievable Truth") and writer/director ("Waitress") whose career was cut short by her senseless murder three years ago. "Waitress" co-star Cheryl Hines (Larry David's long-suffering wife on "Curb Your Enthusiasm") decided to make that script her feature directorial debut.

The results, despite the good intentions and honest effort, are mixed.

Like "Waitress," "Moonlight" is a heightened-reality study of a bad marriage with an undercurrent of bleak humor. (I described Shelly's peculiar emotional tone as "sweet-hearted cartoon despair" in my 2007 "Waitress" review, and while that tone is far less successfully achieved here, it's still a fairly apt description.)

This time around, Meg Ryan plays a workaholic lawyer who finds out her husband (Timothy Hutton) is cheating on her with a twentysomething bubblehead (Kristen Bell). Ryan knocks Hutton out with a flower pot and duct-tapes him to a chair, and, later, to a toilet. "You won't be un-taped until you love me again," she says.

"Moonlight" feels like a filmed stage play, with its close quarters and long monologues. I'm guessing this is what attracted Ryan to her role. It’s nice to see the actress get a shot at applying her manic perkiness to a character who's emotionally driving off a cliff -- having every feeling at once as she tries to bully Hutton into loving her again, with Hutton offering counter-manipulations at every turn. And the movie's very final moment has a nice cynical bite.

But the movie just never gels into something special like "Waitress" did. The couple-assessing-their-marriage-under-duress comedy has been done much better ("The Ref" comes to mind immediately, with "War of the Roses" close behind). The self-conscious staginess gets as flimsy as the duct-tape bondage -- especially after Bell and an uncomfortably violent robber (Justin Long) are introduced mid-movie. And the musical score puts a too-whimsical exclamation point on all the wacky emotional combat. (I'd bet good money "Habanera" from "Carmen" was on the temp track, if I wasn't hearing actual "Carmen" riffs. This is a remarkably lily-gilding choice of music for the material.)

I admire that all these talented people wanted to honor Shelly by making this film. They probably would have better honored her by mounting her script in a playhouse.
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(84 min.; rated R for language and some threatening behavior; playing at Portland's Living Room Theaters) Grade: C

'Serious Moonlight' (The Oregonian, Friday, Dec. 11, 2009)

CORT AND FATBOY and HAM-FISTED RADIO: 'The Road,' the best little-seen flicks of '09, and a soul-destroying 'Fan Fiction Friday'

Two separate podcast appearances by yours truly this week:

• CORT AND FATBOY: We played movie-catchup during the Friday, Dec. 4 show -- talking about "The Road," "Fantastic Mr. Fox," "Ninja Assassin," "The Messenger," and "Boondock Saints" (and its hit-piece companion documentary "Overnight"). Also discussed: Douglas Adams. It's worth noting that this week's "Fan Fiction Friday" is so twisted and wrong, it audibly sapped me of my will to live.

• HAM-FISTED RADIO: I also enjoyed a long, leisurely sit-down with host Dawn Taylor and engineer Fatboy Roberts on Dawn's new podcast, "Ham-Fisted Radio." We rambled on about: our favorite underperforming movies of 2009; the cultural overdose on cuteness; hummingbirds; gorgets; John McLoughlin; the strange utterances of Bill Mudron; community newspapering; and Wes Anderson, among other things.

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Cort and Fatboy (Friday, Dec. 4, 2009)

Ham-Fisted Radio, Episode 004: Movies, Gorgets, and the Backlash Against Cute (hamfistedradio.com)

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The Mr. Do & Mr. Don't Holiday Gift Guide.

In the full-color, twice-as-long version of the comic in today's Oregonian, beloved instructional characters Mr. Do and Mr. Don't unleash their holiday gift-buying tips on unsuspecting Portlanders. Click here to read the whole thing.
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The Mr. Do & Mr. Don't Holiday Gift Guide (Webcomics Nation)

Complete CulturePulp comic archives at WCN
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MOVIE REVIEW: 'The Messenger'

Longer version of a review in Friday's Oregonian. (Oh, and I also contributed an item on the new "North by Northwest" DVD/Blu-ray to the paper's "Wired Gift Guide.")

"The Messenger" manages to calculate the cost of war without showing it.

Instead, director/co-writer Oren Moverman's stripped-down, finely tuned drama follows two Army soldiers (Ben Foster, Woody Harrelson) assigned to a "casualty notification team" -- a grim detail that sends the pair on missions to suburban homes and apartments to tell parents and spouses that their loved ones were killed in action.

Moverman shows us six separate notifications, many filmed in relentless handheld single takes, with actors including Samantha Morton and Steve Buscemi playing the next of kin. The film's power lies in the blunt, mostly unaffected manner in which it brings overseas conflict right to your doorstep. Foster and Harrelson's characters are, in effect, invading American homes with the worst news that can be delivered, in what Harrelson's character clinically describes as a "pure hit-and-get operation."

The movie's greatest strength is its restraint. Moverman eschews the message-movie lectures and respects his audience (and those who serve) with a mostly no-frills presentation of his drama, abetted by strong actors who react to bad news in ways ranging from befuddled to violent. I frankly found Moverman's handling of PTSD to be more nuanced than the much-praised "The Hurt Locker"'s, which deals with many of the same ideas from an action-movie, crying-in-the-shower-with-your-clothes-on angle. (The two films --both powerful in their own ways -- would make for a fascinating double feature, I think; they come at stress and loss from opposing angles.)

Foster and Harrelson -- playing a wounded sergeant and a recovering-alcoholic career soldier, respectively -- also do more with less. Foster puts his naturally offbeat energy to excellent use as a man furiously internalizing his pain and getting way too fascinated with Morton's war widow. A long, single-take scene with Foster and Morton in a kitchen is among the movie's best, filled with lust, grief and gentleness conveyed in tones barely above a whisper. Harrelson gives what might be a career performance as a jaded mentor who tries to conduct each notification using a well-rehearsed set of rules of engagement. The only scenes that felt "actorly" to me come when the pair drunkenly crash an ex-girlfriend's wedding party; otherwise, "The Messenger" has a verisimilitude rare in films tackling this subject matter.

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(112 min., rated R, playing in Portland at the Fox Tower) Grade: B-plus

'The Messenger' (The Oregonian, Friday, Dec. 4, 2009)

Wired Gift Guide (The Oregonian, Friday, Dec. 4, 2009)