Top 10: 2010

If 2010 can be defined by a genre, then for me this was the year of the documentary. In my six years of doing this website, I can think of none that had as diverse or engaging a crop of documentaries than 2010. Although you could certainly argue that some of the best documentaries weren't actually documentaries at all (but we’ll get to that later). While the big budget fare and the prestige pictures certainly had some great entries, it was the documentaries that will stick in my mind.

Before I break it down to the 10, I wanted to highlight a few titles that fell just short. The film that came the closest was Four Lions, a pitch black comedy about British terrorists with some of the funniest dialog of the year. Animal Kingdom, another strong contender for the top 10, is a gripping Australian crime saga less about the rise and more about the fall of a family of criminals. Comparisons to Scorsese aren't unfounded.

Finally, before I begin I should note that two films I would have liked to see before compiling this list were The Illusionist and Another Year, but due to poor release plans, neither were viewable before year's end. Alright, without further ado:

10. Shutter Island

The pairing of Scorsese and DiCaprio has resulted in some of the best films of the last decade. In this, perhaps their final outing together, they have crafted an over the top dark psychological thriller. The whole cast is electric, but it is again DiCaprio who steals the show, giving one of his best performances to date. It’s a performance all the more captivating when you see the film a second time knowing who this man really is. And Scorsese, freed from looking for an Oscar, goes for something big and crazy, which is a nice change of pace for him. While it’s inevitable that your reaction to the ending will color how you feel about Shutter Island as a whole, there’s no denying that the craftsmanship on display is uniformly excellent.


9. Catfish

One of two documentaries – or are they? – to make my top ten, Catfish is a film best left unexplained to the uninitiated. Much of the film’s power comes from the sense of discovery, as three friends travel across the country to meet a woman in person that one of them has been romancing online for months. By turns scary, thrilling, funny, and deeply moving, this is a film that captures the way we use (and misuse) the internet. It’s interesting that while the internet has been a common thing in most of our lives for 15 years now, cinema is just now starting to look at it with a critical eye. While I am still torn as to how I would feel about Catfish were it to be revealed that the filmmakers were manipulating their subject in order to make this film, there’s no denying that what they found was one of the most fascinating people of 2010.


8. Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World

Edgar Wright doesn’t seem capable of making a generic movie. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is almost certainly the most singular film experience of the year. Indeed, no other film comes to mind that is quite like this. Much like in the comics it is based upon, Scott Pilgrim sees the world through his understanding of video games, comics, and TV. It is so specifically about a generation born into the 70’s and 80’s that it will probably alienate those not of that generation. And to my mind, Scott Pilgrim features the most revolutionary use of editing since The Matrix. Wright’s editor has crafted an entirely new way to tell a story, cutting out the fat and moving things forward at such a clip that it threatens to leave behind those not prepared. To see something that feels so new is exhilarating, and one can’t help but think that this kind of editing will be the future of cinema (for better or worse).


7. Monsters

If Scott Pilgrim felt like the future of cinema, Monsters is a classic throwback to the days of Spielberg at his most scrappy. Shot for little money entirely on location, it follows a pair of Americans as they try to get out of Mexico after it has been infested with giant aliens. While many are put off by the fact that a movie called Monsters has so few actual monsters, it often feels just as much a creative choice as it does a financial one. When we finally see the monsters in all their CGI glory, it is unexpectedly moving. The final moments of this film remain one of my absolute favorite scenes of the year, as what it reveals about the reality of the movie and the world these characters live in is profound and touching in ways you would never expect from a monster movie.


6. Winter's Bone

Perhaps the most stripped down and basic film on my list, Winter’s Bone is not for everyone. The plot is threadbare at best, and it is the atmosphere, characters, acting, and themes that really drive the film. When Ree’s father disappears after putting the family house up for his bail money, the sheriff informs Ree that she has one week to find her father or they will take the house. The journey this young girl takes is harrowing and shocking. Jennifer Lawrence is a wonderful new find as the lead here, but it is John Hawkes that steals the show. One of those great character actors that never really got his due, Hawkes is finally given a chance to shine as Ree’s uncle Teardrop. And that ending is wonderfully confounding in the way it seems both hopeful and hopeless.


5. Blue Valentine

A film simultaneously about the hope for a promising future and despair for lost time, Blue Valentine follows both the beginning and ending of a relationship. Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams create two wholly authentic characters, and the feeling of a shared history between the two adds so much nuance to their relationship. The film never falls into the trap so many relationship dramas do, which is to wallow in the despair of a failed marriage. Blue Valentine is always engrossing, and it is intelligent in the things it has to say about relationships. It's refreshing to see a movie like this done with some semblance of subtley, and it never points the finger at one person and says they are to blame for the failure of the marriage; they each shoulder equal blame. It takes a strong filmmaker to make you not take sides in a film like this, but director Derek Cianfrance pulled that off, and he is someone worth keeping an eye on.


4. Exit Through the Gift Shop

While Catfish makes me want to believe it is real, Exit Through the Gift Shop makes me hope it is a scam. If Banksy really did pull off a hoax of this magnitude, it would be amazing. And if it’s all true, then it is still one of the most engaging and delightful films of the year. As a documentation of the world of street art, it opened my eyes to something that was all around me but I completely ignored. The people and the culture of this world are intriguing, and the fact that many of these artists are now creating galleries of their art seems inevitable. But the film asks us to consider if the art world is embracing these artists because of the quality of their work, or because they’ve been told to. Does paying to see and own this art make it any more profound than if we were to see it sprayed on the side of a building? If I fill a warehouse with junk and call it art, then charge you to see it, are you more or less inclined to agree with me that it is in fact art? The film doesn’t seem to want to answer these questions, instead simply putting them out there for us to ponder.


3. Black Swan

Somehow the three most interesting filmmakers of this generation made the three best films of 2010. You would expect at least one to falter, but they didn’t. My top three represent, to my mind, some of the most exciting works in recent cinema. Of the three, Black Swan is certainly the most daring. Darren Aronofksy winds his audience up so tightly with his films, that the end is as much a catharsis for us as it is for his main characters. Natalie Portman, as the increasingly insane Nina, is the best she has ever been here. While the film takes its time showing you how crazy things will become, you need that early lull in order for the film as a whole to work. As a companion piece to Exit Through the Gift Shop, it might serve as an unexpected answer to Banksy’s question as to what makes something great art. The more the art takes out of you, the better it becomes. Nina’s final performance of the film, in which she let’s everything go in order to fully become the black swan of the story, represents the pinnacle of what she will ever achieve as a dancer, and she knows it. When reading the ending through Nina’s eyes, it becomes less dark and more profound.


2. Inception

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about the state of the film industry today is that there is no market for independent filmmakers. On a regular basis you see great indie directors abandoning personal projects for mainstream success. This almost never works out, as these filmmakers don’t try to adjust the big budget to their sensibilities, instead adjusting their sensibilities to the big budget. Not so with Christopher Nolan, who has thrived greatly within the blockbuster model. Inception is everything a big summer release should be: thrilling, original, fun, challenging, and debatable. On top of that, Nolan was able to tap perhaps the two best actors working today. One consistently on top of his game (DiCaprio), and one on the rise to superstardom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). And is there a more amazing moment in 2010 than Levitt jumping around that hallway as gravity starts to shift? Impeccable filmmaking all around.


1. The Social Network

I rewatched The Social Network again before writing this to refresh some things. What struck me the most was how incredibly watchable this thing is. Right from that wonderful opening scene you’re hooked. The film is a marriage of the year’s best script, one of our best filmmakers on top of his game, and a cast that delivers career best performances. Jesse Eisenberg has been delivering subtly nuanced performances for a few years now, so it’s nice to see him finally get such a meaty role to showcase that talent for the general public. And special mention must be made of Armie Hammer and the Winkelvi. Such a great, funny dual performance that isn’t getting the credit it deserves. He is able to make what should have been the villains of the movie into perhaps the only characters with any real honor or integrity. It’s hard for me to define what makes this the best of the year over my numbers 2 and 3. I guess the best way to explain it is that not only is every aspect of this movie great, but all those aspects work so perfectly in combination in a way that no other film did this year. Who would have expected such immense greatness from a film about Facebook?

True Grit

Watching the Coen Brothers' remake of True Grit brings to mind a question I think a lot of filmgoers have been wrestling with lately: what is the point of a remake? The remake is becoming a major part of cinema, and it could be argued it is the laziest form of film making - even moreso than sequels. There seems to be two kinds of remakes: one is the retelling of a story for an audience that may not have seen the original. The other is a reinterpretation of a film, filtering it completely through a new director's point of view. There is probably more nuance than those two options, but largely most remakes fall into one of the two camps. The Coen Brothers would seem like the ideal candidates for the second category, but True Grit never seems to have much in common with their darkly ironic worldview to begin with (The Searchers always felt like it would make more sense for them). And indeed, True Grit lacks a lot of what one might expect from the Coens, ultimately feeling more like a retelling of the original John Wayne version than anything else.

So then, I ask, why? Why spend a year of your life remaking a fairly well known, Oscar winning Western, and not update the story in any real way? What is this film meant to offer us? The answer seems to lay with two things: the acting and the technical components. If nothing else, the Coens have so finely tuned their craft, that they make some of the most fully realized films each year. From sound to visuals to editing, they seem incapable of making a technically deficient movie, and True Grit is no exception. With each gunshot that rings out, you will jump in your seat. Every set looks so real you would assume they found authentic locations to shoot in. The costumes run circles around those in the original. The score, inspired by hymns from the era, is enchanting and memorable. In pretty much every technical aspect, this is the superior film to the 1969 original. But is that enough?

The acting, with apologies to Mr. Wayne, is unanimously better here. Rooster Cogburn, as portrayed by John Wayne, was little more than an extension of the Duke's persona. He played a type, and this character was that type to a T. Jeff Bridges, on the other hand, has created a wholly original character. Mumbling, foolish, aggressive, bitter - Bridges fills what could have been a stock hero with so much nuance and energy that you can't help but be entertained by him. And while he is very good, even better is newcomer Hailee Steinfeld as young Mattie Ross, the girl who hires Cogburn to avenge her father's murder. She takes the delightfully archaic and wordy dialog and runs with it effortlessly, making you forget she is acting at all. As head strong as Mattie is, Steinfeld never lets you forget than you are watching a young grieving girl, and she lets that aspect shine through at just the right moments. It is one of the best performances of the year.

And yet, for all this, the film still suffers from its inability to shake the original, to be something new. The pacing often feels very off, dragging right when it should be speeding up. There is a long sequence early on in which Cogbrun is on trial for murder. While this is meant to serve as our introduction to just who Cogburn is, it ends up stopping the momentum of the movie and tells us little that we wouldn't know just from watching how this man behaves around others. And the climax of the movie seems far more rushed than in the original. While we are never meant to really know Tom Chaney, Ned Pepper, or the other villains of the film, it feels like they get even less screentime here than in the original, making the climax feel more perfunctory than it should. And speaking of endings, they seem to be the most divisive aspect of any Coen Brothers movie. Here will be no exception, but for the opposite reason of A Simple Man or No Country: it doesn't know when to end. We get a flash forward on top of another flash forward, telling us every last detail we could ever want to know, when a little more ambiguity might have served the story better.

If you have never seen the original True Grit, this may well be a very good movie. I have seen the 1969 version, so it becomes more difficult for me to appreciate this version. The things that stand out here really stand out, but the things that fail are pretty glaring. In the end, I cannot judge this movie as if I hadn't seen the Wayne version, any more than a newcomer could judge this in the context of the original. Which again begs the question, why remake this film? As much as I liked the aspects I liked, I probably would have enjoyed them even more in the context of an original story. It often felt like the Coens were spinning their wheels instead of trying to be innovative. This movie can be fun at times, but it never really rises above that, and occasionally dips below it.

Black Swan

Darren Aronofsky, more than any other director working today, seems utterly fascinated by the self-destructive nature within people. Indeed, there is perhaps no more interesting aspect of human nature than one's willingness to self inflict pain and turmoil in the pursuit of personal happiness. Be it drug use in Requiem for a Dream, wrestling in The Wrestler, and now dancing in Black Swan, there is always a dangerous balance between transcendent joy and complete physical and mental destruction for his characters. As such, he is often able to make us feel a very deep and profound connection to his characters, and his films have resulted in some of the great screen performances of the last decade. Natalie Portman joins that list with Black Swan, a film that demands more of her than any film she has ever done, but demonstrates more potential from her than one might ever have expected.

Portman plays Nina, a ballerina of indistinguishable age. Nina lives with her mother, speaks with a childlike voice, and has no real grasp of the world around her. Sheltered her whole life by her mother, she simply doesn't have the confidence and darkness that is required if she wishes to play the dual leads of both the White and Black Swans in the upcoming performance of Swan Lake. Yet the director sees something in her and plucks her from her obscurity, forcing her to confront her fears, desires, and inner turmoil. Played by Vincent Cassel, Thomas the director is an uneasy balance between artistic genius and sleazy manipulator. There is never a clear sense of whether he is trying to seduce Nina, or if he is really trying to mold her into a more confident artist. Also tearing Nina apart is the new dancer in the troupe, Lily (Mila Kunis). It's hard to tell if Lily idolizes Nina or wants to destroy her, and Kunis finds the perfect balance between the two with her performance.

Portman is an actress who is known for her likable, intelligent persona. Here, like Nina, she is forced to stretch beyond her limits, to try and encompass both her nice girl persona and something far more powerful and sinister. It is brilliant casting, and Portman makes every beat work. For much of the film, Nina feels like something Natalie Portman would normally play, there isn't much barrier between actress and role (aside from increasing the childishness). But when she makes her metamorphosis into a Black Swan, she becomes unrecognizable. Confidant, strong willed, and frankly frightening, Portman is suddenly like you have never seen her. This is the kind of rare performance where an actress is able to tap into her heretofore unseen potential and do something you never would have expected. It will certainly be the role that defines Portman's career, and hopefully it opens up a whole new door for her.

Is there a more confidant director working today than Darren Aronofksy? With every film he aims for greatness and achieves it. His films are both of a piece and radically different. He gets the strongest performances he can out of his actors, utilizes music like no other, and can create a visual representation of every character's mind with ease. In Black Swan he creates a world of a nightmare, were the seeming simplicity of Nina's world is deliberately torn down as she struggles with her art. The way he uses his camera to film the dancing is thrilling and intimate, and the use of color is unusual to say the least. Evert set and costume is either black or white, except for Nina's very colorful room. As Nina grows as an artist, the color of her world begins to drain, melting into the blacks and whites found everywhere else. And is there a more wonderful pairing of director and composer right now than Aronofsky and Clint Mansell? Mansell's score here is an overwhelming recreation of Swan Lake, filling the film in an operatic way. It is chilling and powerful in the exact way this story should be.

Black Swan lures you in with its examination of the world of dancing, before pulling the rug out from under you as Nina's mind deteriorates. Much like he did with The Wrestler, you get a great behind the curtain look at what goes into the art of dancing. I have no real knowledge of dancing, but Aronofsky and Portman were able to make me see the difference between competent dancing and transcendent dancing. Nina is a very strong dancer, but she is mechanical. You can see that she simply cannot lose herself in her art, there is always a barrier of thought there. But as she grows into herself, the dancing become more fluid, more honest. The final sequence of the film, in which we see her finally perform Swan Lake, is one of the great scenes of 2010. The dancing really is beautiful, and in combination with everything else going on, it becomes the kind of transcendent experience that Nina has been looking for her whole life.

This is certainly one of the stranger films of the year. The literal and the imaginary intertwine with little explanation as to which is which. Aronofksy is able to combine all the elements of his film into a mind trip that is both sobering and uplifting. It's a film that requires some patience from its audience, but it grows into a thing of unexpected beauty by the end. There is honestly so much going on here that I am unable to really unpack all my feelings on it after one viewing. To me, there are few rewards of cinema greater than when a film defies an easy explanation, that it demands to be seen over and over in order to discover new things. Such is the case with Black Swan, a film I will certainly be revisiting over the years with new interpretations each time.

RIP Leslie Nielsen

1926-2010

I'm sure I speak for a number of people from my generation when I say that Leslie Nielsen is one of the cornerstones of modern comedy. From Airplane! to The Naked Gun trilogy to my childhood guilty pleasure Surf Ninjas, Leslie Nielsen was a shinning example of deadpan comedy. No one could do it as well as he could, and even when he was slumming in films that were beneath him, he would still bring his A-game to each role. It's truly sad to hear he has passed away today at age 84, but he leaves behind an indelible legacy. The roles he created, specifically Lt. Frank Drebin and Dr. Rumack, have become icons of cinema, and he will surely be delighting people with those and his many other roles long after he is gone.

The King's Speech

The King's Speech is like a film from a different era. So often when you hear that kind of statement, it's referring to that ineffable time when they made good movies, the likes of which we don't see anymore. This isn't one of those cases. No, The King's Speech harkens back to the 90's, when Miramax could get away with making the blandest movies imaginable and reap Oscar glory because of it. Shakespeare in Love, Chocolat, The Cider House Rules, and others of their ilk were all big Oscar players in their time, but none left any kind of lasting impression after their day in the sun. In the 2000's, the Oscars started to turn away from this kind of middle of the road mentality, instead favoring singular visions of bleakness and honesty. No one seems to have informed the brothers Weinstein of this fact, as they still pump out bland period piece films in the hopes of winning more awards. Based on critical reception, they may have finally stumbled onto something with The King's Speech, and for the life of me I don't understand why.

Colin Firth plays King George VI, a man who never expected to be King of England, but found himself thrust into the position after his brother failed to reconcile his personal life with his duties as King. King George has the problem of not being able to speak without stuttering uncontrollably. To the film's credit, Colin Firth does a great job with this part. The film is always trying to manipulate us with scenes of him stuttering as people look on in embarrassment, but Firth digs a little deeper, giving us glimpses of him as more than just a man who stutters. There is anger, resentment, and a deep shyness underneath his stuttering that is far more interesting than his need to speak in public. Assisting him in his quest to speak is Geoffrey Rush as Lionel Logue. Rush is usually a really great actor, but he can have occasion to go over the top when not properly directed, and such is the case here. He is the period piece equivalent of the manic pixie girl found in so may romantic comedies - the one who is able to dig deep inside the hero and bring out the best in him simply by being different from everyone else around them. While the character of King George has facets thanks to Firth, there seems to be no real dimensions to Lionel. We see him try to audition for a part in a play, and fail by virtue of his age, but otherwise he has no dichotomy. He is so self assured that he fails to ever be engaging on a human level.

The film is beautifully made, and if movies simply had to look good this would be one of the year's best films. The art direction in particular is exceptionally well crafted. The office Lionel inhabits looks like something Wes Anderson might have done were he to make a British period piece. And the shot compositions are distinctive enough that one could very easily make a recognisable King's Speech spoof, were someone strange enough to want to do such a thing. King George is almost always framed in the bottom left corner of the screen, with much of the rest of the frame just filled with dead space. It's a strange, yet interesting way to film the story. One of the first things you learn as a DP is to frame your action in the center, so by moving the action to the corner it gets you into the mind of King George, how he hates to be the center of attention, shying away from it. And of course, the costumes are exquisite, as one would expect from a story about a King in the 1930's. But does any of that make you want to see this movie? Probably not, unless you are a big fan of art design.

Perhaps what stuck me most about how utterly unnecessary this movie was, is how it sets this man's struggle against the backdrop of World War II. It is this period of time, if in no other, that the story of a man's speech impediment would seem frivolous by comparison to what is really going on in the world. Millions of people were being persecuted, incarcerated, and executed. The entire world nearly fell apart because of the whims of a power hungry mad man with a vendetta. Some of the most interesting, heartbreaking, unexpected things to happen in the last century happened at this exact moment in time. So while I appreciate that England needed to have a leader they felt they could trust a this dark hour, overcoming a stutter - no matter how severe - is simply not that engaging or important in the grand scheme of things here. And the worst part is that this story, told in a better context of the world around it, might actually have been really interesting. Juxtaposing the speechless George with the master orator Hitler could have been a unique way of examining George, but instead we get a throw away line about how Hitler sure speaks with conviction.

A film like The King's Speech really confuses me by its existence, even more so by its embrace by audiences. No one involved with this picture took any real risks, nothing is extraordinary, and I never got the sense that this was a story that had to be told. Like I said, it exists solely because those involved want to win Oscars. And they might very well pull it off. But a part of me thinks that the Academy has moved on at this point, that they wouldn't need to take a step backwards and embrace the kind of film that made them the butt of a number of jokes for so long. If you want something challenging and thought provoking, this isn't your film. If you want something that can be easily consumed and forgotten, check out The King's Speech.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I

I realized I haven't reviewed a Harry Potter movie since 2005's Goblet of Fire (still my favorite entry in the series), and that's probably because they are a hard bunch to discuss. What can I really say about Deathly Hallows (Part I) that's all that different from the past six movies? Sure, the various directors have had differing takes on the world of Hogwarts, but since David Yates adopted the franchise, it has all felt a bit too bland for me. He doesn't seem to have any particular vision for these movies, so his entries feel especially interchangeable. His films, more than any others, have each been little more than a buildup to the next in the franchise, which makes it hard to enjoy the film at hand. That goes doubly so here, with a film whose sole purpose appears to be as a setup for the conclusion to the series. While this creates a number of narrative and pacing issues for the audience, it does allow, finally, for some actual character development in these later films.

I haven't read a single Potter novel, nor do I expect I ever will. I come to this franchise purely as a curious spectator who wants to see what the fuss is about. So I suspect that I am missing out on a great deal of character development found in the last few novels that is largely being exorcised in favor of plot movement and set pieces. By splitting the final novel into two movies, however, it allows this film to slow down a bit and reexamine the central three characters. For the first time in the series, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint are allowed to take center stage without the support of a bevy of well known actors. Sure, most of the ever growing cadre of acting legends are here, but usually only in cameos. The three leads mostly do a good job anchoring the film. They still have their weak points, but they've come such a long way over the last decade. Grint, in particular, really does a fine job of conveying all the conflicting emotions going on within his character. And it was nice to see Harry actually wrestle with his parents' deaths again, something that seems like it should have played a bigger part in his psychology in past films. Watson has the most difficult character of the three to play, the uptight know-it-all, and as always it's a bit difficult to suss out the acting from the writing. Still, the three work well enough together at this point that you will likely forgive any missteps on their parts.

The film does have serious issues with a consistent pace. It will spend twenty minutes on an undercover heist, then follow that with twenty minutes of the kids hiding in the woods doing nothing particularly interesting, just talking and morosely dancing. This format is repeated a couple times; action beat followed by dead weight, making it hard to become all that engaged in what should be the most rousing entry in the series. This is it, the end of the story. Surely it should be a tad more exciting, dangerous, and conclusive. But, as always with Yates, Deathly Hallows is more about setting up the next film than it is about telling the story at hand. I will forgive the movie its ending, which I am in the minority of feeling was a decent way to end the movie on a cliffhanger. Others have claimed it is an abrupt ending, but to me it felt like an appropriate culmination of the preceding two and a half hours.

The action, as always, is great. Indeed, it is some of the best of the series. The aforementioned heist scene, in which our three heroes disguise themselves as adults to break into the Ministry of Magic, is probably the stand out. But what also struck me was how unrelentingly dark and violent this series has become. When Harry Potter began it was lighthearted and glossy, but ten years down the line it has become something I don't think I would take a kid to see. There is one scene in which Harry finds a room covered in blood, flies swirling over a decomposed body. I applaud the filmmakers for following their convictions that the audience needs to grow up with Harry, but it still comes as a shock to see where this series has ended up thematically.

Like I said, there's not a lot to be said for Deathly Hallows. It's a good movie that fails to reach the levels of originality of parts 3 and 4, but still perhaps better than the previous Yates films. If you've made it this far into the series, there's no reason to give up here. I suspect and hope that the final film will be among the better in the series, as Yates will finally have to focus on the film at hand, and not spend the two hours he has left setting up yet another sequel.