Village Voice Now-Kinda-Lame Poll

[Sabin]

Critics' Poll: Top Films, Actors, Documentaries of 2009
94 critics voted. The results are in.

Tuesday, December 22nd 2009 at 4:56pm
Shane Harrison

Best Films of 2009

1. The Hurt Locker
Kathryn Bigelow
(356 points, 54 mentions)
Bigelow's you-are-there Iraq War drama immerses the viewer in the front-line existence of a U.S. bomb squad in Baghdad. It's an experiential war movie—and a full-throttle body-shock, too.

2. Summer Hours
Olivier Assayas
(239 points, 40 mentions)
Old money meets a new world as bourgeois siblings struggle to divide their mother's estate and Assayas ponders the value of family and France in the age of relentless globalization.

3. A Serious Man
Joel and Ethan Coen
(229 points, 34 mentions)
Larry Gopnik, schlub extraordinaire, absorbs humiliations of all kind—financial, professional, personal, rabbinical—to learn that life is really about . . . just kidding! Life isn't about anything, God sucks, and the Coens are brutal in this blackest of black comedies.

4. Inglourious Basterds
Quentin Tarantino
(214 points, 36 mentions)
All hail Quentin Tarantino's smashingly entertaining World War II romp about a dirty half-dozen American grunts trying to bring an end to the Third Reich. Jews and Nazis may battle it out to a fiery finish, but it is cinema that emerges triumphant.

5. 35 Shots of Rum
Claire Denis
(189 points, 32 mentions)
Denis's quiet, poignant father-daughter drama shows the beauty and strength of familial bonds, and the equally strong force of personal, individual desire.

6. The Headless Woman
Lucrecia Martel
(183 points, 28 mentions)
Though structured around Vero, a middle-aged peroxide blond who hits something (a dog?) with her car, Martel's willfully disorienting head-scratcher's true subject is the self-satisfied stagnation of the privileged elite, whom the film eviscerates without mercy.

7. Police, Adjective
Corneliu Porumboiu
(171 points, 28 mentions)
A slow-burn absurdist triumph, Police begins as a police procedural but winds up an exhilarating verbal ping-pong match about conscience, personal morality, and the true meanings of words.

8. Fantastic Mr. Fox
Wes Anderson
(163 points, 29 mentions)
Asking existential questions through the whisker'd mouth of a reckless, self-absorbed, corduroy-clad fox (George Clooney), Wes Anderson's stop-motion animation wonder is, in the end, deeply human.

9. Two Lovers
James Gray
(137 points, 20 mentions)
An explosion of emotions, Gray's Brighton Beach–set melodrama gives Joaquin Phoenix every Jewish boy's impossible situation: marry the parents-approved, nice Jewish girl (Vinessa Shaw) or shtup the crazy shiksa next door (Gwyneth Paltrow).

10. Up
Pete Docter and Bob Peterson
(120 points, 21 mentions)
The latest Pixar insta-classic, Up takes off as widower Carl turns his home into a high-flying house-balloon and floats up, up, and away to see the world. Turns out, he is not alone—and his journey for personal wish fulfillment becomes something even more essential.



BEST ACTOR

Jeremy Renner, The Hurt Locker
(60 points, 27 mentions)
Beneath his blustery macho surface, Renner's Staff Sergeant William James may be the movie's most intricately wired explosive device. Bomb-detonator wins the war for best actor, at least.

Runners-up:

Nicolas Cage, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (33 points, 19 mentions)
Colin Firth, A Single Man (32 points, 13 mentions)
Joaquin Phoenix, Two Lovers (29 points, 12 mentions)
Tom Hardy, Bronson (28 points, 12 mentions)


BEST ACTRESS

Tilda Swinton, Julia
(66 points, 25 mentions)
As the titular desperate woman—a leggy, vodka-guzzling tart in false eyelashes and cheap sequined gowns—Swinton devours her role, then spits it back up, dances giddily upon it, and twirls it in the air.

Runners-up

Charlotte Gainsbourg, Antichrist (57 points, 25 mentions)
Carey Mulligan, An Education (42 points, 23 mentions)
Catalina Saavedra, The Maid (41 points, 19 mentions)
Meryl Streep, Julie & Julia (32 points, 18 mentions)


BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
(92 points, 35 mentions)
As the loquacious Nazi Hans Landa, Waltz is not only the movie's villain, but also its master of revels. A cheerfully sadistic SS Colonel you can root for!

Runners-up:

Christian McKay, Me and Orson Welles (34 points, 17 mentions)
Woody Harrelson, The Messenger (30 points, 15 mentions)
Paul Schneider, Bright Star (23 points, 12 mentions)
Vlad Ivanov, Police, Adjective (22 points, 9 mentions)


BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Mo'Nique, Precious
(69 points, 29 mentions)
A force of nature, Mo'Nique transforms an ostensibly one-note monster—Precious's welfare mom—into a complex portrait of a psychologically damaged woman.

Runners-up:

Vera Farmiga, Up in the Air (45 points, 20 mentions)
Mélanie Laurent, Inglourious Basterds (32 points, 14 mentions)
Samantha Morton, The Messenger (31 points, 17 mentions)
Anna Kendrick, Up in the Air (26 points, 14 mentions)


BEST DOCUMENTARY

Anvil! The Story of Anvil
(12 points)
Sacha Gervasi's phenomenal rockumentary follows the now-fiftysomething "demigods of Canadian metal" through a disastrous European tour and the recording of their 13th album—and waning shot at fame.

Runners-up:

Of Time and the City (10 points)
The Beaches of Agnès (9 points)
The Cove (8 points)
La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet;
Tyson (7 points)


BEST FIRST FEATURE

The Messenger
(8 points)
The directorial debut of Oren Moverman (who wrote Todd Haynes's I'm Not There) is a moving and nuanced drama about a pair of casualty notification officers, bearing awful news while coping with their own traumas.

Runners-up:

Afterschool (7 points)
In the Loop; A Single Man; Tulpan (6 points)


BEST UNDISTRIBUTED FILM

To Die Like a Man
(24 points, 11 mentions)
A fabulously sad fable about a Fado-singing, pooch-pampering trannie growing old, Portuguese filmmaker João Pedro Rodrigues's To Die Like a Man, which premiered at this past Cannes and then came stateside to the New York Film Festival, is also a piece of lyrical, playful, unpredictable filmmaking.

Runners-up:

Trash Humpers (16 points, 7 mentions)
Enter the Void (12 points, 7 mentions)


WORST FILM OF THE YEAR

Precious
(6 points)
Starring our top pick for supporting actress, Precious—about an overweight, neglected, and abused teen mother—is apparently an acquired taste.

Runners-up:

Inglourious Basterds; The Lovely Bones; Nine; Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (4 points)
Whatever Works (3 points)


BEST FILM OF THE DECADE
Mulholland Drive (10 points)
Comic, sexy, surreal, self-reflexive, thrilling, and ludicrous by turns, David Lynch's 2001 exploration of the Hollywood dream factory is a voluptuous phantasmagoria with a two-part structure that suggests Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr. reversed so that the dream comes first.

Runners-up:

The 25th Hour; In the Mood for Love (5 points)
La Commune; Yi Yi; Zodiac (4 points)



Edited By Sabin on 1261537298