CityBeat's music writing brigade found a lot to love about music in the last year of the '00s. From locals to underground sensations to mainstream oddities and commodities, 2009 surely was something to write home about.

Year-end “best-of” lists give me the jitters. Yes, I know: poor Phil. It’s true, though. Ranking 12 months’ worth of DVD releases is an overwhelming task. Worse still is the mad rush to watch as many as possible as the year fades in an effort to catch an overlooked title. The stacks of unwatched screeners that skyscraper over my desk only compound the nerves.

Movie culture, like the rest of American can society at this late date, is in a serious state of flux. The one-two combo of the recession and the continued fracturing of the pop-cultural landscape have resulted in fewer movies of every size and stripe. Still, the multiplex did have its pleasures in 2009.

You might have noticed that several art/independent titles in 2009 and 2008 end-of-year awards lists — Summer Hours, In the Loop, Gomorrah — did not play a first-run theater in Cincinnati. Or did they? Cincinnati has become a hot spot for controversy regarding specialty films that go first-run video-on-demand.

This list documents not only a new decade’s worth of films but also a new millennium. Having survived the Y2K scare — which, in hindsight seems like a forgotten footnote — we found ourselves less than two years later staring at a changed landscape.