Top 10 Movies of 2009

10. Sherlock Holmes

What could easily have been a boring adaptation of one of the most beloved mystery characters in fiction history turns out to be a clever, witty, moody and true-to-form update with a stellar cast lead by Robert Downy Jr.

9. Paranormal Activity

Easily the scariest and creepiest movie this year, possibly the scariest movie we've ever seen. It's interesting to think what would happen if a person was haunted, rather than a place. Takes the mature road and goes for the play on fear of what happens when you're sleeping, rather than your typical below average gorefest. 

8. District 9

A clever metaphor about the price of racial prejudice unlike any sci fi movie I've ever seen. Do the aliens end up coming back to fix the lead character? Does his wife ever find out what really happened to him? Don't know, and not knowing makes this movie all the more affecting. Plus it's just fun if you don't get any of that metaphor stuff.

7. Inglorious Basterds

What was promoted as an over-the-top slaughterfest of nazis, is really a fantasically touching and at times fun story of a girl who is a sole survivor in her family of Jews, and comes up with a plan to get revenge on all the head honchos of the nazi party. Plus there's some slaughtering, or should I say, scalping, of nazis, not gonna lie. 

6. Avatar

It took a little while to get used to tall blue people with tales walking around on screen. But once you let the world of Pandora consume you, it'll be the most fun you've had watching a movie all year. A visual masterpiece if there ever was one. A movie so breathtaking I was literally in awe every ten minutes. An enormously entertaining blockbuster of the best kind. 

5. Up

What's the saddest and one of the most affecting movies of the year? A Disney Pixar cartoon called Up. 

 

4. 500 Days of Summer

One of the most modern and realistic takes on relationships I've seen in years. We'd watch these two leads take a shit together if it meant producing a hugely entertaining love story like this one. 

3. Up In The Air

A movie about a man who, at the same time, both embraces and ultimately denounces an overly detached culture. This movie is both light and dark, funny and tragic, romantic and real and all things "up in the air." 

2. A Single Man

Is it possible to find beauty and clarity in death? This honestly gut wrenching film explores this question as it follows a single man throughout one single day months after his partner of 16 years dies in a car accident. Fascinating film from start to finish. 

1. Precious

This movie is simply bone chilling. Monique's performance, along with the film itself, will go down in film history as one of the most brutally honest depictions of life for young women with little opportunity living in ghetto's everywhere. I was ultimately floored.