Film critic Philip French of The Guardian said that 2009 "began with the usual flurry of serious major movies given late December screenings in Los Angeles to qualify for the Oscars.
They're now forgotten or vaguely regarded as semi-classics: The Reader, Che, Slumdog Millionaire, Frost/Nixon, Revolutionary Road, The Wrestler, Gran Torino, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
2009 was a mostly undistinguished year for Hollywood, with indifferent films from Woody Allen (Vicky Cristina Barcelona), Michael Mann (Public Enemies) and others, and deadly blockbusters such as Angels & Demons and 2012.
The Coen brothers, however, were on form, examining their midwestern Jewish roots in A Serious Man, and Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker was the best film yet about Iraq.
The most likable European picture was the Italian Mid-August Lunch, the directorial debut of 60-year-old Gianni Di Gregorio (screenwriter on Gomorrah), and the three most memorably argumentative and provocative were Paolo Sorrentino's Il Divo, Lars von Trier's Antichrist and Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon.