The Ten Best Films I Saw in 2009, a.k.a. Ten Reasons Why Avatar Does Not Deserve an Oscar (Part Two)

The first five films were presented this past Tuesday in Part One.

As a movie about the war in Iraq, The Hurt Locker was overdue, but it was decidedly worth the wait. Director, Kathryn Bigelow captures the tension, the ugliness and the aimlessness of the conflict by keeping her camera grounded and her characters adrift.

Presenting the war through the exploits of Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner) – the leader of an Explosive Ordinance Disposal unit – these themes are distilled into a series of intense standoffs. Watching James attempt to defuse homemade explosive devices is inherently dramatic, but Bigelow never overplays her hand. Instead of opting for overdone, ticking time-bomb scenarios, she spreads the fear evenly; the entire film is awash in an unremitting sense of latent danger. The villains are faceless specters; their motivations are never examined. It is never clear if anything is being gained through James' successes beyond a temporary reprieve from death.

James is burdened by these ambiguities on some level and, at one point, even attempts to find direction by seeking reprisal. Even he knows, however, that he is a man who thrives in the isolation of the battlefield, independent of concerns like morality. The Hurt Locker presents an Iraq suspended in space – a place where there is no up or down, just the task at hand. It makes this relatively bloodless war movie one of the most unsettling I have seen.

To say that Quentin Tarantino's films can often be challenging to watch is an understatement. Regardless of whether one is troubled by his self-indulgent tendencies or his indifference toward good taste, however, Inglourious Basterds will likely prove to be a hell of a lot more fun than his past films.

It helps that most of his sadism is directed at Nazis this time around. Tarantino milks the World War II setting for all it is worth, gleefully flouting historical accuracy to great effect, but still playing upon common knowledge of the period. Sure, we have seen assassination attempts on Hitler in films before, but has such a scenario ever been executed with such deft dramatic build-up as it is here? Hell no. Tarantino displays a newfound capacity for restraint in the lengthy standoffs that are this film's greatest strength.

Having Christoph Waltz play the villain helps, too. He is nearly as instrumental in creating the film's most intense scenes as Tarantino. His Colonel Landa is the sort of devilishly calculating villain that every Hollywood film wishes it has. He completely overshadows the film's Hitler, who becomes a caricature. Just about every character in this film, though, is entertaining in their own right – something to be expected from Tarantino. What is unexpected is that they populate a story free of pretension. Inglourious Basterds is a giddy, pulpy rewriting of history and, because of that, it is one of Quentin Tarantino's most successful works.

Paranormal Activity is 2009's Cinderella story – not merely because it was lucrative but also because it was a wake-up call for the horror genre. Oren Peli's concept was time tested: A couple is living in a potentially haunted house. His execution is brilliant in its simplicity: One location, two actors and a camera. The result is the rebirth of the classic nail-biter.

By sidestepping the humorless sadism of torture porn and the worn-out conventions of slasher films, Paranormal Activity rediscovers the soul of the horror genre. A majority of the film consists of a static, night-vision shot of a couple's bedroom and Peli uses this narrow perspective to tightly control what the audience knows. Fear, after all, is all about the unknown. Characters run offscreen forcing the audience to fear the worst for them, sounds ring out with no hope of revealing their source and various bizarre phenomenona are depicted with chilling detachment.

Limiting the scope of the film also allows it to closely follow the degrading mental state of the two characters. It drags the audience down with them. As the characters become more and more terrified of nightfall with each passing day, the audience comes to dread each successive bedroom scene more than the last. Peli does not merely trap the film's action in this house, he traps the audience within the narrative, making it impossible not to become emotionally involved. You will dread going to bed after seeing Paranormal Activity.

Leave it to Wes Anderson to make a kids' movie about a guy going through his midlife crisis. Fantastic Mr. Fox is a wholly unique experience – a mingling of a classic children's storytelling with one of the most idiosyncratic directors around. What makes it so great is that it does complete justice to both halves of its pedigree.

In this era of soulless CGI talking animals, a film made like Fantastic Mr. Fox was sorely needed. This film wears its rustic aesthetic on its sleeve, steeped in warm wood tones and autumn foliage. Every character looks as if the animator's hand has just left them, fur bristling with each movement. Such an authentic style is the perfect vehicle for a story about identity. This seamlessly fits in with Anderson's oeuvre, not only because Mr. Fox (George Clooney) is a close cousin of Royal Tenenbaum or Steve Zissou, but because Anderson's affinity for rigid framing and blocking easily translates to stop-motion animation.

Furthermore, Anderson's clever, rapid-fire dialogue is a welcome upgrade for a genre plagued by the obnoxious dichotomy of ham-fisted puns for the kids and glib double entendres for the parents. When talking animals can be made truly palatable, instead of merely tolerable, for adults, it is a promising step for American animation.

With A Single Man, Tom Ford manages to make tragedy beautiful. That is quite the achievement for a first-time director.

The film slips us into the mind of George Falconer (Colin Firth), a reserved college professor, as he contemplates suicide in the wake of his partner's death. His depression combines with the rigid superficiality of the 1960's to create a vivid study in emotional detachment. Ethereal sequences deconstruct the facades worn by various incidental characters feature by feature. It illuminates George's pain, as he savors every detail, prematurely mourning the loss of his own life.

Still, the film is anything but a slog. George is not humorless and neither is Ford. What could have been the grimmest sequence in the movie is easily one of the funniest and George's encounters with various characters show that he is not inclined toward misery. It means that, for all of George's detachment, the audience is consistently engaged with his emotions. This is a melancholy film – undeniably potent in its depiction of despair but, nevertheless, hopeful and invigorating.

If it were not for Eduard Grau's cinematography, these qualities would not have been quite as potent. His compositions carefully confine George's interaction with the world and his judicious use of color lend particular impact to George's fleeting moments of happiness. Far too often, dramas of such gravity lack a strong visual component, but A Single Man provides a truly immersive emotional experience.

2009 was an interesting year for film, and I believe this list represents it well. The combined revenue from all of these films probably pales in comparison to that of Avatar, but ambition and individuality are rarely awarded with popularity. The Academy has chosen to squander its chance at recognizing such valuable qualities. Fortunately, that hardly means that all moviegoers must do the same.

Gone, but Not Forgettable

With Avatar suddenly being called the frontrunner for this year's Best Picture Oscar, there are a number of small movies that are almost guaranteed to be sold short. One of them is A Single Man. The film may very well snag a nomination but, as we have previously discussed on this blog, that does not mean what it used to mean. The sad fact is that this introspective, character-driven movie is far too easy to overlook this award season – even if it is one of the best movies I saw in 2009.

A Single Man is Tom Ford's first film and, with it, the successful fashion designer has proven that his talents have a wide breadth. He has created an adaptation of Christopher Isherwood's novel that is mature both emotionally and technically.

George Falconer (Colin Firth) is a middle-aged college professor living in early ninteen-sixties California. Lost in the wake of the sudden death of his longtime partner, Jim (Matthew Goode), he has been floating through his life in a stupor. So, on this day in late November, he plans to kill himself. Ford's script, written along with David Scearce, leads us through the day slowly, intermittently providing flashbacks to George's past with Jim, but focusing on a number of encounters with other characters. There is the booze-addled Charley (Julianne Moore), an old friend of George's. There is the vanilla family that lives across the street. There is the young prostitute (Jon Kortajarena) that George encounters outside of a liquor store. Most predictably, there is also the student (Nicholas Hoult) who is fascinated by George. Each encounter serves to illustrate George's detachment, but also his desire to connect with another person.

It may all sound trite, but each relationship has its complexities and George is never quite as sullen as one would expect him to be. He is strangely fascinated with the people around him. He pores over every physical detail of the women he meets, seemingly searching for a crack in their thick armor of make-up, hair and couture. He buys time with the prostitute simply to have a conversation with him and coyly accepts a joking gift from the student. Charley seems to suit him best, though. She wears her armor ineffectually, letting her true self hang out – something a man who must remain mostly closeted has to admire. Yet, George is forced to maintain a certain distance from Charley, as her feelings for him run far deeper than they should. He is truly a man suspended in the world around him.

Ford's direction, aided by Eduard Grau's cinematography, conveys this surrealism ably. George lives in a house that features many, large windows, but when he is inside, the camera never sees past the walls of shrubbery surrounding it. When George peers outside to spy on his neighbors, he never shares the frame with them, creating such a disconnect that one almost wonders if the two scenes are taking place on the same planet. When he enters the outside world, its colors are noticeably desaturated, only fading in at certain moments. The technique is a bit conspicuous, but it is also beautifully cryptic. The blood suddenly returns to characters' faces and the world around them comes to life, creating fleeting moments that have no obvious connection to each other beyond providing a hint of what George is searching for.

At the core of it all, however, is a performance that is surprisingly honest. Colin Firth may play George as a reserved man, but he never lets the humanity leave the character. Even as he retreats to the furthest corners of George's mind, distant emotions play across his face. He is not afraid to let George be warm and lighthearted at moments and he does so without compromising the tragic nature of the character.

Yet, calling Firth's performance a highlight would be selling the rest of the film short. Tom Ford has created an entrancing film that uses images of considerable beauty to explore the depths of one man's grief. Always vivid but never contrived, this is one of those films that will leave you sitting through the credits, pondering its many emotional truths.

In the past few years, the Academy has made a point of giving recognition to films about gay characters. Brokeback Mountain and Milk made the orientation of their protagonists the overt source of the films' drama. A Single Man, however, has matured beyond that point. Being closeted is simply a fact of life for George, only underlying a greater sense of grief. Ford's film is far more interested in telling a story about one man than it is in distilling the struggles of an entire group of people. Because of this, I doubt that the Academy will be as quick to recognize the quality of the film. For many, that would be proof enough that this is a truly good film. They would be right.