Top Ten of 2010

Everyone else has weighed in their favorites, now I secure enough to reveal my own.  2010 was an interesting year cinematically, one in each I feel there was more films that came out that I admired and appreciated than usual, but fewer that I out and out loved.  Was it a good year?  I hesitantly say yes, but more caustically say it was business as usual:

#11 Winter's Bone- the doomed runner-up slot that I feel inclined to give a film of such enormous strengths.  Director Debra Granik crafted a flick of such mood and authenticity and specificity that I feel ashamed it's not on my Top Ten list proper.  Jennifer Lawrence's steadfast and strong performance rightfully made the headlines, but there was so much richness beyond that in the beautiful technician of this indie Ozark drama, with the wonderful ensemble (Oscar nominated John Hawkes, Dale Dickey and a standout cast of actors, both professional and not), beautifully cinematography, and tight and lean editing.  This surely was not a weird, insular Sundance sensation, but a striking and haunting film noir to be savored for a long time to come.
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10) I Love You Phillip Morris- an utterly sublime mixture of the sweet and obscene from the screenwriters of Bad Santa.  The feel good prison gay sex comedy of the year, even though it's been crackling around since Sundance 2009.  Starring Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor as men who fall in love in jail; it's the most outrageous story of the year-- the fact that it's based on truth only adds to the absurdity.  What's most striking is Carrey's performance, likely his best ever, one that mixes his goofy comical id with a libido; he get's to let loose in the most satisfying fashion, but focused on one main function: the guy is in love, and the sweetly baby-faced McGregor makes it even more palpable.  Bonus points are given for it's transgressive quality in tweaking the cliches of queer cinema in general.
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9) Blue Valentine- the most awesome acting duet of the year was done by Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams, whose fully-formed, raw performances recalled that chemistry in the cinema can never be manufactured, it's either there or not.  Their cinematic dance must be acknowledged for the ages to come; he yings to her yang.  That writer\director Derek Cianfrance had the courage to let his actors loose must be considered potentially the best decision made from any film in 2010.  It results in an intense, emotionally experience of falling in love, as well as falling out it, made beautifully realized by actors in full control of craft, yet comfortable enough to let it all hang out and let us grasp and awe in amazement of it all.  The hauntingly sweet scene of Gosling's Dean serenading William's Cindy is one of the best moments of the year.
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8) 127 Hours- a one man show to be sure, but it's one is the newfound jack of all trades James Franco, hanging on by a thread...or in this case by an arm.  This one man survival tale, thanks to the enormous visceral talent of director Danny Boyle, and cinematographer\poet Anthony Dod Mantle, made for one of the compelling films of 2010.  We know what happens, and yet, being held up with Franco's Aron Ralstom is one of the tightest and most exhilarating experiences I've spent in a theater all year.  We are bound to him, and yet the vigor and sense of life that this thrill seeking young man has is hopeful and honest.  Is it better to live without a safety net, and face uncertain consequences, or one drab and without a sense of adventure.  Franco's eerily honest "morning show" breakdown would've secured an Oscar nomination in my book...it's one of the best scenes of the year!
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7) Scott Pilgrim vs. the World- the best video game\comic book\romantic comedy ever made...Edgar Wright's generous and loving adaptation of the idiosyncratic comic is perhaps the sweetest, and most unjustly unheralded film of 2010.  All the geek love that stormed out of Comic-Com couldn't make this a financial hit, but I have a feeling that history will be kind to this genre-spewing, altogether infection movie.  Starring Michael Cera as the titular Scott Pilgrim and his developing relationship with the girl of his dreams, manages to make a million references without losing it own identity, as well as having a fun visual style all it's own, whilst never failing with the characters-- even the most minute of which have a soul and identity of their own.  Scott Pilgrim-- I lesbian you!
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6) Inception- the fanboys will forever protest, why can't Christopher Nolan ever get respect from the Academy.  In all honesty I don't care-- he's the most commercially successful director of our age that continually brings out awesome and challenging filmmaking.  That a crazy meta-idea of a film trapped inside a dream of a dream of a dream can be bankable and conversed about for the ages is enough for me.  What's most striking is not the visually fancy at play here (we already know Nolan is an indelible craftsman) but an emotional cord that hasn't never really been developed before.  This is first and foremost a love story, with a frazzled and bruised Leonardo DiCaprio too deeply entwined with his own grief and nonsense regarding with wife (played with exquisite expressiveness by Marion Cottilard) to move forward.  It's a step forward for original brave big-studio filmmaking, but a bigger step forward for Nolan.
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5) Inside Job- the most frightening film of the year.  Scarier than any horror film; more incendiary than the most provocative of filmmakers.  Charles Ferguson (helmer of No End in Sight, the best film, narrative or otherwise about Iraq ever) tackles the economic crisis with such clarity, common sense, and bewilderment, it's a shock that no one was able to stop it way before it began.  Ferguson is the anti-Michael Moore-- he attacks on an intellectual level, with minimal showmanship; the facts should be the most jarring thing.  And it's in this clarity, that he's crafted a no-nonsense documentary for the ages.  He's mad as hell and not going to take it anymore...we should all follow.
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4) The Kids Are All Right- the most generously written and acted comedy\drama of the year.  Helmer Lisa Cholodenko, along with co-writer Stuart Blumsberg, and actors Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Josh Hutchinson and Mia Wasikowsa breathe fresh light into this joyous and delightful film of social mores.  Bening and Moore play a married couple with two kids, whose lives are changed by the entrance of the sperm donor who made their happy family possible.  What sounds like a high concept mess, is by turns the most humane and funny and real film of the year.  A family that feels fresh by universal, without any sort of treatise of homosexual\heterosexual commentary.  This isn't an unorthodox family, but any family, every family.  Chug your red wine Bening!
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3) Toy Story 3- the Pixar magic continues, this time continuing and closing the chapter on their first and most triumphant.  Fifteen years of fan love and nostalgia may have paved the way for this one, but the wizards and masterly craftsmen at the most reliable studio in Hollywood know that isn't enough to make a film click.  What transpires is one of the emotionally moviegoing experiences of the year.  I freely admit I bawled within minutes of the films start, rejoiced several times in the middle, due to it's wit and invention, only to bawl buckets near the close.  Woody and Buzz are two of the most indelible characters of the last twenty years of filmmaking, yet the visionaries in charge never rest on their laurels, and found new ways in making us, their bountiful audience, embrace them.  One of the few great trilogies of all time comes to an end.
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2) The Social Network- at the risk of sounding boring, or too much of a follower, one of the best qualities of David Fincher's maxim opus is the strong, totally in-synch ensemble.  Jesse Eisenberg rightfully earned an Oscar nomination, but Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake and Rooney Mara, along with the insanely talented supporting players are deserve credit for bringing with film to life.  It feels epic all most, until you stop and think about it's subject.  The creation of Facebook doesn't deserve nearly as awesome a film to tell it's tale.  Of course, the Fincher's masterful overall achievement is nothing but spectacular-- that a film that is essentially a talky drama is so monumentally thrilling to watch on a technical level is insane, and Aaron Sorkin's script is the most intelligent, gripping to come along in a long while-- this is the perfect vehicle for him, he should continue to only write for over-caffeinated college students.  Possibly one of the few films of 2010 that will be analyzed, dissected, and debated long after all of are dead, and with good reason.
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1) Black Swan- from the moment I saw Darren Aronofsky's ballet freak-out horror movie, I knew I had seen something special.  I wasn't sure what just yet, but that the film crept up into my dreams made me acutely aware I'd something that stirred me.  Further viewings confirms that this a truly heady piece of cinema.  Tense, frustrating, perhaps even infuriating, but also incredibly moving.  Nina Sayers just wants to be perfect...in the end she succeeds, but only because Aronofsky, the writers, technicians, and it's star Natalie Portman made her perfect!