The ups and downs of 2009

THE first film released at cinemas in 2009 turned out to be the best.

Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire was a vibrant fable that re-established the director as a major talent and achieved the rare feat of charming both the public and the critics.

It was the most un-Hollywood of 2009's major box office hits but its dip into the slums of India even charmed the American Academy, who gave it a Best Picture Oscar. It was the first genuinely British film (ie not financed by American money) to take the coveted award since Laurence Olivier's Hamlet in 1948.

Beautifully scripted and acted (largely by real Indian slum kids) the film was blessed with an evocative soundtrack and was slickly assembled by Boyle, who seemed genuinely surprised by the film's warm reception.

Slumdog Millionaire was an antidote to the banal blockbusters that Hollywood inflicted on us in ever more depressing fashion.

Compare Boyle's artistry to the slam bang wallop disaster zones created by Michael Bay – a sledgehammer film-maker whose zero brain Transformers sequel was a candidate for the worst film of the year.

Indeed, the only big budget event movie to deliver at all was Harry Potter – which at least did what was expected and duly took more money than any other film at UK cinemas in 2009.

But while Hollywood struggled to give us a real life blockbuster worthy of the name, American animators still rose to the challenge.

Bolt was a major return to form for Disney, whose animation arm had more or less sunk until Pixar become a corporate companion.

Coraline was less sweet and had a macabre streak that scared smaller children but was equally inventive.

But Pixar again led the field and Up was the best animated offering of the year. Like its rivals, it was released in 3D and the process did seem to attract an ever increasing share of cinema audiences but Up's charm had nothing to do with putting on glasses and getting special effects thrown into your lap. Its charm was in its captivating characters and heartwarming story. Its clever understanding of the sadness of growing old was something that has eluded far more serious film-makers and yet was captured in a montage sequence that was among the most moving scenes in any film this year.

Romantic comedies are a rightly maligned genre that conform to a tired template – as demonstrated all too well by the dire Sandra Bullock offering The Proposal, which seemed to be stitched together from a dozen other variations on the theme.

But (500) Days of Summer was a breath of fresh romantic air. Sharp, original and delightfully played, it was also perhaps the first rom-com that seemed to play better to men than women.

Thanks largely to Twilight, there was a non-stop parade of vampire films in 2009. But while New Moon was an anodyne retread of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Jennifer's Body was too silly for words, there were genuine scares and youthful insight in one teenage vampire offering. Let the Right One In was a genuinely original take on an overdone theme.

But it wasn't the best piece of European cinema seen in 2009 and nor was Broken Embraces, another fine offering from Spanish auteur Pedro Almodovar, nor the realistic French schoolyard offering The Class.

No, it was Austrian Michael Haneke's icily brilliant The White Ribbon that will linger longest. A chilling look at the restrictive and occasionally brutal life of a pre-First World War German village, it showed how and why the Nazis rose to power in the next two decades.

British films struggled, as usual, to get screen time in the middle of a sea of mediocre Hollywood product placement but two that shone through were Moon and An Education.

David Bowie's son Duncan Jones delivered a classic sci-fi drama with a 1970s feel on an impossibly-low budget with Moon.

And An Education was a lovely evocation of London in the early 1960s with a stunning performance from the fresh and incredibly talented Carey Mulligan.

The film that perhaps summed up 2009 better than any other, though, was American. The Hurt Locker cast a dispassionate eye on an army bomb disposal team operating in the Middle East.

As the bodies kept coming back home, this reminded us in unflinching style that a very dirty job is still being done by a very brave few.