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| RED One Digital Camera; what many of this years most acclaimed films were shot on, including The Social Network |
In the 30's we reacted to the Great Depression with stories that all but ignored it. People wanted escapism on the sort of scale that they could only get at the movies. This time around (and maybe this says something about the scale of this crisis compared to that one) our greatest films tackle our problems head on. Small regional films like Winter's Bone, about a young girl who must do the unspeakable to protect her family, resonate far more than as isolated tales of woe and were more widely seen than they would have been even 5 years ago. Two other surprise box office successes in The Town and True Grit also tackled characters who were down and out, financially and otherwise. They are genre films tailored to our times, made with care and skill.
That isn't to say that escapist entertainment is dead; the year's biggest films were Toy Story 3, Alice in Wonderland, and Iron Man 2. Those films were of decidedly mixed quality but appealed to those looking for fantasy. Escapism is seemingly set to conquer the Oscars too -- The King's Speech is a controversially whitewashed biopic of the King of England during WWII. It's the sort of feel-good movie producers dream about. None-the-less, an even more controversial biopic, The Social Network, which fictionalizes its story to make a film more representative of its time, is far and away the most critically praised film of the year.
This year has also seen the debate over 3D heat up. Its most prolific detractor is most certainly Roger Ebert who points out that the glasses dim the picture and our brains can't process the images as well as traditional 2D movies (3D as distancing device). While others (James Cameron, Jeffrey Katzenberg) claim it is the only way to save the movie going experience. I for one don't think that it is worth the money, but I realize its hard for someone with so much invested in an art form to accept change to it.
On another note digital is increasingly making its presence felt each year as image quality improves astronomically. This is a change that is far less controversial, independent features can be made for next to nothing on digital and released cheaply. Its for that reason that film festivals are becoming more and more important every year, leading to the discovery of films like The Kids Are All Right, Winter's Bone, and Fish Tank. Without further ado, I'll present my top 15:
My criteria for inclusion is that each film must have been released (outside of film festivals) in the 2010 calendar year. I saw about 80 films this year but still somehow managed to miss many acclaimed films. A survey of this kind is impossible but bear with me:
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| Scott Pilgrim vs. The World |
14. Salt
13. True Grit
12. Winter's Bone
11. The Town
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| Winter's Bone |
10. Enter the Void
One of the most singular viewing experiences of my life, I was never sure until after it was over what I thought of it. The film follows the ghost of a drug dealer as he travels through time and space following his death early in the film. There are a ton of interesting visual ideas here, the camera is never where you would expect it to be. It is obviously riffing on 2001, Tarkovsky, and Brian De Palma, which in the minds of many others reduces the film to something less than what it is -- which is mind blowing. Yes, it does use many elements from other films, but in a lot of ways it goes farther than those films. There is an art to making something shocking meaningful, and Gaspar Noe manages that here.
9. I Am Love
Tilda Swinton is inevitably fearless and fantastic every time she gets in front of a camera. Maybe that's why she gets so little recognition for her always superior work; little has been written about her by the critics and she has received almost no awards this year. The film is more than just her though -- this is perhaps the most beautiful film made this year, each image is lovingly framed and exquisitely lighted. The reason this isn't higher on this list is because of how uncomfortable it can be. This is the movie I had to pause the most often on DVD this year, but ultimately it was more than worth watching.
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| I Am Love |
Easily one of the most entertaining films of the year, you're never quite sure what to make of this movie until the end (and even then you may not be so sure). It begins as a document of the rise of graffiti art and spirals in several unexpected directions. There's nothing particularly serious going on here but it is a surprisingly interesting send-up of the art world. I have to say that I'm hopeful that this will win the Best Documentary Oscar just for the inevitable stunt that famous reclusive artist Banksy will come up with to accept the award.
7. Shutter Island
Martin Scorsese has become increasingly preoccupied with film preservation and history in recent years. This has significantly decreased the quantity of his work obviously, but also the quality (The Aviator and the over-rated The Departed being the prime examples), which is why this film was so refreshing. Always interested in technical exploration first and story second, he needs a specific sort of script to really stretch his cinematic muscles. This movie is full of ambiguity and rife with opportunities to reference and expand upon the technicolor achievements of the 50's and 60's, which he obviously loves. It is a love letter to those films, and is best appreciated as such.
6. Black Swan
The director, Darren Aronofsky, has made several horror movies disguised as art films (not that horror isn't art) and his latest is no exception -- it makes some dubious connections between artistic process and madness, tackles workplace sexual politics (on several levels), and female sexuality in general. For all that high concept posturing though, the film is at heart body horror. This is not to decrease its accomplishment, which is considerable. It is excellently paced, with great use of hand held photography. Its greatest strength though is (to get back to body horror) is how it shows the mental transformation physically, and the physical transformation mentally. The film is genuinely cringe inducing; it asks each of us to put ourselves in Nina's place and succeeds.
5. Carlos
Easily the longest film I saw this year, it is also the most complex. Oliver Assayas takes the over-exposed story of a terrorist and creates (reveals?) a character of enormous complexity. It is not only a tale of politics and power, but also of greed, radicalism, and mostly ego. It is an absorbing five and a half hours to say the least.
4. Somewhere
One of my favorite films of all time is Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation and I was one of the minority who loved Marie Antoinette 4 years ago, so to say this was almost a foregone conclusion for this list might be an understatement. Yes, the characters are privileged and a bit whiny but they are also complex creations seemingly drawn from the world Sofia Coppola knows. The best bit about this, and all her movies, is how she draws meaning out of images and tonal shifts, much more than usual narrative devices.
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| Somewhere |
The best documentary of the year is (as all great docs are) meticulously organized. It tackles a large and complex subject, namely the 2008 market crash, and turns it into something understandable. It has often been called non-partisan but the truth is that it is (spoiler alert) extremely anti-libertarian. Either way, its a must see for anyone who votes.
2. The Kids Are Alright
The best thing about this film is its normalcy. I don't mean because the central characters are a lesbian couple and their two children, I mean that each action in the film feels true to all the characters. In shaping a logical story out of these fully realized characters, Lisa Cholodenko (the writer/director) made it about more than just them. She allowed us to see aspects of ourselves and our society throughout the film. This movie almost single-handedly reaffirms the idea of family in an era when it obviously means less and less.
1. The Social Network
The best film of the year is a biopic, but not an entirely truthful one. It's about relationships, but they aren't exactly real either. It's about business, but that business doesn't make anything. What it is about is modern America. It's the American story made anew. It has a haunting, brilliant score which doesn't tell us how to feel about what we're seeing but instead expands on it (it doesn't reduce, but enhance). The acting is uniformly good, and the directing -- well, there isn't a more technically proficient director on digital than David Fincher. I don't know how it will hold up over time, but for my money, it's a modern classic.
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| The Social Network |
Awards:
Best Technical Director: David Fincher (The Social Network)
Best Director of Actors: Lisa Cholodenko (The Kids Are Alright)
Best Performance: Tilda Swinton (I Am Love)
Best Cinematography: Roger Deakins (True Grit)
Best Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network)
Rising Star: Greta Gerwig (Greenberg, Hannah Takes the Stairs, Nights and Weekends, Night of the Devil)
Best Use of Special Effects: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Best Use of 3D: Tron: Legacy
Best Animated Movie: How to Train Your Dragon
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| How to Train Your Dragon |
Best Music Video: Janelle Monae - Cold War
Runner Up: LCD Soundsystem - Drunk Girls
Worst Movie: The Sorcerer's Apprentice
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