Final 2009 Movie Review Roundup
This is the last reviews I’ll be doing for films of 2009. I didn’t get to catch up with Crazy Heart, The Blind Side, or Nine (okay I only want to see Crazy Heart) but I’ll probably get to them in the next month. The last 5 films really couldn’t be more different, whether in regards to content or quality. Check back on Sunday for the final piece of the Best of 2000s series, as I unveil my Top 10 films of the year!
Let’s go from best to worst.
The Road
In the adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, director John Hillcoat makes his American cinema debut, and if this is any indication of his talent, than we should expect good things to come. The Road is not a perfect movie, I didn’t leave the theater truly moved or captivated, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t interested or enveloped in what I had saw.
Much like the other recent McCarthy adaptation, No Country For Old Men, I think this film is much more about creating an honest and intriguing story with real, totally developed characters.out. The film rests solely on the relationship between a father (Viggo Mortensen) and his son as they travel through a post apocalyptic world, looking for something that they never really expect to find. Mortensen is fantastic here, showing the kind of talent he has displayed since The Lord of The Rings and through A History of Violence and Eastern Promises.
The Road is definitely a film you should check out, especially if you were one of the many who loved No Country For Old Men.
This Is It
I expected this to be much more of a “show” then it actually turns out to be. It’s much more of an intimate look inside a musical genius who we had lost touch with after 2 decades of controversy and then his untimely death. There are moments in This Is It that we get to see MJ working with his dancers, trying to grind the moves into them and you see a performer who is clearly the best at what he does, and yet it looks absolutely effortless to him. As a performer there were few, if any, as good as Michael Jackson. However, we also get to see how Michael had created a life where he was babied around as everyone who works with him is always very careful with the words they use and to never even remotely offend Jackson.
This Is It is a very intriguing, if brief, look into the world of the greatest showmen in history.
In The Loop
In The Loop is a sort of pseudo spin-off of a British comedy series, but apparently is also completely stand alone for those unaware of its origins. I wish I had seen the series before so that maybe some of the jokes and relationships worked better for me, but as a stand alone film I couldn’t help but care less about anything going on. The screenplay (nominated for an Oscar) in the film is full of spot-on, biffy dialogue we have to expect from British comedy writers, however it doesn’t change the problems with the story.
In the Loop is not a bad film, there are no glaring weaknesses, it just felt very “meh” to me.
Fantastic Mr. Fox
I will say that I want to applaud Wes Anderson and others who decided to really try and make something different, especially to what they usually do. That said, doing something new does not qualify that it will be good, at all. For those who LOVE Wes Anderson’s style of film (I love The Royal Tenenbaums, not much else) I don’t think anything I say really applies to you. You’re going to love this film, possibly more than most of his others, but to those who are on the fence on Mr. Anderson, this is for you.
In the story, the foxes and other animals are intelligent and have their own societies (Own internet and TV, etc.) along with the society of humans, who apparently are aware of the intelligence of these animals and do nothing about it. Ummm, no. Not at all. Look I believe an audience should be able to take 1 leap of faith, and then it works logically from there (the only problem I have with Up is the physics of the balloons or the old men is completely ridiculous). The story is everything you’ve already seen from Anderson, and if you didn’t like The Life Aquatic or The Darjeeling Limited then you will not like this film. I think TDL and this are his 2 worst so far, so I’ve lost trust in the helmer.
Some people have praised the stop-motion animation done in this film, and though I again applaud them for doing something completely different, the look just doesn’t work for me, but I won’t penalize much for that.
I was completely unmoved by this film and felt it was utterly passionless. Thanks for trying, but please don’t do it again.
The White Ribbon
Where do I begin? If you like sucking off a director who HAS to be different about EVERYTHING and create a film that is devoid of any sort of wit or…anything interesting, then The White Ribbon is for you. This 2 1/2 hour film is the poster child for what people think all foreign films are: long, boring, overly intellectual, and that’s a shame because some foreign films, like 2008’s The Class or 2009’s Mary and Max are actually quite good (I think it is very hard for a foreign film to be well liked in America because we are so set in our ways in what we expect from film, but that’s another discussion).
There isn’t one thing I liked about this film, and by 90 minutes in I wanted to throw a brick at my TV.
