Your Favorite Summer '09 Movies

[Mr Light]

Well the summer movie season is finally at a close, and it's time to rank 'em up! What were your favorites? I ended up seeing a lot more movies this summer than I thought I would, mainly out of boredom

THE TOP TEN:
1. Transformers 2: more robots, more fighting, I liked it!
2. Terminator Salvation: again, fighting robots. I had no probs.
3. Star Trek: so much better than I thought it would be
4. Land of the Lost: unfairly maligned, I thought it was hilarious with some good dino action.
5. GI Joe: fun cartoon-y action.
6. District 9: great semi-intellectual SF flick with good action
7. Harry Potter 6: the lamest of the later novels with a even worse ending than the book
8. UP: good stuff but liked Wall-E more.
9. Wolverine: it was pretty bastardized (Deadpool?!?!?!) but it's still an mutant movie
10. The Hangover: pretty funny

THE REST:
11. Night at the Museum 2: better than the first I guess
12. Inglorious Basterds: disappointing, wanted more Basterds and action
13. Ice Age 3: the best of the trilogy but I don't really care for them.
14. The Proposal: for a rom-com it was alright I suppose.

Yet To See:
Angels & Demons, Drag Me to Hell, Pelham 123, Year One, Public Enemies, Bruno, G-Force, Aliens in the Attic, Funny People, Ponyo

 

[captcalhoun]

G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Terminator Salvation
Wolverine
Ice Age 3
Fast and Furious

only one i didn't like?

Star Trek.

 

[Starbreaker]

1. Star Trek
2. The Hangover

 

[Broccoli]

Star Trek
Harry Potter.

I didn't see any others.

 

[Vasquez Rocks]

1. Funny People
2. Star Trek
3. Wolverine

 

[Turd Ferguson]

1. The Hangover
2. Star Trek
3. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
4. Terminator Salvation

Note: This list might change because I plan to see Halloween II and Inglorious Basterds on Wednesday and Thursday

 

[Barbados Slim]

1. Away We Go. Sam Mendes, John Krazinski and Maya Rudolph rocked my world with a movie that had me laughing constantly and crying a lot.

2. Star Trek. Saw it four times over the summer. Love it each one.

3. The Hangover. The perfect storm of comedy. A great plot, funny cast and unique gags. Heather Graham's breasts don't hurt neither.

4. Up. Looks great and very emotionally strong.

5. Drag Me To Hell. Funny as hell and pretty scary in a PG kind of way. Great ending too.

6. Ponyo. Another sweet innocent Miyazaki film. Not as good as Spirited Away or Totoro but was still neat.

7. G.I. Joe. After enduring all the mud slinging, this came out and was everything everyone said about it...but it turned out all the sucky elements made a goddamned fun movie. I can't wait for the sequel.

8. Terminator Salvation. I don't get the hate for this, Sam Worthington was good and it was a well-conceived nightmare world with some neat killer-robot porn.

9. (500) Days of Summer. I'm already a huge Joseph Gordon-Leavitt fan and he was great in this. The star of the film is its unique storytelling structure.

10. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. My favorite book and least favorite movie. Too long and lacking in action. I still cannot comprehend why they changed the ending the way they did. And the acting from the kids, especially Bonnie Wright, just couldn't measure up to the needs of the material.

 

[MeanJoePhaser]

Top ten? Coming up with 5 would be being too kind.

Great: None. None that I saw, anyway.

Good:
Inglourious Basterds, it's not great because it's largely Tarantino doing his usual thing just changing time periods.

Terminator Salvation, I'm being generous here. Probably. It was nice to see more than a snippet of the future war. On the other hand it adds little to the mythos, if anything. THe original idea was totally tossing a curve in it. Not sure I would've like that, either.

Mediocre:
X-Men Origins Wolverine, Hugh Jackman makes it watchable and raises it a notch, but it still stinks of half-hearted prequel rot.

Star Trek, less creative than I thought it would be. The villain was another ex-miner from the Romulan empire. I mean...what the hell? Pine is so-so, but at least he's not Channing Tatum.

Public Enemies, I wanna say it was good. But it really wasn't. It was well-acted and well shot, but some of the audio stank ( i thought it was the theater, but IMDB comments agree), couldn't hear many early lines over misplaced music, and it was not one of Michael Mann's better efforts.

Subpar:
GI JOE The Rise of Cobra, the feared worst part with the accelerator suits was the best part. The rest could've been done better by almost anyone...really. Why they insisted on keeping the Rex idea throughout all script changes...it's like Kevin Smith's giant spider story. THERE HAS TO BE REX IN THE GI JOE MOVIE! Whereas any GI JOE fan would be "who the #$^& is "Rex"? Miller was a good Baroness, when she was evil. I'd say Eccelston was slumming but he's been in dreck before. Quaid was misused/underused or just not into it.

Angels and Demons, this series might be better served by someone else playing Langdon, someone good. I find it odd that the creation of anti-matter is part of a religious thriller. Maybe not a bad thing, actually. Biggest problem with movie is that it's too obvious who the villain is.

Bad:
Land of the Lost, watchable but still...why was this made? Ferrell's schtick is fun sometimes, but here it was mostly irritating.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Star Trek and Up were all I saw. That's pretty much my normal summer movie-going schedule. I would have seen Moon but it was out of the theaters altogether before I made time for it.

 

[Shaytan]

I don't remember how many movies I've seen this summer but the most outstanding one was Un Prohète (A Prophet), the last Grand Prix of Cannes. Not something really funny for summer.

 

[JonathonWally]

Fast & Furious - It was decent, it was nice to get the original guys back but the story sucked.

Star Trek - Loved it, thought it was great, very exciting, managed to pack a lot of story and good action into 1 movie. Really looking forward to some sequels if they maintain the same.

Terminator Salvation - I liked it, it was very different from the first 3 but we finally got to post Judgement Day but still early into the war, hope we get more.

Wolverine - Bastardized a lot of stuff, ruined an awesome character (Deadpool) but Hugh Jackman made it watchable and fun.

District 9 - Wow, just phenomenal, some truly great action scenes in what was an awesome story and epic story of humanity. I wasn't expecting a story so deep.

 

[Brandonv]

I didn't see many movies this summer.

1. District 9 A+
2. Star Trek A-
3. Terminator Salvation C+
4. Wolverine D+

I think I initially ranked T4 higher, but after thinking about the movie more my opinion has gone down.

 

[miraclefan]

3. Knowing (7 out'a 10) 2. Ice Age 3 (7 out'a 10) 1. STAR TREK (9 out'a 10) is it obvious I didn't see that many movies?

 

[Harvey]

Inglorious Basterds, Star Trek, Moon, The Hangover, Drag Me To Hell, and (marginally) District 9.

My favorite movie of the year is still Adventureland, although that probably came out too early to count.

Terminator: Salvation was terribly mediocre, X-Men Origins: Wolverine was as boring and unwieldly as its title, and the less said about Knowing (I suppose it came out earlier, but I saw it this summer) the better.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is the odd man out here. I suppose I liked it (even more when I saw it a second time on IMAX), but I'm more partial to Harry Potter the series rather than any particular installment of the franchise.

 

[Mr Light]

I absolutely hated Adventureland. What was the point of that movie? To be as lame and depressing as possible? The commercials made it look like a zany comedy starring Ryan Reynolds!

 

[barnaclelapse]

In no particular order:

1.) Public Enemies
2.) Star Trek
3.) The Hurt Locker
4.) Funny People
5.) District 9
6.) The Hangover
7.) Ponyo
8.) Inglorious Bastards
9.) Drag Me To Hell
10.) Up

I really wanted to see "A Prophet", too, but I couldn't get a chance.

 

[Barbados Slim]

I absolutely hated Adventureland. What was the point of that movie? To be as lame and depressing as possible? The commercials made it look like a zany comedy starring Ryan Reynolds!

I thought it was a good movie but it was mismarketed. They went for "From the makers of SUPERBAD!!," showing shots of Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig, and instead it was more of a Cameron Crowe, coming-of-age story. I liked it quite a bit but get why people would hate it when they went in expecting something else.

 

[Harvey]

I absolutely hated Adventureland. What was the point of that movie? To be as lame and depressing as possible? The commercials made it look like a zany comedy starring Ryan Reynolds!

Oh, it was one hell of a mismarketed movie. They crammed in every joke from the movie into the trailers and avoided advertising that it was an awfully melancholy coming of age story. But such a wonderful film in that vein, I thought.

 

[I am not Spock]

Ummm... I don't know, there was this one film , kind of a space thing, that you guys might not have heard of.

Space Track, was it called?

No, Star Trek. That's it. Best movie of the year so far.

 

[OdoWanKenobi]

1. Moon
2. Up
3. District 9
4. Star Trek
5. The Hangover
6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
7. The Hurt Locker
8. Bruno
9. G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra
10. Public Enemies
BIG GAP
11. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
12. Terminator Salvation
13. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

The first 10 on my list I consider to be worthwhile experiences, (and the gap between them all is not very big,)with only the final three leaving me saying "that sucked" upon exiting the theater.