'Up in the Air' tops Dann's list of best films of '09

In 2009, Hollywood tried to kill off the romantic comedy with numerous brain-gouged features (remember "All About Steve" or "I Hate Valentine's Day" or "I Love You, Beth Cooper"?), rebooted the "Star Trek" franchise with a fresh set of USS Enterprise crew members, resurrected classical Disney animation ("The Princess and the Frog") and continued Harry Potter's tradition of intelligent, well-crafted filmmaking with its sixth entry, "The Half-Blood Prince."

The year also celebrated the return of several key filmmakers to their top form, and they are included in the following list of the best English-language movies of 2009:

1. "Up in the Air" You could call Jason Reitman's timely, intelligent movie a comic romantic tragedy. It's a wonderfully written study of a professional corporate terminator (played by George Clooney) who preaches the self-centered doctrine of no attachments. Ever.

Then he meets his match in a fellow business traveler (Vera Farmiga), who's as sexy, smart and intoxicated by elitism as he. Anna Kendrick is screen electricity as a computer-savvy new hire with a big plan to fire people online, thereby saving a ton of money - and making Clooney a dinosaur in his own time.

"Up in the Air" is a movie for our time, about our time, especially during inspired montages of people reacting to the news they've just been let go. These are nonactors recalling how they actually responded to being canned.

All in all, a superior movie that leaves you with a knowing sucker-punch.

2. "Avatar" James Cameron doesn't make small plans, and his reportedly $300 million investment in a computer-animated/live-action science-fiction thriller pays off handsomely with a state-of-the-art film that employs digital characters working along with the more human kind.

In the future, mercenary Marines work for a corporation that wants to harvest a mineral on the planet Pandora, but the Marines must first remove the denizens from their most sacred sites to get at the mineral.

Merging concepts from "A Man Called Horse," "Romeo and Juliet" and Abel Ferrara's "Bodysnatchers," Cameron's movie is about the very humanity of humans, discovered by one Marine (Sam Worthington) only after he becomes an avatar - a replicated Pandorian designed to infiltrate the local population and find out how to destroy it.

3. "Away We Go" It's a search for the true meaning of home as seen through the eyes of a quirky, comically realistic, economically challenged couple (played with good hearts by John Krasinski and "Saturday Night Live" alum Maya Rudolph) expecting their first baby. They travel around North America, auditioning cities so they can choose the right nest to feather. Directed with confidence by Sam Mendes and written with wit and compassion by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida.

4. "(500) Days of Summer" The underrated Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as a greeting card writer who falls for a fellow office worker (the smoldering Zooey Deschanel) who doesn't believe in true love. She doesn't, really.

A superior, chronologically jumbled, anti-romantic comedy from young director Marc Webb, who leads his cast in a gleeful, Bollywood-inspired "impromptu" production number celebrating elusive romance. Probably not a good first-date movie, come to think of it.

5. "The Hurt Locker" Director Kathryn Bigelow combines her two biggest passions - westerns and adrenaline junkies - in a tense, sweat-inducing drama about a U.S. military bomb squad on the job in Iraq. Jeremy Renner creates one of the year's most interesting, complex characters as a cowboy member of an army bomb unit who thrives on the risk of death. This is the kind of movie college film classes will be dissecting and discussing for years to come.

6. "Coraline" I appreciated Henry Selick's stop-motion animated fantasy more than the explosively popular "Up," which does pack a great opening (a brief montage that whisks through a lifetime of love) but then spends the rest of its time trying to top it with a cartoony tale of a widower (resembling an aged Spencer Tracy meets Jackie Chan) living out his dream.

Selick's dark, cautionary fairy tale, based on the Neil Gaiman book, is about a willful little girl (voiced by Dakota Fanning) who discovers a portal to an alternate universe where perfect parents with buttons for eyes attend to her every whim. There's a catch, of course, along with a blunt "listen to your parents" warning to kids. Pretty scary, too.

7. "Capitalism: A Love Story" Whether you're far right, far left, or an extreme centrist, everyone can probably relate to Michael Moore's declaration: "I refuse to live in a country like this! And I'm not leaving!"

Moore has perfected his mainstream, anti-establishment documentary-making skills to the point that his newest movie is as entertaining as it is passionate and biting.

The film examines, among many things, the fear tactics employed by the government to gain support for bailing out America's failing banks, how corporations benefit from dead employees, and how the words of Jesus Christ dissent from America's traditional view of wealth and prosperity.

"Capitalism" accomplishes what the best of docs do: inspire thought and spur discussion.

8. "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire" This is a heady, blinding rush of reality-based drama that operates like a blistering documentary. Newcomer Gabourey Sidibe delivers one of the most unforgettable film performances of the decade as an overweight, illiterate high school student about to give birth to her second baby, the result of a sexual attack by her own father.

She is sent to an alternate school in New York where a motivated teacher (Paula Patton) gives her a sense of self and hope. Mo'Nique's performance as the self-serving mother is a conscience-searing event to witness. Pop singer Mariah Carey's spin as a dowdy social worker is a jaw-dropping surprise.

The cast and characters are so strong, not even Lee Daniels' wavering direction can blunt their gut-punching impact.

9. "Inglourious Basterds" After a decade of critical and commercial ups and downs, Quentin Tarantino strikes back with a joyously nasty Allied forces fantasy in which Adolf Hitler and his chief Nazi associates are killed in a French theater. Tarantino's violently daffy, loose remake of a 1973 World War II movie stars Brad Pitt as a Southern-drawlin' commander in charge of a group of military convicts drafted to do suicide mission work behind enemy lines.

Christoph Waltz creates a whole new level of villainy as Nazi Col. Hans Landa, a snake-charmer with a keen understanding of politics and the heart of a great white shark. In his own way, Landa's the Hannibal Lecter for the 21st century's first decade.

Tarantino creates a whole new war movie from parts of classic spaghetti westerns and stuffs enough homages to other movies in his script that film scholars could write dissertations on it.

Besides, who else could get every family newspaper in America to print the word "Basterds"?

10. "District 9" Neil Blomkamp's expensive indie movie is an inspired mix of science-fiction, fantasy and political commentary as it tells an "Alien Nation" story about extraterrestrials landing in South Africa during the 1980s. The newcomers are instantly placed in their own ghetto, and it's pretty clear the visitors aren't the brightest and best of the species, but the opposite.

Blomkamp, a protégé of Peter Jackson, wisely keeps the sci-fi thriller elements in check and concentrates on presenting a smart, dramatic and transparent political allegory about racial conflict. A violent, unforgettable movie.