Best of 2009 (New and Revivals)

24 City

Frontier of Dawn

The Beaches of Agnès

Following up on my posts about the best films of the decade and best queer films of the decade, here is my tentative list of the best films I saw theatrically in 2009 (subject to last-minute revisions). The list is divided into Best New Releases, Best Films I Saw at the New York Film Festival, and Best Revivals.

Best New Releases
1. 35 Shots of Rum
2. 24 City
3. The Beaches of Agnes (Varda's appearance at the Walter Reade is the Q&A of the year)
4. The Headless Woman
5. The Limits of Control
6. Bright Star
7. Tokyo Sonata
8. Summer Hours
9. Lorna’s Silence
10. Two Lovers
11. Liverpool
12. Fantastic Mr. Fox
13. A Serious Man
14. The Frontier of Dawn
15. Still Walking
16. Me and Orson Welles
17. Precious
18. Night and Day
19. The Hurt Locker
20. Inglourious Basterds

SPECIAL MENTION: Invictus; The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus; Lake Tahoe; Beeswax; Up in the Air; Gomorrah; Goodbye, Solo; Of Time and the City (Terence Davies's beautiful, very personal documentary, first seen in 2008); Julia (for Tilda Swinton's fearless, breathtaking performance); (500) Days of Summer (for Joseph Gordon-Levitt's performance)

Best of the New York Film Festival
1. Wild Grass
2. To Die Like a Man
3. Mother
4. Everyone Else
5. Ne Change Rien
6. Ghost Town
7. Police, Adjective
8. Independencia

Best Revivals (grouped by venue, not ranked)
The Cloud-Capped Star (Ritwik Ghatak, Walter Reade)
Satyajit Ray Retrospective (Walter Reade)
Viaggio in Italia (Roberto Rossellini, Walter Reade)

Shoeshine (Vittorio de Sica, Walter Reade)
Pyaasa (Guru Dutt, Walter Reade/NYFF)
La Rabbia di Pasolini (Pier Paolo Pasolini, Walter Reade/NYFF)
The Third Generation (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Walter Reade)
La Promesse/The Son (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Walter Reade)
The Red and the White (Miklos Jancso, Walter Reade)
Jeanne Dielman (Chantal Akerman, Film Forum)
Holiday (George Cukor, Film Forum)
Wild River (Elia Kazan, Film Forum)
By Candlelight (James Whale, Film Forum)
In a Lonely Place/Bigger than Life/Wind Across the Everglades (Nicholas Ray, Film Forum)
Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (Jonas Mekas, Anthology)
You and Me (Fritz Lang, Anthology)
Screen Test #2 (Andy Warhol, Anthology)
Blue (Krzystof Kieslowski, BAM) (Juliette Binoche in person)
A Time to Love and a Time to Die (Douglas Sirk, BAM)
King Lear (Jean-Luc Godard, BAM)
The Ceremony (Nagisa Oshima, BAM)
The President/Love One Another/The Bride of Glomdal (Carl Th. Dreyer, BAM)
Playtime (Jacques Tati, MoMA)
Terence Davies Trilogy (MoMA)
The Housemaid (Kim Ki-Young, MoMA)
Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, MoMA)
Il Sorpasso (Dino Risi, MoMA)
L'Argent (Marcel L'Herbier, MoMA)
Vivre Sa Vie (Jean-Luc Godard, Museum of the Moving Image)
Vive L’Amour (Tsai Ming-Liang, Asia Society) (Tsai and Lee Kang-Sheng in person)