Yesterday I began my list of my Top 10 Movies of 2009!  Let’s continue, shall we?

5.  Inglourious Basterds — Quentin Tarantino demonstrates, once again, that no one can wring more nail-biting tension out of simple conversation than he can.  What I thought would be  a simple men-on-a-mission story wound up being a much more complex, intriguing tale.  Filled with astounding, unforgettable performances (Brad Pitt as the tough-talking Aldo Raine, Melanie Laurent as the fiercely intelligent Shosanna Dreyfus, and of course Christopher Waltz as Col. Hans Landa, one of the most unforgettable film villains of the past decade) and some great Tarantino touches (yep, that is a Samuel L. Jackson voice-over at one point), the film is ridiculously compelling.  And that ending.  Ho boy.  Read my full review here.

4.  District 9 — With a budget reportedly in the ballpark of 30 million dollars (which, if my information is correct, is about a third of what was spent on the Alec Baldwin/Meryl Streep comedy It’s Complicated), first-time director Neill Blomkamp fashioned one of the most gripping sci-fi tales I have ever seen.  The film is set in Johannesburg, almost thirty years after an enormous alien spacecraft appeared over the city.  The aliens, nicknamed “prawns,” have been settled in slum-like conditions in a refugee camp called District 9.  When the corporation MNU bows to public pressure to remove the aliens from the vicinity of Johannesburg, the hapless Wikus Van De Merwe (who participates in the forced evictions) finds his life turned upside-down.  As a sci-fi fan I am always looking for smart, original new works of sci-fi, and this film has both qualities in spades.  With jaw-dropping special effects (I am amazed at how well the alien “prawns” are brought to life), a career making performance by Sharlto Copley (who plays Wikus), some terrific action, and edge-of-your seat intensity from start to finish, District 9 is a magnificent and haunting creation.  Read my full review here.

3.  Fantastic Mr. Fox — A deliriously fantastic combination of Roald Dahl’s story (about a family of foxes menaced by three vicious farmers) and director Wes Anderson’s unique sensibilities, Fantastic Mr. Fox feels to me like the film Mr. Anderson has always wanted to make.  He has filled the movie with his specific style — detail-filled sets and precise, stage-like staging — and the foxes are a classic addition to Mr. Anderson’s repertoire of wonderfully idiosyncratic, somewhat disfunctional families.  The script is complex and sophisticated (with characters who all possess strengths as well as character flaws, and no easy answers to their dilemmas in sight), and the voice-actors (including George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Michael Gambon, Willem Dafoe, and many others) are wonderful.  The stop-motion animation has a hand-crafted, low-tech feel that fits the story perfectly.  (But that is not to take away from the great achievement in animation that this film represents.  Between the animation and the voice-acting, these foxes — and other animals — are unquestionably ALIVE.)  Somber and joyful, playful and serious, I can’t think of another movie that is anything like it.  Fantastic.  Read my full review here.

2.  Up — At this point I am really starting to believe that the mad geniuses working at Pixar can really do no wrong.  After each new Pixar magnum opus I continue to declare that there’s no way they’ll ever be able to top THIS one, and then the next film comes along.  Well, here I am again.  My jaw was pretty much on the floor from beginning to end.  The heartbreaking opening sequence (in which we follow Carl Fredrickson and the love of his life, Ellie, from childhood to old age over the course of a matter of minutes) is absolutely devastating, a gut-punch that could be one of the most powerful few minutes of film that I have ever seen.  It’s a hell of a way to start a film, and luckily the rest of the movie earns the emotional investment garnered by that opening sequence.  I absolutely adore the way the film slowly builds upon that somber opening until it becomes an explosion of, well, all sorts of wonderful weirdness that I wouldn’t dream of spoiling for you if you haven’t seen the film.  I will only add that Dug is, without question, one of the greatest characters created on film in recent memory.  The computer animation is absolutely stunning, and the 3-D effects give the film an extraordinary depth without ever becoming gimmicky or annoying.  It’s a masterpiece, and there’s absolutely NO WAY that those folks at Pixar will ever be able to top THIS ONE…  Read my full review here.

1.  Where The Wild Things Are — If there’s a theme to my choices this year, I think it’s pretty obvious that I am drawn to films that feel like unique, singular creations.  I love walking out of a movie thinking, boy, I’ve never seen anything quite like THAT before.  Well, no film made me feel that way — that I had been lucky enough to go on a cinematic journey unlike any I had taken before — more than Spike Jonze’s adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s beloved book, Where The Wild Things Are.  This film hit me like a ton of bricks, and I almost don’t know where to begin in describing my love of it.  To begin with, I was blown away by the emotional intensity and honesty of Max’s journey in the film.  A young boy with an enormous amount of energy and creativity, Max is also filled with great loneliness and anger, feelings that he is not yet old enough to be able to process or really understand.  This causes him to lash out at his sister and his mother (Catherine Keener).  After one such explosion, Max runs out of the house, at which point he finds a boat and sails away to the domain of the Wild Things.  The creatures are fierce and violent, but also gentle and childlike in their emotions.  Where the Wild Things Are is gripping but also almost dreamlike in its storytelling.  The film is not in any rush to draw obvious morals for either Max or for the audience, and it studiously avoids a standard narrative structure.  This gives the film a naturalism (which is a funny thing to say about a movie with giant Wild Things) and a sophistication and complexity that I adore.  The visual effects are astounding, as the Jim Henson Company’s giant puppets were seamlessly combined with computer-generated facial animation (not to mention terrific voice acting by the likes of James Gandolfini, Catherine O’Hara, Paul Dano, Forest Whitaker, Chris Cooper, and others) to bring the Wild Things to extraordinarily convincing life.  Young Max Records is phenomenal as Max — one of the best child performances I’ve seen in while, believable and gripping.  Spike Jonze (who directed the film, and co-wrote the screenplay with Dave Eggers) has created a true masterpiece, one I relish having the opportunity to revisit many more times to come.  Max may have gone home to his family, but I can’t wait to return to Where the Wild Things Are.  Read my full review here.

So that’s my list!  Do you agree?  Disagree?  Let me know.  In the mean-time, I’ll see you back here on Friday for my final Best Of 2009 list, my listing of the 10 Best Comic Books of 2009!  See you there!

I still remember the first time I saw Pulp Fiction.  I didn’t know anything about this guy Quentin Tarantino, and I hadn’t yet seen Reservoir Dogs.  But in reading about the film in advance of its release, it looked like it had a pretty spectacular cast, and I thought the trailers looked pretty cool.  So, when the film came out in theatres, I corralled a bunch of my high school buddies to go see the flick with me.  Boy, were we totally unprepared for what we were about to experience in that darkened theatre in Milford, CT!  We pretty much had our brains blown right out of our heads.  When the film was over, none of us could really speak — or even move!  My friends and I just sat silently through all of the credits, slowly absorbing everything that we had just seen.  What a movie!  Walking out of that theatre it was pretty much assured that, from then on, I’d buy a ticket to any movie that Quentin Tarantino ever directed.

And, well, I have, and he hasn’t let me down since.  Jackie Brown, Kill Bill (volumes I and II) and Death Proof (Tarantino’s half of Grindhouse — and please lord, can we someday get the complete theatrical version of Grindhouse released on DVD???) all proved to be relentlessly entertaining.  What has really impressed me, though, is that while all retain the distinct signature of Tarantino’s style of movie-making, those four films are all quite different from one another in terms of content and tone.  I am happy to report that I can say exactly the same of Mr. Tarantino’s latest work, Inglourious Basterds.

This is a spectacular film, one of my very favorites of this mediocre summer of movies.  (My other favorite would be Pixar’s Up — see my review here — and two more different movies I could scarcely imagine!)

As with most of Tarantino’s movies, Inglourious Basterds kicks off with a powerhouse of a first scene.  In Nazi-occupied France, dairy farmer Perrier LaPadite (Denis Menochet, looking quite a lot like Gerard Butler in 300) is paid a visit by “the Jew Hunter,” S.S. officer Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), who is seeking to determine if Monsieur LaPadite or any of the other local farmers are hiding a family of Jews who have disappeared.  Tarantino is a genius at being able to craft exquisite tension from scenes of simple conversation, and this opening sequence is a master class in this skill (rivaling, in my mind, the deservedly famous “say what again!” interrogation scene from Pulp Fiction).

By the end of this prologue, only young Shosanna (and why her name is spelled that way, rather than Shoshanna, which is how it’s pronounced and how this Hebrew name is usually spelled in English, is a question even more perplexing than the purposeful mis-spelling of the film’s title) is able to escape Landa.  Cut to several years later, with WWII in full swing, when we are introduced to Aldo Raines (Brad Pitt) and his group of Basterds, mostly-Jewish soldiers dropped behind enemy lines with the sole purpose of brutally dispatching as many Nazis as possible.  The exploits of the Basterds is but one the several storylines we follow through the film, including that of Shosanna’s, until everything converges at a theatre in France in which Joseph Goebbels is premiering the new Nazi propaganda movie, Stolz der Nation (Nation’s Pride).

Inglourious Basterds is quite unlike any WWII movie that I’ve ever seen before.  While it is consistently tense and incredibly engaging, it also has an entertainingly tongue-in-cheek tone.  The film is filled with purposefully anachronistic Tarantino stylistic touches, such as dramatic freeze-frames in which a character’s name is emblazoned on-screen in bright 1970’s fonts, or the sudden appearance of a voice-over by Samuel L. Jackson to explain a plot point about the flammability of a certain type of film stock.  Some might find these sorts of things distracting, but I loved every one of them.  They help give the film a sense of anything-can-happen and you-never-know-what’s-around-the-next-corner that kept me constantly on the edge of my seat.  (Though even that did not quite prepare me for the astounding ending, which, to put it mildly, is not quite historically accurate.)

Once again, Tarantino has assembled a marvelous ensemble of actors.  In film after film I remain impressed by Brad Pitt’s ability to bury himself in a variety of bizarre characters, and his Aldo Raines is a marvelous creation.  The man’s distinct, slow drawl doesn’t quite hide a keen mind for tactics and a terrible brutality.  Melanie Laurent is extraordinarily compelling as Shosanna, a scarred woman whose fierce intellect enables her to always keep her head despite the remarkable circumstances in which she finds herself caught up.  Diane Kruger is also quite wonderful as German movie-star and turncoat Bridget von Hammersmark.  We don’t get to spend too much time with most of the Basterds, unfortunately, but I must comment that despite the criticism that Eli Roth seems to be drawing in some quarters as “the Bear Jew” (in her review for the New York Times, Manohla Dargis used just one word to describe his performance: “dreadful”), I thought that he was quite perfect in the role.  I only wish he’d had a bit MORE to do in the film!

But as good as all of the above actors and actresses are (as well as the many other fine performers in the film who I have not mentioned), the success of Inglourious Basterds rests on the astounding performance of Christoph Waltz as Col. Hans Landa.  This is a remarkable addition to Tarantino’s already enormous stable of dangerous and frightening bad-guys.  Waltz’s Landa is cultured and refined, speaking many languages fluently and displaying great brilliance in the effective way he carries out his brutal work.  He is also, most notably, incredibly jovial as he goes about his business — and whether that is Landa’s natural disposition or just a facade to put his enemies at ease and trick them into making a mistake, the result is a frighteningly ruthless figure.  Tarantino told Empire Magazine (in March, 2009), that if he had not found the perfect actor for the role, he might have pulled the plug on the entire movie.  That might be an exaggeration, but luckily for us all it seems that he did find his perfect actor.  This is a career-defining role for Mr. Waltz.

There are some flaws in the film.  I was disappointed that, in a movie called Inglourious Basterds, we didn’t really get to know most of the Basterds that well.  Some of them don’t even get a single line of dialogue!!  (I was particularly disappointed that Samm Levine, who I loved so much from Freaks and Geeks, fits into this category.)   Interestingly enough, I have long-since had the same complaint about Reservoir Dogs, another Tarantino film that draws its title from the name of a group of dangerous tough-guys.  In both films, the focus seems to be on several “lead” members of the team, while we learn almost nothing about the rest of the gang.  In both films, I find that to be a bit of a disappointment.

I must also admit to being a bit unsettled by something pointed out by Daniel Mendelsohn in his review for Newsweek.  He writes: “In Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino indulges this taste for vengeful violence by—well, by turning Jews into Nazis. In history, Jews were repeatedly herded into buildings and burned alive (a barbarism on which the plot of another recent film, The Reader, hangs); in Inglourious Basterds, it’s the Jews who orchestrate this horror. In history, the Nazis and their local collaborators made sport of human suffering; here, it’s the Jews who take whacks at Nazi skulls with baseball bats, complete with mock sports-announcer commentary, turning murder into a parodic “game.” And in history, Nazis carved Stars of David into the chests of rabbis before killing them; here, the “basterds” carve swastikas into the foreheads of those victims whom they leave alive.  Tarantino, the master of the obsessively paced revenge flick, invites his audiences to applaud this odd inversion—to take, as his films often invite them to take, a deep, emotional satisfaction in turning the tables on the bad guys. (”The Germans will be sickened by us,” Raine tells his corps of Jewish savages early on.) But these bad guys were real, this history was real, and the feelings we have about them and what they did are real and have real-world consequences and implications. Do you really want audiences cheering for a revenge that turns Jews into carbon copies of Nazis, that makes Jews into “sickening” perpetrators? I’m not so sure.”

That’s a valid point, and consideration of this idea does take some of the fun out of the proceedings, in retrospect.  But it’s interesting that Mr. Mendelsohn mentions The Reader.  As I wrote in my review of the film, that is a film in which I was much more troubled by the inversion upon which the film rests: the idea that the  young German with whom Kate Winslet’s character had an affair had his life ruined by her, a Nazi, in an equivalent way to how the lives of countless Jews were destroyed by the Holocaust.  Perhaps I was far more troubled by The Reader because that film was clearly setting out to be a SERIOUS and IMPORTANT drama, while Inglourious Basterds is, despite the intensity and dramatic stakes of the film, really more of a romp.

The other major criticism that has been made against Inglourious Basterds is that it is too long; that it is overly-indulgent.  I can see that.  The film IS very long!  But when I see a Quentin Tarantino film, I WANT him to be indulgent!  I’m not going in looking for a standard type of film — I’m looking for a film that is boiling over with all of Mr. Tarantino’s particular interests and influences.  That’s part of what makes his films so unique, and so enjoyable.  Those who complain about the way many conversation scenes in the film seem to go on and on are, to me, sort of missing the point.  As I noted towards the beginning of this piece, it this through conversation that Mr. Tanatino is able to slowly build the amazing suspense to be found in so much of his work — and it’s also how he reveals to us, slowly, the nature of the characters we’re watching.  I just don’t know what to say to someone who wishes there was more action and less talking in this movie.  Well, actually, I do:  You can go right on down to your local video store to find plenty of movies like that.  Me, I can’t wait to enjoy, for a second time, Quentin Tarantino’s version of World War II: Inglourious Basterds.

Welcome back to Motion Pictures!  We’ve got lots of great stuff coming your way in the next few weeks (including my LENGTHY dissertation on Inglourious Basterds, coming on Wednesday).  For now, let’s see what sorts of fun stuff has hit the web recently:

James Cameron has finally made another movie!  And after almost two years of teases, we have at last been graced with a trailer — check it out here.  I don’t hate Titanic — not at all.  I happen to think, though, that it’s one of Cameron’s weaker movies — because I absolutely adore the two Terminator Films, Aliens, The Abyss, and True Lies.  Those five films are all pretty much masterpieces, in my book, so I have been bummed that Mr. Cameron has gone a decade without making a new film.  But that drought is finally at an end!  Let’s hope Avatar is good…

Some other interesting trailers have hit recently:  Here’s a glimpse at the long-delayed The Wolfman.  It’s got a great cast (Benicio del Toro, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Hugo Weaving, and Emily Blunt) but the year-long delay and lots of rumors of problems with the film have me skeptical.

Then there’s the latest Michael Moore joint, Capitalism: A Love Story.  Check out the trailer here.  That should be interesting…

Earlier this month, when I was looking for an image of the crows from Dumbo for my Transformers cartoon making fun of the ridiculously infantile (not to mention offensive!) Skids and Mudflap, I came across this fascinating list of the Nine Most Racist Disney Characters.

In a recent interview with Europe’s Sky TV channel, Quentin Tarantino listed his twenty favorite movies of the past twenty years.  It’s a pretty bizarre list, hence Chud’s article titled Is Quentin Tarantino Totally Fucking With Us?  (Unlike the author of that piece, I for one was THRILLED to see Unbreakable on that list!!)

Finally, take a gander at this:

Been there, man.  TOTALLY been there.  I can’t wait for this!  Might have to bite the bullet and sign up for HBO for a few months so I can see the much-heralded Seinfeld reunion…

Haven’t done one of these in a while…

Here’s some of the fun stuff floating around the interwebs these days:

The Simpsons has moved to HD!  This has apparently necessitated a change in the show’s iconic opening credits sequence, which has remained constant for 19 years.  (Can you believe it’s been that long??)  Fear not, fans, the new credits sequence is quite spectacular.  It follows the general pattern of the old opening, bringing us through Springfield — from Bart writing on the blackboard to Homer working in the plant to Lisa in band class to Marge shopping with Maggie, etc etc.  But there are a LOT of great new gags, and new appearances by many of the popular characters who weren’t around when the show originally launched (Groundskeeper Willie, Otto, Ralph Wiggum, Pattie & Selma, Sideshow Bob, Apu and his Octuplets, and many more).  And the new animation is terrific.  If you missed yesterday’s episode, check out the new opening by clicking here.  Note that the couch gag is, of course, just this week’s version — that ending joke will continue to change every week.  By the way, after watching this clip, do you find yourself missing Bleeding Gums Murphy?  (He’s one of the characters Bart used to skateboard past, who has now been removed.)  Don’t worry, he’s still there!  Check out the pictures on the wall behind the kids in Lisa’s band class…

Just like the year when there were two asteroid-hitting-the-earth movies (Deep Impact and Armageddon) or the year when there were two volcano movies (Dante’s Peak and Volcano), this year there are two Mall Cop flicks coming out.  Perhaps you, like me, chose to pass on Paul Blart: Mall Cop, starring Kevin James.  But you might still be interested in Seth Rogen’s much, much darker take on the idea.  Click here to see a trailer for Observe and Report.

Speaking of trailers, Quentin Tarantino’s let’s-go-kill-some-Nazis flick Inglourious Basterds (yes, that is how the title is spelled) has a teaser trailer that was just released.  Click here to check it out.

Is Joaquin Phoenix melting down before our eyes, or is this all some kind of hoax for the documentary that Casey Affleck is apparently filming about Phoenix’s attempt at a rap career?  I have no idea, but click here to watch his truly bizarre appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman, and judge for yourself.

If you’re a Watchmen fan who is chomping at the bit for the movie to be released (Match 6th is coming!!), then you definitely need to click here to watch the teaser for the Tales of the Black Freighter direct-to-DVD release. 

Finally, I encourage you all to bid a last farewell to the great Ricardo Montalban, who passed away last month, by clicking here to watch Robot Chicken’s Star Trek II: The Opera.  Brilliant.