In the year 2009: Must-see movies

While the ink on all the 2008 year-end lists may barely be dry, a new year means new films to scrutinize and celebrate, fresh faces to adore and another reason to crush on Paul Rudd.

Below are a handful of films that, for their own individual reasons, stand out from the pack and look like winners, be they blockbuster hits or art house gems.

Wendy and Lucy

Already a hit with film reviewers, especially in Toronto where the city’s Film Critics Association named it best film and Michelle Williams the best actress, Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy follows Wendy, a young woman in financial dire straits who encounters many a roadblock on her way to Alaska where a lucrative job awaits. The journey to gainful employment is met with car trouble, a sick dog – that would be Lucy – and closed doors at every turn, in this story of a woman living life in the margins. Simply told in bleak detail, Wendy and Lucy is poised to make Michelle Williams’ star shine even brighter.

Taking Woodstock

Talented director Ang Lee shifts his focus from the perils of love to a rock concert that helped define a generation in Taking Woodstock. Based upon the novel by the same name, the film chronicles Elliot Tiber’s somewhat inadvertent involvement in the phenomenon that was Woodstock when he offered up his parents’ motel as a home base for the concert organizers. Tiber couldn’t have known the remarkable scope of the 1969 concert and was soon playing a part in a watershed pop cultural experience that brought together The Who, CCR, The Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin, among others. With hilarious and superbly dry comedian Demetri Martin leading the pack as Tiber himself, and supporting work from the likes of Emile Hirsch, Paul Dano, Eugene Levy and Kelli Garner, the deck is stacked in favour of this rock concert pic.

I Love You, Man

As firm believer in the ways of Paul Rudd, the forthcoming release of I Love You, Man is something to be celebrated. Not only does the film star the divine Mr. R. as the newly-engaged but bro-less Peter Klaven who embarks on a series of platonic dates to find his best man, but his fiancée is played by “The Office” hottie Rashida Jones and his bro-in-waiting is Forgetting Sarah Marshall’s Jason Segel, who brings a fearless comedic sensibility to everything he does. Director John Hamburg - who previously brought the yuks as screenwriter on Zoolander, Meet the Parents and helmed a few non-Ben Stiller projects like episodes of the much-loved Apatow series “Undeclared” - is poised to guide I Love You, Man into the canon of Rudd’s hilarious hit comedies.

Terminator Salvation

McG, a man who’s had his fingers in everything from The Pussycat Dolls’ reality series to Charlie’s Angels and “The O.C.”, takes a seat behind the camera for the fourth installment in the Terminator series. Christian Bale stars as John Connor, the leader of the resistance movement against Skynet in a post-apocalyptic 2018, and boy, do the machines look angry. Facing new challenges to keep the Terminators from annihilating the human race, Bale is helped along by an eclectic supporting cast that includes Helena Bonham Carter and rapper Common. At this point, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s involvement is limited to a rumoured cameo – let’s hope it’s a brief one at that – and the dexterous mind of McG could be just what the series needs to overcome T3's lukewarm critical reception. If the ingenious Flash poster is any indication of the level of innovation and stylistic direction Terminator Salvation will offer, the audience appears to be in good hands.

Adventureland

Jesse Eisenberg, who more than held his own alongside Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney in The Squid and the Whale, stars as James, a recent grad whose post-college European vacation turns out to be financially impossible, forcing him to take a dreaded in-town job during the summer of ’87. Scraping the bottom of the employment barrel, James joins a group of teenage misfits at Adventureland – a theme park – and ends up enjoying a defining, montage-filled summer in the process. SNL stand-outs Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader, Martin Starr of “Freaks & Geeks” fame, Twilight’s Kristen Stewart and Ryan Reynolds – really, him? – round out the top-tier cast in this coming-of-age comedy. Superbad director Greg Mottola works double duty as writer-director here, infusing James’ tale with elements from his own adolescent escapades, making the nostalgic adventure all the more resonant.

The Box

Richard Kelly brought the world cult classic Donnie Darko and then unleashed the uneven and cartoonishly bad Southland Tales five years later. But this cinephile has not yet given up on the visionary writer-director and his next project, The Box, is poised to herald his return to the creatively daring material that first won him fame. Starring Cameron Diaz and James Marsden as an unhappily married couple who are given a mysterious box by an equally mystical stranger (Frost/Nixon’s Frank Langella), they are promised $1 million with the press of the box’s button. The catch? This button also controls someone else's life, and, with one touch, a stranger somewhere will be met with certain death. And just like that, the couple is forced to choose between the moral high ground or guaranteed wealth – all in the span of 24 hours. The Box, based on a short story by Richard Matheson, investigates the darkest side of human greed and the often subjective nature of morality.

--

Do these movies look like winners or duds? What films are you looking forward to in 2009? Share and discuss below!