10 Movies to Watch in 2009

With 2009 upon us (for quite a while now), I thought it was about time I made this list. These are the top 10 movies I'm looking forward to watching in 2009. None of them will be up to par with 2008's The Dark Knight, but it's looking to be a pretty stellar year for film nonetheless.

Note: Although not all of these films have trailers released, I've looked over the trailers of the ones that do and taken my favorite shots from them. Enjoy!


10. Up
May 29
This one really needs no explanation. I want to watch if because it's a Pixar movie, it's as simple as that.


9. Funny People
July 31
Think what you will about the people involved, but Judd Apatow's brand of comedy is here to stay. And it's funny too. Funny People is about a comedian, played by Adam Sandler, who finds out he's dying. Seth Rogen, Eric Bana, Leslie Mann, Jason Schwartzman and Jonah Hill also star. It looks hilarious, and it's actually directed by Apatow. His only other directorial outings are The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, and this one looks to be another winner to add to that short list.


8. Inglourious Basterds
August 21
I love World War II films, and seeing Tarantino's take on them will be interesting. The cast is interesting as well, and includes Brad Pitt, Diane Kruger, Hostel director Eli Roth and B.J. Novak of TV's The Office, just to name a few. The trailer seems to sum the movie up well: "killin' Nazis."


7. Shutter Island
October 2
I don't know much about this film, but it involves Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio working together to adapt a Dennis Lehane novel. Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone are other Lehane novels that became film adapdations. Not too shabby. Scorsese is a legend, so this one is pretty much a guaranteed hit.


6. Avatar
December 18
Once again, not much is known about this one, but it's James Cameron's first feature film since Titanic, so it's definitely one to keep an eye on. It also has space marines, and Cameron seems to know his stuff when it comes to them (Aliens anybody?).


5. Where the Wild Things Are
October 16
This movie has been a long time coming, but in 2009 we should finally see Spike Jonze's adaptation of Maurice Sendak's book, a childhood necessity of many. Jonze is using suits for the Wild Things instead of CGI, which makes me all the more excited for Where the Wild Things Are.


4. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
June 24
Again, think what you want about Michael Bay and his filmography, but the first Transformers did a fine job of portraying the 80's cartoon in a live action medium. It's the franchise Bay was born to helm, because it begs for product placement, and Bay always seems eager for some product placement (The Island anyone?). I was initially skeptical of Fallen, but the Super Bowl TV spot and the recent extended teaser made me a believer. Hopefully the finished movie turns out the same way.


3. Terminator: Salvation
May 21
Christian Bale's infamous rant notwithstanding, McG's new Terminator film looks to be a pretty amazing entry into the summer lineup. I honestly don't know much about the story, but suffice to say it's the first Terminator film to take place after the nuclear war (the nuclear war that the characters spent three films trying to prevent). The trailers look ridiculously cool, especially the latest one, which finally revealed a bit about the story (more than, "There was a war with robots"). Like most fans of the series, I wish James Cameron was at the helm, but it should be interesting to see what McG does with Terminator.


2. Public Enemies
July 1
This film could easily sit at number one for me. We have Heat and Collateral director Michael Mann calling the shots, and Johnny Depp starring in something that isn't a Pirates or Tim Burton movie. It's a period heist movie about John Dillinger and those trying to catch him, one of whom is played by Christian Bale. Again, the trailer for this movie is one of the best I've ever seen, and I can't wait to see what Mann, Depp and Bale come up with when Public Enemies hits theaters.


1. Star Trek
May 8
I'm a Star Wars fan, through and through, but the new Star Trek is fixin' to make a Trekkie out of me. J.J. Abrams, creator and executive producer of my favorite TV show (LOST) is taking the franchise and re-imagining the original crew with an origin story telling the tale of how they all came together as the crew of the Enterprise. The footage we've seen looks jaw-dropping, and early reports from people who have seen the entire movie are incredibly promising.

Video Game Review: Braid

Just might be the best game in years

Once in a great while, a video game comes along that changes the way we think about gaming. Perhaps the most recent example is Valve's Portal, a game that took first person shooters to new heights with its inventive puzzles and ability to make simplicity into complexity, without the frustration.

That was before Braid, a 2D platformer for the Xbox Live Arcade and PC. On the surface, Braid certainly doesn't appear to have much in the way of innovation. It looks and controls a lot like the original Donkey Kong, and we've seen the ability to rewind time to correct mistakes in other games too, notably in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. But Braid has a lot more going for it than just these elements.

For one, it's the best game I've played in years. Braid is a perfect example of multiple visions coming together to make a magnificently cohesive whole. Developed by Jonathan Blow, the game features a "painterly" art style provided by comic artist David Hellman and music compiled from several different artists, all of whom wrote the music for purposes other than Braid.

Braid is the story of Tim, a seemingly average guy who is trying to rescue the Princess. Start playing the game, however, and you'll realize just how complex the story is. At its core, Braid's story focuses on regret, and the possibility of going back and fixing one's mistakes. That pithy description can't come close to doing the story justice, but suffice to say it's a nice twist on the typical plots of this type, and probably has the deepest and most complex storyline I've ever seen in a platformer.

As the game's official Web site states, "every puzzle in Braid is unique. There is no filler." This couldn't be more true. Each puzzle has its own twist, and many appear quite impossible to solve at first glance. Once each puzzle is solved, Tim gains a puzzle piece. Once Tim finds all the puzzle pieces in an area and puts that area's puzzle together correctly, a ladder in the overworld grows a little closer to bringing the player to the final chapter of the game.

Each world features a puzzle "motif," meaning all the puzzles will revolve around one central concept. None of these concepts are throwaways, and all had at least one puzzle that took forever for me to crack. This is an important feature, since it really is impossible to die in the game since time can be rewound and Tim's death prevented. The challenge is necessary to keep gamers glued to the screen like I was.

On the visual side, Braid shines unlike any other game I've played. Playing this game feels like playing a constantly-moving painting. The environment and background are always active, making the effect of rewinding time that much more noticeable and impressive.

Braid's music deserves a special shout out. As mentioned before, none of these songs were written specifically for the game, but they fit so well that it feels as if they were. The orchestration is beautiful, providing just the right amount of whimsy and foreboding demanded by a game like this.

The only potential downside to Braid is the replay factor. While I fully intend to play through it again, I doubt it'll be nearly as fun as the first time. Not knowing the solutions to the puzzles and the satisfaction of figuring them out was one of the crowning achievements of Braid. Still, for just a few bucks, you can't go wrong.

Hopefully the game industry learns a thing or two from Braid. I wasn't joking around when I said this was the best game I've played in years. That's the honest truth, and the reason is simple: Braid takes a smaller budget and a simple concept and makes that concept into something smarter and greater than even the best mainstream games. It does so by taking its simplicity and making something truly puzzling out of it, coupling that with a fascinating storyline, wonderful music and graphics, and a whole lot of charm.

Braid is available on the Xbox Live Arcade and for download on PC here. Buy it, and you won't regret the purchase. Braid is a one-of-a-kind experience, and one that should not be missed by anybody, gamer or not.

Where's my Chrome?

Consider this post my way of saying, "why no Google Chrome for Mac?" It's coming, but I'll be happy when it's here. This video is a neat stop-motion ad created by the Google Japan team for the browser. Check it out.

The Fremont Troll, with a twist

I'm always a fan of cool photography, especially some of the recent Flickr finds I've come across. One of my favorite Seattle landmarks is the Fremont Troll, an enormous piece of public art beneath the Aurora Bridge in the Fremont neighborhoods. It's clutching a Volkswagen Beetle from California (thanks to Wikipedia for the car's licensing info). This photo from Flickr user moohaha features the Troll at night with the face of a Native American chief projected onto him.

On second thought, don't Super Size Me

I just watched Morgan Spurlock's documentary Super Size Me last night with my girlfriend, and I must say I'll be surprised if I eat any fast food for the next decade or so. It's a well-made and influential documentary, even if it does take Spurlock's experiment to a bit of an unreal extreme. It's quite disturbing to see this guy descend into bad health.

Twilight and Let The Right One In

Fads are very difficult entities to judge. Many of them come around and stick around just long enough for the majority of the general public to loathe them entirely, with just enough hardcore stragglers sticking around to keep the dreaded fad in the limelight. The recent infatuation with vampires is certainly an example. I talked to an employee at FYE in Bellingham, Wash., not too long ago and asked him about the plethora of Twilight merchandise that surrounded me. He told me how much customers seemed to love the stuff, even specifying the popularity of the Edward Cullen cardboard stand-up that stared me in the face with its yellowish eyes.

Ironically, I was in the store that day to find a different vampire movie. I read on various blogs during the past year about Let The Right One In, a Swedish indie film with some similar themes to those present in Twilight. Make no mistake, these are completely different films, but there exists an intriguing comparison to be made between the two.

The similarities are, on the surface, numerous. Both are based on books, and both are centered around romance and young love, and in both, one person within that romance is a vampire. The similarities don't stop there, but that's not the point. The point, I suppose, is quality.

Twilight, based on the book by Stephenie Meyer, is the story of Bella, a high schooler who moves from Arizona to live with her dad, the police chief in the small, perpetually-gloomy-and-rainy town of Forks, Wash. She meets a boy named Edward at school, and happens to fall in love with him. The only catch: he's a vampire.

I forced myself to watch Twilight before writing this, for obvious reasons. I went into the viewing expecting to hate what I saw, and honestly found myself a little surprised. It's not a great film, or even a good one, but it certainly is not horrible either. Twilight suffers a plight similar to movies like Watchmen and Spider-Man 3. If the director had gone a different way with some of the design choices or just tweaked a few aspects here and there, the movie would be far superior to the one fans saw in theaters upon release. But, the fact is, director Catherine Hardwicke seemed to like the laughable running scenes and sometimes-terrible dialogue. The special effects don't help either.

All that aside, the biggest problem I have with Twilight is its apparent claim to innovation. The vampires in this movie can see themselves in mirrors, go out in the daylight (they sparkle instead of die), eat animals instead of people, and even read minds and see the future in some cases. I consider this to be changing the mythology, not blazing new trails in the vampire sub-genre. True innovation, in my opinion, is taking a mythology that's been done to death and doing something original with it.

Enter Let The Right One In. Released in 2008, this film, based on the novel of the same name by John Ajvide Lindqvist (no relation), tells the story of Oskar, a young bullied schoolboy who befriends the neighbor girl, Eli. As you may have guessed, she's a vampire.

This is a wonderful movie, for more reasons than the simple fact that it's a foreign indie and film nerds like me are required to like it because of that. Let The Right One In is, at its core, about children. Both these kids turn in their first performances in the realm of acting, and both do a remarkable job. Never once was I taken out of the film by their lack of ability or experience, because I would guess they were playing themselves most of the time. I would imagine that there's an innocence that comes with casting new child actors. They're uncorrupted by the ideas of filmmaking as an industry, and they can turn in truly genuine performances. The argument that they're playing themselves could be made, but if playing oneself leads performances like these, then I'll take it.

That's not to say Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart were bad. Stewart actually surprised me with her very real-ish performance as a "normal" high school kid. Again, she could be playing herself, but it works. Pattinson has his moments, but after a while the audience hopefully understands that Edward being with Bella could have dangerous consequences. We get it, Edward, stop repeating yourself.

I stopped in at Wal-Mart, Target, Blockbuster and FYE before finally coming across the last available copy of Let The Right One In at Best Buy, all the while finding myself under the creepy, watchful gaze of Robert Pattinson. I'm writing this not to bash on Twilight, but to encourage everyone to grab an indie film every so often. I'd recommend researching them first, obviously, because indies can be a little out-there (by that I mean ridiculously explicit or mind-tripping weird). Let The Right One In is one of the few vampire movies we saw during the same year as Twilight, but it flew under the radar because of its indie and foreign status. It's easy to write off those unheard-of movies you see on the Blockbuster shelf as shoddy direct-to-DVD movies, but that description doesn't always fit. Just because you've heard of Twilight doesn't necessarily mean it's a good movie, and just because you've never heard of Let The Right One In doesn't mean it's terrible.

All I'm saying is, watch an indie film sometime, and sorry, Napoleon Dynamite doesn't count. You might be surprised with what you find.