Top Ten Movies of 2009

Here we are firmly entrenched in awards season, as we careen towards the Oscars, through the Golden Globes, the SAG awards, the DGA awards, the (insert metropolitan city here) Critics Choice awards, the PGA awards, and whatever else you can think of. I figured it was time to drop my top ten list of the year.

First a warning; this list is not reflective of anything other than the films that spoke to me this year. That affected me in some way. What was most interesting about this year in film, aside from how totally crappy most of it was, is that all the films on my list stuck with me well after the fact, something many movies don’t do for me.

And looking over my list I get another striking thing, a lot of these movies, all deal with similar themes, fears, and obsessions. For me, 2009 in film dealt primarily with how we humans connect with, or don’t connect with other people. Beware of spoilers.

Enough of my preamble here it is my top ten of 2009:

10.) Watchmen – I’m still flummoxed as to how this totally anti-commercial, totally anti Hollywood movie made it onto movie screens funded by a major studio. Zach Snyder made a dark, disturbing movie looking at how it may not be a good thing to have super heroes. A somewhat flawed but extremely ambitious film. And the opening five minutes possibly are the best five minutes on film this year.



9.) Up – Does Pixar even have a bad movie in them? I mean seriously. Here’s a sweet, fun tale about an old man, a boy and a house. Another movie with an opening so incredible it makes the list simply for that.




8.) Avatar – It’s really no secret that I loved this movie. Yes, the story and characters are simple, but on the whole I found it to be a well-told story, and I was totally engaged from minute one. Yes the special effects are spectacular but the heart and soul really belongs to Zoe Saldana as Neytiri. James Cameron has made the Star Wars of our generation.




7.) Star Trek/The Hangover - J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek takes what made the original Trek work(the characters) and then adds a serious layer of fun to the proceedings. What makes it best film worthy though is that the characters are so well realized and acted that these characters, this ship feels fresh and new again. Todd Philips The Hangover takes the Apatow style comedy we’ve grown all too used to, and adds something unexpected, a mystery. A brilliant hilarious character study.





6.) District 9 – An extremely effective allegory; about, racism and trust, oh, and it has kickass action to boot! Sharlito Copely is amazing in Neil Blomkamps fully realized alternate history that will have you; disgusted, laughing, and on the edge of your seat.


5.) Zombieland/Adventureland – An impossibly well structured coming of age story involving zombies. Add a hilarious and heartbreaking turn from Woody Harrelson and Zombieland makes the list! Adventureland is another coming of age story but more realistic. What makes the script work is how complex its characters are, a totally unexpected touching movie.





4.) 500 Days of Summer – A movie about being in love with someone who is not exactly on the same page. A brilliant, clever, modern take on relationships. Zoey Deschenal and Joseph Gordon Levitt are brilliant as the two lovers in question. The script by Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber jumps backwards and forwards through time, making the movie surprising, and Marc Webb’s direction is grounded with a hint of whimsy.




3.) Inglourious Basterds – In Quentin Tarantino’s bloody World War II fantasy cinema is a weapon both literally and figuratively. Possibly Tarantino’s most mature film, with some of the tensest scenes ever. It makes World War II surprising, and interestingly enough, fun. With a breakthrough performance by Austrian actor Christoph Waltz you’ve got a sucker punch of a movie.



2.) The Hurt Locker – Speaking of sucker punches. Kathryn Bigelow’s story about an IED bomb squad in Iraq is possibly the tensest movie I’ve seen. Bigelow imploys Hitchcockian levels of suspense to make a story of why people go to war. Jeremey Renner is fantastic as the warrior addicted to the drug of war. Possibly the manliest movie ever made, and the best Iraq war film, mainly because it is always first and foremost a thriller. For my money this movie should win the best picture Oscar.



1.) Up in the Air – However, for me this movie just hit home. Jason Reitman’s film about how much of life is becoming impersonal and the man who changes his heart and suddenly wants to connect, with the backdrop of the anxiety of recession and losing your job. Make this a funny and bittersweet movie, which feels like a modern Preston Sturges movie.



Runners up:

Black Dynamite – I don’t think I laughed that hard in a movie theater.

Away We Go – A sweet, funny, charming movie.

Drag Me to Hell – Sam Raimi’s return to horror is hilarious scary and totally awesome.

Moon – Featuring an amazing performance by Sam Rockwell, this sci fi flick in the vein of 2001 is weird, loopy, and pretty darn cool.

Me and Orson Welles – I was totally charmed by this movie.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox – Another utterly charming movie.

Now, there are a couple movies I have not seen: Invictus, Precious, The Lovely Bones, The Messenger, or A Serious Man, An Education. And while I expect to like or seriously love these movies, I don’t think it will change my list one way or another.

Avatar

It’s no secret to my readers (all two of you) that I love the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs. I especially love his works concerning Mars; or Barsoom as it is called. Yes, his plots are all the same, but the amount of imagination on display in those books compensates for the narrative simplicity. I understand Burroughs wrote other stories besides adventure stories, but really, the guy is known for adventure stories, I understand his fans love that romance novel he wrote, but seriously, he’s an adventure storyteller.




A typical Burroughs adventure would go something like this: protagonist finds himself embroiled in two warring cultures, typically they are a lost culture somehow, either living at the earth’s core, some lost civilization in Africa, or two warring races on Mars. Our hero eventually chooses a side in the middle of the conflict and using his superior intellect/muscles he helps the good side over come the other. There’s also a romance thrown in there for good measure. I’m over simplifying it to the extreme, but that’s the basic plot of every single Tarzan, or John Carter of Mars book.

Enter James Cameron, filmmaker. Oh sure, you may know him as the guy who wrote and directed the single most profitable movie ever made. But before that he was the guy who shaped science fiction cinema. I’d argue that Cameron, Ridley Scott, and George Lucas are the three filmmakers who came up with our modern vocabulary of science fiction cinema. Whether it’s the Vietnam inspired Aliens, or the gritty noir cityscape of Blade Runner, or the soaring, swashbuckling fantasy of Star Wars, you’re not going to find three guys who created the cinematic myths we’ve come to hold so dear.
After the massive success that was Titanic, Mr. Cameron waited for technology to catch up with his science fiction epic. Making a few underwater documentaries, and a Television show along the way. But when he felt that motion capture technology had caught up to the story in his head, he still wasn’t there, and never being a guy to just settle, he developed the technology for him to do it.

Enter Avatar.

I think I finally understand how people felt on May, 25th 1977 as that enormous starship sailed over an audiences head in Star Wars. I think I understand what audiences must have felt staggering out of theaters in 1933 after seeing King Kong. Hell, I haven’t felt this sense of sheer awe, and HOLY CRAPness, since I stumbled out of the theater seeing Jurassic Park. In the simplest terms I felt like a kid again. Believe the hype kids, this movie is the real deal.

Jake Sully is a crippled marine, a wayward and lost soul, trying to find his place in the world, or rather, universe. Sully is drafted to the planet Pandora a lush, forest moon, with an extremely complex eco-system, six legged things that can kill you, flying things that can also kill you, and a race off 12 foot tall blue cat-like people called the Na’vi who live on the largest supply of a precious mineral “Unobtanium” (yes it’s called that, and it’s actually a real engineering term). The Na’vi are not exactly happy about the humans being on Pandora in the first place. In order to learn about/get the Na’vi off the mineral deposit the humans have developed a program called the Avatar program where humans are plugged in(so to speak) to a genetically modified Na’vi.

Jake has been selected to take part in the Avatar program, because the hawkish colonel, Col. Quarich wants to keep an eye on the Na’vi and he’d rather not have the Na’vi standing at all. One gets the impression he’d rather just smell the napalm in the morning. Complicating Jake’s spying duties he falls in love with Neitri a warrior princess of the Na’vi, tribe.

You can see where things go from here.

Cameron has created a pulp adventure movie. Writ large across the cinema screen. He’s taken those simplistic tales of Burroughs at put them on screen. When I say that, don’t misunderstand, Avatar has an extremely simple story. But it is a story executed with wit, empathy and heart, it is a classic story in the Joseph Campbell mode. And when you’re reinventing the wheel visually it’s probably best not to do so naratively, our brains can only take so much.

I’m not going to do what other critics have done and gush about Pandora and the wonders found there. All I will say on the matter is this: Avatar MUST be seen on the biggest screen possible, and, if you can, in 3D. Simply put it is a visual feast for the eyes.

The actors are across the board fantastic, yes the script doesn’t give them a lot to work with, but the actors bring their A game to this. Stephen Lang as Col. Quarich was an amazingly evil badass. Sam Worthington is great as basically the audiences Avatar. But the real standout, is Zoe Saldana, who gives a tender, nuanced performance as Neitri the headstrong Na’vi princess.

I really didn’t expect to like this movie. Every single trailer, interview, and article about it left me cold. In particular the amount the film cost to make was very, very, disconcerting. In the end, while I don’t think a movie should cost the GNP of a third world country, all that money is up on the screen. Cameron has created a cinematic work of art, that from here on in will be studied, and take on a life of its own in much the same way Lucas’ Star Wars cycle has.

Avatar is pure genre cinema at its finest. I can’t recommend it enough.

Vowels Part 2

Another exciting trip through history!

Vowels

A new historical short from Stolen Donkey

THE: Vampire Hunter

My thesis film: THE: Vampire Hunter written, directed, and produced by yours truly.

THE: Vampire Hunter from William Morey on Vimeo.

A funny sketch

For those of you not in the know I belong to a comedy troupe known as Stolen Donkey here's our latest sketch, Highlander reviews are still forthcoming.

Thuvia Maid of Mars Review

I’ve been a terrible blogger. I made this big huge deal about going through the Highlander movies and reviewing each one, and I completely snuffed my readers, by distinctly not doing that.

I apologize for that, the reviews will happen, don’t worry gentle readers, to tide you over for the immortals here’s a review of “Thuvia Maid of Mars” by Edgar Rice Burroughs.



“Thuvia Maid of Mars” is the fourth book in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars or Barsoom series. This series is only second to the Tarzan series in Burroughs’ oeuvre, and has been largely forgotten by the general public. Whereas you can walk up to any American and they’ll know who Tarzan is, if you walk up to an average American they would have absolutely no clue who or what Barsoom or John Carter are.

With that all in mind, let’s refresh shall we? The first book called “The Princess of Mars”, John Carter was an ex-confederate soldier who was hunting for gold in Arizona when he is suddenly attacked by Indians and miraculously astrally projects himself to Mars.



On Mars, John Carter meets Dejah Thoris, the beautiful Red Martian, the “princess” of the books title. Of course when Carter meets her she’s being attacked by giant green four armed creatures, called Tharks, the Green Martians of Mars.

Burroughs mars is a wacky place, it’s full of four armed white apes, Red Martians, Yellow Martians, Black Martians. It’s a world where swords, are used right along side pistols, and ships can fly. Remember the first book was written in 1912, well before there were such things as science fiction.

Carter quickly finds that due to the difference between Earth’s gravity and Mars, he can leap tall buildings in a single bound.

Of course Carter our scrappy hero, wins the heart of Dejah Thoris, and in the second and third books unites Mars(or Barsoom as the Martians call it) and becomes the warlord of Mars.



Let’s be perfectly clear here Burroughs was not a terribly good writer, imaginative, yes, good? Not so much. He relies very heavily on formula and the same plot. We can’t, exactly hold this against him of course, he was writing for the pulps, and when you are writing under that time frame it’s understandable you’re going to rely on what works, and what is the fastest to write.

Which brings us to the fourth Barsoom book, “Thuvia Maid of Mars”. What’s interesting here, is that the main characters of the book are not John Carter or Dejah Thoris, but their son Cathoris, and Thuvia a feisty minor character you meet in the second Mars book.



Our story opens with Thuvia in her home city of Ptarth, where Our Villain Astok Prince of neighboring city state Dusar tries to subject himself to Thuvai, she rebuffs him, but he still is not getting the hint, and Cathoris leaps to her rescue. Astok leaves, like a whiny little bitch and swears revenge.

After the commotion, Cathoris professes his love for Thuvia, but she of course is betrothed to another. This breaks Cathoris’ little heart, but he being a man of chilvary, decides he’s just going to go home.

Astok, then complicates matters by up and kidnapping Thuvia, and implicating Cathoris in the process. When Cathoris hears about this he jumps to the ready to find Thuvia and the adventure begins.

So we’ve got all the Burroughs plot elements, we’ve got the lecherous villain, in Astok. We’ve got Thuvia, he heroine who needs to be rescued, and we’ve got our noble hero, who after finding out that Thuvia has been kidnapped leaps into his flyer to save her, not out of some sense that maybe this will lead to her loving him, but literally he’s just doing it to keep her safe.


It’s like those day dreams I used to have when I was twelve, a cute girl in my sixth grade class would be threatened by bullies, space aliens, monsters, what have you, and I would swoop down in my jet pack, and it was always a jet pack. Save the girl from the threat. The girl would inevitably swoon, and fall head over heels for me, and offer a kiss, I would decline opting out of the kiss and flying into the heavens on another adventure. Which leads me to conclude that I would most likely be more neurotic than I am had I read these books when I was twelve.

Cathoris eventually finds Thuvia in a broken down flier, and being attacked by Green Martians. Cathoris gives chase, which eventually leads him to a hidden valley in one of the dead seas of Barsoom. The Green Men are suddenly attacked by the Lotharians and millions upon millions of archers, and Banths(a kind of six legged lion).

Cathoris having inherited some of Dad’s special gravity defying tricks (I think if I tried to figure out how this happened my brain might explode) leaps into the fray and saves Thuvia from the hands of the Green Martians who are quickly being decimated by those damn archers.

Cathoris and Thuvia escape. And Thuvia of course thinks Cathoris is the one at fault for kidnapping her. Which if you apply logic to the situation wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense. Thuvia implies that Cathoris had 1) Thuvia kidnapped, 2) Had his crew attacked by the Green Martians and 3) Risked his own neck to save her. I guess it’s not THAT far fetched, considering from what it sounds like, that’s exactly the type of plan most people on Barsoom come up with. Also, Thuvia gives in to her baser tempers every so often, so she’s just in the heat of the moment.

It should be pointed out here, that Thuvia is interesting because she’s a little bit feistier than most Burroughs’ heroines, resembling Burroughs other famous female character Jane in some of the later Tarzan books. Thuvia is feisty, self sufficient, and has this crazy ability to hypnotize lions, which is a nice little trick and gets Burroughs out of some narrative log jams in the story.

However, like all Burroughs female characters she still has to be saved by Cathoris, how the hell else are you expecting them to fall in love? Talking over a game of Jetan (martian version of chess)?

Despite Thuvia’s reticence about Cathoris they make their way to the city of Lothar, which is a lost city of Barsoom, where as the population started to die out, and by constant attacks from the Green Martians they’ve developed this technique of creating imaginary people, namely the archers. There’s a fun little moment where Cathoris asks what the hell is going on with this wacky place and the Lotharian tells them that are two factions of the Lotharians, the “etherialists” who believe there is no such thing as matter, only mind and the “realists” who believe the opposite. This weirds Cathorsis out. Which is amusing because the weird barometer on Barsoom is pretty high, so when something wigs a Martian out, it’s gotta be pretty strange.

Thuvai and Cathoris are separated but, Thuvia manages to escape the clutches of the Lotharians. Cathoris makes a new friend in Koar the once imaginary archer/ ancient legendary hero of the Lotharians. They after Thuvia and just when it looks like things are going to be okay, Thuvia is kidnapped by Astok.

Poor Thuvia suffers so much abuse in this book, that you could call the book “Thuvia and no good, very horrible, rotten day”, but considering through the first half, she’s insufferably annoying, I wouldn’t call the book that, I also wouldn’t call Thuvia poor either, I mean everybody wants to marry this chick, even though she’s a spoiled brat.

Meanwhile the implication of Cathoris as kidnapping Thuvia has literally set Barsoom on the brink of a civil war. Ptharth Thuvia’s city is sending its battle ships against Helium (Cathorsis’ city), and things look really bad.

I’m not entirely sure what Ptarth thinks it can accomplish, John Carter is of course the Warlord of Mars and he lives in Helium, he knows the Black Men of Barsoom, the Yellow Men, and they will all rally behind him, unless Ptarth just feels like getting their ass handed to them because of a slight of honor, which again makes some Barsoomian sense of logic, but wouldn’t make any strategic sense.

In other Burroughs touch Cathoris impersonates a Panthan(read Ronin). And of course through a series of events Cathoris and Koar manage to kill Astok, and they are running into the fray of the civil war, when they come across the Green Men attacking a ship. Cathoris being the most honorable man in the universe swings down to save him, and in an amusing plot contrivance it happens to be Kulan Tith Thuvia’s intended betrothed. Thanks to Cathoris, well, really thanks to Koar who without his imaginary warriors Cathoris would not have beaten back the Green Martians. Even more amusingly, Koar runs with his archers after the Green Men. Never to be seen again.

Cathoris professes his love for Thuvia, and Thuvia nearly cries because she realizes she does love Cathoris. Kulan Tith over hears all of this and instead of being pissed off that his bride to be doesn’t love him, he takes the higher road and says that’s okay, that it’s better to be with the one you love, and I won’t marry Thuvia.

And the book ends.

WAIT? WHAT? That’s it? I mean, okay, I can infer that the civil war was averted and Cathorsis and Thuvai got married, and may have had kids, but, I mean, it’s not like there are very good communication systems on Barsoom. Did half the planet go to war and then find out that they didn’t really need to do that? It was all fine!? Cathorsis was in a dead sea with his bride to be, while the rest of the world went to war?

So, “Thuvia Maid of Mars” is not going to win any literary awards but it is a rip-roaring fun adventure story. Barsoom is always a fun place to visit. This time out the Lotharians are a fun and amusing and present an interesting threat. Cathoris while being a John Carter clone has a better sense of humor than his super serious father, and Thuvia although being insufferable at the start of the book grew on me. Burroughs always seems to be having more fun on Barsoom than he ever does with his most famous creation, Tarzan. Which I find interesting, and sort of sad, while Tarzan is remembered, the Barsoom novels have been far more influential to science fiction, without them we wouldn’t have Star Wars.