Best of 2009

Avatar

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Avatar
  • IMDb: link

James Cameron‘s Avatar hit theaters a week before Christmas of 2009 and quickly claimed a spot on my list of best films of that year. With the first of its long-overdue sequels finally making its way to theaters this winter, Avatar returns to theaters in hopes of rekindling the magic movie goers discovered more than a dozen years ago. While it wasn’t the best film that year, it’s one of the most watchable, and I’ve returned to Avatar multiple times over the years always being entertained.

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Up, WAY UP, In the Air

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Up in the Air
  • IMDB: link

Every couple of years it seems director Jason Reitman is putting out a movie that ends up on my best of the year list. Oh wait, that’s exactly what he’s been doing.

Starting in 2005 with Thank You for Smoking followed by 2007’s Juno, Reitman has quickly made a name for himself creating smart, funny, off-beat, award-winning films with heart, wit, and a little bit of sass.

Another two years have gone by, and Reitman returns once again with tale of a salesman. In Thank You for Smoking Aaron Eckhart made smoking not only palatable, but patriotic.

Here Reitman casts George Clooney as a termination specialist, a man who is selling unemployment – with a smile. And as he did with Eckhart, Reitman allows the man’s natural charm and the wit of the script to soften the hard edges of what it is he’s selling. If you’ve never believed a movie about firing people could be this entertaining, you’re about to be proven very wrong.

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Fantastic Mr. Fox, Simply Fantastic

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Fantastic Mr. Fox
  • IMDB: link

I’m far from director Wes Anderson’s biggest fan. Although I enjoyed The Royal Tenenbaums (and to a lesser extent The Darjeeling Limited), in my opinion, most of his work seems to value style over, and sometimes at the cost of, substance.

Anderson’s latest Fantastic Mr. Fox is a stop-motion animated adaptation of Roald Dahl’s book about a fox fighting his own nature to steal from the wealthy farmers Boggis (Robin Hurlstone), Bunce (Hugo Guinness) and Bean (Michael Gambon), and provide his family with what he feels they deserve.

And, I must admit, it’s really, really good. In many ways the film is a perfect fit for Anderson and merge of its offbeat humor with his own. The stop-animation allows the director to play to his strenghts and design a a complete world. And as a book the story is naturally divided into the kinds of chapters Anderson enjoys breaking his film into (here he even provides titles for each).

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Glorious “Basterds”

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Inglourious Basterds
  • IMDb: link

inglourious-basterds-posterQuentin Tarantino is a filmmaker. Love him or hate him, the man has a passion and reverence for cinema as well as a definite style in crafting his own projects. Inglourious Basterds, the writer/director’s latest, took more than a decade to come to the screen. The film is many things, but boring isn’t one of them. Insane and glorious, Tarantino has finally succeeded in crafting a film I can’t help but love.

Although I’ve always respected Tarantino as a director (less so as a producer), and will easily admit to the quality of Pulp Fiction, at times his career has taken him down paths I wasn’t keen on following.

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Up

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Up
  • IMDB: link

up-poster

Pixar’s latest, Up, tells the story of a grump old widower (Ed Asner) befriended by a young kid (Jordan Nagai) who sets off on a wild adventure.

What could easily have been a paint-by-numbers tale is given the Pixar treatment. This isn’t Gran Torino; it’s so much more. In fact it’s arguably the most grown-up story the company has done, and quite possibly the best flick Pixar has ever made.

The film begins by giving us a brief history of Carl Fredricksen (Asner). Rather than simply giving us a grumpy old man the plot takes the time to let us get to know him and see how he became the person he is as the main story begins. This may seem like a small thing, and some may find it too much backstory, but it’s just one example of how Pixar goes the extra mile in terms of character, animation, and story. Could the movie still work without these scenes? Yes. Would it be as good a movie? No.

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