Best of cinema by Mad Movies. Part 4: 2009-2010

Every year my favorite magazine for action/horror/thriller/SF (Mad Movies) publishes the list of the best movies of the previous year (and the worst ones), according to its editors and an average for the whole magazine team.
I have gathered them for your here with a few comments. Enjoy!
All parts of this article can be found under this link.

2009 was marked by the SF bomb Avatar, most successful movie ever and by a good factor three. I belong to the category of people who liked it a lot, and I watch it again at least once a year. In its shadow, do not underestimate District 9, a small unexpected South African realization produced by Peter Jackson. A great example of what kind of Science-Fiction one can do when not bound to the Hollywood system. Very very good. I would dare linking the success of those movies to the following production of the many high-budget SF movies that hit our screens in 2013-2014. Great, I have always said there were too few SF movies.
Then follow some good ones. I was fascinated by the graphic novel Watchmen and liked the movie although it does not bring much in terms of adaptation. The Curious case of Benjamin Button is good, but it was hard to fail anyway with this combination of story, cast and crew. Drag me to Hell, the return to horror by Sam Raimi, is pretty good and scary. Rec 2 is not as surprising as the first one but a good sequel in the same spirit. Esther the evil little girl is also interesting and frightening.
Terminator Renaissance is an honest try at refreshing the franchise but I was not convinced, party because too many scenes take place during daylight and we don't feel the same oppressing atmosphere as in the two original movies. I liked the colorful The Fall by Tarsem Singh (The Cell), the nervous Gamer and the underrated X-men Origins: Wolverine.
Going down the scale I found Jennifer's Body average, Transformers 2 passable, Dragonball acceptable and Morse an interesting little Norwegian film but not fully satisfying. 2012 by Roland Emmerich is impressive at the beginning in spite of its dumb story, but the last half hour (filmed with seemingly a cheap digital camera) buries it.
Then there are some movies that were appreciated by the Mad Movies team but not by me: the Korean Chaser, Welcome to Zombieland (a bit better than the average zombie movie but nothing stellar), Midnight Meet Train (first American realization by Ryuhei "Versus" Kitamura) and The Road. This last one (adapted from a best-seller) received many good reviews by all the press like if they had never seen a post-apocalyptic movie before which is probably the case, but the characteristic elements of the movie were already present in Mad Max 2 for example. I didn't like Lars Van Trier's Antichrist, pretentious and meaningless to me.
A few movies I have yet to watch: Strangers (one of the first home invasion movie, with Liv Tyler), Timecrimes, Paranormal activity (I have seen the Japanese version and it should be interesting for cheap thrills), Southland Tales starring The Rock, Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and Twilight. I am not sure I want to see Thirst by Chan-Wook Park (OldBoy) as I didn't read much good about it.
As sometimes done in the Mad Movies list (especially in 2013), let me now present a special mention for me in this year of 2009: it is the video game Borderland. Of course it is not a movie, but it is close to the genres I like: post-apocalyptic, violent, action-packed and bloody funny. I enjoyed playing it for countless hours on Xbox 360. It is only fitting that I first heard about it when watching its trailer at the Munich Fantasy Filmfest in 2009.

Not Many "jaw-dropping" movies in 2010, but a long list of good ones. It looks like I have seen most of the movies produced in that year!
The only Masterpiece for me is Amer, a wonderful Giallo made by a couple of french passionates, that JoRafCinema saw presenting their film at the Fantastic Film Festival of Espoo in Finland.
Then I see in the list that Avatar extended version is often quoted and it is indeed the only one I watch now. I very much liked Splice by Vincenzo Natali (Cube) with its romantic story of genetic modification reminding of Spieces (La Mutante in French) and of the yet-to-come Thale. It often happens to expect something from a director and be disappointed, but this time it was not the case.
I also loved Piranha 3D by the Frenchy Alexandre Aja who did disappoint me with The Hills have Eyes. This time his remake is funny and extreme in the gore, sex, action and situations, and with just the right actors (Elizabeth Shue, Ving Rhames and Christopher L. "Doc Brown" Lloyd).
Inception starts from an original idea and is well realized by Christopher Nolan. I am surprised it didn't get better ratings. Shutter Island by Scorcese and with DiCaprio was an efficient thriller even if not revolutionary.
Kick-Ass arrived logically after 10 years of super hero movies and shows a different view on this trend (but I think I prefer Super produced the following year). The Last Exorcism is produced by Eli Roth (Hostel) and he introduced the movie at the Munich Fantasy Filmfest. I enjoyed it and the tone it adapted via the viewpoint of this exorcist that tries to discredit his own job. Daybreakers is an original vampire story with Ethan Hawk well executed by the Spierig Brothers (Undead).
Monsters is a simple space invasion monsters movie shown in a very realistic way. No surprise that his director Gareth Edwards was chosen to work on Godzilla to be released in 2014. The killer tire in Rubber by the DJ Quentin Dupieux (shot with a Reflex camera) was an interesting experience, and Halloween 2 by Rob Zombie was well in line with the first one. Finally The Book of Eli is a post-apocalyptic action movie shot in a classical way, highly recommended especially for the great acting by Denzel Washington.
I have then a list of average movies, and in particular I disagree with Mad Movies top 3: I was disappointed by Peter Jackson's Lovely Bones, bored by Nicholas Winding Refn's Valhalla Rising (hopefully he did much better with Drive), and not impressed by Wolfman with Benicio del Toro.
Iron Man 2 was showing more action than the first but was in general less good. The expected Predators by Nimrod Antal (Kontroll) and produced by Robert Rodriguez (Sin City) was no better than an Alien vs. Predator. The Last Airbender convinced me that Night M. Shyamalan cannot direct action sequences. Adele Blanc-Sec is a bad adaptation of an otherwise very good comics. The first part of the last Harry Potter movie made it obvious that two parts were necessary only to squeeze money one final time out of the sorcerer's fans. Sherlock Holmes: useless. The French La Horde: typical of the french genre movies that end up like an episode of a TV-series.
Not much good to say about All the boys Love Mandy Lane, Skyline, Legion, Percy Jackson, Ga'Hoole, Buried or the animated Summer Wars. The only movies I may want to still watch from that year would be Scott Pilgrim and maybe Alice in Wonderland although I don't expect much from this one.

For a short time (1-2 years), the magazine Impact (historical Action/Thriller counterpart to Mad Movies) was back and even produced a list of best movies for the year 2010. Not surprizingly, I think it is the first year since the 80's during which Action films started to be trendy again, in particular thanks to the release of The Expendables, the lineup of Action Heroes directed by and featuring Sylvester Stallone, which I liked although it shows some defects.
I have seen a few movies from this best-of list that I can comment on. The Town directed by and featuring Ben Affleck was a nice gangster story, but not to the point of comparing the director Affleck to Eastwood like I have read! A bout portant (Point Blank) was a nice French thriller for once (reminding me of Pour Elle from 2008), and The Social Network a good dramatization of the birth of Facebook by David Fincher.  The A-team was not as bad as it is rated, even if it is true that it betrays a bit the series. Machete was a lot of fun but also representative of Rodriguez's laziness.
Millenium 2&3 were also pretty good but not at the level of the first.
Black Dynamite is a kind of Blaxploitation parody and I loved it. I also liked Centurion by Neil Marshall, especially for the moment when you see the erection of Hadrien's wall, an echo the the director's other movie Doomsday. The Dissapearance of Alice Creed is a clever kidnapping story with minimalist set and cast (including the lovely Gemma Arterton). And IP Man tells efficiently the (party fictionnal) story of Bruce Lee's mentor. I have seen those four last movies at the Munich Fantasy Filmfest, which is still my best source for discovering such interesting B-movies.
The TV-series Sons of Anarchy (season 2) is mentionned, and I admit that I liked it and it is the best I have seen in the first four seasons.
I don't have any particular memory of The Killer inside me with Jessica Alba (except for when she is spanked with a belt), which is not a good sign. The ageing secret agents of RED didn't make me laugh and the action was not even spectacular. And how can someone place The American (annoying story with Georges Clooney) in his top 5?
I probably sould watch Agora and The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans as they were well rated.

Stay tuned for the next episode, Part 5: 2011-2012