1. Up
Directed by Pete Docter
Written by Docter and Bob Peterson, from a story by Docter, Pererson, and Tom McCarthy
I'm not sure what happened at Pixar that led it to make a movie that is obviously for adults, half of whom will be bawling in the first 10 minutes, but it's the studio's best picture and I'm glad that it somehow came to be.
2. Inglourious Basterds
Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino
Tarantino once said he'd like to make films that deal with the atrocities of the past—in this instance, the Holocaust—"like spaghetti westerns, not like big issue movies. I want to do them like they're genre films." What he didn't say was that the first genre picture he'd make along those lines would ask the sorts of open-ended moral questions that the middlebrow Holocaust movies that win Oscars aren't interested in engaging.
3. A Prophet
Directed by Jacques Audiard
Written by Audiard, Thomas Bidegain, Abdel Raouf Dafri, and Nicolas Peufaillit
Like all the great prison movies, this is a story about power. But not, in this case, the power of the jailers.
4. Coraline
Directed by Henry Selick
Written by Selick, from a novel by Neil Gaiman
A horror movie for children.
5. A Serious Man
Written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
"He went back to work. For a while he checked every patient's teeth for new messages. He didn't find any. In time, he found he'd stopped checking."
6. Jennifer's Body
Directed by Karyn Kusama
Written by Diablo Cody
A teen comedy so dark, it makes Heathers look like Saved by the Bell.
7. Broken Embraces
Written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar
Almodóvar works wonders with the stuff of soap opera. Someday they should give him control of an actual soap opera, just to see what he does with it.
8. Funny People
Written and directed by Judd Apatow
Every now and then, Adam Sandler decides to demonstrate that he can act. No one is sure what prompts this, or why he does it so infrequently.
9. Four.Five.Three.Six.Five
Directed by Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross
A couple of brothers bring their cameras to a Midwestern town. People let the filmmakers into their lives, because the filmmakers are already a part of their lives—they grew up there, same as their subjects, and they know this town well. Watch their rich portrait and you'll feel like you know it well too.
10. Daddy Longlegs
Directed by Josh and Benny Safdie
Written by the Safdies with Ronald Bronstein
A tale about a loving, charismatic, and deeply irresponsible dad. Your chance to see what
being raised part-time by a Cassavetes character would be like.
Honorable mentions:
11. Ajami (Scandar Copti, Yaron Shani)
12. Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson)
13. Cropsey (Joshua Zeman, Barbara Brancaccio)
14. Moon (Duncan Jones)
15. The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke)
16. Life During Wartime (Todd Solondz)
17. The Thick of It 3 (Armando Iannucci)
18. Universal Soldier: Regeneration (John Hyams)
19. Sherlock Holmes (Guy Ritchie)
20. Teclópolis (Javier Mrad)
And a shoutout to Gamer, which had the year's best dance number.
Of the films of 2009 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in Impolex and Videocracy.
