Best of 2009: #10-5

There's a few days until the decade ends, a new year begins and we have to wait 11 grueling months until we start producing "Best of" lists once again. In the mean time, it's been a  mildly interesting year for me and I'd like to share some of those things with you. So let's take a gander at my favorite films of the year (if you can't wait and don't care, my full list is here.)

10) Fantastic Mr. Fox

Wes Anderson's further progression into defining his visual flair throughout mediums is one thing. But taking that and shrugging off the all-encompassing title that follows a "Wes Anderson film" is another Herculean feat.  His adaptation of Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox did the impossible: it reminded jaded critics and even a jaded audience that beneath the suits and Bill Murray cameos, Anderson is a talent. It's fine if you don't believe that, but I know the world's foremost Anderson hater. And he liked this. He liked it so much he wrote to me and said he liked it. You don't understand that this is a huge deal.

9) Tetro
You should call it a comeback when it relates to Francis Ford Coppola's return to the director's chair. Youth Without Youth brought about a quaint story mired in science fiction, but it is Tetro that accomplishes the year's most striking usage of black and white in a feature. Focusing on the titular character (Vincent Gallo) as he attempts to spend his days in South America without the ghost of his family haunting him, Coppola unfolds a story that deals with the pressure of having talent.

In no way does the film brag about that fact, instead "talent" is a burden that can injure and--literally--be responsible for the murder of the one you love, if you squander it. This is a perfect reflection of Coppola's views on the world and even in film, whereas real life is all blacks and grays, it is the past that has the most attention to color and detail. At times a little heavy handed, Tetro evokes proof in the phrase "magic of filmmaking."

8) Police, Adjective
Reviewed here.

7) Beeswax
To pull an Armond for a moment: if Fox redeemed Wes Anderson to the masses, then Beeswax redeemed Andrew Bujalski to me, while pissing off a majority of his supporters. Taking that information as you will, this film firmly removes Bujalski from the catch-all term that he helped inspire and elevates his work.

Maybe it's because I'm older, or maybe it's due to my own personal neurosis, but the "slice of life" intents that he takes with the two sisters (Tilly and Maggie Hatcher) grows on you. Of course, it's about people talking. To say that as if it's an insult or a critical insight just means you're a fucktard.

6) Bronson
Reviewed here and here.

5) A Room and a Half
Honestly, the most surprising film I got out of 2009. It floored me first at the New York Film Festival and then again at AFI. An imagined biopic of the poet Joseph Brodsky (Grigoriy Dityatkovskiy), noted animator Andrey Khrzhanovskiy directed and co-wrote this, his first live-action film, that fuses truly majestic musical sequences to the life of a bored Russian poet cat who writes to those he once loved.

Joined with The Wild Grass, the overtones of turning feline make one yearn for the day that they too can eat the cat crunchies after reincarnation. Room takes the fictional biopic film and allows the inspiration of Brodsky, haunting the screen with recordings of his poetry and personal opinion, to float down into the audience.