Our Top 10 Lists of 2010

Cinemanolis
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Post by Cinemanolis »

1. The Social Network
2. Toy Story 3
3. Ghost Writer
4. Black Swan
5. Inception
6. I Am Love
7. Undertow
8. Dogtooth
9. Ajami
10. White Material

Honorable mentions: 127 Hours, Easy A, Fish Tank, Shutter Island
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Johnny Guitar
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Post by Johnny Guitar »

Well, I didn't really write anything about whether or not I thought it was a good movie - so it's not surprising you weren't sure whether I liked it!
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Post by anonymous1980 »

Johnny Guitar wrote: (I admit I did actively dislike Black Swan. But I agree with people who think it works better when thought of as an intense comedy than a deadly self-serious drama.)
I read what you wrote about it several times from your Elusive Lucidity blog. I couldn't figure out whether you liked it or not. I feel stupid.
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Post by Johnny Guitar »

Still have yet to see plenty of 2010 Stateside commercial releases (including Everyone Else, Vincere, Carlos, The Fighter, Mesrine, and Dogtooth …), but here are my ten favorites … maybe forgetting on or two … in roughly descending order

Butterflies Have No Memories (Lav Diaz)
The Father of My Children (Mia Hansen-Love)
Bluebeard (Catherine Breillat)
Around a Small Mountain (Jacques Rivette)
Vengeance (Johnnie To)
White Material (Claire Denis)
Wild Grass (Alain Resnais)
Unstoppable (Tony Scott)
Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl (Manoel de Oliveira)
The Ghost Writer (Roman Polanski)

I'm cheating a bit, maybe, to include Butterflies Have No Memories (the only film on the above list that might be a masterpiece), which did get a (small) commercial release here in Chicago as part of a three-short-film series, but may not have in NY or LA. But I needed to round out the list to ten, and really The Ghost Writer was as low as I wanted to go for the top ten. I actually didn't dislike films like The King's Speech or (more ambivalently) True Grit – it's just that these sorts of movies very, very rarely speak to me or surprise me anymore. (I admit I did actively dislike Black Swan. But I agree with people who think it works better when thought of as an intense comedy than a deadly self-serious drama.)

Other honorable mentions (some respectable genre films) - Shutter Island (Martin Scorsese), Valhalla Rising (Nicolas Winding Refn), Step Up 3 (Jon M. Chu), Ip Man (Wilson Yip) Daybreakers (the Spierig brothers). None of them are great, but I like the fact that NWR's film doesn't worry itself trying to explain things, but instead lets events “breathe” … Scorsese's film is maybe his most visually imaginative and 'thick' in 15 years … Ip Man and the latest Step Up movie have their share of idiocies, but provide a kineticism and inventiveness that surpass anything from the last few Best Picture winners (for my money). And Daybreakers, while not an especially great movie, shows an intelligent approach to such low genres as the zombie/vampire craze – i.e., make the monsters not “them” but “us,” and from there one can at least raise a few interesting questions.
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Post by Zahveed »

1. The Social Network
2. Black Swan
3. Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World
4. Let Me In
5. Shutter Island
6. Inception
7. The King's Speech
8. 127 Hours
9. Kick Ass
10. Toy Story 3

I had a rough/busy year, so I didn't get to see as much as I would have liked to. And 2011 is sucking.
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Post by Damien »

So long, 2010 . . .


4 Stars:
1. Vincere (Marco Bellocchio)

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3½ Stars:
2. The Ghost Writer (Roman Polanski)
3. Hadewich (Bruno Dumont)
4. Ajami (Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani)
5. Eccentricities Of A Blond-haired Girl (Manoel De Oliviera)
6. Rabbit Hole (John Cameron Mitchell)
7. The Fighter (David O. Russell)
8. Fair Game (Doug Liman)
9. Eyes Wide Open (Haim Tabakman)
10. Joan Rivers: A Piece Of Work (Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg)
11. The King’s Speech (Tom Hooper)
12. Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold)
13. Night Catches Us (Tanya Hamilton)


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3 Stars:
14. The Killer Inside Me (Michael Winterbottom)
15. Inspector Bellamy (Claude Chabrol)
16. True Grit (Joel and Ethan Coen)
17. White Material (Claire Denis)
18. Let It Rain (Agnes Jouai)
19. Let Me In (Matt Reeves)
20. The Illusionist (Sylvain Chomet)
21. Eclipse (David Slade)
22. Exit Through The Gift Shop (Banksy)
23. Red Riding: In The Year Of Our Lord 1983 (Anand Tucker)
24. Carlos (Olivier Assayas)
25. Remember Me (Allen Coulter)
26. Winter’s Bone (Debra Granik)
27. The Last Exorcism (Daniel Stamm)
28. Patrik Age 1.5 (Ella Lemhagen)
29. Un Prophète (Jacques Audiard)
30. Animal Kingdom (David Michôd)
31. Red Riding: In The Year Of Our Lord 1980 (James Marsh)
32. Harlan: In The Shadow Of Jew Suss
33. I Am Love (Niels Arden Oplev)
34. Howl (Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman)
35. Women Without Men (Shirin Neshat)
36. Brooklyn’s Finest (Antoine Fuqua)
37. Mother And Child (Rodrigo Garcia)
38. Death At A Funertal (Neil LaBute)
39. Hereafter (Clint Eastwood)
40. The Girl On The Train (André Techiné)
41. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (Niels Arden Oplev)
42. Army Of Crime (Robert Guédiguian)
43. The American (Anton Corbin)
44. Neshoba (Micki Dickoff and Tony Pagano)
45. Vision: From the Life of Hildegard von Bingen (Margarethe von Trotta)
46. Anton Chekov’s The Duel (Dover Koshashvili)

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2 ½ Stars:
47. Shutter Island (Martin Scorsese)
48. Mother (Joon-ho Bong)
49. Stolen (Anders Anderson)
50. A Film Unfinished (Yad Vashed)
51. The Town (Ben Affleck)
52. The Secret Life Of Angelica (Manoel De Oliviera)
53. The Kids Are All Right (Lisa Cholodenko)
54. Salt (Philip Noyce)
55. The Crazies (Breck Eisner)
56. The Girl Who Played With Fire (Daniel Alfredson)
57. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (Edgar Wright)
58. Machete (Robert Rodriguez and Ethan Maniquis)
59. Inside Job (Charles Ferguson)
60. Making Plans For Lena (Christophe Honoré)
61. Diary Of A Wimpy Kid (Thor Freudenthal)
62. Wild Grass (Alain Renais)
63. Red Riding: In The Year Of Our Lord 1974 (Julian Jerrold)
64. Mademoiselle Chabon (Stéphane Brizé)
65. Our Beloved Month Of August (Miguel Gomes)

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

2 Stars:
66. Biutiful (Alejandro González Iñárritu)
67. Letters From Juliet (Gary Winick)
68. Somewhere (Sofia Coppola)
69. Catfish (Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman)
70. Daniel and Ana (Michel Franco)
71. The Social Network (David Fincher)
72. Never Let Me Go (Mark Romanek)
73. Dogtooth (Giorgos Lanthimos)
74. How Do You Know (James L. Brooks)
75. Bluebeard (Catherine Breillait)
76. Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (Chris Columbus)
77. Conviction (Tony Goldwyn)
78. Green Zone (Paul Greengrass)
79. Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky)
80. Brotherhood (Nicolo Donato)
81. Nora’s Will (Mariana Chenillo)
82. 127 Hours (Danny Boyle)
83. Heartbreaker (Pascal Chaumeil)
84. Dear John (Lasse Hallström)
85. Valentine’s Day (Garry Marshall)
86. Daybreakers (Michael and Peter Spierig)
87. Blue Valentine (Derek Cianfrance)
88. Alamar (Pedro Gonzalez-Rubi)
89. My Dog Tulip (Paul and Sandra Fierlinger)

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1 ½ Stars:
90. The Last Song (Julie Anne Robinson)
91. Leaving (Catherine Corsini)
92. Inception (Christopher Nolan)
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Post by Big Magilla »

Oops. I continue to screw this one up. Instead of quoting Greg's comment and adding my own, I inadvertently edited his.

Sorry.
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Post by Greg »

Big Magilla wrote:Most ever-rated:

I think you mean over-rated.

Corrected. Thanks.




Edited By Big Magilla on 1295891629
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Post by OscarGuy »

I'll go ahead and do a 10 Worst list because I have seen all the bad movies for the year I'm likely to see, but I still have a couple left to watch before making my best of list.

1. The Last Airbender (1/2 *)
2. A Nightmare on Elm Street (*)
3. Daybreakers (*)
4. Clash of the Titans (* 1/2)
6. The Chronicles of Narnia (* 1/2)
5. The A-Team (* 1/2)
7. Alice in Wonderland (**)
8. Iron Man 2 (** 1/2)
9. TRON Legacy (** 1/2)
10. Kick-Ass (** 1/2)
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Post by Big Magilla »

Precious Doll wrote:
Big Magilla wrote:Scott Pilgrim vs. the World; Black Swan; I Am Love; Please Give and The Mother.
It's Mother, not The Mother.
Corrected. I actually liked The Mother with Anne Reid and Daniel Craig, as well as the Albert Brooks-Debbie Reynolds movie, which was also titled Mother.

Although the title suits all three films, I think they need to retire it for a while. It gets confusing trying to figure out which one people are talking about.

I don't do 'worst' lists because I tend to stay away from the films that wind up on such lists, so the films on my 'over-rated' list should not be construed as simply a list of bad movies - some are, some aren't - they are films that just don't resonate with me the way they do with a lot of others.
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Post by Precious Doll »

Big Magilla wrote:Scott Pilgrim vs. the World; Black Swan; I Am Love; Please Give and The Mother.
It's Mother, not The Mother.
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Post by Big Magilla »

Ten Best Films of 2010

The Social Network (David Fincher)
Never Let Me Go (Mark Romanek)
Let Me In (Matt Reeves)
The King's Speech (Tom Hooper)
The Fighter (David O. Russell)
The Kids Are All Right (Lisa Cholodenko)
Letters to Juliet (Gary Winick)
Nowhere Boy (Sam Taylor-Johnson)
Winter's Bone (Debra Granik)
The Town (Ben Affleck)
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Post by criddic3 »

Sabin wrote:Best Supporting Actress
2. Ewan McGregor, I Love You Phillip Morris
:laugh:
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Post by ITALIANO »

Oh ok.
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Post by OscarGuy »

The issues of eligibility are manifold, so you shouldn't necessarily blame the Academy.

The onus is on the film's producer/distributor to get the requirements met. One week run in an L.A. County theater beginning within the eligibility period is one, but all films that wish to be considered must also submit a form to the Academy. Most likely films like Vincere had the release requirements, but not submit the necessary forms.
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