For me, 2009 was as much about the films I didn’t see as the ones I did. Take The Wrestler, Mickey Rourke’s third comeback movie. I was around for the first, Francis Coppola’s The Rainmaker, then the second, his appearance in Sin City. But I’ve also seen documentary footage of steroid abuse and was not keen to watch a former film star succumbing to it.
Then there was Slumdog Millionaire. By the time it came out, I knew the beginning, middle and end. Forget the cash, all he wanted was the girl. The Academy Award campaigns were entertaining enough for me to pass on both films.
The job of a film reviewer is to shine a light on movies that a viewer would not necessarily seek out. I derived great pleasure watching and recommending the music hall melodrama Faubourg ’36, from the director of The Chorus, Christophe Barratier. Not that many people in Britain saw that movie or The First Day of the Rest of My Life, a drama in five parts following five members of a family at five key points in their lives. I can envisage Hollywood remaking it – or at least appropriating its novel structure.
Cinema trip of the year had to be to the Leokino in Innsbruck to see Jim Jarmusch’s The Limits of Control, the most fun you can have watching an enigmatic and ridiculously self-controlled hit man (Isaach de Bankolé) ordering two espressos in separate cups. The Leokino sets its ticket prices according to the length of movie. Sub two-hour films cost seven euro. Films between 120 and 135 minutes are 50 cents more and so on. Don’t ask me what they would charge for Avatar – they won’t show it. But if you want the new Daniele Thompson film, The Code Has Changed, or a documentary advocating recycling, Plastic Planet, it is the place to go.
The most outrageous press preview this year is a tie. At a screening of Antichrist, a publicist was on standby to furnish journalists with spirits if the anticipation of the genital mutilation scene was too much to bear. Perhaps I should have a swig to prevent myself laughing at that talking fox. A preview of Dead Man Running at London’s Mayfair Hotel was notable for the gift bags containing popcorn, an unfamiliar energy drink and a key ring with a London cab on it – the latter had only a tenuous link to the movie. When you get an email stating that Ashley Cole and Rio Ferdinand invite you to their movie, you truly do not know what to expect.
If I have a preference, it is for films that pull you in two directions at once. Take Kornél Mundruczó’s Delta, about a young man who sets up home with his sister. Incest is presented as pure love, but generates horrific consequences. You don’t want the couple to get together, but the film suspends and investigates concepts of the unnatural.
Then there’s Ursula Meier’s Home, a road movie where the motorway that opens up next to a house occupied by Isabelle Huppert, her husband and three children is a main character. You want them to stand up against the motorway; you are thrilled by their means of adaptation. However, this turns to suffocation and only the last reel, in which the family wall themselves in, lets the film down.
Quentin Tarantino’s extremely flawed but unforgettable Inglourious Basterds has one brilliant set piece among several ordinary moments and an extremely dodgy revision of history.
I enjoyed filmmakers Judd Apatow and Nora Ephron working well within their respective comfort zones, in Funny People (about comedians) and Julie and Julia (about writing and cooking). I had a perverse admiration for the most blatant example of studio interference in a movie. Tom Tykwer’s The International about – actually I can’t remember – features an alarming shift in tone from low-key suspense and thrills when Clive Owen and company suddenly start exchanging gunfire in New York’s Guggenheim Museum. Well, they had to have something for the trailer.
I saw a record number of British movies this year, with a significant number being sub prime. I Can’t Think Straight was a lesbian interracial romantic comedy, low on both rom and com and high on tourist attractions. The Heavy featured Stephen Rea being so laid back, he could almost have passed for a sofa bed, albeit one with a whiny drawl. By the time I got to Colin, I was grateful for the lack of dialogue in the first 20 minutes. As for The Boat That Rocked, let’s just say that at least Working Title’s American-set films, Frost/Nixon and State of Play, delivered something akin to entertainment.
Finally, let’s hear it for Oren Peli’s Paranormal Activity – a film in which Micah Sloat is told by his live-in girlfriend (Katie Featherston) that she is being followed by a spirit and he responds by buying a state of the art digital video camera. For 90 minutes, we are stuck in their house as strange things happen, with unintentional laughs – the spiritualist who cannot stay – mixed with a chilling atmosphere and a memorable money shot. Best ending of the year – easy.
Patrick Mulcahy
