With the year wrapping up the time has come to cast an eye back on the year that was 2010 and try to sum up what has come and gone. As always when doing these things I'm a little bit surprised how things have shaken down in the final lists. A few notes before we get rolling.First, as should always be kept in mind, this lists are purely subjective and should be treated as such. They're not meant to be an objective statement of quality of lack thereof, merely a reflection of my own tastes and viewing habits.
Second, I haven't seen everything yet. The absence of films like True Grit and Bedevilled means only that I haven't seen them yet. There are a few other prominent ones out there that I haven't seen as well.
Third, as I went through my viewing year it quickly became apparent that 2010 was an exceptional year for debut film makers. I normally include three picks as my discoveries of the year in this list but there were simply too many too choose from of such high quality that I wasn't willing to cut it down that I have instead chosen to make a separate post selecting my top twelve discoveries of the year. This discovery post will run tomorrow.
And, finally, please note that I do not claim that my bottom list is a 'Worst Of' list. No, I have seen MUCH, MUCH worse films than these this year, the huge majority of them festival submissions which you have never heard of and will not on this list. Instead what I'm giving you are five films that I personally found to be disappointments.
Got it? On we go with the good stuff.
Todd's Top Ten Of 2010 (in alphabetical order)
13 Assassins
Takashi Miike's foray into the world of the samurai is the most assured, polished and simply best crafted film of his career. Those who gripe that it lacks the stylistic excesses of Miike's early years are missing the point entirely. The goal here was to make a classic and he's done just that, turning in not only what is the best film of his career but also arguably the finest samurai film in decades. The entire cast is stellar, the story is complex without bogging down, and the action brings a fantastic jolt of adrenaline.
Animal Kingdom
David Michod's debut feature delivers fully on the promise shown in his years serving as principal writer for Australia's Blue Tongue collective. The Sundance winner just swept the Australian film awards for a very simple reason. It's very, very good. A crime story at once epic and earthy the picture takes you through the dissolution of a mid level crime family in Melbourne, blood ties being swept away by waves of paranoia and the compelling urge for self preservation at all costs. Ben Mendelsohn and Jackie Weaver steal the show on an acting level but the entire cast is stellar and Michod's writing and direction are both sure handed.
Armadillo
Janus Metz's fabulous war documentary Armadillo made news first by being the first documentary ever selected to compete in the Critics Week program in Cannes. It made news second by being the first documentary ever to win said program. It made news third by triggering an inquiry into the actions of Danish troops in Afghanistan and the rules of engagement there with its incredibly intimate portrayal of the soldiers engaged in the ongoing peace keeping mission and fighting against the Taliban. This is intimate, engrossing, adrenaline pumping stuff, an absolutely fascinating piece of cinema.
Black Swan
Darren Aronofsky proves once again that he is one of the most vital, important and invigorating talents in the American film world. Black Swan deserves every ounce of the acclaim being heaped upon it, credit due in equal parts to Aronofsky and star Natalie Portman, who delivers what is surely the performance of her career. Black Swan is a tricky film to peg - it doesn't fit neatly into any pre-conceived slot - and that's a major part of its power. It unsettles you as it reels you in, the opening acts serving as a slow burn lead in to a barnstorming finale.
Carancho
Ricardo Darin anchors Pablo Trapero's Carancho with a riveting, complex performance as a broken man slowly unraveling thanks to the tiny more of conscience he retains. Classic noir in content if not in style, Trapero's film spins its amoral tale of insurance scams and ambulance chasing in as unaffected a style as possible, letting events play out in a cold, almost clinical fashion as his characters stumble inevitably to a bad end. The always stellar Darin has never been better and he's perfectly matched to both director and story.
Marwencol
Jeff Malmberg's Marwencol is a film I simply can't forget which is more than a little ironic since it's subject - outsider artist Mark Hogancamp - is a man who can't remember. After being beaten literally to death outside of an upstate New York bar Hogancamp was revived by paramedics, spent several days in a coma and awoke knowing nothing about himself or his previous life. Unable to afford proper rehabilitation and treatment Hogancamp instead created Marwencol - a one sixth scale model world populated with heavily modified army dolls and Barbies who live out rich, complex lives as Hogancamp tries to exorcise his demons. Not the slickest or most polished documentary you'll see this year it is certainly one of the most heartfelt, a deeply affecting portrait of a very damaged man trying to put himself together again.
Scott Pilgrim Versus The World
While you can argue that there were significant errors made in the marketing and planning of Edgar Wright's Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, and while there is certainly a case to be made that this is a film made for a very specific audience - the size of which was grossly overestimated by the bean counters at Universal Pictures - I'm a part of that very specific audience and, dammit, this film nailed it.
Funny, charming, technically flawless, action packed, and constantly surprising Scott Pilgrim deserves better than to be dismissed out of hand by those who have Michael Cera / hipster fatigue. It is a fabulous piece of film making by one of the most talented and ambitious directors on the planet today. That it happens to also be set in my home town is merely a happy bonus.
Separado!
No, I am not being willfully obscure with this pick. The story of Super Furry Animals front man Gruff Rhys travels through the Welsh settlements of Patagonia in search of a distant cousin brilliantly defies expectations as it morphs between concert film, road movie and anthropological study. The style and structure of Separado mirrors the character of its subject, the film a cheerfully shambolic exercise in raw creative power. Whether you know Rhys and his music before the film or not - my own exposure was cursory at best - you'll be hard pressed not to love the man by the time the credits roll. A purely feel good doc that far too few have had the chance to see.
Stake Land
The American horror film of the year. Plain and simple.
Jim Mickle's sophomore film is a 70s style road trip through a grim apocalypse, a land where the men don't talk much because they're too busy cutting down the undead. The living may not be much but it beats a death that never ends.
Mickle's a director with the good sense to know when to back off and when to go for the throat and he is well matched once again with his star and writing partner Nick Damici.
We Are What We Are (Somos Lo Que Hay)
The inclusion of Jorge Michel Grau's We Are What We Are on this list should surprise nobody who is a regular reader of the site as I have been a vocal supporter of the film since first coming across it at the Guadalajara International Film Festival in March.
An unsettling hybrid of domestic drama and extreme violence, Grau's film paints a picture of a family struggling to cope with the loss of their father and the subsequent pressure on the children to step up and shoulder the responsibilities of adulthood. The hitch to this being that the family are cannibals and father was the provider. Grau's writing and direction provide the initial hooks for this one but it's the haunting, understated performance by Francisco Barreiro in the lead that gives it a lasting resonance.
While these were the ten that made the final cut it's worth noting that the initial short list included over thirty titles and I'd like to offer an honorable mention to the final three cut from the list: Confessions, Snabba Cash and The Last Exorcism.
And with the praise taken care of we now move on to the list of five disappointments.
Todd's Biggest Disappointments Of 2010 (in alphabetical order)
Amphibious 3DWhile expectations were not high for Brian Yuzna's return to the director's chair after departing Spain for Indonesia - a healthy dose of splatter and a moderately competent script would have satisfied - Amphibious 3D came nowhere close to meeting them.
The acting - too frequently in phonetic English - is atrocious and the script even worse. By this stage of his career I would expect Yuzna to understand that when you cast someone to be your action hero (hello Michael Pare) you do not set him adrift in a boat, doing nothing, through the entire climax of the film. This is what happens in Amphibious. The 3D effects are handled well and what gore there is is also solid but there's not nearly enough to cover for the fact that every other aspect of the film fails and fails badly.
Brighton Rock
Oh, Sam Riley. You had such a promising start with Control, why are you so determined to throw it all away?
To be fair, it's not just Riley at fault here. Of the entire all star cast - Helen Mirren and John Hurt among them - only Andy Serkis seems to have the first damn clue what sort of movie he's in and director Rowan Joffe doesn't seem to have any clue how to handle the complex source material from novelist Graham Greene. This one just piles mis-step on top of mis-step, each mistake pushing it farther and farther away from what it could have been until it ends up as a mangled heap of scrap.
Oh, Sam Riley. You had such a promising start with Control, why are you so determined to throw it all away?
To be fair, it's not just Riley at fault here. Of the entire all star cast - Helen Mirren and John Hurt among them - only Andy Serkis seems to have the first damn clue what sort of movie he's in and director Rowan Joffe doesn't seem to have any clue how to handle the complex source material from novelist Graham Greene. This one just piles mis-step on top of mis-step, each mistake pushing it farther and farther away from what it could have been until it ends up as a mangled heap of scrap.
The Butcher, The Chef And The Swordsman
I know I'm in the minority on this one as many people whose opinions and tastes I normally agree with - including our own Kurt Halfyard, who gave the film a very positive review - are quite fond of this mainland Chinese kung fu comedy but I simply found the viewing experience painful.
Mashing up genres is a difficult thing to do and here I found the transitions clumsy in the extreme with many of the characters simply irritating, many of the actors quite poor, the action muddy and - most critically - the comedy was just not funny. I did not laugh. Not once. This is a problem.
I Saw The Devil
I pause a moment here to remind you that this section is dedicated to 'Most Disappointing' films, not 'Worst Films'.
On a technical level Kim Ji-Woon's I Saw The Devil - like all of Kim's films - is very nearly flawless. Skill and craftsmanship are not the issue here. The problem is that for a film that has pretensions of being so much more than it actually is, I Saw The Devil is completely hollow and content to skim across the surface of its characters and situations. It is a film that spends well over two hours to make a point that could have been made just as well in a fifteen minute short. It's all noise, no substance. And from a film maker as gifted as Kim I demand better.
The Silent House (La Casa Muda)
No theatrical experience this year made me angrier than watching Gustavo Hernandez's The Silent House. Yes, the atmosphere is good. Yes, the jumps are effective. But the film so stubbornly refuses to have its central character behave in a way that makes any sense at all that if you stop and think about the events of the film for even a moment the entire thing crumbles into total nonsense.
This is a film that confuses story motivation with character motivation. It spends nearly an hour with its leading lady crawling slowly from room to room through a dark house because if she does not do this they have no film. However, if I've had the battered corpse of my father thrown onto me by an unknown assailant within the first ten minutes of the movie - and the assailant is presumably still in the house - I'm not staying there. I'm running like hell and doing whatever is necessary to get out. You need a better reason to keep her there than that your film would be fifteen minutes long if she left and your failure to provide one destroys the entire picture. There's a lot of talent on display here, all of it ultimately wasted, and that irritates me.
Very interesting list, Todd, and as ever there are a couple on here I've never even heard of. Very happy to see 13 ASSASSINS in your top ten. I was utterly blown away by that & it will be wrestling for the top spot in my own best of 2010 list. And you're dead on about I SAW THE DEVIL, all shouty shouty adolescent shock tactics with very little to say. Kim Ji Woon is human, after all.
What no Amer????????
Booo i say, Boooooooo!!!
What, no "Red, White and Blue"?
Booo I say, Boooooooo!!!
;-)
Interesting list, I will post mine soonish.
I agree about I Saw The Devil's shallowness, but also do not care.
It is quite difficult to be shocked and offended in cinema today, in the words of Darren Aronofsky "I just push it as far as I can. In today's world, it's hard to create images and ideas that people will remember."
Black Swan and I Saw The Devil is in my top 5 for that very reason, it will be hard to shake ISTD; the forest seemingly abundant with serial killers, the black, not greyness, of the world the characters inhabit, and the shocking rape and murder and no holds barred destruction of everything, both physically and emotionally.
I really want to see 13 Assassins now, Miike's commercial forays constantly disappointed me so I am looking forward to this one.
No Inception? :(
Great list Todd, I'm bookmarking this page for future reference in hunting down these obscure faves.
I need to slow down. I missed the "top picks" part of the title and jumped right to the list and was thinking WTF? Has todd fallen completely off the boat? Happy ending tho. Good lists.
This is a pretty good list, I also agree with most of it (I thought Devil was kind of like The Chaser, which I enjoyed a lot)
A few days ago I skipped Black Swan, thinking it was being over hyped and overrated, and instead went to see Tron Legacy. Coming out unsatisfied, I have to admit that I was horribly mistaken, and I had a much better time watching Black Swan than Tron.
I am just glad that Stake Land and Animal Kingdom made your list. Animal Kingdom was truly one of the best films this year. Guess it is time to hunt down Carancho.
We share Animal Kingdom and Black Swan on our lists, and I share your respect for Carancho, 13 Assassins, Scott Pilgrim, Marwencol and Stakeland. Not so much for Armadillo, which seemed a rehash of Restrepo with subtitles. I guess I'm just fed up with documentaries about soldiers losing their moral compass during war. Seems the war itself is a mass loss of moral compass.
I also disagree on I Saw the Devil, which I found a thrilling roller coaster of a ride and unique in the way it kept ratcheting up the tension.
Todd, you must see Tropa de Elite 2 (or Elite Squad 2). It is already the most viewed movie of all time in Brazil. It is way better than the first one and the main character is now consider a national hero. The movie is already available in the net but not in very good quality. Congratulations on this fantastic list.
Question: did you see I SAW THE DEVIL uncut or cut? Because they felt, to me, like two entirely different movies at times, and I definitely enjoyed the former over the latter.
Todd, props for the "Carancho" recommendation. I just finished watching it. Quite the little film. It's destined to be remade by Holly-weird.
"Animal Kingdom" is just awesome. Best crime drama of the year by far. Australia is kicking but.
Gotta say, I loved "I Saw the Devil". Probably the best film I saw all year.
I can't wait to see "We Are What We Are", "13 Assassins" and "Stake Land". Still gotta see "Black Swan".
Also, props for mentioning "Snabba Cash". Looking forward to the sequels. We might have another "Pusher" on our hands.
"The Last Exorcism" honorable mentioned caught me off guard. I always assumed it was another "Exorcist" rip-off. I may have to check it out now.