At the end of every single chuffing year we become awash with lists. Top 10 Best New Black Female Opera Singers of 2009, Best Reality TV Based Novelty Single by an actor who plays a gay on a soap opera but who isn’t actually gay in real life and the fiercely contested Football’s Best Wayne Rooney of the Decade. It’s a ball ache, but every prick and his Andi Peter’s knob wants you to know how they rank things from the last 12 months, and they want to do it in ascending numerical order.

So here we go, my Top However Many I Get Up To Films of 2009 from #1 down.

NUMBER ONE:

DISTRICT 9 - Written/Directed by Neill Blomkamp, Starring Sharlto Copley

I’ve been thinking about my favourite movie of 2009 for most of 2009. This one came out of absolutely nowhere all of a sudden and it was awesome! They had a way lower budget than damn near every other flick that came out last year, no stars and it wasn’t even set in America for Christ’s sake. There’s no way that anyone could have called the success of this movie. South African Blomkamp wrote this film based on his own short movie, Alive in JoBerg, about aliens living in slums amongst the local humans of the country. Peter Jackson saw it and probably wet his kecks. With the chance to show the world another amazing talent from beyond the equator, how could he possibly keep dry?

Sharlto Copley, the star and driving force behind the action drama adventure [it’s got so many layers damnit!] isn’t even an actor. He’s Blomkamp’s old boss at a post production house in Sou’frica. Almost all of the dialogue out his mouth is improvised. They just tossed him into the story and let him live with it, much like his character Wikus Van De Merwe. Copley is on his own for most of the film, what with his main co-star not being real and that, but the whole thing just works for me. They’ve managed to fuse a post-event documentary feel seamlessly with a summer blockbuster. You don’t even notice it shift gears most of the time. It’s incredible. The action isn’t gratuitous and you always get the feeling that the focus of this film is one man having his whole world brought down around him, albeit in extraordinary circumstances.

It’s out on DVD right now and I suggest you get the Special Edition, because... well I always suggest that. It’s just better.

NUMBER TWO:

MOON - Directed by Duncan Jones, Starring Sam Rockwell

Another low key masterpiece out of 2009, Duncan Jones [AKA Zowie Bowie, son of David] walks out into the cinema light with his directorial debut. A sort of one man show starring Sam Rockwell [from Choke, Welcome to Collinwood and a series of other films you haven’t seen, as well as starring in this year’s Iron Man 2]. Set entirely in a harvesting station on... on the moon... Sam Rockwell plays... Sam...

He’s a lone technician charged with keeping the automatic systems running, aided and kept company by his roving computer system GERTY, as voiced by Kevin Spacey being awesome. It’s just a few more days before Sam’s stint ends and he gets to go home finally, but when he starts to get sick and things begin to go wrong at the station... well I don’t wanna fuck it up for you, but the tagline is genius. ‘The last place you'd ever expect to find yourself’.

Scarcely anyone I know saw this picture, which is a fucking shame because I loved it. It’s not your typical sci-fi bobbins. Moon is a character piece, a lot like District 9 in many ways, and that’s what makes it stand out. You can feel Sam’s loneliness and isolation from frame one, and before you realise you’ve become emotionally invested in his journey. I’m very much looking forward to Jones’ next movie, Source Code, which IMDb says will be ‘A sci-fi story centred on a soldier who wakes up in the body of a commuter who witnesses a train explosion.’

Sure, they spell ‘centered’ weird, but that’s not their fault.

NUMBER THREE:

WATCHMEN - Directed by Zack Snyder, Starring Jackie Earl Haley, Patrick Wilson etc...

I’m a comic book reader, alright? I just am. Have been since I was about 14 years old. I’ve taken time off of reading them, years at a time, but comics inform on so many things that I do. As I write this I’m wearing a Transformers T-shirt and a hoodie with the Multiple Man’s symbol on it, which I had custom made. I like comics. Love them. So it’s no surprise that Watchmen, one of the most eagerly anticipated comic book to movie adaptations in history, has made it onto my list.

Terry Gilliam said it couldn’t be made into a feature film. Alan Moore, the creator, wanted nothing to do with it after years of Hollywood fucking over his characters [League of Extraordinary Gentleman is an abomination, but I think he’s being a little harsh about V for Vendetta], but finally it exists thanks to Zack ‘300’ Snyder. The cast he assembled to play this ensemble of characters is truly exemplary, except for Malin Akerman as Silk Spectre II, who was shit.

Focusing on an alternate 1980’s, Watchmen follows a group of former heroes and adventurers. Since the passing of ‘The Keen Act’ banning all costumed vigilantes, they’ve all tried to carry on with their various lives... until one of their own is mysteriously murdered. Rorschach gets on the case, with his noir narration and his being wicked all over the place. People have given this picture a lot of shit for changing parts of the original comic plot [yeah... the fucking squid] but what most comic nerds don’t understand is that some things do no translate well to film. A giant mutant squid in the middle of Manhattan works perfectly well in the comic medium, because it’s fantastical, but on the screen it would just look fucking stupid. There’s not a thing missing from the comic that didn’t have to be and personally I consider this the most faithful adaptation yet. No liberties taken, no frigging around with the characters to make one of them latino or in a wheelchair to please the box tickers. Justin Timberlake didn’t play Doctor Manhattan and there was no Men In Black style rap song to accompany the film.

Watchmen was handled with class and that shows in the amount of people who were unfamiliar with the comic and had maybe never read one in their lives, going out having seen the movie and buying the Watchmen graphic novel.

Zack Snyder made the impossible happen and he deserves all the praise he gets.

For the past few hours I’ve been thinking about what to put as NUMBER FOUR. I thought about the other movies I saw last year. Star Trek, Messrine... 17 Again. I even went to Tesco for fucks sakes... to look at the DVD Charts and also buy corn on the cob and some potatoes.

I enjoyed Star Trek. I think I even reviewed it for this very site, but enough to put it at NUMBER FOUR? That implies that Star Trek is only one place not as good as Watchmen, which is flat out not fucking true. Watchmen couldn’t shit on Star Trek from any higher. If I was putting in Star Trek my list would go from THREE to ELEVEN in one jump. That would be rick-diculous.

So after spending most of the evening agonising over what would go fourth, I decided that nothing would. No other film of 2009 is good enough even slightly to deserve a place next to the first three movies. Nothing. Sure, some people will be outraged.

“What about Inglourious Basterds?!” they will all scream while buying another edition of Pulp Fiction Blu-Ray. Well, I haven’t seen it. That probably doesn’t make things any better.  The Men Who Stare At Goats?  Didn’t see it. Avatar? Haven’t seen it yet. Of all the movies I did see of 2009 there are none that stack up to my top three, and so here endeth the list article.

Done. Chips. Laters.

The Gazz Edition - Movies of 2009 - Brought to you by Gazz Wood -