Best films of 2010

[Chris L]

I know these lists are kind of redundant by this point, and I always have to wait to see most of this stuff on my own dime, but we nerds cannot abdicate our duty.  At least a couple of these are 2009 titles I had no chance to see until this year, or in the case of #1, a 2011 film I caught at a festival screening.

1. Certified Copy
2. The White Ribbon
3. Mother
4. The Oath
5. Exit Through the Gift Shop
6. True Grit
7. The Social Network
8. Winter’s Bone
9. A Prophet
10. Inception - I'm on board with Nolan's universe of magical banality.  Check out brilliant Twitterer george lazenby's interpretation of this film as a metaphor for huge-scale blockbuster moviemaking

Least favorite:
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.  Wildly unpopular choice, I'm sure. Like watching someone play a video game you have no interest in.  Unfunny (aside from a couple of puns), sort-of-offensive, and featuring a largely charisma-free cast.  Edgar Wright, you used to be amusing.

Least favorite runner-up: Shutter Island, although it might be entertaining to imagine a version told from the hospital staff's perspective.

Oh, and here are my favorite TV episodes:
1. Breaking Bad - One Minute
2. Breaking Bad - Half-Measures
3. Community - Modern Warfare
4. Louie - God
5. Louie - Bully

[jbissell]

This is the first year in a long time where I saw very little current releases in the theater, mostly a lot of revivals (best of which was an assortment of Kurosawa). Of those on your list, I've only seen The White Ribbon (excellent) and Inception (liked it, but it will have been a very so-so year if it's in my top 10). I plan on catching up with the rest since I have the next week off.

Toy Story 3 is the best I've seen so far and I'm pretty sure it would be in my top 5 even after I see a bunch of others. Most of the other films I saw either failed to live up to expectations (Black Swan, Jackass 3D) or were entertaining but flawed (Piranha 3D, MacGruber, The Other Guys). The Joan Rivers doc was a pleasant surprise.

[Martin]

I don't have a top ten yet. As a true OCD film nerd my top ten probably won't be finished until March-April or something, when I've seen everything I want and/or need to see. Things like: The King's Speech, the Joan Rivers doc, Certified Copy, Never Let Me Go, Alamar, Everyone Else, The Fighter, True Grit, Uncle Boonmee, The Illusionist, Black Swan, Inside Job, I Am Love, Another Year, Of Gods and Men, Jackass 3D, The Oath, a couple of Swedish ones...

(Also I go strictly by IMDB dates, so White Ribbon, Mother, Prophet etc are all 2009 for me.)

These will probably be on my list:

Les amours imaginaires (Xavier Dolan)
Carlos (Olivier Assayas)
Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy)
Four Lions (Chris Morris)
Winter's Bone (Debra Granik)

But of those five, only the last three are locked. This has been a weak year for films, for me. I've seen 68 films from 2010 so far. Most of them have been terrible.

In the meantime, some interesting reads:

Metacritic's roundup of the top films of the year

Roger Ebert's best films of the year

[Chris L]

The Ghost Writer is a solid evening's entertainment but I don't quite see why it's doing so well in that metacritic list (Slant also had it at #2). I guess maybe that's a symptom of a weak year.  Also, sorry to bring up Polanski's "legal trouble" again, but I thought it was funny seeing him direct a film that scolded Blair and Bush.  Thanks for the "help," Roman.

Carlos was my most-regretted miss; it only played here for four days over Thanksgiving weekend when I was out of town.  Also have high hopes Dogtooth and Inside Job.

[Omar]

The best filmed work of 2010: Breaking Bad season 3.

I liked these feature films to varying degrees (2010 was probably the worst year ever for cinema):

Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy)
True Grit (Coens)
Catfish (Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman)
Life During Wartime (Todd Solondz)
Winnebago Man (Ben Steinbauer)
Best Worst Movie (Michael Paul Stephenson)
Greenberg (Noah Baumbach)
Shutter Island (Martin Scorsese)
Tiny Furniture (Lena Dunham)
The Social Network (David Fincher)
Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky)
Splice (Vincenzo Natali)
The Crazies (Breck Eisner)
Trash Humpers (Harmony Korine)

I will view these sometime between today and 2018:

White Material (Claire Denis)
Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer (Alex Gibney)
Due Date (Todd Phillips)
Winter's Bone (Deb Granik)
127 Hours (Danny Boyle)
Inside Job (Charles Ferguson)
Amer (Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani)
Jackass 3D (Jeff Tremaine)
Marwencol (Jeff Malmberg)
Enter the Void (Gaspar Noé)
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (Woody Allen)
The Town (Ben Affleck)
The Last Exorcism (Daniel Stamm)
Make-Out With Violence (Deagol Brothers)
Piranha 3D (Alexandre Aja)
Soul Kitchen (Fatih Akin)
The Tillman Story (Amir Bar-Lev)
The Kids Are All Right (Lisa Cholodenko)
Dogtooth (Yorgos Lanthimos)
Wah Do Dem (Ben Chace & Sam Fleischner)
Please Give (Nicole Holofcener)
Everyone Else (Maren Ade)
Bluebeard (Catherine Breillat)
The Runaways (Floria Sigismondi)
Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold)
Carlos (Olivier Assayas)
A Prophet (Jacques Audiard)
The Fighter (David O. Russell)
Hadewijch (Bruno Dumont)
Rabbit Hole (John Cameron Mitchell)

[Martin]

Chris, Dogtooth is fine, but 2009 as far as I'm concerned.

For reference, and since you're dying to know, here's a few films that might've made my list in 2009:

35 rhums (Claire Denis)
Apan (Jesper Ganslandt)
Bakjwi / Thirst (Park Chan-wook)
Collapse (Chris Smith)
Crude (Joe Berlinger)
Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson)
Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold)
The House of the Devil (Ti West)
The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh)
In the Loop (Armando Iannucci)
Le Donk and Scor Zay Zee (Shane Meadows)
Lourdes (Jessica Hausner)
Man tänker sitt (Henrik Hellström, Fredrik Wenzel)
Moon (Duncan Jones)
Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea (Hayao Miyazaki)
Un prophète (Jacques Audiard)
Stingray Sam (Cory McAbee)
Up (Pete Docter)
Das Weiße Band (Michael Haneke)
World's Greatest Dad (Bobcat Goldthwait)

[Chris L]

Chris, Dogtooth is fine, but 2009 as far as I'm concerned.

Since I didn't see it in a local theater this year and it comes out on dvd in January, you may be reminding me of that in 2011 as well.

[Spoony]

I need to see Winter's Bone.* That looked great but I never found the time. I saw True Grit this weekend, and can't (won't) stop shouting, "AH AIM TO ______ YOU" in whatever situation I can apply it to.





*I should have said "AH AIM TO WATCH YOU, WINTER'S BONE."

[not that clay]

Saw True Grit yesterday. I was worried it'd be brutal like No Country for Old Men, but it wasn't. I thought it was great all around.

[Pidgeon]

Saw True Grit yesterday. I was worried it'd be brutal like No Country for Old Men, but it wasn't. I thought it was great all around.

Yeah, it was actually pretty tame violence-wise. That's why the one very brief brutal scene in the movie (I'm sure you know which one I'm talking about) felt a little out of place.

[Chris L]

Everyone Else is on Netflix Instant but I can't work up much interest in watching it, for whatever reason.

[hardweek]

Biggest surprise for me was The Social Network. Funniest thing is that every time the twins talked, I leaned over to my wife and said, "doesn't it sound like they're using a voice modulator?"Turns out the twins were played by the same guy tweaked with some studio wizardry. Go figure.

Exit Through The Gift Shop lives up to the hype. So does Restrepo.

I also had blast watching The Expendables in the theatre....speaking of blasts, got motion sickness from that Leo Dicaprio narrated iMax thing.

[dave from knoxville]

I pray to God that someone in Hollywood with too much money produces a movie entitled "That Leo Dicaprio Narrated iMax Thing", hopefully penned by Charlie Kaufman.

[fletcher munson]

Scott Pilgrim was actually one of my favorites of the year.  Thought Scott Pilgrim and Easy A had the wittiest scripts of any film I've seen in a long time.  dare anyone to agree with me.

[yesno]

I liked scott pilgrim a lot more than I thought I would. it was very creative and, which I liked most, flashy.