Some Other Movies From 2009 (2)

For further background on the year in film, please refer to the Some Other Movies From 2009 entry. 

The following things happened in 2009:

• Bitcoin went online.
• Barack Obama became President of the United States.
• The Sri Lankan Civil War ended.
• An outbreak of H1N1 triggered a global pandemic.
• Michael Jackson died.
• David Carradine, Patrick Swayze and Brittany Murphy passed away

Underlined entries were viewed on Netflix.

One of the More Interesting Things I've Seen Lately

1. Max and Mary

Two lonely people, one in Australia and the other in New York, form a long distance relationship that endures of decades.  This animated film definitely isn't for kids, but those with a taste for the eccentric will find its sense of humor endearing, and the story it tells unique.  Toni Collette voices Mary, with Philip Seymour Hoffman as Max.  The writer and director of this movie, Adam Elliot, has won many awards for his work.

Some Good Ones

1. Law Abiding Citizen

Director F. Gary Gray was diving deep for this one.  I'm guessing a lot of people missed it at the time, but this movie makes some compelling arguments against the criminal justice system.

And for what it's worth Gerard Butler does a good Punisher.  Jamie Foxx is equally compelling as the lawyer trying to stop him.  Will it remind you of Se7en?  Oh yeah.  But is it as good?  Definitely not, but it stands on its own legs and I respect that.

Fun Fact: That slammin' song at the end is Grand Funk Railroad.

2. Bride Wars

Completely forgettable, but not bad.  The adorable Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway star as two BFFs who (gasp) find that their weddings have been scheduled for the same day.  It's NOT hilarious but, again, it's not bad.  Hey, check out Chris Pratt!  Starlord and Catwoman in the same movie!

It's the cinematic equivalent of a hot pocket.  If you were really hungry you'd eat one, if you weren't, you wouldn't.

3. Notorious

The life and times of Biggie Smalls.  At the time I was way more into Tupac, and The Notorious B.I.G.'s popularity was something of a mystery to me.  Even so this movie is pretty good, and director George Tillman Jr. does a good job of telling Biggie's story.

4. Star Trek

Figured I'd go back and re-watch it.  It holds up well, although the constant panning and lens flares do get a bit annoying.  J.J. Abrams did a lot more for the Star Trek universe than he did for the Star Wars universe, though I get why he eventually jumped ship for that more famous and financially lucrative property.

I didn't like Into Darkness, but the third film, Star Trek Beyond was good.

And by the way, where are they now?: Well, of the original cast, Leonard Nimoy (Spock), DeForest Kelley (Bones) and James Doohan (Scotty) are no longer with us.  In 2017 William Shatner (Kirk) voiced a character on - I kid you not - the My Little Pony TV series, and identified himself as a "brony."  He's also doing country music, and appeared on the Grand 'Ol Opry last year.  Nichelle Nichols (Uhura) was on TV's The Young and the Restless for a while, worked with NASA, and retired in 2018 after she was diagnosed with dementia.  Walter Koenig (Chekov) has appeared in various low budget science fiction movies.  George Takei (Sulu), probably the most vocal of the original cast members, is a champion of LGBT rights and was a staunch critic of the Trump administration's immigration policies.

And let's not forget Anton Yelchin, who plays Chekov in 2009's Star Trek.  He was great in Green Room, a movie that also featured Patrick Stewart, who everybody knows from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

5. The Fantastic Mr. Fox

Not as interesting as Max and Mary above, but this animated adaptation of Roald Dahl's book will leave you feeling happy.  It's a Wes Anderson movie, and although his signature style is evident he doesn't step too much on the original story.

6. The Princess and the Frog

I liked the music.  The rest was Disney princesses and New Orleans voodoo.  I was only halfway paying attention, but yeah, I liked the music.

Fun Fact: Terrence Howard voices the heroine's dad.  I suppose he did this instead of Iron Man 2, which he would have been filming at the time.

7. 500 Days of Summer

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel star in this movie about love found and love lost.  It threatens to wear out its welcome toward the end, but it's a film full of interesting touches.

Fun Fact: Director Marc Webb would go on to direct The Amazing Spider-Man 1 and 2.

8. Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead

It's surprisingly not bad.  Completely predictable, yes, but not bad as these things go.  The guy trapped in barbed wire and dragged behind the truck was a nice touch.  The plot?  I don't remember.  Anyone familiar with this series knows that the second one was the best one, so I wasn't going in with the highest expectations.

Fun Fact: This movie was shot in Bulgaria.

9. Exam

Reminded me a lot of Cube, but this one's set in a single room, and the story's easier to digest.  I guessed the ending early on - I wasn't sure, but I guessed - but this didn't diminish my enjoyment of it.  I'm just wondering, what if someone answered The Question at the beginning of the test?  Or more than one person?  Would that person automatically pass?  Would everybody pass?

A Cause for Sadness: Actress Gemma Chan is so beautiful.  I wish she'd been in more of this movie.  And no, I'm not giving anything away by saying so.

10. Jennifer's Body

I would watch the hell out of a sequel to this movie IF it was written by the same person.  Amanda Seyfried's character is interesting, Megan Fox was well used, and some of the lines are extremely quotable.  It wouldn't surprise me at all if this movie enjoyed a cult following.

Fun Fact: Amy Sedaris, who plays Seyfried's mom, is the younger sister of writer David Sedaris.

"Borderline / Seems like I'm going to lose my mind / You just keep on pushing my love / Over the borderline..."

1. Orphan

The reveal at the end almost makes this movie worth it, but Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard are such shitty parents that I started rooting for the adopted kid halfway through.

Some Bad Ones

1. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

Instead of Ebenezer Scrooge (or Bill Murray), we have Matthew McConaughey, and instead of the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future we have three ex-girlfriends, ready to show Matthew McConaughey how to form lasting, committed relationships in which both parties are respected.  Feeling nauseous yet?  To make things worse, they really take McConaughey's character too far in the other direction, to the the point where you wonder how anyone in this movie can tolerate his pathological behavior.  The bit with Michael Douglas is funny, but that's about it.

2. State of Play

Great cast but it's very boring.  Russell Crowe plays a reporter investigating a murder, with Ben Affleck as a congressman at the center of his investigation.  It's way too similar to other, better movies about government corruption and corporate conspiracies, some of which Crowe and Affleck have also appeared in.  All the President's Men?  The Parallax View?  The Insider?  All much better films.

Fun Fact: Brad Pitt was originally set to play the reporter, with Ed Norton as the congressman.

Unsurprisingly Terrible

1. American Pie Presents: The Book of Love

Three high school guys attempt to get laid.  And then - spoiler alert - they get laid.  But the getting laid part happens just before the credits, so don't get your hopes up early.  Aside from this, breast implants and lame sexual innuendo abound.  Oh, and Stifler's... whatever he is... gets raped by a moose.  Yeah, that really happened.  Prioritize your life accordingly.

Fun Fact 1: There are 9 movies in this series.  This is one of the five spinoff films.

Fun Fact 2: Poison's Bret Michael's is in this briefly.

Fun Fact 3: Check out star Bug Hall's Wikipedia entry.  It's quite the rollercoaster ride.

Sad Fact: Saved by the Bell's Dustin Diamond also appears in this movie.  He died this year of lung cancer.  His life post-Saved by the Bell was... pretty weird.

Nope.

1. The Ugly Truth

Katherine Heigl stars as a vocationally successful if romantically unsuccessful woman, with Gerard Butler as a cartoonishly misogynistic man.  I got about 15 minutes in and had to stop.  It was that stupid.

Bad Bordering on Offensive

1. The Fourth Kind

Paranormal activity in Nome, Alaska.  This movie, like Notorious above, mixes dramatic recreations with actual footage, but in this case the inclusion of an actual murder pissed me off.  It just wasn't good enough to take that kind of step, and the footage makes it feel like the worst kind of exploitation.

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Some Other Movies From 2006 (2)

Some Other Movies From 2009

The top 5 movies of 2009 were Avatar, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and the completely forgettable 2012.  

There's been a lot of hate directed at James Cameron's Avatar since it came out, but I think that at least some of this hate is traceable to hipster types who probably LOVED the movie when it first came out, and only decided to hate on it much later.  I dislike the way it borrows from books like The Jesus Incident without giving those books (and their authors) proper credit, but Avatar was definitely the most innovative blockbuster of that year.

In 2009 the Marvel Cinematic Universe was just starting, so the field was more open to other properties.  DC was still in the running with The Dark Knight, Fox was stumbling along with X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and plenty of people were still willing to give Sony's Spider-Man a chance, even after Sam Raimi's disastrous Spider-Man 3.

The above-mentioned Avatar, The Hurt Locker, Crazy Heart, Precious, Inglourious Basterds and The Blind Side were big awards-winners that year.  Of these movies Crazy Heart was definitely my favorite, but Precious was also great (if hard to watch a second time).  I'd have to give the "most overrated" award to Inglourious Basterds, a film which always struck me as the kind of movie frat boys obsess over.

My favorite movies of 2009 were Avatar, Crazy Heart, Precious, The Dark Knight, the first Taken, Anvil! The Story of Anvil, Watchmen, Pandorum, Ong Bak 2: The Beginning, The Box and Sherlock Holmes.

The worst movie of 2009?  I'd nominate Crank: High Voltage.  I just couldn't make it through that one.  Every time you think Jason Statham's starring in the dumbest movie ever made, years later he surprises you with an even dumber one.  In 2009 it was Crank: High Voltage.  This year it was The Meg.

Some Good Ones

1. A Single Man

The second I saw director Tom Ford's name in the credits I knew I'd like this movie.  Colin Firth stars as a gay man grieving over his deceased lover.  This was Ford's first film, the second being 2018's Nocturnal Animals.

2. Until the Light Takes Us

You can watch this whole documentary on Norwegian black metal on YouTube.  I'm not a huge fan of the scene (I did like Burzum, I could never get into Mayhem or Darkthrone), but the interviews with Vlad Vikernes (in prison!) are interesting, and I enjoyed learning about how the music came to be.

3. An Education

A young girl is forced to choose between her attraction toward an older man and her parents' hopes for her future.  It's a very understated movie, and the worst anyone does is steal the protagonist's virginity.  Critics LOVED it in 2009.

Fun Fact: Actress Carey Mulligan, who stars in this movie, may be more familiar to American audiences as Ryan Gosling's love interest in Drive.  Oh, and she also appears briefly in Brothers below.

4. The Young Victoria

Emily Blunt stars as Queen Victoria, Britain's longest-serving sovereign and the reason we refer to the late 1800s as the Victorian Era.  Paul Bettany co-stars as Lord Melbourne, with Mark Strong as the scheming Lord Conroy.

Emily Blunt is in a lot of underrated movies, and this movie is perhaps her most underrated of all.  Director Jean-Marc Vallee (Dallas Buyers Club, Wild) began his foray into English-language films with this one, and it was also one of Blunt's first leading roles.  I love the way it turns the sexual politics of the day on their head, with men often finding themselves at the mercy of much more powerful women.

5. The Messenger

Ben Foster and Woody Harrelson star as two soldiers charged with notifying next of kin that their loved ones have been killed in the line of duty.  It's a nice, understated movie with a surprisingly upbeat ending.  After watching Antichrist (below) this was exactly what I needed.

6. Brothers

I don't know, it's just... weird seeing Tobey Maguire and Jake Gyllenhaal in the same movie.  I guess because I identify the two actors with different decades.  I tend to identify Maguire with the late 90s and early 2000s, and Gyllenhaal with more recent films.  I realize that they've both been around for the same amount of time, I guess it just has to do with when I became more familiar with either actor.

In Brothers they play two siblings distanced by the conflict in Afghanistan.  Natalie Portman plays Maguire's wife.  It's an excellent movie, and would also make a good double feature with The Messenger above.

Fun Fact: Maguire was of course Spider-Man in Sam Raimi's trilogy, but Gyllenhaal is set to play Mysterio in the upcoming Spider-Man: Far From Home.

7. Fast & Furious

Not to be confused with THE Fast and THE Furious, the first movie in this series.  This is the fourth one.

In Fast & Furious, Vin Diesel tries to get revenge for the death of his girlfriend.  Spoiler Alert: if you've seen Fate of the Furious you'll already know that she isn't dead.  In this installment Paul Walker's still in the FBI, Vin Diesel's stealing things and occasionally visiting his hot sister, and in-between there are car chases.

Critics hated it, but I think it's alright.  Not awesome, but alright.  During the "initiation" car chase you can even see snippets of the tie-in video game they were pushing back then.

8. The Last Station

Tolstoy's wife and publisher contend over the contents of the author's will.  Christopher Plummer stars as Tolstoy, with Helen Mirren as his wife and Paul Giamatti as his publisher.  James McAvoy also appears as a young admirer of Tolstoy's.  I'd say that the first 3/4 of this movie is good, but it wears out its welcome in the last 1/4.  Ending the film with Tolstoy leaving his estate would have made more sense.

9. Julie and Julia

Meryl Streep stars as Julia Child, with Amy Adams as a blogger trying to cook all of her recipes in a year.  Streep is characteristically great as Julia Child, and Adams gives a serviceable performance as her neurotic admirer.  

Two things I like about this movie: 1) it doesn't take the path of least resistance, and have the two women meet up in the end, and 2) Stanley Tucci, who also appears in The Lovely Bones (below), is much better used in this movie.  It's not particularly memorable, but it wears its heart on its sleeve and it does a subtle job of comparing the disconnections in modern society with the disconnections of Julia Child's time.

10. Me and Orson Welles*

Richard Linklater directed this movie about a high school student cast in Orson Welles' production of Julius Caesar.  I'll admit it sounds boring, but Zac Efron is great as the high school student and Christian McKay channels Orson Welles like nobody's business.  This movie also does an excellent job of recreating New York in the 1930s.

Some Bad Ones

1. The Men Who Stare at Goats

It's strange, but not strange enough.  This movie about a "paranormal ops unit" in the U.S. military seems to be pulling its punches, and as a consequence the Strangelove-esque humor present in the script fails to register.  McGregor, Clooney and Bridges do their best under workmanlike direction, but the film as a whole is like hearing someone try to tell a joke but messing up the punchline.  Even that little bit of War Dogs set in Iraq is way funnier than anything in The Men Who Stare at Goats.

2. The Lovely Bones

Despite some stunning visuals it bored me.  Peter Jackson directed this story about a girl stuck in purgatory after her murder, and even though Stanley Tucci is memorable it just drags on until its inevitable heartwarming conclusion.

This movie wouldn't have been great regardless of what anyone did, but I think where things really started to go wrong was in the editing room.  Trimming about a half hour out of this movie would have done wonders for it.

3. Invictus

Morgan Freeman stars as Nelson Mandela, with Matt Damon as the captain of South Africa's rugby team.

The problem with this movie is that none of the characters in it are interesting.  Despite the fact that Morgan Freeman's a great actor, despite the fact that Nelson Mandela's one of the most interesting historical figures of our time, and despite the fact that Nelson Mandela has served as an interesting character in other movies, in Invictus he just seems like a doddering old man, full of platitudes about racial equality and overwhelmed by the government he's trying to lead.

Perhaps worst of all, the rugby in this movie is never involving.  In sports drama terms it almost gets interesting near the end, but for the most part the rugby team just runs around and has arguments.  The critics loved this one, but I'm going to have to disagree.

Fun Fact #1: Not only did Clint Eastwood direct this movie, but his son Scott appears as one of the members of Damon's rugby team.

Fun Fact #2: If something about this movie feels familiar, it may be the fact that Morgan Freeman played another South African convict in 1992's The Power of One.  In that movie he also helped a white guy overturn South Africa's Apartheid regime.

A Really, Really Bad One

1. Chandni Chowk to China

This movie borrows freely from Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Hustle, which was apparently a hit in India as well.

An ancient Chinese warrior is reincarnated in India, and then sent to China to save a village near the Great Wall of China.  Yes, that's really the plot, and yes, it gets even stupider after that.  This movie's only redeeming features are its unabashed stupidity and Deepika Padukone, who spends most of the movie in a variety of sexy outfits.

Fun Fact #1: Gordon Liu, who plays the bad guy in this movie, appeared in scores of Hong Kong kung fu films AND Kill Bill Volumes I and II.

Fun Fact #2: A lot of this movie was filmed in Thailand, not China.

Fun Fact #3: This movie was somehow the third highest-grossing film in India in 2009.

A Movie That Might Be a Work of Genius, But Which Is Sure to Inflict Psychological Damage

1. Antichrist**

Looking for a movie that's arty AND disturbing?  Then Antichrist is the movie for you!  Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg star as a couple trying to overcome the accidental death of their son, with Lars von Trier directing.  In tone it reminded me a lot of Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage, though it's much more stylized than that earlier film.

Fun Fact: Eva Green was initially approached for the role of Willem Defoe's wife, but her agents refused to allow her to appear in this movie.

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*Wikipedia says this movie is from 2008 in one place, and from 2009 in another.  Not sure which entry to believe.

I also watched Melancholia, the first film in von Trier's "Depression Trilogy" yesterday.  I plan on writing about Melancholia, Antichrist, and Nymphomaniac in greater depth after I finish watching the third film.