The 100 Project: The Top 25 Movies of 2009

2009 is an interesting place to reach for The 100 Project for a few different reasons. For starters, this is where I start to overlap my own work. Way back when, I made a list of top 25 movies for this very year. You can see it here. In the time that has passed, my opinions on a number of films has changed, some for the better, some for the worse. Next, 2009 is the first year after The Dark Knight. When that movie did not receive a Best Picture nomination in 2008, people cried loud, long, and hard about it. As a result, the Academy decided they would nominate up to 10 films in that category beginning in '09. That particular award also highlights a bit of an issue with the process I'm using for The 100 Project. I've decided that I'm using Letterboxd to determine what year a movie will be counted as. In most cases, this is irrelevant. Here, it matters somewhat. The Hurt Locker won Best Picture. Letterboxd, however, has it listed as a 2008 movie, so I put it on that list. Without looking forward, I'm not sure how often this is going to come up again. I will say that even though this affects the lists of the two years involved it does not alter how I feel about the movie and, therefore, doesn't change the end goal of the project. That goal, of course, is to come up with a list of my top 100 movies of all-time. But, let's just get this year out of the way.

My Top 25 Movies of 2009

• According to my Letterboxd account I've seen 182 movies released during 2009, a personal best
• Of the 10 movies I saw in theaters that year, 3 make my top 25. Two others are honorable mentions.
• I've seen all 10 of the Best Picture nominees. Subtracting the winner, The Hurt Locker (see above if you skipped ahead to this part), 4 of the other 9 make my top 25. Another is an honorable mention.
• 5 animated movies make my top 25 with 2 cracking the top 6. 3 more are honorable mentions.
• 10 movies from my original list a decade ago, did not make my new top 25. Some of these were recategorized as 2008 films, and did make that top 25.

25. Watchmen

24. Notorious

23. Star Trek

22. The Princess and the Frog

21. Big Fan

20. Up

19. Broken Embraces

18. Good Hair

17. 9

16. Sin Nombre

15. The Cove

14. Mother

13. Moon

12. In the Loop

11. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

10. District 9

This is one of the movies I saw in theaters to make this year's list. I wasn't sure what I was getting into when it started, other than it involved aliens. When it ended, I had seen the most unique alien invasion flick I ever laid eyes on.

9. Zombieland

Here's another movie I saw in theaters. I had to work a bit of magic to do it, too. Mrs. Dell is not a horror fan. To persuade her to go I had to stress, repeatedly, that it was much more comedy than horror and that Woody Harrelson is in it. She likes Woody. I loved it. She actually liked it. And the Bill Murray cameo is pure gold.

8. Precious

There are some movies that you like even though they are tough to sit through. This is one of those. The subject matter is difficult enough by itself. However, Mo'Nique's performance as an abusive mom is all-too real - frightening and sad.

7. Drag Me to Hell

After the first Spider-Man trilogy ended, I was very excited to hear Sam Raimi was returning to horror. When I watched it, I was not disappointed. It's balls to the wall right from the start and is full of the dark humor that made Raimi famous. 

6. Coraline

Dark comedy and kids movies don't usually go together. Coraline borrows heavily from the Tim Burton aesthetic and makes it work. It's creepy and makes some slick commentary,  and is fun as hell. Honestly, I liked it after my first viewing, but didn't love it. It was on a "3D" DVD and the room wasn't dark enough. Watching it on regular blu ray greatly enhanced the experience.

5. Inglourious Basterds

This is the first Tarantino movie I experienced on the big screen. And it was well worth it. While he's never been accused of sticking too close to the facts, his style of revisionist history is wholly enjoyable. The rollercoaster started immediately with Christoph Waltz's horrifying intensity and concludes with one of the most satisfying comeuppances of all-time.

4. The Hangover

Sometimes, I'm just a teen boy who just wants to hear raunchy and immature jokes. This movie tapped into that pubescent, testosterone-fueled energy and mainlined Neanderthal humor directly into my veins. You know, the good stuff. It's a high I experience every time I press play on this one. 

3. Thirst

Like a lot of people, vampires are my favorite cinematic nocturnal creatures. What the Twilight franchise did to them nearly dried up my bloodthirst because they had no bite whatsoever. Thank Movie God for Park Chan-wook. The Korean auteur reclaimed the vampire with this stressful and gory, but ultimately beautiful, love story.

2. Mary and Max

I used to rent lots of movies from my local library. After a while I was just looking for something different that I could watch with my kids. I came across this, it looked interesting, so I took it home. Nearly every minute of it was perfect. I laughed most of the way, and it kicked me in my gut whenever it wasn't tickling my funny bone. By the time it ended, it had instantly become one of my all-time favorite animated films.

1. Black Dynamite

Blaxploitation is a genre near and dear to my heart. So are parodies, when they're done well. This one is done exceedingly well. It captures the spirit and aesthetic of the genre while being hilarious all the way through. Not a detail was missed. It did what great parodies do. It makes use of all the tropes it's skewering and very clearly loves the thing it's deconstructing. 

Honorable Mentions (alphabetical): The Boat That Rocked, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Daybreakers, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Informant!, The Invention of Lying, Law Abiding Citizen, The Lovely Bones, Monsters vs. Aliens, Next Day Air, Orphan, The Secret in Their Eyes, A Single Man, Up in the Air, The White Ribbon