movies of 2009

utterly and completely brilliant in every way. this is easily one of the best romantic comedies i have ever seen, as everything was perfect, from the creation and development of the characters, to the acting, to the script and overall story, and topped off by some of the most creative, innovative, and effective directing ive ever seen in any film. the non-linear storytelling worked so well here and every risk taken by webb worked from the musical number, to the split screen, to the scene that faded to sketch art. i cant say enough about this film. a romantic comedy for all time that leaves behind all cliches to tell a story i cant wait to see again.

brilliant. gilroy had already proven himself as one of the best screen writers in film today, and then when he made his directorial debut two years ago he directed one of the greatest masterpieces of the last decade. in this his second film, he has now proven himself a directorial powerhouse in this incredibly short period of time. this is not your standard heist flick. the cinematography was perfect, as well as the cast and the locations, and the script was incredibly intelligent, almost as much as his first film. gilroy has also created a little trend with his two films in that they start decent, slowly progress by the middle, and then hit a final 15 minutes that are not only mezmerizing but improve the overall quality of the entirety of the film. both of his films have built in momentum to shocking climaxes in this exact same way. a truly great film.

without question, this is a film i could see myself raising the score on over time. this is a deeply brooding and thought provoking film that carries along with no clear plot until the end, when suddenly it all makes sense. this alegory of the life of Job takes a unique turn, pondering the question, "what if Job had failed?". deakins cinematography was wonderful and the unknown actors really delivered in a film that many will hate because they dont get it, but one that should be embraced for the vision of telling a thousands of years old story with a great glimpse into morality and suffering. the coens have done it once again.

like in bruges from last year, taken is the early garbage time suprise of the year. far from perfect, this film may be formulaic at points and not too complex but it didnt matter, it was just enthralling to watch. although not the best film neeson has ever been in, this may be the performance of his i most enjoyed as he played the action star better than expected, and the film had an absolute loveable quality to it. the strongest point of this film was probably its prudence, dealing with killings and prostitution effectively while still holding a pg-13 rating. simple, but a thrill ride i loved every minute of.

what a fun and well mapped out film. i came in disposed towards this film, despite not being into zombie movies, because im a huge woody harrelson fan, but i was still really suprised by how much i liked the film. creatively directed, the film had its uniqueness in spite of being apart of a fleshed out sub genre, and the comedy and drama were well timed and neither were overdone. the film surprises with one of the best cameos ive ever seen, and the end was fitting despite being typical. all around excellent zombie comedy.

i absolutely loved this flick. i was expecting less, but it delivered. although ive seen a little of the show, ive never been a star trek fan, but this movie is making me want to go back and watch the other films in the franchise. it wasnt a perfect film, but i cant complain about anything as the film was exactly what it was trying to be. great action, solid performances for a sci-fi flick, an interesting story, and solid special effects. a really enjoyable film.

without question basterds is my favorite tarantino film, and the first of his that ive actually loved. the film wasnt perfect as it didnt develop its characters well and it featured too many scenes that dragged much longer than they needed to, but the film also did a lot of things very well. the dialogue was as good as a tarantino film has ever had, the humor was appropriate and used very well, the violence was gritty and realistic, and the acting performances were excellent across the board. the overall story here was just very good and i couldnt wait to see where it ended up. even with all of this i think that the best part of the film was the tension built by so many scenes, and each scene led in a direction other than the most predictable one. a wonderful film that gives me hope that i might enjoy some of tarantinos work in the future.

a great example of near perfect story telling. the story pulls some conventional punches, but lays them out through some wonderful originality as well. definitely one of the most gritty and heart wrenching films of the year, the film is careful not to glorify anything, leaving it up to the viewer to make their way through a dark story to see why any of it matters. a great film.

innovative and fun, wes andersons animated film is destined to become a classic. the voice acting was superb and the story was clever despite feeling typical for a film starring animals living in this environment. a wonderful film.

pixar delivers another incredibly strong film with their 10th movie. im not convinced they will ever make a bad film. while not quite as good as my top 4 or so pixar films, its better than pixars last two films by a long shot and delivers an opening 15 minute sequence that is one of the most effective and touching 15 minute stretches i have ever seen on film. the rest of the film is also effective in its own way and despite the need to suspend disbelief in a number of areas the film really delivers. after pixars last two films where they got too creative for their own good and left many kids bored and a bit confused, they got back to making great childrens entertainment with this film that parents will also love. a great film.

a very pleasant surprise. i liked this film a lot, and it wouldnt be a stretch to say that its probably the best of all of the soderbergh films ive seen. matt damon was great and the script was perfectly witty and clever. i find soderbergh to be an inconsistent director, but some of the choices he made here to let things happen off camera helped to set up the mystery of who was lying and who was telling the truth and it made this dramedy extremely effective. highly recommended.

miyazaki is a phenomenal animator and an even better storyteller, and ponyo is an excellent example of miyazaki's skills with both. incredibly unique and compelling, obviously reality must be suspended for the film to resonate but just about everything in the film works well. a wonderful film.

this is an excellent film. with no experience blomkamp put together an excellent sci-fi film that is destined to be a classic in coming years. although there were a few minor cliches present most of the film was highly original, the development of the two main characters was effective, and the Christological ending was extremely well done. im looking forward to see what blomkamp will do next, and in the mean time i will enjoy this wonderful sci-fi flick.

what a fun movie. the flick contained a few logical flaws in the script and nicholas cage's voice didnt fit his character all that well, but i liked every other thing about this film quite a bit. the movie was fun, the script was concieved well, and the characters all fit into the story well. this is about as good as one can expect from an animated film.

surprisingly this is a strong 3 1/2 and ive thought about scoring it higher. it might be that denzel is my favorite living actor and that i have loved his past collaborations with tony scott, but despite this film having a few glaring flaws i really enjoyed watching this film. the exchanges between each of the characters were engaging and the simple plot was executed well. a solid summer film.

despite my cinephile tastes, every once in a while a brain dead action film comes around with just the right formula for me to fall in love with it anyway despite its simplicity. for 2009 ninja assassin is that film. obviously the film wasnt going to thrive on acting, dialogue, or story, but the cinematography was a pleasant suprise and the way the limited story was told in conjunction with the action made for an exceptionally entertaining film. i loved watching the film. it is the epitome of a true guilty pleasure and im already hoping for a sequel.

what a pleasant surprise. this film is being widely panned by critics, but i couldnt help but be enthralled with this film from start to finish. the tension and intensity were developed very well through the whole film as i waited patiently for the reveal of how butlers character was pulling off what seemed to be impossible, and while some may not like the big reveal at the end, i thought the film was laid out very well. the film presents some very interesting ethical questions that is only hightened by the fact that there was no true villian and no true hero due to the fact that every character was developed in such a way that they were equally likeable while being equally selfish. butler was great in one of the surprise films of the year.

a very good and realistic war film that tells a powerful story. the acting and characters were top notch. after a near perfect first half, the film was held back by a second half that seemed to lose direction and delve a little more into the unrealistic. after brilliance in the first half the second half featured a few different scenes that were more forced and overly scripted. the cameos were excellent from fiennes, pearce, and especially lilly, and overall this is a very good and highly recommended war film.

a marvelous spectacle of a film that was a complete joy to watch but was not without its downsides. although i love comics, i actually watched this without having read the source material, which helped in some ways but probably hurted as well. on the upside most of the cast was chosen perfectly and performed with brilliance. the effects were as good as expected and snyder did a great job directing the parts of the story that we were given. the world created for the film was impressive, sending me into an escapist mentality at the outset of the film. on the downside, despite most actors bringing a lot to the table, i felt that the entire representation of adrian played by matthew goode fell incredibly flat. goode's performance was lacking, i felt that he was a bit miscast and lacked believability, and his character was incredibly underdeveloped in the film. this was disappointing because of the major role that his character plays. essentially, we end up with a villian that seems inconsequential. also, aside from dr. manhatten, i dont think the characters were fleshed out all that well, despite the long running time of nearly 3 hours. because this was my introduction to these characters, i floated through the film unsure of anyones true motivations or connections to anything that any of them did. rorshach was great, but the other characters seemed to just exist in a series of events sort of stacked one on top of the other without really drawing me into the story as a whole. and finally, after the first two hours were incredibly impressive in the way the film was unfolding, i felt like the final 40 minutes went 80's cheeseball very quickly and never recovered. overall a very good film that i recommend, but one that thrives more on spectacle than story.

i dont know that ive ever been so disappointed in a movie that i liked so much. this is truly a great film, with stunning art direction and cinematography and a solid performance from a young max records. but the film also felt a bit void of depth despite the deeply emotional and even depressing disposition of the wild things. the entire time i felt the film nearing that point of revelation that would blow me away, but it never came. a really good movie that has its special place among unique films, but the film never capitalized on what should have been a film filled with more joy.

i watched this film having seen 3 documentaries about the life of john dillinger. after much anticipation i can say that i loved this film, while at the same time feeling disappointed by it because i think i expected even more from a movie helmed by mann with such a superb cast. on the upside, the film was exciting and filled with memorable scenes. mann thankfully made great decisions on what to include in the film as most of the main points in dillingers career that his documentarians have focused on are the same things that ended up in the film. however, i was very disappointed in the cinematography as the camera work was shaky and the tone of the photography was an unfortunate choice. the fleshing out of characters and situations was also far too underdeveloped leaving the film with an incomplete feeling. as the film carried on, it moved too quickly from one situation and character to the next and left me wanting a lot. pervis was the most underdeveloped despite being a focal point as major points of the true story involving his character went unmentioned. overall despite the criticisms i actually did enjoy the film a lot but its not the masterpiece i was hoping for.

a philosophical film with an excellent concept that just wasnt carried out well enough. there were massive inconsistencies with the nature of the surrogates and there were a few plot wholes that bogged down my mind too much to let me enjoy the film as much as i wanted. it was very entertaining and certainly worth a view, but i was expecting much more.

a film as silly as its title, clooney was fantastic and the script was witty and clever through most of the film, but in the end it still fell a bit flat. not that i expected it too, but the story didnt actually amount to much. good for a solid laugh but not quite as clever as the coen comedies that this seemed like it was trying to be.

entertaining and full of great landscapes, the the film fails almost everywhere else. the telling of amelia's life was stale and formulaic, handing us the standard information about amelia's life without digging deeper than what you might find on her wikipedia page. the film just flows from one event to the next, telling us little about amelia than the surface. the performances were also flat, which suprised me because i find swank to be one of the most delightful actresses of our time. overall a solid watch for a popcorn flick, but could have been excellent and wasnt.

its seems contradictory for me to slam most romantic comedies for being too predictable and unrealistic and then give this film a decent score, since it was predictable and unrealistic, but i liked this flick, so sue me. heigl and butler are both fun people to watch on screen and while this film was considerably flawed as are most from this genre, it was still fun and had some very funny moments. some of the dialogue was a bit too vulgar for this type of film and there were scenes that didnt work well at all, but it was an excellent date movie and nowhere near as bad as i thought it would be. a charming film.

im very torn about how to rate this film. on the one hand the entertainment value was through the roof and the story was a bit better than i was led to believe. the film furthers the overall storyline of the terminator franchise just fine as i saw it. on the other hand while the story itself wasnt bad, it wasnt told all that well, leaving me with far too great of a feeling that things were missing. for example, whats so great about john connor? why is he the prophesied one and where did the prophesy come from? how exactly does the rest of the world view him in light of his role that he is the savior? what is the background on how we got to this point as far as what happened in between the previous trilogy and this film? and i could go on and on. aside from this, and i should have expected it from McG, but the action in the film was WAY too over the top at moments and some of the scenes showed themselves to be so much about the action that they didnt even appear to be thought through. for example, why were the terminators just throwing people around, why didnt they just start snapping peoples necks? McG may be good at blowing things up but explosions dont make for a good movie if they are too far fetched to be believed even in a world of robots at war with humans. the film would have been better served with another director without question. in the end the next films in the franchise will decide the legacy of this film. if they are done well my score for this film will probably go up.

the strength of the film was the clever hat tipping to all of the other classic sci-fi films from years past. some of the comedy was timed very well and the characters were a lot of fun. the thing holding this film back was an underdeveloped story. i question the choice of overly focusing on susan and not developing the other characters more, especially the alien antagonist. overall a worth while dreamworks film.

although this is an incredibly flawed film, i really enjoyed it. it had way too many problems to even be thought of as a "good" movie, but it was a lot of fun to watch. the characters were excellent and the concept of the film was very good, but it was the execution that fell very flat. if youre looking for silly entertainment then the film is fine, but the flaws will be glaring.

the entire film worked incredibly well for me until the final act, which fell so flat that it left me feeling that the film as a whole lacked the direction that seemed to build well in the first two thirds of the movie. it wasnt just one or two things, but rather the entirety of the final act that took a wrong turn from the art direction, to the motivation of the characters, to the script itself. a solid film that im glad was made and is a decent addition to the xmen film legacy, but not a great film by any means and a little disappointing. not nearly as good as X1, a tad below X2, but miles better than X3.

i came into this film as someone who is not a fan of seth rogen but i loved his character and his performance. i came in as someone who is not a fan of judd apatow and im still not. i came in as a fan of sandler and he was very good in this film. the movie had a great story with strong characters and quite a bit of charm, but it suffered from terrible dialogue, a few ridiculous scenes, and some jr high humor that fell incredibly flat. sandler and rogen were great but apatow just takes things further than they should be and it kept this unique and thought provoking film from being great.

only jesse eisenbergs second best film of 09' with the word "land" in the title. the cast was chosen well enough and the film had its charming and funny moments, but overall a bit bland. i wasnt expecting much so i wasnt necessarily disappointed when i received a very average film.

a passionate and engaging film that was also riddled with an unfortunate series of turns that left the film without focus. ultimately every time the film seemed to introduce a sub plot that i thought i would become interested in it went nowhere, leaving all characters but the main two without much purpose. the leads did an alright job getting us through the main point of the film, but i felt that i was left hanging too often to feel great about the final product.

could it be that the proposal was a better summer movie than transformers 2? unfortunately yes. i didnt hate watching this, but it wasnt good. i love sandra bullocks style of humor and the film had a few laughs but it fit the cliche of unbelievability and predictability for a romantic comedy. its a fine date movie, my wife loved it, but its ultimately a film that did a few things very well and still fell short.

what a disappointing film. for everything about the movie that i enjoyed there were three things that i hated. the first transformers is an amazing film for the nastalgia and effective use of characters, but for the franchise to continue its momentum a great story and solid direction was needed and we didnt get it here. there were too many problems to list, so because i think long reviews on flixster are a bit silly i wont list them all, but my problems arent general, they are specific and damaging. the one flaw i will mention is that it seems that when bay does something well, he tries too hard to do the same things bigger in the sequel ala bad boys 2 and thats not a good practice. this film was way too busy and with too many insignificant conflicts they all got lost in the shuffle. the film gets an average score for being entertaining and having a few good sequences, but overall there was a lot to hate about this film.

im not entirely sure why i wanted to see this. im not a fan of this genre of film and im one of the few men on earth that thinks that megan fox's looks are extremely overrated. maybe i wanted to see it to see how fox would do with her acting as she evolves, how seyfried would do as a follow up to mamma mia, and how diablo cody would follow up juno. none of these follow ups work very well. the script has its quirky moments, but overall its empty and the actors arent charismatic enough to save what was a film with likeable moments but an overall silly film that leaves too many wholes in the plot.

after directing some of the best comedies in the last 30 years like groundhog day, vacation, and caddyshack, and starring in many others like ghostbusters, i had hoped this film from harold ramis would pan out a bit better than the terrible looking trailer suggested it would. unfortunately the trailer revealed pretty much what i got, an unfunny, uninteresting, and shallow comedy. the film did actually make me laugh a few times because the cast was too good to not produce a few laughs, but overall the attempts at humor fell short and the story itself was meaningless. the film felt like an attempt to recreate mel brooks' "history of the world part 1", but it didnt work nearly as well. it didnt kill me to watch it, but it was very forgetable.

although not the worst movie of 2009, it came close. the film featured poor acting, incredibly annoying characters, and some of the weakest special effects ive seen out of a movie relying so much on them. the film also was founded on biblical imagery that was misplaced and misused at every possible turn culminating in a rediculous scene where we see angels traveling by spaceship. absurd through and through, the film only recieves a rating this high because it was entertaining at points and cage was very tolerable in the lead role.

nostalgia and morbid curiosity brought me to making this my first film of 2009. call me naive, but because this was a reboot to the franchise i actually expected something like, i dont know, the infusion of a plot or semi-effective dialogue. it was so much more of the same, but to greater degree. more gratuitous sex, more poorly conceived characters, and more pointless story telling. the presence of panabaker helped, and i wasnt angry about having seen it, but it was as pointless as they come. my greatest hope is that i dont have to sit through any other films in 2009 that are this bad.