Movies for 2009

I managed to miss a couple of the movies I wanted to see this year at the cinema (although I'm hoping Santa might be kind and drop a couple of them on DVD under the tree!). But I hope to get a better hit rate in 2009. Here are some of the movies I'm interested in seeing:

Watchmen

When I originally heard about Alan Moore's Watchmen I really did wonder what people were going on about. Then I got a copy and read it - only then did I understand. It is a wonderful deconstruction of the super hero genre superbly told and nicely illustrated by Dave Gibbons.

I always have high expectations of comic book movies and was frequently disappointed but recently the movie people have really stepped up their game (of course there have been notable exceptions!). Hellboy, Sin City and 300 were all excellent with the latter two being an almost frame for frame conversion. So I have high hopes for this one!

Terminator: Salvation

The original Terminator movie made a real impact on me. I love SF and particularly time travel and both the story and imagery of that movie really hit the spot for me. The sequels haven't quite managed to recapture that initial impact but have been a decent extension of the concept and certainly better than some. I even have a soft spot for the TV show.

Christian Bale impressed me in Batman Begins (but less so in the Dark Knight which was really Heath Ledger's movie) so I'm wondering what his take on John Connor will be.

Star Trek

As a huge fan of the original series this movie could be very, very disappointing. I have some faith in J.J. Abrams through the Alias TV series which I very much enjoyed and the casting of Zachary Quinto as Spock seems pretty promising but have they really "got" Star Trek.

For me the key to Star Trek is the interplay between Kirk, Spock and McCoy combined with an interesting storyline. Spend too much time on the special effects and not enough on the characters and you get Star Trek the Motion Picture. Add too many characters and you get Next Generation (you also need to avoid having any characters that are too annoying!).

Will this one be a success? I'm hoping so but we'll have to wait and see.

Public Enemies

Johnny Depp as John Dilinger, Christian Bale as Melvin Purvis and Michael Mann at the helm - this promises to be an interesting movie.