Movies 2010, Part 2: The Very Good & The Awful

By no means complete here are a few movies I saw in 2010 that I liked an awful lot, but were, for one reason or another, flawed: ambitious failures, great ideas halfheartedly executed, or just lacking that certain spark that one knows for genius when one sees it.


I Love You, Phillip Morris
Glenn Ficarra & John Requa (2009)



In the end this thoroughly enjoyable romp about a gay man on the wrong side of the law and the man he desperately loves doesn't have much there there. But it's a fun trip. Carrey's manic, plastic-faced shtick marries well with the character he plays. McGregor gives an outstanding performance as Carrey's soft-spoken, demure love-interest. I Love You, Phillip Morris is gay gay gay gay gay with a surprising, refreshing lack of condescension or sincerity and solemnity.

Black Swan
Darren Aronofsky (2010)



Am I arrogant enough to claim that my interpretation of Black Swan is more insightful than any of the critics I've read? Maaaaybe. I think I saw a fable about the transformative power of performance and the pursuit of perfection. The critics keep talking "horror movie" and "psychosexual thriller." This is like calling The Wizard of Oz a road movie or Frankenstein a novel about the dangers of home-schooling. Well, ymmv. I don't really care for Portman as an actress but she's very good here. I love Mila Kunis, and I wish she'd been given more to do, but what she does is done very nicely. And, of course, it's beautifully filmed.

Splice
Vincenzo Natali (2010)



Scene by scene it's very engaging, filled with ideas, and often deliciously creepy. But it never really jells into somehow coherent as a whole.

My roommate and I saw this at a budget theatre. There is a scene in the film toward the end with which the hoi poiloi were not the least bit happy. I've never heard an entire audience erupt in such vocal disgust unless it was the time I saw Brokeback Mountain with a group of patients on a psychiatric ward. (A story for another time.)


The Social Network
David Fincher (2010)



Despite Sorkin's smart, sharp writing let's face it, this is the Marvel Comics version of the story, Facebook: Origins. Nonetheless, I had a blast watching it. But then I felt the same way about Iron Man 2.


The Kids Are All Right
Lisa Cholodenko (2010)



What I love about Cholodenko's films is that her characters are allowed to explore new emotional, social, and sexual territory without being punished (as is the case with too many American movies). This film's major flaw was that it was clearly pandering toward a straight audience. I'm suspicious of movies where the protagonists are gay characters but there is significantly steamier heterosexual sex. 

The Messenger
Oren Moverman (2009)



Thoughtful. Well-acted. Moving and realistic portrayals of loss & grief.  A bit programmatic.

Year of the Dog
Mike White (2007)



Written and directed by Mike White who also wrote and starred in arguably my favorite gay-content film, Chuck and Buck. Here, Molly Shannon plays Peggy, a lonely, socially inept woman devoted to her dog Pencil. When Pencil moves on to the big dog park in the sky, Peggy's life changes inexorably and in decidedly odd ways. There are some very good set pieces, and great support from Laura Dern, as an overly devoted mother from Hell, John C. Reilly, Peter Sarsgaard, and Regina King.

So that is, along with the previous post, the best new or new-ish movies I saw in 2010. I saw many other fine films, but they are older than the three year scope I chose for these lists and often all ready very well known.

The two worst movies I saw in 2010 in the theatre were:  Love & Other Drugs (Edward Zwick) and Morning Glory (Roger Michell, who also directed Enduring Love which was also unbelievably awful).

Best Movies (I Saw) In 2010

I'm not in the movie business, I'm not a professional critic, and I don't have money to burn. I see what I can, when I can, how I can. This is a list of the best films I saw in 2010. To the best of my knowledge none of these selections are more than three years old (and some, of course, are 2010), and in most cases didn't have wide releases. They are only loosely ranked, with films toward the top of the list more well thought of than those toward the bottom, but I wouldn't bother to list a film at all if I didn't think it was well worth seeking out.

Police, Adjective
Corneliu Porumboiu (2009)

A bone-dry, black comedy from Romania about a police detective pursuing the pettiest of a petty criminal, and the ethical dilemma he encounters in that pursuit. This is a stately, slow-moving affair that I'm afraid some viewers might liken to "watching paint dry." But patience is well-rewarded.

 



The White Ribbon
Michael Haneke (2009)



Haneke's sumptuous b&w near-epic length study of the fomenting of evil in an Austrian backwater in the years leading up to World War I. Gorgeous, constantly engaging, sublime performances including the many child-actors.


 I Am Love
Luca Guadagnino (2009)




There is no singing but this is opera - tragic opera. Guadagnino seems to love all that he turns his camera upon: Milan in winter, the beauty of men & women, food, the natural world, architecture. Swinton is a marvel as the Russian wife of an Italian industrialist. 

Afterschool
Antonio Campos (2008)

 

A black comedy about living in the age of surveillance. Robert, an unhappy student at an upscale prep school accidentally videotapes the death by overdose of two girls, popular twin sisters. He's tasked with making a memorial video, and his result is, to say the least, not well received.  

  




Antichrist 
Lars von Trier (2009)

 

Von Trier's over-the-top beautiful and painful to watch examination of a couple lost to grief over a dead child. Also, a spiteful, bitter rebuke of psychotherapy, through and through. Not for the squeamish or faint of heart.

House (Hausu)
Nobuhiko Obayashi (1977)



This whacked-out roller-coaster ride of a movie makes the cut because it only recently had its first U.S. screenings. I had an opportunity to see it on the big screen at Atlanta's High Museum. House is a surreal horror film into which director Obayashi must have put every fucked up fantasy & nightmare he ever had. Four teenage girls go away for the summer to a relative's house and get picked off one by one. I promise you, this will be the only movie you've seen where a piano eats someone. Oh, and it's a boat-load of sexual subtext.


Big Fan
Robert D. Siegel (2009)



Almost too painful to watch in the way that it exactly captures its subjects: embarrassment, family dysfunction, and, most importantly, the way that a love of professional sports can substitute for, you know, having a life. Patton Oswalt gives a mesmerizing performance.

Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1974
Julian Jarrold (2009)



Based on David Peace's grim panic-attack of a novel Nineteen Seventy Four, this is the first and best of a three film series. It seems to me to that a great deal of effort was made to capture the period: clothes, cars, architecture, hair styles, and the ubiquitous and often difficult to discern Yorkshire regional accent. So many British police procedurals & crime dramas seem to be shot from the same script, and this trilogy suffers those defects. But this stand-alone film is at the forefront because of the elegant filmmaking and acting. Andrew Garfield is my favorite new(ish) British actor. Look for him also in the very fine Never Let Me Go.

 










Bluebeard
Catherine Breillat (2009)



This brisk little film (78 minutes) delves into the nature of temptation, sibling rivalry, marriage, generosity, and cruelty. It's an awesome little film, and one of the most surprising I saw in 2010. 

Mother (Madeo) 
Joon-ho Bong (2009)



It's only by chance that this film is at the bottom of this list because, really, it's freakin' brilliant. It's very different but the compassion it displays puts me in mind of Denys Arcand. And if there were any justice in the world of cinema Hye-ja Kim would be an international sensation. She is called upon to a do a wide variety of things and she does everything with aplomb. This is one of those wonderful rare films where it is equally likely that one will laugh or cry at the same incident, or do both at once. 


Tomorrow: The runners-up. Maybe. Blogging is hard. And time-consuming!