I’ve listed the movies released in 2009 that I’ve already seen and here now are my very brief thoughts on them. I’ve omitted “Watchmen,” which I feel I have to watch again before I critique it, and included a very fine film that I saw at the Newport Beach Film Festival, “Idiots and Angels,” Bill Plympton’s latest. It’s a dark comedy about a complete scumbag who starts growing wings on his back. As he desperately attempts to hack them off only to find them sprouting anew each morning, he must also fight off those who ridicule and attempt to profit off of him. Is he capable of salvation? I am a huge fan of Plympton’s work; he’s one of the few standout voices in independent and experimental animation left and I love his use of angles and transitions, which is probably best demonstrated in his short film “Your Face.”

“Coraline” is a wonderful movie, combining all the elements I love about fairy tales and your usual “life lessons.” I would love to see Laika become the Pixar of stop-motion animation, a style which actually looks great in the wholly unneeded 3D. They even got me to obsessively reread the book a few times. (9 out of 10)

God, I thought “I Love You, Man” would be so, so incredibly stupid. Instead, partly thanks to accompanying friends and partly thanks to a specific kind of audience, I got a fine, fun comedy with genuine heart that didn’t go too overboard with genre cliche. (8.5 out of 10)

I caught “The Brothers Bloom” at the Newport Film Fest a few weeks before its theatrical release. It was cute, but nowhere near the “classic” many critics have made it out to be. Writer/director Rian Johnson does seem to have a sense of control and knows exactly what he wants, which I always respect in a film. Maybe one of these days I’ll check out “Brick.” By the way, Rinko Kikuchi steals the show. (8 out of 10)

If you want to see something both disturbing and interesting I suggest you try “Observe and Report.” Not so much funny as it is ballsy. (8 out of 10)

Not much to say about “State of Play.” It got the job done and will be forgotten right about now. (8 out of 10)

“Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian” is fun, cute, and not as good as the first. It has a creepy ending, which I’ll go into further detail in a forthcoming article, and overall does not deserve the scorn heaped upon it and its predecessor by many online writers. (7.5 out of 10)

I’d never seen Zac Efron in anything before but now I know this guy’s got charisma. “17 Again” was a purely unoriginal ripoff, but it sure was a lot of (once again) fun. (7.5 out of 10)

I don’t remember “Monsters vs Aliens” at all. The opening scene, traveling the galaxy in 3D, is breathtaking however. But that’s all I remember. (Of course that’s partly because I fell asleep…not the movie’s fault though…shhh.)  (7 out of 10)