Complex's Best of 2009: The Top 25 Movies

#5: Funny People

DIRECTOR: Judd Apatow

STARS: Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Leslie Mann, Eric Bana, Jonah Hill, Jason Schwartzman

PLOT: When he's diagnosed with terminal cancer, successful and intentionally isolated comedian George Simmons (Sandler) tries to build a genuine relationship by returning to his standup roots and taking an aspiring comic (Rogen) under his wing.

THE COMPLEX CO-SIGN: It's not that difficult to find the hilarity in a 40-year-old virgin or a disheveled stoner slacker who accidentally knocks up a hot one night stand. But Apatow is serious as cancer about finding the real-life humor in tragic circumstances. Dare we say it's funnier than his previous work? We dare. The official king of comedy is sick with his.

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#4: District 9

DIRECTOR: Neill Blomkamp

STARS: Sharlto Copley

PLOT: A bureaucrat (Copley) in Johannesburg, South Africa learns the true nature of ghettoized aliens and his own multinational corporation when he's exposed to extraterrestrial biotechnology while trying to relocate them from one refugee camp to another.

THE COMPLEX CO-SIGN: Made for a relatively measly $30 million with Peter Jackson shielding Copley from movie studio fuckery, D9 is the kind of low-budget, intelligent—yet action-packed—sci-fi film that we all need more of. Michael Bay can go stick an enormous explosion up his ass.

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#3: Avatar

DIRECTOR: James Cameron

STARS: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Giovani Ribisi, Michelle Rodriguez, Joel David Moore

PLOT: On a mission to help humans strip natural resources from the eco-centric Na'vi race on Pandora, a paraplegic marine (Worthington) controlling a human-Na'vi hybrid becomes torn between the two sides.

THE COMPLEX CO-SIGN: We're always suspicious anytime a director spends over a decade developing an epic pet project (ahem, Oliver Stone's Alexander, ahem) but Cameron's wait for proper 3-D and CGI technology was well worth it (if you don't peep it at least once in IMAX 3-D, you must really hate yourself). An entire, rich world was created around a handful of actors working with green screen, and you hardly notice except to marvel at how seamless and beautiful it all is. Plus the eco-friendly story is almost enough to make us stop burning trees.

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#2: Inglourious Basterds

DIRECTOR: Quentin Tarantino

STARS: Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Mélanie Laurent, Diane Kruger, Eli Roth, BJ Novak

PLOT: "The Basterds," a unit of Jewish-American soldiers that terrorizes Nazis by brutally murdering or branding them, and a French-Jewish survivor of a massacre (Laurent) independently plot to cripple the Reich with violence.

THE COMPLEX CO-SIGN: "The Jew Hunter," Standartenführer Hans Landa, is easily one of the top 20 movie villains of all time, thanks to both actor Waltz and writer/director Tarantino. Gassed about his ability to write dialogue (especially for women), QT splattered verbal diarrhea all over Death Proof, but he atones for that with the brilliant opening scene of this WWII spaghetti western masterpiece alone. It's a huge diarrhea-lief.

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#1: Star Trek

DIRECTOR: J.J. Abrams

STARS: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Eric Bana, Zoë Saldana, Karl Urban, Anton Yelchin, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Leonard Nimoy

PLOT: James Tiberius Kirk (Pine) and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise fight to protect the universe from the time-traveling Romulan terrorist (Bana) who killed Kirk's father and altered the time-space continuum.

THE COMPLEX CO-SIGN: It's damn near impossible to make a movie that appeals to longtime devotees, newbies, and everyone in between (see: Watchmen and Terminator Salvation—or, better yet, don't see them). Abrams pulled it off with a blockbuster that has the perfect balance of action and intelligence, comedy and drama, insider references and accessibility, and actually left us amped to see sequels. Star Trek was our number one at the halfway point and holds tight despite some tremendous films dropping in the second half of the year. We can only hope that in the sequel we'll actually get to see intergalactic playboy Kirk invade more alien chicks' inner space.

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