I’ve tried to keep up with all the new releases this year, but there are still several I keep hearing about but haven’t seen yet. It sounds like The Hangover was a surprise hit, and Up in the Air is getting all kinds of good press, but I’ve seen neither. Even worse, the Coen Brothers and Hayao Miyazaki both released movies that I haven’t seen yet. But of the ones I have seen this year, here are my favorites:

1. Up
I’ve still only seen this once, because the first time had me crying like Glenn Beck within 10 minutes. I already gave the long-winded explanation for why this movie was so excellent, but the short version: it’s the first Pixar movie that’s about a real character, instead of just a familiar story role or a symbol for something else. It’s actually kind of harrowing: if Pixar can take their usual excellence and attention to detail and storytelling, and break completely free of the “family movie” formula, they’ll be unstoppable.

2. Drag Me to Hell
Watching Evil Dead 2 the other night just made me appreciate Drag Me to Hell even more. It’s pure Sam Raimi concentrate, every bit as wacky and over-the-top as the Evil Dead movies, but with some real money and professional polish behind it.

3. In the Loop
Easily the best screenplay of any movie of 2009, and not a weak performance in the entire ensemble cast. (Steve Coogan’s character is the only one that stands out as something of a false note, and that’s just because he’s movie-funny instead of seeming like a real person). I hope this one pulls in a ton of awards so it gets more attention in the US.

4. Inglourious Basterds
This is the movie that should finally shut up Quentin Tarantino’s critics: he knows what he’s doing. His tics and affectations are all here, but they actually work in service of the movie instead of seeming like self-conscious posturing.

5. Fantastic Mr. Fox
Two great things in one: a novel, imaginative, non-pandering animated movie with a distinctive style; and a good Wes Anderson movie.

6. Star Trek
The new Star Trek was a hell of a lot of fun, even if it did seem fun in spite of itself instead of actually earning it. It revitalized the franchise and made Star Trek “cool” again, all without making a lick of sense.

7. District 9
I still haven’t decided whether District 9 is genuinely intelligent or if it’s just putting up a front. But that doesn’t really matter when you’ve got a guy in a mech suit catching a rocket with one hand.

8. Moon
Moon may be style over substance, but that burst of style was really needed. Plus Sam Rockwell’s performance was about perfect.

9. Watchmen
I was sold from the opening credits, but the movie did kind of go straight downhill from there. Still, it was reverent enough to be a solid interpretation of the comic book, but smart enough to realize that the comic book’s ending was bullshit.

10. Sherlock Holmes
I didn’t even like this one all that much, but it still made the top 10 because it was a little bit more interesting than Coraline (which would be number 11).

Seats for the IMAX 3D version of Avatar were made of unobtanium, apparently, so we had to settle for the old-school regular 3D version, and we liked it that way. Well, more or less. Before the movie, there was a trailer for the Clash of the Titans remake which looks ridiculous but will probably make hundreds of millions, and there was Terminator Salvation, and now Avatar, which teaches us one thing: if you’re an actor, you need to get Sam Worthington’s agent.

As for the movie itself: what do you say about a movie that everybody in the United States has already seen? (I’ll save the spoilers for later, all the same). It’s extremely pretty, it’s almost three hours but just feels like two and change, it’s got the big action climax as required by the movie blockbuster by-laws, and it doesn’t do anything badly. There are plenty of critics eager to give it rave reviews. It’s got all the marketability of Titanic while being a just plain better movie than Titanic (and no Celine Dion). The effects are at least as impressive as The Phantom Menace, but nobody ever once mentions trade agreements (and no Jar Jar). What could possibly be the problem?

For me, the problem is that the movie just feels hollow. It’s hundreds of millions of dollars and years of work in the service of something that’s technically perfect but ultimately meaningless. It’s too smart to be mocked, but it doesn’t come across as clever. It’s too strident in its message to be called mindless, but the message is too bland and inoffensive to be challenging. It’s got too much of James Cameron’s imprint to be accused of design-by-committee, but still feels too formulaic to feel like one man’s vision. It ultimately seems like all the rough edges were sanded down and polished to a sheen — but it exudes competence instead of imagination.

The reviewers calling it the most beautiful film they’ve seen in years, or saying that seeing it was as extraordinary as seeing Star Wars for the first time, or refer to it as the end of our moviegoing life as we know it: I have to conclude that they’ve never played World of Warcraft or Halo. (Considering that I’m paraphrasing the Times, the New Yorker, and Roger Ebert, that’s a safe bet). Because in the entire two hours and forty minutes, there was exactly one moment that felt like something I hadn’t seen before, several times over. (For the curious: that moment was towards the end, where Sully’s girlfriend-mate holds his human body for the first time).

The rest of it is Covenant homeworld crossed with the Night Elves’ kingdom. I’ve always had a serious case of The Emperor’s New Clothes about the Matrix movies, but even I would have to concede that there’s plenty of novel and memorable imagery in those, stuff I’d never seen before. It was telling, I thought, that the poster for Avatar described it as being “From the creator of Titanic” instead of “From the creator of Aliens,” since this is squarely in the realm of The Abyss & Titanic: James Cameron movie product designed to make hundreds of millions of dollars, instead of movies designed to tell such imaginative and tightly-made stories that they can’t help but make hundreds of millions of dollars. And even The Abyss had the water alien that makes Mastrontonio faces, and Titanic had the memorable sequence where the ship breaks in half and goes vertical. I can’t think of any visual in Avatar that could compare.

To explain what’s actually wrong with the movie requires spoilers in case you’re a statistical anomaly and haven’t seen it:
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There’s a telltale movie ticket in my pocket, the lingering taste of a Chick-fil-a peppermint shake (awesome, albeit for a limited time), and soil on my shoes of the type only found at the Mall of Georgia, so I can deduce that I went to see Sherlock Holmes tonight. It was a couple of hours ago, so I’ve already mostly forgotten it.

That’s not necessarily a big criticism, though. I hate, hate Guy Ritchie movies to the point of headaches and nausea, and I didn’t mind this one. His affectations were at a minimum here — the occasional jump cut, a completely gratuitous attempt at showing a scene out of chronological sequence — for an action blockbuster movie, it’s downright restrained. Although I’m pretty sure it’s not the real story, I like to imagine that Ritchie saw the movie Crank and had an Oppenheimer-like fit of remorse at the horrors he’d unleashed on the world.

And I’d rather have the fleeting memory of an action movie than lingering resentment at Ritchie’s “look at me!” theatrics. Oh wait — there was a an awful lot of winking nonsexual tension between Holmes and Watson, I remember that. Nothing more overt than frequently asserting it’s a hip 2009 action movie starring two male longtime companions, but they never passed up a single chance at old-married-couple style bickering or lingering glances between the two.

But for the most part, it’s a very gray CSI episode with some terrific set design and familiar names. Purists balked at the premise of Robert Downey, Jr as a martial arts-expert Sherlock Holmes (myself included), but they (we) needn’t have worried. The original stories made Holmes out to be kind of a freak, and there’ve been plenty of adaptations and reinterpretations since then that either played up the character quirks or took liberties with history. By comparison, the new movie is practically reverent. And as you’d expect, Downey is one hell of a lot more likable than Jeremy Brett.

The basics of the characters are valid, there are plenty of opportunities for the trademark deduction sequences, and the story is unremarkable but inoffensive. Plus there’s the built-in appeal of pseudo-science in Victorian London: much of Sherlock Holmes is the movie League of Extraordinary Gentlemen should have been. The only thing really wrong with it is the regrettable action movie inflation that means all characters — even mastermind detectives — can survive dozens of punches and at least two explosions with just a scratch here and there. It’d be nice to for once see a movie where the fight scenes had genuine consequences and punches really hurt.

They’ve clearly set it up for a franchise; maybe they can up the stakes for future movies. It’s laid a respectable foundation, even if it’s not as rousing or exciting as Downey’s other franchise. The trailer for Iron Man 2 looks fantastic.