I considered not even doing a Top 10 this year, or doing something weird under the pretense that I was somehow above whoring for traffic. Please. I will wear heels with goldfish in them for more traffic. So, a Top 10 list it is. No such petty considerations as “not having seen everything” or “methadone-shaky critical credibility” are gonna stop this guy.
You know what? Fuck it, I'm going to do more than one Top 10 list. Let's start with . . .
Top 10 Pictures I Haven't Seen
True Grit
Fair Game
Biutiful
The King's Speech
Four Lions
Animal Kingdom
The Killer Inside Me
Blue Valentine
A Solitary Man
All of which I'm looking forward to for a variety of reasons. True Grit needs no introduction: I love the Coens, I love Jeff Bridges when he's got a good script and a real director, and I didn't like the original all that much (Duke was awesome, movie was half-assed), making it a prime candidate for a remake. Fair Game seems like a prime candidate for one of my periodic world-affairs nerd-outs, and a fine opportunity to smile at Naomi Watts for a couple hours; also, I like Doug Liman when he has an actual script.
Biutiful looks like it's going to be two-plus hours of misery wank, but Alejandro González Iñárritu makes me really want to sit through two-plus hours of misery wank. I watched Babel when I was coming down from a migraine and thought it was the tits (and no, not just because of Rinko Kikuchi's), so I'll give Biutiful a shot, aunque Guillermo Arriaga no escribió esta película. Nadie es perfecto.
The King's Speech is one of my soft spot pictures. I have this fatal weakness for diagrammatic feel-good English pictures about people overcoming adversity. It helps that most of them, take Billy Elliott for one shining awesome fucking example, are pretty good. And I like that this one's got a twist: the guy who needs to overcome adversity . . . is the king! Jolly good, cheerio, pip pip old chap. Of course, it's Colin Firth, and I'd watch Colin Firth read the letters to the editor from the Sunday Times. Anyway, all's I'm saying is, if you want me to defend my love of formulaic British feel good movies, all you're getting in response is a “fuck you” and maybe a “stop bothering me” if I'm feeling loquacious.
All I heard about Four Lions is that it's got serious balls and the director's crazy. That always gets my antennae perky. Animal Kingdom's Australian, say no more. The Killer Inside Me is Jim Thompson, Michael Winterbottom, and C-Fleck, which intrigues me, as all three of those motherfuckers were/are nuts. Blue Valentine made the four people who've seen it walk around stunned with smoke coming out their ears, which always intrigues me. And my mom told me to see A Solitary Man, and I'm a good son. (EDIT 1/1/11: Mom: "You made a mistake. It was Animal Kingdom I told you was good. I have Solitary Man on my queue, I haven't seen it yet." Whoops. Still want to see A Solitary Man, though.)
Top 10 Movies That Weren't Good Per Se (Or Even Actually Movies) But That I Still Liked
From Paris With Love
The Warrior's Way
Red
The Town
Heavy Rain
Lost
The Runaways
The A-Team
Tron: Legacy
Human Target
Again, not every movie on this list is good, and only seven of them are movies (and you can make a decent argument that some of the movies aren't even movies). But show me someone who only likes things that are good, and I'll show you a morally consistent tight-ass who has a lot less fun than I do.
From Paris With Love I've already yakked at length about both here and at Premiere, but the bottom line is that movie is fun. It takes time-dishonored action movie clichés and puts slight, subtle, intelligently conceived variations on them, kind of like the way a skilled guitar player can make an ordinary chord progression sound like something exciting and special. Which leads to another way to describe From Paris With Love. It's rock 'n' roll. And I like rock 'n' roll.
I covered both The Warrior's Way and Red for Tor.com; you can revisit those reviews if you like, or if not I'll say both were stylishly executed diversions, if lacking that feverish “let's do another line!” intensity of From Paris With Love. Jang Dong-Gun handles a sword almost as well as Helen Mirren does a machine gun, and if you know me you know movies with cool swordfights and Dame Helen Mirren firing machine guns get much love from yours truly.
The Town (aka The Fackin Tann) is a new entry in the pahk the cah at Hahvid Yahd subgenre of pictures where actors go up to Boston, get unflattering haircuts, and develop accents of the highest cartoonishness. B-Fleck did a fine job directing this picture, and the cast is awesome (Jon Hamm kicks mucho ass as the one guy in the movie without a Bahhhhhhhhstin accent; despite this, it's great fun to bellow “DAWN FACKIN DRAYPA!” whenever he does anything cool, which is frequently) but the script is dumb, and the whole thing with B-Fleck falling in love with Rebecca Hall teeters on the brink of full retard; wondering whether it'll tip or not is more suspenseful than whether B-Fleck and Jeremy Fackin Renner ah gonna fackin get away with the final fackin heist. Still, flaws aside, B-Fleck's here to stay as a director; I just hope he gets more/better help with the script next time.
And now, Heavy Rain, which isn't a movie, per se. But it kind of is. I don't have anything new to add to this, except regret that that La Marseillaise joke didn't work better.
Lost, too, not a movie, but that didn't stop me from yammering like a coked-up parrot about it back in May. Those couple months I spent with Lost were great fun, and concentrating the geek-out in a small period of time probably helped me enjoy it more than the people who suffered through the weeks between episodes only to find out “FUCK it's a fucking Kate episode.” I would be like “Ah, a Kate episode. Oh well.” I think its rewatchability was killed by the way in which it resolved, but that doesn't diminish the first time through one bit. It also makes it a good choice for a localized thing about “best of” a given year, as it was a much-enjoyed one-shot.
The Runaways was a weird movie. Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart were both really good in it, though their performances were a lot more committed to depth and totality than writer/director Floria Sigismondi's script and direction, both of which were concerned almost completely with surface. The Runaways were a singularity in pop music history, an all-girl rock band that charted at a time when that simply did not happen. The Runaways is one of many “rise to fame/crash and burn” music biopics, which is kind of sad, because it could have been more. Still, it's a watchable movie, and should get a lot of credit for avoiding major ickiness in re: 15-year-old Dakota Fanning doing coke and making out with chicks. Anyone looking to perv on that stuff will be disappointed, which is a credit to Sigismondi.
I won't defend The A-Team, partly because I don't remember anything about it except Sharlto Copley being awesome and Jon Hamm (again) showing up at the end as the villain for the sequel if there's going to be one. I really should watch Mad Men at some point, that guy rules.
Again, no defending Tron: Legacy. It was energetic. And Olivia Wilde, though painfully underused, sure is pretty. Empty-headed fun is a proud tradition in cinema. But, you know, not on a Ten Best list.
The not-so-good/not-a-movie list concludes with Fox TV series Human Target, which is pretty good, but not a movie. The story of enigmatic ex-assassin turned protector of the innocent Christopher Chance (Mark Valley), Human Target is well done on a modest scale, with pretty good action and an engaging supporting cast headed by Chi McBride and Jackie Earle Haley. It's an old-school TV show with a decent sense of the modern age, inasmuch as an old-school TV show needs to have such a thing. And, like most of the things on this list, it's something I enjoy very much but can't/won't defend.
And now, with no further ado . . . the TOP 10 MOVIES OF 2010 (that I've seen), in ascending order from 10 to 1:
Endhiran
Singing, dancing, SF, Indian Voltron Cobra, and Aishwarya Rai. This one's good for anyone with the capacity for joy in their lives. More here and here. This picture got me very excited about getting more into Indian movies, and while I'm still at the very early stages, I'm going to keep on it.
Runaway
Oh, Kanye. Kanye, Kanye, Kanye. The second I heard he directed a 35 minute video for his 9 minute single, I immediately said, “I need to see this.” And OH holy shit. He apparently worked closely with noted hip-hop video director Hype Williams on this, but really Runaway is like Alejandro Jodorowsky and David Lynch showed up at Yeezy's place and said “What's good, baby, you want to split a five-strip between the three of us?” and gave Ye three tabs and a camera and watched as he staggered giggling out into the woods. The scene where Kanye gets pissed at the fancy dinner party because the snooty fucks are snickering about his half-phoenix/half-Victoria's Secret model girlfriend and Kanye stomps over to the piano and starts playing “Runaway” as all the ballerinas come in . . . well it's just as great as the description makes it sound. The movie was a great and thoroughly apt preview for Kanye's album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, as it's just as beautifully crafted and duckfucking insane as the record.
Kick-Ass/Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
Although these two pictures are quite different, I mention them together because of the comic book connection, and because both frequently made me go, “Wow, is this really happening . . .?” One main difference is that the titular protagonist of Kick-Ass assumes the mantle of comic book hero as a conscious choice, while Scott Pilgrim has it thrust upon him. Both are tales of dorks who achieve great things and end up with stunningly beautiful geek-friendly girlfriends. Despite that similarity, though, these two pictures are vastly different, similar only in their being fantastically entertaining in their own ways.
One thing I do have to say though, as awesome and capable of taking care of herself as Hit-Girl was (Chloe Moretz is ridiculously good in the role), when Mark Strong punches her in the face during the climactic boss fight, it bothered me. Sure she'd killed all his dudes. But she's a fuckin 10 year old girl, man.
(One final note, speaking of Mark Strong: seeing all those English guys, like Dexter Fletcher and Jason Flemyng, playing NYC Italian mobsters was a lot of fun).
The Kids Are All Right
I'm a very big Lisa Cholodenko fan, and have been for years, and was thrilled when she finally put a new picture out (she's been directing TV for forever). I love the way she deals with sexuality, leaving politics out of the question and focusing on the way things actually are. Annette Bening and Julianne Moore's marriage is one of the best, richest, and most honest portrayals of a romantic relationship I've ever seen, and bonus points to Lisa C. for not turning Julianne Moore into a villain for banging Mark Ruffalo out of validation, instead treating her like a real person who made a mistake. Also, leaving it relatively ambiguous though guardedly optimistic about the future of the marriage at the end of the picture is a nice touch, and one of my favorite things about Lisa Cholodenko as a director: she leaves all the cheap melodramatic Hollywood shit at the door and says “All right, people, let's make an actual fucking movie.” God, I love her.
The American
Hey there, Anton Corbijn. Thanks very much for this picture. George Clooney as an aging, shadowy, tight-lipped guy who makes custom-built weapons for assassins and works for a Dutch guy who won a bet with Lance Henriksen to see who could be more of a leathery badass? Sure, I'm all in. Oh, and thanks as well for Irina Bjorklund, Thekla Reuten, and Violante Placido (che bellezza immortale e celestiale . . .)
Every single shot in this movie is so beautiful you feel it. The execution is beautiful, elegant, precise. Oh, and anyone who claims this picture is boring either needs a fucking brain transplant or got given a bootleg copy of The Limits of Control (which was similar in premise and did suck) by mistake.
Inception
I still stand by all this, with the addendum that it gets even better with repeated viewings. And watching it with headphones on is an exquisite experience if you're into sound. It's also a lot less confusing each revisit; if you pay attention, it's all laid right out for you right there. Bravo, Chris Nolan.
By the way, I know box office grosses don't necessarily mean anything, but it rules that this picture of all pictures has made $800+ million.
Black Swan
Again, I pretty much said all I needed to with this post. Jesus Christ, Natalie Portman was good in this. And remember, nearly everything from the first act break on is a metaphor.
The Social Network
No more need be said than this: a movie that not four months ago I thought of on a level with Ridley Scott's rumored adaptation of Monopoly, I know think is the best studio picture since . . . fuck, I don't know. Best in years. For a movie that's so heavily fictionalized, it has an amazing sense of this time and place, the modern age. More here.
And, finally, the #1 . . . drum roll . . .
Winter's Bone
Give Debra Granik what she needs. And get the fuck out of her way. She's one of the best directors in the world right now. And let's see what we can do about making sure Jennifer Lawrence doesn't have to do fucking comic book movies, shall we? I know Matthew “Kick-Ass” Vaughn is directing that X-Men thing she's in next, and he's awesome, but I don't want any fucking around with an actor this good. Jennifer Lawrence HAS IT. Give her roles where she can act. I know this is asking a lot (Gender equity? Crazy talk), but let's give it a try.
Well, that's it. Angry comments about shit I “forgot” are always welcome. Happy New Year, everyone!
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