Was 2010 a stellar year for the movies? In a word: no. What year has been truly stellar in recent memory?
However, being the eternal optimist that I am, I would like to think that the golden age of cinema is still ahead. It’s a given that even in a year where the cinematic output as a whole leaves something to be desired, there will invariably be a dozen or so films that do what films are supposed to do: entertain and enlighten. If a film does so in a way that completely confounds the audience’s expectations, its merits deserve to be openly praised.
The process of choosing 10 films that I felt represented themselves best in 2010 wasn’t as tricky as I originally thought it would be. What did prove tricky was deciding what order to place them. I don’t know about you, but I personally appreciate end-of-the-year critics’ lists that rate the best of the bunch in film, music, theater, and television in order of preference.
Whenever I’m asked which film genre I like the best, I always say that I really don’t have a favorite genre overall; it shouldn’t matter what the genre is as long as the finished product delivers the goods. There have been years where my Top 10 films were overwhelmingly dramatic and others where comedy reigned supreme. This year it was split down the middle.
As far as straight comedies go, you won’t find a better (or funnier) comedy from 2010 than Easy A, which is loosely based on the Nathaniel Hawthorne classic The Scarlett Letter. The film features a breakout performance from rising star Emma Stone as Olive Penderghast, a clean-cut high school student who uses her newfound rep as the school tramp to her advantage. In an era that’s been sadly devoid of sharp, funny, memorable, young female characters, Stone’s Olive takes her place alongside Molly Ringwald’s Samantha Baker (from 1984’s Sixteen Candles), Winona Ryder’s Veronica (from 1989’s Heathers), Alicia Silverstone’s Cher Horowitz (from 1995’s Clueless), Reese Witherspoon’s Tracy Flick (from 1999’s Election), and Lindsay Lohan’s Cady Heron (from 2004’s Mean Girls) as the most interesting of the lot.
Speaking of memorable female characters, Annette Bening and Julianne Moore successfully teamed up for one of 2010’s best films, The Kids Are All Right, playing a longtime lesbian couple whose lives are turned upside down when their two teenage children (Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson) track down their sperm donor (Mark Ruffalo) and invite him into their family. Much like the ABC comedy series “Modern Family,” Kids is reflective of our times, magnificently acted by the entire ensemble, and has a wonderful message about family values at its core.
Diane Lane was pretty damn terrific as Penny Chenery Tweedy, the woman behind the legendary, Triple Crown-winning horse in Disney’s enthralling sports film Secretariat. There’s little doubt the story (set in the 1970s) has been sanitized by the good folks at Disney, but no one does inspirational tales of people rising above adversity better than the Mouse House. Certainly comedienne Joan Rivers has overcome her fair share of adversity (sexism, ageism, being banned from late-night, her husband’s out-of-left-field suicide) all of which and more is chronicled in the superb (and quite candid) showbiz documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work.
3-D animation has taken off in the past couple of years, thanks in no small part to writer-director James Cameron’s Avatar. So many 3-D animated films opened during 2010, there were concerns about a potential log jam happening. Would too many of them be playing simultaneously thereby triggering a tug of war over available 3-D capable theaters? If that had happened, the two 3-D efforts that took the filmmaking technique to new heights in 2010 would have deserved special accommodations: Tangled, Disney’s re-imaging of the classic Brothers Grimm fairy tale, Rapunzel, and DreamWorks Animation’s high-flying, spectacle How To Train Your Dragon. The former proved that the “princess” movie is far from dead, and the latter came as close as any rival studio has thus far to being on par with Pixar Animation Studios’ consistently brilliant work.
Similar to Pixar, the filmmakers responsible for my seventh, fourth, and top two picks of the year have come to epitomize what filmmaking at its height can and should be.
Joel and Ethan Coen’s evocative remake of the classic 1969 western True Grit casts recent Oscar winner Jeff Bridges in the role that won John Wayne his Oscar. It looks like he’ll be in the running for another best actor Oscar two years running. Hopefully he’ll be joined in the Oscar race by talented newcomer Hailee Steinfeld, who steals the show as the stalwart 14-year-old daughter of a murdered man who’s determined to settle the score with the criminal (played by Josh Brolin) responsible for his death and hires a gruff U.S. Marshal (Bridges) to track the culprit down. Steinfeld is being pushed for supporting actress, but the talented young woman is definitely Grit’s leading lady.
Director Christopher Nolan’s Inception proved to be the most complex film of 2010. USA Today critic Claudia Puig probably summed it up best when she asked if the film was surrealist heist thriller or a dream invasion action epic. Whatever it is, Inception is a captivating film from an innovative filmmaker working at the top of his game.
Black Swan is a modern-day All About Eve set in the world of ballet. Natalie Portman delivers a dynamic, game-changing performance as a ballerina who’s driven mad by the demands of playing the lead role in her company’s production of “Swan Lake.” Is it a ballet film? A backstage exposé? Or a horror film? Depends on who you ask. I, for one, think it’s a sick, twisted, and utterly brilliant exploitation film of operatic proportions from director Darren Aronofsky.
And the best film of 2010 was…The Social Network. Shrewdly directed by David Fincher, with a whiplash smart script by Aaron Sorkin (a self-proclaimed non-fan of the Internet), The Social Network is at turns a legal drama, a tragedy of semi-epic proportions, and a portrait of a young man – Mark Zuckerberg, played with Zen-like precision by Jesse Eisenberg – who can’t see the forest for the trees because as bright as he is, his EQ isn’t as sufficiently nourished as his IQ. Eisenberg’s great work is equaled by British import Andrew Garfield, mesmerizing as Eduardo Saverin, Facebook’s one-time CFO (and the socially-inept Zuckerberg’s one true friend), and Justin Timberlake, in a spellbinding turn as Napster founder Sean Parker.
Mack’s Top 10 Films of 2010
1. The Social Network
2. Black Swan
3. The Kids Are All Right
4. Inception
5. How To Train Your Dragon
6. Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work
7. True Grit
8. Tangled
9. Secretariat
10. Easy A
Honorable Mentions: 127 Hours, Conviction, Cyrus, Despicable Me, Fair Game, Morning Glory, RED, Solitary Man, The Town, and two HBO films “Temple Grandin” and “You Don’t Know Jack.”
2010’s Worst Film: A tie between the made-on-the-cheap alien invasion flick Skyline and the beachside melodrama The Last Song, the latter of which proved transitioning teen pop star Miley Cyrus can‘t act to save her – or anyone else’s – life.
