My Film Highlights of 2009

The year is not quite done, but I've decided to do a short run through of the best (and worst) movies I've seen in 2009.

Best Movie seen in the Cinema: To date, I have seen 40 movies in the cinema this year. If I go a December movie binge I might just bring the total to around one a week. There were many quite wonderful films - the brutal rawness of The Wrestler, the emotionally heart wrenching (some would say manipulative) yet also quietly funny Departures, the wonderfully adapted 1960s take on suburban unhappiness that is Revolutionary Road, the delightful Up! and the thought provoking and just generally provocative Waltz with Bashir, and the list goes on.

Two movies stood out for me, though. For sheer pure enjoyment, nothing quite beat J.J Abrams Star Trek. It managed to both pay homage to and reinvent and revitalize an old franchise, but more importantly it was just a tremendous blend of wonderfully good humour and great action. Sean Penn rightfully won the Best Actor Oscar for a chameleon like portrayal of Harvey Milk - Milk, in my opinion deserved the Best Picture Award as well. I was supposed to choose between them, but I honestly can't, so I'll fudge and pick both.

Best Movie Seen (Other Media): This was truly impossible to decide. How could I possibly choose, when I saw A Man For All Seasons, The Lion in Winter, The Third Man and The Hustler on DVD? All of them are classic films that are deservedly great. How to choose between Paul Schofield's tremendous portrayal of Thomas More as a man of conscience (A Man for All Seasons) or Paul Newman's immensely charismatic yet complex pool shark (The Hustler), not to mention a classic film Noir in The Third Man complete with a Orson Welles cameo. That's to discount Bernado Bertolluci's tremendously influential Last Tango in Paris with an unforgettable performance by Brando which I also saw for the first time this year. All brilliant movies which I would definitely watch again.

Worst Movie Seen (Any Media): Hollywood continues to churn out fairly bad, testosterone fueled action movies which ensures that Michael Bay will always have a job. While the first Transformers movie was fairly successful (mainly by not taking itself too seriously), the second one was bloated, overcooked and excessively long that took itself far too seriously. It was also not helped but some fairly bad acting (Sam's dad going "I don't wanna lose you" in such a terribly fake way in the middle of a war zone being the icing on the cake). New Moon was turgid and often excruciating. I found it impossible to overlook the often terrible lines such as "all you have to do is breath" [to make me happy], or "Bella, you're everything to me" (okay, I'll be honest and admit those aren't the exact lines, but rough paraphrases, but you get the idea!).

Occasionally I also feel the odd compulsion to watch a bad, generally brainless action movie without any plot. Thus, the abysmal Elecktra and the rather dull Fantastic Four. Oh, and I also did pay to watch Street Fighter: Legend of Chun Li in the cinemas, but that had Kristin Kreuk in it, and a local Singapore actor!


Addendum: Avatar did indeed turn out to be a spectacular movie which made my Top 25 list of the decade (as did Milk) while Star Trek missed out in that regard. So I guess Avatar and Milk are my best of 2009.