Another perspective on the best movies of 2009 from contributing writer Josh Miller.

This is not an objective list; rather than choosing films that are the best films of the year because of simple filmmaking aesthetic, I chose the ten films that I had some sort of resonance with personally. This list could potentially be updated in the near-future, but this is a pretty accurate reflection as it is…..

1. The Road – This adaptation of the Pulitzer-Prize winning novel by Cormac McCarthy is a bleak look at a  father and son wandering around a post-apocalyptic world. Many films have covered this territory in the last few years, but The Road is the best of them and the best film of 2009. It’s a dark, gloomy film that portrays the animalistic nature of humans unflinchingly. It’s suspenseful, thought-provoking, and powerful.

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It all worked out. Pretty much.

Jeff Bridges finally won an Oscar. “The Hurt Locker” beat “Avatar” for Best Picture. And Sandra Bullock actually made me want to see her performance in “The Blind Side.”

All in all, this year’s Academy Awards was one of the most satisfying Oscar ceremonies ever. The right people won (mostly) and the producers found interesting ways to present the less-than-star-studded categories (the video packages for the sound and short film categories were the most compelling B-roll of the night).

If only hosts Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin  had brought the funny. I can’t really blame them completely; the material they were forced to present was some of the worst second-rate awards banter on record. I couldn’t believe the live audience was giving them so many pity laughs.

Too bad opening act Neil Patrick Harris couldn’t have stuck around for the entire ceremony. He was, as always, legendary.

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“No More Pull-Ups.”

“Nice.”

These are the final lines of dialogue from “2012,” the mother of all disaster movies. Something like six billion people die in the movie, but gosh darnit, those cute kids and the lovable pooch make it safely to Noah’s Ark 2: Apocalyptic Boogaloo.

Don’t get me wrong. I’d much rather watch this 150 minute pile of absurdity than any minute of “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.” I just think it’s hilarious that on Oscar weekend, a time to celebrate the best of what the movie industry can offer, the #1 DVD rental in all the land will be a movie about the coolness of natural disasters. Maybe let Haiti skip this one for a while.

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Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin host the (something annual) Academy Awards at 5 p.m. Sunday on ABC. It should be a big test for the industry’s most celebrated award show. While some see the 10-nominee Best Picture race as detrimental to the Academy’s reputation as the authority on quality filmmaking, others believe the stuffed category will boost ratings for the fledgling ceremony telecast.

Those are discussions for other days. For now, let’s focus on the big night: Who will win, and perhaps more importantly, who should win. On with the predictions!

Best Picture
The most heated battle of the night comes down to mega-blockbuster “Avatar” and the low-budget war drama “The Hurt Locker.” The two films couldn’t be any more different. One is good, and the other is an overblown rip-off of “Pocahontas” with cool special effects.

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No matter how great the filmmaker behind the camera, a movie is only as good as its screenplay.

Martin Scorsese may be the best director working today, but even he can’t steer “Shutter Island” away from its fundamental story problems. Moody atmosphere, convincing period art direction and an island stocked of A-list actors just can’t save the film from a predictable, tedious plot.

Based on a novel by Dennis Lehane (“Mystic River”), “Shutter Island” takes place in 1954 at a hospital for the criminally insane located on a remote, Northeastern island. A disturbed murderer has disappeared from her cell, so two U.S. Marshals (Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo) are called in to investigate. A couple immediate warning signs for the officers: The guards won’t let them bring in their firearms, and the hospital doctors (Ben Kingsley and Max von Sydow) exude a level of vague creepiness typically reserved for villains on “Lost” island.

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I finally got around to seeing "The Invention of Lying" tonight (Thanks, Netflix, for delaying its availability four weeks after its regular home video release date).

The film isn’t as hilarious as you might expect from writer/director/star Ricky Gervais, the man behind the British version of "The Office" and the HBO series, "Extras." Still, “The Invention of Lying” has quite the intriguing premise: Gervais plays a man who can lie in a world where everyone else can only speak the truth, no matter how harsh.

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Pick of the Week: “Cold Souls”
Paul Giamatti made a perfect wino in “Sideways” and a rather effective boxing coach to Russell Crowe in “Cinderella Man.” In his latest acting challenge, Giamatti plays Paul Giamatti, a semi-famous actor tackling a soul-sucking role in a Chekov play.

That’s only the start of “Cold Souls,” a bizarre but thoughtful independent film that was quietly released late last summer. When the character of Giamatti grows tired of his heavy emotional load, he visits a doctor (David Strathairn, “Good Night, and Good Luck.”) who can remove souls from the human body and store them in a facility until patients want them back. Without his soul, Giamatti can add some much needed levity to his dreary stage role. (more…)

The best of the best.

Check out numbers 11-51 in part one of this Best Movies of the 2000s list. By now you’ve read a thousand of these articles. At least mine originally published on Christmas Day, so it’s not like I’m that late to the party.

And yes, this Top 10 contains 13 movies.  It’s not cheating. Really.

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The North Idaho lifestyle has its benefits. Diverse moviegoing is not one of them. Some of the best movies of any given year never play in our area, and many take their sweet time getting here.

“Crazy Heart,” the indie drama starring Oscar hopeful Jeff Bridges, finally opened in Spokane last week after months of media buzz.  Bridges stars as has-been country singer Bad Blake, a raging alcoholic who survives on the crumbs of a few good, sad songs. It’s a performance that will no doubt earn Bridges a long overdue Academy Award.

Blake travels hundreds of miles in his beaten truck to play half-empty bowling alleys and dive bars. Still a great musician (in between puking up his whiskey meals), Blake hasn’t written anything new in years. Too bad, because former protégé Tommy Sweet (a terrific Colin Farrell) has hit the big time and wants the industry’s best drunken songwriter to pen a few hits.

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