Over the course of this week I will be posting Kris Fulton’s Best Movies of ’09 list – which isn’t really a best movies of ’09, but more of a “here are the best movies I’ve watched in ’09″ list.
Kris is most well known for being the singer of the Baltimore screamo band Age Sixteen but he’s also an excellent photographer and a writer (as well as being an awesome dude).
I decided to break his article into a series of posts because each film is written about extensively and I don’t want the homepage turning into a wall of text. Thanks for contributing Kris!
“I’ve always enjoyed the experience of watching films since I was a kid. My family had a pretty extensive VHS collection growing up so there was always something that I could find that I hadn’t seen yet or couldn’t appreciate before. After going through an art program and taking a handful of classes based on analyzing film, I’ve come to love it even more. There is definitely a difference between a “good” film and a “great” film. Most audiences can appreciate a good film but I think that there is a level of nerdom that comes with picking out great films. I hope to someday take more classes on the art of film, until then I settle with obsessively watching films and even going the extra mile of watching “the making of:” ’s, listening to commentary from directors and actors and doing research of the films on wikipedia and imdb.
A lot of really good films came out in 2009 as did a lot of bad. I actually didn’t end up seeing most of them due to how much I hate going to the movie theater nowadays. The combination of the ridiculous ticket prices and disrespectful people talking through the movie or constantly kicking my chair is a huge turn off for me. I feel like a 50 year old man asking the kids next door to stop throwing their ball across my yard and then hopping over to get it, thus crushing my prize winning summer squash, but I just rather not spend $10 on an overall unpleasant experience. Not to mention that there are few movies that I would even want to spend that much money on watching anyway.
Long story short, I’ve really come to enjoy Netflix especially after they finally added their “Watch Instantly” feature to Apple computers. There I have access to thousands of movies, some of which I’ve always have wanted to see, some which I should have seen but haven’t, some that I never would have watched in a movie theater, and others which I stumble upon randomly.
Since I haven’t seen a lot of the movies that came out in 2009 yet because they aren’t on DVD yet or I haven’t gotten them in the mail, I figured that I would go back in my Netflix history and suggest 10 movies that I saw in 2009 and think are worth the readers of this blog to take the time to view (out of my humble opinion) if you haven’t already. Each will have the link to it’s respective imdb page if you want to find out more about them.”
Top Ten Movies I saw in 2009 (in alphabetical order)
ALMOST FAMOUS
This was one of the many movies that I have wanted to see at one point, but just forgot about for whatever reason. A “coming of age” movie loosely based on the true life of director Cameron Crowe’s (Fast Times at Ridgemont High (book), Jerry McGuire, Vanilla Sky) experience as a writer for Rolling Stone. Crowe started writing for the magazine as a teenager as does the lead character William Miller (Patrick Fugit). The story portrays what you may think of a typical “rock n’ roll” lifestyle of touring bands in the 70’s and this introverted, naive teenager who becomes a part of it and experiences several life lessons in an otherwise atypical environment.
I think what I liked most about this movie was how much I could relate to the main characters and thinking about how insane it would be to both go on a nationwide tour and start to make it big as a musician(from the standpoint of the guys in the band) as well as hang out and experience the lifestyles of individuals who you hold to such a high, unrealistic regard. Having the director actually have lived the story that he was retelling really reflected in the acting, locations and believability of the movie. While watching it you don’t feel like this is something that could and would never happen in real life because of the relationships and interactions of the characters in the film. It all feels real and you start to relate to the characters – you want Stillwater to make it big as a band, you want William and Penny (Kate Hudson) to settle down together and for him and Russell (Billy Crudup) to stay close friends.
There is a lot of trivia and interesting facts about this film which you can read on imdb one of which is that the music budget was $3.5 million due to the over 50 different original songs used for the film. Supposedly most films have a budget of less than $1.5 million. You can also read the direct relationships of scenes in the movie to the actual experiences of Crowe.
AMERICAN BEAUTY
Such an amazing film with so many iconographic scenes: plastic bag floating in the wind, roses flowing out of the shirt of Mena Suvari, etc. After watching it, I felt a really weird and indescribable sadness for the characters and the reality that it was mimicking. I knew a lot of the memorable scenes already when I saw them, but in the context of the movie they mean so much more. The attention to detail in this film is ridiculous and I would definitely recommend reading the “trivia” about it on imdb. I love when movies leave you wanting more and with unanswered questions because that means that the director and actors did their jobs in making you believe in the world that they created and its story so much that you want more. Apparently the original script of the movie included more scenes which extended the story past the way it ends and also changes key decisions made by characters within the film.
The title of the film comes from a breed of rose actually called the American Beauty which is beautiful in appearance but tends to rot from underneath at the roots and branches of the plant. The flower, like the suburban life portrayed in the film, seems perfect from the outside but has hidden flaws which can not be seen at first glance.
Tags: best of 2009
