Club 50 Wrap-Up: 2009

Years Completed:
1987 | 1988 | 1989 | 1990 | 1991 | 1995 | 1996 | 1998 | 1999 | 2001 | 2002 
2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2010 | 2009 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014

As I've been going through this Club 50 project, some years aren't very interesting. I have trouble coming up with anything to say. Others are dominated by a single trend or observation. 2009 has just the right mix of interesting movies, being recent enough to recall details, and distant enough to have some perspective. My notes are overflowing from this year, so I just going to list them all.

It was the year that...

...Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen didn't need a finished script to make $400 million in the domestic box office. The story I always heard was that they had to race to get an outline of a script ready before the 2008 Writers' Strike began. Thus, production began without a real script. That sure explains a lot, doesn't it?

...the X-Men franchise squandered the last of our collective goodwill. To follow up the divisive The Last Stand with the unorganized short story collection X-Men Origins: Wolverine then put First Class in a hole when it came out 2 years later.

...Kevin James became a leading man. I still don't know how Paul Blart: Mall Cop became such a big hit. Neither does Sony.

...Liam Nesson became the world's biggest badass. He never shied away from action movies before that (Batman Begins and Kingdom of Heaven were only a couple years before), but those "special set of skills" resulted in one of the most remarkable career shifts in Hollywood.

...began the new Disney Renaissance by taking a step back in order to move forward. The Princess and the Frog was a throwback to the look and feel of the original Renaissance movies, which then made for a smooth transition into success with the likes of Tangled, Wreck-It Ralph, and of course, Frozen.

...lightning didn't strike twice for the Jim Carrey + Christmas formula. In 2000, Carrey's How the Grinch Stole Christmas was the highest grossing movie of the year. His motion-capture A Christmas Carol was a much smaller scale hit but with a significantly larger budget.

...Harry Potter kept going. It's pretty remarkable how steady that franchise was. By the time it got to the sixth installment, The Half Blood Prince, it made the most money since the first movie. From the 4th to 7th movies, the box office total domestically only varied by about $11 million.

...Sandra Bullock got the Oscar that we didn't realize she deserved. We all love Sandra Bullock, but before The Blind Side, she was never in the hunt for an Oscar. As soon as she was in the thick of it though, we made damn sure she won that thing.

...The Hangover became the spiritual successor to Wedding Crashers. Despite years of Apatow Productions dominance, it was this second coming of the Frat Pack hit, also about a wedding weekend, also featuring Bradley Cooper, that broke the record for highest grossing R-rated comedy.

...Up and Where the Wild Things Are made us cry. Normally movies targeted at kids don't emotionally devastate people of all ages.

...Star Trek was reborn as a summer blockbuster, dividing fans.

...Fast and Furious proved that the franchise was just revving up.

...Avatar took over the goddamn world. Entire essays could be written on the subject, but the mix of perfect timing for the global market, 3-D technology, and James Cameron magic completely dominated the box office.

2009 was the first year with "The Dark Knight rule" in place. The results were varied. 10 nominees. Six made the top 50 in the box office. Considering that movies like The Blind Side (#8), District 9 (#27), and Up (#5) had little hope of making the cut in a five movie list, It served its purpose. The important part is that it made sure there was no chance Avatar would slip out of the field.

To wind down each year as I complete them, I'm going to hand out a few superlatives or anecdotal awards to highlight some of the highs and lows of the year's top 50 box office earners.

First Seen: Taken

I can't think of a time when a single speech changed a career as drastically as Liam Nesson's.

Last Seen: Coraline

I'm still bored from watching this.

Happiest Surprise: Taken

There are some fantastic choices here. I Love You, Man and Zombieland are both comedies that I assumed wouldn't be as good as they looked in the previews and ended up even better. I was convinced that Pixar was out of ideas when I heard about Up. That was too weird to work. By ten minutes in, I was already an emotional wreck and amazed that they did it again. I'm sticking with the obvious choice though. Like everyone else, I saw Taken opening night because that ad campaign is one of the finest of the last decade. 15 minutes in, I was fully regretting my decision. Pretty much everything until the daughter is being abducted is bad. It just is. As soon as she's taken though, the movies turns it on and gets awesome. I can't think of a time when my opinion of a movie swung so much while I was watching it.

Biggest Disappointment: Couples Retreat

Certainly, X-Men Origins: Wolverine deserves a mention here, but X-Men: The Last Stand prepared us for disappointment in that series. Couples Retreat squanders a terrific cast. When you have a collection of veterans including Jason Bateman, Kristen Bell, Malin Akerman, Vince Vaughn, Jon Favreau, Faison Love, and Kristin Davis and end up with something as lifeless as this, it has to be considered a major disappointment.

Looked Better Then: District 9

I wanted Michael Jackson's This Is It to be more than it was. The nature of how it was put together made that difficult though. It's weird how quickly we have collectively forgotten about Avatar, given the way that it broke every record it could in the box office. In 2009 though, District 9 was being heralded as a new kind of SciFi (or a return to the classic SciFi storytelling). With Elysium and Chappie, Neill Blomkamp keeps dipping in the same bag of tricks every time. He's looking much more like a one-hit wonder than a visionary new voice. There's still plenty of time to turn that around, but I think the damage has been done to District 9's legacy.

Looks Better Now: The Princess and the Frog

I wanted to pick Where the Wild Things Are, because it's a beautiful movie that people didn't seem to get at the time. I'm afraid it's still pretty forgotten. That makes The Princess and the Frog the more obvious choice. At the time, all the fuss was made about Tiana being the first black Disney Princess and what got lost was the discussion about if the movie was any good. It turns out, it was very enjoyable with a great message about putting in the work to make your own fairy tale life. It helps that it's also regarded as the start of the new Disney Renaissance.

Favorite: Up

While there's a lot of competition at the top, Up is still my favorite Pixar movie. It has that opening, which is rightly discussed first and foremost . It's also might be the funniest Pixar movie. And dogs. So many dogs!

2nd Favorite: I Love You, Man

I'm still confused by this movie. It's not tied to Apatow productions in any way other than the cast. In fact, the director is famous for writing Ben Stiller movies (Meet the Parents, Zoolander) and the writer is known for the Dr. Doolittle movies. Paul Rudd and Jason Segel are as likable and funny as they've ever been.

3rd Favorite: Paranormal Activity

I'm a sucker for found footage horror movies, and I mostly have this movie to thank for that. It's such a simple device and can yield such great scares. The extreme minimalism of the first movie in the series still makes it the best one.

Honorable Mention:

Taken

One of the best kill-em-all movies out there. Once it gets going, it doesn't stop until Liam Nesson has killed every last one of them. The sequels have only shown how delicate the formula is.

Zombieland

Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Woody Harrelson, and Abigail Breslin. That's a strange foursome. So strange that it works really well. They all bring their own energy to this. I want to credit the script and direction for as much of this as I can, but the casting is what really shines. And that Bill Murray cameo...

Up in the Air

This movie pissed me off the first time I saw it. I was so deflated by the lack of a "Hollywood ending" that I didn't know what to do with it. I've cooled over that. Now, I look at the terrific performances by George Clooney, Anna Kendrick, and Vera Farmiga.

Where the Wild Things Are

What the hell, Spike Jonze? Where did that come from? That Maurice Sendak book I kind of remember reading as a child wasn't supposed to be such a poignant movie with exceptional voice work from James Gandolfini, Catherine O'Hara, Paul Dano, and others.

The Princess and the Frog

Do you want Cajun food now? I want Cajun food now. It goes unnoticed how great Disney is at inverting its own fairytale formula so often without ever abandoning its own brand. That's such a tricky balance and they make it seem effortless.

Least Favorite: X-Men Origins: Wolverine

I could always pick a Tyler Perry movie without hesitation, so Madea Goes to Jail is certainly a candidate. I can't tell the Twilight movies apart, so picking New Moon hardly seems fair. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is the only movie in consideration that I flat out refuse to see again. I've forgiven aspects of it though, and I always accepted that the first Transformers was the anomaly. I'll stick with the movie that baffled me the most.
Here's what I always imagined happened: David Benioff, Skip Woods, and anyone else who had a pass at the script and didn't earn a screenplay credit all had an idea for what the movie could be. No one could agree on a single idea, so someone came up with a compromise: Everyone gets 15 minutes of the movie to write their part.