Wow, is this really my 4th Annual Ten Best List?  You bet it is!  And what a great year for movies it was, with me handing out four stars on no fewer than 26 occasions and finding 18 movies I REALLY wanted to get onto my Top Ten List.  Yes, the year was short on Utter Greatness, and no movie I saw this year could challenge the previous three Best Movie Champs Stranger than Fiction, The Mist or The Dark Knight.  But the year did have a deep bench, and I found nice surprises in all kinds of genres.  Of course, these lists are just for fun, and the difference between movies #5 and 18 is really no greater than a question of what kind of mood I'm in on any given day.  But I really tried to rank these titles based not on an objective standard of greatness (you know how I feel about that), but rather how totally buzzed about their awesomeness I was upon coming out of the theater.  No self-respecting list should be without at least a movie or two that's generally regarded as crap and a couple more most people have never heard of and, as always, my picks deliver the goods!  Without further ado, I give you The Best Movies of 2009 (Lamar Kukuk Edition):

1.Coraline-In the year when 3D had its' coming out party, no movie put it to better use than this captivating stop-motion fable about a lonely girl lured into an alternate universe where everything was perfect... as long as you're willing to sew buttons over your eyes to stay.  Wildly imaginative, delightfully ghoulish, and just amazing to look at, Henry Selick's triumph headlined the best year of animated movies ever.
2.A Perfect Getaway-David Twohy's deliriously audacious puzzle-box thriller has a big ol' twist that's not so hard to guess, but the wonder of it is the way he makes that part of the game.  Playing with our perceptions of heroes and villains and the way bracing ourselves for The Big Twist has become a part of the 21st Century moviegoing experience, the Pitch Black director conducts a symphony of deception while constantly looking over his shoulder and winking.  Perhaps the most joyous film I've ever seen about homicidal maniacs, its' excellent cast was lead by a never-better Timothy Olyphant.
3.Zombieland-I've never been a big zombie guy, they scare the crap out of me, but somehow director Ruben Fleischer and writers Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick managed to make a world overrun by blood-drooling ghouls the setting for the year's funniest movie.  Jesse Eisenberg essayed one of the all-time wussy heroes, Emma Stone had a serious Leading Lady breakthrough, Woody Harrelson fused his leading man and character actor personas to perfection as the grizzled zombie hunter who hadn't cried this much since Titanic, and Bill Murray... well, you had to be there.  As wise and exciting as it was silly, and be sure to memorize those rules for the next zombie apocalypse.  If all else fails, CARDIO!
4.The Box-It failed at the box office and took an unfair public beating over some disastrous exit poll numbers, but Richard Kelly's old-school spookfest delivered the goods and then some.  Scary as a well-told campfire ghost story but also fascinating in its' ambitious, metaphysical scope, this Cameron Diaz/James Marsden vehicle was a near-perfect replication of a 70's thriller except they were never this good and Ford-era makeup artists could never have messed Frank Langella's face up like that.  Only Kelly could make a movie this creepy as a love letter to his parents.
5.Up-It may have been the zombie apocalypse for Woody, but I haven't cried THIS much since Titanic.  While it lacked the iconic characters and frenetic action of some of the Pixar classics, this lovely tale of lost love, redemption and talking dogs combined the best attributes of summer and holiday movies to produce a true original.  The year's most uplifting movie.
6.(500) Days of Summer-NOT the year's most uplifting movie, but certainly one of its' most emotionally authentic.  Marc Webb's feature directorial debut plumbs the depths of breakup despair as it tells the tale of a poor wretch (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, taking his game to a whole new level) so desperate for the luminous Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel, mixing in just the right amount of chilly indifference with her quirky charm) to love him that he ignores every obvious sign that she never will.  Between musical numbers of joy and soul-crushing split screens comparing hope and reality, this brilliant comedy of rueful laughs felt like it was reinventing the wheel even as it spoke to our universal experiences.
7.Monsters vs. Aliens-And sometimes it's good enough to just be awesome.  Every kid raised on Saturday afternoon monster movies could appreciate the conceptual genius of Dreamworks' 3D spectacular, but I can't remember the last time an animated movie introduced this many great characters or walked the walk of its' "it's OK to be different" message so well.  I could spend the entire day rattling off delightful moments, and I even loved the spinoff TV Halloween special.  I can't wait for the further adventures of Dr. Cockroach, BOB, Ginormica, The Missing Link and Insectosaurus!
8.Fantastic Mr. Fox-They didn't come any more unique than this, a Wes Anderson kid's movie done in the Rankin/Bass stop-motion animation style.  But what sounded on paper like a strictly technical exercise actually proved richer and more human than any of Anderson's live-action films.  It was a great year for George Clooney (who also triumphed in The Men Who Stare at Goats and Up in the Air), who provided iconic voice work as Mr. Fox, leading a wonderful cast through a world both wonderfully silly and unexpectedly profound.
9.Where the Wild Things Are-Spike Jonze turned Maurice Sendak's beloved 10-sentence children's book into a gloriously moody meditation on the wonders and horrors of childhood.  The book's creatures came to remarkable life thanks to the special effects team at Jim Henson's Creature Shop, both lovable and genuinely scary.  No movie divided audiences more, but I was quite moved by this strange emotional journey.
10.Gamer-The writing/directing team of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor stand for nothing if not excess, and found their perfect subject matter in this wicked sci-fi satire about the dark nexus of technology, commerce and our darkest unspoken desires.  As a death row inmate "driven" by a video game player in a real-life battle to the death, Gerard Butler was his usual bone-crunching self, but it was Michael C. Hall as the architect of a technological business plan for world domination who delivered one of the year's best and most dynamic performances.

Did I mention that there were quite a few more movies just a hair less awesome than these?  Here are ten more runners-up (in alphabetical order):

-Astro Boy-Even MORE awesome animation, this time Anime-style as a robot boy designed to replace his creator's dead son did battle against a massive monster who was a metaphor for contemporary politics.  Now that's one to grow on!
-Avatar-James Cameron returned from a decade-long hiatus to push the boundaries of 3D and blow up the boundaries of stop-motion animation in a familiar but still pretty-damn-awesome sci-fi spectacular.
-Brothers-Jim Sheridan's emotionally wrenching drama about a returning prisoner of war (a sensational Toby Maguire) captivated even while he was presumed dead thanks to a strong, observant screenplay and a deep cast.
-The Brothers Bloom-Rian Johnson's fairy tale caper about con artist brothers (Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo) and the cons that make families work managed to be both delightfully whimsical and emotionally profound.
-Inglourious Basterds-Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France, Quentin Tarantino so made WWII his own, he even changed the ending.  Bubbles over with the love of all things cinematic, and seethes with hatred for a culture of self-interest that didn't die with the Nazis.
-Moon-Duncan Jones' auspicious directorial debut provided a stage for Sam Rockwell to enact the year's most captivating one-man show in a dual role (and then some) as lunar miners whose uncanny resemblance can only mean very bad things for them both.
-Paul Blart:  Mall Cop-Die Hard... at the mall... with a fat guy, but played so big-heartedly one couldn't help but be sucked in by Kevin James' underdog heroics.
-Sherlock Holmes-Everything I ever asked for in a Holmes, Robert Downey Jr. led an amazing cast breathing fresh new life into Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's world.  While the plot was nothing special, this loving tribute to one of my favorite literary characters was the year's most exciting new franchise.
-Taken-OK, we all know the score by now.  You mess with Liam Neeson's daughter, you get really, really dead.  And there was no more enjoyable execution (pardon the pun) of a reliable movie formula this year, while veteran character actor Neeson enjoyed a rebirth as a two-fisted leading man.
-Watchmen-Nobody could have filmed the Citizen Kane of graphic novels any more faithfully than Zack Snyder, and while he couldn't get it all in there, his sci-fi superhero epic stands on its' own as a brilliant meditation on what it would mean to put on a costume and declare yourself the law.

And I'm not done yet!

BEST 2008 MOVIES THAT DIDN'T REACH HARRISBURG UNTIL 2009:  Gran Torino and The Wrestler-Two brilliant meditations on the third act of tough guys short on self-awareness.  Clint Eastwood and Mickey Rourke offered two very different summations of what their careers have stood for in amazing performances.

BEST SEQUEL, BEST PREQUEL, OR BOTH:  Terminator Salvation-McG found new life in the Terminator saga by going Back to the Future and offering Christian Bale as the grown-up John Connor beginning to realize his destiny as arch-nemesis of The Machines.  Perhaps the year's most jaw-dropping special effect was the transportation of 1984 Arnold Schwarzenegger lock, stock, and barrel into the action climax.

BEST DOCUMENTARY:  Crude-An unthinkable environmental crime committed against the indigenous people of Ecuador by Texaco provides the jumping-off point for Joe Berlinger's fascinating tale of how a cause must be sold to the public.  Even if it wasn't such an important story, it would be worth seeing just for the insight into how the cause-adopting machinery of Sting's Rainforest Foundation works.

BEST CHRISTMAS CAROL: Ghosts of Girlfriends Past-While Robert Zemeckis raked in the holiday cash with his by-the-book 3D Christmas Carol, Mark Waters went memorably off-script with this clever summer comedy that told you everything you need to know about the Matthew McConaughey romantic comedy by turning its' protagonist into Scrooge himself.  Hilarious supporting performances by Emma Stone and Michael Douglas aided the star who really knows how to play a cad.

BEST BLOODBATH:  Ninja Assassin-Ninjas have never been deadlier, more invisible or more numerous than in James McTeigue's rousing Super-Sized B-movie that pitted reformed assassin Rain against about 1,000 ninjas and their assorted deadly tricks.

See, what did I tell ya?  That WAS a great year!  Remember, I'm screener-free, so any award contenders that didn't reach the Harrisburg, PA area by December 31 were NOT eligible for this list, same as The Hangover, which I just never got to no matter how many people told me I should.  But as for the awesomeness of what I DID see, may the same be true of 2010.  Happy New Year!