2010 In Review...Top Ten, Bottom Ten

I'm way behind on this stuff, so I'll do full movie reviews after the Top Ten List.

I have to admit, this year's Top Ten looks a lot worse than last year. Nothing on this list really felt like it was fighting for top spot. Part of this could be due to a rather unimaginative year from Hollywood, and part of it could be that I've been really lazy on my Oscar homework. Movies I have YET to see that could have made my list include:

The Fighter

Black Swan

The Kids Are Alright

Let Me In

Winter's Bone

Monsters (I could see it making MY list, anyway)

Off to the races!

1. Toy Story 3--the "Return of the King" of Pixar, in that it's not necessarily the best of the trilogy, but it elevates the Toy Story franchise in its entirety to something easily on par with the greatest film sagas of our time. You've made it to the top again, Pixar!

2. Kick-Ass--Nicolas Cage shoots his daughter in the chest in his first scene, then they go out for ice cream.

3. 127 Hours--I'll never be able to think the way Danny Boyle does, but thankfully he puts it to good use and makes great films.

4. Easy A--A wonderful tribute to John Hughes, and one of the few really good comedies I saw this year. Emma Stone, you might be perfect.

5. Inception--While the movie has its detractors, I still think its a great flick. A movie with this much inventiveness STILL being a summer blockbuster deserves praise. BWAAAAAAMMMM!!!

6. Tangled--Disney is back!!! The first CG animated movie from the studio I've seen that still captures the heart of Disney. Well done!

7. Catfish--Fascinating little film that wonderfully blends what the very nature of a doc is about in itself. Man, why couldn't I have been as inventive as the kids who put this thing together?!

8. How To Train Your Dragon--Dreamworks' great leap forward! I have my doubts, but keep it up!

9. Despicable Me--Is my love for animation showing? Still, Universal finally had a much-needed hit from its brand new animation studio! Stay strong and keep these coming!

10. Piranha 3D--The best possible movie that could have been made with this title. Kelly Brook is hot.

Normally I do a Bottom Five list, but I saw so many awful movies this year that I think I'm going to do a Bottom Ten. Here we go...

10. Shrek Forever After--On this list more for what it represents...shameless unnecessary sequels nobody wants to see. Last I heard they're planning six (SIX?!) Kung Fu Panda films and four How to Train Your Dragons. Dammit Dreamworks, have you learned nothing?!?! (Facepalm)

9. Letters to Juliet--Boring drivel. Amanda Seyfried is pretty but vacant. I recommend checking her out in "Chloe" instead. And no, I haven't seen Chloe in full...just a select few scenes from the Internet.

8. A Nightmare on Elm Street--Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes continues to destroy classic horror franchises with this terrible remake. Making the film "darker" and "more serious" only makes it more uncomfortable as it becomes clearer Freddie isn't a gleeful killer but an all-out creepy pedophile. Gee, that's fun.

7. The Wolfman--More unnecessary horror remmakes! I actually wouldn't be against a remake of 40s-era monsters in concept (it was great when Cronenberg did "The Fly"), but this was trash. When three different endings are shot months before your release, you know that nobody had any clue where the movie was headed.

6. Harry Brown--It's not just the big studios that make bad movies! I never thought I'd see the day where Michael Caine would be in one of the worst films of the year, but here we are. An uncomfortable hate-filled film with little redeeming qualities.

5. Alice in Wonderland--Why did this make so much money?!?! It was very pretty, but any movie where the characters pull out the literal screenplay to tell the characters why they need to do what they are doing (and aren't being tongue-and-cheek) needs a lot of work. Tim Burton, go back to designing the worlds, and let someone else handle the story (Henry Selcik ftw!).

4. Our Family Wedding--Unfunny people in a "diverse" comedy that came off as racist. I'd go out for drinks with America Ferrera though.

3. The Last Airbender--While visually OK, this movie proved without doubt that Shyamalan's time may be up. What a mess! What is disappointing is that I felt this easily could have been the next great franchise in the vein of Star Wars or Harry Potter, but it's pretty unsalvageable now.

2. My Soul to Take--I'll take more about this later, but it was one of those movies that made no sense from beginning to end, even in terms of basic understanding of what was going on (similar to Southland Tales in that respect). Man what happened, Wes Craven?

1. When In Rome--You win, Kristen Bell! The absolute worst movie of 2010, and one of the worst I've ever seen in my life.

Man, there were some stinkers this year, weren't there? Let's try harder in 2011, OK Hollywood?

OK, real reviews. Keep 'em quick:

OLDER MOVIES

"Scream 1-3" I don't know how I never got around to seeing these movies until now. They are pretty much tailor-made for film students who enjoy the horror genre, so naturally I loved them! I think the second film is the weakest of the bunch, but they're all a lot of fun!

"Call of the Cthulu" Now here's an interesting way to make a movie! A small but inventive low-budget film tells an HP Lovecraft story as if it were an authentic silent film, with pretty good results for those who appreciate experimentation. Cthulu himself is done with stop-motion animation (my favorite!) and some of the sets are pretty impressive, evoking the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and the original King Kong.

It IS a shame that, even though this was made in 2005, if made today for the same amount of money it would probably be more convincing as an "authentic" old movie, simply because of the great strides that have occurred in digital camera technology. The movie often LOOKS like it was shot on digital, even with flicker and film grain added. If you shot this on the 7D, you wouldn't have as many of these problems, guys!

"The Naked Gun 2 1/2" We all watched this as a tribute to Leslie Nielsen when he died. It's not as good as the first Naked Gun, but it's still pretty damn funny. RIP Mr. Nielsen!

"Ponyo" All Miyazaki films are inventive, imaginative, and beautiful. That having been said, I feel like this was one of the weakest in his repertoire, with more akin to his early children-centric work such as "My Neighbor Totoro" than his later masterpieces such as "Princess Mononoke" or "Spirited Away." It's light and fun, but there's not a lot of focus. It's sort of unbridled imagination for imagination's sake.

But it IS Miyazaki, and the animation is stunning and worth seeing nonetheless. Seriously, how can you hate on a movie with this adorable theme song?

"Spaced" During a bout of sickness I finally got around to watching the delightful BBC show that gave Edgar Wright his start. It's very clear after seeing his other work how his style developed--lots of swish pans, being irreverently dramatic, even the basic slacker characters all started out here. Personally I thought that while his work became more technically polished later on, most of "Spaced" feels a lot more "true." Instead of the somewhat insufferable Canadian hipsters we got in Scott Pilgrim, here we have a bunch of British 20-something would-be artists obsessed with going to pubs, debating comic books and movies, and figuring out how to pay next month's rent. I feel like all people involved with the show have really LIVED this life, and it shows. Also the constant homages to Star Wars and other movies fit a lot better in TV show form than in a 2-hour feature. If you're a 20-something nerd (like me!) I think you'll really like it.

MOVIES FROM THIS YEAR

"Megamind" I wasn't a huge fan of this Dreamworks entry, but at least it's not as offensively bad as "Monsters vs. Aliens." I just generally dislike these pop-culture flicks over a more original idea. "Megamind" may on paper a more well-structured screenplay, but I'll take an unfocused "Ponyo" with more heart, soul, and innocence over these committee-made schlock-fests any day.

"My Soul To Take" One of the most incomprehensible movies I have ever seen. What did anything have to do with anything?!?! It's shocking that the guy who made the stellar "Scream" series I talked about above put this together. There are generally bad movies, and then there are movies where the basics of filmmaking get thrown so far out the window that it feels like a disjointed series of shots and scenes from several movies that have nothing to do with each other. Craven clearly knows how to put together a movie that at LEAST makes sense, so what happened?! One of the worst movies I've ever seen.

"Easy A" Whenever anyone wails about how Hollywood is falling into a sinkhole, I say "Make more movies like this!" Shot for only 8 million, it still features a stellar cast, sharp screenplay, and is tons of fun. The entire cast is brilliant, from the adorable Emma Stone in the lead to all of the adult characters who lighten up the sidelines (highlights are Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson as her parents, and the always enjoyable Thomas Hayden Church as her eclectic teacher). The movie was a huge hit at the box office, grossing somewhere around $60 million total. That's what…over a 600% return on your investment? And why did people see it? Because it was a good story!!!

"Unstoppable" There are some movies that aim to deliver precisely on their premise, and no higher. Unstoppable is this kind of movie, and I loved it.

Tony Scott has flirted with more serious fare occasionally, but it's clear that it's not where his heart really lies. A standard action-packed thriller like this works much better for him, and is executed wonderfully. I had a blast.

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (part 1)" When I was in high school and I first started down my delusional path of "I'm going to be a filmmaker!" a fantasy project of mine was always to do one of the Harry Potter movies (book 4 was my favorite). However now that I'm older and I know how difficult in can be to adapt a film, I'm glad somebody else wound up doing the job (though you should have brought back Cuaron, WB!!!).

As a big fan of the books, it's always a delight to see what you imagined in your head translated to the screen, but (to her credit) J.K. Rowling's universe is so dense that far too much exposition needs to be crammed into each scene in order to explain what is going on. In previous films little bits of information were left out just to make THAT movie work, but now they're paying for it, and it becomes tiresome quickly.

Case in point--in a scene that is meant to have a sense of urgency, the entire film screeches to a halt to introduce the character of Mundungus, who will be important later. In the books Mundungus has been around since the order of the phoenix (I believe), but they've left him out of the movies thus far, so now we're forced an awkward introduction.

The same holds true for Bill and Fleur's wedding. We sort of know who Fleur is, but we've never heard of Bill, even though book-wise he gets his first mention in Sorcerer's Stone (technically the movie mentioned him too, but how am I supposed to remember some off-hand remark in a movie that came out nearly a decade ago…I was barely hitting puberty!). So why should I care about the wedding of a character of whom I know absolutely nothing? Even more ridiculous is the "climax" of this film (awkwardly split into two parts) involving (SPOILER!) the death of Dobby. Dobby and the rest of the house elves have a much larger part in the books, but in the movies I don't think we've seen him since the second film. So you're telling me our big climactic scene involves the tragic death of a secondary (tertiary?) character we haven't seen in eight years?

All in all the film is far more episodic than any other, feeling like a chapter-by-chapter retelling. That's kind of nice if you like the books, but it doesn't make for a very interesting MOVIE. More than any other of the Potter flicks, this one felt like if you hadn't read the source material you would be completely lost and confused.

On the other hand there are some pretty inventive moments. Breaking in to the Ministry of Magic, meeting with Xenophilius Lovegood, and the sequence where Ron destroys the horcrux were all great. And having the tale of the three brothers be told through animation was lovely. Even the ending where Voldemort steals the elder wand was exciting, if not smacking a bit of, "Oh, I guess the movie is done now."

Now I'm not saying this is a bad film, by any means. I certainly don't know how I would have done it better necessarily; but it just goes to show some things work better as books, some as movies (though I think Peter Jackson proved complicated fantasy epics CAN be realized to a pretty awesome degree).

Anyway "Deathly Hallows" looks and sounds great, but is very convoluted. However I AM convinced the next film will rock!

"127 Hours" Danny Boyle scores again! A movie about a guy trapped under a rock for its entirety seems a little difficult to make interesting, but I found this one of the most riveting of the year. Franco deserves an Oscar for his performance as Aron Ralston (though he may lose to Colin Firth…which I'm OK with).

I have to say, there are some filmmakers whose work I look at and think, "You know what, give me some more money and some more experience, and I could do something like that." Then there are guys like Danny Boyle…I have NO idea how his mind works or how he pieces a story together, but his pseudo-documentary style is riveting and fascinating.

I will say that "the scene" involving the arm is pretty intense, mainly because of the sound design used (what a smart way to show cutting through a nerve!). However as someone who wears contact lenses myself, the bit where he has to stick them in his mouth to keep them moist also had me squirming.

"The King's Speech" I smell Oscar bait! Does anyone else smell Oscar bait?

Regardless, it's pretty good Oscar bait, AND it tells a story about something I knew absolutely nothing about. The King in WWII had a stutter? Cool! (You could argue that the fact that I didn't know this proves how unimportant British royalty has been for the last century, but whatever).

Colin Firth is in top form as the titular king, and Geoffrey Rush is pleasant as his dialogue coach (I wish Rush could be my uncle or something).

It's a shame that this movie is rated "R" simply because of one scene where Rush asks Firth to curse just so that a steady stream of words can flow. It's a good scene, but other than this blue streak the movie could probably be rated "G." It's like one of my favorite (and underrated) Australian films "The Dish" with Sam Neill, which could also have been given a G rating until one character turned to the other and said, "You don't fuck up." Suddenly…BOOM. PG-13. And yet somehow this is less OK than showing people getting shot and murdered.

"Yogi Bear" This movie is awful. But why, you may ask, was it not on my Ten Worst list?

Because everyone THOUGHT it was going to be awful. Nobody expected anything else! It's harmless, and nobody cares. Avoid it, but know that it's not hurting anyone. Next review…

"Tron: Legacy" I may be a victim of Stockholm syndrome here, but I kind of liked the new Tron movie. I like to compare it to last year's "Avatar." The story is sort of a mess, but at least it's a newer more original world, and the movie looks frickin' AMAZING. Plus, Olivia Wilde's Joan of Arc haircut makes her hotter than ever.

I did have a problem with Jeff Bridges in this film, however. What I like about Bridges is that he always brings "The Dude" into any part he plays, livening up that character and giving it new life. But this is always done UNINTENTIONALLY. In the first "Iron Man" his character wasn't written to be "Dude-like," but Bridges added that extra layer that made it tons more fun ("Hey Tony, brought you some pizza man…"). And his characters in "Crazy Heart" and "True Grit" (more on that in a minute) also have his signature charm.

In "Tron" they're just trying too hard. Bridges is given lines like, "Sam, you're really messing with my zen thing, man" which are funny unto themselves, but as a whole make me think some exec thought it would be really cool to make as many in-joke references as possible. It just takes you out of the world. In fact "trying to hard" is probably where nearly ALL the problems in the film stem from. They're so obsessed with appealing to fans and being cool that they didn't stop to think if their movie actually made any sense (it doesn't).

I have yet to see this movie on the big screen, but I still think regardless of its problems it had a cool vibe, man. And Daft Punk's score was quite awesome.

"True Grit" This movie had one of the most rocking trailers I'd ever seen, so maybe my expectations were too high. I am a HUGE fan of the Coen brothers, and I always felt like their movies in many ways WERE westerns if not in the traditional sense. They're often stories of vast expanses, crimes, people hunting down others, and the wild setting as a character in its own right (Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Fargo, O Brother Where Art Thou?, No Country For Old Men). So I was very excited to see what they would do with this one.

In general I thought it was 2/3 of a damn good movie that unfortunately didn't pay off in the third act. As expected from the Coens, the outdoor location shooting is gorgeous and really makes you feel as if you're living in the Old West, and the acting is top-notch all around. Jeff Bridges delivers a winning performance as expected, but the little girl could very well be up for an Oscar as the precocious Maddy. The biggest surprise was Matt Damon as the buffoonish Texas Ranger. The Coens have a way of coaxing goofy performances out of generally clean-cut stars (George Clooney in "O Brother" or "Burn After Reading"? BRAD PITT in "Burn After Reading"!), and Damon's heroic clumsy goofball was an unexpected load of fun.

However the final showdown with the bad guys is somewhat of a letdown. Aside from the villains not really being in the movie enough anyway, when Bridges rushes at them and guns them down it's all over far too quick. The bit involving the snake pit was neat (and scientifically accurate!), but as a whole the finale was anticlimactic. The Coens often have strange endings that leave things hanging ("No Country" or my favorite, "A Serious Man"), but generally there's a purpose behind it, and this time I just felt cheated.

Still, a darn good western no matter how you look at it, with some pretty tense sequences, especially in the middle.

I do have one question. What state was this movie supposed to take place in?

"Tangled" I think Disney might be the winner for being my favorite studio from this year. As I'm sure you're aware by now, 1/3 of the reason I wanted to make movies is because I grew up with Disney animation (another third is Star Wars, and the final third is LOTR). However at some point Disney got off the tracks a bit. They've slowly been getting back on for the last few years, and having Lasseter at the helm certainly helps. Last year's "Bolt," for example, wasn't perfect but certainly FELT Disney. And "Princess and the Frog" wasn't bad either.

However "Tangled" is great. While I will always be a lover of 2-D animation, this is the first (non-Pixar) film I've seen that doesn't just use 3-D animation because it has too, but bends the tools to the will of the animators to create breathtaking visuals. The scenery is stunning and the characters are vibrant and expressive…even though it's 3-D this movie has more in common with "Aladdin" and "Beauty and the Beast" than anything I've seen in a long time. If you can see it in 3-D I recommend it, as it really pays off (the floating lanterns scene is well worth the heftier ticket price alone).

While all of the main characters are tons of fun, special mention should be made of Maximus the vigilant and tenacious horse. One of the best Disney characters in a while, I wasn't entirely aware he was going to be such a big part of the movie when he was first revealed. Thank god somebody in a development meeting said, "You know, I think we have something with this horse here…" Whichever animators were part of his team deserve a medal! In a pretty darn good animated flick, he was unquestionably the best.

I should mention that while the songs aren't bad, they're not particularly memorable either (but at least they HAD songs!). I didn't leave the theater humming any of the tunes, which is often what you want from this sort of movie.

Still, good work Disney! Go see it! Take your kids!

OK, I'm done. I hope 2011 is a good year!