TOP 10 FILMS OF 2010...
I'm ready to go.. but to be the obsessive movie geek I have to let out some ground rules of the movies that were available to be ranked.
These will be the top 10 films first viewed, by me, in movie theaters throughout 2010. It's very possible that some of the selections from the Wisconsin Film Festival might have been officially released in a previous year in the country of their origin, but they nonetheless count, because I'm seeing them with my eyes as a brand new movie in a theater.
Even with my limited means, I find it very difficult to keep this as a rule. You may recall, that I put an amazing Chinese epic called Red Cliff in my top 10 of last year, even though I watched in on a region-free DVD on my computer. This was due to it's only availability being a set of Chinese DVDs a friend lent to me. In fact, there was a theatrical version edited for United States release that apparently was really terrible, so this was the ideal version of Red Cliff to watch.
That being said, it's time to break the rule in some way, because as a very special honorable mention...
None other than the guru of film criticism, Roger Ebert, put this movie on his top 10 foreign films of 2010, even though I had saw it at home through Netflix Instant. Doing some digging it looked like it was released in its home country of Korea in 2009 but released in the U.S. in 2010. It was actually a selection at WIFF 2010, along with all of the director Bong Jon-Ho's other films. But I can't bring myself to judge it among the theatrical experiences I had during 2010... it seemed like I was already viewing it from my backcatalog of films I want to see.
In a perfect world, though, it would be very difficult not to make this my best film of 2010. This Korean director has continually upped the ante, after Memories of Murder, and the Host, to make hauntingly ambiguous endings that never seem like a cop-out. A murder mystery, a steadfast belief in innocence, and a mother and son that goes beyond anyone's casual comfort zone... the elements combine in ways totally unexpected, and conjure up feelings and emotions that I had no reference point for. Incredible movie.
NUMBER 10 (TIE):
This will be the only tie, I swear, but these two movies ended up having some tremendously distinct qualities, while being balanced with some flaws that couldn't be completely excused. I couldn't recognize one over the other.
Cyrus' strengths were its acting and very natural dialogue. Unlike many high quality but grandiose movies, the small set of characters in Cyrus talked and reacted in ways that you could relate to if you were in that situation. Jonah Hill, beyond anything else I've seen, shows that he can take his persona to creepy (but not psychotic) lengths. So while it's refreshing to see these kind of human characters, it would have been better for the story to have a little more substance. I wouldn't want to see this movie right away for the second time, but I definitely would like to watch these characters and see what happens to them.
It's pretty much coincidental that these two movies are tied, but Handsome Harry might be contrastable to Cyrus in that the characters, with possibly the exception of the main protagonist, are actually very ill-defined. Cliched performances and general stereotypes of "men with troubled pasts" can be disengaging, and the secret that drives the story has been a topic of more prominent movies for many years. Perhaps I was too much in film festival mode to tolerate something remotely conventional, but then something interesting happened. The story, pacing, and structure became so perfectly composed that the meaning of these 'conventional' characters' actions shifted to something deeply emotional and sad. The main character was so confident and masculine that the slightest shift of perception into who he actually is created a ripple effect that reached its point in a devastating conclusion that truly expresses the incredible damage of keeping shame and pain bottled up tight for decades.
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