So last weekend's box office was the highest ever, about $270-million for Avatar, Sherlock Holmes , et al . What does this tell us? Simply, if movies are good, people will go. Now, if movies are great – ah, that's a different story. A great movie will be remembered, no matter what it grosses. Here are scenes, in almost alphabetical order, from my 12 favourite films of '09, which I'm tremendously glad live on in my mind.
The Brothers Bloom Interior, day. Con man Bloom (Adrien Brody) sits at the foot of a bed next to his mark, heiress Penelope Stamp (Rachel Weisz). But he's not here for her millions, not any more. He's fallen in love. They're talking, and then suddenly they're just looking at each other. He's going to kiss her. She wants him to. But as he leans in, he pauses, and the look he gives her in that pause is sexier than anything else in a movie all year. Fantastically stylized, globe-trotting giddiness, The Brothers Bloom is the second genius film – the first was 2005's Brick – by the genre-popping writer/director Rian Johnson, who's like, 12 (okay, he's 36, but he looks 12). Sadly, it didn't find its audience in theatres. Aren't we lucky there are DVDs?
(500) Days of Summer Exterior, day. Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) walks to work, having just spent his first night with Summer (Zooey Deschanel). He looks pretty happy about it. So happy that he's hearing music, the cheesy, infectious strains of (You Make My) Dreams Come True . Everyone he passes cheers him on. Then, yep, he's singing, and the moment does exactly what it's supposed to do: It lifts this bittersweet rom-com into something iconic.
An Education Interior, evening. Precocious high-school student Jenny (Carey Mulligan), out for a glamorous evening with her much-older paramour David (Peter Sarsgaard) and his friends Danny and Helen (Dominic Cooper and Rosamund Pike), tosses out a phrase in French. Helen stares at her, bemused. Jenny translates. “But why say it in French?” Helen asks. And in that one subtle exchange, we know that Jenny is in the wrong world. A brilliant script by Nick Hornby, brilliantly acted.
Fantastic Mr. Fox Exterior, day. Mr. Fox (George Clooney) zooms via motorcycle to his next daring robbery, when out of nowhere his son Ash (Jason Schwartzman) appears in the sidecar. The moment is deadpan, eccentric, charming – and typical of writer/director Wes Anderson, who with this film elevates stop-motion animation to a timeless, all-ages appeal.
Hunger Interior, day. The hallway of Maze prison, Northern Ireland, during the 1981 hunger strike of Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender) and his fellow IRA prisoners. Slowly, silently, liquid begins spilling out from under each cell door – urine. Wearily, a prison worker mops it up. And we in the audience feel viscerally the hopelessness of this ancient, bitter, conflict. A movie that's painful to watch and would be almost too painful to recommend, were it not so carefully rendered by writer/director Steven McQueen.
The Hurt Locker Exterior, day. Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner), in full bomb-defusing gear, walks alone down a street in war-torn Baghdad toward an explosive embedded in the road. The way the camera isolates him on the dusty street with the sun beating down is deliberately evocative of a classic western. Until he starts to follow the fuse, and the camera pulls back and back on a terrifyingly dense tangle of bombs. Though it didn't draw big audiences, this nail-biter from director Kathryn Bigelow is a master class in suspense.
