Your Top 10 Movies of 2010 (Any Year)
There's usually a thread like this for games around this time, and it's always one of the best Gaming Discussion reads of the year. Throwing newly discovered classics into the ring with contemporary favorites is interesting with any form of entertainment. So let's do it with this one! I'm curious to see what everyone watched to fill the void of quality new releases, especially with the Netflix Instant Watch library as deep as it is.
Rules: Just list the best ten movies you watched for the first time in 2010 with a little blurb about why you liked them. No need to rank them against each other, but feel free to do so if you want. Putting the release dates next to the titles is strongly encouraged.
PROTIP: Your complete Netflix Instant Watch and Shipping histories are available under the "Your Account" tab. Handy!
10. Black Swan (2010)
Either an interesting (if loose) take on Swan Lake, or a story about jus' a couple'a crazy gals gittin' inta trouble depending on whether you buckle your own seatbelt or if the state pays someone to do it for you. Not one of Aronofsky's best films, but certainly one of 2010's. The fragile mental state degenerating under pressure seems to be Aronofsky's favorite chord to strum, and it's one I'm not tired of hearing.
9. Moon (2009)
My surprise of the year; by far good enough for me to sign up for Duncan Jones' next flick on his name alone. This goes to show that CG is no substitute for sets and props. Real stuff taking up real space in a scene is irreplaceable. Moon looks a hundred times better than Avatar on probably 1/100th the budget. I have TNL to thank for recommending this one en masse. Thanks!
8. Eraserhead (1976)
Why not?
7. In The Mood For Love (2000)
Already beat off to this one all over the I Just Watched Thread. I could literally feel the longing between the characters in my gut. The sexual tension turned my stomach the same way great suspense and horror movies do. i still have to see Chunking Express.
6. Peeping Tom (1960)
None of Powell's movies particularly impressed me before this. My new favorite conventional serial killer movie of all time. If there is a single movie on my list that I can see absolutely everyone on TNL liking, it's this one.
5. The Lives of Others (2006)
What the hell could've ousted Pan's Labyrinth for the Oscar in the Best Foreign Film of 2006 category? This, and it wholly deserved it. Very compelling stuff about the Stasi - East Germany's secret police before the collapse of the Berlin Wall - monitoring a couple of suspected West German sympathizers. Some of the best suspense this side of Hitchcock.
4. Sin Nombre (2009)
A TNL Movie Club entry. Realist cinema at its best. Of my three friends whom I forced to see this, I asked, "Which character deserves the most sympathy?" I got three different answers. I've seen Sin Nombre three times now, and I've come up with three different answers myself.
3. Beauty and the Beast (1946)
Visual poetry. From Cocteau's essay in the DVD booklet, "The poet Paul Eluard says that to understand my film version of Beauty and the Beast, you must love your dog more than your car." No one is going to do any better than that. Strongly recommended for, well, the kind of postas who have probably already seen it: SSJN, Mr-K, Doc Holiday, Compass, squall_vb, Finch, Frogacuda, arjue, D_N_G, etc. Still on IW.
2. The Third Man (1949)
The deeper the list, the less adequate I am to describe the entries. Probably the only movie I've seen where the main character has no more than, what, fifteen minutes of screentime? Every single scene is because of him, almost every line of dialogue is about him, and he's almost never there. By the time you actually see Orson Welles, you forget he's even in the movie. The studio must have had a fit over that.
1. M (1931)
The best movie I watched this year, maybe the best movie I've watched period. I saw it in the spring and have seen it maybe 4 times since. There are just so many lenses you can bring to it: What is it saying say about punitive violence and the death penalty? What is it saying about anarchy? What is it saying about the culpability of clinically insane criminals? About parenting? About childhood? About sexual deviance? About justice?
M is Fritz Lang's best movie. Even better than that one joint about the robot.
