Favorite Movies of 2010 - Updated -

2010 was not a good year for me in real life, easily the worst year I've ever seen.  And as for the rest of the world, it wasn't very good either.  The War in Iraq did finally come to an end, but in Afghanistan Pakistan, Mexico, and Sudan, things have gotten increasingly violent over the years.  Massive oil spills in the Gulf, earthquakes in Haiti, and Greek economic collapse.  Unemployment is still high, politicians are just as stupid (see the Ground Zero Mosque issue), and nothing seems to be getting better anywhere.  Then just when I thought 2010 couldn't bring me any more horrible gifts, it threw two feet of snow right on top of me in the last week.  Man, this year sucked.

But luckily the movies didn't suck.  There was plenty of happy cinematic diversions to help us forget what a terrible year its been.  So just in case some of you guys missed the best movies of last year, I'll go ahead and list my favorite films that I saw in 2010.  This isn't the definitive list, since God knows I haven't seen every single film released.  I mean, I don't even feel right making a 2010 list without having seen "True Grit" and "The King's Speech", movies I really have a good feeling about.  And its really a personal list, these are my favorite movies, they aren't necessarily going to be yours.  They're just the movies I recommend the highest in case you missed them.  Basically this list is all the movies that I would immediately want to see again.  I mean there were a lot of movies I liked, and a lot I recommended to see in theatres.  But as fun as say, "Devil" or "Predators 3" were to see in theatres, I can't say I ever want to see them again.  "Daybreakers" was good, but I can barely even remember it.  How can I put that on the list?  There are good movies and then there are great movies:  movies I want to own.  These are those films.  Watch them today.  Stop whatever you were doing, even if its a funeral or something, go to the video store or theatre and get watching.  That's a command.  That funeral can wait, these can't.

So let's begin:

9. Get Him to the Greek:  I didn't write a full review of this one because I just saw it on DVD a few months ago.  Sadly 2010 didn't have many good comedies but "Get him to the Greek" was that one bright spot in a rather barren desert.  This is a semi-sequel to "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" now focusing on that film's best character, Russell Brand's Aldous Snow.  As a comedy it brings us such great things as the ultra-drug Jeffery.  Keep on rubbing that furry wall.  P-Diddy also makes a break-out performance as the insane rage-filled music exec Sergio Roma, who is so angry he'll appear in your hallucinations and eat his own head.  But more importantly, the movie has great dirty songs like "Ring Around My Posey" and "Bangers, Beans, and Mash".  If you love 90s Brit-Pop, this is your movie.  Remember:  furry wall.

8. Tales From Earthsea:  Goro Miyazaki's first film and probably his last.  The poor son of Japan's Walt Disney, Hayeo Miyazaki is scheduled to make another Studio Ghibli movie called "From Kokuriko Hill", but who knows if that will actually happen?  Its too bad, because Goro has real talent for this.  Technically this movie was released in 2006, but since it was released in 2010 in America, the only country that I live in and thus really care about, its a 2010 film.  Basically this is what happens when Studio Ghibli does high fantasy and that is one awesome combination.  Amazing beautiful cityscapes, a fantastic adventure story, condensed magic in a film roll.  And then for whatever reason this movie was absolutely despised by pretty much everybody who isn't me.  Weird.  Yeah the plot was missing a wheel or two, but that certainly didn't kill the raw emotion of "Earthsea".  I still say its worth a view - Ghibli even at its worst (which this isn't) is always worth a view.

7. Tron Legacy:  My review of this one was a bit overly negative, I think.  "Tron Legacy" is a fun movie, and there was really no choice.  I just could not leave this one out, even if I tried.  Somehow Planet Blue would have come to life and then would have edited itself to include this movie in.  Yeah, that's impossible, but "Tron Legacy" was so much fun that it makes the impossible possible.  The story was barely passable, the characters were underdeveloped, it wasn't much of a sequel, but goddamn was the action awesome.  Daft Punk's soundtrack was so reality-warping wonderful that it made this silly Blockbuster movie a work of art.  I might go out and see it again today, who knows?

6. Marmaduke:  Lol, no.

6. Black Swan:  Easily the best horror film of the year and so good that its actually in the running for Best Picture.  "Black Swan" is what happens when you combine the madness of a desperate artist, self-mutilation, and more sexual repression than an Evangelical summer camp.  You know that its all going to end in hot lesbian sex and then a couple of bloody murders.  Natalie Portman gives nothing less than the greatest performance of her career as Nina, a wacked-out ballerina forced to find her inner darkness in order to perform as the villain of Swan Lake, and find it she does.  Her last dance was perhaps the most beautiful and frightening sequence of the entire year, so worth a see.


5. Tangled Rapunzel:  The best Disney film in nearly a decade, far above the already excellent "The Princess and the Frog".  Even if the advertising was nonsense, with posters that make the leads seem like they're fucking in a bed of hair, that doesn't matter, the movie itself is perfect.  Funny, entertaining, and full of real emotion, this is what Disney is supposed to be (they just need a better composer because every song was forgettable).  More importantly it had great characters, was goofy, but wasn't afraid to take itself seriously.  "How to Train Your Dragon" might have been DreamWorks' finest outing, but Disney just had to prove why its #1 by making something truly exceptional.  And the animation is beyond stunning.  Don't cry, sad king, don't cry, your little baby will be home soon.

4. True Grit:  Wonderfully excellent beautiful and both funny while somewhat depressing.  I made sure to travel back in time from about a week in future to include this film on the list.  Its a Western done classically, which is a formula that cannot fail.  Jeff Bridges might be talking with a jar of marbles in his mouth, but he's not the hero, its Mattie, the little girl who needs revenge.  She faces a harsh wilderness, a drunken marshal, and a gang of possibly-insane outlaws to get her bloody goal.  Exciting gun battles, well-casted characters, and amazing cinematography of the Wild West, not to mention a perfect script that perfectly captures that cadence of the 1900s language.  Its a beautiful film, unpretentious in its goal to simply be a Western with a little dark Coen Bros humor thrown in.  Straight Westerns are far too uncommon these days, we need more of them.

3. Inception:  The big giant action film of 2010 featuring the world's most complicated plot for no reason other than to so emotionally exhaust its audience that you're left with no choice but to love it.  Its an abusive spouse, really, the louder it punches your brain insideout with its massive booming soundtrack the more you don't want it to leave you.  However, when you get right down to it the plot isn't really more than a psychedelic heist action film involving dreams within dreams within dreams within dreams within dreams within a taco.  More importantly, the movie has that rotating gravity fight scene.  Goddamn I loved that part.  Still, I gotta admit this was pretty overrated - not "Avatar" overrated, but certainly far from the greatest movie ever made.  There were two that were greatly superior.

2. Toy Story 3:  If you didn't cry at the end of this movie, you either are a freakish creature from dimension X unable to comprehend human emotions, or lost your tear ducts in a fire.  This movie got me, and got me hard.  I was able to be strong during the king scene of "Rapunzel" but the ending of this movie destroyed me.  Weirdly right up until then the movie was pretty much just Pixar's little toy version of "Ocean's 14" with the same great Toy Story characters (except Bo for some horribly sad reason) and a bunch of new great characters like the evil Lotso and the metrosexual Ken.  In a more awesome addition, there was a living Totoro plushie!  I want a living Totoro plushie.  I'll need something to soak up my tears.  Of course I don't think I can ever see this movie again because I really don't need to be letting loose so much raw emotion - I got some masculinity to protect here.  Sorry.

But before I list the Best Film, I feel I have to mention the Worst Film of the Year.  Amazingly it isn't "Saw 3D" and it isn't "Twilight 3" and it even isn't "The Last Airbender".  Those were all fun in their stupidity, this is just pain.  This movie was so wretched, so awful, so hideous that it still annoys me to this very day.  This is the movie I actually walked out of:

0. The Wolfman:  This should have been on the "good" list, by rights.  Werewolves, Anthony Hopkins, Benicio Del Toro, and Hugo Weaving - great actors in a great horror monster movie.  Instead is was just boring.  The plot is completely predictable, everybody seems to be acting like they're in a different movie, and it isn't scary.  Plus the werewolf effects look worse than the 1941 original, which is almost beyond belief.  I can't tell what kind of movie this is supposed to be.  Is it a straight-up monster movie?  Psychological horror?  Or is it some kind of dim parody?  By half-way through I was completely tired of this movie and I left.  I just walked out of the theatre and went home.  Only two movies before that have ever brought that upon me:  "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants", and "The Reader" - which ironically was nominated for Best Picture.  This was worse than both of them.  "Prince of Persia" was insipid and made for a quick buck, this was insipid, made for quick money, and just plain old stupid to boot.  It was so awful I couldn't even write a review of it.

And now, the Best Picture of 2010:

1. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World:  Really there was no way No. 1 was going to anything other than "Scott Pilgrim" or "Toy Story 3", and I feel like a monster having to choose between the two.  Ultimately "Scott Pilgrim" takes the top spot not exactly for being a better movie, but more because too few people went to see it!  WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, AMERICA??  YOU LET THE BEST MOVIE OF THE YEAR BE A FLOP??  YOU SICKEN ME*!

"Scott Pilgrim vs the World" is the excellent adaptation of the what I consider (rather ignorantly due to lack of comic experience) to be the best comic series of all time.  I've been hunting them all down and reading them all.  This movie motivated me to read the comics, play the awesome X-Box Live game, and watch the tiny little cartoon, "Scott Pilgrim vs. the Animation".  Its a great story about a gamer slacker being forced to admit some responsibility and maturity into his life in the only way he knows how:  defeating video game bosses.  This is a coming of age story remade for the modern world.  Nobody becomes a man at thirteen anymore, we don't grow up until our 20s.  Scott may not find true love with Ramona, but he does find something that works for now, and that can be good enough when you're my age.  Plus the movie and the comic has a ridiculous style all to its own with a wacky world full of Vegan Cops, people who explode into coins when you kill them, and a rockin' soundtrack.  Definitely the most important film to come out this year, and there's just no choice but to give it the top spot.  "The Social Network" might be called the film of my generation, that's nonsense, "Scott Pilgrim" already took that title.

Here's to 2011, may you be even better than 2010.  And please don't bring any more disasters upon my life, okay?

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* Disturbingly Armond White included this as his Number One film of the year too.  Hilariously, it was not only the lone film I saw on his Top Ten, but also the lone on that list I had even heard of.  And Armond White is basically the Antichrist here... which is why he is gone forever now.  My lone New Year's Resolution is to not mention him ever again in a review, because he's just too easy to mock.