2009 Retrospective

Time to look back on what I liked for the year 2009 in the world of movies. I added brief write-ups to the major four categories. So sit back, relax and slip out to the kitchen for a refreshment, cause here we go...

Best Picture: My full list for the year is here. Honorable mentions go out to Up, Zombieland, State Of Play, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Knowing & Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs.

Star Trek
The Trekker in me is thrilled to be able to legitimately give top spot for the year to JJ Abrams spectacular reboot of the Trek franchise. Years ago, when Enterprise ended and the tenth film, Nemesis, flopped (though I do like the film), I agreed with most fans that the franchise needed to take a break as well as get some new blood behind the camera. JJ Abrams and his team of buddy writers/producers took a running leap at the project with a magical mix of geeky fandom and general audience accessibility. The results ended up better than either side of that equation would have ever expected. From the pitch-perfect casting of all the characters to the fantastic production to the clever writing ideas of how to reboot the franchise, it all works brilliantly. The Trek franchise is officially back, and it's in good hands. May it live long and prosper.
Avatar
Ignoring the minor quibbles I have with the safe writing approach to the project, this new technical watermark for film production is one massive piece of awesome entertainment. After a dozen years away from the big studio film director's chair, James Cameron returns with a bang. From start to finish, Avatar is an engaging, entertaining experience. Though I just couldn't quite bring myself to put Avatar above Star Trek as best movie of the year.
Inglourious Basterds
Certainly one of my favorite Tarantino films, Inglourious Basterds is one of those movies that no studio would let almost anybody else make. Filled with long stretches of dialog and extremely low key editing and production, this is the result of a confident and experienced director. The cast has huge amounts of fun with the roles, and the production is just plain gorgeous. This one might not be for everyone, but I loved it.
The Hurt Locker
For the number of attempts to date to set a film in the current Middle East conflict, this is the one to finally nail it. Leave it to director Kathryn Bigelow to figure it out. Along with co-producer and also writer, Mark Boal, they figured out how to make this thing just spot-on from start to finish. With a remarkably observational approach to the material, it allows you to form your own opinions and even character interpretation is left open to opinion. Put simply, it's a remarkable accomplishment of a film.
Up In The Air
Director Jason Reitman proves that he's the real deal, 3 for 3 in directing spectacular films. Based on a book that I've gotta get around to reading, it's a remarkably entertaining character study performed by a perfect cast, surrounded by tons of nice location shooting. Everything about it works flawlessly.

Best Actor: I'm going to do something unusual and just give the cast of Star Trek a Best Ensemble award at the end of this and leave them off the main acting categories. All of them were so perfect in their roles that they'd dominate the lists too much - and it's hard to know how to break them apart into lead and supporting roles. So just think of them as collective winners. Some notable runners up include (in no particular order) Brad Pitt (Inglourious Basterds), Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds), Ed Asner (Up), Woody Harrelson (Zombieland), Jesse Eisenberg (Zombieland & Adventureland), Russell Crowe (State Of Play), Nicolas Cage (Knowing), Robert Downey Jr. (Sherlock Holmes & The Soloist), Jude Law (Sherlock Holmes), Clive Owen (Duplicity & The International), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (500 Days Of Summer), John Krasinski (Away We Go), Steve Zahn (Management), Ewan McGregor (The Men Who Stare At Goats), Paul Campbell (Play The Game), Andy Griffith (Play The Game), Quinton Aaron (The Blind Side), Robert DeNiro (Everybody's Fine), Paul Rudd (I Love You, Man), Jason Segal (I Love You, Man), Demetri Martin (Taking Woodstock), Bill Milner (Is Anybody There?), Jamie Foxx (The Soloist), Liam Neeson (Taken), Adrien Brody (The Brothers Bloom), Mark Ruffalo (The Brothers Bloom), Morgan Freeman (Invictus), Sam Worthington (Avatar), Tobey Maguire (Brothers), Peter Sarsgaard (An Education), Jake Gyllenhaal (Brothers), Alec Baldwin (It's Complicated) and Johnny Depp (Public Enemies).

Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker)
I've been a fan of Renner for quite some time. Heck, I enjoyed some of his really early roles like his stoner comedic role in National Lampoon's Senior Trip. But in recent years, Renner has become quite adept at hardened action roles, like in SWAT and 28 Weeks Later. He's certainly no stranger to automatic weapons. For this role, his performance is casually intense (as strange as that may sound). It's a perfect representation of an aimless danger junkie who can only seem to get one thing in life right.
George Clooney (Up In The Air)
Clooney has become one of the most reliable actors of his generation, almost always dropping effortlessly into whatever role he's given. And when the role provides such cool and collected material as Up In The Air does, Clooney makes it seem effortless. Reitman's films tend to feature a central protagonist character, and all his films cast that role with perfection. Be it Aaron Echkart in Thank You For Smoking, Ellen Page in Juno or Clooney in this film, they are always right up there as one of the best performances of their year. Clooney also gets as runner-up mention for both Fantastic Mr. Fox & The Men Who Stare At Goats.
Sam Rockwell (Moon)
Sam Rockwell is one of my favorite actors, and this movie really lets him shine. Quite frankly, if the performance of the lead actor in this film wasn't perfect, the entire film would fall apart. As basically a one man movie, Moon relies heavier on the performance than most any other movie would. Unsurprisingly, Rockwell is up to the challenge.
Matt Damon (The Informant!)
Matt Damon is one of those actors that I quit underestimating years ago. It's rather alarming the range of roles he can convincingly pull off. For this role, Damon gets to be more playful than usual, and he gets to layer in tons of subtle details to a fascinating character. Damon also gets a runner-up mention for his excellent performance in Invictus.
Michael Caine (Is Anybody There?)
Simply stated, Michael Caine is an acting legend. He's been a favorite actor of mine for many years. His role of a deteriorating elderly man in the overlooked Is Anybody There? is spot-on.

Best Actress: As I said in the best actor category, Star Trek is exempt from this list. Runners up go to Vera Farmiga (Up In The Air & Orphan), Isabelle Fuhrman (Orphan), Rose Byrne (Knowing), Zoe Saldana (Avatar), Emma Stone (Zombieland), Abigail Breslin (Zombieland), Julia Roberts (Duplicity), Jessica Biel (Easy Virtue), Naomi Watts (The International), Kristen Stewart (Adventureland), Marla Sokoloff (Play The Game), Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side), Katie Featherston (Paranormal Activity), Ellen Page (Whip It), Jennifer Aniston (Management), Maya Rudolph (Away We Go), Evan Rachel Wood (Whatever Works), Amy Adams (Sunshine Cleaning), Emily Blunt (Sunshine Cleaning), Hilary Swank (Amelia), Meryl Streep (It's Complicated), Rachel Weisz (The Brothers Bloom), Kate Beckinsale (Whiteout), Natalie Portman (Brothers) and Sara Paxton (The Last House On The Left).

Carey Mulligan (An Education)
I was an instant fan of Carey Mulligan after her brilliant performance in the 2008 Doctor Who episode Blink (my favorite episode of the series). Mulligan has gone on to other supporting roles in a variety of films, but this star-making lead performance is further proof that she's gonna go on to a marvelous acting career.
Melanie Laurent (Inglourious Basterds)
The classy yet edgy performance of Laurent in Tarantino's stylized historical action drama is a marvel. Tarantino is no stranger to giving female characters a cool and stylistic nature in his films, and Laurent joins the likes of Uma Thurman in his collection of works.
Anna Kendrick (Up In The Air)
Relative unknown Kendrick has made something of a splash over the last year or two. As well as landing this choice role in Up In The Air, she has featured in the Twilight film series (which regardless of what you may think of them, they're certainly going to get Kendrick some notoriety). The hopeful and honest character she plays in Up In The Air could be one of those roles that ends up being annoying, but her performance is anything but. She plays off Clooney with ease and manages to even outshine a great performance from Vera Farmiga.
Rachel McAdams (State Of Play)
This film adaptation of the British mini-series turned out surprisingly great, and the cast has plenty to do with that success. Most of that has to do with how well Russell Crowe and Rachel McAdams play off each other. McAdams is one of those actresses that can somehow give any character she plays that extra sense of warmth and likability. Also, and honorable mention for her fun performance in Sherlock Holmes.
Zooey Deschanel (500 Days Of Summer)
As a contender for being my favorite actress, Zooey Deschanel can pretty much do no wrong in a performance as far as I care. Here, she manages to make what could come off as a cold character and give it that warm and quirky edge that makes it work, and work very well. She and Joseph Gordon-Levitt play off each other with remarkable ease, and they elevate the film above the standard genre flick (as does the atypical script).

Best Director: Honorable mentions go to Pete Docter & Bob Peterson (Up), Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland), Kevin Macdonald (State Of Play), Wes Anderson (Fantastic Mr. Fox), Alex Proyas (Knowing), Tony Gilroy (Duplicity), Lone Scherfig (An Education), Steven Soderbergh (The Informant), Tom Tykwer (The International), Greg Mottola (Adventureland), Marc Webb (500 Days Of Summer), Duncan Jones (Moon), Neill Blomkamp (District 9), Clint Eastwood (Invictus), Stephen Sommers (GI Joe: The Rise Of Cobra), Drew Barrymore (Whip It), Sam Mendes (Away We Go) and Robert Zemeckis (A Christmas Carol).

JJ Abrams (Star Trek)
As a big fan of Abrams' television work, I had high hopes when he began directing feature films with Mission: Impossible III. As my favorite film of the franchise so far, I really enjoyed MI3. When I heard they were re-booting the Trek franchise, I had high hopes, but was doubtful it could be pulled off well. Then I heard that Abrams was gonna be doing it, and suddenly I thought it might be possible. The end result was better than I could have hoped for, and Abrams has cemented himself a place in the list of top film directors, and with only two feature directing credits to his name to date. One thing's for sure, I can't wait to see the next Trek film.
James Cameron (Avatar)
As I write this, Avatar is into its third week of release and is storming the record books. After taking a dozen years to follow-up Titanic, Avatar is a monumental return to cinemas for Cameron. Not that I didn't enjoy the documentaries he made in the intervening years, because I did, but it's great to see him throwing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of effort into a mega-project again. Avatar has a real shot at finally being the one to dethrone Titanic's all-time box office record (as of a day ago, it's officially in the #2 spot, and climbing). Cameron has a remarkable talent for directing hugely ambitious productions, and his obsessive attention to detail shows.
Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker)
I've admired Bigelow as a director for many years. She's one of the few female directors that can do aggressive action as good or better than her male counterparts. Her 1995 film Strange Days is a personal favorite film of mine (and others like Point Break). As one of Cameron's ex-wives (heck, Cameron wrote and produced Strange Days), it'll be interesting to see if both of them get to compete against each other with Oscar nominations for directing. They've both got a huge chance at the nomination (both got Director's Guild Award nominations), and I dare say that Bigelow might even have a chance at beating Cameron amongst peer voters.
Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds)
Few other directors could get away with making this movie. With a pacing so relaxed and confident that no studio would likely allow anyone else, Tarantino spins a hugely entertaining "what if" historical story. And of course, he gives it that Tarantino stylistic touch.
Jason Reitman (Up In The Air)
With three films to his directorial credit, Jason Reitman (son of legendary comedy director Ivan Reitman) has shot up to the top handful of directors on my personal favorites list. I absolutely loved his work on Thank You For Smoking and Juno. With Up In The Air he further proves his effortless talent at directing character dramedies. I definitely look forward to his next film.

Best Supporting Actor: Other honorable mentions go out to Brian Geraghty (The Hurt Locker), Joel McHale (The Informant), Tom Wilkinson (Duplicity), Paul Giamatti (Duplicity), Martin Starr (Adventureland), Joel David Moore (Avatar), Jason Schwartzman (Fantastic Mr. Fox), Bill Murray (Fantastic Mr. Fox & Zombieland), Armin Mueller-Stahl (The International), Ewan McGregor (Amelia), Justin Long (He's Just Not That Into You) and John Krasinski (It's Complicated).

Jeff Bridges (The Men Who Stare At Goats)
Eli Roth (Inglourious Basterds)
Colin Firth (Easy Virtue)
Anthony Mackie (The Hurt Locker)
Scott Bakula (The Informant)

Best Supporting Actress: Honorable mentions go out to Sigourney Weaver (Avatar), Melanie Lynskey (The Informant), Carey Mulligan (Brothers), Marcia Gay Harden (Whip It) and Drew Barrymore (Whip It).

Diane Kruger (Inglourious Basterds)
Olivia Williams (An Education)
Evangeline Lilly (The Hurt Locker)
Helen Mirren (State Of Play)
Ginnifer Goodwin (He's Just Not That Into You)

Best Screenplay: Honorable mentions go to Up, Knowing, An Education, The Informant, Adventureland, 500 Days Of Summer, Play The Game, Taking Woodstock and The Soloist.

Best Film Score: As anyone who knows me will tell you, I'm a film score fanatic. So, needless to say, this is an important category for me. Honorable mentions go out to Alexandre Desplat (Fantastic Mr. Fox), Hans Zimmer (Sherlock Holmes), John Powell (Ice Age: Dawn Of The Dinosaur), Clint Mansell (Moon), Hans Zimmer (Angels & Demons), Christopher Young (Drag Me To Hell), Alan Silvestri (GI Joe: The Rise Of Cobra), Alan Silvestri (A Christmas Carol), John Ottman (Astro Boy), Mark Mothersbaugh (Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs) and others. My full list of film score preferred order for the year can be found here.

Michael Giacchino (Star Trek)
Marco Beltrami (Knowing)
Michael Giacchino (Up)
James Newton Howard (Duplicity)
James Horner (Avatar)

Best Sound: This is one of the tech categories that's typically dominated by big budget studio productions. Honorable mentions go out to The Hurt Locker, Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, Sherlock Holmes, GI Joe: The Rise Of Cobra, A Christmas Carol, Race To Witch Mountain, Angels & Demons, Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince, Pandorum, Battle For Terra, Surrogates, Night At The Museum: Battle Of The Smithsonian and Terminator Salvation.

Best Cinematography: Another big-budget dominated tech category. Honorable mentions go out to State Of Play, The Hurt Locker, Moon, Invictus, GI Joe: The Rise Of Cobra, Amelia, Angels & Demons, Harry Potter & The Half Blood Prince, Pandorum, Whiteout, The Uninvited, A Perfect Getaway, Surrogates, Night At The Museum: Battle Of The Smithsonian, The Road, 2012 and Watchmen.

Best Visual Effects: Now here's a category that's almost always dominated by big budget films. Honorable mentions go out to Moon, Sherlock Holmes, GI Joe: The Rise Of Cobra, Race To Witch Mountain, Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince, Pandorum, Inkheart, Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans, Surrogates, Night At The Museum: Battle Of The Smithsonian, 2012, Watchmen and Terminator Salvation.

Best Main/End Titles: As always, I'm sure to have forgotten about some of the cool ones for the year. Honorable mentions go to Up, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Knowing, Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, An Education, The Informant!, Easy Virtue, Sherlock Holmes, Extract, Whip It, Angels & Demons, Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince, Pandorum, Whiteout, Watchmen, Drag Me To Hell and Land Of The Lost.

Best Trailer: Not a great year for trailers, to be honest. Links go to the page for each movie, and links in parenthesis go to the trailer itself. Honorable mention goes to Pandorum (Trailer 2).

Best Poster: Links go to the page for each movie, and links in parenthesis go to the poster itself. Honorable mentions go to Watchmen (Poster), Up (Poster), The Hurt Locker (Poster), The Informant (Poster), The International (Poster), Adventureland (Poster), 500 Days Of Summer (Poster), Moon (Poster), District 9 (Poster), Sherlock Holmes (Poster), Amelia (Poster), Taking Woodstock (Poster), Pandorum (Poster), Taken (Poster) and Saw VI (Poster) .

Special Awards:

Best Ensemble Cast - Star Trek (He's Just Not That Into You gets runner-up)
Best Rewriting Of History - Inglourious Basterds
Best Running Gag - Tallahassee's constant Twinkie obsession in Zombieland
Best Sport - Whackbat from Fantastic Mr. Fox
Best 3D - Avatar (Coraline gets runner-up)
Best "Oner" - The plane crash from Knowing
Best Cameo Appearances - Race To Witch Mountain (featuring the actors who played the original kids, Kim Richards & Ike Eisenmann, as well as Journey Of Natty Gann's Meredith Salenger playing a reporter named Natalie Gann)
Best Underdog Box Office Hit - District 9
Easiest Casting In Movie History - Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela in Invictus
Most Surprisingly Fun Movie Of The Year - GI Joe: The Rise Of Cobra
Proof That Budget Isn't Everything - Paranormal Activity
Worst Plot Gimmick - The "real life story and footage" in The Fourth Kind (which did nothing but hurt an otherwise intriguing movie)
Biggest Over-hyped Disappointment - Watchmen
Biggest Actual Disappointment - Land Of The Lost (which almost worked, but the forest couldn't be seen for the trees)
Punishments Which I Deserved, Cause I Bloody Well Knew Better - Bruno and Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen (one of the worst movies of the decade)