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7 articles
The Best Films of 2009
4 hours ago
Matt Singer: We entered 2009 with a new president who promised to bring our country hope. But looking back at the year in film, I don't see a lot of hope; I see a lot of grief and despair. Oh sure, the box office charts were dominated by your now-typical assortment of franchises, spin-offs, reboots and sequels -- a major cause of grief and despair for some -- but you also had enough apocalypse movies to fill a book on Biblical prophecy. Even some of the obligatory superheroes got dark: the world (spoiler alert!) doesn't end in "Watchmen," but it comes awfully close.
There was an air of doom in certain quarters of the film industry this year too, as the effects of the bad economy rippled through everything from festival attendance to the shriveling ranks of working film critics. Examining my own list of the year's best, I find that …
- Alison Willmore
Fight Scenes, Chemistry and Other Unheralded Joys
4 hours ago
Screw "best performance," "best director," "best film of the year" (well, not that -- we weigh in on that in our top tens here). In this week's IFC News podcast, the first of a two-parter, we call out some of the other highlights from the year in cinema we feel deserve recognition, from the best fight scenes to the most memorable on-screen chemistry.
Download: MP3, 44:11 minutes, 40.5 Mb
Subscribe to the podcast: [iTunes] [Xml] …
- Alison Willmore
Something Borrowed, Something Blue
8 hours ago
I can imagine Robert Zemeckis -- whose botched motion-capture animated features "The Polar Express" and "A Christmas Carol" were full of rubbery, dead-eyed, freakish-looking human constructs -- watching James Cameron's "Avatar" with an expression on his face not unlike F. Murray Abraham's Salieri listening to his first Mozart composition in "Amadeus."
From a technical standpoint, "Avatar" is a game-changer, a paradigm shift, the greatest thing since sliced "2001." In the same way that "The Matrix" and its technological advances reverberated over the ensuing decade, so will "Avatar" act as a bellwether for the next wave of effects-heavy genre films.
I just wish it were a better movie. For all of Cameron's soaring accomplishments in creating realistic motion-capture characters and his deft handling of the new era of 3D, "Avatar" feels both familiar and overlong. You've traveled this road before, even if now you're doing it in a blinged-out luxury …
- Alonso Duralde
Maggie Gyllenhaal, Young Old Soul
8 hours ago
It's true that Maggie Gyllenhaal's first two films were directed by her father Stephen (1992's "Waterland" and the following year's "A Dangerous Woman"), but no one was crying nepotism by the time she broke out of Sundance with 2002's pitch-black comedy "Secretary," an astute character study on Bdsm behavior in which she bared all -- figuratively, literally and both ways boldly. Since then, Gyllenhaal's carved out an eclectic path through indie cinema ("SherryBaby," "Donnie Darko") and mainstream fare ("World Trade Center," "The Dark Knight"), with her richest roles typically emerging from the smaller passion projects that she clearly loves most.
Such is the case with first-time filmmaker Scott Cooper's charming country-music drama "Crazy Heart," adapted from Thomas Cobb's novel and featuring the music of co-producer T-Bone Burnett. In a performance that just nabbed him a Golden Globe nomination, Jeff Bridges headlines as 57-year-old crooner legend Bad Blake, …
- Aaron Hillis
The Year's Most Cinematic Games
8 hours ago
Throughout 2009, the intersection of video games and films has been a seething hot spot, both culturally and for business. And though this marriage is fraught with plenty of potential hazards -- best seen in the unkillable and still usually awful game-to-film adaptation -- there's no denying that's plenty of room for both mediums to share and grow.
Games tend to be more successful when they focus on their essentials, and films usually thrive when they don't try to hard to duplicate their interactive competitors, but there are no hard-and-fast rules for this developing relationship. And there's no reason to believe that, as films and games continue along semi-parallel tracks, they won't become even better at synthesizing their unique elements.
And new developments are already taking place. 2009 was a banner year for games that delivered movie-like experiences by blending user-operated mayhem with filmic set-pieces, storytelling and structures. You can definitely make …
- Nick Schager
2009's Most Memorable Critical Dust-Ups
8 hours ago
Just as the Tiger Woods scandal snuck up on sports writers in this tail end of '09, New York Times critic Manohla Dargis' f-bomb filled interview on the state of women in Hollywood has become the gift that has just kept giving this holiday season for those who still enjoy a good old fashioned critical beatdown.
It's a worthy capper for a year that began with Variety critic John Anderson literally punching producer's rep Jeff Dowd at Sundance over his negative opinion of "Dirt! The Movie." (He never wrote the review after the incident or the parody videos that followed.)
Overall, it's been an interesting year for criticism and film writing in general, as massive media layoffs have led to established names making their mark online. With fewer positions, more writers are having to become a jack-of-all-trades and then compete with those who understood this as a fact of life long ago. …
- Stephen Saito
Running Amunk for the Holidays
8 hours ago
Happy holidays, everyone! Those willing and able to drag themselves away from the huge pile of swag under the tree can enjoy the late Heath Ledger's final performance, a Jude Law double bill and a drolly comic Romanian police procedural underneath among other holiday presents that await at the multiplex.
"Alvin and The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel"
With the tagline "Munk Yourself" sounding more like a threat than a come-on, the high-pitched trio of singing rodents return just in time for exhausted moms to plunk the rugrats down at the multiplex after the presents are unwrapped while they snore quietly in the back row. Betty Thomas, who has some kid-themed kid-themed hijinks with on her CV, steps in for the first film's helmer Tim Hill and trades out her experience with real critters on "Dr. Dolittle" for these much less messy (not to mention non-union) digital substitutes. Jason Lee reprises his role as Dave, …
- Neil Pedley
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