“I have seen films you people wouldn’t believe. Soldiers on fire in the streets of Baghdad. I’ve watched quicksilver waves glitter in the night as the moon is drawn down. All of these celluloid moments will be lost in time, like tears…. in…rain.”Hopefully some of these films will be remembered in years to come, where intelligent drama replaces the insipid and uninspired musings of Box Office delights. I’ve yet to see many interesting films such as Michael Haneke’s THE WHITE RIBBON, Corneliu Porumboiu’s POLICE, ADJECTIVE, or Werner Herzog’s madcap BAD LIEUTENANT, but the line must be drawn sometime. My only prerequisite is that the film must have opened theatrically in the US in 2009: many foreign films take years to reach our shores…if at all. Of course, the list is totally subjective but I hope you find one or two gems that you would have otherwise missed. Enjoy.
- THE HURT LOCKER (Kathryn Bigelow)
- TOKYO SONATA (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
- PONYO ON THE CLIFF BY THE SEA (Hayao Miyazaki)
- ANTICHRIST (Lars von Trier)
- LE SILENCE DE LORNA (Luc & Jean-Pierre Dardenne)
- MOON (Duncan Jones)
- HUNGER (Steve McQueen)
- THE LIMITS OF CONTROL (Jim Jarmusch)
- GOODBYE SOLO (Rahmin Bahrani)
- ANVIL: THE STORY OF ANVIL (Sacha Gervasi)
