Kathy already told you that Hollywood has a slew of sequels and remakes ready for 2010. So it seems a good time to post a link to Rick's best and worst movie list for 2009, which ran in Thursday's Life section. (I contributed to this year's lists, but I was so busy with local arts/theater stuff this year that Rick saw the vast majority of movies for review.)
I can tell you that Rick has a slightly different philosophy about these kinds of lists than many other critics out there. He likes to highlight movies both good and bad that people in Fresno have actually SEEN, as opposed to titles that may or may not actually open here. (The dirty little secret about Top 10 lists is they often are dominated by tiny little films that no one in the country has seen except a few big-city critics.)
Here's the Top 10 list:
1. Where the Wild Things Are
2. The Road
3. The Hurt Locker
4. Precious
5. Star Trek
6. Fantastic Mr. Fox
7. (500) Days of Summer
8. Up in the Air
9. Watchmen
10. Up
Your thoughts? (The first comment on The Bee's online story is: "Horrible list. But I didn't expect much from a newspaper full of liberals." Come on. You can be more creative than that.)
For the Bottom 10, see the jump.
The Worst 10:
1. Year One
2. Imagine That
3. Law Abiding Citizen
4. Pink Panther 2
5. Old Dogs
6. I Love You, Beth Cooper
7. Observe and Report
8. Land of the Lost
9. Battle for Terra
10. New in Town
wow, i completely agree with the bottom ten. as a matter of fact, i did not bother to see any of those ten.
First of all, I didn't see more than a couple of movies this year that were better than Up - and I guarantee that the Fantastic Mr. Fox was not even CLOSE to as good as Up. I made the bold prediction that Up would get a best picture nomination, and I'm standing by that. I think it will be in the 5.
Very tough call for me between Wild Things and Up. I call it a tie. Both are superb. And - mainstream list or not - the Watchmen does NOT belong in any top 10. Mediocre at best.
Your top 10 is pretty much on point, IMHO, but your inclusion of "Observe & Report" on your ten worst made me shake my head. Perhaps "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" is more your flavor but I found Jody Hill's film the antithesis of Steve Carr's film and I would love to hear your comparisons between the two. If either of those films deserved to be on any worst lists, I'm definitely going to put "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" on there before "Observe & Report" which I found to be brilliant and one of my favorite of the year.
OK, so I don't watch a whole lot of movies, but I had to come up with a top movie list recently. It was tough. But I thought I'd share it anyway.
Stuff I liked:
- (500) Days of Summer
- Up in the Air
- The Hangover
- Adventureland
Granted, I haven't seen a lot of those movies listed.
I did see Observe and Report and thought it was good enough. It was certainly better than New Moon.
Respectable list for the approach (except, Inglorious Basterds has to be on the list, and probably Moon). The bottom ten passes the eyeball test by inclusion of the ones I saw (O&R, Beth Cooper). I think Nine belongs in the bottom 10 just for squandering talent. And The Ugly Truth, which, for me, is the worst movie of the 2009.
Perhaps Don & Rick could offer up a 10 best (or whatever number) list of what we DIDN'T get a chance to see here that they did, because even movies that don't open here theatrically do come out on DVD/Blu-Ray and VOD/PPV without the restricted distribution and some folks should know what to be on the lookout for at Blockbuster or Netflix or Comcast, instead of settling for Law Abiding Citizen because at least they've heard of it (like Goodbye Solo and Sin Nombre).
I think Land of the Lost was awesome, but it could be just a personal opinion. I would definatelly moved it up on the list a bit.
Inglorious Bastards & A Single Man are CRUCIAL on this list.