My Favorites of 2010 – Movies

My Favorite Movies of 2010

I love movies and I went through a list of movies that were released in theaters in 2010 and narrowed down my favorites.  I then edited those favorites down to a list of 10 and arranged them in order.  Without further ado, here they are.

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#10

Predators

Adrian Brody kicked some serious butt in this movie

This summer flick first caught my attention when I heard that Robert Rodriguez had his hands in production duties.  I love his campy and violent take to action flicks and his vision to make the predator creatures scary again came through.  I chose this over his own Machete because I love a good re-imagining or a good remake.  And simply put, I enjoyed Predators more.  I think it was a better guns-galore-explosions-every-10-minutes action film than the popular Stallone movie The Expendables.  It takes enough cues from the old film while updating it to make it enjoyable and fresh and leaving us with a satisfying cliffhanger ending that leaves room for more wrist-blade-shoulder-rocket-launcher-mandible action.

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#9

Toy Story 3

STOP TOYING WITH MY EMOTIONS PIXAR!

Pixel perfect animation and nostalgia galore filled this summer flick from Pixar that once again made this burly man cut onions.  Seriously though, you can’t help but love Pixar’s movies.  They have true heart and better stories than most films Hollywood can muster.  Blue Sky? Dreamworks Animation?  Please take notes.  You’re getting better, and How to Train Your Dragon is most likely a serious contender for animated film of the year, but don’t clog your movies with lame pop culture references and whatever “it” celebrity is available for voice acting.  I’m half expecting the cast of Jersey Shore to appear as orange d-bag birds in Blue Sky’s upcoming Rio.

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#8

The Town

Jon Hamm's John Ham

Great script, solid acting, and some intense bank robbing action made this a pretty entertaining movie.  I also loved the Boston setting.  I saw this with some friends from Boston that commented that they were a little homesick after seeing the movie.  Also, Jon Hamm. Yes…

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#7

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1

Hermione Granger. ME GUSTA.

I’ve loved the Harry Potter books since I was in Elementary School, but the movies have never been my favorite.  I liked 3 and 4 a lot due to new directors and some more mature elements that brought humanity into a world of magic and myth.  But the newest entry in the movie series is easily one of the best.  It stayed true to the book and had some awesome set pieces.  And the 3 brothers story animated by Stateless Films?  BRILLIANT.  Can’t wait for the conclusion.

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#6

Tron: Legacy

"Man, that light cycle really tied the grid together..." -The Clu abides.

This is a prime example of what a summer blockbuster can and should be.  Even though it came out in December, it had all the elements of a good popcorn flick.  Special effects were really cool, the sound design was unique and pleased the ear with futuristic resonance and digital atmosphere, and the soundtrack by Daft Punk?  HOLY COW.  So good.  I feel like this is the kind of special effects powerhouse movie that Transformers could have been.  Also, Olivia Wilde > Megan Fox.  ’Nuff said.

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#5

127 Hours

"This rock has been waiting for me all my life . . . and all its life,"

Just a warning, these final 5 movies are love letters to the directors, but for good reason.  Danny Boyle (28 Days Later, Slumdog Millionaire) knocked it out of the park with this adaptation of the true story of Aron Ralston.  Aron Ralston was hiking in Utah and slipped on a boulder while descending into a canyon and got his arm caught between a rock and the canyon wall.  It was a great film that showed off James Franco’s acting prowess.  You spend almost the entire movie with him in one setting but his struggles and hardships are so well displayed that you are glued to the screen and you’re never bored of watching this guy stuck in one spot in a canyon.  Be warned that this movie is pretty taxing on emotions near the end as he realizes what he has to do to free his arm from the rock, but like Slumdog Millionaire before, it comes out on top as one of the most uplifting and inspiring films of the year.

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#4

Inception

Joseph Gordon-Levitt kisses Ellen Paige in one of the smoothest moves of all time. Kudos to you Mr. Gordon-Levitt

Christopher Nolan is a great director who is finally getting the recognition he truly deserves.  The man has been messing with our heads since Memento and he brought a gritty and realistic vision to Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.  This time he tackled the wonder of the dream.  Inception was a slick thief film mixed with the surreal where popular science reigns king.  And the plot and ideas had millions wondering what’s really going on in their head while they sleep.  As noted in my popular post on my wishlist for villains in Batman 3 (Now known as The Dark Knight Rises) I’m really looking forward to Nolan’s next film.

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#3

The Social Network

The track "3:14 Every Night" accompanied me at 3:14 every night I forgot to do homework

David Fincher has been one of my all time favorite directors ever since I pirated Fight Club and watched it on a dim CRT monitor my freshman year of high school.  And like Fight Club, Seven, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, there’s a lot more going on in the film than what the title or premise proposes.  Fight Club isn’t some film solely about an underground fighting ring, Seven isn’t just a murder mystery, and Benjamin Button isn’t just a tale about a man who ages backwards.  The Aaron Sorkin scripted Social Network is not just the story of Facebook.  It’s the story of a computer driven generation where pride, recognition, and popularity reign supreme.  The acting is excellent and the soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross accompanied most of my studies this semester and I imagine a lot of the next.

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#2

Black Swan

"It's perfect!"

As a film buff I know it’s a crime that I haven’t seen any of Darren Aronofsky’s films such as Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain, or The Wrestler, but my incentive to view them is now cemented by Black Swan.  If you had ever told me that I would love a movie about ballet so much I would’ve called you a dirty liar.  But this movie was dark, drenched in symbolic images and provoking themes (black and white, reflections and mirrors, perfection vs natural human performance), and more intense and thrilling than any horror movie I’ve ever seen.  This is not a horror film by any means but it succeeded in doing what true horror should, getting underneath your skin and twisting your vision of what the truth or reality is.  The amount of time the film gave you to relax grew exponentially shorter until the conclusion.  Go see this movie.

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#1

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

I'm in lesbians with this movie

I doubt that this will show up on too many top 10 lists, but I absolutely loved it.  I think I was in the perfect demographic for this summer movie from Hollywoods greatest mash-up artist Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead being a romantic comedy zombie movie and Hot Fuzz being a police action murder mystery comedy).  I’m a 18-24 year old video game playing, rock and roll fan, who loves stylistic visuals, and vegan jokes.  I wrote about this in my last post and just about everything I said stands true.  The music is great.  Nigel Godrich’s score paints this surreal video game garage rock world, Beck’s Sex Bob-Omb tracks are blast your ears off distorted goodness, Broken Social Scene’s Crash and the Boys tracks are so apathetic and angsty that I was taken back to my public high school, and Metric’s contribution to Clash and the Demonhead was one of my favorite songs of the year.  Seriously, here’s the Metric version, and here’s the movie version sung by Brie Larson the actress who played Envy Adams in the film.  The movie is drenched in geeky video game references and the comic book visuals with onomatopoeic words flashed on the screen is so cool I couldn’t help but fall in love with it.  It was my favorite movie released in 2010.

 

Note: I haven’t seen True Grit yet, so this list might change seeing as how I LOVELOVELOVE the Coen Brothers.

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