Best of 2009 Posted by Richard Brody

December 4, 2009
Best of 2009 Posted by Richard Brody

This year's top eleven, with the usual caveat that there are some nice things I'm sure I've missed and that I still hope to catch up on, soon, in which case I'll report back on them. In any case, a list isn't made of commandments graven in stone but, rather (to quote some schmaltz of my childhood, from the Classics IV), of traces of love.

I confess that I hadn't noticed until now the many overlaps between directors on my best-of-decade list list and those on this one, which just means that some of my favorite filmmakers had superb new work this year. It's unintentional that two American independent films seem paired off together; there weren't many other good ones, and the best of the year's Hollywood productions were unusually strong and original.

1. "Fantastic Mr. Fox" (Wes Anderson): Pure animal wildness plus an exquisitely controlled expressive frenzy; one of the most visually generous movies ever made, comparable in detail to Jacques Tati's "Playtime." You have to see it twice to see it once.

2. "The Beaches of Agnès" (Agnès Varda): A poignant self-portrait, an unstinting autobiography, and a memory film in which cinematic inventions are Varda's own madeleine.

3.-4. "Funny People" (Judd Apatow): Deep self-portraiture and the loving depiction of loveless pursuits; the prismatic view of self in multiple guises, the multiple ironies of self-delusion, and the pain and strangeness that makes people funny. Adam Sandler's fiercely funny performance is filled with worldly wisdom.

3.-4. "Two Lovers" (James Gray): A deep melodramatic mood and a sense of place; an ending worthy of Douglas Sirk's "There's Always Tomorrow."

5. "Gentlemen Broncos" (Jared Hess): A profound, impulsive, ecstatic religious vision; from the mouths of babes often comes wisdom, and also some stuff that has to be cleaned up.

6. "Police, Adjective" (Corneliu Porumboiu): A dialectical and lexicographical masterpiece, illustrating with the depth of a philosophical treatise and the persuasiveness of a dossier of evidence the connection between language and power.

7. "24 City" (Jia Zhangke): When a Chinese factory town is being demolished to make way for a luxury prefab complex, the ghosts of past oppressions arise to meet a new generation of living zombies.

8. "Lorna's Silence" (Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne): The moral dilemmas of clandestine immigration yield visions of a primal, Shakespearean force.

9. "The Frontier of Dawn" (Philippe Garrel): A rare physical beauty haunts this tale of metaphysical passion; Garrel films his son, Louis, as a photographer in order to depict his own lifelong fusion of love and movie love.

10.-11. "Beeswax" (Andrew Bujalski): There's more nitty-gritty of the link between day jobs and dreams, money matters and intimate conflicts, than in a raft of movies that wave their politics like a banner.

10.-11. "Alexander the Last" (Joe Swanberg): The master of controlled improvisation makes performance his subject; an audacious leap into the psychology of art and its romantic implications.
Best of 2009: The Front Row : The New Yorker (26 December 2009)
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2009/12/best-films-of-2009.html
http://snipurl.com/tv6yd