The Hurt Locker (2009)

Director Kathryn Bigelow expertly builds tension with each wire cut by bomb specialist Jeremy Renner in a war movie — Iraq in 2003 — refreshing void of ideology. Renner gives a superior performance, his character part reckless artist, part John Wayne.

d: Kathryn Bigelow | imdb.com | trailer | Die comfortable.

Whatever Works (2009)

Woody Allen directs Larry David, who essentially plays Allen — a neurotic, cynical genius who falls in love with young runaway Evan Rachel Wood. He’s fun to watch, and Wood’s naiveté is adorable, misunderstanding David’s world view, then co-opting it.

d: Woody Allen | imdb.com | trailer

G-Force (2009)

Jerry Bruckheimer produces a movie that mixes life action — and too many extreme close-ups of Zach Galifianakis — with CGI guinea pigs who are super spies. Unfortunately, it has all the elements of a Bruckheimer production and homage to “Transformers.”

d: Hoyt H. Yeatman Jr. | imdb.com | trailer | need for speed

Friday the 13th (2009)

Director Marcus Nispel restarts the slasher franchise in a glossier but familiar fashion: The boys are drunk and high, the girls are topless and Jason, in memory of his mother, kills almost all of them. He enjoys his work, impaling campers in myriad ways.

d: Marcus Nispel | imdb.com | trailer | He’s using him as bait.

Adventureland (2009)

Recent college graduate Jesse Eisenberg falls in love with Kristen Stewart and smokes pot with the other dead-end kids at an amusement park in 1987. Eisenberg and Stewart are so natural together, and the film never plays the period for broad laughs.

d: Greg Mottola | imdb.com | trailer | Hired | Date with Lisa P.

A Serious Man (2009)

Joel and Ethan Coen’s most personal film is an adaptation of The Book of Job — except darker and funnier. A Jewish physics professor (Michael Stuhlbarg) in suburban Minnesota suffers an endurance test informed by Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody to Love.”

d: Ethan Coen and Joel Coen | imdb.com | trailer | I’ve tried ...

Shrink (2009)

After his wife commits suicide, Hollywood psychiatrist Kevin Spacey self-medicates with marijuana. Spacey brings his usual gleeful cynicism, but his patients are a depressing bunch of show-biz clichés who are all too-neatly interconnected — another movie cliché.

d: Jonas Pate | imdb.com | trailer