Best Movies of 2009

So, 2009 was a fascinating year in the movies. It ended spectacularly with Avatar, with some light relief from In the Loop there in the middle, and so much fun with Funny People. Notice I deliberated didn't mention summer turkey Transformer 2. Oh balls, I did. With my eye on the Oscars and the Golden Globes (to be presented by our very own Ricky Gervais, pictured), here's my top flicks for the last year of the noughties....

1. The Hangover: Not quite as good as it could have been but nevertheless one of the most fun movies of the year, a Vegas caper tale with lots of hi jinks thrown in.
2. In The Loop : Malcolm "shouty bloke" Tucker wonders round Whitehall tearing his hair out at Minsterial incompetence, with the bonus of a stateside cast including James Gandolfini in the run up to a fictional war somewhere in the Middle East. Lots and lots of joyous, emphatic and wonderful swearing.
3. Avatar: Special effects extravaganza from James Cameron turned out to not suck despite looking like a giant turkey in the trailer. He didn't scrimp on the script either, and the result is probably going to be the biggest grossing movie ever, beating the record he set with Titanic.
4. Funny People: Surprisingly insightful character drama described as a comedy, with a bit of satire on Hollywood thrown in, all about a hit Hollywood comedian-actor, who's life is turned upside down when he is diagnosed with cancer. No, it's not depressing, but Judd Apatow is going to have to stop going over familiar ground soon......
5. State Of Play: Classy US remake of the brilliant BBC drama minseries, turning into a movie on the grand tradition of Washington-based political conspiracy movies.
6. Taking Of Pelham 123: Somewhat underrated by reviews, this actually didn't suck, and John Travolta made a pretty good, scary baddie.
7. The Wrestler: a bravura acting performance from a broken down ol' piece of meat.
8. The Damned United: Sheen Does it again, this time with a quip-perfect Brian Clough, in movie of Dave Peaces' novel about Ol Big Ed's disasterous spell as manager of Leeds United.
9. Up In The Air: George Clooney satirises his off screen persona in this recession comedy about an executive who loves corporate loyalty cards, air miles and travellling first class more than he loves people. Quite likely to win something in this awards season....
10. Frost/Nixon: Michael Sheen plays slippery, lightweight David Frost in out of his depth, in this Ron Howard directed flick that was described as being "Rocky" for journalists, giving "Tricky Dicky" the trial he never had.
11. Moon: Brillant throwback sci-fi movie, harking back to the likes of 2001, Blade Runner, Alien, and Dark Star, directed by Duncan Jones (son of David Bowie), and with a truly incredibly performance from Sam Rockwell, who carries a whodunnit/ghost story/character drama. Totally different from anything else that came out this past year, and refreshing for it.

I also enjoyed Star Trek, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Gran Torino and District 9. My money's on Up In The Air, The Road, Up, and perhaps Inglourious Basterds. I'm also now realising that there's a distinct lack of foreign movies in my list, something I shall endevour to rectify this year! Anyway, best of luck, especially to Ricky Gervais with presenting the ceremony tomorrow, despite the fact that The Invention Of Lying sucked....

Best Films of 2009: The Hurt Locker (Dir. Kathryn Bigelow)

The Hurt Locker is the most recent attempt at capturing events in the current US / Allied occupation of Iraq, following the toppling of Saddam Hussein from power in 2003. Depicting war is a tricky and difficult task, always raising questions of authenticity: It takes years, sometimes decades, for an accurate appraisal of the war as a political, moral and historical event, and perhaps we're too close to events in this recent middle east altercation to really get to the truth.

What I've been hoping for, if I'm honest, in relation to this current conflict, is an angry portrayal of  it as the poorly thought-out, badly executed, and morally vacuous action it is, leading to the death of over 100,000 Iraqis. It would be good to finally see the implicating of political leaders like Bush and Blair as power-hungry Neo-Con meglomaniacs, and the true motivation being a cash bonanza for oil companies and defence contractors, the old military-industrial complex that was at fault for Vietnam, not the non-existent "weapons of mass destruction".

The Hurt Locker isn't that movie. One of last year's most critically acclaimed movies was written by freelance writer Mark Boal, who spent time emedded in an American bomb disposal squad in war-torn Iraq. The result is a mixture of action thriller and cinema verite. It follows a bomb disposal unit as they are sent out each day to diffuse bombs, praying to come back intact, and counting each minute until make it to the end of their tour of duty. When their much admired leader (a brief, excellent cameo from Guy Pearce) dies on a disposal mission, Lt James (Jeremy Renner, pictured above) is drafted in to take over as their leader and disposal expert. But James is unstable, and rather than wanting to stay alive, he's a "wildman", more intent on going for glory, and living off the heady intoxication of enemy contact, and the dangers of being blown up. His wreckless ways put him at odds with his team, and Sgt JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) in particular, as they put themselves at risk with each mission, coming closer and closer to death each time.

While there are stabs at putting the actions of these aggressive, macho grunts in a political context (Lt James arrives to base to discover it has changed names from Camp Liberty to Camp Victory), it is the madness of humanity in these insanity-inducing conditions that becomes the point of focus, the kind of stuff well-captured in Apocalypse Now. War is seen as a dangerous lark for boys, an exciting rush, "fun", as one soldier calls it on the one hand, but the reality of constant fear, mistrust of every foreign face, and death is never far away. It's a disturbing but exhilerating experience, and the attention to detail by Boal and Bigelow is to be applauded, as the personalities of the actors ring true as they clash, as risks are taken, tempers fray, and people die.

However, The Hurt Locker ends in an unsatisfactory manner for me, incomplete, one that would not satiate the publics' desire for a jingoistic action thriller, nor mine for a moral inventory of the conflict. Having said that, it's the most compelling, authentic portrayal of the Iraq war and its' aftermath to date, to be viewed as experiential rather than moral, and for that reason, it warrants viewing, and if predictions are to be believed, it's certainly worth watching out for at this years' Oscars.

Hack Rating: 3.5/5

The Hurt Locker - Trailer
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The Movie Premiere Of The Year : AVATAR

Some movies come with a bit of hype. This one comes with so much, you might think it was the second coming of Christ. Well, sort of. But after seeing the trailer for the James Camerons' new movie Avatar, it looks like it might actually justify the hype.

Cameron is the director that bought us Aliens, the second movie in the Alien quadrilogy, and considered by name critics to be the best. Add to that the first two Terminator movies, and the enourmous commercial success of late 90s Winslet/Decaprio vehicle Titanic, and you have a master of big budget, visual extravaganzas.

Avatar is his first venture into directing since Titanic, with a whopping budget of $200 million dollars, and the prospect of it being shown in 3D in some theatres. The movie will make use of a modern version of motion capture techniques similar to those used by Robert Zemekis in The Polar Express, and the director, who originally wrote an 80 page script for the film back in 1994, has insisted he had to wait until now for the technology available to be true to his artistic vision. As well as being visually stunning, and full of action, Cameron,  will be exploring themes of the kind that made his previous movies such a special combination of action and thought-provoking sci-fi. From what you can see in the trailer, the movie can be viewed as a metaphor for American Imperialism, and a comment on man's greed and the current climate crisis, as humans seek to mine a planet with precious mineral resources, intending to infiltrate and kill the native population who stand in their way, as he explained earlier this year at Comic Con 2009, "the humans in the film, even though there are some good ones salted in, represent what we know to be the parts of ourselves that are trashing our world and maybe condemning ourselves to a grim future.". It's also refreshing to have a central character in Australian Sam Worthington (last seen in Terminator Salvation), who is wheelchair bound, playing a marine called Jake Sully who has been wounded in combat on Earth. While this all sounds great, and the trailer looks good, let's hope it's a triumph of moviemaking, and not a hilarious big budget turkey in the vein of Battlefield Earth or The Postman.



Official Avatar Movie

London Film Festival Roundup

As the 53rd London Film Festival winds up today, it announced the winner of it's inaugural Best Film award to be french prison flick Un Prophete (starring Tahar Rahim, pictured), which follows the story of a young Arab man who ends up spending six years behind bars. The forthcoming adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's post apocalypic novel The Road, which stars Viggo Mortsensen and Charlize Theron was also shown at the festival, was also singled out, recieving praise from a jury which included Angelica Huston and Jarvis Cocker.

Best British Newcomer went to Jack Thorne (formerly a writer on Channel 4 program Skins), the screenwriter responsible for coming of age story The Scouting Book For Boys.

Tonight, the closing night, includes a showing of Nowhere Boy, a biopic about John Lennon's childhood, and his difficult relationship with his aunt aunt and mother, as well as his friendship with a certain Paul McCartney. The movie stars David Morrisey and Kristin Scott-Thomas.



This year's Festival has been bigger than ever, screening over 200 films, with appearances by the likes of George Clooney, the Coen Brothers, John Hurt (who was awarded a BFI fellowship), and Bill Nighy, as well as a host of newcomers. On receipt of the award, Hurt told journalists, "For me, the BFI is the heart of British cinema," Hurt said. "I consider it the highest honour possible to be awarded a Fellowship."

The All New A-Team

However unlikely it may be that the remake lives up to the original, the first press images of next years' A Team movie have been released (click the piccie to get up close and personal). Starring Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper (from the Hangover, reviewed below), Quinton Jackson and Sharlto Copley (District 9), shooting for the movie got underway last month, and the team, who, as you may remember, escaped from a maximum security stockade while under arrest for a crime they didn't commit, will be joined by Jessica Biel. It remains to be seen if B A Baracus will forced to get in a plane, but chances are, he probably will, though writer Michael Brandt has suggested a less camp, more serious, character driven movie, referencing The Bourne Identity, Die Hard, and Casino Royale. Watch this space.

FlashForward

Ahhh, autumn, autumn. The leaves are going brown and falling from the trees, the days are shorter and colder, it's back to school and college for many of us, and the festive hat trick of Bonfire night, Halloween and Xmas awaits. Oh, and everyone is indoors, huddled around their TVs to enjoy a packed autumn schedule, which , aside from the X-Factor and Strictly, this year once more bring us another raft of big US TV dramas. This time it's Generation Kill (C4) from the makers of The Wire, ultra-cool vampire series True Blood (C4), Stargate Universe (Sky 1), with the return of much loved series Heroes and Lost to follow next year.

Then there's FlashForward, a new series premièring on Monday nights on Channel , which is based on a 1999 novel by Canadian writer Robert J Sawyer who devised the show along with co-creator David Goyer (writer of The Dark Knight, and Blade: The Series, amongst other things), and and Brannon Braga (24). The major league pedigree is complete with a cast which includes top notch British actors, as usual, this time in the form of Joseph Fiennes who plays FBI agent and recovering alcoholic Mark Benford, his wife Olivia (Sonya Walger, an escapee from Lost), somewhat bizarrely, Jack Davenport, best known to older viewers as posh toff Miles from ground breaking nineties drama This Life, and more recently the Pirates of The Caribbean movies. With American John Cho (last seen rolling an enormous joint as Harold in the Harold and Kumar movies), and, somewhere in the first season, an appearance by former Hobbit and hairy-faced Mancunian Dominic Monaghan also in the cast, the list of vaguely familiar faces is complete.

The show is clearly a contender hoping to follow in the footsteps of the televisual behemoth that is the ratings and critical success of Lost, and as such, it is centred around a “high-concept” premise ; everyone in the world has blacked out for precisely 2 minutes and 17 seconds, with many experiencing a dream like vision, which turns out to be a “Flash Forward” to where they will individually find themselves 6 months from now, at 10pm on 29th April 2010. Such an inscrutable mystery poses countless questions, which will no doubt be strung out over countless episodes with not much resolution and more questions than answers. Thankfully, frustrated fans of Lost will be glad to know that the makers promise it will be nowhere near as convoluted as the show it hopes to replace in their affections.

In the early shows, we have already found that the central character of Mark Benford has envisioned his descent back into alcoholism, the collapse of his marriage, and his future role as an investigator of the mystery posed by these visions. As the FBI officers struggle to make sense of the ensuing global crisis, they have set up a website, Mosaic, for people to describe and compile their visions, to see if they correspond. Meanwhile, Marks' surgeon wife Olivia is disturbed to find the man with which she has had visions of having an affair walk into the hospital where she works, and Benfords' partner Dimitri (Cho) is troubled that he has no visions at all : in this future, is he alive? Are these visions of the future “real”? And who is the mysterious man clad in black, caught on CCTV walking through a baseball stadium in Detroit, while all around him, and the world over, everyone else has blacked out?

Flash Forward continues on Mondays, 9pm on Five.

'The Hangover' Review

Another bromance movie following in the Hollywood tradition of recent years, The Hangover stands at the crossroads between 2 hollywood genres - the "what stays in Vegas" movie, and the road trip movie, as 4 male friends go away for a weekend of pre-wedding debauchery, but end up losing the groom and the plot. Indeed director and co-writer Todd Phillips' first feature was in fact 2000's Road Trip, and his second was the hilarious 'Old School', and it particularly shares the latters theme of misbehaving buddies old enough to know better.

The girls are an afterthought, either villains, super bitches, or sweet caring and perfect like Heather Graham's hot stripper/mom. But the accusations of mysogyny are missing the point. This movie's not about the girls, but the friendships between the dudes.

If the territory is familar, the execution is not without its' charms. In particular, the charming weirdness of Alan, Tracy's brother, with his fat Jesus appearance and his sweet, innocent yet insane personality (Zach Galifianakis) a counterpoint to the worldly cool of Bradly Cooper's Phil, and geeky dentist Stu (played by Ed Helms). These 3 musketeers spend most of the movie trying to piece together what happens the night before (when Zach's character accidently slipped them all a date rape drug instead of Ecstasy), which somehow involves a real life tiger, an actual baby, a missing family heirloom/wedding ring belonging to Stu, and the mysterious disappearance of their friend and husband-to-be Doug (Justin Bartha).

As road movies go, The Hangover is a fun ride, hitting all the right notes with such fun ingredients, including a cameo from an air-drumming Mike Tyson, but the film never quite lives up to its' potential, and is likely to provoke laughter among the more literal-minded American viewers at which it is aimed, as the US reviews of this movie largely confirm. For the more discerning British viewer, however, some goofy ingredients like a tiger, a hooker with a wedding ring and date rape drugs will not compensate for the hit and miss humour of the movie, and a slight shortage of wittier banter or richer characterisation. For me, Phil isn't enough of a bastard, Stu isn't enough of a dork, and Alan could be just a touch weirder - in the directors' similar former movie Old School, the characters played by likes of Owen Wilsion, Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn are just bigger and brasher, making for more fun.

The Hangover, then ; like a great breakfast with some awesome ingredients after a great, messy night out, only slightly undercooked.

Hack Rating 3/5