Best movies of 2009

1. The Hurt Locker

Of all the films that have been made about the Iraq war, The Hurt Locker is the “only one that transcends the specifics of its subject,” said Joe Morgenstern in The Wall Street Journal. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, the intensely shot thriller about the tensions within an American bomb squad in Iraq has already become an “instant classic.” On DVD.

2. Up in the Air

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Director Jason Reitman and his star George Clooney made the “most originally enchanting film of the year,” said Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly. Clooney plays perfectly off co-stars Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick, making the film at once a “lighter-than-air screwball comedy,” a “timely-as-today snapshot” of America economic struggles, and a heart-rending portrait of the missed connections in one man’s life. In theaters.

3. Up!

Pixar has done it again, said David Denby in The New Yorker. In the “latest triumph” from the computer-animation studio, a curmudgeonly widower, voiced by Ed Asner, fulfills his wife’s dream to visit South America—when he flies there in a house suspended from balloons. His journey is “touching, exhilarating, and hilarious.” On DVD.

4. Summer Hours

In Olivier Assayas’ “formally elegant” French-language film, the death of a matriarch leads to a familial tug of war, said Stephen Holden in The New York Times. Rather than a melodrama in which the siblings plot and scheme as they divide up the estate, this “Chekhovian” film turns out to be a “calm reflection on the changing value of things over time.” On DVD.

5. Fantastic Mr. Fox

Indie auteur Wes Anderson made his first mass-market movie—but stayed true to his “idiosyncratic sensibility,” said David Ansen in Newsweek. Trying his hand at stop-motion animation, the director has created a “witty, touching, and original” adaptation of Roald Dahl’s children’s book that is sure to become a “family classic.” In theaters.

6. Precious

Lee Daniels’ Precious is brutally honest and often just plain brutal, said Duane Byrge in The Hollywood Reporter. In this “inner-city horror story,” an obese, illiterate Harlem teenager, played by Gabourey Sidibe, endures abuse of every kind at home as she tries to escape the life she has known. Her life story comes to seem a “disturbing masterwork of human survival.” In theaters.

7. A Serious Man

Joel and Ethan Coen’s “absurdist comedy” about growing up Jewish in 1960s Minnesota is as dark as it is funny, said David Fear in Time Out New York. The brothers’ most personal project to date, the film is a “profound exploration of the moral order of the universe and the purpose of faith.” In theaters.

8. Avatar

James Cameron has “outdone himself” with Avatar, said David Edelstein in New York. With the help of a “brontosaurean budget,” the director used computer effects to create a vivid futuristic world of such “thrilling depth” you can’t help but get lost in it. Even if the anti-imperialist themes are a bit obvious and tired, the virtual “perspectives are dizzying.” In theaters.

9. The White Ribbon

The White Ribbon is a “daunting, enthralling experience,” said Richard Corliss in Time. Set around the end of World War I, this German-language film examines the rotten soul of a small village in northern Germany. Austrian director Michael Haneke connects the town’s “random acts of violence” to the seeds of Nazism, creating a “lacerating saga of collective brutality and guilt.” In limited release.

10. In the Loop

In the Loop features some of the “most beautiful, foul-mouthed invective since Glengarry Glen Ross,” said Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune. This political satire—about the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom collaborating to plot a war in the Middle East—has the same wicked sense of humor as the BBC series The Thick of It, from which it was adapted. On DVD.

How the films were chosen

Our results weigh the rankings from year-end lists published by: Chicago Tribune, Entertainment Weekly, The Hollywood Reporter, New York, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Observer, Newsweek, Paste, Time Out New York, The Village Voice, Time, and The Wall Street Journal.