My year-end piece is up on the Philadelphia City Paper's website. You should read it now.
All done? Good. Now, to business. There are a number of movies that, while they didn't quite make the cut, are still worthy of year-end remembrance, and rather than cut into my already slim word count, I thought I'd honor them in this relatively unsullied space. So, without further ado, The Best of the Not-Quite Best of 2009.
In the Loop may not be the cinematic art at its highest level, but sweet Jesus was Armando Iannucci's sharp-tongued satire a gas. It seems like cheating to give the movie credit for Peter Capaldi's terrifying turn as a volcanic British spin doctor, since the character was worked out on the BBC sitcom The Thick of It, of which In the Loop is a kind of alternate-universe spinoff. But Capaldi took Malcolm Tucker to new heights and/or depths, and the movie's (apparently fact-based) depiction of a diseased political culture is the most incisive since Robert Altman's Tanner '88.
Passing Strange may just be a decent film of a great show, but what a show. Mark Stewart, the imposing lead singer of The Negro Problem and Stew (he insists the latter is a band as well as his musical alias), turned double consciousness into multipart harmony with his stage musical about the identity crises facing a young black bohemian. Drawing on, though not replicating, his own life story, Stew skewered the "middle-class coon show" of his native culture as well as the implicit racism of the European artists who became his new family.
Although it hasn't given me much cause to think back over it, David Twohy's A Perfect Getaway provided two of the most pleasurable hours I spent in a theater all year. Returning him to the unabashed B-movie aspirtions of Pitch Black after the abortive bombast of The Chronicles of Riddick, the tropical thriller hinges on a structural shift that even now I'm reluctant to spoil. Many of my colleagues spotted the twist earlier than I did — I'm not really one for looking around corners — but what makes the movie is not the element of surprise so much as the way it manages to rewrite the terms of our engagement two-thirds of the way through.
The only thing keeping Trier's Antichrist off my list is the fact that I can't claim to fully understand it. A deliberate assault that doubles as a naked confession, the film haselements that seem as schematic and psychobabbling as its detractors claim, but it's too wriggling and alive to be pinned down so easily (something it shares, oddly enough, with Avatar). It's not clean enough to be calculated, which as much as anything leads me to believe Trier is speaking straight from his warped little heart. Incidentally, those who misread Trier as a misogynist might be surprised to learn that he has a fervent admirer in Chantal Akerman, who was particularly vocal with regard to the richness of his female characters Anyone who can watch Charlotte Gainsbourg bare her soul and dismiss the movie as a glib provocation simply isn't watching closely enough.
Then there were the great performances trapped in movies that were less so. In The Hangover, Zach Galifianakis chose at every instance to zig where lesser actors would have zagged. It's hard to imagine anyone else seeing "Who Let the Dogs" out as an opportunity for a breathy soft-shoe. As a larcenous sci-fi hack, Jemaine Clement in Gentlemen Broncos brilliantly sent up the self-important swagger of small-time celebrities. While I'm far from an across-the-board Meryl fan (too much technique; not enough life), her uncanny evocation of Julia Child in Julie and Julia was a masterpiece of understated physical comedy, a slope-shouldered work of art. Peter Sarsgaard's slow-burning creep lent weight to the otherwise off-the-shelf An Education. I've been delinquent in getting to Dexter, so perhaps the drawling techie villain Michael C. Hall plays in Gamer is less of a revelation than it seemed. But his malicious glee was contagious, and his musical theater background paid off in the film's most inspired scene. I have yet to schedule the second viewing that would confirm if Steven Soderbergh's The Informant! is a self-aware satire or just a jaunty quirk-fest, but there's no questioning Matt Damon's inspired turn as a paunchy, paranoid ADM turncoat.
Finally, an apology to all the worthy films I should have seen but didn't. According to the handy database run by a critics' discussion group I belong to, I saw fewer eligible releases this year than any since 2002 (although if I squeeze in a few more on the 31st I can bump that up to 2004). I have a good reason — the best, in fact, that being the unbelievably sweet and beautiful 8-month-old asleep upstairs. But I still hope to catch up with some of the more egregious omissions, particularly those that have been sitting around the house for months. Sita Sings the Blues, here I come.
