The 20 Best DVDs of 2009

As we finish up 2009, it's time again to look back at the DVD film releases of the past year and give thanks! Again, I am talking about new films on disk, most released theatrically in 2008 (unless noted as a 2009 release).There are many fine TV series and re-releases, but that's another blog. Happily we've reviewed many of these films already on this blog, so I've included the links. Most of these films I give four shakers to unless noted as the elusive fifth shaker.

With all the chaos in life, nothing beats getting lost in a good film. So here are my picks on the best twenty. I think any film lover on your list would appreciate any of these. (Why not do a gift basket and get them all? :)

Happy Holidays and Happy viewing! (When the January rental doldrums hit, I will offer up some additional good films of the past year)

1) Anvil: The Story of Anvil - Old Head bangers keep the dream alive into middle age. Review here.

2) The Cove (2009) - A dramatic doc on the battle to save dolphins from slaughter and captivity.

3) Days and Clouds – A successful Italian couple try to keep their marriage afloat and start over in a harsh economy. Review here.

4) Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son about His Father – Began as a project to tell a son about his murdered father, director Kurt Kuenne successfully covers additional tragic twists in one of the most heart-wrenching films you'll ever see.

5) District 9 (2009) – A great sci-fi film on lost humanity that I think was totally overlooked this summer. Director Neill Blomkamp gives us an exciting story about aliens who become refugees in South Africa and how the corporation tasked with relocating them then seeks to exploit them for their weapons technology. 5 Shakers

6) Doubt - John Patrick Shanley's powerfully acted tale of the power struggle between a conservative nun and a progressive priest in a 1964 New York City parish. Our Reviews here. 5 Shakers

7) Eden - A simple but universal story of an Irish couple struggling with their ten-year marriage. Review here.

8) Frozen River - Another story of personal survival, Melissa Leo brings amazing truth and believability to her role of a mother struggling to keep her family afloat by any means possible. Jessi's Review here.

9) The Hangover (2009) - Todd Phillips directs a believable and likeable cast in a tale of the ultimate bachelor party gone bad in Las Vegas. Comedies about men who don't want to grow up are a Hollywood stable, but this one avoids the usual bathroom humor to deliver a fun and clever flick.

10) I've Loved You So Long – Another tale of family dynamics, this time two siblings who struggle to get reacquainted after a fifteen year absence. Kristin Scott Thomas is compelling as a shell-shocked woman who slowly reveals her secrets to her well-meaning but puzzled younger sister (Elsa Zylbertstein). Jessi's Review here.

11) Let the Right One In – An alternative vampire flick to the one which shall remain nameless. Original and creepy, the setting of a cold, dark, depressing Swedish town is spot on and the concept of a little girl vampire is spooky. Review here.

12) Milk – Director Gus Van Sant really captures the details and tone of the era in this timely biopic of Harvey Milk (Oscar winner Sean Penn) the first openly gay man to be voted into public office in America. A great supporting cast includes Josh Brolin who is brooding and intense as Dan White, a troubled fellow official on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors who feels threatened enough to murder.

13) Revolutionary Road – Though I didn't notice the trend before this is my third pick to focus on a troubled marriage. Based on the novel by Richard Yates, Sam Mendes delivers a film not really about the homogenized suburbs but about the compromises of marriage and conformity. Very similar in time period and theme to "Mad Men", seeing April (Oscar winner Kate Winslet) framed behind a picture window like a caged bird is tragic. Review here.

14) Sin Nombre (2009) – A Honduran girl falls for a Central American gang banger on a train heading to the US border. Review here.

15) Slumdog Millionaire – Last years' big Oscar winner tells the fairy tale odyssey of an 18-year-old Mumbai "slumdog" (Dev Patel) attempting to find his lost love (Freida Pinto) by going on a TV game show. Director Danny Boyle directs this story with energy and heart and a breakout final song unexpectedly paying tribute to big Bollywood dance numbers. Jessi's review here.

16) Star Trek (2009) – J.J. Abrams reboots the franchise for new fans and old trekkers alike. A great finish to a decade of some outstanding sci-fi! 5 Shakers Review here.

17) Summer Hours - As an aging widow reunites her adult children and their families to their childhood home; she realizes her possessions and legacy will become devalued once she passes on. A subtle but powerful film on how the global economy is not only splintering families, but undermining cultures, creating a society does not value its’ own history.

18) Up (2009) – Pixar does it again with an amazingly touching film on never being too old to live out your dreams.

19) Waltz with Bashir – An "animated documentary" for adults as ex-soldiers revisit their fractured wartime memories. Review here.

20) The Wrestler – Mickey Rourke's amazing comeback film of a tortured middle-aged wrestler trying to come to terms with his life while staging a final bout. This is the wrestling picture Barton Fink should have written.

'Star Trek' time travels in to save our day!

I used to work with a man who looked and acted deliberately like Data of Star Trek: The Next Generation. He later moved onto vampires but I did agree with him that our office would be more fun if we all wore the uniforms like those on the show. Yet TNG movies were too serious and more of a bore than their predecessors in the eighties with the classic original cast. Although those films got worse with each entry and began to look like 'beer bellies in space', they still retained that sense of wonderful cheesiness of the original series. In the fab sixties, Kirk and the crew which included plenty of mini-skirted fembots conquered the universe. Shatner kicked ass with a shoulder-rolling brawl set to a blazing horn section; A cosmic Don Draper. He also would bed down multi-colored alien babes as Spock and Bones argued logic versus emotion like a classic psych exam. My elder brother was an old school Trekkie and I recall as a boy going to a local mall to see Leonard Nimoy. (We didn't get close).

I didn't really watch TNG or the other spin-offs much. Yet I had "Star Trek" imbedded in my brain, a cultural touchstone and an example of how sci-fi could be fun as well as cerebral. Last year as I looked around an Apple Store one of the clerks (er Associates) was running down the features and programs of a Mac, when he asked casually "Hey have you seen this?" and played the new Star Trek trailer in Hi-def. I had no idea it was being remade. Suddenly it was all there in that three minute clip: JJ Abrams of "Lost", "Alias" and "Cloverfield" fame had rebooted the franchise with an origins story. Uhura was a super hottie! The guy from "Heroes" as Spock? 'Harold' from "Harold and Kumar" as Sulu? "Shaun of the Dead" as friggin Scotty? Leonard Nimoy - Are you serious? The original sounds effects even sounded hip. We both looked at each other in a WTF moment of nerdy joy. I saw the film as soon as it opened.

This would have been so easy to mess up but outside of one CGI snow monster that didn't thrill me as necessary, I am pleased to say that Abrams and company really nailed this! Chris Pine had extra large space shoes to fill with Kirk but has done it and here is the young captain, complete with his bar fights and the bedding of green girls, fully intact. He subverts authority follows his instincts and is brutally loyal to his team who form before our delighted eyes. Spock, Bones, Chekov, Uhura, Sulu and Scotty here are all thrown together for the first time and have their own heroic moments to shine. Eric Bana as Nero is the best villain since Khan and then there's the space-time continuum, the sci-fi device that opens the parallel universe and gets old and new Trek to fit together as it should. Zachary Quinto as Spock and Karl Urban as Bones stand out and really channel their TV counterparts. So loyal to the original campy Trek but retrofitted with added adrenalin, it is as fun as the original series and is as movies should be. In these hard times it is so timely to see Gene Rodenberry's original vision of a diverse crew of young explorers attempting to right the wrongs of a sometimes evil universe. Fun for mind, body and soul, "Star Trek" is one of the best DVDs of the year.

Not to be Missed...Part One

Okay, so I'm in full swing on watching films in anticipation of having to vote for the SAG awards.
Here's a quick run-down of some of the best I've seen so far. Pass the salt and dig in.

Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
So far, this film rises far above the pack in Cinematography. A beautiful, heart wrenching, cinematic masterpiece. The story and direction are outstanding. Really, there are some films one sees that define the medium, and this is one of them. It's why we see films...and love them.

I've Loved You So Long (Il ya longtemps que je t'aime) (2008)
I'll admit that I'm biased when it comes to Kristin Scott Thomas---she is a remarkable beauty and talent. Compelling to watch. And here, in this moody, unraveling story, she is superb. For personal family reasons, this film probably affected me more than most. And the success in this French drama lies in the hands of Ms. Thomas. I loved it, tears and all.

WALL-E (2008)
A sweet, thought-provoking and engrossing tale about an animated robot? Yep. Score another big win for the talent pool at Pixar. I expect to be swept up in emotion by films with animated animals, but I didn't expect this reaction from WALL-E. An adorable, brave little...robot...and a future of obese, couch potato humans who've lost the ability to move? Sign me up. A smart tale, sweet story, and great film.

Frozen River (2008)
While Slumdog Millionaire gets my vote as a cinematic masterpiece, Frozen River shines as a gritty masterpiece. Melissa Leo 's performance is stellar. I can still feel the cold, hear the crunching of packed snow and ice, and anguish over "Ray Eddy's" life in a trailer in upstate New York. Bravo.

Doubt (2008)
Philip Seymour Hoffman and Meryl Streep in the same film? Truly, I must have died and gone to heaven. If you love film as much as I do, you must see Doubt. This is what all filmmakers aspire to. On every level, in every category, one of the best films ever made, in my ever so humble opinion. Streep and Hoffman are beyond brilliant. I couldn't believe that the film was over when it was...it felt like only ten minutes had gone by.

Too much gushing for you? Tired of hearing "one of the best films ever?" Well, stay tuned...more to come. Including a palette-clearing summary of some not-so-wonderful movies.

"Outsourced" (2006): Sweet as Banana Lassi

‘Americans get angry over their jobs being outsourced. But aren’t so many of the products they buy made in China?’

This is just one of the smart observations made in this endearing, beautifully told story. Watching “Outsourced” feels like watching a foreign film at it’s best. Rich, intriguing characters, a reluctant outsider, and a warm, unfolding culture. An American employee is shipped off to India when the novelty company he works for decides to outsource their sales support. Josh Hamilton plays the culturally insensitive American who slowly opens his mind, and heart, to a new culture...a new way of thinking.


(<---- The adorable Ayesha Dharker)
I couldn’t help but be reminded of “Local Hero” (1983), in which Peter Riegert’s pre-Bill Murray, intricately underplayed character is sent to Scotland to buy a village where his company plans to build an oil refinery. Outsourced is a little funnier, a little lighter, but achieves the same feeling, nonetheless.

I had the honor of performing in a staged reading of one of George Wing’s works in progress when I lived in Seattle. His previous hit, “50 First Dates,” has the same romantic heart. His collaboration with John Jeffcoat has produced a thinking person’s love story, that takes a look at the day to day realities of outsourcing American jobs.

There’s no Hollywood prerequisite “edginess” here— no murders, explosions. Just an economics/love story that really blew me away. This is the first film I’m rating 5 salt shakers..... a classic, a must-see.

Five-Shaker Cinema - A Best of List

As Jessi and I use this blog as a fun way to share our takes on films, it’s easy to see that we are not alone. Literally hundreds of reviewers screen mountains of films, with thousands of folks chiming in through message boards, blogs, and dedicated web sights along with media outlets big and small. It’s the definitive ‘too much information’ overload of our times. We just want to have fun like our old friends Siskel & Ebert did way back when.

So as we randomly sample the giant pie of current DVDs’ available I thought I’d give up some past opinions. These 118 films IMHO rate 5 salt shakers- our highest rating. I pulled these from the ratings I have already online at Netflix. Of course not a definitive list but just great films that I personally could watch over many times and enjoy. If you’re a Netflix member each film hotlinks back to their site to make it easy to add these to your queue. Film geeks love their lists- so here are some great films in reverse order of their release. If you haven’t seen some of these, I think you’ll enjoy them. If not we can get in big arguments- that’s what we’re here for right? I know I left so many out- I’m just trying people…


No Country for Old Men (2007)
Children of Men (2006)
Hotel Rwanda (2005)
Kinamand (2005)
The Squid and the Whale (2005)
Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)
Riding Giants (2004)
Sideways (2004)
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
13 Conversations About One Thing (2002)
28 Days Later (2002)
About Schmidt (2002)
Bloody Sunday (2002)
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002)
Ghost World (2001)
In the Bedroom (2001)
Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
Wallace & Gromit: Three Amazing Adventures (2001)
The Endurance (2000)
You Can Count on Me (2000)
Being John Malkovich (1999)
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Fight Club (1999)
The Matrix (1999)
October Sky (1999)
The Taste of Others (1999)
The Big Lebowski (1998)
Run Lola Run (1998)
Beautiful Girls (1996)
Dead Man Walking (1995)
Hoop Dreams (1994)
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Faraway, So Close! (1993)
Groundhog Day (1993)
Slacker (1991)
GoodFellas (1990)
Miller's Crossing (1990)
Drugstore Cowboy (1989)
Cinema Paradiso: Director's Cut (1988)
Wall Street (1987)
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
Platoon (1986)
Brazil (1985)
Lost in America (1985)
Amadeus (1984)
This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
The Big Chill (1983)
A Christmas Story (1983)
Das Boot (1981)
Airplane! (1980)
Caddyshack (1980)
The Changeling (1980)
Ordinary People (1980)
Raging Bull (1980)
Apocalypse Now (1979)
Being There (1979)
Mad Max (1979)
Halloween (1978)
National Lampoon's Animal House (1978)
Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)
All the President's Men (1976)
Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976)
Network (1976)
The Omen (1976)
Nashville (1975)
Amarcord (1974)
The Godfather, Part II (1974)
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)
Scenes from a Marriage (Theatrical) (1974)
American Graffiti (1973)
Don't Look Now (1973)
Frenzy (1972)
The Godfather (1972)
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
The Graduate (1967)
You Only Live Twice (1967)
Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966)
The Battle of Algiers (1965)
Dr. Strangelove (1964)
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)
Seven Days in May (1964)
8 1/2 (1963)
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
La Dolce Vita (1960)
Psycho (1960)
North by Northwest (1959)
Some Like It Hot (1959)
Wild Strawberries (1957)
Paths of Glory (1957)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
The Searchers (1956)
Rear Window (1954)
Ugetsu (1953)
A Christmas Carol (1951)
Strangers on a Train (1951)
All About Eve (1950)
The Bicycle Thief (1948)
It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
Notorious (1946)
Casablanca (1942)
Citizen Kane (1941)
The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
Gone with the Wind (1939)
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
The Rules of the Game (1939)
The Petrified Forest (1936)
King Kong (1933)
City Lights (1931)
Dracula (1931)
Man with the Movie Camera (1929)
The General (Silent) (1927)
Battleship Potemkin (1925)
The Gold Rush (1925)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920)