In no particular order except for the first three:
- BLACK SWAN
- MESRINE: KILLER INSTINCT
- THE KILLER INSIDE ME
- DOGTOOTH
- LET ME IN
- THE LAST EXORCISM
- INCEPTION
- BLUE VALENTINE
- SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD
- WINTERS BONE
Black Swan was a lock for first. Aronofsky and Portman delivered a masterpiece whose final act left me exhilarated and breathless like nothing else this year.* On paper Black Swan reads like a cross between ’80s DePalma and Showgirls. Somehow, the director and his amazing cast transmute that base material into a fantasia of art, sacrifice and schizophrenia. Here, Aronofsky has managed to synthesize the mature storytelling instincts of The Wrestler with the synesthetic delirium of Requiem for a Dream, and I stand in awe.
*Well, nothing else in released commercially. Then there’s A Serbian Film, which I saw at a SXSW midnight screening. It’s the most offensive, dangerous piece of art - and it unquestionably is art - I’ve ever experienced. (Read more here.) I’d also like to give a nod to SXSW’s The Loved Ones, the best as-yet unreleased film I saw on 2010’s festival circuit.
The rest of the list was a lot harder to write, with a plethora of movies I liked but didn’t love. A title that landed 12th or 13th today could easily have been 8th or 9th another day. When in doubt I tended to err in favor of the independent and quirky.
Here’s an example. Blue Valentine made the list and The Fighter didn’t. Both are very good films, bordering on greatness thanks to superlative performances. Both directors employ unconventional techniques to elevate plots that are otherwise conventional melodramas. Sure, no one makes a better crackhead than Christian Bale, but I’d much rather return for a second viewing of Ryan Gossling’s breaking heart and that why the lovers are in and The Fighters ain’t.
A few words on the rest:
Stylish and sexy, Mesrine: Killer Instinct showed a remarkably different side of Black Swan’s Vincent Cassell. It’s companion film, Mesrine: Public Enemy Number 1, was also a fine film but the rise is always more fun than the fall.
The Killer Inside Me offers a little bit of many of my favorites of the year: almost as subjective as Black Swan, as stylized in its time and place as Mesrine, with a brief foray into A Serbian Film’s nihilistic brutality, featuring a performance by Casey Affleck that’s one of the year’s most remarkable.
Dogtooth didn’t make it to LA until January, but I’m including it here since it played New York in 2010. I didn’t know there was a Greek cinema, let alone one capable of such chilling yet comic minimalism. In my brain (and probably nowhere else), Dogtooth was the anti-Tiny Furniture.
Let Me In managed to pull off the impossible - take a perfect film, my runaway favorite of 2008, and turn around a worthy remake that in many ways improves upon the original.
The Last Exorcism also bucked the odds, breathing fresh life into the tired horror movie trope of the demonically possessed (or is she?) teenage girl and the equally tired device of the fake documentary. I loved simply hanging out with Reverend Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian), and the film wisely takes its time building character before delivering scares. Many viewers gripe about the lack of a Hollywood ending, but I credit the film for getting out at exactly the right moment.
Inception was a bubble film for me.* I have to give Nolan credit for having the audacity to deliver such a cerebral blockbuster - and embed within it a pretty good love story. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy, Marion Cotillard and the whole hotel fight scene? Great. Leo DiCaprio, Ellen Page and a sterile dreamscape free of anything remotely dreamlike? Not so great. Still, any movie that can leave audiences debating the meaning of a spinning top is doing something right.
*Among those for whom the bubble popped are The Social Network, The King’s Speech and True Grit, movies with great dialogue and nothing much to say - though the Coen brothers’ latest came very close.
We’ve already discussed Blue Valentine. Scott Pilgrim was a movie that deserved a better fate than it got. I love how it managed to find visual inspiration in 8-bit video games while delivering a message about the limits of narcissism sorely missing from most other teen flicks, even ones I love like Superbad. It also has the distinction of being the only actual comedy on my list.
Four or five films were vying for the last spot but I’ve given it to Winter’s Bone for Jennifer Lawrence’s breakthrough performance and for delivering an almost documentary-like realism to its Ozark Mountain setting. Extra points may have been given for casting Deadwood actors John Hawkes and Garret Dillahunt. I picked up the HBO series’ Blu-ray box set over the holiday and have been feeling nostalgic for all those hoopleheads and cocksuckers.
That’s my rather longwinded look back at my favorite films of 2010. What were yours?
