What a down year 2010 turned out to be at the movies. Hollywood hoped it would be the year of 3D but unfortunately it will go down as the year of unnecessary 3D. In a lot of big movies it seemed there was even less of an effort to tell a story than usual. Instead, studios relied on the 3D surcharge to boost box office numbers. In the end 2010 ($10.57 billion) was in fact the 2nd highest grossing year ever behind only 2009 ($10.6 billion) but attendance was the lowest since 1995. People not going to the movies is not a good thing. Especially when I’m one of them. I only saw 74 movies in theaters last year. Hopefully 2011 is much busier.
Here are my ten favorite movies of 2010:
10. SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD
IMDb: Scott Pilgrim must defeat his new girlfriend’s seven evil exes in order to win her heart.
Edgar Wright does to 16-bit video games what he did to zombie movies and action movies in SHAUN OF THE DEAD and HOT FUZZ.
Michael Cera is least like the Michael Cera default character in that he fights back when challenged. When he does revert to neutral he is surrounded by enough colorful characters, video game and action movie gimmicks, and self-referential silliness that the movie never loses any of its charm.
9. BLACK SWAN
IMDb: A ballet dancer wins the lead in “Swan Lake” and is perfect for the role of the delicate White Swan, but slowly loses her mind as she becomes more and more like the evil twin sister of the White Swan, the Black Swan.
This is two movies in a row for Darren Aronofsky in which there is a perfect match between actor and character. Mickey Rourke and THE WRESTLER came together at just the right time and now Natalie Portman finds this role as her career hits a major surge.
The story of a ballerina struggling to find her identity on stage parallels Portman’s. Playing fragile and vulnerable has never been a problem but the opportunity to play more well-rounded characters wasn’t there before this movie. Hopefully her career doesn’t peak with NO STRINGS ATTACHED.
8. THE TOWN
IMDb: As he plans his next job, a longtime thief tries to balance his feelings for a bank manager connected to one of his earlier heists, as well as the FBI agent looking to bring him and his crew down.
The second best heist movie co-starring Pete Postlethwaite of the year. This one though doesn’t involve dreams, it’s a straight-forward tale of bank robbers and the FBI agent determined to bring them down.
Ben Affleck pulls triple duty (director, co-writer, and star) and he excels at all three. The direction is sharp and the screenplay points to something more than just four criminals trying to evade the police. It’s about one man trying to evade the circumstances that created him and his friends in the first place. Affleck, the actor, is wonderful at navigating the line between the criminal world with Jeremy Renner and the civilized world with Rebecca Hall. Jon Hamm’s awesomeness speaks for itself.
7. THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO
IMDb: A journalist is aided in his search for a woman who has been missing — or dead — for forty years by a young female hacker.
Technically a 2009 movie, it was released in North America in 2010.
When it comes to crime fiction, cold cases are interesting to me for two reasons. One, the corrosive effects of time make solving the mystery monumentally difficult. Two, there’s a sense of futility in that, even if solved, there is no undoing the grief that has persisted for, in this instance, forty years. The seemingly incongruous pair charged with finding the answers and their own personal histories that they bring to the table make the story all the more fascinating.
6. TRUE GRIT
IMDb: A tough U.S. Marshal helps a stubborn young woman track down her father’s murderer.
Hailee Steinfeld has received a lot of acclaim as a supporting actress which is very strange because it is by every conceivable measure a lead performance. She carries the first half of the film by herself trading horses with Colonel Stonehill, putting up with the landlady’s snoring, and matching verbal jabs with La Boeuf. Even when she and Rooster Cogburn embark on their journey they share the screen as equals.
Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, and cinematographer Roger Deakins are great as usual.
5. HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 1
IMDb: As Harry races against time and evil to destroy the Horcruxes, he uncovers the existence of three most powerful objects in the wizarding world: the Deathly Hallows.
For the first time in the film series, characters built for adventure are allowed to go on one.
Without the safety net of Hogwarts there is a sense of peril for the young wizards that hasn’t been there before. Also unlike the previous films, the story is not dependent on magic, it uses magic to enhance what’s already there. The result is that this movie has the biggest and also the most intimate moments in the entire series and it certainly feels like it’s building to something grand in Part 2.
4. THE FIGHTER
IMDb: A look at the early years of boxer “Irish” Micky Ward and his brother who helped train him before going pro in the mid 1980s.
The unsung heroes of this movie are Micky Ward’s sisters. Christian Bale, Melissa Leo, and Amy Adams are magnificent and Mark Wahlberg is the stoic center around which they can revolve but it’s the sisters that create a feeling of menace in Micky’s home life. Like a pack of wolves they stare down Charlene as she goads Micky into making his own decisions. Those scenes don’t work without them and it’s where Micky does his best fighting.
3. TOY STORY 3
IMDb: The toys are mistakenly delivered to a day-care center instead of the attic right before Andy leaves for college, and it’s up to Woody to convince the other toys that they weren’t abandoned and to return home.
TOY STORY 2 defiantly states that toys are meant to be played with. If TOY STORY 3 is to remain true to its predecessors then grown-up Andy has a dilemma. Keeping the toys out of sentimentality is not an option. Neither is storing the toys in the attic until he has kids of his own. Either the toys are to be given away or they must be allowed to enter the void beyond this realm of existence. As you would expect from Pixar, this dilemma is resolved maturely with genuine reflection from both Andy and the beloved toys.
That’s not why the movie is this high on the list though. TOY STORY 3 is a classic escape film and the genre’s motifs are displayed proudly.
2. INCEPTION
IMDb: In a world where technology exists to enter the human mind through dream invasion, a highly skilled thief is given a final chance at redemption which involves executing his toughest job to date: Inception.
It’s rare for a director to have this much freedom on a movie of this scale. In this instance it took the success of THE DARK KNIGHT for Christopher Nolan to be able to make his long gestating project about dream invasion.
The foundation of the movie is the love story but the impetus for the plot is a straight-up heist. Dom Cobb assembles his team, they make their plan, and improvise when the plan falters. Most of the 2nd half of the movie is the execution of this plan through a three-tiered dreamscape. Each layer is distinct enough to not confuse the audience and the editing is sublime as all three layers play out simultaneously. It’s the most riveting sequence in a Hollywood blockbuster in years.
1. THE SOCIAL NETWORK
IMDb: A chronicle of the founding of Facebook, the social-networking Web site.
It takes a group of people this talented to turn a series of depositions into a movie with this much vitality.
David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin have this skill in common: efficiency. Every frame and every line of dialogue carries so much information that what could have been a tedious legal drama is instead a nuanced, character-driven thriller. The bow that ties it together is the score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross which infuses the movie with a cool meditative edge teeming under the surface.
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Box office data from Box Office Mojo.
Movie synopses from IMDb.
Rajan Kumar 