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

A few months ago, I ranted about how the Academy's decision to expand the nominations for the Best Picture Oscar to ten was little more than a ratings-grabbing gimmick. With the 82nd annual award show coming next month, time has proven that my fears were justified. The inclusion of ten films in the running has done little to make the race more interesting; there is no question about what movie is going to win the top honors this year. Yet, seeing films like District 9 and Up nominated is undeniably intriguing. It proves that, in an ideal world, more nominations really would lead to a more interesting show.

That is why I wish to make a list of my own. It is by no means a definitive list, as I hardly saw every movie there was to see last year. Instead, take it as a humble suggestion of what the Best Picture nominees might look like if the Academy was truly interested in picking the ten best films of last year – without prejudice, pretension or any goddamn blue aliens.

Coraline is a rare breed – a kids' movie that will make parents want to leave the theater. That the film can be quite disturbing, however, is exactly what makes it so successful. Grappling with change as a child can often be a harrowing experience and Henry Selick's vivid fantasy captures every bit of the emotion that goes along with it. Coraline is not afraid to tap directly into the greatest fears children have and bring them to beautiful, exciting, horrifying life.

When the eponymous character begins to escape into a parallel dimension where her parents are more lively, attentive and fun, the visuals explode with warm, inviting color. It leaves no doubt as to why she would want to escape the dreary, decrepit reality of her life. Yet Coraline's doppelganger mother becomes increasingly fixated on keeping her in this fantasy world as it gradually degrades into something surreal and dangerous. The stop-motion animation in this film is impeccable – realistic and subdued when necessary, but more often vivid and expressionistic. It creates a fun ride, yes, but it also communicates considerable emotion.

Furthermore, the film provides the rare opportunity to see a strong girl as a protagonist. No prince sweeps Coraline off of her feet; she fights her own battles.

It may have been marketed as the successor to Superbad and its protagonist may only be four years older than those of that film but, Adventureland is a far more mature film. James (Jesse Eisenberg) has just graduated college and, unsurprisingly, is stuck at home without a job. It is not long before he is forced to lower his standards and apply to work at Adventureland, the local bargain-bin theme park.

There are numerous strange coworkers, belligerent customers and exchanges of dry banter, but this film slowly reveals depth that goes well beyond the territory of teen slacker comedy. Ryan Reynolds' character may seem like the typical mentor-in-debauchery, but the truth about him is far sadder and far more believable than such archetypes. James' workplace romance with a girl named Em (Kristen Stewart) is equally complex – she provides fleeting moments of respite from his life of unremitting disappointment. The moments where their relationship is working beautifully represent the restlessness and the stasis of suburban life with montages of flickering fluorescent light and serene nightscapes. Adventureland's characters, themes and setting are all bound so closely that they create an uncommonly authentic portrait of this unique stage of life.

Moon proves right the old cliche that says "less is more." Indeed, much of Moon is less – from its cast of essentially two to its cramped moon base setting to its extremely understated style. Making it any other way would have greatly diminished the power of its story.

It is the story, after all, of one man. Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is hired to manage a moon base alone for three years. We witness his day-to-day routine in this completely isolated home and then we witness his slow degradation. Moon, however, never takes the obvious route. When a second Sam appears in the base, it does not symptomize some crack in his psyche, even if he fears it might. A memorable sequence has Sam silently assess his double over a series of days, as he slowly realizes that he has not gone mad – he has met his clone. Thus begins the evolution of the relationship between Sam and Sam.

There are still elements of paranoia, deftly underplayed by director, Duncan Jones, but they focus on the mystery of clone Sam's origins. It results in a film that constantly defies expectation, even in a subgenre that regularly flounders in the shadow of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Yes, Jospeh Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel are an indie movie dream team, but that did not guarantee that their coupling would yield a great movie. 500 Days of Summer does not merely rise to this challenge, though – it breathes new life into the stale romantic comedy genre with a style that constantly innovates without ever feeling contrived.

Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber wrote a story that almost seems to take place in the head of Tom (Gordon-Levitt). It is a series of non-chronological moments from the course of his relationship with Summer (Deschanel). It allows the film to carefully explore how even the greatest romances can be, at once, thrilling and quite misleading. The highs are silly, funny and even breathtakingly beautiful. The lows are cryptic and often use clever editing to highlight their disparity with Tom's expectations. In the film's final act, things only become more chaotic as Summer's mysterious behavior becomes more difficult to understand. Fleeting moments from throughout their relationship flash by, and only toward the very end do they fully reveal their significance.

500 Days of Summer takes a unique look at romance and succeeds far beyond expectation. With there being no ground better-tred than romance, can praise get much higher than that?

The Harry Potter film series has not always been something worth watching. The fact that The Half-Blood Prince stands on its own as a great film, however, is a powerful indication of how far the series has come. For the first time, the series has imbued its nuanced fantasy world with vast emotional depth, proving that no franchise, no matter how trendy or profitable, has to settle for low artistic value.

Most people will know this story's tragic ending before they sit down, but that only enhances the film's powerful sense of tone. The wizarding world is becoming more dangerous by the day and Harry is fully aware of this. Excellent cinematography, deft direction and fine performances wring every conceivable drop of foreboding out of this story, even as the Hogwarts students sail ever-further into the silliness of adolescence. In fact, the film's numerous moments of comedy never clash with the overall tone; they, instead, throw the darker components into relief. When the giggling crowds of students fade into the grim shadows of Hogwarts' hallways for the final act, the burdens beset upon Harry, Malfoy and others are exposed as patently unfair.

I, for one, would never have expected this series to become as resonant as it has. Yet the efforts of an incredibly talented cast and crew – director, David Yates, in particular – have managed to elevate a childrens' fantasy story to something truly worthwhile.

The remaining five films will be presented this Saturday in Part Two.

"Harry Potter" and the Infinite Audacity of Its Filmmakers

To put it bluntly, this movie should not be this good. Paramount, with its summer cash cows, has proven that you do not need to make a great movie to keep the fans of a franchise happy. Yet, Warner Brothers insists on churning out summer spectacles that are strikingly innovative and complex. One could even argue that "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," an absolutely impeccable production, exposes how the Potter films' producers have infused the franchise with more genuine emotion and atmosphere than it really demands.

The Harry Potter films have always suffered from a bit of the old movie-adaptation-of-a-book syndrome. Easily the worst offender, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" had a woefully malformed script, courtesy of Steve Kloves. The movie sought to ride on the whimsy of its premise for an entire two and a half hours, as it meandered from episode to episode, ultimately arriving at a lame final act. Director, Chris Columbus was also to blame. He, in recent years, seems to be specializing in bland, tedious film adaptations of beloved franchises. ("Rent," anyone?) Harry Potter got a bit better when the vastly superior Alfonso Cuarón took over the chair with the third installment. Yet, the story still felt limp and Cuarón's work offered only the faintest echoes of his true talent.

Not until the fourth film, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," did this franchise become something worth taking seriously. With this film, writer Kloves finally found some semblance of dramatic structure within his source material. The result, despite some shaky performances, is one of the best Harry Potter films to date. The film benefitted significantly from the inherent structure that the Tri-Wizard Tournament provided, as well as the quickly rising stakes of the series' plot. The following installment continued on these strengths, despite marking Kloves' only absence from the series and the introduction of a fourth director, David Yates.

Now, with the latest film, Yates has solidified his role as the Harry Potter director. His work on the "The Half-Blood Prince" displays a versatility that allows him to develop J. K. Rowling's universe in all of its facets. He, for example, is the only director in the series who understands how to make wizard fight scenes worthwhile. His face-off between Harry and Malfoy is gritty and violent. He lingers on the ugly result, allowing its full impact on Harry to resonate. When there is an attack on the Weasley house, he uses the silence of the open fields surrounding it to its maximum dramatic effect.

Yet, action sequences are not this film's greatest strength. After the film's somber, emotional climax, Yates chooses to insert a silent shot of the empty Great Hall. It is a simple, but powerful summation of the profound damage that has been done.

This director has made an all-important realization: six films in, magic is no longer very magical. For Harry, every other wizard and even the moviegoer, most forms of magic have become commonplace. Yates is smart enough to treat them as such. Moments of whimsy are almost entirely absent from this film. The magic that is shown is violent, dark and disturbing – elements that are only revealing themselves to most of the characters now that Voldemort has returned. The magic is also, vitally, less abstract. Beams of light and puffs of smoke have been replaced with more tangible results like shattering glass and raging fire. The dangers of dark magic are becoming, in a word, real.

Professor Slughorn states, at one point, that "there can be no light without the dark." Yates fully grasps this, the film's prevailing theme. (The fact that there is a prevailing theme in this film shows how far Kloves' scripts have come.) More importantly, however, Yates understands the inverse of this maxim; "The Half-Blood Prince" never veers into the portentous, as it is often quite funny. Harry's misplaced sense of chivalry, as it appears when his crush approaches a dinner table, is presented with amusing, understated discomfort. Similarly, Ron's admirer digs her spoon into a table with hilariously rapt infatuation.

The fact that the cast never misses a beat certainly helps establish this dichotomy. Pointing out just how incredible Harry Potter's cast is has become cliched, but it bears repeating. Whoever is responsible for assembling it is responsible for an amazing feat of casting. To think that so many actors can do so well, so consistently over almost a decade, while half of them are going through puberty is downright mind boggling. Daniel Radcliffe has grown into quite the actor, as Harry continues to shed his meekness. Emma Watson has coiled Hermione into quite the little ball of tension. Alan Rickman remains undeniably brilliant, filling Professor Snape with as much droll hatred as ever. Even Tom Felton has come into his own, creating a deeply troubled Malfoy who displays all the self-imposed alienation of a school shooter.

The film's tone, however, is largely defined by the excellent cinematography of Bruno Delbonnel. From the bleak, high-contrast look of the subway station early in the film to the moonlit chiaroscuro of the climax, this film is rife with potent visuals that elevate it far beyond anything the series has seen thus far. Delbonnel's work stays true to what came before it, but lends newfound volume to these familiar settings. Dumbledore's study is still awash in warm candlelight early in the film but, at the end, it is lit only by pale, grey sunlight. Even the hallways of Hogwarts display astonishing visual range, intimately lit by red lanterns for a party midway through the film, but later, so cold and dark that students seem to be disappearing into the stone walls.

The beauty of the film's climax can hardly be overstated. Without Delbonnel's eye, the painful loss that these final moments portray would not have been nearly as powerful. The film's themes are imbued with such a profound level of sophistication through his photography that it transcends every other aspect of the film.

In fact, dare I say that it is too good? As I have already mentioned, these films are often burdened by their insistence on remaining extremely faithful to J. K. Rowling's novels. On one hand, this has blessed the films with an uncommonly detailed fantasy world. On the other, it seems to have forced a fundamental simplicity onto them.

As I admire the significant quality of this film's production, I cannot help but wonder what it all means. Harry Potter, as it happens, can always be boiled down to a simple, good versus evil story; what constitutes good magic and bad magic is never really challenged or complicated. Potentially fascinating areas are largely ignored, such as the wizards' relationship with the muggle world. Social relevance, symbolism and truly complex themes seem to be non-existent. It all lacks genuine meaning.

To be fair, I have not read any of the books recently. These deficiencies, however, seem so fundamental to the Harry Potter world that I cannot believe that they only came about in translation. This may seem like a serious criticism for a film I have praised so highly, but it is the film's very quality that exposes these flaws. This story is executed with such profound talent and devotion that it compels one to think deeply about it all. Sadly, Harry Potter does not seem to hold up to penetrating thought. It is, in all its complexity, still a mere kids' story.

The fact that I needed to realize such a thing after watching "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" is, ultimately, a testament to how great of a film it is. It takes a story that does not require sophistication and craft, and gives it just that. I sincerely hope that, in its final chapters, the quality of the film saga's ideas can measure up to the quality of its execution. Yet, if it fails to do so, I will not be terribly disappointed. The later Harry Potter films have truly been something to behold, with a vibrant world and wonderfully drawn characters; these films are already far better than one could have expected.