This detective film turned out to be better than I thought it would and though the Boston accent Mel Gibson tries to emulate is at times too high-pitched, like a cartoon version of his on-screen character, he gets the job done and exudes a Mel Gibson I haven’t seen since the first Lethal Weapon (1987). It helps that the screenplay from William Monahan (The Departed (2006)) is decent, and the dialogue rich. But my theory here is that Mel read the script but didn’t sign on until he was told Howard Shore would be doing the music.

If you have kids and you’re looking for something to do after doing your part to support the victims of Haiti, look to Tooth Fairy and a hand full of other films in theaters now that will lift the spirits and get the giggles going. I know what you’re saying, too. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has gone soft starring as a hockey player gone fairy. But don’t let the pink tutu fool you. They’re just wrestling tights, or in this case, hockey tights, but of a different kind.

Another film by Producers Joel Silver and Susan Downey, part of the team behind Sherlock Holmes (2009), with added Producer Denzel Washington which means he had a hand in picking the script. The Book of Eli is a post-apocalyptic, desolate film, sort of a Western film genre parable thirty years into the future where the John Wayne, Grasshopper, Man With No Name character played by the superb Denzel Washington passes through the trials and tribulations of a Book of Revelations-portrayed mad world, headed west with a possession sorely wanted by bad guy Carnegie, played by Gary Oldman. A powerful item Eli carries that he says probably started the war. “Stay on the path,” he tells himself, turning a blind eye to war ravaged gangs that kill and rape the innocent at the drop of a hat. Though yea as he walks through the valley of the shadow of death he is a man comforted with Bruce Lee agility and a righteous fine knife-sword.

If Vampire films is your sort of thing, put this one on your list. And if you can’t wait for the DVD and don’t mind spending the cash, go see it now while it’s in theaters. That is if you’re a fan. Personally, I’d wait and rent it for a buck at one of those dollar kiosks at Walmart or in the lobby of your local grocery store, or wait to get it through Netflix or cable. The perfect vampire film to rent on a cold Monday night when football has vanished and 24 feels so déjà vu. I’ll get into the specifics here in a sec but know that if you’re shot hunting while watching your movies, looking for great photographic images amongst the cinematic debris, know that there is a frame of such Picasso magnificence near the end of Daybreakers that it will make you feel okay you spent money on the film and it might leave you with something more to digest after the film ends than just flashes of blood dripping wallpaper from exploding bodies.

I had to leave out several really great films to get a list of 99. What you’ll find here is a very short list of films that aren’t necessarily the greatest films of all time but are films I felt were more memorable to me in the 00’s than others and contained strong entertainment value (favorites and opinion) in addition to the elements of directing, screenwriting, cinematography, editing, sound, and visual effects. Missing are films the likes of Traffic (2000), Almost Famous (2000), Gran Torino (2008), Grizzly Man (2005), 28 Days Later (2002), The Departed (2007) and The Hangover (2009). For my top 9 of the year, a surprise with Sherlock Holmes.

99. 24 Hour Party People (2002)
98. Night at the Museum (2006)
97. Punch-Drunk Love (2002) OR The Matador (2005)

The lighting and cinematography by Philippe Rousselot alone warrants an Oscar nod for Sherlock Holmes. If that’s the only category it gets nominated in I’d be satisfied. Like a Dutch painting, like Rembrandt or Italian painter Caravaggio, the light in Sherlock Holmes often comes in from the side, one side of the screen sparsely hotter than the other, often the darker side falling off into a fathomless depth that adds terrifically to the black magic and sorcery that conjures forth mysteries to be solved by our characters Holmes played by Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law’s Dr. John Watson—two buddies the likes of which we haven’t seen on film since Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid (1969); hunting down clues around dirty old London like you would expect in a film about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, and one directed by Guy Ritchie. Filthy, fighting, trouble-prone men who find themselves in another one of Ritchie’s complicated plots only this time all the glory will be for a Warner Brothers franchise, set in the London year of 1891.

I can’t say Avatar belongs in the top nine movies of 2009, nor the top nine of the decade. But as far as movie events go, yeah, I put it somewhere in the top nine movie experiences of the decade. And the reason for that is threefold: 1) director James Cameron has every technological advancement in cinema at his disposal and he uses all of them, for good or bad, to make Avatar quite the movie outing; 2) as we near the end of the Blackberry-Twitter-Facebook-Wii-Playstation-Xbox-iPhone decade, what better way to go out than with a film about the marriage of virtual and real worlds; and 3) while its 3D is not pioneering, and might remind some of Disney Epcot Center’s 3D Captain EO (1986), Cameron does leave the first decade of the millennium with a decent premonition of what going to the movies can be in the next decade and beyond. It won’t matter how good your set-up is at home, this is the way big action films should be seen.

As the first black President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, also known as Madiba from the ancestor family he comes from, could have boycotted the 1995 Rugby World Cup and asked others to do the same. Because the Springboks, as the national Ruby team is known, represented everything about white apartheid South Africa that non-white South Africans were opposed to. Instead, Mandela wore the South African Springbok rugby jersey, number 6, the team captain Francois Pienaar’s number, showing through action that forgiveness started with the Presidency. “Reconciliation starts here. Rainbow nation starts here. Forgiveness starts here. Forgiveness liberates the soul,” he would say as he, the team, and the country showed a World Cup global audience of more than one billion people that all colors of South Africa could make it work. Two-time Oscar winning director Clint Eastwood brings the story to the big screen in Invictus.

As for gifts this holiday season I’ve been inspired by film critic David Edelstein’s recent segment from CBS News’ Sunday Morning, the title “Good Things Come in Small, Round Discs,” to think outside the box (office) as he says when it comes to giving DVDs to friends and loved ones. I couldn’t agree more. It’s a great idea and it shouldn’t just be this year but on all special occasions. Who cares about Transformers and Harry Potter when you can give someone a quirky little indie film like Permanent Vacation featuring the late great David Carradine.

Carradine, who passed away earlier this year is one of the darlings of independent cinema. His list on IMDB is 257 films and TV episodes deep and would have kept growing had the Grasshopper not choked to death from supposed self-inflicted asphyxiation. This film isn’t one of his best, he sort of only has a cameo in it but it’s actually a side of David Carradine we haven’t seen before. As he says in the DVD extras, this is the first time he has played an “old man.” It’s the DVD extras that we’re really talking about here. It’s a Carradine gem, like a baseball signed by Pee Wee Reese or a twenty-five cent stamp, a Susan B. Anthony coin, a can of NEW Coke…there’s something rarely seen here resonating Carradine’s days as Woody Guthrie in Bound For Glory (1976) that would be enjoyed by all David Carradine fans. And the behind the scenes insight make it a perfect gift for the student filmmaker or for filmmaker wannabes, or for the fan of dark comedies, British humor, quirky characters, campy films, or just camping in general. The director W. Scott Peake and the actors give a kind of run-down on the whole production and the fun they had while filming in and around Milton, Florida. The size alone of lovebugs seen flying around during takes might suggest it’s a Jurassic Park sequel. The camera really does add fifteen pounds because these things are monstrous, Kafkaesque, I’d say. To the DVD extras, then, I’d say the movie Permanent Vacation becomes the bonus material.

Precious is missing from the National Board of Review’s list of 2009’s Top Films. I think it’s a mistake. Especially considering the NBR is the grand advocate of film as art and that 2009 is their 100th year as the self-proclaimed “oldest organization devoted to Motion Pictures as art and entertainment.” Precious is one of the smartest, well crafted films of the year with a stand-out performance by newcomer Gabourey Sidibe as a 16-year-old mother of two, given to her by her father, and the abusive mother she tries to save her children from, played with simmer-to-a-pig’s-feet-boil precision by slender sometime comedian Mo’Nique. It’s a film executed with a kind of Errol Morris documentary vision and Terry Gilliam whimsy by director Lee Daniels that will most certainly appear as one of Oscar’s ten Best Picture noms come March 2010. An emotional film adapted from the novel Push by the writer known only as Sapphire; beautifully done with playful camera work that captures the physical expressiveness of these actors as they bring to life the novel’s words. So what films and film categories surpass Precious?

Props to Summit, Sunswept, and Temple Hill entertainment companies for giving the Twilight audience exactly what they want. I mean, the way they hit their target audience is genius. I’m not going to argue that it’s not a good move for everyone involved either, including Stephanie Meyer who is making a fortune off her books. It’s just that guys who liked films this summer like G.I. Joe, Star Trek, Transformers 2, and folks who dig films like Public Enemies, and sure-to-be-nominated Oscar films like Nine, The Hurt Locker, Up In The Air, Precious, or Invictus, will be bored out of their skulls. But the girls will love it. New Moon and the Twilight Saga puts a whole new spin on the film-for-women genre term know as “chick flicks.”

The Fourth Kind is an alien abduction film that gets its ideas more from Communion (1989) and The Blair Witch Project (1999) than the actual archived recordings it pretends to deliver, and feels and looks like a student film full of a good ten minute idea stretched with poor execution to an embarrassing ninety minutes. With more senseless filler than a “fixed” Atlanta pot hole, the only thing getting abducted in The Fourth Kind is your money.

Bet you didn’t know 99x is currently featured in one of the best films of the year. It’s Zombieland, and if you look in the bottom left hand corner of the screen about fifteen minutes in you’ll see a highway littered with cars, one of which features a huge square 99x sticker on the right lower corner of a red SUV window. It happens just as our heroes Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) and Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) stop to look for Twinkies in post-madcow-turned-zombie-virus America. You can’t miss it. And Zombieland, whether you like horror films or not is a film not to be missed. Filmed right here in Georgia using Georgia crew and equipment. You might even see a friend or two zombieing it up on West Paces or down there in Valdosta or Rutledge. It is one of my favorite films of the year and I place it in my top ten of 2009. Scary as that seems. Speaking of scary, other than The Rocky Horror Picture Show playing since 1975 (midnight Fridays at The Plaza) here’s a list of horror films still in theaters. Catch them while you can. Before they catch you.

Hilarious send-up of 70’s Blaxploitation films written, produced by and starring Michael Jai White (Spawn (1997), The Dark Knight (2008)) as the heroic, almost comic book superman protector and occasional stand-in pimp of his Nixon-era community. It might appear to be just another spoof but upon close inspection you’ll find it’s a work of art as the recreated clichés of 70’s micro-budget filmmaking give White an excuse to neo-stylize from within the context of the genre. Like the Italians did with realism after World War II, White in trying to find comedy in the techniques of the past invigorates film structure and style better than the best of current Hollywood. And it’s all disguised with humor.

Finally one of those lost in the season by-the-numbers studio films worth seeing. Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler teach and learn their own lessons the hard way in Law Abiding Citizen. Both play workaholic characters living in the city of brotherly love who fight to earn each other’s respect, and mine by story’s end, with a smart exit by these characters like we haven’t seen since Sylvester Stallone’s Nighthawks (1981) or Charles Bronson’s Once Upon A Time in The West (1968). Maybe not as great as West (which wasn’t really a studio film) but Jamie Foxx continues to prove he’s a real star. And everyone knows you can’t be a star without star support. I’d say the script does its part but it is actor turned producer Butler who shines that light.

The following are nine genre films indicative of fall’s most notorious characteristic, early darkness. Who says you can’t have fun in the dark.

1. Zombieland
Release Date: October 2nd
Director: Ruben Fleischer (dir. of Jimmy Kimmel live; prod. for MTV’s Rob and Big)
Starring: Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg (The Squid and the Whale, Adventureland)
Story: Fun comedy Zombie film about Man and Young Man bonding over burnt Zombie; feels like Shaun of the Dead at Disney World with a modern family twist.

If you like your sci-fi in your horror and your horror in your sci-fi, Pandorum is your film. Psychological thriller? Alien film? I can’t tell you. All I can say is there has been relatively little advertising of this film through regular channels. So if you’re looking for a film that’s one of the best of the summer run-off, or I guess part of an early, early fall kick-off, and sneaking up on us under the radar, this ship-stuck-in space film with lots of darkness and evil lurking around every corner is just for you. Before you spend $10 on the highly publicized and glossy Hollywood big-pic Surrogates, think about this film first. You won’t be disappointed.

I think the exclamation mark mirrors the soundtrack more so than the film, though this punctuation is probably part of director Steven Soderbergh’s humorous tongue in cheek remark on 90’s forced corporate enthusiasm, pre-Enron-like shenanigans and one man’s dynamic attempt to become a whistleblowing hero even if heroism is only in his comic book mind. The Informant! is one of the best films of the year in terms of film as art, or in terms of pushing the proverbial envelope on the imaginative use of film elements. In this case screenplay, acting, and directing.

What? You mean this isn’t a remake of the Kurt Russell, John Carpenter remake of The Thing from 1982 like the trailers sell it to be? And Kate Beckinsale isn’t playing the Kurt Russell part? What a rip off. I feel so totally deceived. And even more so after seeing Beckinsale’s extremely poor performance. How embarrassing. It’s a murder mystery at a science research outpost in Antarctica, and as the film lets us know Antarctica “is the coldest, most isolated place on Earth. ” Really? I didn’t know that about Antarctica.

It was a late prescreening, around 9:30PM which is unusual for this kind of thing. But perfect for the kind of crowd that rolled in: talking to the screen, laughing louder than usual, screaming in the dark. It’s what a movie like this needs to succeed at the theater because other than scantily clad college girls being off’d one at a time by a Scream-like hooded killer, there’s nothing much else to be anxious about here. No thrill ride, I guess depending on who you are; just the entertainment of Jerry Springer show-like reactions from the crowd.