The Best Films of 2009
By Nareg Torosian

In a year of sweeping political change and widespread economic hardship, it comes as no surprise that Americans flocked to the movies for the fantastical and the familiar. U.S. film-goers plunked an astounding $10.6 billion at the box office in 2009, and 11 of the year's 20 highest grossing films were sequels or reboots. Now more than ever, franchise names and word of mouth have greater audience pull than the actors advertised on the marquee. With the exception of a pair of Sandra Bullock movies and a Robert Downey-fied "Sherlock Holmes," many of the year's most popular films didn't need star power to propel them to nine-figure grosses ("Avatar," "The Hangover," "District 9," and "Paranormal Activity" among them).

One would think that this would be a boon for independent cinema, but cash-strapped film studios risk less by promoting spectacle over substance, therefore making it harder to catch indie films in theaters. Personnel shake-ups at many of the major studios confirmed this: both Warner Brothers and Paramount closed their independent branches; Miramax closed its doors; and MGM and the Weinstein Company found themselves approaching bankruptcy. Many of the smaller films these companies once championed are bypassing theatrical distribution altogether, instead premiering – and hopefully finding their audience – on DVD, cable, Netflix, and iTunes.

Review aggregators such as Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic and discerning critique sites such as Slant Magazine and The A.V. Club kept me up to speed on the year's releases. Though many of my picks feature big-name actors or Oscar pedigrees, only 5 of the 20 films on my list received wide theatrical distribution. My hope is that these choices will encourage you to try something new rather than flock to the familiar. Here are the films I thought were 2009's finest:

20. "Where the Wild Things Are" – Director: Spike Jonze

Maurice Sendak's beloved children's book gets a naturalistic, psychologically complex adaptation, courtesy of Jonze and co-writer Dave Eggers.

19. "Black Dynamite" – Director: Scott Sanders

The blaxploitation spoof to end all blaxploitation spoofs, this lovingly detailed and incredibly fun throwback looks like the greatest grindhouse feature never released in 1972.

18. "Humpday" – Director: Lynn Shelton

Bold but immensely charming, this low-key comedy is somehow able to pass off its premise as believable: two recently reunited, straight college buddies make a drunken pact to film themselves having sex for a local film festival, then find themselves playing chicken after the hangovers wear off.

17. "A Single Man" – Director: Tom Ford

Fashion designer Ford makes a stunning directorial debut with his adaptation of Christopher Isherwood's novel about a gay British college professor (a revelatory Colin Firth) who struggles to find meaning in his life since the death of his long-time lover.

16. "Sugar" – Directors: Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck

The writing/directing team behind "Half Nelson" returns with this similarly nuanced, unsensationalized look at how a Dominican baseball pitcher struggles to make it in the American big leagues and bring his family out of poverty.

15. "Observe and Report" – Director: Jody Hill

The most cheerfully vulgar and tonally schizophrenic comedy to escape from the Hollywood studio system since "Bad Santa," this underrated Seth Rogen vehicle planted "Taxi Driver" into a shopping mall and played it for (really uncomfortable) laughs.

14. "The Messenger" – Director: Oren Moverman

Boasting strong turns from Ben Foster, Woody Harrelson, and Samantha Morton, this intensely acted but sensitively written character study follows a pair of Army G.I.s as they give notice to families of fallen soldiers.

13. "Five Minutes of Heaven" – Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel

Winner of two major awards at 2009's Sundance Film Festival, Hirschbiegel's lean, gripping morality play about a former Irish terrorist (Liam Neeson) meeting his surviving victim (James Nesbitt) is the German director's best feature since "Downfall."

12. "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans" – Director: Werner Herzog

Nicolas Cage's brilliant, bugfuck performance as the gleefully immoral title character is the best reason to watch Herzog's in-name-only remake of Abel Ferrara's modern classic.

11. "Moon" – Director: Duncan Jones

In a banner year for sci-fi, no genre film was better than Jones's thoughtful debut feature, a psychological stunner about the sole astronaut on a lunar base (a terrific Sam Rockwell) whose life unravels when he discovers he has unexpected company: himself.

10. "Bright Star" – Director: Jane Campion

Campion's best work since "The Piano" delicately and lyrically recounts the final three years in the life of poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and his relationship with Fanny Brawne, awesomely played by Abbie Cornish.

9. "Two Lovers" – Director: James Gray

Joaquin Phoenix's Letterman appearance unfortunately overshadowed the film he was supposedly promoting – Gray's finely observed, erotically charged romantic drama about a troubled Jewish man (a never-better Phoenix) who hooks up with the daughter (Vinessa Shaw) of his father's potential business partner but pines for the unstable shiksa (luminous Gwyneth Paltrow) who moves in nearby.

8. "Goodbye Solo" – Director: Ramin Bahrani

Sabotaged by a marketing campaign that tried to pass it off as quirky, feel-good comedy, Bahrani's richly humanistic drama follows the reluctant relationship formed by a winsome Senegalese cab driver and one of his depressed American passengers. Like neorealist directors De Sica and Rossellini, Bahrani eschews clichι and sentiment to deliver a tale of uncompromising warmth and sadness.

7. "Fantastic Mr. Fox" – Director: Wes Anderson

Rarely have the visions of two artists meshed so symbiotically – and with such irresistible joy! – than in Anderson's first foray into stop-motion animation. While staying faithful to Roald Dahl's children's novel, Anderson fleshes out the narrative with his trademark verbal wit and visual style, and gets some charming voice work from George Clooney and Meryl Streep to boot.

6. "Julia" – Director: Erick Zonca

In a career-defining performance (the year's best), Tilda Swinton is astonishing as the boozy, unrepentant train wreck of a title character who agrees to a woman's desperate offer to steal her son from her grandfather's custody – then decides for a much bigger and incredibly dangerous score. Zonca's first feature in a decade (and his first in English) is a nail-biting thriller for the ages.

5. "In the Loop" – Director: Armando Iannucci

Line-for-line the funniest film made this decade, this whip-smart and acerbic political satire takes a brutally unvarnished look at the machinations of British and American government officials prior to the invasion of an unnamed Middle Eastern country. Peter Capaldi and James Gandolfini lead the year's best ensemble cast, who take the template set by fellow UK TV show "The Office" and extend it to a profanity-laden, feature-length comic masterpiece.

4. "Inglourious Basterds" – Director: Quentin Tarantino

Though set in WWII, Tarantino's most mature film to date is less a war movie than a treatise on how cinema shapes a collective consciousness, but critical dissection isn't necessary to enjoy the movie's innumerable pleasures: the juicy dialogue, the bravura setpieces, the expansive soundtrack, and the unforgettable characters – from Melanie Laurent's courageous heroine to Christoph Waltz's snakelike Nazi.

3. "A Serious Man" – Directors: Joel & Ethan Coen

The most personal film yet by the Coen brothers is set in their 1960s childhood Minnesota and centers on a Jewish physics professor (an excellent Michael Stuhlbarg) who looks for answers from God when a series of unfortunate events plague him for no apparent reason. The Coens' trademark black humor hovers over this empathetic search for faith in a seemingly random universe.

2. "Up" – Director: Pete Docter

Pixar's magnum opus works simultaneously as rousing adventure, family entertainment, and parable about loss and fidelity. Sensually dazzling yet rich in metaphor, "Up" reminds us of why we go to the movies in the first place. And that heartbreaking, dialogue-free sequence of Carl and Ellie's life together ranks among the best in animated history.

1. "The Hurt Locker" – Director: Kathryn Bigelow

A finely tuned character study guised as a stomach-churning thriller, the first great film about the Iraq War sidesteps politics completely and presents an unadorned, soldier's-eye view of the conflict. In a breakthrough performance, Jeremy Renner is an overconfident, devil-may-care bomb-disposal technician addicted to the adrenaline of his job. Bigelow wrings maximum intensity from watching Renner work but remains sensitive to the plight of American soldiers and the civilians they are trying to protect.

In other awards…

Best Documentary

Best Foreign Film

Blind spots: "The White Ribbon," "A Prophet," "Police, Adjective," "35 Shots of Rum," "The Headless Woman," "You, the Living," "Revanche," "Mother," "The Maid," and "Tokyo Sonata"

Best Animated Film

Best Actor

Best Actress

Best Supporting Actor

Best Supporting Actress

Best Director

Best Ensemble Cast

Best Directorial Debut

Most Overlooked

Ranked from lowest to highest box office receipts, according to Box Office Mojo.

Most Overrated

James Cameron spends $300 million to remake Disney's "Pocahontas" in space (alternately "Dances with Smurfs" and "FernGully 2: The NeverEnding Story"). Glad to see it came with special glasses, but earmuffs would've been more helpful.

In the vein of "Crash" and "Slumdog Millionaire," this well acted but offensive piece of cultural exploitation misplaces spectacle for sensitivity. More jarring are the film's insulting clichιs, inappropriate stabs at broad humor, and stereotypical casting. (Once again, only light-skinned black people can apparently help their dark-skinned brethren escape their plights.)

I really enjoyed this movie until the final act when – I'll tiptoe around plot developments here – George Clooney makes a crucial decision that I didn't buy for his character. The film's been overrated by those critics who mistake its message for its perceived notion that everyone will eventually succumb to it. I believe in the message, but unlike the film's makers, I don't think it will suit everybody.

A close second to "Precious" in 2009's White Guilt Sweepstakes, this remarkably degrading sports drama gives African-Americans the inspirational message that one day their saintly white lady will come and make all their decisions for them. And I like Sandra Bullock as much as the next guy, but wearing a wig and mangling a Southern accent doesn't count as acting.

If Clint Eastwood's direction had some life to it, it might have elided the boilerplate dialogue, creaky sports-drama clichιs, and Morgan Freeman's and Matt Damon's well researched but highly mannered accents.

The year's most polarizing film was justly maligned for its misogynist bent, heavy-handed symbolism, and empty provocation – but even among Lars von Trier's insanely controversial filmography, there's never been another movie quite like it.