Closed the lid on another year of films at the Toshi Station Movie Manifest (and reversed the Manifest page so the most recent year is now in pole position, as it always shoulda been).

Selecting the first four of our annual "Top Five" for '09 was easy - no obvious stand-out for that fifth slot, however.

Top Four: District 9 easily claimed a spot. Then Star Trek and Avatar, a flashy duo that ticked all the right nerd checkboxes. Finally Doubt, which featured crazy acting chops.

The Fifth: boiled it down to The Reader, State of Play, Gran Torino, The Hangover, Inglorious Basterds, and Zombieland. Despite the variety, they all weighed in at about the same level of enjoyment. Went with Inglorious Basterds (despite the supremely irritating misspelling) - the dialogue is just too good to ignore.

The losers this year included Knowing, GI Joe, and Wolverine. I could have just as easily included Choke, Land of the Lost, and Angels and Demons. We're not expecting every film to be a classic, but those that fail to live up to their potential really sting. Wolverine is one of the great comic book characters of the modern age - toss a bunch of ninjas at some steel claws for 90 minutes and it's a winner. Instead we get a very "meh" story and low-rent special effects. So painful.

Here's how '09 stacked up against History. Our local Dollar Theater pulled the number of in-theaters films way up in '09. It's a crummy little theater, but the price is too right. We're hoping this is the year we'll get Netflix streaming reliably over the TiVo, which should bolster the non-theater count in 2010.