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Macky Awards: Top 30 films of the year.

There’s a big difference between a list that purports to be the 10 or 15 or 20 ‘best’ films of the year and the 10 or 15 or 20 ‘favorite’ films of the year. ‘Best’ needs to be objective. The ‘best’ films of the year need to do the greatest job of achieving the goals they set out to accomplish with their film. Their themes need to be clearly articulated without being obvious. Their plots need to be fresh and authentic. Their editing must be clear, their sound mixes crisp, and their acting engaging. The ‘best’ films of the year shouldn’t have anything to do with the theatre they were seen in. They should have nothing to do with the mood that a certain audience member was in when they watched it. The ‘best’ film of the year shouldn’t even have much to do with the tastes of any particular audience member. That is why a list of the ‘best’ films of the year can only be remotely successful when it is an aggregate of a sufficient cross section of respected and knowledgable critics’ lists of ‘favorite’ films of the year. Favorite films have much to do with the context with which an individual watches the movie under. If I get in an argument with my girlfriend just before a movie, that movie would have to be twice as good to elicit the same reaction from me as it would’ve had to under better circumstances.

So why make a list of favorite movies if it’s totally subjective anyway? I don’t know, really. To promote discussion and to share, I guess. To help other people discover some movies I think are good that perhaps they weren’t interested in seeing before? To let readers hear my opinions and therefore understand me better as a person? All lists of this nature basically suffer from this same lack of purpose but people keep reading them. I love lists and others love lists and I don’t know why. But maybe that’s for another blog entry.

I’ve heard people bash this years movies. I’m not sure why. No, 2010’s not as strong as 2008, the year we had ‘There Will Be Blood’ and ‘No Country for Old Men’, but 2010 certainly isn’t as bad as the year we had ‘Crash’, or even last year, with ‘The Hurt Locker’ and ‘Avatar’ as the stand outs (remember ‘The Blind Slide’). The year before was weak as well (‘The Reader’ which was one of the five nominees, wouldn’t have even made the top 10 this year). Jumping back a few years more to 2004 (with still no year as strong as 2010, excepting the aforementioned 2008) we’ve got both ‘Master and Commander’ and ‘Sea Biscuit’ nominated. ‘Chicago,’ a pretty mediocre film, won best picture the year before. So as far as the decade goes, 2010, I think, was a pretty good year for both big budget studio films (‘Inception’, ‘Toy Story 3’) and ambitious indies (‘Winter’s Bone’, ‘Enter the Void’) as well.

But enough with the content. Lets get to lists! Without further interruption, my top 30 films of 2010 (over the course of these two posts I got so sick of writing that the first few of the thirty don’t have any write-ups. You’ll thank me for this later.):

30. The Town

29. How to Train Your Dragon 

28. Devil

27. Rare Exports (A Christmas Tale) 

26. Animal Kingdom

25. Somewhere 

24. Exit Through the Gift Shop - Pretty Low right?

23. Of Gods and Men

22. 127 Hours

21. Restrepo – A documentary about one of the most dangerous and active platoons in the Middle East, we see the human side of the war on terror. We see the people who are actually out there and the things that they go through, their highs and lows, and they’re as affecting as they are polarizing. ‘Restrepo’ shows war for the scary, unknowable, confusing crap game that it, likely, is; the essential insensitivity, completely unfathomable for those of us not there. These soldiers are mere mortals who holler and hoot, hurt and regret as much as any of us.  

20. Gasland – Josh Fox’s gravelly voice provides the majority of the style in this documentary against gas. But not the gas you think, Fox is out to unveil the truth about natural gas and the negligence involved in the frack drilling that collects it. It’s hard to drink tap water with the same reckless abandon I have in the past.

19. Greenberg – An awkward shoe-gazer kinda film that I found simultaneously fascinating and mind numbingly boring. I think that my issue was with the visuals. As I watched, I continuously looked around my hotel room, minimizing and maximizing the media player screen. But there are parts of ‘Greenberg’ that are so real that they hurt. Ben Stiller captures the hurt of getting on in the years and still not knowing who you are or what you’re doing. 

18. Blue Valentine – Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams carry a dark and real tale. The tale of love that dies for no real reason at all. Gosling’s character isn’t even out of love but Williams is miserable. She is so miserable that she can’t be happy no matter what Gosling does to try and make things up to her. And the more he tries and fails the more unhappy he becomes. As he becomes frustrated, Williams sinks even further into her depression with the situation. But they try hard. And that’s the human instinct that gives us hope that is eventually shattered. This is the tragedy of ‘Blue Valentine;’ they try and make it work but they fail.

17. Toy Story 3 – I was one of the unlucky who waited too long to see ‘Toy Story 3’ and ended up a victim of the hype. “OMG, you’ll know when you get to the part.” “I dare you not to cry.” You should never say things like that about a movie. If you like it and want other people to see it, tell them straightly and soberly. Don’t build up their anticipation for one exact moment in the movie. If you do, then when that moment finally comes, your friend will be thinking as much about you as they’re thinking about the movie. That’ll take them out of the moment that you pointed them toward in the first place.

16. The Kids are All Right – Lisa Cholodenko takes a look at an unconventional marriage and an unconventional family in a film that doesn’t dare to simplify its set up or intentions. Yet the message is that simplicity is the only way to survive the complex problems of the real world; problems that could never be summed up in an hour and a half. With the help of an ultra talented, uniquely subtle, and poignant cast though, she goes a long way to summing up the completely impossible.

15. Teenage Paparazzo – An incredibly interesting debut feature from Entourage’s Adrian Grenier. ‘Teenage Paparazzo’ is like a well meaning essay that doesn’t set out to tell a story as much as it sets out to pursue an interest. Grenier wanted to better understand the world that has made his character on TV famous and his life in reality complicated: the paparazzi and the entertainment press. That he does this through the conduit of a 14 year old boy who finds his passion in photographing the rich and famous only adds to the interest of this twisting and self-aware piece.

14. Waiting for Superman - A system of intrigue and gladhanding that is similar to the police game in The Wire. Tenure. Terrible teachers are either shifted onto other schools in the district or put into ‘the rubber room’ where they await reassignment for up to 3 years. Their hearings are 8 times larger than the average criminal case. But this documentary has an extraordinary human element that really puts it over the top. The set piece near the end is heartbreaking.

13. The King’s Speech – Tom Hooper has made a great film but one, I think, that won’t last the test of time. I quite enjoyed it sitting in the theatre but after that I could’ve never talked about it again and been totally fine. If you’re over 40 you should probably watch this movie or risk being left out of any discussion on films from this year.

12. The House of the Devil – I’m not certain this counts as a 2010 picture. It never played outside of Festivals on screens in Canada until at least 2010 (if it ever even did) so I’m counting it. It’s a throw back to 1980’s horror movies that is done so well it could practically have been produced in the 80’s. Except it’s scary. Way scarier than most of the horror fare the Me Decade had to offer. The pacing is slow and creepy and almost perfect. If you like horror you absolutely must check this out.

11. The Illusionist – A great little French animated film. A must see for fans of Jacques Tati. It is melancholy and sad in a way that only a French cartoon could be.

10. Enter the Void – Man. Enter the Void is one helluvan experiment in form and structure. Yet, I don’t believe it’s concept is a surprise to anyone. Who hasn’t wished that they could make a movie that basically just followed around the first person view of one interesting character? But if ‘ifs and buts were candy and nuts’… Gaspar Noe actually pulls it off! Well… kinda. If he had REALLY pulled it off this movie would probably be number one on this list. The fact of the matter is, the second half of the film loses some of its power. I like to see ‘Enter the Void’ as a modern day artistic manifesto. Gaspar Noe is here laying the ground rules for a movement perhaps best called ‘film as trance’. He puts us in large situations, bars filled with people, music, dancing, and somehow makes these spaces feel small and isolated. He makes us feel alone within Oscar, the protagonist, as Oscar himself is within a vast space filled with people, the exact opposite of alone. This works best in the first portion of the movie, told only from within the direct sights of our drug-addled ‘hero’. We hear his thoughts. We experience the first person denial from within his drug addiction. Funny enough, I found the last hour and a half lost the motion and trajectory of the first hour by trying too hard to tell us the story of Oscar. I seeped back into my own consciousness. I was taken out of my trance by a necessity to analyze the information that was being fed to me.’Enter the Void’ is also probably the most disturbing movie I’ve ever watched all the way through. There was a point I had to mute it because the screams of a child became too much for me. Still, a film like this, so lush with color, it’s hard to take your eyes off of it.

9. Please Give - “Old furniture has ghosts.” ‘Please Give’ is a small film with a huge amount of humanity. It shows its characters at their worst and offers little change in them by the end of the film. But little change is the human way. In real life, it is too often true that “nothing helps.” But when your perspective is to partake in life from a resentful point of view (like many of these characters), even a tiny shred of honest compassion can feel like a breath of fresh air. Catherine Keener tries her best to give. She frequently drops twenty bucks on the homeless men/women outside of her apartment, she attempts to volunteer at a center for the physically and mentally disabled, but it’s only when Rebecca Hall actually reaches out and asks her if she can stick around til the men come to cart her deceased Grandmother away that Keener finally gets to give from her heart. ‘Please give’ is a gently complex film that shows us there is often no greater way to give than by simply being in the same space at the same time as another human being when they need it most.

8. Catfish – I’d heard people say the less you know about this movie before seeing it, the better. I agree with those people. I want to try and avoid talking about the plot in anyway. So I’ll say this in favor of ‘Catfish’: it’s never boring, it’s frequently surprising, it’s incredibly fresh, and it contains one of the purest examples of meekness I’ve seen on film. Do not confuse meek and weak.

7.True Grit – Another solid outing from the Coen Brothers. Another unique outing from the Coen Brothers. It seems like every movie they make is totally different from the last, no? I particularly liked just how efficient the script was here. Every single line mattered in this movie. And not only did every line matter, every line was crafted, polished, and styled to be the best line it could be. The acting was terrific and the cinematography was interesting. The only thing I could complain about with ‘True Grit’ was how quickly the lyrics were heard in the closing song. I wanted to simmer awhile, ya know? That’s a pretty tiny complaint though.

6. Black Swan – As time goes by I find myself feeling less and less fond of ‘Black Swan’. The reason I like it the most is that it’s brought some craftsmanship and critical attention to the genre of the horror film, which I think is deserved and long overdue. Why I like it the least is that it’s not as good as ‘The Wrestler,’ Aronofsky’s brilliant submission from 2009. All in all though, ‘Black Swan’ is a solid movie about how far some people are willing to go to achieve excellence. What I found myself wondering as the credits rolled was this, “do you think Natalie Portman’s character would think what she achieved was worth what she had to give up to get it?”

5. Winter’s Bone - What some of the best fantasy movies do is immerse their viewers into foreign fictional worlds. One of the reasons Star Wars is so awesome is because you feel like you could navigate the universe of the story from outside of the plot. ‘Winter’s Bone’ is not a fantasy film and the world it creates is not wholly fictional. But my oh my is it foreign. As Jennifer Laurence searches for her father within the Appalachan Mountain community she’s lived in her whole life, we catch a glimpse into the backwoods from an insider’s point of view. Laurence navigates mobile homes, incestuous drug dealing rings, and a sadly joyous birthday party and the whole while the audience feels entranced and contained. The Ozarks evoke the tarns of Dagobah with an engaging and disturbing difference: these swamps and forests are real, sitting right under our noses in the Southeast of the United States.

4. Social Network – If you don’t already know why this movie was good then you probably have no interest in reading top movie lists in which case I’m talking to nobody.

3. Dogtooth – ‘Dogtooth’ is a crazy movie. It is a constant mystery that never tells and only shows what’s going on. The film was almost 45 minutes in before I was really certain about what was happening. I don’t want to tell you what it’s about because the anticipation of its unraveling is one of its strongest attributes. It asks questions on ethics and morality and gives a ‘for-instance’ answer that is beyond anything I could imagine. It parodies the constraints of language (at first I thought my subtitles were off). I’m pretty sure everything I’ve read about this movie essentially sums it up with one word: “unflinching.” I don’t think I’d argue with that.

2. The Fighter – I love the way the characters in ‘The Fighter’ speak over top of each other. It’s realistic and it’s stimulating. I was really expecting not to like ‘The Fighter’ very much. I thought it was going to be a fairly typical boxing movie. Then I heard someone say that it was marketed poorly, that it wasn’t really about boxing as much as it was about family. This made me think I was going to like it even less. I like movies that are about new things that I haven’t seen before. I admired the filmmaking behind ‘I am Love’ but I was bored with the themes. ‘I am Love’ seemed to latch onto the same themes that a lot of literature latches on to: discussions of formality vs authenticity, inside worlds vs outdoors, love vs duty, etc etc etc, blah blah blah. What I didn’t know about ‘The Fighter’ was that it wasn’t so much about family, and all the things you expect to come with that, as much as it was about the way that your family can hurt you; the way they become nested in your life even when they’re not good for you. A damaging family can be like crystal meth. You’re reliant on it and you love it but it does you damage to no end that you sometimes can’t even see. Mark Wahlberg finds himself stuck in a bind between success, boxing, and the things that he loves or his family. The way the story was executed was not what I expected, the realism within the moving performances was not what I expected, and Mark Wahlberg’s decisions were not what I expected. That makes ‘The Fighter’ a movie I like a lot.

1. Inception - ‘Inception’ is as close to a Jean luc Godard art film as it is to an action blockbuster. It’s exciting, it’s action packed, and it’s full of ideas and innovations. Is Inception confusing? Yes. Are there holes in the plot? Probably. Does it matter? No. Christopher Nolan made a film that is as much about the culture of movies as it is about dreams. We’ve been incepted by the medium of film since the day our parents threw Pinnochio or the Jungle Book onto our VHS players. Our culture’s conception of ethics, morality, and relationships stem as strongly from the films and television we’ve been subjected to as anything else. Our dreams have literally been invaded and infected by the content of our favorite shows. So at the end of the film, when you’re left wondering what it is that happens, know that that’s an inception in itself. Nothing happens. The movie ends. The story is over. The top neither falls or keeps spinning. But you want to know. You need to know. And that’s Nolan’s triumph.

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