Bad Romance
2009
Written on a tour bus in Norway and premiered at Alexander McQueen's last show, all nonsense syllables and appetite.
★ 8.7
Browse by time · year
2009
Showing 113 works across all media from 2009
Inglourious Basterds
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
2009
Christoph Waltz plays four languages and makes every one of them frightening: Tarantino builds his scenes as long conversations where somebody at the table already knows too much.
★ 7.9
Up
Directed by Pete Docter and Bob Peterson
2009
The four-minute marriage montage is the most devastating thing Pixar has ever done, and it is wordless: after that, an old man flies his house away on balloons.
★ 7.8
A Prophet
Directed by Jacques Audiard
2009
The best prison film of this century, and it works like a business education: an illiterate nineteen-year-old walks into a French jail and starts learning very fast.
★ 7.6
The Hurt Locker
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow
2009
Bigelow made war feel like an addiction rather than a duty: a bomb disposal sergeant works without much fear, and every defusal is stretched until the room turns physical.
★ 7.3
A Serious Man
Directed by Coen Brothers
2009
The Coens' most personal film and their least forgiving: a Minnesota physics professor's life comes apart for no reason at all, and nobody in it will explain anything.
★ 7.3
Empire State of MindJay-Z
Empire State of Mind
2009 · From The Blueprint 3
Two songwriters homesick in London started it; Keys and a Moments piano loop made Jay-Z's first lead-artist number one.
★ 7.2
My Girls
2009 · From Merriweather Post Pavilion
An arpeggio out of Chicago house, a sample from the Cassini Saturn probe, Lennox wanting only a home.
★ 6.9
You Belong With Me
2009 · From Fearless
Banjo, fiddle and mandolin under a scene Swift wrote after overhearing a touring musician's phone call with his girlfriend.
★ 6.8
Two Weeks (Grizzly Bears)
2009
Chris Bear started the piano line on a Cape Cod weekend; Victoria Legrand's stacked harmonies make the rest glow.
★ 6.3
1901
2009 · From Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
A fantasy of Belle Epoque Paris, handed out free online, that then spent thirty-one weeks climbing to alternative number one.
★ 6.2
Feel It All AroundWashed Out
Feel It All Around
2009
Bedroom pop in the literal sense, a Gary Low disco record slowed to a crawl, and chillwave had its template.
★ 6.2
Little Lion Man
2009
Banjo hammering under a chorus that needed a radio edit, produced by Markus Dravs and voted Australia's song of 2009.
★ 6.1
Up in the Air
Directed by Jason Reitman
2009
Reitman cast people who had actually just been laid off and filmed them reacting for real: a man who fires strangers for a living has arranged his whole existence around not landing.
★ 6.0
Woods
2009 · From Blood Bank
Four lines, no instruments, one voice stacked through Auto-Tune into a choir Kanye West later built a song from.
★ 5.8
Merriweather Post Pavilion
2009
There is no guitar anywhere on it, which for a rock band was the point. It is named after a Maryland concert amphitheatre.
★ 5.7
The Secret in Their Eyes
Directed by Juan Jose Campanella
2009 · Argentina
The camera drops out of the sky into a packed football stadium and does not cut for five minutes: an Argentine investigator reopens a case he could never leave alone.
★ 5.7
Lisztomania
2009 · From Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Heine coined the word for Liszt's swooning fans, and Philippe Zdar gave these guitars their chrome shine.
★ 5.5