If you read one post this year....read this.
Ever since I forged my first list in 2002 (handwritten and illegible, with the Count of Monte Cristo coming out on top), one of my greatest and most pathetic pleasures has been the end-of-year ranking of and reflecting upon the films that came into being over the past 12 months. These year is no different, but, before I start with the orgiastic overpraise, I've got one last sentimental nugget for the year that will soon be "last year". It was my first full year of blogging, and, looking back, either my writing improved considerably or my standards for myself have lowered incalculably. Though I'd keep watching and writing about the movies even if I was trapped in an Alaskan teepee with a faulty wireless and no friends, the fact is that its you, faithful nation of readers, the instill in me the drive to do more betterer. How? By simply reading. Thank you. Also, since I'm fairly good friends with damn near everyone who reads this, I'd like to offer my immeasurable thanks for your compassion, loyalty, and, most of all, patience. It's a year that's been rough and rewarding in equal measure, but, thanks to you guys, I felt loved every step of the way. Barbra said it best; "May all your storms be weathered, and all that's good get better." I love you all! Happy New Year.
(Halloween 2010. Alvy Singer.)
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Roger Ebert summed it up best-"it was not a great year for films, but many great films were released." Instead of the deluge of minor masterworks we've had over the past few years, this was a year of almost constant mediocrity, coupled with a few MAJOR heavy-hitters. I'd consider my top 3 choices to be flat-out classics, worthy of the very best TCM marathons. In short, the bad was abundant, but the good was so good that it damn near made it worth enduring all the the shite. And so, without further ado, Cinema Extravaganza 2010....or, the official title;
THE ANNUAL END OF DECEMBER CINEMA EXTRAVAGANZA THAT I EAGERLY AWAIT ALL YEAR INSTEAD OF DOING SOMETHING ATTRACTIVE, PRODUCTIVE, OR SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BYAAAAAAA!!!
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THE BEST FILMS OF 2010:
Runner Up: The Book of Eli
With The Matrix movies in the rearview mirror as the new cinematic decade dawned, we desperately needed a new studio film to shoot us through with adrenaline while serving up a hearty feast for our craniums. The Hughes Brothers, making a slam-bang return after a decade-long hiatus, provided one with this exhilarating ass-whup marathon that doubles as a serious examination of religious corruption. As Denzel Washington's titular character guards the last copy of the Bible on a journey through a brilliantly rendered, contagiously ominous nuclear wasteland, we come to understand the truly dangerous power of misbegotten faith, a concept all too relevant to our Tea Party reality. Before the credits roll there's a possible set-up for a sequel, and for once, I say bring it on.
10. Scott PIlgrim vs. the World
It came off as a guilty pleasure in the trailers, but, to paraphrase Queen Babs, nothin' to be guilty of here; this one's a masterpiece of craft, an invigorating entertainment that tweaks the conventions of event pics while getting you hooked on its Pixie-Stick energy. Michael Cera's turn as a Canadian mensch whose new GF comes with some sword-toting, grudge-bearing baggage centers the film and gives it just the right touch of earnest soulfulness, and, behind the camera, director Edgar Wright matches his boffo work on Shaun of the Dead. Cheeky references to video games, indie bands, and 00's trends abound, but what pumps through this one's veins is an unbridled love of the movies. Plus, it's got the best line of the year by far; "He punched the highlights out of her hair!"
9. 127 Hours
Danny Boyle is as good a manipulator of space as we've ever had work a camera; the guy can make the inside of a toilet into an endless underworld, and an expansive Juhu slum into a straitjacket; thus, the guy was the perfect choice for this true-story thriller about Aron Ralston (James Franco), a hiker forced to cut off his own arm when pinned to the bottom of a crevice by a stray boulder. He conveys the claustrophobia of Aron's cloistered quarters, but also invents wildly evocative imagery to display the emotional expansiveness of his hero's thought process. Franco expertly conveys the complexities of a man in the process of stripping away his own hubris, and Boyle's two ace cinematographers capture the beauty and terror of his surroundings; this is a giant, graceful trust fall between actor and director. As for those ripping the picture because it provides only sideways glances at Mr. Ralston's life prior to the incident, I fart in their general direction; this movie is in no way a biography, but instead something a hundred times more original...a study of what drives the human mind to produce such tremendous amounts of courage.
8. The King's Speech
"Broadly speaking, short words are best, and the old words, when short, are best of all", Winston Churchill once said. I think he'd be proud, then, of this efficient, crowd-pleasing chronicle of his compatriots, which takes a series of simple, done-and-done-again plot points and relays them to us with such consummate sincerity that we feel as if we're seeing them for the first time. Tom Hooper triumphantly told the story of Queen Elizabeth I in one of my favorite television mini-series of all time, and he brings the same attention to detail and utter lack of pretension to the proceedings here. Despite the sturdy ensemble and embarrassment of technical riches, what really makes The King's Speech tick are the scenes between Colin Firth's Duke of York and Geoffrey Rush's Lionel Logue, the Australian actor who helps him undo his speech impediment; their precisely tuned, deeply felt duet is a how-to exhibit for aspiring performers everywhere.
7.The Ghost Writer
After years at work on a succession of solid period dramas, the legendary Roman Polanski is back in thriller mode, but his years in across-the-pond exile have caused him to alter his directorial tone; out is the flickering-neon American seediness evident in Chinatown, and in is a distinctly European shade of gloomy ennui. But it's a change that works wonders for this phenomenally told tale of a biographer (Ewan McGregor) encountering a good deal more trouble than he expected when he signs on to ghost-author the biographer of a controversial politico (Pierce Brosnan, absolutely on fire here). Blending neo-noir with character study, and placing considerable emphasis on the particulars of his dreary setting, the director keeps us so fascinated with the constantly shifting geographical and emotional surroundings that we don't even notice the rug being carefully pulled out from under us; like the motorcyclist that mugs McGregor in the knockout opening minutes of the movie, this one sneaks up on you. Put Polanski's brush with arrest earlier this year out of your mind when experiencing The Ghost Writer, and you'll find an excellent piece of work from a man exhilarated by his artistic freedom.
6.The Social Network
I mean, what can be said about this one that hasn't already been said? Or that I haven't said in my drooling prior post a few months ago? Suffice to say that David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin have taken a single topic and expanded it to encompass our entire modern world, creating a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions and filling it with a cast of across-the-board dynamite soon-to-be-stars. A masterful exploration of who we are and what we are up to in our post-Y2K years.
5. Tiny Furniture
A spiritual successor to The Graduate, imbued with dialogue sharp enough to give Tina Fey an orgasm, this sterling indie flawlessly captures the feeling of interior inertia you get during those sprawled-out, in-between stretches of life. In a world where low-budget films tend to be cutesy exercises in mumblecore narcissism, first-time writer/director Lena Dunham startles with her frankness, particularly in her astoundingly astute rendering of a frayed mother-child dynamic. In her debut, she displays an uncanny cameraman's eye, a poet's ear, and the ceaselessly compassionate heart of a true artist. I didn't trumpet another film harder this year, and I'm proud to say that's the case.
4.Toy Story 3
Don't shank me, but, I think, in our desperation to find quality entertainment in the dog days of perhaps the worst May in movie history, we hailed a helluva cinematic good samaritan as the Messiah. With a repeat viewing, it becomes apparent that TS3 is not quite as good as the first picture, but it's better than the second, and Pixar more than delivers on the glorious promise of emotional maturity and intellectual incisiveness that they made with Up. Slyly playing on our innate connection to toys (hell, to these toys), the picture uses the guise of a fiendishly entertaining prison-break plot to explore the theme of saying goodbye to childhood. By providing a definitive ending to one of the definitive series of our time, Lee Unkrich, John Lasseter and co. remind us of the cathartic value of closure in both our moviegoing and homemaking lives; they also ensure that a generation of kids will be taking as many toys to college as possible.
3. The Fighter
In my life, I have loved exactly three sports films; Hoosiers, Any Given Sunday, and now this stirring smash about a a Boston boxer (Mark Wahlberg) torn between his domineering family and a shot at in-the-ring gold. These movies don't transcend the stereotypes of the genre; they make them irrelevant by putting the focus on the players, not the game, so that by the end we don't just want these people to win one bout; we want them to be happy and healthy for all eternity. David O. Russell has created a layered, lacerating depiction of a twisted, toxically prideful family, while not denying us the snap-crackle-pop electricity of a few damn good fight scenes; he's made a boxing picture that's less about battered bones and more about bruised souls. A flawless, fiercely talented cast sinks their teeth into a feast prepared by a cinematic master chef, and the result is a mainstream marvel for which the word "visceral" was invented.
2. Rabbit Hole
Loss is different for every family, and for every member of that family; it's a simple message, butRabbit Hole relays it with such raw, testifying power that it feels like a tear-stained epiphany. David Lindsay-Abaire has brought his stage drama of the same name (one of my personal favorites) to the screen with none of the typical boxed-in, teleplay feel you often get from adaptations, and John Cameron Mitchell of Hedwig and the Angry Inch fame does a tonal 360, displaying a heretofore unseen knack for shaping serious performances and manipulating a camera with unforced grace. The genius of the picture is its understanding that grief, in any capacity, isn't tidy; instead of using the theme of death as a clothesline on which to hang a plot, it presents us with a series of piercing, vivid, often darkly funny vignettes that probe the mysteries of the human psyche while engaging in an unsentimental celebration of its incomparable strength. As a husband and wife grieving over the four-year-old they lost in a freak accident, Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart, both giving the best and most unaffected performances of their entire careers, anchor the film beautifully, while Dianne Wiest makes a welcome comeback as Kidman's lush of a mother, and Miles Teller breathes a resonant vitality into the demanding role of the teenager who caused the fatal incident. This is a shining example of cinema fulfilling its highest purpose, using all the visual, aural, and emotional resources at its disposal to forge a passionate inquiry into issues that really matter; more to the point, this is probably the best movie ever made about the loss of a child.
And my pick for the BEST FILM OF 2010
is....
is.....
ISSSSSSSSSSS....................
1. Inception
When The Dark Knight hit theaters, it was Woodstock, it was the Super Bowl, it was an all-stops-out event that rode a wave of deafening critical and commercial hosannas all the way to the bank. Looking back, it's not the film we thought it was, and that's not an insult--it's still probably the best superhero film ever made, but those who hailed it as a psychodrama, character study, or post-9-11 parable simply got a bit too excited; the psychological theories bandied about here are well-known to a high schooler, the characters are more or less commendably well-drawncaricatures, and just because the film plugged into America's zeitgeist doesn't mean it diagrammed the country's angst. In short, TDK remains a damn good piece of inventive popcorn entertainment, but I think within a few months we all knew we'd overhyped it just a bit. Inceptionhad the opposite effect; in the minds of many (including this wannabe Yid-critic), it mushroomed from a gotta-see-it-twice hot-months phenom into a bona fide masterpiece that stands as the best science fiction film made in my lifetime.
Christopher Nolan should be lauded for creating a dazzlingly intricate maze the likes of which we've never seen on screen before, but his true triumph lies in creating a string of fully imagined, thrillingly complex characters to comprise his team of dream-thieves; the massive labyrinth of the plot would amount to nothing if we weren't presented with people whom we were willing to follow through it. Make no mistake about it; while the film shines in every regard, from the flawless performances (DiCaprio and Marion Cotillard deserve Oscar attention they sadly won't get) to the seamless special effects, this is Nolan's victory. He's effortlessly straddled the line between bang-bang pulp and thinking-man's prestige, providing an extremely well-done popcorn picture for those who just want their adrenaline fix, and a truly compelling allegory for those who'd like to get their brains into the game, too.
The fact is, when you peel away the bajillions of different dream levels and the fun-house mirror streets and the totems and the Edith Piaf song and the zero-gravity fights, Inception is really about the cinema itself. Filmmakers, much like Dom Cobb and his dream thieves, have the dangerous ability to plant ideas in our heads-through their work, they can exaggerate fantasies about getting the girl, further inflame pre-existing prejudices about beliefs, cultures, and events, or even, in some cases, start entirely new social networks, be they protest groups or midnight-movie clubs.
It's an action movie by Fellini, a philosophical manifesto by John Woo. Ah, fuck the comparisons. It's in a category all too itself. A crackingly good event movie, an accomplished feat of storytelling, an expedition into our intellect, the proof positive that Christopher Nolan will be one of the iconic auteurs of the new millennium, and a cautionary tale that reminds artists of the remarkable power and responsibility that comes with being granted unconditional access to our dreams. BRAAAAAAAAAAAHM!!!!
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Performances of the Year:
Female:
Lead: Hye-Ja Kim, Mother-If 2009 was the year of comedy warhorses like Mo'nique and Sandra Bullock trading wish-upon-a-star escapism for raw (or, in Bullock's case, "raw") naturalism, 2010 found actresses respected for their restraint diving into their inner diva for a series of galvanizing, highly dramatic performances that played like berserk but intricately choreographed tightrope dances, with the dancer never too far away from the precarious flaming pit of parody. Halle Berry, Natalie Portman and Jacki Weaver all hit grand-slams with their unflinching portrayals of women on the verge, but for me, this years standout in the seemingly never-ending parade of dauntless dames was Hye Ja-kim, South Korea's favorite leading lady and star of Boon Jong-Ho's Mother. As the mother of a mentally retarded boy framed for a rare murder in a quiet Korean province, Ja-Kim singlehandedly carries a film often in danger of collapsing under the weight of its self-imposed avant-garde wonkiness. Initially off-putting in its bruising bluntness, the complexity-and, indeed, the genius-of this performance reveals itself as the plot thickens, and by the end of the film we come to know this woman, and to understand her tragedy; the abundance of love that runs through her veins does so not as a virtue, but as a venom.
Supporting: Melissa Leo, The Fighter-Take off your hats folks, and pay your respects to the most underrated actress working in Hollywood today. After years of dynamite work in cable TV (Treme) and indie cinema (Confess, Frozen River), she broke into the mainstream this year with an indelibly truthful, uninhibited performance as the aggressively domineering mother-manager of two Beantown boxers. She takes an often unforgivably barbarous woman and makes us fear, hate, pity, and understand her all at once, showing us buried reserves of jealousy and desperation without ever explaining her actions verbally; rarely have a pair of eyes said so much. Leo: A fitting surname for a woman whose feral intensity, unwavering self-possession, and guileless emotional honesty have catapulted her to commercial success at last, and had damn well better send her to the Kodak stage this Oscar season.
Male:
Lead: Jesse Eisenberg,The Social Network-Portraying detachment ain't easy. You have to give off the impression of a person who's constructed a dam around their soul, yet also convey to us the magnitude of what's building up behind it. Eisenberg finds just the right note of icy dissonance here, firing shrapnel from the corners of his slackened mouth, but letting hangdog hurt and childish neediness leak out of his eyes. In its very lack of hugeness, it is monumental.
Supporting: Christian Bale, The Fighter-Ever since his apocalyptic Terminator freak-out, we all knew there was a volcanic mania in Bale, waiting patiently to erupt; here, playing a washed-up pugilist and cocaine addict, he puts his inbred craziness to work, exuding a nervous energy that really sears the screen. This is such a committed, crackling portrayal that you half-expect the character to be panhandling on the street when you walk out of the theatre. It's a performance that hinges around the infinite subtleties of human body language; when his character experiences a major epiphany, notice how he responds not with words, but with movement, and how that movement is so clear and certain and true that it's as if he'd just let loose with a five-page monologue. There's no surer thing at the Oscars this year.
Director:
Danny Boyle, 127 Hours-Most films seem made; Danny Boyle's work appears to spontaneously spew out from the depths of his giddy, unchained imagination, rarely moreso than in his latest creative output. While his qualifications are perfect for adapting the Aron Ralston story, what helps him bring a possibly cliche incident successfully to the silver screen is what he lacks: any hint of lugubriousness or self-consciousness, and a fear of substantial risk-taking.
Cinematographer:
Matthew Libatique, Black Swan-Ever since Requiem For A Dream, Darren Aronofsky's been fascinated with the demands the human psyche impinges on the body in its ill-advised quest for perfection, and here, ace lenser Libatique mounts of army of handheld cameras to serve his director's vision. Diving, ducking, and bobbing around the dancers with the kind of wiry intensity generally reserved for action pictures, he reminds us that, while ballet is all lotus-blossom grace on the outside, it's also an internal inferno, with each stretch of the ligament and arch of the bone nothing less than a small, hard-won miracle.
Score:
Trent Reznor, The Social Network-Steiner and Tiomkin would roll over in their graves if they heard these cuts, all heavy on electronic instrumentation and light on propulsive dramatic energy. But, in the context of the movie, Reznor's work, especially the spare, six-note piano melody that serves as the movie's central motif, is just right; brilliant, beautiful, sad, and slightly removed...just like The Social Network's haunted, haunting anti-hero.
Screenplay:
Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network-Yes, there's an unusual verbal fecundity to be found in this screenplay-you almost wonder if the characters have to speak so fast so that they can fit all these great lines in-but the screenwriter never once mistakes quantity for quality, letting loose when needed but also well aware of the infinite value of silence and simplicity; for me, the most affecting, unforgettable line in the picture is a mere two words long; "It's raining." Because of Sorkin's conductor's sense of energy, tension, noise, release, rhythm and motion, this line, and every other one big or small, sings.
Filmic Fails:
Alice in Wonderland-This joins Nine and the last two Ocean's flicks as one of the great missed opportunities of the new millennium. But while those movies sputtered shamefully to the finish line by making use of their few precious joules of star wattage, this shoulda-been-great melding of Lewis Caroll and Tim Burton's psycho psyches is dead in the water from scene one, thanks to its oppressively gloomy production design, half-assed attempts at Narnia-esque sword n' shield banging, and shockingly dim-witted script, which strips the story of all its ubiquitous prepubescent awe by warping the titular character into a sexually frustrated, chronically whiny china-doll teen. Day by day I hate it more, so much so that I wrote a detailed deconstruction of the thing as one of my college essays.
I Am Love-Look up pretension in the dictionary and you'll find either some pictures of certain people from my synagogue or the post for this arsty-fartsy mess. Best known around Hollywood as Tilda Swinton's pet project (she produces and stars), I Am Love makes an appallingly shabby attempt to camouflage a soapy wreck of a story (woman discovers daughter is a lesbian, starts experimenting herself) with ardently extravagant photography, ritzy wardrobes, and the most obnoxious music this side of Bjork's worst releases. At least in between the almost comically random lingering shots of food, facial expressions, furniture, shop windows, and foliage, the filmmakers manage to sprinkle in a couple of lengthy sex scenes; incompetently photographed, yes, but they keep you awake.
2, 4, 6, 8, This Is How We Overrate:
The Kids Are All Right-Look, I have absolutely nothing against homosexuality-Jesus, this is the guy who picked Brokeback Mountain as the best film of the past 10 years! But I'm no fan of this wife-and-wife domestic dramedy; here's a film that takes slightly above average material, salts it with liberal doses of topicality, and then demands that we love it. The cast is uniformly strong (Bening's radiant lionness-in-early-winter work indeed merits a little awards attention), but whatever work they do is in service of a fundamentally flawed script; for two hours, the movie hammers home the legitimate but ball-numbingly obvious message that same-sex partners deal with marital strife, too. The kids are all right, I suppose, but, in this case, the buzz is all wrong.
Never Let Me Go-A true disappointment for a Mark Romanek fan like myself, this underwritten and overdirected sci-fi adaptation about three youngsters swapping beds and shedding tears in the aftermath of a life-limiting, world-widening discovery slathers author Kazuo Ishiguro's simple prose with a generous and wholly unnecessary glaze of arthouse pretension; too often this picture uses ambient music and designed to the nth-degree camera angles to disguise gaping holes in character development and simple logic. Only Carey Mulligan prevails, taking the few grace notes afforded her in the role and whipping up a virtuoso's symphony of keening loneliness and hot-blooded confusion; too little, too late.
Won't You Please Remember Me?:
It's Kind of A Funny Story-Cliches are a bit like Liza Minelli; marry them to the right people and they can really work. In that vein, any wrung-out platitude or fatigued plot point should plotz with gratitude to land in the able hands of Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden, who have speedily established a solid reputation for successfully making the old new again, and do so once again with this refreshingly unprepossessing chronicle of blossoming teen-luv in an asylum. Everything from the performances to the score to the look of the thing is pleasingly understated yet carefully designed, and even if the darker aspects of the story are occasionally subject to some unsavory PG-13-ification, the emotions that are on display are as real as it gets.
Poster of the Year
Trend of the Year: Leo's Relationship Fails (SPOILERFEST!)
Let us recount; after marrying a manic depressive mess in 2008's Revolutionary Road, he got hitched to a deranged child-killer in Shutter Island, followed by a suicidal dream-temptress inInception. At least he outlived his beloveds in his most recent go-rounds-remember, Jack Dawson wasn't so lucky. Plus, things are looking up for L-D-Cap. As the titular character in The Great Gatsby, he finally nets his true love....oh....wait.....
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Questions? Comments? Fury that Burlesque didn't make an appearance on my list? Comment away. Hell, make a list of your own. Sayonara, my friends. And onward to 2011!
