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!

Having watched Fantastic Mr. Fox, the phenomenal new stop-motion animated film from director Wes Anderson (Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and The Darjeeling Limited), I am almost forced to reconsider all of his previous (also wonderful) films.

Mr. Anderson’s work has always been characterized by an extraordinarily stylized look to his sets and staging.  (The Royal Tenenbaums, my favorite of Mr. Anderson’s films, must be considered a triumph of art direction amongst its many other great qualities.)  Now it seems to me that Mr. Anderson has always been approaching his movies as if they were animated films: pouring never-ending attention into the creation of the artificial worlds that his characters inhabit.  (In animation, this is of course necessary: there are no “standing sets” to use – everything must be designed from the ground up.)

Or maybe I should put it this way: in stop-motion animation, Mr. Anderson has found a perfect stylistic vehicle for his particular idiosyncratic method of storytelling.

Adapted from a book by Roald Dahl, Fantastic Mr. Fox focuses on a family of foxes who enter into an escalating feud with three cruel farmers: Boggis, Bunce, and Bean.  What is remarkable is that this animated fox family is just as fully-realized as any of the clans seen in Mr. Anderson’s previous films.  Each character is filled with flaws and with strengths.  Each feels, well, human!  George Clooney voices the title character, Mr.  Fox, who is inventive and fearless… but also dangerously reckless and oblivious to the walls he is inadvertently building up between him and his son.  Jason Schwartzman plays his son, Ash, a teenaged (in fox-years) boy who idolizes his father but, sensing that he is not going to get the approval he seeks, has withdrawn into teenaged “this is all stupid” rebellion (that includes the wearing of bizarre outfits).  Meryl Streep is the patient mother of the brood who deeply loves her husband yet must admit, in a powerful moment late in the film, that she never should have married him.

Does this sound like your every-day animated film so far?

It’s just amazing, really, how Mr. Anderson (working with co-writer Noah Baumbach, who wrote and directed the magnificent film The Squid and the Whale) has shaped Roald Dahl’s tale into a film whose character drama fits perfectly in with the rest of Anderson’s filmography.  But he has done so without losing the charm and heart of Mr. Dahl’s original tale – particularly when it comes to bringing to life the increasingly escalating lunacy (and violence) of Mr. Fox’s back-and-forth feud with the farmers.

I haven’t even mentioned the enormous ensemble that surrounds the Fox family.  As in Mr. Anderson’s other films, much of the fun in Fantastic Mr. Fox comes from the terrific group of actors who have been tasked with filling in the edges of the story (and the world that has been created).  Bill Murray plays a worried badger, Willem Dafoe plays an antagonistic rat, Wally Wolodarsky plays a friendly opossum, Eric Chase Anderson plays Kristofferson (a cousin of the Fox family with whom Ash falls into a rivalry), and lots of other familiar and impeccably-well-cast voices.  But my favorite supporting role was Michael Gambon (now best known as Dumbledore from the Harry Potter series) who plays the villainous Mr. Bean, a terrifying menace that bedevils the Fox family (and all the other animals in the vicinity of his and his brothers’ farms).

The stop-motion animation – so rare to see nowadays – is wonderful and brings just the right hand-made feel to this very human story.  Having dabbled myself in stop-motion animation as a kid, I can only raise my glass in stunned appreciation to the magnificent artists who must have spent months bringing this tale to life, one teensy tiny movement at a time.

Don’t make the mistake as dismissing Fantastic Mr. Fox as a kids movie.  (It really isn’t for kids at all – well, certainly not young kids.  I was somewhat frustrated to have seen this movie in a theatre in which most of the seats sold seemed to be filled by parents and young kids.  Needless to say, most of the laughter heard as the movie unfolded came from the adults.  A lot of the kids seemed bored or a bit confused.)  But I was absolutely delighted by every frame of the film. Fantastic Mr. Fox is exciting, funny, and poignant, and clearly the work of an extraordinarily talented group of craftsmen guided by a director with a unique vision.  What more could I want to see in a film??

Simply fantastic.

I walked into Wes Anderson’s film The Royal Tenenbaums totally unprepared for the idiosyncratic work of genius I was about to see.  I had seen Rushmore on video a year or so earlier, but I’d gone in expecting a goofy Bill Murray comedy and so didn’t quite know what to make of the film I actually saw.  While Rushmore had gotten a lot of acclaim upon its release, the film didn’t exactly blow my skirt up (to borrow one of my favorite lines from True Lies).  But I’ll watch Gene Hackman in almost anything, and the rest of the ensemble cast of Tenenbaums looked intriguing, so I decided to check out the film when it came out in theatres.  I was absolutely blown away by what I saw: the film was emotional and very, very funny, but even more than that, every frame seemed to be absolutely unique, unlike any other film I’d ever seen before.  This was the work of an accomplished, singular filmmaker.

The Royal Tenenbaums remains my favorite film by Wes Anderson, but I’ve also quite enjoyed The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (a much-underrated film that I have really grown to like upon repeat viewings) and The Darjeeling Limited.  Despite my appreciation of those films, though, I had never sought out Mr. Anderson’s first film: Bottle Rocket.  There’s no particular reason for that — I wasn’t avoiding seeing it — it’s just a film that I never got around to watching.  But when the Criterion Collection (always known for their high-quality presentations of notable films) released Bottle Rocket on DVD last spring, I knew I had to take the plunge.

Bottle Rocket focuses primarily on the friendship between three young men: Anthony (Luke Wilson), Dignan (Owen Wilson), and Bob (Robert Musgrave).  The three guys — Dignan in particular — harbor aspirations of becoming master criminals.  When we meet them at the start of the film, though, they’re pretty hapless.

Bottle Rocket isn’t strong on plot, exactly.  That’s not to say that nothing happens in the film — quite a lot happens, actually.  But there isn’t really a strong dramatic through-line to the events — the movie feels more like a series of vignettes.  That hurts the pacing of the film somewhat, but adds to the naturalism of the story.  These three friends aren’t typical movie-heroes caught up in BIG DRAMATIC events.  They’re just sort-of hapless schmoes trying their best to figure out their own lives and find their way in the world.  And therein lies the movie’s charm.

The two Wilson brothers and Robert Musgrave all turn in strong performances — especially Owen Wilson, whose character of Dignan is a truly unique creation.  The great James Caan is also a lot of fun to see in his small role as Mr. Henry, the older local thief who Dignan idolizes.  I should also mention Lumi Cavazos who plays Inez, the South American maid with whom Anthony falls in love when the three boys go “on the lam” after a small book-store heist that they pull.

That “on the lam” story makes up the bulk of the middle of the film, and the time and attention that Mr. Anderson gives to that sequence is a great example of what I was describing earlier about the film’s sort-of bizarre pace.  One could argue that nothing of great consequence happens during the boys’ brief stay at that out-of-the way motel — in some ways, the sequence is a lengthy digression from the events of the rest of the film.  I will admit to getting a little antsy during this part, thinking to myself, “where is this going?”   But for Mr. Anderson, the devil, as they say, is in the teensy tiny details.  Not only in terms of his set design (where you can see the lavish attention to detail that would come to define his later work), but also in terms of the development of his characters.  True, nothing really EXCITING happens during this long middle section of the film — there’s nothing that would warrant inclusion in a typical Hollywood crime film.  And yet, within the normal, almost every-day events that Mr. Anderson captures of these few weeks in the lives of Anthony, Dignan, and Bob, there is a universe of small moments that reveal to us the characters of these three men — what they’re each looking for, and where they’re going.

That seems to be what interests Wes Anderson in this story — and luckily, his script (co-written with Owen Wilson) and his actors are all compelling enough to take the viewer along for the ride.

Bottle Rocket isn’t for everyone.  This is a bizarre, small film.  But I’m glad to have seen it, and it will sit proudly on my DVD shelf next to the rest of Mr. Anderson’s films.