The 11 Best Movies of 2009

I haven't quite figured out when the decade ends, otherwise I'd probably be posting a best-of-the-decade-type list like everybody else. That list, like this one, won't be a top 10. This list isn't a top 10 because I've never done a top 10, and I don't really plan on doing one anytime soon. I'm also not going to list every movie I've seen this year like I did last year, because some movies are better left forgotten. So, in alphabetical order...


Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
While I'm one of those people who often finds Nic Cage more of a nuisance than an actor worth paying any attention to, his unique quirks actually enhance Werner Herzog's film about an asshole cop who quickly becomes a monster after being diagnosed with moderate to severe back pain. Cage rapes, snorts coke, laughs at his own bad jokes, and stares at iguanas with reckless abandon, hardly noticing that his whole world is crashing down around him until everything suddenly, finally seems to be going right for him. A spectacularly shot, superbly acted film. And it's pretty damned funny, to boot.



District 9
Before Paranormal Activity went all viral and made a bunch of money on a small budget, District 9 did the same, building its hype through small glimpses into a world where aliens crash landed in, of all places, South Africa, and were quickly put behind huge fences, given cat food to eat and shacks to live in. The first half is apartheid-allegory-via-clever-concept. The second is one big chase scene. You know something? I'm a sucker for clever, well-executed concepts, awesome looking guns, and long, drawn out chase scenes. District 9 had that in spades, and, of all the movies on this list (with the exception of The Hurt Locker), was the movie that had me gripping the armrests the hardest.



Goodbye Solo
The most moving, personal movie I saw all year. A real shame that almost nobody else did. Goodbye Solo involved a relationship between an African cab driver and a 70-year-old white man who frequented a movie theater in Winston-Salem, N.C. The cabbie, who knows everybody, wants to chat. The old man, who wants to be driven out one-way to Blowing Rock National Park in a few weeks time, doesn't want any attachment to the world beyond his reason for going to the movies. Ramin Bahrani's third film is absolutely poetic, and is the kind of movie I hope benefits from the Academy increasing their nominee pool to ten features.



The Hangover
Three men wake up the morning in their palatial Las Vegas hotel suite the night after a bachelor party for their best friend, Doug. They find a chicken, a tiger, a mountain of empty cans and bottles, and a completely trashed room, but no Doug. This year's quote-bomb, The Hangover avoids a lot of lame Vegas pitfalls by focusing more on the characters than the city itself. Not only does that allow Bradley Cooper, long stuck in the asshole boyfriend role, to become a convincing lead, but it gives us Zach Galifianakis, who promises to be the anchor of many future comedies. There should be no holding him down.



The Hurt Locker
Should win the Academy Award for Best Picture, if there's any justice. A so-raw-it-bleeds film about a bomb disposal unit in Iraq, Kathryn Bigelow's near-flawless movie is not only the best of a small number of worthwhile films dealing with the War on Terror, it's also one of the best war movies I've ever seen. Bigelow does not give the viewer a sense of her opinion on the war. Instead, she examines why somebody whose job involves disarming complex bombs would crave working that highly dangerous position. The sad truth is in the title card: War is a drug.



Inglorious Basterds
Another war movie that's not really about the war it depicts, Quentin Tarantino throws out the history book to give us a World War II that's all jacked up on Mountain Dew. Anchored by some tremendous performances (Christoph Waltz's being the stuff of legend) and Tarantino's indomitable love of cinema, Inglorious Basterds proves that not every script that gestates in a dresser drawer for ten years is an idea best left in the drawer.



Moon
Cinematic hard sci-fi at its finest, Duncan Jones' Moon is the story of a man and his computer as they work together to mine the Moon. Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is the only man on the Moon. His only company is Gertie (Kevin Spacey), a computer that communicates through a disturbingly calm voice and a handful of emoticons. I don't want to spoil a thing when it comes to this movie, which was hardly seen, but it's far less 2001 than you'd think, given the nature of the computer, and leans more towards a question of ethics than of mankind's potential. Rockwell's performance is especially good given that he's working with little more than his set, which is more gorgeous than you'd suspect from a movie with such a tiny budget.



Observe and Report
Sorely overlooked because of a different mall cop movie, Jody Hill's incredibly misanthropic movie is this year's future cult hit. Seth Rogen plays against type as bi-polar anti-hero Ronnie Barnhardt, a Travis Bickle type who lusts after make-up counter clerk Brandi (Anna Ferris, who finally lives up to her hype). Everybody who saw it either loved it or wondered why it was made. I was left crying in my seat.



A Serious Man
Only the Coen Brothers could have made this movie, which takes place in a predominantly Jewish community in 1967 Minnesota, which seems blissfully untouched by the Beatles and the Summer of Love, though its influences are creeping in at the edges. Relentlessly Jewish and unflinchingly Midwestern, this modern day parable is the kind of movie that is lost on nobody. If you haven't had a run-in with the Columbia Record Club, maybe you've quested to get your headphones back from a teacher, or spent a semester avoiding a much larger, much meaner boy. Or maybe you just really like Jefferson Airplane. Or F-Troop. Or had a neighbor who sunbathed nude in her backyard. Or anything, really. This is life at its most cosmically tragic.



Up
It's an animated movie with an 80-year-old protagonist, a Disney movie where a character's death isn't the central, game changing moment, a Pixar film, which should say enough. Pete Doctor's Up is everything an animated movie should be--smart, sophisticated, and unafraid to defy the norms of the genre. In a decade full of Kung Fu Pandas, Bolts and Shrek sequels that shouldn't have been, Pixar has, with one notable exception, churned out nothing but animation that actually means something. Not quite as good as Wall-E, but what is?



Where the Wild Things Are
The more I think about this movie, the more I like it. Before I decided to rank alphabetically, this was almost at the top of the list. There are some movies that just capture a mood or a period in your life, and for me, no other movie captures what childhood felt like so effortlessly. All of the wonder, imagination, sadness, and rage. The times you scream, the times you run away, the times you run back home. It's all here, and it's all gorgeous, from the cinematography to the Wild Things to Karen O's soundtrack.


Close: (500) Days of Summer, Adventureland, Anvil: The Story of Anvil, Drag Me to Hell, An Education, Funny People, I Love You, Man, Zombieland
Unseen: Too Many to List