Top Ten Films 2010

10. Winter’s Bone

Winter’s Bone is set in brutally impoverished Appalachia, where seventeen year old Ree has a week to track down the dead body of her meth cooking father before the law takes her house away. This requires her to tread to the muddy and dangerous social waters of the Ozarks. So as you can tell this is not exactly an uplifting movie, but it’s a wonderful unflinching and intense portrait of a series of very desperate people.

9. 127 Hours

With 127 Hours, director Danny Boyle has managed to create an action movie where the main character is unable to move. 127 Hours follows the real life story of Aaron Ralston, a climber who after going hiking alone, gets his arm crushed by a rock in a canyon. After desperately trying to free himself for five days, while slowly using up the little of his remaining water, he finally decides to sever his arm to escape. The film is anchored by a very expressive and powerful performance by James Franco, and is helped by beautiful cinematography that keeps the film moving despite the fact it’s always in the same place. Obviously the amputation sequence at the end is gruesome and not for everyone, but it’s very much necessary and is a powerful statement about the human drive for survival.

8. Machete / Piranha 3D

The exploitation movie is back! Machete is about an illegal immigrant wrecking bloody revenge on the politicians who want to deport him, and Piranha 3D is about teenagers on spring break getting attacked by giant fish. Filled with buckets of violence, nudity, and bad dialog, they’re wonderful fun that you’ll probably feel guilty about later. What makes it even better is that the directors are clearly in on the joke, and work to make their movies as extreme and ridiculous as possible. How could you deny a movie that contains the line, “You just fucked with the wrong Mexican!”

7. The King’s Speech

The King’s Speech is about King George VI, known by his friends as Bertie, who suffered from an extreme and humiliating speech impediment. He eventually turns to Lionel Logue, who cures his speech impediment and eventually becomes his friend. Now the premise sounds conventional and boring, but what really makes this movie superb are the performances by Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush. They give beautiful and complex performances, and both of them deserve the buckets of awards that they are going to receive this year.

6. The Social Network

The Social Network is a tale of ambition, greed, and betrayal set to the story of the creation of Facebook. Driven by anger over his girlfriend breaking up with him, and jealousy of his fellow students at Harvard who come from old money, he creates one of the most popular websites in the world and becomes a billionaire. Driven by an unexpectedly brilliant performance by Jessie Eisenberg, who plays Mark as an awkward sociopath who’s horribly out of touch with everyone else, and a witty and fast paced script by Aaron Sorkin, the movie takes what could have been sensationalist bullshit and turns it into a polished reflection on class and ambition.

5. Splice

In probably the most original movie released this year, Splice is a movie about the consequences of the creation of human life. Splice surrounds Elsa and Clive, two scientists who end up creating a half human half animal chimera. But in many ways the creature is very human and they begin to treat it like their child. Although it was marketed as a horror movie, it’s not actually scary at all. It’s a very intriguing psychosexual Freudian family drama with a sci-fi twist. Understandably that isn’t for everyone, but I just loved it.

4. True Grit

Many may dismiss True Grit as a remake of a film that was already superb, but it’s a very different picture. While the 1969 version was vehicle for John Wayne, True Grit is a western about biblical retribution, but in true Coen brothers fashion it’s also a complex reflection on good and evil. It’s a story where the “good” characters and the “bad” characters aren’t that different, and karma simply deals justice with a swift and brutal hand. It’s very similar to No Country for Old Men, but Grit contains a lot more kindness and humor, and therefore is much easier to watch. Supported by great performances by the entire cast, particularily from newcomer Hailee Steinfeld, this is more evidence that the Coen brothers quite simply can’t make a bad film.

3. Exit Through the Gift Shop

Thierry Guetta was simply a Frenchman who owned a vintage clothing store, but who also constantly carried a camera and filmed everything that he saw. His cousin was the famous street artist Space Invader, and through him he ends up falling into the complex world of street art. After filming hours of footage of street art, he becomes obsessed with the idea of creating a documentary about the famous anonymous street artist Banksy, and therefore Banksy decided to make a documentary about Thierry. Exit Through the Gift Shop is that documentary. It functions as a character study, the charting of the birth of a movement, an expose on the exploitation of street art, and in many ways a practical joke. It’s endlessly entertaining and puzzling, but also inventive and insightful. I’d recommend it anyone.

2. Toy Story 3

Pixar seems to have a special ability that causes me to tear up during every single one of their movies, and Toy Story 3 was no exception. Andy is heading off to college and the toys’ fates seem to be in jeopardy, but they sent over to a daycare center that’s at first welcoming but then later sinister. Both emotionally beautiful and immensely creative, the movie never stops surprising you. In the end,it’s a simple beautiful love note to consumerism, childhood and the power of relationships.

1. Black Swan

Black Swan follows Nina Sayers, a ballerina at a top ballet company in New York, who is given the dual lead role in a production of Swan Lake. Director Darren Aronofsky views Swan Lake as a metaphor for the two extremes of art, which are controlled and rational versus passionate and dangerous. These extremes cause the childlike Nina to split in two, both literally and figuratively. This is all lead by Natalie Portman, in one of my favorite performances of all time, who takes an intellectual abstraction and turns it into a real human being who the audience can, at times painfully, relate to. The movie itself toys with both of these extremes and is both recklessly and powerfully melodramatic, but also interesting and complex. It forces the audience into Nina’s pointed shoes, and makes us feel like we ourselves are losing our grip on reality. It’s one of the most powerful movies I’ve ever seen, and is easily the best movie of the year.

'Red State' Trailer: Wow.

So the trailer has just been released for Kevin Smith's long rumored evangelical Christian horror movie Red State, and man does it look good. Smith is known largely for profanity filled R-rated commedies, so this is a huge departure for him. After the horribly lame and unfunny 'Cop Out', it seems that he'd run out of steam in the comedy genre, so it makes sense that he'd take a risk and move on. But it seems that the risk has paid off, because it looks very unique and very very unnerving. As someone who loves a classy horror movie, I'm super pumped. Check it out.

(There's some slightly disturbing imagery, so check yourself before you wreck yourself.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmmnVGyLajw

Tron

TRON - B

TRON: Legacy - B

Imagine a company investing 250 million dollars in a sequel 20 years after the original came out. Also the original was a massive flop that only a very select number of fans have seen. However this is exactly what Disney has done with Tron: Legacy. Disney's strange gamble seems to have payed off with a successful first weekend, mostly due to it's incredibly aggressive marketing campaign. So out of curiosity I decided to watch both the 80's original and the sequel, and see what I made of them. What's shocking is that they are almost exactly the same movie, despite the fact Legacy claims to be a sequel rather than a reboot. This is not just because of the plot, but rather also their strengths and weaknesses also. They have did the same things excellently, but unfortunately they have made the same painful mistakes.

The original Tron follows Kevin Flynn, played by a ultra cool Jeff Bridges, a computer programmer who is accidentally sucked into a computer. While in the computer he is forced to play in a series of gladiator-esque games by a sinister computer program called Master Control, that has sinister designs for the outside world. Now the plot of Tron isn't why you would want to see it. It's writing is at times a little unfortunate, and has a lot of trouble avoiding schlocky 80's action movie cliches. It toys with "2001"-esque ideas about the consequences of technology, but dosn't really do anything with them. Master Control mentions taking over the entire world once, and it really raises the stakes, but then it's never mentioned again. Because of this the entire movie just kind of seems like Jeff Bridges having a good time in a psychedelic world trying to get some copyright information, which is not that compelling. I think the reason why they struggled with this is that they had to humanize really abstract concepts like RAM, which is understandably challenging. When programs talk about their users it almost sounds like the toys in Toy Story talking about their children. But it did begin the development of our cultural understanding of cyberspace, which is definitely something to be applauded.

So Tron: Legacy takes place about 20 years after the original Tron, and Jeff Bridges has gone missing in the grid, leaving his son Sam by himself. So Sam ends up getting sucked into the computer program, and is forced to play in a series of gladiator-esque games by a sinister younger computerized version of Jeff Bridges that has sinister designs for the outside world. Sound familiar? Not only in plot, but also in structure Legacy is identical to the original Tron. This wouldn't really be an issue if the original had a great plot, but Legacy ends up having all the issues of the original. Primarily this is the regrettable writing ("What am I supposed to do?" "Survive!"), but also the characters aren't very developed, so when things stop exploding you have trouble caring.

What everyone should be seeing both Tron's for though is the visuals. Tron was actually the first major movie to come out of Hollywood that extensivly used special effects. It seems that the approach was ahead of it's time, because many animators and critics shunned the technique, and the Oscars disqualified Tron from the visual effects category because they considered the technique cheating. Despite the original being a lot older it still looks fantastic. Because the visuals are so old it actually becomes interesting, unique and really really trippy. The entire movie has a strange neon glow to it, and sticks to bold primary colors which makes it very striking. Even though the CGI is very minimalistic, it's really effective. You may just be seeing a red block chasing a blue block, but you end up irrationally supporting the brave blue block and hating the evil red block. I guess that now we are in a society that has completely embraced CGI and computers, the movie makes a lot more sense.

That's probably why Disney decided to reboot Tron. The visuals in Legacy may not be as innovative as the original, but they still look fantastic. It takes a huge amount of visual references from the original, but still finds it's own beautiful glossy style. It's color scheme is huge expanses of darkness punctuated by flashes of bright neon, and it looks really great. Also some of the action sequences are some of the best I've ever seen. The light-cycle scene blew my mind, and was over way too fast. The only visual thing that disappointed me was the 3D. I could hardly even notice it, and it made my eyes hurt. It's a shame because the 3D could have been fantastic in TRON. Also having Daft Punk score the movie was a masterful choice. They're the most iconic electronic artists out in the world, and their music perfectly fits the futuristic atmosphere of the grid. Another notable part of the movie was Jeff Bridges playing both himself, and a younger computerized version of himself called CLU . This was done by the people who aged Brad Pitt in Benjamin Button and it produces mixed results here. Younger Jeff Bridges suffers from slightly dead eyes, and his face looks like it's been overstuffed with botox. This creepiness works wonderfully when Jeff Bridges is playing the artificial version of himself, but in flashbacks when he's playing the actual Flynn it looks really strange.

So for those anticipating a science fiction masterpiece from either of these movies, you won't find it here. But technically they're both really stunning, and Jeff Bridges acting like The Dude is always welcome. Just sit back and watch the light show and you'll have a good time.