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!

Nobody loses with The Losers

The Losers

Wow! So…um…The A-Team has a lot to live up to this summer.

The Losers is an action movie based on a comic book from DC/Vertigo about a band of special forces guys who get framed on a job they were doing. Left for dead in Central America, they eventually get the chance to return Stateside in order to enact their revenge and clear their names. So far so very A-Team. Now I’ve not read the original comic this movie was based on so I have no idea how much of a rip off…I mean homage to the much loved eighties TV series it is. All I do know is that, as a movie, The Losers rocks! The story of The Losers is pure nonsense. But it doesn’t matter. The script by Peter (The Rundown, Hancock) Berg and James (Zodiac) Vanderbilt is fun, tight, fast-paced, witty, and sharp as sharp can be. The direction by Sylvian White is stylish mixing glossy, fast cut MTV/Michael Bay-isms with a hefty dose of Peter Berg’s own hand held grit. But neither styles overplay themselves, they just mix wonderfully and give The Losers its own distinctive comic book look and feel.

But above all else it’s the terrific cast that truly makes this film. Right from the get go each and every one of them radiates effortless charisma and charm. They all seem immensely comfortable playing off each other, like riffing jazz musicians in one of the coolest bands you’ve ever heard. But at the core of it all are four great performances. The team’s leader is the tough, laconic and hugely charismatic Jeffrey Dean Morgan. You might remember him as Edward ‘The Comedian’ Blake in Watchmen. Dean Morgan is like a more world weary Robert Downey Jr minus the smartass. And spookily he looks a lot like him too, only a beefier and more rumpled version. His gruff sparring with the also great Idris Elba is a wonderful character cornerstone to the movie. Chris Evans plays the teams tech guy and the main source of comic relief. Evans once again shows why he is a big star just waiting to go stratospheric. He brims with charm and humour, but, as he proved with the likes of Danny Boyle’s Sunshine, he is also a genuinely strong actor. Plus he isn’t afraid to take the piss out of himself as he does to great effect here. His character in The Losers is a bit of dork who can’t talk to women and is mostly unaware of his own dorkishness. The sequence where he infiltrates a tech company to steal info from a computer is hilarious. I never laughed so hard at a Journey song. Luckily for us Chris has been cast as Captain America in Marvel’s upcoming movie adaptation of its legendary patriotic hero, which means he will also play the dual lead with Robert Downey Jr’s Iron Man in Joss Whedon’s movie of The Avengers. Wow! My head nearly exploded just attempting to contain the enormous geeky coolness of that sentence. And then there is Zoe Saldana in the femme fatale role. Ah, Zoe. I’m so in love with this girl it ain’t funny. Last year with Star Trek and Avatar she proved she was a wonderful actress with so much natural poise and feeling to her performances. Here she is just as good, although her character doesn’t have as much depth to work with as in those previous two films. But she is still an intense presence who looks stunning and who moves with a seductive feline grace. Maybe it’s the trained ballet dancer in her but she moves like nobody else on screen. You can tell Zoe from only her silhouette, purely from the way she moves. Also, in this movie, she is in what is probably THE greatest single shot of the year: stood tall and poised atop a cargo container while firing a rocket launcher from the hip. In slow motion. As sexy and lethal as all hell. But for all good heroes you have to have a good villain. And with The Losers we do get a good villain, a very good one. Which brings me to the fourth top-notch performance in the movie: Jason Patric as the vicious, sarcastic Max. He’s coldly evil, casually shooting a girl dead just because she accidentally moved the parasol she held over his head to let in some sun. And then, later on, he is bitingly sarcastic to his main henchman in what are some wonderfully amusing put-downs. It is that nasty sarcasm that does the trick. You rarely get that in films - especially American films. But Patric does it so well here. He really is a cold, snide, ruthless, ghastly monster. And what more could you want from a comic book bad guy?

So, in the end, despite the visual razzmatazz and the very cool action, it is the cast and the characters of The Losers that stays with you. It has that feeling of a perfect group coming together to make magic happen. It’s like watching Firefly/Serenity, or Predator, or the new Trek movie. Every role has been perfectly defined, cast and played, with the group chemistry being immediate and evident. Together this band of brothers (and sister) light up the screen, and by films end you just wanna be able to hang out with them and have a few beers and a few laughs. I loved The Losers. A lot. I had a huge grin on my face all the way through (when I wasn’t drooling over Zoe). It entertained me in a big way. And I can’t wait to see it again. 4.5/5

The Losers trailer