Year in Review 2009 – Part 2 – July to December

July
I managed to get married in July so all things movies went on the back burner but some of the movies I did manage to take in were Public Enemies starring Johnny Depp at the beginning of the month. Some of the older hardcore critics didn’t like the way it was shot, in Hi-Def but I thought it looked spectacular. At times though Public Enemies became very slow and seemed to be lacking in the number of many shootouts John Dillinger had. Either way though, it was a solid picture which stepped up a gear in the second half and it definitely warranted 2 viewings.
From there I had the misfortune of viewing Bruno with Sacha Baron Cohen. While it provided the laughs on occasion I couldn’t help but feel we’d seen it all before in Borat. People walked out of this movie in their droves so it certainly wasn’t something for the moral high ground groups.
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince turned up in July as well and as a non-Potter fan I just couldn’t get into it at all. Well, excluding the final 4 minutes which I have to admit I did get sucked into. But as I advised in the review, it was best avoided like a monkey in a highly agitated state!
But the big saving grace was Moon from Duncan Jones. A 5 star movie that is a must see!!Everybody didn’t go out and buy broomsticks!

August
August saw what is posed to be one of the biggest movies of the year, Avatar get some on screen action. The trailer arrived and plenty were upset as it seemed not to be what many expected. Then pants started to slowly come off and many of us, myself included, started drooling at the the Na’Vi in 3D. For me, one of the best movies of the year arrived, and as with any Quentin Tarantino flick, Inglorious Basterds was surrounded in a gigantic cloud of hype and bullshit. Entertaining, tense and what is surely an Oscar nominated performance (at least) for Christoph Waltz. I loved every minute and am still sacrificing small animals in the hope that an extended / directors cut turns up!
Mr. Dark Knight, Chris Nolan amazed us all with a teaser trailer for Inception and even as it was a teaser trailer, I still took off my pants. 
And then July grinded to a Halt with Funny People. This had success sprayed all over its face! Seth Rogen who is always superb and Adam Sandler in an adult comedy and with Judd Apatow in the directors chair, what could go wrong. Not a great deal went wrong, not a great deal went right either. Solid performances from all, but the movie tried to flex its intellectual balls in the second half and it failed like a badger trying to bite the tires off an 18 wheeler! Everybody went out and told anyone who would listen that they wanted their Nazi scalps!

September
No one expected District 9 to be as big as it was! “Fookin Prawns” kicked off September superbly. Neil Blomkamp climbed up Mount Everest and roared that he had extremely large balls. Produced by Peter Jackson (yes, that one), District 9 was one of the best action flicks of the year. And only made for $30 million. If you still haven’t seen this movie, then you should hang your head in shame! That said its out on DVD / Blu-Ray very shortly!
Jesse Eisenberg doing his best Michael Cera impression came shortly after the prawns with Adventureland. A blandish, coming of age comedy which to be honest, seemed solid at times but went off all over the place at others. The only thing that really held this together was the instant likeability of the characters and pretty solid performances.
  From here September took a bit of a nose dive with Gerry Butler and Gamer which was an incredibly difficult movie to watch for a multitude of reasons, most of all though the camera work which was obviously great if you needed a bit of induced nausea.
Bruce Willis built an extension to his house in September after phoning in a lacklustre performance in Surrogates, which was like a cross between a wig shop and the Matrix. And when a movie has a running time of 88 minutes, that isn’t animated that says to me something is radically wrong.
Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr. what a pairing. You would think “What the fuck can go wrong here”. Well alot did go wrong. For such a simple story revolving around a journalist and a talented homeless person, this was akin to watching a movie about Quantum Physics. The over complication of the Soloist took away from the rock solid performances of its 2 main stars.
Everybody went out and bought Prawns and kicked their ass!

October
One of the better months for movies. Even Ricky Gervais, who I can’t stand made me smile for most of his offering, The Invention of Lying. I even questioned my own mortality after watching it.  
Then things really took off, literally with Up. The latest from Pete Docter and the boffins at Pixar made us all cry at least once. Up is certainly for me, the animated movie of the year and showed once again Pixar have a unique gift of story telling. They raised the bar with its animation and character’s who were all instantly loveable and made us all wonder if tying balloons to our house would actually cause the thing to lift off the ground. And you know as well as I do, some fool probably tried it!
Near the beginning of the year I saw Woody Harrelson and a cowboy hat kick the shit out of hordes of Zombies. In one of the most entertaining movies of the year, Zombieland was the movie equivalent of Dead Rising on the Xbox 360. The trailer had promised so much and unlike many movies this year, Zombieland actually delivered so much more! Oh and it had the best cameo in the last 20 years!
Everybody went out and bought balloons!

November
So 2009 is running out of time but we’re not running out of movies. Well, we’ve probably almost run out of decent movies anyway. November saw Megan Fox get it on with the chick from Mama Mia in Jennifers Body. Essentially a story about about Megan Fox eating students. Unlike Megan Fox in this movie, you would have felt incredibly empty after this dreadful movie going experience. Is it worth it for the lesbo scene? Well if you haven’t discovered internet porn, it probably is!
Christmas came early for movie goers in November, as the Men who stare at goats squeezed down cinema chimneys everywhere. Originally supposed to come out in January it arrived early, and Clooney and co provided a somewhat enjoyable romp about a secret CIA organisation who utilise the power of mind control. Cloud bursting and goat heart shenanigans abounded.
Disney's Xmas Carol reminded us all that mad shopping trips were not too far away and Jim Carrey reminded us all he is a god, even with motion capture technology.
Given that we are only 2 odd years away from the official end of the world, Roland Emmerich reminded us all that he’s obsessed with flattening the planet, except this time there wasn’t a giant japanese lizard in site. 2012 was a gargantuan demonstration for special effects and not much else to be honest. An hour of everyone’s lives could have been saved if he cut most of the dialogue, but he didn’t! In any case, most of the set pieces were displayed in the trailers, so if you were really stuck a few trailer viewings would have made everything alright.
Girls everywhere screamed their lungs out for Team Jacob and Team Edward in New Moon. Great for the fans of the book, but for the rest of us,   well we would have been better off inserting shards of glass into our eyes and removing them with piranhas'.
November came to an end with Law Abiding Citizen where Gerard Butler pulled off a nice guy, turned nut job. Jamie Foxx made us all hate him and for their efforts they got 3.5 stars in the new star system on the blog!
While it missed the traditional Halloween release date, Paranormal Activity hurtled into cinemas and scared us all shitless! Underpants sales went through the roof after one of the most terrifying movies ever made. After cleaning myself up, I gave it 5 stars!
Everybody went out and bought new underpants!

December
In a month which we all go mad and spend money on shit that nobody likes, you would hope that we would get a little bit of escapism with the movies. Cameron Diaz and The Box turned up and many preferred to battle crazy Christmas shoppers. Descent 2 went back down a big, dark hole and nobody cared as we were all still shitting it from Paranormal Activity. And then Spike Jonze brought us all back down to earth and returned us to our childhood’s with the superb Where the Wild things are. It got 4 stars! And then the world went blue, in 3D. Avatar got 5 stars and brought the (as of writing) year to a close!!
So that concludes the first ever year in review of done, and I’m never doing it again! Well until next year anyways! Have a good movie Xmas :)