2010 in Review: Film

After some careful (and some not-so-careful) consideration here's my own personal take on film in 2010 starting with the ten movies I enjoyed the most.

My top 10 favourite films of 2010

10. Easy A. Will Gluck’s witty, charming and keenly intelligent high school comedy sees the fab Emma Stone as Olive, the invisible nerd girl who tells a little lie to get herself out of a pickle. Only problem is Olive then sees that small lie grow beyond reason until she is eventually branded the biggest [insert derogatory term for women who have lots of sex with lots of different men] in the school. Stone is wonderful in the lead but she also gets great support from a sterling supporting cast especially Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson as Olive’s loving if slightly eccentric parents. Smart, witty, biting, Easy A sees Emma Stone’s birth as a major movie star. At least it should.

9. Centurion. Neil (Dog Soldiers, The Descent) Marshall’s Roman Britain era film sees the always excellent Michael Fassbender leading a surviving band of Roman soldiers back through the hostile wilds of Scotland to the relative safety of Northern England after their legion is devastated by fierce locals. All the while, mute psycho tracker/hunter Olga Kurylenko is hot on their heels and craving Roman blood. Centurion is one of the best looking films of 2010 thanks to Marshall’s sweeping direction and regular DP Sam McCurdy’s gorgeous (as always) cinematography. Centurion is simple yet grimly elegant with blistering and bloody action, great characters and gorgeous scenery.

8. The Losers. Similar to The A-Team and The Expendables, The Losers is by far the best even if it did make by far the least at the box office. It has a breezy, witty, snappy script and a top-notch charismatic ensemble cast led by the excellent Jeffrey Dean Morgan in rumpled George Clooney mode but with the brilliantly nerdy and funny Chris Evans stealing the show. Director Sylvain White gives the whole thing a glossy, gritty comic book feel while always keeping the ensemble cast front and centre. Also, The Losers has my favourite single shot of 2010: the gorgeous Zoe Saldana firing a rocket launcher in slow motion. Sexiest thing I saw all year. Does that make me a bad person?

7. Whip It. Drew Barrymore’s hugely charming, sweetly anarchic and very funny directorial debut sees Ellen Page’s outsider teen from a nowhere town hook up with a ‘cool’ roller derby team made up of a motley bunch of girls who can’t stop fighting and losing. Beyond the funny and the roller derby madness, the film is at heart a simple story about a mother and daughter’s stressed relationship and their struggle to connect to each other. Ellen Page is fab as is Kristen Wiig as the roller team’s mother figure but it is Marcia Gay Harden as Page’s actual mom who takes the acting gong in a perfectly pitched performance of parental strife.

6. Tron Legacy. Yep, I’m a Tron geek. Have been since 1982. I love light cycles, recognizers, disc wars etc. And though far from perfect this belated sequel is a stunning film to look at and is smarter and richer in substance than it has been given credit for. The script, though messy and choppy, is loaded with allegory and theme and the brilliant score by Daft Punk keeps your neck hairs raised. Oh, and Olivia Wilde makes for one dreamy cyber warrior babe.

5. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Edgar Wright directs what is the single most energised and visually inventive and creative film of the year. A very funny, very cool, very smart love story and coming of age story that plays out like a super slick video game. Think Spaced with a budget. Tons of energy, tons of smarts, tons of fun.

4. Black Swan. Darren Aronofsky’s deconstruction and reconstruction of an immature, fragile and fearful girl’s psyche as she struggles to become the mature and confident woman she needs to be is a beautifully poetic and darkly disturbing piece of cinematic art. It is certainly not to all tastes but I for one adored every single frame. Natalie Portman is quite extraordinary as Nina, the troubled young ballet dancer struggling to transform in to the perfect performer. That Oscar should be hers for the taking. To my mind this is Aronofsky’s best work yet. A beautiful nightmare.

3. Kick-Ass. Mathew Vaughan’s bright, bloody, violent, sweary, funny not-so-superhero film adapted from Mark Millar’s comic of the same name is so much fun it hurts. Aaron Johnson is great as Dave/Kick-Ass, as is Nicolas Cage as nutty vigilante Big Daddy, but it’s uber-moppet Chloe Moretz who steals the movie as the viscous, foul mouthed and all round badass Hit Girl. If you’re a geek like me and you don’t love this film then there’s something truly wrong with you.

2. Toy Story 3. Pixar strike again with what is arguably their best film to date. Before TS3’s release who’d have thought they could come close to equalling let alone surpassing the previous two Toy Story films. But that’s exactly what they did. A glorious mix of laugh-out-loud fun, edge of the seat adventure and genuinely heartrending emotion, Toy Story 3 is not just a great animated film but a great film. Period. Oh, and Spanish Buzz, possibly THE funniest thing this year.

1. Inception. Christopher Nolan’s puzzle box film is an absolute masterpiece of ingenious, complex storytelling and thematic depth. It’s that rarest of beasts – a blockbuster that is unashamedly deep and intelligent, that challenges its audience and demands close attention, active thought and multiple rewatching. Nobody makes films like Christopher Nolan, nobody.


The five films I hated most in 2010

NOTE: these are all major releases and don’t include the many dregs I’ve seen from cheap direct to DVD or cable as there’d be far too many of them to list.

5. Robin Hood. Utterly dull, charmless and misguided ‘prequel’ to the old story we all know and love. Batman Begins did this kinda thing so very right. Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood got it so very wrong. Boring in da Hood.

4. Case 39. Puffy faced Renee Zellweger looked as bored as the audience in this long delayed scary child horror that was neither horrific nor scary, but was instead just plain silly and bland. Kids, just say no to a puffy Zellweger.

3. Legion. Paul Bettany is a heroic renegade angel in this flashy but stupid and tiresome actioner that wants so bad to be The Terminator with an angry God instead of Skynet but without an ounce of the originality or intelligence of Cameron’s sci-fi classic. Beefcake Angels make me laugh.

2. Law Abiding Citizen. Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx star in this ridiculous, morally dubious and flatly made revenge thriller from hack journeyman director F. Gary Gray. Arrest ‘em all and throw away the key.

1. Resident Evil: Afterlife. Boring beyond belief was how I found this floater; a big steaming jobbie that has no redeeming features whatsoever with no proper story, no interesting characters, terrible acting and a style ripped off ten years too late from The Matrix…and done really badly at that. Die you zombie scum!


Other stuff


Best actor: Ryan Reynolds in Buried. Special mention to Ben Affleck in The Town who was also most impressive.

Best actress: Natalie Portman in Black Swan. And a special mention goes to Chloe Moretz for her outstanding roles in Kick-Ass and Let Me In. If not for Natalie it would be Chloe hands down.

Best Guilty Pleasure Film: The Wolfman. Joe Johnston’s gory remake of the 1941 classic is more old school Hammer Films than Universal horror but Rick Baker’s make-up FX are fab as is Benicio Del Toro in the title role and the always great Hugo Weaving as Inspector Abberline.

Most likely guilty pleasure for 2011: Zack (300, Watchmen) Snyder’s Sucker Punch. Kick-ass girls fighting giant samurai, dragons, space robots and mutant soldiers in what Snyder describes as Alice in Wonderland with machine guns. Woo hoo!

Best Trailer for a movie released in 2010: Inception

Best Movie News of 2010: The Hobbit is officially a go with Peter Jackson directing

Worst Movie News of 2010: Warner Bros. and Atlas Entertainment to make a Joss-less Buffy reboot movie. NOOO! GRR ARGH!

Third toy time is yet another charm

And so Pixar strikes again with TOY STORY 3, which against all the odds of sequel making turns out to be just as good as the previous two Toy Story films.

And you can’t get much better praise than that.

To be honest it should have come as no surprise. I mean they do have form, a LOT of form. But creating a third film in such a successful and high quality series is often a difficult task with the final result usually proving to be something quite a bit lesser than what came before. But not here. Why so? Simple really. Three things: story, story and story. Pixar invest so much time and effort in story and character. It is the beginning and end of everything they do. This (amongst other things) is what raises them to a level well beyond their animated competitors with the script for TOY STORY 3 being a perfect example. It is a precision machine of perfect storytelling yet it remains wonderfully warm with genuine emotional depth and layers of subtext. This new adventure for Woody, Buzz and the gang is based around the structure of a prison escape film, though with darker, deeper, more duplicitous undertones than, say, the great CHICKEN RUN from Aardman. Pixar know that we have to genuinely connect with and care about characters in order to fully invest in a story. And, boy, do we ever. Wait until you get to the big scary finale as together, hand in hand, the gang face certain doom. Lump in throat time. The main thrust of TOY STORY 3 is about moving on, learning to let go and finding new purpose in life. It is also about loss and how we deal with loss, a theme that has run through all three films. Pixar aren't afraid to confront these big important themes in their films. And bless them for doing so. For it's that extra emotional oomph that can, when done well and with genuine feeling, reduce a grown man to tears. Remember Jessie telling her heartbreaking tale of abandonment in TOY STORY 2? Remember Anton Ego's flashback to childhood in the glorious RATATOUILLE? Remember the utterly devastating first ten minutes of UP? I rest my case. TOY STORY 3 also contains allusions to faith including imagery of heaven and hell with things getting pretty dark and intense in places. But just as with the previous two, it is the theme of family and friendship and what that really means that underlies everything. However, never fear, for along with all of that serious stuff, TOY STORY 3 is also one heck of a laugh out loud funny film with Buzz Lightyear switched in to Spanish mode a particular highlight. This is pure comedy gold that allows the smitten space ranger to go all romantic Latin hero with Cowgirl Jessie. Brilliant! The film looks utterly gorgeous too, with Pixar going and raising the bar even higher for CG animation. Also, the 3D presentation works beautifully giving so much depth of field and sharpness to the image with no discernable motion blur. It is by far the best use of 3D since AVATAR. And then there is the cast. As always with these films the voice cast are perfection led by the now iconic work of Tom Hanks and Tim Allen as Woody and Buzz. There is also memorable work from new arrivals Michael Keaton as a conflicted Ken doll who finally finds his Barbie, Ned Beatty as the villainous, emotionally scarred bear Lots-o-huggin and Timothy Dalton as the classically trained hedgehog Mr Pricklepants.

I’m pretty confident that this will be the last of the Toy Story movies as it really does feel like an apt and fitting finale to the story of Woody, Buzz, Jessie, Rex, Slinky et al. And if it is to be their very last outing then they’ve sure gone out in style leaving the audience with big smiles on their faces and a few tears in their eyes, just as it should be. Simply put TOY STORY 3 is a total and utter joy to watch from its very first frame to its final heartfelt denouement.

So thank you Pixar, you’ve gone and done it again.

Like there was ever any real doubt. (5+/5)