Click here to read about the favorite films of 2009 of the Life & Arts staff

2009 wasn’t an especially bountiful year for cinema, but audiences lapped up the slop that Hollywood plunked down into theaters all the same, with the top two box office grossers being two of the worst films of the year. The idiocy that was “Transformers 2” speaks for itself, but the golden calf that is “Avatar” featured characters that were just as flat, dialogue that was just as hackneyed and effects that were far more skillful, but just as forgettable.

In a year where the Academy is going to have to stretch to fill its newly minted 10 Best Picture slots (impeccable timing, folks), only a handful of mainstream films are really worthy of the nomination. Fortunately, there are gems to be found where most audiences never treaded this year. All films made their United States theatrical debut in 2009.

Click here to watch The Daily's Dusty Somers explain his picks for the top movies of the year

20. “Moon” (Duncan Jones)

Sam Rockwell gives a riveting tour de force performance in this beautifully understated piece of lo-fi sci-fi.

19. “(500) Days of Summer” (Marc Webb)

It’s the rare romantic comedy that takes advantage of the structure without becoming a slave to it, and it features the best use of split screen since Brian de Palma’s “Sisters.”

18. “35 Shots of Rum” (Claire Denis)

Denis directs a rhythmic and measured ode to family and interconnection.

17. “Coraline” (Henry Selick)

A lovingly constructed stop-motion fantasy, “Coraline” is half nightmare, half daydream and wholly enchanting.

16. “Up in the Air” (Jason Reitman)

Reitman delivers his best film yet, perfectly capturing the mood of the era, even if the film’s ideas feel somewhat less than genuine.

15. “Inglourious Basterds” (Quentin Tarantino)

Tarantino restrains the insufferable facets of his filmmaking and releases his inner cinephile to great effect.

14. “Tulpan” (Sergei Dvortsevoy)

Proving that cinematic references to Kazakhstan don’t begin and end with “Borat,” Dvortsevoy delivers a harshly beautiful portrait of life among the elements.

13. “Adventureland” (Greg Mottola)

Wistful, yet smart, Mottola let down audiences looking for another “Superbad” with this nostalgia trip, but made a much better film.

12. “The Hurt Locker” (Kathryn Bigelow)

Action director Bigelow gives us a pure shot of adrenaline filmmaking, distilling her talents down to the best possible product.

11. “Two Lovers” (James Gray)

Joaquin Phoenix’s potential swan song to acting features his best work ever, surrounded by a textured and moving character portrait by Gray.

10. “Fantastic Mr. Fox” (Wes Anderson)

Stop-motion animation seemed a perfectly logical career step for Anderson, and his blend of twee design and mopey characters with father issues translates wonderfully across mediums.

9. “Lorna’s Silence” (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)

The Dardenne brothers offer yet another humanist sucker punch, digging through the dirt of despair while hinting at the beauty aboveground.

8. “Broken Embraces” (Pedro Almodóvar)

It’s a masterful melodrama about filmmaking, two things that Almodóvar does better than almost everyone.

7. “Goodbye Solo” (Ramin Bahrani)

Unsentimental and immensely moving, “Goodbye Solo” features the best performance of the year from Souleymane Sy Savane as a cabbie who becomes intertwined with a stranger looking to end his life.

6. “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus” (Terry Gilliam)

“Parnassus” is a gloriously messy film from Gilliam that recalls most of his strengths and features ten times as much imagination as “Avatar.”

5. “Summer Hours” (Olivier Assayas)

Deceptively simple, “Summer Hours” gets under your skin almost imperceptibly until its final scene with its look at the connection between family and possessions.

4. “The White Ribbon” (Michael Haneke)

Haneke fosters an impeccable sense of time and place and provokes a growing unease with his menacing and mysterious film about unknown evil in a small town.

3. “In the Loop” (Armando Iannucci)

Wordplay doesn’t get much better than this in one of the funniest and sharpest scripts of the decade that will have you gasping for breath and rewinding often.

2. “A Serious Man” (Joel and Ethan Coen)

A Coen film for the Coen faithful, “A Serious Man” is their most blackly funny and idiosyncratic film yet, filmed with a precision rarely seen.

1. “Up” (Pete Docter and Bob Peterson)

Perhaps Pixar’s greatest achievement ever, “Up” is storytelling at its finest, with cute little block-head cartoons that reveal truth about the human condition and bring you to tears. Now that’s some great filmmaking.