Top Ten Films 2010

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Late again.

10. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
I caught the last twenty minutes of this by accident one afternoon when I had to give out passes for a fire alarm, or some such thing; and those last twenty minutes were so intriguing and well done that I immediately wanted to get the novel and read it and then watch the rest of the film—which, eventually, I did. The film does a very good job of efficiently compressing the story told in the tightly-plotted, rapid-fire novel; and Noomi Rapace, though not a spot-on match of the girl described in the novel, delivers a striking performance, gifting the audience with one of the most compelling characters in years.

9. Blue Valentine
The feel-bad movie of the year—hands down; and yet, it’s so cleverly presented that it’s hard to look away. The story is told in non-linear fashion, but to say that director Derek Cianfrance is channeling his inner Tarantino is to understate just how helter skelter the movie really is. Ultimately, though, that’s also part of its charm. Cianfrance cuts between time and place with absolutely no transition, leaving it to the viewer to make the connections between one scene and another. It’s awfully well made, but it’s awfully harrowing, too. Very challenging - for an American film.

8. The Kids Are All Right
At this point, you almost have to ask yourself what exactly Annette Bening has to do to win that elusive Oscar. She earned her fourth nomination for her role as the uptight breadwinner in this dramedy about a lesbian couple whose kids reach out to their sperm donor and wind up getting to know their dad. What might have kept her from winning here is that Julianne Moore was also very good, playing the laid-back, fun half of the couple. Moore has nearly as many noms as Bening, and also no wins. The film is a little too perfect in places—almost like an advertisement for a new Pottery Barn store in Stepford—but the strong acting and strong writing more than make up for that.

7. The Illusionist
A hand-drawn animated film with almost no dialogue—and what dialogue there is, is in French. Okay, if you got that far, then maybe you can get your head around a story about an aging illusionist (it’s not just a clever title) who no longer impresses audiences with his simple sleight of hand—but continues to go from place to place in search of those audiences anyway. For a time, his path crosses that of a young girl who is just starting make her own way in the world, and they settle into a vaguely symbiotic father-daughter relationship. By the end, of course, things have changed; but what is unique (and refreshing, and ultimately very satisfying) is that those changes happen organically, which opens up lines of existential thinking that are almost never triggered by animated films. Pound for pound, one of the more rewarding films of the year.

6. Nowhere Boy
I’m not necessarily convinced that this is a great film; but as so often happens with movies that are steeped in music from the 1960s, I really liked it (even if, technically, this movie was steeped more in the music of the 1950s). Aaron Johnson doesn’t resemble John Lennon so much as he resembles Buddy Holly, but he’s got the swagger we might imagine that Lennon had when he was young. But more than anything else, the film portends Lennon’s tragic end and gives us something of an idea of what informed his thinking, his politics, and his music. Great supporting turns by Anne-Marie Duff and the inimitable Kristin Scott Thomas effectively bolster the eponymous role played reasonably well by Johnson.

5. Inception
So yeah, it turns out that this film was everything it was cracked up to be. Pretty much a non-stop cavalcade of sharp visuals and snappy sounds—and it also had a reasonably compelling (if perhaps unnecessarily complicated—this is Chris Nolan, after all) story and some fine acting. In fact, I think there’s one performance in particular that really helped to elevate this film from unfathomable schlock to very watchable chaos. Leonardo DiCaprio and Joseph Gordon-Levitt both do a good job of getting into their roles and chewing scenes—but it’s the appearance of Ellen Page that brings that little bit of levity that is necessary for something this dire to work. I sort of hate to say that she humanizes the film to some degree, because that sounds hokey; but it might also be the truth. Nolan generally packs too much into his movies, but he also finds ways to make those overstuffed kerfuffles eminently appealing—and that’s the most important contribution Page makes to the film. (And just try to take your eyes off of Marion Cotillard. Can’t be done.)

4. Rabbit Hole
This was supposed to be a thoroughly bleak, utterly heart-rending exploration of what happens when two parents have to confront their worst nightmare; and yet, while it was certainly not the happiest film I’ve ever watched, it wound up being far more uplifting than I ever would have guessed. The writing is so good that, in the midst of the all the gloom, there are actually places where you can safely laugh out loud. Post-Botox Nicole Kidman is a little scary to look at sometimes, but her acting chops are still in good working order; and Aaron Eckhart seems to get better with every role. The surroundings are a little too Pottery Barn, and the ending has a kind of muddled tone that betrays the fearlessness of the rest of the film; but those are minor quibbles, and they’re not enough to derail what is otherwise an exceptional film.

3. The Fighter
I can’t even remember what my quibbles were with this one. No, wait…it was a couple of the songs on the soundtrack, and some of the montage sequences. The acting was incredible, particularly Christian Bale as a crackhead has-been boxer who pretends to be his brother’s trainer. Mark Wahlberg is the brother, and he gives what I thought was a really underrated performance as blue-collar fighter Micky Ward. Wahlberg was understated in a movie full of scenery chewers, but it plays well thematically. Melissa Leo was just fine as Micky’s mother, but Amy Adams really stole the show as his girlfriend. I don’t know that she has done a finer piece of work. I absolutely fell in love with her while I was watching this film.

2. The Social Network
You could choose to take this film just as an entertainment, regardless of its veracity, and you would certainly be none the worse for wear. It is well written, well acted, and brilliantly edited; and there’s even an arrangement of “In the Hall of the Mountain King” by Trent Reznor, of Nine Inch Nails fame. So about that veracity, then: it’s way too complicated to try to explain in a brief blurb like this. Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin used as source material a book by Ben Mezrich called “The Accidental Billionaires.” If you read the book, you will find many, many chapters and sections that begin with phrases like “We can imagine that…” or “We can guess what happened next…” Mezrich supposedly got much of his information from Eduardo Saverin, the co-founder of Facebook who supposedly got screwed over by Mark Zuckerberg. Thus, you would think that a movie based on such a book would paint Zuckerberg in a bad light. In reality, though, not so much—at least, I didn’t think so. Time magazine named Zuckerberg their 2010 person of the year, and there’s quite the fawning portrait of him in the Person of the Year issue. The truth about Mark Zuckerberg is probably somewhere between the character portrayed in the film (brilliantly!) by Jesse Eisenberg and the character they wrote about in Time. The Social Network builds on a strong foundation of cinematic elements; and while the little details might be compressed or altered (or possibly even imagined), the broad strokes that Sorkin paints with are accurate. The result is an extremely impressive film.

1. Winter’s Bone
This film was based on an actual work of fiction (the novel of the same name by Daniel Woodrell), but it might be more authentic than The Social Network; and the reason for that is director Debra Granik’s meticulous approach to her craft. Set in a bleak no-man’s-land in the Missouri Ozarks, near the Arkansas state line, the story tells of Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) and her family—in particular, her meth-cooking father, who has jumped bail and disappeared. When the sheriff comes to her door and tells her that her father had put up the house and land for his bond, and that the family will lose both if he fails to turn up for his court date, Ree—all of seventeen—decides that the only thing she can do is find her father. What follows his a harrowing journey of discovery that is frighteningly effective at reframing the concept of loss of innocence. The authenticity builds from the foundation of Granik’s decision to shoot on location and to convince locals to appear in the film and allow the crew the use of their homes. The story gives itself up reluctantly, because the people who live here do the same with their secrets. By the time you get around to the end, it’s entirely possible that the revelations are foregone conclusions; but the real payoff comes when you realize that after everything you have seen, life is going to keep on keeping on for these people. There is only survival to strive for in this part of the world, and perhaps not even that for very long.