2009 so far

As the summer movie season winds down (although some anticipated films remain this month, mainly Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds, Miyazaki's Ponyo and Chan Wook Park's Thist) and the more serious fall season begins, I figured it was time to look back at the year in film so far. This will also sort of make up for how lazy I've been with this thing all summer. I haven't seen as many films as I would have liked so far this year (somewhere around 25), and I still haven't gotten to many highly regarded releases, including Tetro and The Hurt Locker, but here's what I have seen.
Top 10 (yes, some of these, including the top two, are technically 2008 releases, but they weren't released anywhere near me until 2009 and I don't really care about that sort of thing
1. Hunger
A masterpiece where every motion is absolutely necessary and every little tic says something new about the characters and their situation. The long conversation in the middle is a stunning centerpiece and acts as the highlight of Michael Fassbender's masterful performance, but Steve McQueen's stunning debut has no weak moments.
2. Revanche
Gotz Spielmann's immaculately shot noirish drama features great performances from it's entire cast as the tension continues to rise until the properly ambiguous ending.
3. In The Loop
Simply put, this is the funniest film of the year and one of the funniest of the decade.
4. Tokyo
I think somewhat higher of this one now than I did at first, especially the section directed by Leos Carax. It seems funnier and more poignant having actually seen one of his features (the great Lovers On The Bridge). The other segments are also very strong.
5. 500 Days Of Summer
I normally hate romantic comedies and I have it this high. That should mean something to you.
6. The Limits Of Control
Jim Jarmusch's stunningly beautiful (courtesy of the great cinematographer Christopher Doyle), critically misunderstood film may go down as one of his finest.
7. Star Trek
Sure the plot is nonsense and the villain is weak, but I don't think I've had more fun at a movie this year
8. Watchmen (Directors Cut Only)
The theatrical cut of the film wasn't necessarily bad, but the characters really weren't as developed as they could have been and the editing seemed off. The director's cut, which adds 24 minutes of footage, almost entirely in early character moments, fixes a lot of this. Malin Akerman and Mathew Goode are still pretty bad, the music choices are still laughable and Snyder still can't create a good action sequences, but more of the comic is here, and that is necessary.
9. Moon
Duncan Jones' debut may try a bit too hard to emulate 2001 and Solaris, but this leads to some great visuals and a morally interesting tale anchored by Sam Rockwell's great performance.
10. District 9
The sudden and unexplained shift away from the documentary style of the first half is a problem, as the second half becomes more of a simple action movie (I understand that it was necessary for plot reasons, but if the first half was written that way, they should have kept it going), but it is a damn good action movie, so for now it makes the list.
HM: Adventureland, Brothers Bloom, Up, Bruno, Sin Nombre

Bottom 5
5. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
While it is not the worst film in the series, David Yates' second entry takes one of the better books and turns it into something that is, ultimately, too dull to work on its own.
4. Taken
I know that this sleeper hit isn't exactly the type of film designed for me, but I find it somewhat depressing that this type of film is designed for anyone.
3. Public Enemies
I have to give Mann credit for trying something different, but I just don't think it succeeds. The script tries too hard to both romanticize and humanize Dillinger, never giving us anything resembling a full character. Like Heat, he tries to create a full criminal world, but, for one reason or another, it just doesn't work this time (the lack of De Niro and Pacino in the main roles of course being one of those reasons). The photo-realist, docudrama style also prevents it from reaching the stylistic level of his best film shot in digital, Collateral.
2. Angels and Demons
I don't like Ron Howard. I don't like Dan Brown. If I had paid for this one (the projector in the movie I meant to see was broken, so we got free tickets to this one), I would have been even angrier.
1. Wolverine
My original opinion still stands. This film is completely worthless. It provides nothing new about the character except a series of shockingly dull action set pieces.
There were a lot of simply mediocre films I've seen this year, but none that really deserved to be here

Hunger

It's been a pretty decent couple of years for Ireland in film. First came the palm d'or winner The Wind That Shakes The Barley (a very good film, although it was the only English language film I've ever needed subtitles for), the the delightful musical Once and now, the best of the three, Steve McQueen's Hunger. This is the story of Bobby Sands and the hunger strike he organized at HM prison Maze in order to get IRA members treated as political prisoners. This is a brutal, uncompromising look at the strike, its causes and its effects. McQueen (I can't believe this is his real name) is a well-known, award-winning visual artist making his feature film debut here. The fact that the director is an actual artist is something you should keep in mind during this film. The framing on nearly every shot is clearly the work of a meticulous worker (while he doesn't take this to Kubrickesque levels, there are a couple shots, especially in the hallways of the prison that remind me of Kubrick). Playing Sands is Michael Fassbender, who has had a few small roles in the past, but nothing of this magnitude.
As the film opens, we see a man look into a mirror and wash off his bloody knuckles. We don't know who he is at the time, but we later find out that he is a guard at the prison. He isn't a terrible guy, but we see him do bad things. His final scene is one of the most disturbing I've seen in recent years, but that doesn't come for a while. After we see him go through his day, a new prisoner comes in and refuses to wear his uniform. He is marked as insubordinate, and is forced to strip naked (this movie is not at all shy about nudity) before putting on a blanket (it was part of an ongoing protest). He gets to his cell and discovers that his cellmate had been smearing his shit on the walls as part of another ongoing protest. He doesn't seem to mind, and eventually joins in, but soon the guards come to wash them off. This is where we first meet Bobby. They drag him, kicking and screaming, from his cell, cut his hair and make him into a bloody mess. Even though he is the main character, this doesn't happen until thirty minutes into the film, although nearly no dialogue had been spoken through that point. Next, we get a virtuoso sequence in which, following a small riot, the guards march the prisoners out, send them through a gauntlet of baton-wielding riot police and then have them cavity searched, on-by-one, by a guy who never takes off his gloves. A large part of this is done in one take. Bobby is brutally beaten for not allowing the guards to search him, and we see the psychological effects of this on the guard who is forced to hit him. We don't really sympathize, but it's something. Next, after another moment of shocking violence, we get the film's centerpiece. Bobby has decided to organize a hunger strike, but unlike failed ones of the past, he organizes it so that they will die if their demands aren't met. Bobby lays all of this out in a seventeen minute conversation with a priest played by Liam Cunningham. What makes this conversation so notable is that the entire 17 minutes is done in a single take where the camera never moves. This is supposedly the longest single take in any feature film. After this, we flash to a few weeks later, and we see Bobby whithering down. There is little dialogue near the end, but the physical transformation is tremendous. Fassbender does a fantastic job of expressing every little emotion and pain that he must go through. We know from the outset that Bobby dies, but the brutality of the whole thing is shocking. Did he really accomplish anything? Was he a martyr or a rabble-rouser just trying to start a civil war?
I don't know Bela Tarr's viewing habits, but if he watched this film I'm sure he was proud. The master of the long take's old joke that the 12 minute reel is a form of censorship seems to have been disproved (I'm not entirely sure how they did it). The 17 minute conversation, despite simply being a static camera focused on two men is one of the most charged and tense in recent years. it speaks mainly to the immense talents of the two actors, but also to the film around it. Before this take, there had been very little dialogue. In fact, I'd say at least 75% of the dialogue in the 90 minute film comes in this one take. It's so new and unexpected that we get dragged in and we never leave. The conversation switches between comic statements on the nature of the priesthood to questions of the morality of Bobby's actions with ease, and we completely buy it. Fassbender and Cunningham lived together for weeks, rehearsing 15-20 times a day, to be able to get everything just right, and its worth it.
Like The Wind That Shakes The Barley, this film may be a little to obvious in its politics. The use of Margret Thatcher sound-clips may be a bit over the top, but that film's biggest failing was its complete lack of humanization of the British. here' we know that the guard at the beginning probably isn't a bad guy, and the guard who beats Sands is distraught over it. It isn't much, but acknowledging the humanity of the other side is an important step to avoid seeming to flat and one-sided. The film's final moments have also drawn some criticism, with some saying that the final moments make him too much of a Christ-like figure, but that was set up from the beginning (his long hair and beard at the beginning are very reminiscent of The Passion), so I don't really mind. This film sets up McQueen as a filmmaker to watch and will hopefully draw attention to the issues in Ireland. Whatever side you're on, they aren't finished yet.
Rating (Out of ****): ****