This Wednesday’s #YALitChat on Twitter had the theme “Bests of 2009 in YA: Books, Music, Movies, TV, Anything!”

I’ve been thinking ever since.

So, to finish out 2009, here are my own lists of The Bests of 2009, one a day until it’s time to party like it’s ten years ago.

Best New Movies of 2009

Here’s the thing about movies and me: I don’t see a whole lot of them, and they pretty much stick to a small range of themes/actors/aesthetics/plotlines.  I’m splitting this list in two parts — Movies of 20o9 That I Saw And Liked, and Movies of 2009 That I Will See and Will Like.

Movies of 2009 That I Saw and Liked

The Boat That Rocked (Pirate Radio)
DIR. Richard Curtis
CAST
Philip Seymour Hoffman    …     The Count
Tom Sturridge    …     Carl
Bill Nighy    …     Quentin
Will Adamsdale    …     News John
Tom Brooke    …     Thick Kevin
Rhys Darby    …     Angus
Nick Frost    …     Dave
Katherine Parkinson    …     Felicity
Chris O’Dowd    …     Simon
Ike Hamilton    …     Harold
Kenneth Branagh    …     Sir Alistair Dormandy
Tom Wisdom    …     Mark
Jack Davenport    …     Twatt
Ralph Brown    …     Bob
Rhys Ifans    …     Gavin
Talulah Riley    …     Marianne
January Jones    …     Elenore
Emma Thompson    …     Charlotte

I doubt I need to reiterate my love for this movie again.  Just look at the cast list if you don’t believe my faith in its grooviness.

How To Be

DIR. Oliver Irving
CAST
Robert Pattinson     …     Art
Powell Jones    …     Dr. Ellington
Mike Pearce    …     Nikki
Johnny White    …     Ronny

The best part of this movie is Ronny, played by Johnny White.  Ronny is the agoraphobic, nitrous oxide addicted best friend of the movie’s protagonist, and many of the film’s more humorous moments take place in Ronny’s flat.  Ronny enjoys spying on the deli across the street with his binoculars because “the delicatesseries look quite delicious.”

When I saw the film, the cast (minus Pattinson) did a Q&A after the showing and Johnny White stuttered a lot, which made me love Ronny even more.

Then the subway ticketing machine ate my $104 at 3:30 AM (after the midnight showing) and I felt very much like the poster for this film was the poster for my life, which is pretty much the point of the whole movie if you’re in your twenties and want to have some sort of independent, creative profession.

Taking Woodstock
DIR. Ang Lee
CAST
Demetri Martin     …     Elliot Tiber
Emile Hirsch    …     Billy
Paul Dano    …     VW Guy
Kelli Garner    …     VW Girl
Henry Goodman     …     Jake Teichberg
Imelda Staunton    …     Sonia Teichberg
Eugene Levy    …     Max Yasgur
Jonathan Groff     …     Michael Lang

This movie was completely different than I expected it would be — I was picturing something more like Across the Universe (2007), lush and full of music and colors.  Instead, this movie is… almost depressing.  It does a really good job of showing the ’60s counterculture as a dirty, hungry, damaged phenomenon as much as it is one of beauty and ideas, and I’ve never seen another film that balances the two sides quite so well.

Demetri Martin is also completely adorable, and Jonathan Groff is absolutely transcendent; he was my favorite part of the movie.

However, I never needed to see the parts of Emile Hirsch that belong inside his pants.  Never.

Little Ashes (Sin Limites)

DIR. Paul Morrison
CAST
Javier Beltrán     …     Federico García Lorca
Robert Pattinson    …     Salvador Dalí
Matthew McNulty    …     Luis Buñuel
Marina Gatell    …     Magdalena

I’m very fascinated by Spain in the period between WWI and the Spanish Civil War, and Federico García Lorca is one of my favorite poets.

However, I won’t pretend like Pattinson’s crazy mustache wasn’t a major draw in my interest in this film.

It’s just so curly!

While it’s clear that this is a lower-budget indie film, and not all of the acting is impeccable, I really enjoyed this movie and found it emotionally wrenching, particularly the ending.

Any movie about Lorca cannot end happily, and even though you know what’s coming, Little Ashes succeeds in making it shocking and disturbing and painful anyway.  Javier Beltrán does a beautiful job playing the tragic poet.

I got unbelievably lost trying to find the theatre for this movie in NoLIta, and then all of the trailers were actually commercials for really weird, bohemian things like German hybrid cars and oil paints and stuff.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
DIR. David Yates
CAST
Daniel Radcliffe    …     Harry Potter
Rupert Grint    …     Ron Weasley
Emma Watson    …     Hermione Granger
Jim Broadbent    …     Professor Horace Slughorn
Michael Gambon    …     Professor Albus Dumbledore
Bonnie Wright    …     Ginny Weasley
Tom Felton      …     Draco Malfoy

This is the first Harry Potter movie that I actually liked, and it’s the first one that everyone else I know hates.

Yes, they cut out huge portions of the book.

Yes, they alluded to the actual canon ships (Harry/Hermione shippers, get out! To paraphrase JK Rowling: “Harry and Hermione? Eurgh!”).

But I personally choose to believe, until I am almost inevitably proven wrong, that the cut portions from HBP will be added to the first of two Deathly Hallows films so that the audience has Voldemort’s backstory fresh in their mind as the story goes forward, and I think that the pacing of HBP was great the way it was.

Plus, the shot of Narcissa and Bellatrix at Spinner’s End was absolutely perfect.  It was exactly as I always pictured it.

However, I am not OK with the minimization of Harry/Ginny’s kiss.  THAT WAS NOT SEVERAL SUNLIT DAYS, that was a few musty nanoseconds!

Movies of 2009 That I Will See and Will Like