Brandon Muramatsu

2009 Movie Picks – Summarized

This list summarizes my two previous posts.

Top Picks:

  • Star Trek: The “reboot” of the Star Trek franchise. OMG this was a great movie. Star Trek was a roller coaster ride start to finish and was a great way to reinvigorate the franchise. It follows on several other successful “reboots” including The Dark Knight from 2008, and I’d include the Spiderman trilogy I think. (Star Trek is ranked #100 on the IMDB Top 250 list.)
  • Up: What can I say, Pixar hits another home run. I was a little skeptical at first when I saw the trailers, but now that I’ve seen the movie, Up is clearly one of my top films for the year. Up is in the vein of The Incredibles, a movie for adults that kids will enjoy. This is vintage Pixar material. (When I wrote this, Up was ranked #24 on the IMDB Top 250 list, it’s now down to #101.)
  • 9: I think this is the first full length animated feature that rivals Pixar’s demonstrated ability to tell a story. 9 is a post-apocalyptic story about soul, friends and doing the right thing. Great story, great animation. (It’s executive produced by Tim Burton, though his Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline never really struck a chord with me.)
  • Public Enemies: I think I’d best describe Public Enemies as an “old-fashioned” movie. Johnny Depp’s acting is great (though universally every woman I’ve spoken to about the movie would go see the movie just to watch Depp). The story plays out like a movie from the Golden Age of Hollywood.
  • Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I have slightly mixed feelings about the sixth movie in the series. I finished re-reading the book about a week before I saw the movie, and unfortunately I kept trying to compare the book to the movie instead of enjoying the movie for what it was. It’s still a pretty good movie.

Interesting but not quite good enough to be a top pick:

  • Avatar: Yet another James Cameron epic. Some of the CGI was just incredible. This was also one of the first in the new crop of 3D movies–it wasn’t over the top, and probably added to the ambiance without overwhelming me. Now if he could find a good writer or two…though he is *much* better than George Lucas in this regard, *much* better!
  • District 9: Well this movie is definitely gross, and a bit disturbing. I’m not sure about this one long term either. I’d definitely watch the top five movies over and over again. This one…maybe?
  • Inglorius Basterds: I’m still not quite sure what to make of this movie. It has one or two extremely violent scenes, but on the whole is much less gorey than Kill Bill.
  • Fast & Furious: I really liked the first movie, The Fast and the Furious, and was disappointed by the two in between. This was surprisingly entraining, it won’t win any Oscars but was fun to watch.

Disappointing:

  • Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Transformers was probably supposed to be the blockbuster of the summer. Problem is, it just wasn’t that good. I’ve ranked it next on the strength of Megan Fox and the fact that I’ll probably watch it again as an “escape” movie.
  • Angels & Demons: My problem with Angels and Demons is that they didn’t spend enough money on the CGI. I’ve been to Rome, the Vatican and St. Peter’s, most of the shots just looked fake :(. Another hope for the blockbuster, fails to deliver.
  • X-Men Origins Wolverine. This X-Men was also a disappointment, it sort of felt like a movie to just make money, and never was a likely contender. X-Men it had the unfortunate timing to be released after Star Trek (and I also watched it after Star Trek). The story just didn’t hold up in comparison.

Skipped:
I skipped G.I. Joe (ok I was warned away from this) and G-Force (my original opinion was to be disappointed because it wasn’t like the cartoon of the 1970s/80s, I later saw this and it’s wasn’t so bad).

Missed:
I missed Julie & Julia (ultimately I saw it on a plane and it was pretty good), Ice Age 3, The Time Traveler’s Wife (also ok), Watchmen (I had high hopes for Watchmen, too bad they didn’t prove out) and Terminator: Salvation (unfortunately, I heard mixed reviews about Terminator, another contender for the summer blockbuster that failed to deliver).

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