Top of the Otts in Film #20: Match Point

20. Match Point – As a Woody Allen agnostic, I cannot comment on where this stands in his catalogue. On its own, I find it brilliant, scripted well above most everything on the market. Jonathan Rhys Myers seems like he should be getting Jude Law’s roles, as he’s much more talented than him. Amongst the people he’s also much more talented than: Scarlett Johanssen. She ruins the classic kiss in the rainy field by bringing to it all the passion of soggy cardboard. To be fair though, Myers kind of ruins the romanticism of the scene too by bluntly putting his hand up in that ass, center screen. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVjfW-P5yZY) Overall, casting her as a struggling actress cruelly manipulated by a man she’s more attracted to than vice versa might have been unfair to her career on Allen’s part – it serves to highlight that as an actress she’s not that good and as a pin-up, maybe she’s not that hot? I mean, she’s hot, but seemlingly the kind that won’t age well. But Match Point will always be timeless.

Top of the Otts Movie Countdown #21: Knocked Up

21. Knocked Up – It wouldn’t be the otts without a Judd Apatow movie. This was Apatow at his best – funny but heartfelt, adibbed but not out of control. I’m still befuddled that it took 4-years between when Kristen Wiig owned all of her scenes here and when she finally got a title role in Bridesmaids. That was 4-years of co-starring and cameo-ing in lesser SNL colleagues’ work like Magruber. Thank goodness Ms. Fey finally made it OK for girls to be funny. Instead we got some decent Seth Rogen and some less-than-decent Katherine Heigl. Anyways, after this, Apatow got lazier, farming out straight comedies to his friends, letting the camera run too long on his friends, and getting a little too bitter and mean for someone who has a pretty sweet life.

Top of the Otts Movie Countdown: #22 Borat

22. Borat – The shock value of a first watching is hard to recall. I admit to laughing hysterically for all two hours, something that my female companions could not bring themselves to (the admission, not the laughing – they laughed more than me.) Borat is the rare comedy that’s funniest the first time.

Top of the Otts Movie Countdown #23: Thank You For Smoking

23. Thank You For Smoking – I have been informed that I’m either a bad person or a libertarian for liking this movie. I freely admit – I am not a libertarian so I sort of resent the implication. The person who told me this was a young D.C. activist very much in love with her own opinions. So I guess some people can’t take a joke. 

Top of the Otts Movie Countdown #24: The Hangover

24. The Hangover – Someday, some Harvard Business School case will get written on the overthinking idiocy of early decade Vegas attempting to sell itself as family friendly. Or not – this is what happens when you hire MBA’s and try to grow revenue by adding new customers instead of knowing what your core business is. No offense, geniuses, but Disney’s just down the road already and as there’s no such thing as a “Highroller” Mickey…unless that’s some kind of date rape drug. No one’s blowing $100,000 in a night in exchange for comped rollercoaster rides. In 2005, a moribund Sin City went back to basics with the most successful ad campaign of the decade “What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas.” This is an 80-year old Don Draper Mad Men season arc waiting to happen. Unfortunately, the movie rights for “What Happens in Vegas…” went to a dismal Cameron Diaz-Ashton Kutcher vehicle. In spirit though, The Hangover is “…Stays in Vegas.” And, in a bit of an upset, we have Bradley Cooper as a result, a legitimate cross-genre star instead of the increasingly unfunny Zach Galifinakis, who has been left on the roof to bake with his fern.

Top 25 Movies of the Otts Countdown: #25 Iron Man

25. Iron Man – Let’s begin the decade appropriately, with a comic book movie. Spiderman was infinitely more important in vaulting comic books to the top of the cinema mountain. But as pure entertainment, Ironman is a better movie than all three Raimi-Maguire Spidermans, including the best of them, Spiderman 2. The reason is simple: Robert Downey Jr. Whereas Spiderman is a remarkably old-fashioned character living in the fantasy of 50’s comic book ethics, Downey Jr. plays to the decade, improbably and epically eschewing the secret identity nonsense altogether. He’s also Robert Downey Jr., A-List star when not coked out, and not Tobey Maguire, whose career has vanished faster than otts stalker Superman.

Otts in Film - Decade Awards

BEST ACTION STAR:

NOMINEES:

Daniel Craig

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Layer Cake, Munich, Infamous, Casino Royale, The Golden Compass, Quantum of Solace, Defiance

I’m going to stop citing the script and just say what I think: he’s the best Bond ever.

Matt Damon

The Bourne Trilogy, The Ocean Trilogy, The Departed, Invictus

I’m leaving out a large body of work that’s not action. Bourne is a mainstay of the decade. I had trouble picking him instead of Mark Wahlberg, but Markey Mark’s action resume is surprisingly slim. Not a born action star, it’s a credit to Damon that he can make the crossover.

Hugh Jackman

X-Men, Swordfish, X2, Van Helsing, X3, The Prestige, Deception, Australia, X-Men Origins: Wolverine

It’s mostly Wolverine and a lot of failure. The Prestige isn’t action, but I put it on the list just to help him out. You have to give him credit for keeping one foot in musical theater and the other in comic books.

Dwayne Johnson

The Mummy Returns, The Scorpion King, The Rundown, Walking Tall, Doom, Southland Tales, Gridiron Gang, The Game Plan, Get Smart, Race to Witch Mountain, Planet 51,

Given how much time he spent in the ring, it’s incredible he has time for so many movies. A lot of this career reads like a hard slog to establish himself as something more than a wrestler. He’s really good and he’s only now starting to get the roles he deserves. Hopefully his body can stand up to the wear long enough to land him in a Terminator-level series.

Jason Statham

Snatch, Turn It Up, Ghosts of Mars, The One, Mean Machine, The Transporter, The Italian Job, Collateral, Cellular, Transporter 2, Revolver, The Pink Panther, Crank, War, The Bank Job, Death Race, Transporter 3, Crank: High Voltage

It’s hard not to cheer on the bald, tiny Englishman who took himself from Guy Ritchie’s ubiquitous huckster to Sylvester Stallone’s expendable through ten years of creatine and no conscience as to his role choice.

WINNER: Daniel Craig. In addition to rescuing Bond, he was the best thing in Munich and knocked out some solid indie action movies. The Rock has more action chops but spent too much time just trying to cement himself as a legitimate star.

BEST COMEDIC ACTOR OR ACTRESS:

NOMINEES:

Sacha Baron Cohen

Ali G Indahouse, Madagascar, Talladega Nights, Borat, Sweeney Todd, Madagascar 2, Bruno

Often more uncomfortable than funny, when he’s willing to just play a character in a movie rather than playing one in real life, he’s proven surprisingly talented.

Will Ferrell

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Old School, Elf, Starsky & Hutch, Anchorman, Kicking & Screaming, Bewitched, Wedding Crashers, The Producers, Curious George, Talladega Nights, Stranger Than Fiction, Blades of Glory, Semi-Pro, Step Brothers, You’re Welcome America, Land of the Lost, The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard

Ferrell’s highs are the funniest movies of the decade. He’s also the only person on this list who did serious work that wasn’t awful. But he also made more than a few duds.

Seth Rogen

Donnie Darko, Anchorman, The 40 Year Old Virgin, You, Me, and Dupree, Knocked Up, Shrek the Third, Superbad, Horton Hears a Who!, Kung Fu Panda, Step Brothers, Pineapple Express, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Fanboys, Monsters vs. Aliens, Funny People

Rogen is more just a funny person making movies than anything else. He never does any acting and he always plays himself.

Ben Stiller

Keeping the Faith, Meet the Parents, Zoolander, The Royal Tenenbaums, Duplex, Along Came Polly, Starsky & Hutch, Envy, Dodgeball, Anchorman, Meet the Fockers, Madagascar 1-2, Tenacious D, Night at the Museum 1-2, The Heartbreak Kid, Tropic Thunder

Stiller made it big playing the straight man in There’s Something About Mary and Meet the Parents. We’re left with that impression of him being buttoned-down in our minds…unfairly. The majority of his decade was spent playing increasingly preposterous roles – in movies, TV, and award shows.

  

Vince Vaughn

Old School, Starsky & Hutch, Dodgeball, Anchorman, Be Cool, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Wedding Crashers, The Break-Up, Fred Claus, Four Christmases, Couples Retreat

The last one in, barely, over Steve Carell. Like Rogen, he’s not an actor, just a funny person making movies. He’s just a bigger jerk than Rogen.

WINNER: Will Ferrell. A much closer victory than expected over Stiller. But if you’re not first, you’re last. 

BEST ACTOR:

NOMINEES:

Christian Bale

American Psycho, Shaft, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Laurel Canyon, Reign of Fire, The Machinist, Batman Begins, The New World, Rescue Dawn, The Prestige, 3:10 to Yuma, I’m Not There, The Dark Knight, Terminator Salvation, Public Enemies

The deepest dramatic resume, though terribly humorless and heavy on what-might-have-been disappointments like 3:10 to Yuma, Terminator IV, and Public Enemies.

George Clooney

O Brother, Where Art Thou?, The Perfect Storm, Spy Kids, Ocean’s 11-12-13, Solaris, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Intolerable Cruelty, Good Night and Good Luck, Syriana, The Good German, Michael Clayton, Leatherheads, Burn After Reading, Up In The Air, The Men Who Stare at Goats, Fantastic Mr. Fox

What stands out about Clooney’s series of nominations is that he never fronted a big-money picture. He’s a curiously big star for having never delivered, on his own, at the box office.

Johnny Depp

The Man Who Cried, Chocolat, Blow, From Hell, Pirates of the Caribbean 1-3, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Secret Window, Finding Neverland, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Corpse Bride, Sweeney Todd, Public Enemies

The broadest resume, touching on every drama. Courageous and creative, if a bit heavy on Tim Burton.

Robert Downey Jr.

Wonder Boys, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Good Night and Good Luck, A Scanner Darkly, Zodiac, Iron Man, Tropic Thunder, The Soloist, Sherlock Holmes

Missing half a decade due to drug addiction, he still puts together a resume that beats out most of his generation. Thanks for staying back on the bandwagon.

Brad Pitt

Snatch, The Mexican, Spy Game, Ocean’s 11-12-13, Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, Troy, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Babel, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Burn After Reading, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Inglourious Basterds

Brad Pitt is probably not the smartest person ever. He slept with Mike Tyson’s wife, for example. But damned if that’s not a lot of good movies.

WINNER: Brad Pitt. If Downey Jr. had a full decade of work, he’d probably win. Clooney may be a better actor, Bale’s definitely a better actor, and Depp is much more creative in addition to being more talented. But Pitt just has an inate star in him that uplifts even his bad movies. He has enough range here to not be a John Wayne star always playing himself, but he never creates something as forced as Depp’s Willie Wonka or some of Clooney’s man of constant sorrow.

HONORABLE MENTION: Russell Crowe, Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ian McKellan, Will Smith

BEST ACTRESS:

NOMINEES:

Cate Blanchett

The Man Who Cried, The Gift, Bandits, The Lord of the Rings 1-3, The Shipping News, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Aviator, Babel, The Good German, Notes on a Scandal, I’m Not There, Elizabeth: The Gold Age, Indiana Jones IV, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The other Meryl Streep. Arguably the hardest set of characters to take on, in that she doesn’t take Streep’s outsized cartoons, favoring instead subtle characters.

Angelina Jolie

Gone in Sixty Seconds, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider 1-2, Life or Something Like It, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, The Good Shepherd, A Mighty Heart, Beowulf, Kung Fu Panda, Changeling, Wanted

The only big starlet in Hollywood who can legitimately do action. Her attempts at drama have been substantive from the acting respect but weak as actual films. What is possibly the most interesting thing here is her complete disinterest in rom-com and comedy.

Keira Knightley

Bend It Like Beckham, Pirates of the Caribbean 1-3, Love Actually, King Arthur, Pride & Prejudice, Domino, Atonement, The Edge of Love, The Duchess

Unlike Jolie, some of Knightley’s dramas are successful as movies rather than being semi-desperate bids to be taken seriously. As for her action career, it’s bizarre that she has one. She’s so skinny she can’t make a 3D movie. But it’s hard to argue with a decade spent starring in a lot of beloved films.

Julia Roberts

Erin Brockovich, The Mexican, America’s Sweethearts, Ocean’s Eleven, Grand Champion, Full Frontal, Mona Lisa Smile, Closer, Ocean’s Twelve, Charlie Wilson’s War, Duplicity

It was a strange decade for her as she aged. She found some good roles and she found some real duds. Having to take a role in Closer, where she doesn’t belong, raises real questions about what her place is going forward. I think she’s breaking bad.

Meryl Streep

A.I., Adaptation, The Hours, The Manchurian Candidate, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, A Prairie Home Companion, The Devil Wears Prada, Rendition, Lions for Lambs, Mamma Mia!, Doubt, Julie & Julia, Fantastic Mr. Fox, It’s Complicated

The award is named after her. Still, there is some dismal decisionmaking in there – most notably the failed turn to Iraq War movies in 2007 presumably trying to recapture the Deer Hunter glory. Roberts should be taking notes – Hollywood is very unkind to aging females. She has to start staking out Streep’s claim on an annual role written for a mature female adult.

WINNER: Cate Blanchett. If she wasn’t around, I’d actually go with Knightley, strange as that may seem. Streep soaks up the best scripted roles, and it’s quite possible Knightley just got lucky or has a great agent. But Blanchett is on top talent-wise and should be getting roles written for her more often.

HONORABLE MENTIONS: Sandra Bullock, Jennifer Connelly, Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, Cherlize Theron, Rachel Weisz, Reese Witherspoon

THE DEPENDABLE SUPPORTING ACTOR OF THE DECADE: Philip Seymour Hoffman

State and Main, Almost Famous, Punch-Drunk Love, Red Dragon, 25^th Hour, Cold Mountain, Along Came Polly, Strangers With Candy, Capote, Mission: Impossible III, The Savages, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, Charlie Wilson’s War, Synecdoche, New York, Doubt, Pirate Radio, The Invention of Lying

Special love for Lester Bangs from Almost Famous. Cool is the booze they feed you.

THE DEPENDABLE SUPPORTING ACTRESS OF THE DECADE: Judy Dench

Chocolat, The Shipping News, Die Another Day, Home on the Range, The Chronicles of Riddick, Pride & Prejudice, Mrs. Henderson Presents, Casino Royale, Notes on a Scandal, Quantum of Solace, Rage, Nine

Between her, Helen Mirren, and Maggie Smith, it was a great decade for grand British dames. If only American actresses could look forward to such reliable late-career. Come to think of it, Ian McKellan, Albert Finney, and various Dumbledores...either there’s something about British theater that extends Britons’ careers or we, as audiences, have a distinct positive prejudice towards elderly British gravitas. Call it the Churchill Effect. 

BEST DIRECTOR:

NOMINEES: 

Joel & Ethan Coen

O Brother, Where Art Thou?, The Man Who Wasn’t There, Intolerable Cruelty, The Ladykillers, No Country for Old Men, Burn After Reading, A Serious Man

An impressive catalogue that, to paraphrase one of their characters, “is a little artsy-fartsy”. There’s something to be said for being able to talk to everyone. Nevertheless, given how infrequently writer-directors get something up on screen, that’s a lot of movies.

Clint Eastwood

Space Cowboys, Blood Work, Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Flags of Our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima, Changeling, Gran Torino, Invictus

Consistently above-average but never spectacular. Of those movies, I’d probably most want to rewatch Space Cowboys. Not exactly transcendence. 

Christopher Nolan

Memento, Insomnia, Batman Begins, The Prestige, The Dark Knight

Never a false step, always something to say, and a very broad range. He can talk to any audience and in multiple formats. But he could probably use a sense of humor.

Steven Soderberg

Erin Brockovich, Traffic, Ocean’s Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Full Frontal, Solaris, The Good German Che: Part One, Part Two, The Informant!

The most prolific but shallowest of the nominees. It’s hard to fathom how generous Mr. Soderberg has been with his time. I had to cut some of his lesse-rknown stuff and compile all of his sequels just to fit it into a reasonable text block. It’s a surprisingly deep resume.

Quentin Tarantino

Kill Bill: Vol 1 & 2, Sin City, Grindhouse: Death Proof, Inglourious Basterds

Tarantino’s work is truly style for its own sake. Good though it is, it’s never about anything.

WINNER: Christopher Nolan. “How’d they do that” technical prowess with real narrative control. He’s yet to make a bad movie.

HONORABLE MENTIONS: Wes Anderson, Judd Apatow, Brad Bird, Jon Favreau, Ron Howard, Peter Jackson, Ang Lee, Sam Raimi, Jason Reitman, Guy Ritchie, Martin Scorcese, Ridley Scott, Andrew Stanton, Gore Verbinski.

CULT CLASSIC OF THE DECADE: The Room.

An extremely sketchy importer/exporter (think long-haired Dr. Nick Riviera) puts up enough money to get the rest of his acting class to make a movie which he scripts. He doesn’t speak English good, nor can any of them act. He also foots the bill FOR YEARS for a giant billboard in the middle of LA, promoting this movie. Eventually, real stars watch it, find it hilarious, start sneaking it into real movies, and it becomes the cult classic of the decade.

That’s what you need to know. As for the movie itself, it’s best to read up before watching it, and watch it with people who are already in on the joke. Because it really is the worst movie ever. This gets it to score high on the unintentional comedy scale…eventually.

For example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQ4KzClb1C4

Not to spoil the dramatic subtext, but the dude with the football is sleeping with the girlfriend of the guy with the long-hair (aforementioned extremely sketchy importer/exporter). Anyways, unintentional comic gold.

BEST LOVE STORY OF THE DECADE:

Love Actually – the metanarrative love story

Moulin Rouge – the musical review love story

My Big Fat Greek Wedding – the multi-ethnic love story

The Notebook – the impossibly romantic though in other scenes embarrassingly not so love story

Pride and Prejudice – the timeperiod love story

WINNER: Moulin Rouge.

Greek Wedding gets the decade best but won’t age well. Pride and Prejudice gets the decade least but ages very well. The Notebook has iconic scenes but also bad scenes. Love Actually has iconic storylines but also bad storylines. Moulin Rouge is the only creation that is untouchable from beginning to end, 30 years ago or 30 years from now.

BEST HORROR MOVIE:

28 Days Later

Drag Me to Hell

The Ring

Shaun of the Dead

Zombieland

WINNER: Shaun of the Dead.

This genre’s been done; all that’s left is to mock it.

BEST PURE COMEDY:

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

Knocked Up

The Royal Tenebaums

School of Rock

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

WINNER: Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

It was a great decade for comedy, you could easily put another five in this list, and we’re all winners as a result.

BEST ANIMATED FILM:

Finding Nemo

Kung Fu Panda

Ratatouille

Shrek

Up!

WINNER: Up!

It was also a great decade for animation. My biases are clear. Finding Nemo is probably the consensus pick, except for the French, but I fancy Up!  

BEST LEGAL DRAMA:

Erin Brockovich

Michael Clayton

WINNER: Erin Brockovich

It was not a great decade for the law, as CSI: Et Al wrote every plot possible. Farewell?

BEST TEEN FILM: Superbad

Juno is a better movie but Superbad is the true teen film.

BEST DOCUMENTARY:

Grizzly Man

Man on Wire

Murderball

Much of documentary is now propaganda and polemic. These movies are documentaries as they are supposed to be. Between Grizzly Man and Man on Wire, which are on the same level, I pick the latter because it has that once-in-a-decade sense of wonder and ecstatic experience.  

Best of the "Best"

Best and worst of the decade’s Academy Awards

RAZZIES: WORST MOVIE AWARDS:

2000 – Battlefield Earth

2001 – Freddy Got Fingered

2002 – Swept Away

2003 – Gigli

2004 – Catwoman

2005 – Dirty Love

2006 – Basic Instinct 2

2007 – I Know Who Killed Me

2008 – The Love Guru

2009 – Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

WORST WORST MOVIE: Battlefield Earth. The movie so bad, the screenwriter apologized, explaining that he was only trying to get laid, and instead he created the cinematic version of birth-control. Seriously, this happened: http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/movies/penned_the_suckiest_movie_ever_sorry_MdXedZpTMWJmfpw80Xc7aO

BEST WORST MOVIE: I Know Who Killed Me. Since these movies are all so bad that it’s hard to label one “good” I’ll go with the one I’ve never even heard of. It can't be that bad if it's not famously bad. 

Best Best Actress:

Julia Roberts – Erin Brockovich

Halle Berry – Monster’s Ball

Nicole Kidman – The Hours

Charlize Theron – Monster

Hilary Swank – Million Dollar Baby

Reese Witherspoon – Walk the Line

Helen Mirren – The Queen

Marion Cotillard – La Vie En Rose

Kate Winslet – The Reader

Sandra Bullock – The Blind Side

WINNER: Charlize Theron. The part where you pretend to be someone else is called acting. This is acting.

WORST: Nicole Kidman. There are a lot of bland characters on this list; Kidman’s is the blandest.

Best Best Supporting Actress:

Marcia Gray Harden – Pollock

Jennifer Connelly – A Beautiful Mind

Catherine Zeta-Jones – Chicago

Renee Zellwegger – Cold Mountain

Cate Blanchett – The Aviator

Rachel Weisz – The Constant Gardener

Jennifer Hudson – Dreamgirls

Tilda Swinton – Michael Clayton

Penelope Cruz – Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Mo’Nique – Precious

WINNER: Rachel Weisz. This list is deep in talent and shallow in memorable performances. Blanchett’s is probably the most memorable, but I hesitate because she’s just doing an impression. Instead, let’s go with Weisz, who’s convincing and compelling activist is all that stands out in an otherwise weak movie. Her and the flamingos.

WORST: Jennifer Hudson. When you just relive your brief career on screen, that is not acting. Especially if most of your screen time is spent singing.

Best Best Actor:

Russell Crowe – Gladiator

Denzel Washington – Training Day

Adrien Brody – The Pianist

Sean Penn – Mystic River

Jamie Foxx – Ray

Philip Seymour Hoffman – Capote

Forest Whitaker – The Last King of Scotland

Daniel Day Lewis – There Will Be Blood

Sean Penn – Milk

Jeff Bridges – Crazy Heart

WINNER: Daniel Day Lewis. Sorry guys, he drank your milkshake. Easily the most memorable creation of the decade. And that’s why the award is named after him.

WORST: Adrien Brody. His acceptance kiss on Halle Berry outshone the reason he won the award. He’s not bad, and he’s unfairly disappeared since, surfacing only for a surprisingly good Predator movie. Is it possible Ms. Berry pulled a Jack Palance and read the wrong name and he's been blacklisted, Marisa Tomei style? Or maybe Adrien’s just a bad kisser and Halle’s had it in for him ever since.

Best Best Supporting Actor:

Benicio Del Toro – Traffic

Ian McKellen – The Lord of the Rings

Chris Cooper – Adaptation

Tim Robbins – Mystic River

Morgan Freeman – Million Dollar Baby

George Clooney - Syriana

Alan Arkin – Little Miss Sunshine

Javier Bardem – No Country for Old Men

Heath Ledger – The Dark Knight

Christopher Waltz – Inglourious Basterds

WINNER: Heath Ledger. As always, this is the hardest category. McKellen’s Gandalf is definitely the best good guy of the bunch. But the bad guys are always more fun. Bardem and Waltz are great, but the lightly-regarded Ledger took on the role that Jack Nicholson owned and blew him, the competition, and all of us away.

WORST: Tim Robbins. Robbins’ performance in Mystic River is comically bad. His chime is the falsest note in the cacophony of tone-deaf abrupt turns taken by all of the characters at the end of Mystic River. 

Best Best Director:

Steven Soderbergh – Traffic

Ron Howard – A Beautiful Mind

Roman Polanski – The Pianist

Peter Jackson – The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Clint Eastwood – Million Dollar Baby

Ang Lee – Brokeback Mountain

Martin Scorsese – The Departed

Joel & Ethan Coen – No Country for Old Men

Danny Boyle – Slumdog Millionaire

Katherine Bigelow – The Hurt Locker

WINNER: Joel & Ethan Coen. I’d give it to Peter Jackson if this was for all three movies, or even if it was just for the second movie. But I find the third movie to have too many weak points (and slow-motion hugs, and knowing looks). So between Scorsese and the Coens, I favor the art for Director. No Country is spotless filmmaking.

WORST: Clint Eastwood. Inclined as I am to hate metacanards like Traffic, the truth is that it’s very difficult to execute and Soderbergh led the way (those who have followed have done so presumably out of morbid curiosity). Meanwhile, Eastwood had a nice little film going before he gave it a weak twist ending torn from the headlines. This is the path that filler TV shows take, not Oscar-winning movies. 

Best Best Picture:

Gladiator

A Beautiful Mind

Chicago

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Million Dollar Baby

Crash

The Departed

No Country for Old Men

Slumdog Millionaire

The Hurt Locker

WINNER: The Departed. No Country for Old Men is probably the best work of art, but it’s also jarring, remote, and emotionally unsatisfying. As the guy in the stall next to me after the movie said, "It was long, boring, and will probably win an academy award." You can't be the best of the best unless you grab your whole audience at every level. Consistent and engaging, The Departed succeeds in that. It’s that rare film that, if you’re flipping through channels and stumble upon it, you feel instantly compelled to stop and watch until that one part you like, and then end up blowing your evening on it.

WORST: Chicago. A movie of no intrinsic value. The musical is a fluff piece with no plot to hang around its musical numbers. The movie version adequately renders said musical.

Rounding out the otts: 2009

2009

Closing things out. Soon we'll get started with "Best of the Best" Awards, Decade Long Awards, and my top 25.

TOP GROSSING

1.       Avatar

2.       Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

3.       Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

4.       Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

5.       2012

6.       Up!

7.       The Twilight Saga: New Moon

8.       Sherlock Holmes

9.       Angels & Demons

10.   The Hangover

UPON FURTHER REVIEW: The staying power of the pretty hum-drum Ice Age series is surprising. The staying power of that dismal Dan Brown series is more surprising.

Best Picture:

The Hurt Locker

Avatar

The Blind Side

District 9

An Education

Inglourious Basterds

Precious

A Serious Man

Up

Up in the Air

Upon Further Review: Worst Nomination: Avatar. Avatar turns out to have been a neutron bomb dropped on cinema. Technologically revolutionary, huge impact at the time, killed all the life, but left everything else intact. In the end, it’s just not a good movie.

Most Overrated: Avatar. Seriously, this movie in regular-d is terrible.  

Most Underrated (Then): Crank: High Voltage. It’s likely you haven’t been watching Jason Statham’s movies. Someone is, because they keep getting made, but odds are, it’s not you. This is the Statham movie to watch. It starts at the end of the first film: with him falling from a helicopter to his death (partly in VGA video game format). He survives. Asian gangsters arrive and snowshovel him into the back of a van. Cut to a newsbroadcaster, the underused Q from Star Trek: The Next Generation, who relays these events to us, essentially commenting, “Shit is about to get crazy.” And it does. There’s a Godzilla monster suit fight in there somewhere. So basically, it’s semi-autobiographical.

Most Underrated (Now): Up!. Wall-E is everyone’s darling for being both wordless for long stretches and yet still oppressively didactic. Up! is less preachy, made half the theater cry in the first 10 minutes, and looks better too. I’m in the minority, I’m sure, but I think Up! is Pixar’s best.

Most Influential: Avatar. As of this writing, they’re still selling us 3D tickets. Half the sci-fi films that followed had to be refilmed to take advantage of 3D. Then came the wave of movies rushed out to cash in on 3D gimmicks. Even odds 3D is either gone or the standard in a decade.

Most representative of the decade: The Hangover. Much like Vegas, movies kind of reached the point where they stopped trying to sell something to kids that wasn’t for kids.

Best Scene:

The Hangover – The Wolf Pack

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgTssbfJu3Y

Inglorious Basterds – The pipe scene

http://vimeo.com/9920198

Inglorious Basterds – The pub scene

http://vimeo.com/24676836

Up! – the love story

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZucRzfqQ04

Zombieland – the Bill Murray cameo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDzHsQapOKQ

WINNER: Inglorious Basterds - The pub scene

BEST FILM

1.       Up!

2.       Inglorious Basterds

3.       Sherlock Holmes

4.       The Hangover

5.       A Serious Man

6.       Up in the Air

7.       Black Dynamite

8.       Star Trek

9.       The Hurt Locker

10.   Taken