1. I Killed My Mother/J'ai Tué Ma Mère - Xavier Dolan
2. Avatar - James Cameron
3. Coraline - Henry Selick
4. City Island - Raymond De Felitta
5. The Cove, documentary - Louie Psihoyos
6. I Love You, Phillip Morris - Glenn Ficarra, John Requa
7. A Serious Man - Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
8. Drag Me to Hell - Sam Raimi
9. The Informant! - Steven Soderbergh
10. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo/Män Som Hatar Kvinnor - Niels Arden Oplev
Other great movies of 2009 (in alphabetic order):
(500) Days of Summer - Marc Webb
Adventureland - Greg Mottola
An Education - Lone Scherfig
Broken Embraces/Los Abrazos Rotos - Pedro Almodóvar
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs - Phil Lord, Christopher Miller
Fish Tank - Andrea Arnold
The Good Heart - Dagur Kári
The Hangover - Todd Phillips
In the Electric Mist - Bertrand Tavernier
It's Complicated - Nancy Meyers
Youth in Revolt - Miguel Arteta
Zombieland - Ruben Fleischer
Good, recommendable movies of 2009 (in alphabetic order):
17 Again - Burr Steers
30 Rock - season 4 - Tina Fey (creator) + Best Sitcom of the Year
A Single Man - Tom Ford
Antichrist - Lars Von Trier
Applause - Martin Zandvliet
Away We Go - Sam Mendes
The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans/Bad Lieutenant - Werner Herzog
The Blind Side - John Lee Hancock
Brotherhood/Broderskab - Nicolo Donato
Camping - Jacob Bitsch
Change of Plans/Le Code a Changé - Danièle Thompson
Cold Souls - Sophie Barthes
Crazy Heart - Scott Cooper
Dead Snow/Død Snø - Tommy Wirkola
Dogtooth/Κυνόδοντας (Kynodontas) - Yorgos Lanthimos
Funny People - Judd Apatow
The Haunting in Connecticut - Peter Cornwell
The House of the Devil - Ti West
Hung - season 1 - Colette Burson, Dmitry Lipkin
In the Loop - Armando Iannucci
Inglorious Basterds - Quentin Tarantino
(Untitled) - Jonathan Parker
The Worst of 2009:
1. The Fourth Kind - Olatunde Osunsanmi
2. 2012 - Roland Emmerich
3. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - David Yates
4. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra - Stephen Sommers
5. Fast & Furious - Justin Lin
6. Mr. Nobody - Jaco Van Dormael
7. District 9 - Neill Blomkamp
8. The Box - Richard Kelly
9. Get Low - Aaron Schneider
10. Harry Brown - Daniel Barber
Other less than good movies of the year (in alphabetic order):
Black Dynamite - Scott Sanders
Confessions of a Shopaholic - P.J. Hogan
Enter the Void - Gaspar Noé
Fantastic Mr. Fox - Wes Anderson
The Human Centipede (First Sequence) - Tom Six
[60 titles in total]
Notes:
The first updated lists of the year 2009 in film and TV-series adds just 4 titles to the mix. The best of the year list still has 5 masterpieces on it: Canadian prodigy Xavier Dolan's amazing indie youth debut I Killed My Mother, James Cameron's worldwide sci-fi adventure smash Avatar, Henry Selick's fantastically realized dark family adventure stop-motion animation Coraline, Raymond De Felitta's terrifically constructed Long Island-set dramedy City Island and finally Louie Psihoyos' shocking and devastating dolphin slaughter documentary The Cove.
The top 10 also includes great films from Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (incredible true-story romcom I Love You, Phillip Morris), Ethan and Joel Coen (poignant and hilarious serio-comedy A Serious Man), Sam Raimi (superior and zany horror-comedy entertainer Drag Me to Hell), Steven Soderbergh (Matt Damon-vehicle and true-crime laugh riot The Informant!) and finally Niels Arden Oplev (trilogy-starting Scandinavian noir thriller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.)
Truly delightful and great are also films of the year by Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank), Lone Scherfig (An Education), Pedro Almodóvar (Broken Embraces), Greg Mottola (Adventureland), Christopher Miller and Phil Lord (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs) and others. The year offered shocking European movies (Lars Von Trier's Antichrist, Yorgos Lanthimos' Dogtooth, and, though to a lesser degree shocking, Tommy Wirkola's Dead Snow) and some American genre pleasures (Burr Steers' 17 Again, Ti West's The House of the Devil, Ruben Fleischer's Zombieland and Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds).
In the other end of the spectrum, Wes Anderson made his career's most negligible film to date with Fantastic Mr. Fox. But it isn't bad per se, and can therefore not mingle with the worst of 2009:
Olatunde Osunsanmi's mockumentary sci-fi-horror The Fourth Kind is without question the worst of the year seen so far, and far 'ahead' of the 9 other films on the Worst of 2009 list. It is followed by a new entry from this update, Roland Emmerich's inane 2012 apocalyptic disaster flick David Yates' gloomy, overlong Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Stephen Sommers' G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and Justin Lin's Fast & Furious, all dismal experiences; big, loud and altogether forgettable. They are followed by a smaller, pretentious, overlong art film, Jaco Van Dormael's Mr. Nobody with Jared Leto, Neill Blomkamp's hugely overrated, unpleasant District 9, Richard Kelly's second post masterpiece Donnie Darko (2001) disappointment, the Twilight Zone-inspired The Box and two films with respected veteran star actors, Aaron Schneider's Get Low with Robert Duvall, Bill Murray and Sissy Spacek and Daniel Barber's Harry Brown with Michael Caine, which fail for different reasons.
The 2009 lists will get another expanded update in a year or so. Please, leave your thoughts about them in a post below.
The 2010 Oscars:
Hosting the show were the two male stars of the year's not nominated It's Complicated, Steve Martin, who had previously hosted in 2001 and 2003, and Alec Baldwin, who had not hosted before. The ceremony's big change of the year was to expand the Best Picture category from 5 to 10 nominees in a bid to revitalize the show, a practice that had been discontinued in 1944. It was a popular Oscar show, with 42 mil. US viewers, the best result since 2005.
The night's biggest winner was war thriller The Hurt Locker, which was nominated 9 times, equal to the year's big box office draw, Avatar. The competition was noteworthy because the films' directors Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron used to be married. Hurt Locker won Best Picture, Best Director (Bigelow became the first woman to achieve this), Original Screenplay (Mark Boal), Sound Editing, Sound Mixing and Film Editing. Avatar followed with 3 Oscars: Best Art Direction, Cinematography (Mauro Fiore) and Visual Effects. Crazy Heart, Precious and Up (the only second animation (after Beauty and the Beast (1991)) to be nominated for Best Picture) won two Oscars each: Crazy Heart won Best Actor (Jeff Bridges) and Best Song (The Weary Kind; Ryan Bingham and T-Bone Burnett); Precious won Best Adapted Screenplay (Geoffrey Fletcher became the first African-American to achieve the honor) and Best Supporting Actress (Mo'Nique); and Up won Best Animation and Best Score (Michael Giacchino). Sandra Bullock won Best Actress for The Blind Side, Christoph Waltz Best Supporting Actor for Inglourious Basterds. Argentinian The Secret in their Eyes won Best Foreign Film, and The Cove Best Documentary. Star Trek won for Best Makeup, The Young Victoria Best Costumes. The short film Oscars went to Music by Prudence (doc.), The New Tenants (live action) and Logorama (animated). Honorary Oscars went to Lauren Bacall, Roger Corman and Gordon Willis. The memorial Oscar went to John Calley.
2009 titles still on the watchlist:
The Loved Ones, Undertow, The String, About Elly, From Beginning to End, Giallo, Motherhood, The Descent: Part 2, The Maid, Eastbound & Down - season 1, Tetro, Pandorum, Agora, Julie & Julia, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, The Young Victoria, Bright Star, Coco Before Chanel, The Princes and the Frog, Logorama, The Lady and the Reaper, The New Tenants, Kavi, Miracle Fish, China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province, Rabbit à la Berlin, The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner, The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant, The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, Which Way Home, Ajami, The Secret of Kells and The Milk of Sorrow
Previous annual lists:
2016 in films - according to Film Excess
2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2014 in films - according to Film Excess
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess
2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2012 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2012 in films - according to Film Excess
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2011 in films - according to Film Excess
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess
What do you think of the 2009 lists?
Which 2009 films are your favorites and the worst of the year in your opinion?
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