1. I Killed My Mother/J'ai Tué Ma Mère - Xavier Dolan + Best Canadian Movie of the Year + Best Debut Movie of the Year (Xavier Dolan) + Sexiest Movie of the Year + Best Youth Movie of the Year
2. Avatar - James Cameron + Best 3D Movie of the Year + Best Adventure Movie of the Year + Best Blockbuster of the Year
3. Coraline - Henry Selick + Best Animation of the Year
4. City Island - Raymond De Felitta + Best New York Movie of the Year
5. The Cove, documentary - Louie Psihoyos + Best Documentary of the Year
6. I Love You, Phillip Morris - Glenn Ficarra, John Requa + Best LGBT Movie of the Year + Best Romance of the Year
7. A Serious Man - Ethan Coen, Joel Coen + Best Dramedy of the Year + Best Shooting Star Actor of the Year (Michael Stuhlbarg)
8. Drag Me to Hell - Sam Raimi + Best Horror Comedy of the Year + Wildest Movie of the Year
9. The Informant! - Steven Soderbergh + Best True-Story Movie of the Year
10. The Last Station - Michael Hoffman + Most Undeserved Flop Movie of the Year + Best Russian Movie of the Year + Best Drama of the Year
Other great movies of 2009 (in alphabetic order):
(500) Days of Summer - Marc Webb + Best Romcom of the Year
Adventureland - Greg Mottola + Best Coming-of-Age Movie of the Year
An Education - Lone Scherfig + Best English Movie of the Year + Best Period Movie of the Year + Best Shooting Star Actress of the Year (Carey Mulligan)
Broken Embraces/Los Abrazos Rotos - Pedro Almodóvar + Best Spanish Movie of the Year
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs - Phil Lord, Christopher Miller + Best Family Movie of the Year
Fish Tank - Andrea Arnold
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo/Män Som Hatar Kvinnor - Niels Arden Oplev + Best Danish Movie of the Year + Best Thriller of the Year
The Good Heart - Dagur Kári + Best Icelandic Movie of the Year + Most Overlooked Movie of the Year
The Hangover - Todd Phillips + Best Comedy of the Year
In the Electric Mist - Bertrand Tavernier + Best Detective Movie of the Year + Best Louisiana Movie of the Year
It's Complicated - Nancy Meyers + Best Poster of the Year
Youth in Revolt - Miguel Arteta
Zombieland - Ruben Fleischer + Best Zombie Movie of the Year
Good, recommendable movies of 2009 (in alphabetic order):
17 Again - Burr Steers + Best Fantasy Comedy of the Year
30 Rock - season 4 - Tina Fey (creator) + Best Sitcom of the Year
A Single Man - Tom Ford
Antichrist - Lars Von Trier + Craziest Movie of the Year + Best Horror Movie of the Year
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 + Best Music Movie of the Year
Dead Snow/Død Snø - Tommy Wirkola + Best Gore Movie of the Year + Best Norwegian Movie of the Year
Dogtooth/Κυνόδοντας (Kynodontas) - Yorgos Lanthimos + Best Greek Movie of the Year + Most Upsetting Movie of the Year
Funny People - Judd Apatow
The Haunting in Connecticut - Peter Cornwell + Best Haunting Movie of the Year
The House of the Devil - Ti West
Hung - season 1 - Colette Burson, Dmitry Lipkin + Best New TV-series of the Year
In the Loop - Armando Iannucci + Best Political Movie of the Year
Inglorious Basterds - Quentin Tarantino
Land of the Lost - Brad Silberling + Best Huge Flop Movie of the Year + Silliest Movie of the Year
(Untitled) - Jonathan Parker + Best Satire of the Year
The Worst of 2009:
1. The Fourth Kind - Olatunde Osunsanmi
2. 2012 - Roland Emmerich
3. The Limits of Control - Jim Jarmusch + Most Deserved Flop of the Year
4. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - David Yates + Most Undeserved Hit Movie of the Year
5. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra - Stephen Sommers
6. Fast & Furious - Justin Lin
7. Mr. Nobody - Jaco Van Dormael
8. District 9 - Neill Blomkamp
9. Law Abiding Citizen - F. Gary Gray + Worst Poster of the Year
10. The Box - Richard Kelly
Other mediocre, poor and/or failed 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
Get Low - Aaron Schneider
Harry Brown - Daniel Barber
The Human Centipede (First Sequence) - Tom Six
Life during Wartime - Todd Solondz
The Lovely Bones - Peter Jackson
[66 titles in total]
Notes:
The second update of the 2009 lists adds 6 titles to the selection.
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 list continues with 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 Michael Hoffman's marvelous Leo Tolstoy biopic drama The Last Station, which pushes Niels Arden Oplev's trilogy-starting Scandinavian noir thriller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo out of the Top 10 this year.
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 Roland Emmerich's inane 2012 apocalyptic disaster flick and new entry Jim Jarmusch's art film bore The Limits of Control. The three are joined by 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 pretentious, overlong art film, Jaco Van Dormael's Mr. Nobody with Jared Leto, new entry F. Gary Gray's revenge rigmarole Law Abiding Citizen, Neill Blomkamp's hugely overrated, unpleasant District 9 and finally Richard Kelly's second post masterpiece Donnie Darko (2001) disappointment, the Twilight Zone-inspired The Box. Two poor 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 are forced out of the list in this turn.
Other remarkable filmmakers who served sub-par output in 2009 includes Peter Jackson and Todd Solondz, who made the last two new entries, the equally inconsequential The Lovely Bones and Life during Wartime, respectively. Also Gaspar Noé stunned in a bad way with feel-bad nightmare Enter the Void.
On 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 also 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 just 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 Inglorious 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. A memorial Oscar went to John Calley.
IMDb's users' most popular 2009 titles:
1. Inglorious Basterds - Quentin Tarantino
2. A Christmas Carol - Robert Zemeckis
3. Avatar - James Cameron
4. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - David Yates
5. Watchmen - Zack Snyder
6. The Hangover - Todd Phillips
7. X-Men Origins: Wolverine - Gavin Hood
8. Star Trek - J.J. Abrams
9. State of Play - Kevin Macdonald
10. The Lovely Bones - Peter Jackson
2009 titles still on the watch-list:
The Loved Ones, Undertow, The String, 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, The Milk of Sorrow, The Final Inch, A Christmas Carol, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, State of Play
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 [UPDATED I]
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?
Is/are any vital 2009 title/s missing on the watch-list?
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