2009 Top 10
These films reflect my favorite experiences of the year in cinema. I also think they are very good.
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Nine (Marshall, 2009)
I walk around suppressing the urge to burst into song about 80% of the time.
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Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (Daniels, 2009)
I've been putting off writing about Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, mostly, I suppose because I'm having a hard time describing and justifying my strong antipathy, first to the novel Push on which the film is based and now to the film itself. Perhaps I fear that if I can't justify it, others will assume justifications for me
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Me and Orson Welles (Linklater, 2008)
It is to the credit of Me and Orson Welles that it managed to make me nostalgic for those days while reminding me why I grew to move on from them. It is the best film I've seen about the theater life (and make no mistake, it is about the theater and not the film community). Its pleasures and its insights into human relations are not depended on an historic interest in Welles or the Mercury Theater, although it works on that level, too, I suppose.
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I Am an American: The Making of an Anthem (Lott, 2009)
I would say then that one of the values of "I Am an American" and its attendant documentary is to show black and white together espousing and celebrating patriotism through song and honoring the influences in their lives who have helped to instill that patriotism in them. In fact, I will say it.
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A Serious Man (Coen & Coen, 2009)
There is something about the existential angst of Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) that--I don't know--might have felt at home in an anthology with John Cheever's "Death of Justina" or on a double-bill with whatever film about the silence of God that Ingmar Bergman had just released in 1963.
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Gigante (Biniez, 2009)
Biniez doesn’t mock Jara but instead lets us see the world through his eyes.
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The Twilight Saga: New Moon (Weitz, 2009)
Summit Entertainment heard their cries and has delivered a well-wrought, thoughtful version of New Moon that, while not a scene-for-scene rendering of the novel, is pretty much what readers like myself imagined as they read Bella’s tale of heartbreak and painfully slow recovery
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Somers Town (Meadows, 2009)
OK, I admit it. I’m a sucker for the Coming-Of-Age film genre