Ten bests and five (or three) worsts

Once again I've asked my esteemed colleagues here at "The Phoenix" to contribute their best and worst lists for the year and they have generously responded. Here's the first installment:

GERALD PEARY

10 Best:

1. The Hurt Locker

2. A Serious Man

3. Precious

4. Humpday

5. (500) Days of Summer

6. The Informant!

7. The Baader Meinhof Complex (Best Foreign Language Film)

8. Lorna's Silence

9. Beeswax

10. Up

Most Smug and Obnoxious Films of the Year:

1. Inglourious Basterds

2. The Men Who Stare at Goats

3. Nine

PEG ALOI

Top Ten Best Films of 2009

(in no particular order)

1. AN EDUCATION Intelligent if occasionally dreamy memoir-based coming of age story, perfectly directed by Lone Scherfig and with a breakout performance by Carey Mulligan.

2. FANTASTIC MR. FOX Wes Anderson's cool, clever, delightful puppet animation with a creative soundtrack and a lovable assortment of woodland creatures that dance, meditate, steal, lie, argue, zone out, and glow.

3. MOON  Stunning debut by Duncan Jones who directs Sam Rockwell as a lonely and increasingly-desperate astronaut stuck in a dead-end gig mining moon fuel.

4.O'HORTEN  Charming but never cute, Bent Hamer's story of a Norwegian train conductor's retirement chugs along with unexpected twists and turns.

5 .BRIGHT STAR Jane Campion paints the love life and demise of John Keats, played with subtle intensity by Ben Whishaw, paired with an impressive Abbie Cornish as his lover Fanny.

6. L'HEURE D'ETE (SUMMER HOURS) Olivier Assayas helms this story of three siblings who decide to sell the family's country estate after the death of their mother, and revisits the tone and themes of his earlier masterpiece L'eau Froid.

7. IN THE LOOP Sure-handed feature debut by Armando Iannucci: hilarious, sharp and vicious parody in the style of The Office, set in London and Washington, DC, with a uniformly wonderful cast including Peter Capaldi, James Gandolfini, Tom Hollander and Gina McKee.

8. STAR TREK From the slutty green-skinned girl to the doomed red-shirted officer, J. J. Abrams' prequel abounds with delicious references to the original TV series, and the casting is truly inspired.

9. INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS Who knew our little Quentin had an epic in him? It's not perfect, but it's damned fine, with some truly inspired visual and aural moments.

10. SIN NOMBRE Cary Fukunaga's story of several Mexican families affected by the pervasive control of the drug cartels: brutal, shocking, and hard to shake off.

More to come!