Director of Nowhere Boy Sam Taylor-Johnson to dominate the Fifty Shades Of Grey adaptation

Aaron Johnson is in the running for the lead role in the new Godzilla movie.

2009 certainly brought us a few cinematic corkers, from sci-fi epic Avatar to comic-book crunching goodness from Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight and Watchmen. But it wasn’t all wham, bam and explosions – will 2010 be a year of smarter movies? Judging this list… maybe.

Directed by conceptual artist Sam Taylor-Wood, whose previous interest in celebrity included a video portrait of David Beckham sleeping, Nowhere Boy is a biopic of John Lennon’s early life. Focusing on his pre-Beatles stardom, the film charts the complex relationship between the legendary man himself (played by Aaron Johnson), his staid and respectable Aunt Mimi (Kristen Scott-Thomas) and his free-spirited mother Julia (Anne-Marie Duff).