Random thoughts - the movies of 2009.

First off...my favorite things in movies - 2009:

Adrien Brody and Rachel Weisz dance a Bolero to Nino Rota's Amarcord in The Brothers Bloom

The appearances of Columbus' rules in Zombieland

Carrie Fisher in Sorority Row

Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) whistles Mike Patton's theme music while on patrol in Crank: High Voltage

Demetri Martin gets a police escort to Woodstock in Taking Woodstock

The dog-sitting inventions in Hotel for Dogs

Ed Helms' friendship song in The Hangover

Emile Hirsch in Taking Woodstock

The Guggenheim shootout in The International

"I’m gonna be keeping my eye on you!" - Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

John C. Reilly and Willem Dafoe in Cirque du Freak: the Vampire’s Assistant

John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) nearly gets caught in a packed movie house in Public Enemies

Just about everything in Fantastic Mr. Fox, especially the characters' animalistic traits and Kylie's consciousness signal

Keith David in Coraline and The Princess and the Frog

Liam Neeson in Taken

Martin Starr in Adventureland

Matt Damon's narrative tangents in The Informant!

Michael Douglas and Robert Forster in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

The montage of Rachel Weisz's hobbies in The Brothers Bloom

The opening montage (and Michael Giacchino's accompanying music) in Up

Pete Wiggins talks about the breathing habits of babies in Away We Go

Several moments of lush animation in Ponyo

The staring contest in Shorts

Steve Coogan charges through the White House lawn in Night of the Museum: Battle for the Smithsonian

They Might Be Giants' "Other Father Song" in Coraline

The 34th and 35th days in (500) Days of Summer

Thomas Lennon in 17 Again

Timothy Olyphant in A Perfect Getaway

The very first con in The Brothers Bloom

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- Can we please have a moratorium on bitching about the 'Julie' half of Julie & Julia? What I'm basically saying is that they were equally good, not equally orgiastically awesome (popular opinion on the 'Julia' half). If nothing else, Amy Adams, in spite of a severely unflattering hairstyle, is her usual winning self.

- Shorts was a modestly amusing effort from Robert Rodriguez. One of my favorite aspects was revealed in the trailer, as Toe theorized that Helvetica bullies him because she's secretly in love with him. Her response? "How about...no!" before her goons dump him in the trash. (You see that, John A. Davis and Craig Bartlett? Not every girl who treats a boy like crap secretly likes him. Sometimes, they have emotional problems.) Seeing the film, I was a bit apprehensive that Rodriguez would end up drinking the Kool-Aid and having Toe and Helvetica hook up. Thankfully, that was not to be. By the end, they're "not quite enemies, but not quite friends". Good enough for me.

- The second half of The Invention of Lying ran aground rather distressingly, as the first half was a riot. In particular, the two cameos took me completely by surprise.

- Ode to fetish fuel: there was not one, but two movies where girls were revealed to have tails: Alice (Isabel Lucas) in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Rebecca (Jessica Carlson) in Cirque Du Freak: the Vampire's Assistant. Also, this isn't my favorite fetish, but who wasn't a little excited at seeing Susan burst out of her wedding dress and then the church in Monsters vs. Aliens?

- People can say what they want about Law-Abiding Citizen (though I did like Gerard Butler rocking an American accent), but there's a you'll-know-it-when-you-see-it moment in the film that...you can't buy the 'Holy fuck!' reaction that this moment got from me and others at the screening I attended.

- There were an alarming number of trailers this year that (however out of context) revealed endings. Ponyo's trailer contained the final frames of the film for some reason. The trailer for The International seemed to give away the ending, but, surprisingly, the film's coda differed from what was spoiled. The Last House on the Left's ending was tipped in its trailer as was Gerard Butler's fate in Law-Abiding Citizen (though that made for a fairly cool ending to the trailer).

- As with any movie year, 2009 had its share of overrated movies (like Extract, Where the Wild Things Are and Away We Go). The quick-fix, easy-way-out would be to jump on The Hangover (and, let's face it, it was somewhat overrated, though the chemistry of the leads overcame the hit-and-miss jokes), but the most overrated movie of the year, to me, was Adventureland. I look at this film taking up space in top ten lists and I think, 'did we see the same movie?' I blame the marketing as much as the film; they made it look like 'a laugh riot from the director of Superbad'. I did laugh, though. Martin Starr and Bill Hader performed a daring (if not unsuccessful) two-man rescue operation on this film. Subtract them, though, and all you have is a dull love story involving Columbus and the moody chick from Panic Room, interrupted by "hilarious" (note the quotations) interludes featuring an unfunny fuckwit named Frigo, whose character trait is punching people in the junk. Some saw him as the break-out character of the film, whereas I saw him as right up there with the Party Crasher as one of the biggest douchebags in the history of film.

- The year was rich in guilty pleasures, from the gleefully guiltiest (Sorority Row) to the shamefully enjoyable (Ninja Assassin, Crank: High Voltage, 12 Rounds). And then, there were those that just missed the boat (Gamer, The Final Destination).

- Now, I love a good revenge flick, but I came across three movies that show the dark side of revenge. The Last House on the Left was not an easy film to watch, not for the dehumanizing of the two girls nor for the way the dehumanizers were dispatched (Aaron Paul's death, in particular, was cringeworthy). Law-Abiding Citizen presented a man's quest for revenge...but this man gradually became the bad guy. And yet, in the opening scene, we see his family murdered. What can we glean from this, exactly? Maybe Taken isn't technically a revenge film (Maggie Grace wasn't killed, but how different a film would it have been if she was?), but the basic man-plows-through-adversaries-to-right-a-wrong template is there. I really hope that these films don't have any bearing on my writing; if someone's getting revenge, it should be somewhat fun to watch. Make of that what you wish.

- I think I was a little hard on Pink Panther 2. It's still not a great movie, but, compared to some other comedies, it's not so bad. However politically incorrect it was, it was slightly amusing to hear the expression 'my yellow friend', a nod to the Sellers movies. Also, if you lose interest in the story (and who could blame you?), there's always Aishwarya Rai's legs to stare at and they're awesome.

- I think that the biggest missed opportunity of the year occurred in Race to Witch Mountain. Ciaran Hinds kept taking calls from a mysterious person throughout the film. Given the amount of in-jokes the film had, I'm disappointed that the mysterious person was not shown to be Christopher Lee. Come on, think about it.

- I'm astonished. After 15 years, Liev Schreiber still looks good in drag.

- As much as I enjoyed Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, I must admit that the nervous smile and dumb girl talk that Sam did every time she started waxing scientific drove me crazy every time. I don't know, it reminded me too much of the nervous smile that Helga of "Hey Arnold!" would give whenever she was caught in one of her random acts of crazy.

- In Monsters vs. Aliens, when the aliens attacked after the President made contact by playing "Axel F", I couldn't help but think, 'Maybe they're Giorgio Moroder fans'.