Avatar (2009)
James Cameron returns from a twelve-year absence with an old story and a brand new planet. The plot is borrowed, the world is not, and on sheer immersion it is close to the top of the genre. 9/10.
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Archive
2009
Articles published in 2009.
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)
Terry Gilliam loses his leading man halfway through and turns the disaster into the design. The story is a tangle, the images are inexhaustible, and on sheer invention it earns its keep. 8/10.
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District 9 (2009)
A first-time director, a Peter Jackson cheque, and a mothership parked over Johannesburg. District 9 smuggles a furious apartheid allegory inside a mock-documentary action film, and the trick mostly comes off. 8/10.
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The Hurt Locker (2009)
Kathryn Bigelow's Iraq bomb-disposal thriller is the most acclaimed war film of the year, and I came away cold. Brilliantly shot, well acted, and for me an exhausting watch I have no wish to repeat. 5/10.
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The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009)
Tony Scott remakes a 1974 New York hostage thriller as a loud, sweaty showdown between Denzel Washington's tired dispatcher and John Travolta's ranting villain. The original was leaner, but this one moves. 7.5/10.
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Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)
The sixth Potter film slows down, darkens the palette and lets its teenagers be teenagers. It is the most handsome film in the series so far and one of the best. 8/10.
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Moon (2009)
Duncan Jones makes his directing debut with a small, patient lunar science fiction film built around one actor and one idea. It is quiet, intelligent and beautifully made, and Sam Rockwell holds it together almost alone. 7.5/10.
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Terminator Salvation (2009)
The franchise finally crosses into the future war it has been promising since 1984, and trades time-travel for boots in the ash. The reviews are brutal and the heart is thinner than it should be, but as a piece of post-apocalyptic spectacle it works better than its reputation. 7/10.
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Star Trek (2009)
J.J. Abrams takes a franchise that had run aground and reboots it with a time-travel sidestep, a flawless young cast and a sense of pace the series had forgotten. The most fun I have had with Star Trek in years. 9/10.
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State of Play (2009)
Kevin Macdonald compresses Paul Abbott's six-hour BBC serial into a two-hour Washington thriller, and the result is a grown-up newspaper picture in the All the President's Men mould, carried by Russell Crowe. 8/10.
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