Brendan Rose’s 2009 Top 10 Films

Here is the 2009 version of my (slightly pretentious) Top 10 Films list, with apologies to Crazy Heart, The Messenger, and a few others that I have not yet seen.

1) 35 Shots of Rum (Claire Denis) – A beautifully elegant, melancholy gem of a film. This lean story contains an entire world.
2) The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke) – This arguably didactic film is also defined by formal brilliance and a razor-sharp intelligence in Haneke guiding the ship.
3) Hunger (Steve McQueen) – An uncompromising, unsentimental, brutal film about horrific oppression and a desperate act of protest. The endless dialogue sequence between Sands and the priest is pure genius and anchors the film.
4) 24 City (Jia Zhangke) – Jia’s films possess a completely original cinema grammar. An illuminating and affecting look at China’s rush towards modernity.
5) After Life (Hirokazu Kore-Eda) – Another delicately observed drama from one of world cinema’s best.
6) Headless Woman (Lucretia Martel) – Hypnotic metaphysical drama that touches on class and identity within Argentina in the most subtle of ways.
7) Two Lovers (James Gray) – Gray continues to make rugged outer-borough pictures that defy the gentrifying city’s pop image.
8) Adventureland (Greg Mottola) – A funny, bittersweet coming-of-age tale with brains.
9) Where the Wild Things Are (Spike Jonze) – A children’s chronicle of adventure turned into a gorgeously shot study of the struggle between youthful exuberance and adulthood’s pensive regrets.
10) Me and Orson Welles (Richard Linklater) – Old Broadway, Orson Welles, and pre-war Manhattan all in one. A film brimming with possibility!

Honorable Mention
• The Informant (Steven Soderbergh) – The most hilarious yet dark and depressing film about capitalism ever made. Matt Damon is unstoppable!
• Public Enemies (Michael Mann) – Has a period drama ever felt more “present?”