Shutter Island 
2010 / Martin Scorsese > Something happened to Scorsese between Goodfellas and Casino. He stopped demanding more of the viewer, started catering to a lower common denominator and/or became too complacent with his storytelling. For a film to work, the technicals need to match the fundamentals and aesthetics. They don't always need to be in equal parts, but if one fails, the others get dragged down hard. In the case of Shutter Island, a darkly beauteous approach to classic Hitchcock horror, the director of Taxi Driver becomes satisfied with an ending that's not only predictable but has become almost expected in this day and age. It takes a lot more than a question of morality and human conscience that surrounds the finale to quench the thirst for a good film.
Daybreakers 
2010 / Michael Spierig & Peter Spierig > Daybreakers starts out strong with a focus on creating atmosphere, context and a scientific approach to how vampires come to rule Earth, and then quickly teeters into a banal action clone that misses out on a chance to be a science fiction classic because of its shortsightedness.
Avatar
2009 / James Cameron > From a historical perspective, the positives for Avatar far outweigh the negatives. Cameron's technology is incredible: Often during action sequences, I was wondering if the make-up would come off in the heat, only to realize that, no, this wasn't make-up, that this was a new generation of CGI that would change the way we create and experience movies for the the next decade. Throw in the vibrant, imaginary setting of Pandora and you have a world ripe for the picking. But then comes the story, the characters and the barrage of cliches. One could argue that a tried and true story can be made better with refinement, but I'll argue that even in that, this film fails. The writing is tragically bad at times ("I see you!"), and the supporting players are ridiculous caricatures. If in doubt, seek no further than the element of interest in the film: Unobtainium. If that doesn't give away to the fact that someone, somewhere down the line forgot to do some quality checking on the script, I'm not sure what will.
The trick with Avatar, though, is this: I'm grateful for it. Some consider The Abyss to be the test vehicle for Terminator 2, and that to be a test vehicle for this. But given its lack of maturation in the storytelling department, I can't tell you how excited I am to see what Cameron does with his upcoming Battle Angel. Technology allows filmmakers to provide instant gratification to viewers. But you need a story for a film to be memorable, for it to age well. The Matrix is shockingly corny now, and I have little doubt that Avatar will also fail to hold up in the annals of time, box office receipts be damned. Its legacy, however, will be carried forth by the technology and all the cinema that will be founded on it.
Special Edition: Forty for the Aughts
Accident 
2009 / Soi Cheang > Easily the most accessible film Cheang has made in the latter half of the decade, Accident is a cryptic piece about assassins who construct seemingly random chains of events to do their dirty deeds. On the outside, the package is filled with the kind of polish meant for a classy thriller, but underneath the hood, the focus is really about self-paranoia, or rather, when your business is making illusions, at what point does your reality cease to exist? Produced by Johnnie To, the film also acts as a showcase for Louis Koo’s acting abilities. After a career of being a slighted pop performer, he’s really starting to carve out a name for himself as Hong Kong’s go-to frontman (also see Election 2 and Overheard). Accordingly, Cheang also continues to impress with fresh, genre-hopping efforts similar to fellow countryman Edmond Pang that gives quite a bit of hope to the future industry of the country that brought us both John Woo and Wong Kar-Wai.
The Box
2009 / Richard Kelly > As a kid, I was pretty obsessed with classic Twilight Zone episodes. They were all about possibility and imagination, about the world that may be out there without us knowing. Kelly, after his commercial fuck-up in Southland Tales, pastes on Cameron Diaz and brings forth The Box, which, in the most positive way possible, is a feature length version of a 1950s Twilight Zone episode. With a bigger budget allowing for a fully realized and more refined production process, the film allows us to enter the mindset of mid-century America with fears of the Cold War. Except, of course, there are more sinister things in the air than Communists. There's some level of campiness involved here, no doubt, but if one can accept that as part of the experience, this is an unpretentious sci-fi treat not often found in today's cinema.
Moon 
2009 / Duncan Jones > When it comes to modern science-fiction, there’s nothing worse than predictability. Problematically, science-fiction, in itself, is a derivative art. It takes into effect what’s already around us and extrapolates those objects and ideas into the future. Unfortunately, cinematic conventions are often one of those things. You can argue that much of the last decade’s laziness can be attributed to the endings of The Usual Suspects and The Sixth Sense. Their success pigeonholed lesser-known directors into formulas that were known to work. This has led to a barrage of films, including many in the science-fiction genre, to become innocuous, even lame.
Once upon a time, someone told me the reason they loved Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was because it infused everything that Chinese cinema had been built on for the last half-century and refined it into one final product. And so enters Duncan Jones, mimicking that approach of Ang Lee and creating Moon as a appreciative hurrah for the genre. In the process, he does one thing very, very well: Playing with expectations. Everytime I thought I knew what was going on, one of two things happened: It didn’t, or it happened immediately instead of at the end as a final twist. Without going into plot details, Sam Rockwell has a run-in with another Sam Rockwell early in the film. Who is the second Sam Rockwell? Even if you think you know, you don’t. And that’s the beauty of it.
Aside from Jones, Rockwell stands out as one of the best performances of the year. He won’t get an Oscar nod, but cultists will appreciate this work for a long time to come. Add in Clint Mansell’s techno-tragic soundtrack and newcomer Gary Shaw's awesome cinematography, and you have the recipe for one of the best films of 2009.
Mary and Max
2009 / Adam Elliot > Elliot got on the radar screen with an Oscar for his oddball, tragic figure of Harvie Krumpet in 2003. This, his feature debut, stars a core cast of Toni Collette and Philip Seymour Hoffman, the latter especially nailing his part as a middle-aged man with undiagnosed Asperger’s living in New York in the mid-70s. The former, a pre-teen girl lacking friends and beauty, becomes his penpal from the suburbs of Melbourne. And that’s where normalized expectations take a nosedive. The story has a lot of minor twists and turns, mostly idiosyncratic, running the thin line between quirkdom and absurdity. Had it remained a simpler story that ended in the finality of eventual happiness, it would have wasted its build-up with a sort of banal comedown. But Elliot hits a couple of heartstrings in interpreting his opinion of those who “suffer” from Asperger’s (and subsequently, a lot of other similar perceived ills): Never assume they are worse off than you, and never assume they need your help. Elliot drives this simple message home without insulting the viewer, and for that alone, the man (as well as his film) should be commended.
The Damned United
2009 / Tom Hooper > Contrary to most expectations, this isn’t about Manchester United. It’s about the United that used to be the talk of the show before Alex Ferguson paid off the referees: Leeds. Starring Michael Sheen, whose performances in The Queen and Frost/Nixon has made me believe he’s one of the most under-appreciated actors of today (even after discounting Underworld), The Damned United tells the story of Brian Clough, a cocky, hot-headed manager who takes Derby County and Nottingham Forest to the highest levels of football. The whole show is completely and utterly enjoyable, especially if you’re appreciate the competitiveness present in professional sports. The interplay between Sheen and his fellow actors, including an especially swell performance by Timothy Spall (of Wormtail in Harry Potter/ fame) is especially touching. Walking away, it does feel a bit too neat at the end. Hard to fault Hooper for his choice of time period to portray, but some things (like Clough leading Nottingham Forest to back to back Champions League wins) feel too important to leave out at the same time.
Zombieland
2009 / Ruben Fleischer > Two things in short: Yes, it’s fun to watch, and the cameo is absolutely fantastic. The best in movies since Tropic Thunder. And no, it’s not as good as Shaun of the Dead. That film was ingenious, blending the zombie genre with a type of self-heckling comedy that created something memorable. Instead, Zombieland holds the handrails a bit too close, never really flourishing beyond a louder version of what’s already been done. For that, it maintains its own ground though never matching the charm of Simon Pegg’s vehicle.
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
2009 / Michael Bay > I’ve been suckered: I was told there was no story, that it was a bunch of explosions, that they exploited Megan Fox’s body. Well, it’s not like I was lied to: It really is based around explosions, not to mention very strategic placement of Megan Fox and her navel. But both of those points simply added to my enjoyment. As for no story? That’s a bit harsh. It had more story than the original, and decent enough in its own right that I wouldn’t fault it. It’s Transformers 2. Directed by Michael Bay. Who, I’m convinced now more than ever, is the most brilliant director in Hollywood today when it comes to making stuff explode. I liked Bad Boys, even the sequel, and I loved The Rock. All snobbishness aside, you can’t help but respect the man for his vision and ability. What he does is not easy to do, regardless of what the perception may be. Remind me the last time you saw something like Devastator climb the Pyramids of Giza. That doesn’t happen overnight. If I was Egypt, there are probably two directors in the world I'd let film there: One is Steven Spielberg, and the other is Michael Bay. And folks, that's some massive street cred. What'll be blown up next in Transformers 3?
Gigante
2009 / Adrian Biniez > Garnering quite a bit of love at the Berlinale this year, Biniez’s debut is definitely one of the more light-hearted approaches to the loner’s guide to stalking and potentially getting the girl. Thematically, you expect dark twists in these films, because, let’s face it, that’s what we’re used to, and sometimes that’s the kind of tragedy that satiates our yearning for heartache. But while the approach here is definitely fresher, I can’t help justify it as a feature-length film. It didn’t click for me as I would have expected, even though I liked most of the ideas present. The problem may be that I didn’t need sixty minutes of character development because you could tell in the first ten minutes what kind of a guy we were dealing with. This is also, in many ways, the absolute antithesis to Observe and Report, and while it had potential, it lacked any sort of real hook for further appreciation.
Blood: The Last Vampire 
2009 / Chris Nahon > Tragically boring. When you’ve got the confluence of vampires, live-action anime and Korean megastar Jeon Ji-Hyun’s English-language debut, you expect at least something. Not necessarily storytelling or character development, but at least lots of awesome fights and maybe some skin. But there too, Blood fails. What a terrible intro to Gianna Jun (as she’ll be known stateside), who gained much of her fame through her hard-knock, lovable lead in the rom-com sensation My Sassy Girl. The lack of adequate roles for well-known Asian actresses continue to leapfrog their abilities, and unless you count Gong Li’s serviceable turn as a half-Chinese, half-Cuban drug-mama in Miami Vice, the category continues to remain empty and shameful.
Breathless 
2009 / Yang Ik-joon > Raw, brutal and absolutely beautiful. When the star/director Yang came out and said, “Fuck the Korean film industry,” he meant it. Since 2005, Korean cinema has forgotten what made it so fantastic. It dared to do things global cinema was failing at. Whether it was the entirely unconventional roots of Shin Ha-kyun’s alien catcher in Save the Green Planet, the magical romance in My Sassy Girl or the twist of a lifetime in Oldboy, it’s been a long time since the country’s put forth anything worthy of conversation. Well, this is it: Not since Gary Oldman’s underappreciated Nil by Mouth have we seen domestic violence treated with this kind of uncompromising passion. And while passion may not seem like a word to describe a film of unabashed violence, it’s hard to argue that the violence of man is founded on a kind of ignorant, blind intensity that leads him to do things that don’t always make sense. Sometimes he doesn’t understand it himself until it’s too late. Breathless is that kind of film, where things happens as you would expect them to, no holds barred. It's anger is saddening but organic. There is no sentimentality, just the force of raw energy that devours all of us. The heart stirs immensely in this one, and if it doesn’t, I’d be hard pressed not to send you to the doctor to make sure you’re still ticking.
Mammoth
2009 / Lukas Moodysson > Did Inarritu ghost-direct this? It's got Babel-lite all over it. The whole thing is so predictable, so messy, so amateur, I'm frankly a bit troubled. Maybe Moodysson just wanted to try his angle at the liberal apology for globalization, but this is too shallow and too simplified. As much as I hated A Hole in My Heart, I'd prefer see more risky endeavours than this kind of mediocrity.
Overheard 
2009 / Felix Chong & Alan Mark > Every Hong Kong filmmaker now has to take into effect mainland China’s demands the righteousness of mankind, whether it be the clutches of morality or the dearest of cultural sensitivities. If they didn’t, the single largest portion of their box office receipts go out the door. And because of that, we’re back to adjusting for the 21st century’s version of the Hays Code all over again. Earlier this year, the guys behind Infernal Affairs (i.e., the basis for The Departed) released Lady Cop & Papa Crook after a six month delay because of disagreements with the Chinese censors. Critics bashed it. Lesson learned: If the bad guys can’t win, make sure somehow everyone loses. In Overheard, Chong and Mak make sure that they can utilize this technique into fitting their vision into China’s demands.
The problem is this, however: The tone of the film never becomes concrete. Thematically, we don’t know what the focus is. It starts off being a wiretapping thriller that turns into a morality dilemma for cops. That’s fine, but then we’re thrown into some reactionary revenge sequences. As it happens, vengeance isn’t always necessary or appropriate, even if the audience wants it. And if the actual act of vengeance isn’t satisfying, then it isn’t worth putting forth to begin with. Tricky, yes, but the Chinese censorship dilemma has forced directors and writers to into a corner from which they'll have to climb their way through. This may have been one of the best efforts at it, but there's still some way to go.
20th Century Boys: Chapter Two - The Last Hope
2009 / Yukihiko Tsutsumi > We've established that Japan's incapable of making a proper blockbuster by looking at the treatment the first chapter received, and now that the second chapter's here, there's no need to beat that dead rabbit again. But there's another dead rabbit worth beating, however: Some comics, mangas and books are theoretically unfilmable. They're considered so because most minds can't grasp how such works should be portrayed on the screen. In these cases, the director needs to have an innate understanding of not only the work in question, but also the intent of the author as well as a personal vision and style that doesn't deviate from the aforementioned intent. And that doesn't happen often, otherwise we wouldn't be hellbent on panning so many adaptations that've peeped through Hollywood's budget books over the years. But two examples that pop-up instantly in my mind are Michael Winterbottom's Tristam Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story and Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Both utilize different angles of approaching classic works in transforming them into something magical. You could make the argument in each case it was not necessarily the technology that was lacking, but the imaginations. To add further fuel to the fire, consider the creativity that went into Fritz Lang's Metropolis, a grand gesture of the cinematic medium even before sound arrived!
Tsutsumi just hasn't done that. Chapter Two is confusing, with terrible pacing and mediocre acting. Even the few dubbed dialogues in Thai aren't synced properly! The show's a bloody mess, and really, what more can you expect from a manga that jumbles back and forth, each time letting small pieces of information flow through the storyline. Another thing that's missing is the sense of scope that the manga provided. Compared to the dystopian vision that Naoki Urasawa intended, the recreation here is childish and almost laughable to the point where the whole plot seems ridiculous. But the manga finds ways to make you believe, and that, above all, leads the movie into a realm of failure. All of this, sadly, I still attribute to terrible production value. In the right hands, this is a masterpiece. But here, it's just box office fodder.
500 Days of Summer
2009 / Marc Webb > This started out well. I can understand the premise of a so-called serious story about how relationships are in the real world. Hollywood doesn't produce real world stories because they don't sell tickets. Though frankly, they don't sell tickets because Hollywood isn't particularly good at telling real world stories. In that regards, it was with great excitement that I approached 500 Days of Summer, which seemed to be slowly taking the world by storm (as it sits at #116 on the IMDb 250 right now). A small, independent romantic dramedy doing well is something to cheer for. But for me, it just doesn't stack up.
The biggest epidemic in independent film continues to be quirkiness for the sake of quirkiness. Form fails to follow function, and we end up with a bunch of silly side-effects that don't necessarily move the story or create a certain mood. The boardroom scene, for example: The speech was bad enough, but his friend's reaction? Ten times worse. That's a film groveling to its audience, saying, "I know this is what I'm about so far, but just in case you don't like it, we also have some silly, stereotypical characters who will make you laugh by doing silly things!" That's lazy, and honestly, disappointing. Throw in the whole expectations vs. reality sequence, and you've got it tailor-made for emotional manipulation.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt is as exciting an actor there is in my generation. Walloping this into the group with Mysterious Skin, The Lookout and his work on Third Rock from the Sun exposes his obscene range. On the other end of the spectrum is Zooey Deschanel, who continues to waste her abilities by taking the most banal of roles. If you think she's two-dimensional in this, you probably shouldn't watch Gigantic either. The poster girl for the modern hipster female desperately needs to outgrow her peculiarities. Someone get her a role where she plays something other than the girl that every geek wants to get with.
All this being said, I do respect the film for trying to bring a certain feel to the masses. It slipped (quite a bit, in fact), but the direction is good. Hannah Takes the Stairs will never be mainstream, and sadly neither will Chungking Express, but if the story of heartbreaks is going to get bought on Blu-ray (and maybe even get an MTV Movie Award nomination), Webb may be one of the guys to lead the way. And while it doesn't sound like it, such a feat would deserve accolades.
La Dolce Vita 
1960 / Federico Fellini > Movies about one's own person, as to say how a person matures, even in older age, how one adjusts to aging itself, how to basically understand life and one's position in that life, these are notions that have been tackled over and over in cinema. Such a view of humanity is usually inspected in a smaller scope, observing the nuances and tackling singular topics. But more often than not, this lack of scope leaves too many gaps from the palette of life's emotions.
Fellini, though, captures everything in La Dolce Vita. There are no other ways to describe this than with the kind of love and admiration one has for the medium itself, and how glad I am to have finally witnessed the kind of work that makes watching cinema a necessary part of life. It's as if Holden Caulfield grew up and just happened to be Italian. From head to toe, the superficial glitter slides off to always reveal a piece of the puzzle. The world around him seems to be a joke, but at the end, nobody's laughing. When you're not laughing, is it because the joke wasn't funny? Or is it because the joke's on you?
Observe and Report
2009 / Jody Hill > Been a few months since I saw this, yet I still haven't fully digested it. I know that I respect it for its guts without escaping into a sensationalist romp. It walked on the border of exploitation so many times but never crossed it, and regardless of how one feels about the violence and the probable yet peculiar plot devices, Hill's got me interested in seeing whatever he may direct next. Observe and Report has the unusual achievement of leaving me with a gleeful smile for the future of the human race—not because of the typical melodramatic hope that pervades the movies but because of the sheer raw energy of Seth Rogen's character and the way it makes him so damn human.
Serbis
2008 / Brillante Mendoza > Premiering at Cannes in 2008, Serbis drew a lot of controversy for its explicit sex sequences and—wait for it—boil popping visuals (you'll have to see it to know what I mean). And in 2009, Mendoza scored a coup for the Philippines by taking home the best director prize from the same festival for his follow-up Kinatay. The world can thank him for two simple aspects of his style seen in this movie: He shows a part of his country that most don't know about, as a family in Angeles struggles to survive by running a theatre running heterosexual pornography for a homosexual clientele. And more interestingly, he approaches this culture with a kind of hands-off, natural viewpoint that feels neither forced nor sensational. There are scenes in the film that initially contain shock value, but over a complete run-through, the whole thing works surprisingly well. As my introduction to Filipino cinema, I feel fairly confident that we've only scratched the surface. But if this is any indication of what's to come, the industry should have a brighter future. Its colonial history and the Marcos "reign" along with its positioning in the current globalization climate gives it access to stories that maybe only Thailand can rival.
Watchmen
2009 / Zack Snyder > Respectably ambitious, Watchmen is an epic on a small scale: It has no big name movie stars, nor does it field superheroes of mainstream lore. There are two things it does very, very well: The cinematography is stunning with vibrant colors and imaginative awareness, and the violence is gruesome, righteously effective with exacting choreography. Then there are things that just don't seem to fit: The music is a mess. No film should ever use Simon & Garfunkel's "The Sounds of Silence." It reeks of empty ambition since it's already been used nearly perfectly in The Graduate. A lot of the other, more well-known tracks also seem forced ("99 Luft Balloons?" Really?). This, ironically, actually detracts from the mood the film tries to set. But let's talk adaptation: Faithfulness is good and all, but a comic is a different medium. Whatever you think of Alan Moore, he had it right in saying that the reader has time to reflect back on what he's just read, maybe even doubleback to check facts and link a character to his speech bubbles. But a film of this supposed gravity almost becomes a joke in its obtuse seriousness without being given the time to digest. The awkward pacing and plot jumps that leave us filling in gaps with a considerable level of assumptions also don't help. The graphic novel walked a very thin line between the pretentious and the cautionary, and unfortunately Snyder may have fallen on the wrong side of those tracks.
Stalag 17
1953 / Billy Wilder > Though he's not particularly known for layered works, Wilder definitely swings the bat hard when it comes to making the audience enjoy a movie. Together with William Holden in his Oscar-winning performance, he cooks up a rip-roaring adventure in what could be called the bachelor's version of The Great Escape. The comedy easily surpasses the drama in Stalag 17, as the latter is often predictable if simple and honest. A German POW camp during World War II shouldn't be something you laugh about, but give the writers of the original play some credit for giving us a reminder that laughter remains an alternative tool for vengeance.
Life of Brian
1979 / Terry Jones > There are a lot of renowned comic troupes in the world, and often they exist in variety because different audiences clamor for different styles of humor. Well, count me out of the Monty Python crowd. This isn't my cup of tea. Life of Brian definitely had moments of ingenuity, but far too often it missed and felt repetitious. Moreover, when the joke's on someone who's made into a punching bag (as these characters are), the intended satire can lose a lot of its charm.
Jaws
1975 / Steven Spielberg > There are a lot of stories behind production mishaps in Jaws, most of them dealing with issues with faulty animatronics of the shark. How right they were, and how sad. For 70% of the film, it's really something swell, atmospheric even when bordering on the expected cliché. More often than not, Spielberg just couldn't get the villain to look real, so he used clever methods of making sure the audience would feel its presence other ways (like filming from its point of view, below the water, with the menacing theme music signaling impending doom). But then you see it, and it's over. Unlike The Thing, where the literal creativeness of the special effects made up for its outdated looks, here I had trouble digesting the climactic battle because it looked just downright silly. It's really sad when special effects ruin the potential for a great film to age well, and this is no exception.
