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mygif

the best part of (500) days of summer was the punchline at the end, which was fantastic. i get what you’re saying about the non-sequential presentation, but the story itself was kind of flat. i rate it a solid “meh.”

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mygif

Mystery Team already came out? Man, must have skipped Phoenix entirely…

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mygif

I felt Invention of Lying treated the ‘ability’ somewhat inconsistently at times, and that took me out of it a bit. I just found it jarring that he could literally change someone’s reality at the start (changing his name for instance) but by the end there were people who could imagine lying. Was there something I missed there? Nonetheless quite enjoyable.

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mygif

Great list, I agree with all of them (except for the ones I haven’t seen yet.)

Speaking of: I haven’t seen Up In The Air yet, so (500) Days of Summer still sits on top of my list.

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Cookie McCool said on January 4th, 2010 at 12:43 pm

My dad doesn’t like George Clooney. It’s how I know I was adopted.

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mygif

What? No Avatar? I would have thought a dozen “whoas” would have been enough.

I also was looking forward to Mystery Team

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mygif

My thought coming out of Up In The Air was “This is Fight Club if Tyler Durden never punched anybody, went insane, and rebelled, but just let his soul get crushed instead.”

I’m just putting that out there because I want to hear reactions to it.

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mygif

I’ve not seen all of the films you list, but of the ones you do I mostly agree with you – with two exceptions:

1. Basterds – I can dismiss it. It’s got some good scenes, but it’s not a film. It’s a collection of scenes, some good, some not so good. It never comes together as a whole. And the death of Hitler is an anti-climax. Which should be impossible, but QT found a way. Because his film has no overall narrative. I’ll stop there, because Mark Kermode does it so much better:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/markkermode/2009/08/5_live_review_inglourious_bast.html?page=11 (UK only, but it’s probably out there somewhere for you international types).

2. Star Trek: I’d have put it higher. But I’m a massive Trekkie, so that might just be fanboy love

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mygif

Come on, Flapjacks, it’s your turn now!

(PS: Basterds, overrated. Hurt Locker, meh. George Clooney, I can’t take him serious since ever. Not even in Syrianna)

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mygif

Dude I’ve wanted to see the following Up In The Air, (500) Days of Summer, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Moon, and Mystery Team for some time now because I thought they looked really, really good.

Now that I have confirmation, it just makes me want to see them so much more.

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mygif

“Sam Rockwell finally puts up the bravura performance we’ve always known he could manage but never really brought to the fore.”

Ooh, yay! Hadn’t heard of this movie until now but the above is reason enough for me to look it up. In the movies I’ve seen with Sam Rockwell he always feels underused. (Which will probably happen again in Iron Man 2. Where IS he in the trailer??)

@Andrew, as you wish: I would watch that movie only if it had the Edward Norton voice-over (the best part about watching his soul get crushed was hearing his flat ranting about the support groups and his IKEA-furnished apartment). But Up In The Air looks like a lighter movie than that (although that might just be the trailer).

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mygif

Lots of movies I like on this list, but I’d quibble with the placement. I guess the Basterds backlash is in full swing at this point, but its easily Tarantino’s MOST substantial movie (it’s not an action movie, so I’m not sure why the lack of action is an issue) and it’s actually incredibly tight–the only scenes that get a little flabby are in the Operation Kino segment. Everything else is there for a reason.

On the flipside, I thought Up In The Air wasn’t really much to get excited about. It’s a solid enough movie, but it’s really just a collection of very good performances wrapped around a really predictable, uninsightful script. Does anyone watch the opening scenes of Clooney bragging about how unencumbered his life is and not expect that he’ll have a new understanding of the value of human relationships by the end of the movie? I mean, hell, the big climactic “run out of the speaking engagement” scene was already parodied in “Intolerable Cruelty”. After “Thank You For Smoking” Reitman seemed like a director who was going places, but each subsequent movie he’s made has been just a little less interesting.

And this is literally the first time I’ve heard anyone say anything nice about The Lovely Bones. I desperately want this to be good, so I’m glad of the reassurance, but MGK is standing more or less alone here…

Delighted to see Brothers Bloom, Coraline, and Drag Me To Hell on the list.

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mygif

Can anyone answer this question?

I know that (500) Days of Summer will be playing on my flight(s) tomorrow: should I watch it on those tiny seat-back screens, or should I wait for a more comfortable/more immersive viewing experience?

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mygif

Absolutely loved The Brothers Bloom! Picked it up on a whim because it looked interesting and never regretted it.

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mygif

District 9 is also an educational film, as it teaches the world South African profanity. Turn on the DVD subtitles to pick up some nifty fresh cussin’ material.

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mygif
Tim O'Neil said on January 4th, 2010 at 4:52 pm

I just watched (500) Days of Summer over the weekend – I liked it but didn’t love it, my girlfriend HATED it. I think we were both dissatisfied that Summer was so doggedly, irredeemably unlikable and was never really forced to face the consequences of her life, and the last scene at the park just sort of enabled her to get off with a clean conscience despite having essentially ruined this guy’s life. Rarely in my life – not since at least High Fidelity – have I so wanted to see one character in a movie physically assault and maim another – at least then it would have felt real. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I talk myself out of liking the movie at all. Hmmm.

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mygif

@Jonathan: It requires a bit of attention paid to it to get the ‘full effect,’ but even when I was tired and in a theatre with an uncomfy seat I was completely into this. MGK is if anything underselling it. Probably my favorite romantic comedy of all time.

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mygif
Somberbrero said on January 4th, 2010 at 6:10 pm

I really don’t understand how anyone can think that Summer was a bitch. It is just completely beyond me.

Also, MGK, I think you made a little mix-up. Shouldn’t Drag Me To Hell be on your Worst Movies of 2009 list?

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mygif
Tim O'Neil said on January 4th, 2010 at 7:24 pm

I never said she was a bitch, I think I define a bitch as someone who goes out of their way to be mean or petty. Summer is just . . . well, borderline sociopathic, I guess? It doesn’t help that we’ve all known people like that at some point in our lives, so the movie brought back rafts of unpleasant associations with all the worst kinds of oblivious and unthinking people.

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mygif

@SmR: If you go into Up In The Air expecting something light, you’re in for a rude shock. It’s a DARK comedy. With a capital Dark.

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mygif

Summer was so doggedly, irredeemably unlikable and was never really forced to face the consequences of her life

I loved the movie, but yeah, I think you’re right there. And is not just this movie: every character played by Zoe Deschanel is exactly the same character. At first it was kinda cute, but now is just freaky.

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mygif
Somberbrero said on January 4th, 2010 at 9:51 pm

Granted, it’s been a few months since I’ve seen the movie, but what exactly did Summer do to make her “borderline sociopathic”?

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mygif

‘Up’ would be my number one. Any movie that has me crying at simple montage sequence 5 mins into the film is pretty special. I can’t remember the last movie that actually made me cry before this one came along. And I ended up teary again when the old man finally goes through his wife’s scrapbook.

It doesn’t even surprise me anymore that people say stuff like , “meh”, “boring” or “overrated” when they talk about Inglorious Basterds. That’s generally the reaction all of Tarantino’s movies get when they first are released. Even Pulp Fiction when it came out didn’t really get much of the praise it gets now. His movies generally get a wider audience as they age. What surprised me was how well it actually did at the box office. Even though I love it, it’s probably not Tarantino’s best (both Kill Bill’s is still his best work IMO) but at this point it’s his most financially successful

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mygif

I’m surprised that you characterize 500DoS as movie that takes risks, since what bothered me about it was the way that it felt so contrived: the wise-beyond-her-years kid sister, the karaoke scene (both romcom staples), and the easy-target greeting cards company as a shorthand for the shallowness that the movie wallows in but pretends to transcend. Beyond that, every choice of clothing and every cut on the soundtrack seemed meticulously and mercilessly chosen to appeal to the target demographic. I didn’t just feel manipulated, I felt manhandled.

That said, I didn’t have a problem with Summer as a character. I certainly found Tom’s obsession with her much more troubling.

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mygif

What, are you kidding? Critics came all over themselves when Pulp Fiction came out. Oscar noms galore, topped many year-end-best-ofs, freakin’ Palme d’Or…

If it’s true that his subsequent films have had lesser reactions (although I honestly am not sure if they have), well, it’s because they have been lesser films.

Yes, pound for pound, Kill Bill is probably his most entertaining, but it has no depth. Jackie Brown has its vocal fans, but it bored me too much to remember a thing about it. Deathproof was slighter than slight. (Planet Terror was much better.) And I haven’t seen Basterds.

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mygif

Russell from “Up” was the best character of 2009. I shall not be convinced otherwise.

And “Anvil: The Story of Anvil” was both the most heart-breaking and uplifting documentary I’ve seen since “The King of Kong”

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mygif

How dare you invoke The Apartment to shore up your case for (500) Days Of Summer! Ok, I am one of 500’s detractors – not necessarily the most strident, based on some of the vehement denunciations I’ve seen here and elsewhere. For me the thing that tipped the movie to solid thumbs down territory was the smug, sonorous voiceover that had to explain the story every 15 minutes. The cut-up narrative was fine by me, but the voiceover really ruined the movie

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mygif

On the other hand, I do like that you acknowledged the underappreciated The Brothers Bloom. I don’t personally know anyone who saw this, which is too bad

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mygif

“Hint: religious satire of the most vicious variety imaginable, which likely has something to do with its abject box-office failure”

I’d disagree with that. It didn’t really attract controversy at all, probably because not enough people were interested/saw it initially. If anything, a bit of indignation on the part of the Catholic League or whatever might have drummed up a bit more interest in it.

On “(500) Days of Summer”, I liked it, but I didn’t love it. It has a lot of clever parts (the opening intro to why the male lead has such incorrect expectations, the fantasy/reality split-screen, the final line), but I never really came to care all that much about the characters. “Adventureland” worked a lot better for me.

My favourite movie of the year would probably be either “Basterds”; “Up in the Air” and “Star Trek” were also favourites.

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mygif

I’m glad to see someone else love Adventureland. And 500 Days of Summer turned out to be pretty damn brilliant, yes.

Quibbles: I found Star Trek to be a soulless spectacle; Drag Me to Hell was a disappointment.

Most of the rest are waiting on my Netflix queue.

But no Crank 2? I’d rank it up there. For realsies.

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mygif

I agree with Bill on two points. One, ‘Star Trek’ wasn’t that good (fun movie, but among the best Star Trek films, much less the best of 2009? I don’t think so). Two, ‘Crank 2’ was so brazen, crude, and audacious it became some sort of hyperactive masterpiece. Right after I saw it, I wasn’t sure if I had seen either one of the worst movies of all time, or one of the best. It took me awhile to fully process the experience.

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Admiral Snackbar said on January 6th, 2010 at 3:35 am

It’s weird how I’m so in tune with MGK on comics, yet not on movies. I can’t stand so many of the movies on this list. I hate everything Jason Reitman’s ever done, the new Star Trek was dull and had no style- same for District 9 – and the only thing that kept me going through Away We Go was the hope that Jim Gaffigan would be back at some point.

Basterds was a bunch of variations on the same structure. Surface-level pleasant conversation -> building tension -> uncontrollable violence. I get that Tarantino’s basically filming an equivalent of Golden Age war comics, where it’s just escapist fantasy, so let’s just kill Hitler and feel better, but I didn’t get a sense of catharsis from it.

There’s a special place in my hatred reserved for 500 Days of Summer, although it was a compelling portrait of one filmmaker’s infatuation with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The whole film is a series of impotent gimmicks. That’s not the Apartment, that’s Family Guy, you know? The way it plays with time doesn’t tell us anything insightful about Tom’s perception of relationships, all it does is withhold information until it feels like rewarding us with what we already figured out. Plus, the main characters are obnoxiously twee. (And I don’t understand everyone’s love of the final line. Seriously? I cringed.)

Adventureland was great, though. Lot of people overlooked that one. I think it’s actually much more insightful and accurate than most of the 80s teen/coming-of-age flicks that everyone remembers so fondly, save maybe Say Anything and Pump Up the Volume. I’d easily put it in a class with those two films – the John Hugues teen stuff is pretty self-absorbed, and no one seems to have noticed yet that Ferris Bueller is a total sociopath destined for a scandal-ridden political career.

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mygif

Drag me to hell? Really?

*crawls away and hides in a hole somewhere* That has to be the biggest disappointment of the year for me. I almost hurt something suffering through it in the theater, and I went in wanting to like it.

But alas, to each their own I suppose!

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mygif

So happy reading your thoughts on The Lovely Bones. Saw it yesterday, and still mulling over my thoughts…but it’s definitely better than critics have made out.

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mygif

I haven’t seen most of these movies, although I’m a big fan of Ricky Gervais and kind of bummed that I didn’t get to watch Invention of Lying. The Lovely Bones looks beautiful, but I was warned against (500) Days of Summer, and am too young to be nostalgic for Adventureland. Sorry.

Up was sweet, and very nice to look at, and the montage in the beginning made me cry like a baby; it just didn’t live up to the hype I’d been hearing, which always sucks. I mean, I’d rather watch Kung Fu Panda again, it definitely wasn’t up to the usual Disney/Pixar standards. Basterds, like some of Tarantino’s other work, was an interesting concept with some good moments, excellent visuals, and a kickin’ soundtrack, that was dragged out for far too long. I feel like if he could self-edit and cut or shorten scenes without botching the story, Tarantino’s movies could be far more entertaining.

Coraline was awesome, and is better every time I watch it. Star Trek was great the first few times, but isn’t as good under scrutiny even though it’s a lot of fun; there’s a lot of underutilized talent in that movie. I adored District 9, and I thought it was a really clever decision to set the whole thing in South Africa to avoid the kind of white-vs-brown racial politics and colonial attitudes that plagued Avatar, even if that makes the plot’s politics messier overall. But it was a ballsy move only because South Africa’s human racial politics remained intact. I thought one of the best things about the movie was that it took a lot of standard-issue sci-fi tropes (bio-weapons, vivisection of the aliens, farming them up for segregation, etc.) and put the PoV of the story on a human level within those structures.

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mygif

Amazing list of movies, Coraline was one of my favorite animated movie of last year, yes better than Up. Moon is pretty good too, but some place boring.

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mygif

@AJ: “Right after I saw it, I wasn’t sure if I had seen either one of the worst movies of all time, or one of the best.”

The beauty and genius of Crank 2 was that it was both.

“He was dead … but he got better.”

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mygif

I had two gripes about Coraline.

1. F*&)ing musical. Who asked for that shit?
2. The way the other mother became rather inorganic/mechanical at the end. Really took the edge off the autonomous severed hand.

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