Your Top 10 Movies of 2010 (Any Year)

**A Robot Bit Me** · 12 Jan 2011, 02:29 AM

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.

**Advocate** · 12 Jan 2011, 12:53 PM

I'm game. While I do not have Netflix I do get movies from those usual places.

10. Salt - Started off awesome. Great premise and over-the-top action ... like way beyond belief. Then, the film slowly degrades into a typical Hollywood ass-tastic film. They decide that to be a slick filmmaker we'll keep making Salt switch sides. Ghey. By the end, you wanna punch the director.

9. The Expendables - Brainless awesome. The first half of the film is okay. It's very basic in creating an origin for everyone, okay I lied. Its horrible in telling a tale. The best part was the end when the shit goes down and things go BOOM.
Also: Terry Crews shotgun was epic.

8. Paths of Glory - From the TNL club. Anthony's pick was stellar. Loved every minute of it. Great storytelling, Great cinematography, and awesome acting. The courtroom scene was as freaking good as "A Few Good Men".

7. Fistful of Dynamite - SSJN's pick for the movie club. Another awesome pick.
I enjoyed this tremendously. I felt joy when the two gunned down the Nazi's and felt sadness, when the people were discovered in the cave. So good. James Coburn was great.

6. Death Rides a Horse - I think this was a Doc pick. A second awesome Western. This one takes a higher billing, because it was more classically told (imo).
Also: Lee Van Cleef was a badass and was in this film.

5. Tekken - brainless fun. The action is actually well filmed and choreographed. The other thing is even though the story is flimsy, the acting is darn good. And Kelly Overton ... whoa.

4. Justice League: Crisis of Two Earths - Okay, so this was a cartoon. Yet, how it was told was extrodinary. Give this one a shot, even if you don't know all the characters. James Wood's was awesome in this.

3. Batman: Under the Red Hood - Yo. This movie was BADASS. Freaking awesome stuff. The Joker was never more awesome than in this movie. Just sucks Mark Hamill didn't reprise his role as The Joker. The replacement was great though.

2. Knight and Day - I went into this expecting a shitfest and came out entertained. Cruise I think is reinventing himself. He was funny and Cameron Diaz was amazing as a girl who has no idea what the hell she's doing.

1. A-Team - Like I said in the "I just watched" thread. This movie surprised me. I LOVED the old TV show and I think they captured the best moments of the TV show. I think Liam Neeson played an incredible Hannibal. Bradley Cooper was Face(nice cameo btw). I liked that it was an origin story and told HOW the A-Team ...
a) Came to be, as far as how they all became friends.
b) what they did to be "accused of a crime they didn't commit".

Loved every second of this film.

*terrible quality, but epic scene.

**Opaque** · 12 Jan 2011, 03:07 PM

I support Justice League: Crisis of Two Earths and Batman: Under the Red Hood, the new DC animated movies are just phenominal.

Have you seen Superman/Batman Apocalypse?

**Advocate** · 12 Jan 2011, 03:12 PM

Originally Posted by Opaque

I support Justice League: Crisis of Two Earths and Batman: Under the Red Hood, the new DC animated movies are just phenominal.

Have you seen Superman/Batman Apocalypse?

Yes ... wasn't too impressed.

**Compass** · 12 Jan 2011, 03:49 PM

Knight and Day was the second best movie you saw in all of 2010?

Really?

**Doc Holliday** · 12 Jan 2011, 03:53 PM

Maybe there were a lot of tits in it.

Or babies. He also likes babies.

**YellerDog** · 12 Jan 2011, 03:56 PM

I'll edit in expanded why's later, I guess?

Things I think I saw in the year 2010:

Secret of Kells - Beautiful sountrack, wonderful stylized drawings, fantastic production values; makes me want to move to Ireland to make cartoons. Bad timing, maybe...? Ireland is not doing so hot at the moment.
Micmacs- Jean-Pierre Jeunet makes fun movies!
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World- <3
Nosferatu (1922)- Why so much dirt, Nossy?
Let Me In- Competent remake, curious why it needed to exist though.
Tron Legacy- Lessened by the scrubbing out of all the Möbius designs, and more of a remake than a sequel. Really pretty though!
Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)- Fantastic. There's a fox in it.
Le Samouraï (1967)- Classy.
Predators - What a silly-ass movie. Fun way to spend an afternoon though!
MATANGO: Attack of the Mushroom People (1963) - It may have all been a bad trip, but... MAYBE NOT.

I dunno man I don't think I really saw that many new-for-2010 movies this last year.

**Compass** · 12 Jan 2011, 04:17 PM

Interesting list, ARBM. I've only seen Moon (great), Eraserhead (not so great), and Sin Nombre (very good). I'll check some of the others out.

I just did a quick glance through my rental history and the only movies I gave five stars to this year were:

Good Dick
Triangle
King of California
Gran Torino
Evangelion 1.11

All 2008+ I believe. I don't watch too much older stuff. Everyone's familiar with the latter three, and I've evangelized both Good Dick and Triangle on here in the past, both of which are available on IW in HD.

[edit]: er, I guess Triangle isn't.