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!

My Weekend: A Mind Blowing Trailer. A Kick-Ass Movie. A Creepy Book. A Time Lord in Venice.

Movies:

Inception (trailer)
HOLY CRAP! If you haven't seen it already, check out this new trailer for Inception, Christopher Nolan’s follows up to The Dark Knight. Nolan is the master at making intelligent thrillers with complex narratives and strong adult thematic underpinnings. This just looks stunning. Basically it is a high tech sci fi crime/heist film set in the world of dreams. I'd be mightily surprised if Inception doesn't end up as the best film of 2010. Jaw meet floor.

(Sorry, couldn’t find an embed.)

Iron Man 2
Good but not great. The first one was better. This time around the story was too unfocussed with all of act 2 being just long stretches of talk and virtually no action. Mickey Rourke, though good, was rather an underused villain. Also the films 'wow' factor was pretty much absent this time - except for the great race sequence in Monaco.

But despite its flaws I still enjoyed it quite bit. For a big summer blockbuster superhero film it might be too shallow to be quite so talky but then again when you have the likes of Robert Downey Jr. and Sam Jackson verbally sparring on screen then that’s real talent and charisma overload. Throw in the wonderful Gwyneth Paltrow, whose chemistry with Downey Jr is still pleasingly sparky, the fun Sam Rockwell and the gorgeous ass kicking goddess who be Scarlett Johannsen, plus some pretty cool (when they happen) action sequences, and IM2, for all its faults, is still a cut above. Oh, and if you’re a superhero/Marvel geek then hang around until the end credits are over for a foretaste of the next big Marvel movie. A certain Norse thunder god is on his way. 3.5/5

Kick-Ass
I watched Kick-Ass again this morning. God I love this film. It is just bursting at the seams with such creative, irreverent, yet weirdly warm and affectionate energy. If you’ve ever loved superheroes and wondered why nobody ever tried doing it for real (or maybe you secretly dreamed of doing it for real yourself) then Kick-Ass is for you.

Kick-Ass is directed by Mathew Vaughan (Layer Cake, Stardust) and adapted from Mark Millar’s excellent graphic novel of the same name. Aaron Johnson in the title role is perfect. He comes across as an even geekier version of Toby Maguire’s Peter Parker and a lot more realistic as an ordinary hormone fuelled teenager with dreams of masked heroism and of getting the girl. But it is a certain pint sized psycho moppet who truly steals the show. Chloe Moretz as Hit Girl is a phenomenon. She’s an eleven-year-old whirling dervish of mayhem, death and profanity. And with a vicious curled lip that would make any grown man quiver in fear. Quite simply this kid in this role is an instant pop culture icon. A lot of the stuff she does and says is very, very wrong for such a little lass. And yet she does it so darn well. As her daddy, Nicolas Cage is almost as brilliant. When in his Batman-esque costume, Cage adopts an Adam West style persona that just kills. Watching him in this you remember why he actually is a movie star.

Kick-Ass is the best film I’ve seen this year. And the most fun film I’ve seen this year. And the most wrong film I’ve seen this year. I mean watching nasty Mark Strong punching an eleven-year-old girl in the face repeatedly is a mightily disturbing sight. But don’t worry dear reader, he soon gets his comeuppance. Oh yes indeed. 5/5

Books:

The Reckoning
I’ve just finished The Reckoning, book three in Kelley Armstrong’s Darkest Powers young adult series.

Fifteen year old Chloe Saunders, a troubled but powerful young necromancer, is on the run from Lyle House Children’s Home along with bitchy witch Tori, handsome arty sorcerer Simon, and Simon’s adoptive brother, the hulking, bad moody Derek, a fast maturing werewolf. Hot on their heels is the mysterious and deadly Edison Group, a shadowy organisation who’ve been doing some very nasty secret experiments on supernatural children for years. Chloe and her new friends seem to be the culmination of those experiments. And the Edison Group wants them back.

This third book wraps up the first trilogy of the Darkest Powers series in a fitting and exciting way. The Reckoning is a cracking read full of realistic and witty dialogue, great characters, dramatic action, high emotion, nasty monsters and supernatural shenanigans. There are a lot of chases, fights, double crosses and supernatural showdowns as well as some cool payback and destruction. But, as always with Kelley’s books, the characters, relationships and the emotions are always kept at the forefront. The fact that this is part of a young adult series doesn’t matter. The Darkest Powers series is still set in Kelley’s Otherworld universe and her usual writing style is kept 100% intact. Content-wise the action, humour and horror is all still there. But (as only to be expected in a YA book) the fairly graphic eroticism that plays a role in her adult work is not present here. Instead we get elements of teenage angst along with some burgeoning conflicted feelings; feelings which never amount to anything more physical than a hug, the holding of hands or a tender kiss. And that’s fine. For the teens in this series are so well drawn and so layered and complex in their characters that you totally accept it. It seems truthful and real. You really do like these kids and feel for them in their plight. Kelley Armstrong gives great character.

Anyway, I’ll miss Chloe. She was a great narrator who went on a fun, scary and challenging journey over the three books from a stuttering, insular and rather timid little daddy’s girl to someone of burgeoning power, intelligence, maturity and courage. The fact that she was also a major movie geek (especially horror and action films) and an aspiring screenwriter was just the icing on the cake. Although this part of Chloe’s story is now over, the book’s ending sets up the bigger tale with new and dangerous future missions to undertake. The next Darkest Powers trilogy will have new main characters, new stories and a new narrator, but Kelley says that Chloe, Derek, Simon, Tori et al will be back at some point, most likely as supporting characters rather than leads. And I look forward to meeting up with them again. 4.5/5

TV:

Doctor Who
Doctor Who is still great. Matt Smith now owns this role so much it ain’t funny. I much prefer his Time Lord take to that of David Tennant. I liked Tennant but preferred Chris Eccleston. Now I prefer Smith to them both. And Amy Pond is just sublime. She’s gorgeous, smart, fiery, funny, perfect. The stories so far have varied in quality from the excellent opener, the brilliant Weeping Angels two-parter, to the fun but flawed Victory of the Daleks, and the okay but not great second one called The Beast Below. This week’s ep was Vampires in Venice from Being Human writer Toby Whithouse. It was a fun romp made all the better by the wonderful location filming in Croatia (doubling perfectly for Venice), Whithouse’s witty, funny, insightful dialogue, and Matt Smith knocking it way out of the park as The Doctor. Watch and revel in his quiet, subtle scene with the main villain as they debate about what to do next. He gives a level of mature restraint, thoughtfulness and sly wit that Tennant would have had trouble in selling. My two main criticisms of this episode are:

1) The actual plot is very samey to new Who tales that have come before. Think The Runaway Bride meets The Fires of Pompeii.

2) The FX. The Mill FX house dropped the ball here with some of the crummiest CGI recently seen in the show. The Doctor climbing the tower at the end is embarrassingly bad, as is some of the obvious CG water added throughout to make the location look even more Venice-y.

On the big plus side, though, the gaggle of female vampires are a foxy lot with even The Doctor getting a bit overexcited at times. And Whithouse’s script is full of many wonderful lines and some great character based humour. Next week sees The Doctor and Amy trapped in a world of dreams and having to find their way out before they die. It looks very interesting and suitably weird.

A Kick-Ass comic

Kick-Ass (comic book)

The movie of Kick-Ass is due out in a few weeks. And I can’t wait. The trailers (especially the red band one) are crazy good and the early reviews are through the roof. If nothing else you have to see it for Hit Girl, the ten-year-old prepubescent, sword wielding, foul-mouthed ‘heroine’ who’s guaranteed to upset a lot of people. Kick-Ass is a strange beast in that legendary comic book writer Mark Millar (Wanted, The Authority, The Ultimates, Marvel Knights, Spider-Man, Civil War) sold the movie rights early on to Mathew Vaughan (producer of Lock Stock and Snatch and director of Layer Cake and Stardust.) Vaughan then developed the movie alongside the creation of the comic book. And though essentially the same story with the same characters, they do apparently diverge in some places so that they are not exact carbon copies of each other. I didn’t read the book when it was released in its usual monthly issues, instead I waited for the collected edition of the first volume – the story that forms the backbone for the film. And it is quite simply brilliant stuff and quite unlike any comic I’ve ever read. I just hope the movie will be as ballsy. I think it will.

Kick-Ass is the story of utterly average sixteen-year-old New York kid Dave Lizewski. Dave lives with his doting, widowed dad and leads a typical teenage boys life – he plays video games, hangs out with friends, lusts after hot girls at school, fantasises over a big bosomed teacher, surfs the web for porn, hangs out in chat rooms. Oh, and he’s also a major comic book geek. One day Dave wonders to his friends why nobody in real life has ever tried being a superhero, putting on a costume to fight crime. His friends tell him its obvious: you’d either be utterly ridiculed or just plain dead within days. Probably both. Comic book heroics are nothing more than unachievable fantasies and wish fulfilment whereas real life is hard and dangerous and deadly. But Dave isn’t convinced and so decides to give the superhero thing a try. Using a wetsuit he buys on Ebay and a couple of wooden clubs, Dave takes to the streets as a costumed vigilante, the self titled Kick-Ass…whereupon he promptly gets stabbed, beaten half to death and run over by a car.

After six months in hospital and then lots of physiotherapy (he managed to strip himself of the costume before he was found then told his dad he was mugged) Dave is back on his feet and back to school. But the allure of the costumed hero is too much to resist. And so Dave once again dons the Kick-Ass costume and heads out to pound the streets looking for crime to fight. And this time he succeeds…just. In a bloody brawl, Dave saves a man from a vicious mugging and ends up as a sensation on YouTube after a passer by films it all. The popularity of Kick-Ass skyrockets. Pretty soon other people are donning masks and costumes and taking to the streets as well. Dave sets up a Kick-Ass MySpace page where people can contact him if they need help ala The Equaliser. One such contact leads Dave to a drug dealers den full of very bad people indeed, and where it looks as if Kick-Ass is finally gonna be ass kicked for good. It is then, in what he thinks are to be his last moments on earth, that Dave meets the masked, foul mouthed, whirling dervish of purple hair and lethal swordsmanship that is Hit Girl. A ten year old girl who slashes and stabs and kung fu kicks her way through an apartment full of heavily armed drug dealers leaving no head un-beheaded and no guts un-spilled. It is in this first meeting that the little terror gives to the room full of thugs what is sure to become her immortal line:

“Okay, you cunts. Let’s see what you can do.”

This is a full-page iconic pose of the psycho tyke covered in the dripping blood of her victims, a severed head at her feet, a devilish smile on her lips. I laughed my ass off at the utterly disgusting, hilarious, uber-cool, absurdity of it. It turns out that Hit Girl works with her dad, named appropriately Big Daddy, another costumed type. Only these two have been working for a while now, low key, under the radar, to take down the city’s big mob boss. They have their reasons for doing so, which I won’t divulge. Suffice to say it is true comic book stuff…before then being subverted.

Dave is horrified at the violence and death meted out by the crazy kiddie. He worries that Kick-Ass will be blamed for the deaths due to his MySpace page contact, while Hit Girl thinks that they should team up as she and Big Daddy could use Kick-Ass’s help in a big final push to get the bad guys.

What will Dave do?

Who is Red Mist, another new super type who seems intent on stealing Kick-Ass’s thunder with the public?

And just how the hell did Dave manage to become his High School crushes gay best friend when he isn’t gay?

These questions and more are answered in this clever, crazy, action packed, witty, blood stained comic. There is so much to love here I don’t know where to start. Er…yes I do. Hit Girl. She is an instant icon of the comic book world. An insane inversion of what every little girl should be. For Christmas and birthdays she should want Bratz dolls or fluffy bunnies or cute clothes. Instead she wants M-16 rifles, switch blades and kevlar armour. And she has a swearing vocabulary most middle-aged Dockers couldn’t keep up with. I blame the parents myself. Apart from the awesome but rather over the top Hit Girl, the world of Kick-Ass actually rings true. Nothing here is super. Everything used is everyday or available if you know where to go. People get the crap beaten out of them and spend time in hospital as a result. Or they simply get killed. And the response of the media and the public at large is quite believable. You could see something like this actually happening. Scary.

I knew I’d love Kick-Ass from the first few panels of John Romita Jr’s stylised art and Millar’s sparky, witty dialogue. But when a few pages in Dave is reading X-Men and gives out some big love to Joss Whedon as its writer and then states that he’s the biggest Buffy maniac in the world, I loved him even more. You see I was Dave at that age. A big part of me still is - although I never had the balls (or the stupidity) to actually try being a super hero for real. As Dave soon finds out there are bloody good reasons why people don’t. Emphasis on the bloody.

Kick-Ass volume one is fantastic. It is fast paced, very funny, very violent and quite brutally realistic – not just in the violence but in how things pan out and how people behave to each other. For instance, Dave thinks he might have his very own Mary Jane Watson at school. It doesn’t quite work out that way for the poor lad. Peter Parker thought he had a rough time trying to be a normal kid and a super hero? He should try being Dave Lizewski. Now THAT’S tough!

Pure kick ass genius.