2009 Movie Wrap Up

It occurs to me that I never did my year end list of the movies I saw in 2009 with a relative breakdown of their merits.  So, here we go:

Great
Star Trek
Invictus -- The best Eastwood film I've ever seen.  Damon and Freeman are both perfect.  A surprisingly emotional film for being about racial disharmony, politics and rugby.
Taken
District 9

Very Good
Avatar
Monsters Vs. Aliens -- Cute, funny, inventive.  The number of laughs they get just on the topic of scale alone would make this recommendable.
Sherlock Holmes -- This deserves a full review from me, but I'm lazy.  Downey is awesome, Law is great.  The look and feel of the film is enjoyable.
The Hurt Locker -- This pretty much is the example of a taut thriler.  And the hero (played by Jeremy Renner) is someone you can love and hate simultaneously.  (But mostly you love him.)
Food, Inc. -- A documentary that will make you question how you eat.  And if can do that for me, you know it's good.
2012 -- Loved it.  It made no sense, and it was awesome.
The Proposal
Watchmen -- Wasn't quite as chock-full-of-awesome as I would have liked, but I found Billy Crudup's Dr. Manhattan and Jackie Earle Haley's Rorschach to be pretty much perfection.
Zombieland
The Informant! -- Based on a non-fiction book about the craziest anti-trust investigation in US history, Matt Damon plays the least heroic character of his career.  And (yay!) Scott Bakula is in it!
The Taking of Pelham 123
A Christmas Carol -- After Polar Express and Beowulf, I was getting kind of motion-captured out.  Can't Zemeckis direct live actors anymore?  But this one is remarkably subtle for great swaths of its running time.  I could have done without the crazy chase sequences, but most of the film is remarkable and very true to the original Dickens novel.

Good
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Terminator Salvation
Ingourious Basterds
The Road -- Yes, it's just as bleak as the book (and the trailer) would have you believe.  Viggo Mortensen plays the best dad ever.

Okay
Surrogates -- Bruce Willis as a plastic-coated robot!  Then Bruce Willis as a broken-down slob of a man!  Who wouldn't want to see that?  Does a nice job dramatizing a world filled entirely with couch potatoes.
The Men Who Stare at Goats -- There's some really funny stuff, and some really dumb stuff.  The performances are good, the story is bad, so it clocks in at okay for me.
The International -- The story is entirely forgettable.  (Really.  I can't remember it now.)  But that gun fight in the Guggenheim is awesome!
Fast and Furious -- Never saw installments 2 or 3, but this was mildly diverting, and had some nifty car chases.
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li -- It's tough to categorize a film that you enjoy thoroughly because it's so terrible.  And terrible this one is.  Terrible... and awesome!  Chris Klein rules!!
Knowing -- Here's what I know about this film.  Two great action sequences eclipse a ridiculous story.
The Girlfriend Experience

Okay, But Should Have Been Much Better
Angels & Demons
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
The Twilight Saga: New Moon -- I really want this franchise to be good.  It just keeps not doing that.  Still, this one's an improvement over Twilight.

Kind of Bad
Whiteout -- One of those "Maybe there's a supernatural component!" films that doesn't deliver.  But you get to see Kate Beckinsale in her underwear, so there's that.
Jennifer's Body -- Wasn't funny enough to be a comedy, wasn't scary enough to be horror, wasn't enough skin to be sheer titillation.
Law Abiding Citizen -- Over the top performances followed by over the top plot contrivances.  I hoped for better from Butler and Foxx.
My Bloody Valentine 3-D -- Everything you think it'd be, based on the title.

Very, Very Bad
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen