The Final Best of the Year and Best of the Decade List Post, Really I Mean It

As our final year and decade in review post, we asked some friends of Metro Classics to chime in with their own lists. Here they are:

Kevin, formerly of the Metro, currently at Scarecrow Video:

2009:

Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)
Avatar (James Cameron)
Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea (Hayao Miyazaki)
Where the Wild Things Are (Spike Jonze)
In the Loop (Armando Iannucci)

Decade:

1. The Incredibles (Brad Bird)
2. Kill Bill (Tarantino)
3. Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón)
4. Spirited Away (Miyazaki)
5. Wet Hot American Summer (David Wain)
6. Adaptation (Jonze)
7. The Royal tenenbaums (Wes Anderson)
8. Chop Shop (Ramin Bahrani)
9. Mindgame (Masaaki Yuasa)
10. Battle Royale (Kinji Fukasaku)
11. All the Real Girls (David Gordon Green)
12. Wall-E (Andrew Stanton)
13. Best of Youth (Marco Tullio Giordana)
14. United 93 (Paul Greengrass)
15. Waking Life (Richard Linklater)


Greta, formerly of the Metro:

In no particular order:

2009:

Inglourious Basterds
Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea
Sherlock Holmes (Guy Ritchie) (tied with Star Trek (JJ Abrams))
A Serious Man (The Coen Brothers) (tied with The Hangover(Todd Phillips))
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (Werner Herzog)

Decade:

State and Main (David Mamet)
Wonder Boys (Curtis Hansen)
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson)
Amélie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet)
Kill Bill


Lisa, formerly of the Metro:

I started off the decade as a 10-year-old so you get the top 5 kids' movies of the decade. Non-Pixar and non-Disney, lest the other studios be forgotten.

Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson)
Monster House (Gil Kenan)
Chicken Run (Nick Park & Peter Lord)
Duma (Carroll Ballard)
Elf (Jon Favreau)


Jen from Scarecrow Video:

Best of 2009:

1. Fantastic Mr. Fox
2. Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow)
3. Inglourious Basterds
4. An Education (Lone Scherfig)
5. Away We Go (Sam Mendes)

Best of the 00s:

1. The Royal Tenenbaums
2. Amélie
3. Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola)
4. Children of Men
5. Kill Bill


Mike M., formerly of the Metro:

2009:

District 9 (Neill Blomkamp)
Inglorious Bastards
Up (Pete Docter)
Avatar
Fantastic Mr. Fox

Runners-up: Star Trek, The Hurt Locker, The Brother's Bloom (Rian johnson)


2009 Films I'm Most Excited to See:

Anvil! The Story of Anvil (Sacha Gervasi)
The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch)
Le Donk and Scor-Zay-Zee (Shane Meadows)
An Education
Moon (Duncan Jones)

Top 20 of the Decade:

The New World (Terrance Malick)
Lord of the Rings (Peter Jackson)
Old Boy (Park Chan-wook)
All the Real Girls
In America (Jim Sheridan)
There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson)
No Country For Old Men (The Coen Brothers)
Inglorious Bastards
The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry)
Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman)
Primer (Shane Carruth)
The Lives of Others (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)
This Is England (Shane Meadows)
The Proposition (John Hillcoat)
Shaun of the Dead (Edgar Wright)
Miami Vice (Michael Mann)
Almost Famous (Cameron Crowe)
Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (Shane Black)
AI: Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg)
28 Days Later (Danny Boyle)

Runners-up: Michael Clayton (Tony Gilroy) (believe it), Adaptation, Pan's Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro), Moulin Rouge! (Baz Luhrman), King of Kong (Seth Gordon), A History of Violence (David Cronenberg)

I haven't seen In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai) or this Yi yi (Edward yang) film I've read about. No way in hell is Once (John Carney) on the list. Children of Men just isn't good enough (AI is better sci-fi); neither is Zodiac (David Fincher). I love them both, but no.

X2 (Bryan Singer) was my favorite comic book film of the decade
Wall-E was my favorite animated feature

And just for fun:

Favorite Album of 2009:

The Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca

Runner-up: Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion

Best Album of the Decade:

Arcade Fire - Funeral

Runner-up: Radiohead - Kid A


Macy, formerly of Rain City Video:

Best of the Decade:

Pan's Labyrinth
In the Mood for Love
Memento (Christopher Nolan)
Lord of the Rings Trilogy
Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch)
Old School (Todd Phillips)
Shaun of the Dead
The Lives of Others
United 93
In Bruges (Martin McDonagh)

Okay I know that's more than five. I don't enjoy following directions. Also here are more of my honourable mentions:

Sexy Beast & Birth (Jonathan Glazer)
Amélie
Moulin Rouge
Volver (Pedro Almodóvar)
Death Proof (Quentin Tarantino)
Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnabel)
King of Kong

Favourite dumb comedies:
(they don't get no respect)

Corky Romano (Rob Pritts)
Zoolander (Ben Stiller)
Undercover Brother (Malcolm D. Lee)


Travis, formerly of the Metro, currently at Scarecrow Video:

Decade:

1: Master and Commander (Peter Weir)
2: Wall-E
3: Lord of the Rings
4: The New World
5: The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan)
6: Wet Hot American Summer
7: There Will be Blood
8: The Bourne Ultimatum (Paul Greengrass)
9: The Aviator (Martin Scorsese)
10: The Wind that Shakes the Barley (Ken Loach)
11: United 93
12: Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea
13: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
14: Iron Man (Jon Favreau)
15: Good Night and Good Luck (George Clooney)


Colin from the Varsity:

2009:

1. Hunger (Steve McQueen)
2. Moon
3. Sin Nombre (Cary Fukunaga)
4. Revanche (Götz Spielmann)
5. Gomorrah (Matteo Garrone)
6. Still Walking (Kore-eda Hirokazu)
7. 35 Shots of Rum (Claire Denis)
8. Inglourious Basterds
9. Precious (Lee Daniels)
10. An Education


Ryland, formerly of the Metro, currently writing at a website near you:

Five Favorite Comedies of the Decade:

Everybody talks about impressive dramas. What gives? Why aren't laughs given their due? Is it just because nobody makes serious comedies anymore? Where's the importance of the non-serious in all this serious ranking? As that all-too-serious bat blockbuster kept asking, scene after scene, Why so serious? Let's get serious about not getting serious, or let's take the non-serious serious for once. All of these films below are serious. All of'm make me laugh a lot.

1. A Christmas Tale (Arnaud Desplechin)

Maybe you don't think "comedy" when you think of this movie, but I do. Like any great Renoir picture, it's full of laughs and life, and nearly a joke a minute. Jokes just pump, like a heart, from every source imaginable--including the catch-all collage form.

2. Punch-Drunk Love (Paul Thomas Anderson)

Terrifying, sure, but also a laugh out loud misfit movie that daggers the soul. Here the laughs are release from all that miasma of anxiety; a real throw-up-your-hands kind of movie.

3. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

A special movie. Ranking it this "low" just doesn't feel right. Even if this isn't "low" and the movie's every which way but lowbrow -- although there are a few low blows. In any case, everything's on point, especially the one-liners, and I keep wanting to watch it, which says a lot.

4. Kung Fu Hustle (Stephen Chow)

The history of cinema is all in here, from silents to Tashlin to Fred Astaire to wuxia to, yup, kung fu exploitation. How many movies make dancing so funny on top of fun? Some of the best comedic uses of CGI, like, ever.

5. The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh)

Talked with a friend about this as maybe the most realistic movie ever. Goes against what you'd expect, I know, since it's tongue in cheek and vaguely pastiche-y but, seriously, that's what an office is like, and that's what mania is like. It's all in that hilarious line near the end: "You tell me." We Americans want our stories, and we want them told as big as possible.

Sean's Top Ten Movies of 2009

I haven't seen most of the acclaimed movies from this year yet, but here's my Top 10 of the year so far:

1. Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)
2. Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson)
3. Oxhide II (Liu Jiayin)
4. The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch)
5. Like You Know It All (Hong Sang-soo)


6. Drag Me to Hell (Sam Raimi)
7. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (Werner Herzog)
8. Bluebeard (Catherine Breillat)
9. Written By (Wai Ka-fai)
10. Eccentricities of a Blond Hair Girl (Manoel de Oliveira)


More interesting, I think, is this list of the Top 20 movies I saw for the first time in 2009:

1. Voyage to Italy (Roberto Rossellini, 1954)


2. All That Jazz (Bob Fosse, 1979)


3. Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975)


4. Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch, 2001)


5. Histoire(s) du cinema (Jean-Luc Godard, 1998)


6. Ruggles of Red Gap (Leo McCarey, 1935)


7. Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)


8. Going My Way (Leo McCarey, 1944)


9. Wagon Master (John Ford, 1950)


10. City Girl (FW Murnau, 1930)


11. The Ghost & Mrs. Muir (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1947)


12. Now, Voyager (Irving Rapper, 1942)


13. Magnificent Obsession (Douglas Sirk, 1954)


14. Waterloo Bridge (Mervyn LeRoy, 1940)


15. Age of Consent (Michael Powell, 1969)


16. The Bells of St. Mary's (Leo McCarey, 1945)


17. Simon of the Desert (Luis Buñuel, 1965)


18. The Girl Can't Help It (Frank Tashlin, 1956)


19. Muriel (Alain Resnais, 1963)


20. Kings and Queen (Arnaud Desplechin, 2004)

Mike's Top Ten Movies of 2009

Welcome to my recap of the ten best films I saw over the last 365 days. In my book 2009 was a fairly decent year for cinema. It didn't quite reach the heights of the much-vaunted 2007, which had a veritable grab bag of cinematic splendor at its disposal, but it was a far better year than 2008 wherein only two of the nine movies I had seen by year's end were worthy of my unequivocal endorsement. This year I managed to see twice as many films and I can safely say that the odds are significantly stronger.

What you will not see on the following list are the big disappointments (Public Enemies, Where the Wild Things Are), the fun but forgettable (Bruno, Coraline) or the super-awesome-yet-regrettably-disqualified-due-to-the-fact-that-they-were-actually-released-somewhere-in-the-world-last-year (Ponyo, Anvil: the Story of Anvil).

With that in mind, read on and get indignant!

#10: Star Trek-

J.J. Abrams' refreshing reboot of the venerable sci-fi franchise was one hell of a fun summer blockbuster. The casting was first-rate, the action scenes bold and distinctive, and the plot, introducing a blackhole-induced alternate timeline, ingenious as a means to allow a new, concurrent storyline to emerge. I didn't love everything about the film, I actually missed the heavy-handed moralizing that permeated the original series as well as the attempts at explaining the outlandish phenomena with cold, hard science. Plus, I wanted more Scotty. But all in all this colorful, optimistic and intelligent approach was exactly what the 40-year-old universe needed.

#9: Whatever Works-

Woody Allen's Whatever Works falls squarely in the middle of the masterpiece I wanted it to be and the trainwreck it most certainly should have been. Casting Larry David as the lead was both a stroke of a genius on Allen's part and a most severe handicap for the film. David is one of the finest comic minds ever (as evidenced by the latest season of Curb Your Enthusiasm) but he's definitely not an actor (also evidenced by the latest season of Curb Your Enthusiasm). All in all Larry does a fairly solid job standing in for Zero Mostel for whom the script was originally conceived in the 1970s. The story of a misanthropic scientist who slowly learns to open up and embrace life after taking in a simple Southern runaway is a fine plot for Woody to plaster his jokes onto and for the most part well, it works. I laughed. As usual Allen casts a fantastic group of supporting actors, this time featuring Evan Rachel Wood, Michael McKean and the fabulous Patricia Clarkson.

#8: Adventureland-

Sloppy but sweet. Greg Mottola's coming-of-age tale marks a huge improvement over his last film, the unfunny, incredibly overlong Superbad. Adventureland is the name of a cheap amusement park where James, an intelligent but adrift college graduate played by Jesse Eisenberg, finds employment in the summer of 1987. There he bonds with Joel, an even more overeducated slacker (played perfectly by Freaks and Geeks' Martin Starr) and falls for wild child Em (Kristen Stewart). Most every note rings true in this wistful look back to finding one's footing in an uncertain world.

#7: The Princess and the Frog-

What can I say? Despite the heavy corporate hand guiding its every move, The Princess and the Frog won me over. Filled with a strong shot of skepticism during the overly broad first act, I finally succumbed to the film's charms around the time the two nouns in the title became one. A fair share of the credit goes to Randy Newman and his abundance of genre pastiches that pleasantly punctuate the soundtrack. But in all honesty the film cracks my top ten for the jaw-droppingly gorgeous animation alone. One beautiful set piece after another comes hurtling at you, a wash of rich colors and perfect lines. It may not be a perfect film, a masterpiece that ushers in a new renaissance in Disney animation, but The Princess and the Frog is most definitely something to proud of.

#6: Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans-

Forget Judd Apatow and Sacha Baron Cohen, for my money the funniest cinematic comedian at present is Werner "Sourpuss" Herzog. His last film, the Antarctica documentary, Encounters at the End of the World, was far and away the funniest film I saw last year, what with its suicidal penguins and goat-riding monkeys. This year Werner significantly upped the ante with a very loose remake of Abel Ferrara's 1992 Bad Lieutenant, swapping out Harvey Keitel for Nicolas Cage, and adding a whole lot of hallucinating iguanas. In most every respect the film shouldn't work but time and again Herzog subverts our expectations and takes another left-turn into the increasing madness. The film at times feels like both a mockery of by-the-book crime movies and Herzog's own oeuvre, ominous shots of snakes swimming through rising flood waters are juxtaposed with rants about Swiss cotton underpants. Cage deserves a large share of the credit for committing himself fully to the material as does the supporting cast, particularly Val Kilmer and Brad Dourif. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is a gloriously unhinged film, crossing the heretofore uncharted territory between the Wire and Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing Las Vegas.

#5: Up-

After two consecutive years topping my year-end lists, Pixar falls a few notches with their latest, Pete Docter's Up. It is a thankless task following up such contemporary masterpieces as Ratatouille and WALL*E and Up unfortunately cannot escape comparisons to those films. It's not to say that the film is wholly inferior to those works, in fact I think the five-minute wordless "life" sequence at the beginning of the film is the greatest sustained segment in any of Pixar's ten features. Months after seeing the film I catch myself thinking of that section, Michael Giacchino's devastating theme playing in my head, as I see that image of Carl consoling Ellie at the doctor's office and I just start bawling. I'm crying right now as I type this. It is a work of art of the highest order and I enthusiastically applaud Mr. Docter and the folks at Pixar for pulling it off. Unfortunately, like WALL*E did to a lesser degree when the action shifted to the Axiom, the final hour of Up fails to sustain the lofty heights of its first third. I find the journey to South America over too soon, Muntz's reversal unearned, his petty villainy too thin, and the finale of the film to be rushed in its pacing. They're all minor quibbles and in many respects I analyze Pixar films far more than I should, but it's not my fault. They are the ones who raised the bar so incredibly high. Regardless, Up is still the most gorgeous, heartfelt film I saw this year.

#4: Moon-

I can think of very few actors working today who could hold my attention for an hour-and-a-half as they do little more than talk to a themselves and interact with the occasional robot. The great Sam Rockwell is definitely on my shortlist. In Duncan Jones's directorial debut Moon, Mr. Rockwell plays Sam Bell, an astronaut stranded on our satellite, harvesting energy to be sent back to Earth. Just as his three-year mission is drawing to a close, when he can finally head home to his family and civilization, a whole bunch of crazy shit starts happening. He starts bleeding for no reason, having the occasional blackout, and thinks he sees himself wandering the space station corridors. The film's initial head trip slowly gives way to a moving, thoughtful meditation on what it means to be human. It's a poignant little film with one phenomenal performance at its heart.

#3: A Serious Man-

What do you get when you mix a Yiddish prologue, car crashes, marijuana, death, tornados and the Jefferson Airplane? The answer is A Serious Man, easily the Coen brothers' densest, most idiosyncratic work since 2001's the Man Who Wasn't There. The story of a Jewish physics professor having a crisis of faith in the 1960s manages to be both a bleak, depressing inquiry into the futility of existence and a damn funny film to boot. Michael Stuhlbarg gives one of the year's best performances as Larry Gopnik, a man increasingly aware of the indifference of the world. As usual with Coens, the attention to period detail is flawless, summoning up a Jewish Midwestern home life I swear I had. It is the brothers' most intriguing, beguiling and rewarding film in a decade.

#2: Inglourious Basterds-

Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds is the cinematic equivalent to Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx II. Both were long-gestating, much-ballyhooed projects that over their years of speculation and anticipation grew in our collective mind to become almost mythical works. That they both finally saw the light of day in 2009 and succeeded in fulfilling our every expectation is a wonder. Every beat in Basterds is pitch perfect, Tarantino's sense of rhythm has never been sharper. From the taut opening half-hour conversation, to the Mexican stand-off to end all Mexican stand-offs, all the way through to the heartbreaking climax, where three disparate stories come crashing together in a most magnificent fashion, Tarantino is shall I say, on fire here. The game international cast is spectacular, headed by the great Christoph Waltz, whose Hanz Landa is simply one of the most fascinating villains in movie history. I feel sorry for anyone who missed out on seeing this film in the theatre. Home viewing will not suffice for this violent and beautiful beast. Tarantino's love of cinema is far too grand.

#1: The Limits of Control-

Jim Jarmusch's the Limits of Control is ostensibly the story of a reserved hitman on a mission who has a series of conversations over espresso with enigmatic characters. In this regard the film appears to be a reflection on Jarmusch's work over the past decade (hitman = Ghost Dog; mission = Broken Flowers; conversations = Coffee and Cigarettes) but the Limits of Control manages to both delve deeper and go much farther than any of these films. It is less a story of a quiet professional than a chance for Jarmusch to lay his artistic heart bare before us. The film becomes a muted manifesto for the transcendence of art and its uncorrupted, intangible power to move us. Coming from a man most often described as cool and removed, I find the Limits of Control to have a surprising amount of warmth. It feels like a very personal film for the often detached director. Best of all, the disparate pieces at work here all fit together seamlessly. The gentle rhythm of the elliptical vignettes is both hypnotic and stimulating, drawing us into a world of discipline and beauty. Christopher Doyle's sumptuous cinematography is certainly the best of the year and the drone metal score by Japanese band Boris (named after a Melvins song) is gorgeous. And finally, at the center of this wonderful, intelligent film is Isaach De Bankole who cedes most of the dialogue to a stellar supporting cast but never once loses his place at the film's center. His inscrutable face hides a complexity that is teased out ever so slowly to the final frame. No film this year managed to spin so many plates to such an amazing effect. It is a film whose charms one cannot control.