Monday, February 1, 2010

My Top 10 Movies of 2009

It's the night before the Oscar nominations, and here they are - my top 10 movies of 2009, in alphabetical order:

1. Avatar
2. District 9
3. Drag Me to Hell
4. The Hurt Locker
5. Inglourious Basterds
6. Knowing
7. Paranormal Activity
8. Star Trek
9. Up In The Air
10. The White Ribbon

2009 was a great year for sci-fi/fantasy, with Avatar, District 9, Drag Me to Hell, Knowing, and Star Trek taking half of my top 10 slots. To make it a true sci-fi year, my favorite film of 2009 would definitely be Avatar - a fantasy of grand proportions you only see once in a generation.

8 comments:

  1. Although I haven't seen a few of your 2009 favorites, I did enjoy those that I have, including Knowing (although I think it got beaten to a pulp by the critics).

    We recently saw Star Trek again, and I really think it should have been nominated for a best film Oscar, especially with the expansion of the category to 10 nominees. At least it was better than Up. Yeah, Pixar animations are good, but Best Film material?

    My top pick for 2009 (again, among those that I have seen) would probably be Inglorious Basterds.

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  2. The reason behind hiking up the number of Best Film nominees to 10, was to get more Oscar telecast viewers (by increasing the chance of blockbusters getting nominated). But apparently, that increased the chances for arthouse nominees! I agree with you wholeheartedly on "Star Trek".

    Some say "Inglorious Basterds" was Tarantino's best since "Pulp Fiction". For that level of recognition, I would still go with "Kill Bill", but maybe a second viewing of "Basterds" will change that.

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  3. “Drag me to hell” as a best movie of year???…Hmmmmm…… I doubt that to recommend it anybody or not!

    Paranormal activity seems good but not enough as best pictures of 2009,although, White ribbon with its dark nature annoys me to some extend,but undoubtedly it was very special .
    But , the rest are absolutely awesome choices and well-deserved to win best awards. They all have my fully supports!!

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  4. You need to be familiar with Raimi's other funny horror movie, "Evil Dead", to realize how ingenious "Drag Me to Hell" was - because he repeated the same unique formula. If you don't realize that you Raimi "knows" some scenes are absolutely absurd, the movie would look rather stupid. But while watching it, I was laughing my head off in the theater (I especially loved the disgusting old lady! Horror can't get any more idiotic than that!).

    Was the "Hmmmm" some sort of retaliation to a comment I made about another movie? ;-)

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  5. Exactly smart boy! You know this is not my exclamation, as well as , for cinephiles the time of vengeance comes soon! No need to wait long time!;-)

    “Revenge is a dish best served cold”

    Shakespeare - Macbeth

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  6. Believe it or not, I thought that was originally an old Klingon proverb, mentioned by Khan in "Star Trek II".

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  7. Drag me to Hell was a great film although not as great as Evil Dead which was banned in the UK along with many other movies that now have been released uncut, mostly. This documentary about the whole sorry scandal looks good: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_ocrenOCPo

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  8. It's a shame "Evil Dead" was banned. But the "Video Nasties" documentary is VERY interesting!

    I was trying to avoid watching "Cannibal Holocaust", ... but now I guess I should!

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