It didn’t reinvent the wheel or anything, but 2009 had plenty of film to love, and found several of our favorite auteurs (Quentin Tarantino, Spike Jonze, James Cameron, The Coen Brothers) at the top of their games. Here’s a look at some of our favorites.

Scott

Inglourious Basterds
To say I walked into Inglourious Basterds with low expectations is like saying that a few young ladies enjoy the Twilight franchise. Its trailers painted it as yet another World War II movie, but this time as a screwball comedy with drawn-out torture scenes awash in sweet, sweet Nazi blood. It wasn’t just a bad movie, either; after the fun but hollow Kill Bill and Death Proof, it represented another huge step back for the man who made a wide-eyed 12-year-old me fall in love with movies back in 1994 with Pulp Fiction. But just when I think I can quit QT, Inglourious Basterds made me fall in love all over again. And I do mean love; while there are certainly better films made this year (all of my honorable mentions, for example), I enjoyed them, or admired them, but I didn’t fall head over heels for them the way I did with Basterds. With the help of a tremendous ensemble cast including the unlikely breakout star turn of the year from a fiftysomething Austrian named Christoph Waltz, it’s Tarantino’s best work since 1997’s Jackie Brown, and one of his best movies ever. By turns uproariously funny, heartbreakingly sad, and cathartically violent, Basterds reinvigorates the tired WWII picture and saturates it with the delirious joy of film itself the way only Tarantino can.

Honorable Mentions:
Star Trek (one of the greatest summer movies ever made), A Serious Man (for all of these reasons), Hunger (a unique and unforgettable meditation on political will and spiritual conviction), Precious (a bold step forward for black American filmmaking), Up (one of the roughest-edged Pixar movies and one of the most lovable for it)

Ellen

A Serious Man
All Larry Gopnik wants is to know that his struggle to live an upright life has been worth it. Is that so hard? Well, of course it is. Some critics have twitted this moral marvel for being too removed from reality (because a cattle-gun-armed crazy is the height of realism), but this film resonates with more than just middle-class Jews growing up in Minneapolis: We may not know it, but we’re all studying the goy’s teeth. Only two master craftsmen like the Coen Brothers could pull back and show us the self-defeating yet poignant universality of our quests for meaning.

Honorable performance mentions:
The ensemble cast of In The Loop, Christoph Waltz and Melanie Laurent in Inglourious Basterds, Mark Duplass in Humpday

Robert

Where The Wild Things Are
When I first heard about Where The Wild Things Are way back in 2006, I nearly ignored it entirely except for the fact that Spike Jonze was attached as the director. I immediately though of Jonze’s past work in Being John Malkovich and Adaptation and wondered why he’d ever want to make a kids movie. Previous reports of disputes and studio interference were dashed when that first spectacular trailer hit audiences earlier this year. Seeing the film itself, however, took me to an entirely new place; a place I hadn’t expected one bit. As someone who grew up an only child in a broken home, a lot of Where The Wild Things Are spoke to me in ways I didn’t realize until it was almost over. Based on the classic children’s book, Where The Wild Things Are takes the simple premise of a frustrated child who escapes into his dreams and magnifies it by a thousand, running the gamut of emotions (loneliness, anger, joy, regret, confusion, sorrow) and presenting it all in the crude, disjointed way a child might experience them. The disarray that comes from unhappiness—not knowing what you want, not treasuring your relationships or just being unable to distinguish what’s really important in life—can be hard to overcome, and to most adults it might seem like territory too intense for children, but that’s where we all learn to deal with those emotions for the first time—where those wild things are.

Honorable mentions:
Inglourious Basterds: (Tarantino does World War II with his brilliantly-honed dialogue, an appreciation for cinema and surprisingly, no actual war), Avatar (James Cameron returns to feature films with revolutionary tools to create an otherworldly fantasy unlike anything we’ve seen before), Public Enemies (A sprawling cops-and-robbers update for the 21st century with Johnny Depp as a super-charming John Dillinger)

Zoe

Tyson
Maybe it’s just that I didn’t see a lot of the great movies of 2009. I haven’t seen The Hurt Locker yet, nor The Road, nor Nine nor whatever else is supposed to be good. Maybe it’s just that 2009 was a pretty underwhelming year for movies–friends and I have struggled with the question for weeks. Whatever the reason, the best movie of the year was hard to pick. The ones I did see were good–great, even–but nothing really blew me away. Tyson didn’t either, initially. I saw it with friends in Lincoln’s art theater while I was home recuperating from a broken leg. The blows and violence made me wince more as a result, but I didn’t leave the theater with my jaw agape or anything. And yet, consistently, I have brought it up once a month since. “You haven’t see Tyson? You really should,” has come out of my mouth so much I’m sure its annoying everyone. It’s a quiet movie, just Mike Tyson telling the story of, well, Mike Tyson. But that’s just it–despite the fact that the narrator and the protagonist are one and the same, it’s a shockingly honest, shockingly critical film about a flawed and fascinating man.

Honorable mentions:
Fantastic Mr. Fox (for not ruining one of my favorite children’s books), Star Trek (for space), Duplicity (for suits and being delightful)