2009 Best and Worst Movies

[shun]

Although I understand why some members eventually left or were cast out of the community, if there's one thing I miss it's their impassioned posts whenever they talk about movies - although they also intimidated me at times.

So then, fellow wastelanders, what are your picks for 2009's best and worst?

I'd post my answer, except there are a few movies I'm still going to watch before I made up my mind, since I have yet to see Inglorious Basterds and Avatar. Just thought of starting this thread to kick-start the discussion anyway.

[ckzatwork]

I do my best not to waste my time with bad movies, so I'm posting some of the finest ones I saw in theaters this year (hard to recall all of them, so I'm probably missing films I really like):

Frozen River
Gran Torino
Antichrist
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters
Vals Im Bashir
Un conte de Noël
L'heure d'été
Les Beaux Gosses
inglourious Basterds
Let the right one in
Up

Two that stand out for being not as good:

Public Enemies
New York I Love You

[RandomRob]

Best of the year for me would be UP.

I want to see Ink & District 9 & Franklyn & Duplicity, but that's about it.

[Li-Ion]

Best: District 9
Runner up: Surrogates, 500 days of summer

Biggest surprise: 500 days of summer

Worst: Ghosts of Girlfriends past
Pretty bad as well: Paranormal activity, Transformers 2, The taking of Pelham 123, Duplicity, Funny People

Most disappointing: Watchmen

Way better than expected: GI Joe

Best movies I didn't see yet: the hurt locker, Moon

I plan on watching Avatar this weekend, thus might change some things still...
Don't be surprised that I watch so many bad movies, but I have a flatrate for my cinema around the corner. Plus I have no TV, so instead of watching telly I just walk to the cinema

@ckzatwork: Gran Torino and Waltz with Bashir are from 2008 (were some of my favourites last year...)

[brandonbales]

The goods are as follows:

THIRST!
BAD LIETENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS!!
DISTRICT 9!!!
DRAG ME TO HELL!!!!
HUMPDAY!!!!!
INGLORIOUS BASTERDS!!!!!!


And, if you never saw it, THE PUFFY CHAIR ( though released years ago ) is freaking excellent. I just saw this for the first time the other day. Watch it.

[brandonbales]

Addendum:

FANTASTIC MR. FOX is absolutely incredible. I just saw it last night, and I feel that if the distributor had pushed this a little harder, it might have actually been a monster hit.

What a great film!

If this film is still playing in your area, do yourself a favor and check it out! Do it for the good of cinema!

[Circle]

There are a still a lot of movies I need to see this year, so I don't feel qualified to make a list. However, I will say that Inglorious Basterds is probably my favourite film of 2009 (so far). I found it hilarious, suspenseful, sad, exciting and all those other emotions. Christoph Waltz is amazing, as is Brad Pitt (an actor I find more engaging doing comedy than drama, see: Burn After Reading), in fact the entire cast is sublime. But even more than that, Tarantino's audacious disregard for history, his homages to cinema, unusually structured plot, marks this as one of his best. I don't think it beats Kill Bill or Pulp Fiction, but it's definitely up there.

Speaking of up there, a close runner-up would be Pixar's Up. I don't think it touches the greatness of Wall-E or Ratatouille, but it's a pretty touching and exhilarating family adventure. And I know it's become cliche to praise the opening twenty minutes, but damn that's some brilliant film making.

[shun]

It took me quite a while, but I got around to writing my own best and worst movies in my blog, which is in my sig. Check it out if you're curious, but since I don't want to be accused of shameless self-promoting, I'll list my picks here.

Best-
Avatar
500 Days of Summer
Up
The Hurt Locker
Moon
District 9
Thirst
Red Cliff
Ip Man
Inglourious Basterds

Worst-
GI Joe: Rise of Cobra
Planet 51
Adventureland
Watchmen
My Life In Ruins
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen

Explanations are in my blog, although it was hastily written since I just wanted to get it over with.

[Li-Ion]

One more movie that I want to add, in a new category...
Movie you should watch if you really think that "everything was better back then": Das weiße Band

[Brook Brooks]

Movie-geek engage!

The best films I saw this year were Bright Star, Avatar, An Education, In The Loop, Up and An Education, I think.

The worst films, by a quite a bit, were The Lovely Bones and Watchmen. (As in, these films aimed quite high and fell so far short that it was quite laughable.) Just weird, shallow and far too flashy adaptations of what are some pretty good source materials.

[Circle]

I also have to add "Where the Wild Things Are." It's tough for me to explain why this movie is so marvelous, other than it elicited quite intense emotions - from elation to sadness. It was also a little scary, and a little funny. This might actually be my favourite movie of last year, but I think I need to see it again to be sure.

Anyone else catch it?

[RandomRob]

I actually didnt get the hub-bub over District 9. I love sci-fi, and I found this film exploitive and ugly. Using a real slum as a background to tell a story about a hapless paper pusher and alien guns is just lame considering the current RL goings on in those slums. Ironic too, because if you Google news about the slums of Johannesburg, you now get a bunch of hits about the film, not the real place.

I guess maybe that's the idea?

[Li-Ion]

I think at the core District 9 is a movie about Apartheid. The name of the movie shows it quite clearly: District 6 (in Cape Town however) was the district where Apartheid was enforced for the first time (at least that's what they told me when I visited the place). The director grew up in Johannesburg after all and used the Sci-Fi hook to show his perception of things I assume.

[Cybrmynd]

I think The Dark Knight would be my pick of best movie for 2009. Although I would say that, while Heath Ledger did a great portrayal of the Joker, I don't think the Joker character was entirely dependent on Ledger.

Past Joker incarnations never truly paid attention to the source material, and it's easy to give the vote to Ledger when older incarnations were never up to scratch to begin with. I think any actor who would've atleast paid attention to the source material would have made an amazing Joker, it just happened to be someone who would die suddenly after and be praised even more.

District 9, while a great movie, is a little overrated in my opinion. Definately an amazing film, but something that doesn't neccesarily push the boundaries, and a film that doesn't go further into discussions that seems to almost reach but never continues further.

[Li-Ion]

Too bad that the dark knight is a 2008 movie