It’s that time of year when all film critics are putting together (or have put together) Top 10 lists of their favorite films from the previous year. This always proves difficult for me because I have a very short attention span, and thus I forget most of the films I’ve seen in January by March. I’m also not good about seeing all those films I’m supposed to see (Inception? What?), and I’m a film curmudgeon with wacky taste. Therefore, I asked a few other film people to contribute lists as well. For me, however, the “best” films of the year tend to be those I seek out from decades past after the sheen has deteriorated and the buzz died down. I at times feel the present clouds aesthetic judgment because things like press, diminished expectations and an obligation to see and “like” certain films can dictate conversations about those films. For example, I very much wanted to LOVE Black Swan, but I thought it was a hot mess. The fact that it is getting so much acclaim makes me eager to criticize it — loudly. That said, I think Black Swan will age in ways that win me over as the camp gets campier and people forget how seriously it was taken the first time around. But I’m already off topic. The point is, I asked each responder to contribute a list of five rediscovered gems as a means of acknowledging those films we responded to in 2010 for one reason or another.
This task seemed tough for everyone asked. In fact, many filmmakers, critics, and artists entirely declined to respond because they hadn’t seen enough solid films this year — or enough films at all. Others declined because they’re afraid of making their seemingly too ornery opinions public! (Ah, Midwesterners. Sigh.) One person sent a list of only seven. Perhaps it’s asking too much to want, say, 20 great films produced or distributed per year. Maybe Milwaukee’s theaters are not bringing in the kinds of films many of my friends, peers, and colleagues will rave about. Possibly Hollywood is producing mostly crap. My guess is it’s some combination of the three that lead to the difficulty of this assignment.
Still, one thing is clear: The big winner is Toy Story 3, which everyone included. In fact, I don’t know anyone who saw Toy Story 3 and did not just adore it. Enough said: Onto the lists!
Top 10 — 2010
1. Mother (Dir. Joon-ho Bong) — I rarely use David Lynch’s name as a descriptor, but this captivating and strange thriller is Lynchian in all the best ways and included one of the most noteworthy performances of the year. Hye-ja Kim superbly plays the mother of a mentally challenged young man who gets caught up in a murder case. Mother is both family melodrama and a bleak and sophisticated detective story—and one of the most satisfying films I have seen in years.
2. Marwencol (Dir. Jeff Malmberg) — Artist Mark Hogancamp suffered severe brain damage after taking a life-threatening, hate-crime inspired beating outside a bar a decade ago. During his recovery period, he began creating exquisite WWII-ear models of “Marwencol,” a village populated primarily by Barbies, which he alters to become his friends, family, lovers, and enemies. He then photographs this world to tell the story of village under constant threat of Nazis and other evil outsiders. Hogancamp is exactly the kind of underdog “hero” that gives me hope for humanity.
3. Toy Story 3 (Dir. Lee Unkrich) — Milwaukee filmmaker Fran Kaplan (whose top five list is included below) aptly describes Toy Story 3 as, “An emotionally sophisticated, extremely well-crafted story for all ages, with excellent direction and animation, and without Disney’s usual schmaltz.”
4. Enemies of the People (Dirs. Thet Sambath and Rob Lemkin) — This is the second of the Milwaukee Film Festival documentaries on this list, and one I wrote about during the film festival. At that time I described it as a film of “personal obsession” about “befriending the people behind the people who slaughtered your family.” It’s a truly harrowing film and currently on the 2011 Oscar shortlist for documentary features.
5. The King’s Speech (Dir. Tom Hooper) — This is a pretty mainstream Oscar contender (and a legitimately great film), so I won’t worry about describing it here. I will say that I’m very excited Colin Firth won the Golden Globe for his performance, though I still suspect he might not get the Oscar.
6. Exit Through the Gift Shop (Dir. Banksy?) — I don’t care if this film is for real or not: It was one of the best times I had at the movies this year.
7. The Fighter (Dir. David O. Russell) — Now we arrive at the part of the list where I lose steam. I’m not sure that this is a great film, though it’s incredibly well made and includes more strong performances than any other ensemble film I can think of last year. It’s also likely I’ll forget about this movie by February, but I haven’t seen True Grit or Carlos yet, so here we are.
8. Rabbit Hole (Dir. John Cameron Mitchell) — I left the theater a month ago thinking this is a great film. It’s definitely respectable in that it’s an honest and surprisingly unsentimental look at a family dealing with the loss of a child, but like The Fighter, it’s not sticking with me the way, say, Mother has almost a year later.
9. Social Network (Dir. David Fincher) — The Social Network is my prediction for this year’s big award winner, though most of the people I know (including myself) thought it was a well-crafted film that left them cold. Perhaps this was the point. In fact, it probably was.
10. Ordinary People (Dir. Vladimir Perisic) — This Serbian film about a young soldier turned cold-blooded killer over the course of a 24-hour-period broke my heart on a number of levels. Not only is it depressing as all hell, but it also is not finding an audience. I saw it last summer, and it reminded me of (the new) Steve McQueen’s flawless Hunger with its long takes that emphasize the relationship between environment and atrocity. I hope someone with clout is able to champion this film.
Older Films
1. The Defiant Ones (Dir. Stanley Kramer) — I taught this film during fall semester and felt as if I’d never seen a Stanley Kramer film before: It’s an exquisitely constructed film full of long takes that allow the viewer to engage in the struggle of two ex-cons chained together. I felt so excited about Kramer that I talked with Columbia College Assistant Professor Zoran Samardzija about him, and Kramer’s film On the Beach made Zoran’s top five older films as well. Zoran says On the Beach is “Kramer’s masterpiece: a thoughtful film about nuclear holocaust the end of humanity.” I haven’t seen that one, but I believe him. We also both enjoyed Kramer’s Inherit the Wind, which is disturbingly relevant and as well made as The Defiant Ones.
2. Paper Moon (Dir. Peter Bogdanovich) — I also got into a Peter Bogdanovich mood last fall, which made me revisit the delightful Paper Moon. I’m a sucker for young girl characters with moxie, granted, but I’d forgotten just how much fun it is watching Tatum O’Neal play a con artist.
3. Valerie and her Week of Wonders (Dir. Jaromil Jires) — This film is the definition of what most people think of as “art film.” It’s weird, it meanders, it’s in another language, and it involves questionable sexuality with young-ish girls. Sort of a coming-of-age tale with vampires and magic earrings, it reeled me in with its fairy tale look and strange sense of narrative, and by the end I was convinced I would watch anything Czech director Jires ever made.
4. Carnival of Souls (Dir. Herk Harvey) — A horror classic. In fact, it’s so “classic,” I probably don’t even need to mention it. Still, I am continually struck by its dreamy beauty and ghostly dance sequences.
5. Adventureland (Dir. Greg Mottola) — Obviously the most mainstream of films on this short list, Adventureland is worth a look if you missed it in theaters or during its Red Box cycle. Caveats: I don’t hate Kristen Stewart (I’ve never seen a Twilight film), and I quite like Jessie Eisenberg, the 1980s, and amusement parks. Still, I think this understated film was better than it initially got credit for.
Zoran was kind enough to offer his Top 10 for the year, plus the additional five, and he included some notes about his other five particularly. Zoran explained that Red Garters is “an experimental musical-western shot in Technicolor on expressionistic sets!” and added, “I am not making this up.” Zoran called for a Criterion release of the other western on his list, Monte Hellman’s The Shooting. Bad Biology is the most recent film in his older top five (2008), and Zoran said he missed it because he had “no idea the great exploitation auteur Frank Henelotter made another film. This is every bit as good as his classics like Basket Case and Frankenhooker.” It also apparently features “stop-motion animated penises, a woman with several clitorises, and new-born babies tossed in dumpsters.” Fair warning. Finally, Zoran included Freddy Got Fingered, which seems to be popping up in a lot of my friends “revisiting” lists, comments, and internet posts these days. I haven’t seen it, but Zoran described it as, “a glorious piece of subversive Dadaist film-making that superficially appears to be a gross-out comedy. It’s anti-Hollywood, anti-patriarchy, and even anti-audience!”
Top 10 — 2010
1. Certified Copy (Dir. Abbas Kiarostami)
2. Toy Story 3 (Dir. Lee Unkrich)
3. The Ghost Writer (Dir. Roman Polanski)
4. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (Dir. Edgar Wright)
5. Jackass 3D (Dir. Jeff Tremaine)
6. Film Socialsme (Dir. Jean-Luc Godard)
7. True Grit (Dir. Ethan and Joel Coen)
8. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recalls His Past Lives (Dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
9. Carlos (Dir. Olivier Assayas)
10. Casino Jack and The United States of Money (Dir. George Hickenlooper)
Older Films
1. Red Garters (Dir. George Marshall)
2. On The Beach (Dir. Stanley Kramer)
3. Bad Biology (Dir. Frank Henelotter)
4. The Shooting (Dir. Monte Hellman)
5. Freddy Got Fingered (Dir. Tom Green)
Director and Producer Dr. Fran Kaplan, of Fruit of the Tree Productions, included one local filmmaker in her top seven films: Brad Pruitt’s Mark My Words, which played at the Milwaukee Film Festival in September. She called it, “a moving portrait of nine local African American poets making exquisite sense of their experiences and community through the power of words.” She also mentioned that the Argentinian The Secret in Their Eyes is “a love story wrapped in a mystery with wonderfully developed nuanced characters.”
Top 7 — 2010
1. Toy Story 3 (Dir. Lee Unkrich)
2. The Secret in Their Eyes (Dir. Juan José Campanella)
3. Mark My Words (Dir. Brad Pruitt)
4. Exit Through the Gift Shop (Dir. Banksy)
5. My Dog Tulip (Dirs. Paul and Sandra Fierlinger)
6. Alamar (Dir. Pedro González-Rubio)
7. A Film Unfinished (Dir. Yael Hersonski)
Older Films
1. Arranged (Dirs. Diane Crespo and Stefan C. Schaefer)
2. Eve’s Bayou (Dir. Kasi Lemmons)
3. Frozen River (Dir. Courtney Hunt)
4. Mississippi Masala (Dir. Mira Nair)
5. Trembling Before G-d (Dir. Sandi Simcha Dubowski)
Finally, I asked UWM film student Alex Youngen to contribute a list as well to see if his tastes reflected anything us older people were missing. Nothing obviously “youthful” is reflected in his list, which probably speaks to his respectable taste, though he did refrain form incorporating any kind of hierarchical order into his list. Hence, it’s alphabetical.
Top 10 — 2010
1. Cyrus (Dirs. Jay and Mark Duplass)
2. Greenberg (Dir. Noah Baumbach)
3. Life During War Time (Dir. Todd Solondz)
4. Mother (Dir. Joon-ho Bong)
5. Restrepo (Dirs. Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger)
6. Scott Pilgram vs. The World (Dir. Edgar Wright)
7. The Social Network (Dir. David Fincher)
8. Sweetgrass (Dirs. Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor—uncredited)
9. Toy Story 3 (Dir. Lee Unkrich)
10. Trash Humpers (Dir. Harmony Korine)
Older Films
1. American Boy (Dir. Martin Scorsese)
2. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Dir. Howard Hawks)
3. The Leopard (Dir. Luchino Visconti)
4. They All Laughed (Dir. Peter Bogdanovich)
5. Bigger Than Life (Dir. Nicholas Ray)
