Top Ten Films of 2009

1. Inglourious Basterds
2. Precious
3. Star Trek
4. Avatar
5. (500) Days of Summer
6. The Hangover
7. Coraline
8. Funny People
9. Where the Wild Things Are
10. A Serious Man

The Academy Awards are tomorrow night, and that means it's time to officially lock in my choices for the top ten films of 2009. Sure, most people have this discussion at the end of the year in consideration, but I've always felt that if the Academy is going to hold the ceremony several months into the next year then I deserve that time to see as many films as possible before rendering a final verdict.

And as far as final verdicts are concerned, I feel relatively comfortable asserting that 2009 was one of the weaker years for film over the past decade. More specifically, I'm referring to my impression that there were relatively fewer films in 2009 that will have a lasting presence in the film appreciation portion of my brain, as well as a bit of an uptick in the number of supposed standout films that ultimately left me unsatisfied (See: Up in the Air, The Hurt Locker, Up...or rather, don't see them. I kid, I kid.). Still, there were at least a few truly great films from 2009, including some that have also passed the "Would I want the DVD in my home movie collection?" test (Inglourious Basterds, please!), and several others that, for lack of a better phrase, constitute "the rest of the best" of 2009.

As always, there remains the caveat that I haven't managed to see all of the films from 2009 that I assume have a chance of being among my top films of the year - including An Education, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Crazy Heart, A Single Man, Capitalism: A Love Story, The Road, Zombieland, and others - and, thus, the list above more accurately represents the top ten films of 2009 of the ones I saw.
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