I’d give 2009 at the movies a B overall, and that ain’t bad — it is, in fact, about as good as it gets. It’s true that I found only nine straight-A’s when I looked back through my movie notebook (No. 10 on this list was an A–), but there wasn’t a single F, and that’s a first in my years as an EW columnist. Either I chose more wisely or the quality was better than last year’s B–. I prefer to believe the latter, though there were a few disappointments along the way; the trudging Revolutionary Road was the worst of them. With that said, my list of the 10 best follows.
7. LAW ABIDING CITIZEN
The outraged husband and father decides to punish the baddies himself when the wimpish legal system won’t: Yeah, yeah, we’ve seen it all before, but this version’s script is wound tight and clever enough to draw blood. All of which would mean little if not for the standout performances by Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx, who turns prosecutor Nick Rice into a morally ambiguous antihero.
View the complete list http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/0,,20333816,00.html]here.