So it's the end of the year again & every Tom, Dick & Harry will be making a list of the best films of the year. And as much as I try not to be a 'Dick' I definitely fall into the category of the Tom's & Harry's of the world. So here's my list of the best/favourite films of the year 2010 :-
Although I'm yet to see some of the films that have been doing the rounds of the award nominations like the Oscar test tube baby 'The King's Speech', the indie gem 'The kids are alright' or auteur directed flicks like The Coen Brothers' 'True Grit', Danny Boyle's '127 hours', Clint Eastwood's 'Hereafter' or Roman Polanski's 'The Ghost Writer' I think I still have seen enough to muster up what I think are the 10 best (11 actually) of the year. So here goes...
10. The Other guys
This buddy cop comic caper starred Mark Wahlberg & Will Ferrell as detectives in a police dept. who get nothing more to do than warm the benches. Their big moment comes when detectives Danson & Highsmith (played by Dwayne Johnson & Samuel L. Jackson) "fall" victims to an accident (pun fully intended) & these two are called in to solve the mystery.
The other guys has some absolutely ROFL moments, the chemistry between Wahlberg & Ferrell is awesome & Jackson, Johnson & Keaton are comedy gold in their cameos. Throw in some pretty cool action sequences & a hot as hell Eva Mendes & you have a sparkling movie.
9. Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows part I
Ok, yes this was just one half of the puzzle with part 2 coming to our shores in July next year, but what impressed me the most about this Potter installment was that for the first time it screamed out unapologetically that it was meant for the hardcore Pottermaniacs. Only people who know the characters & situations inside out would be able to 'get' the movie.
Gone are the sun-kissed quidditch pitches of the 1st 2 films, gone is the slight buffoonery expected from the side characters & instead what we have is the darkest, eeriest, most intense Potter film we've seen. Focusing more on character introspection rather than huge epic sfx moments (though yes they are very much present, the 'Tale of the three brothers' sequence steals the show) Deathly hallows pt.1 satisfied the majority by striking the best book-to-film balance yet. The trio of Dan, Rupert & Emma stand up to the challenge & deliver triumphantly. Yes you miss the stalwarts (Rickman, Maggie Smith etc.) a bit but then there's part 2 coming up where all hell shall break loose. Amen.
8. Easy A
Emma Stone shines in this wonderfully bright teen/high school comedy of a girl who tells a tiny little lie in school, which then turns into a rumour which turns into an epic sized rumour & the next thing she knows is the whole school branding her a 'slut', 'tramp', 'harlot' & various other connotations of the same thing. Based loosely on Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic english novel The Scarlett Letter this Will Gluck directed film does much more than just modernize the novel's plot. It shows the perspective of this 17 year old girl who uses the school rumours to her advantage-yes they're talking bad about her, but at least they're talking about her, rather than being an invisible nobody at school that she previously was. In a weird off-kilter way she's "cool". Of course later on the rumour snowball grows far too large for her to control without the danger of being crushed herself. Not to worry all ends happily.
Patricia Clarkson, Stanley Tucci play the coolest parents I've ever seen in my life. And Lisa Kudrow & Amanda Bynes glow in their small roles. Easy A is an extremely witty, inventive, sweet coming-out party for Emma Stone.
7. For the number 7 spot we have a tie. I've picked 2 of the most awesome comic book to film adaptations I've seen.
(a). Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World
Hollywood has always struggled with making satisfactory & cool comic book adaptations & even more so with video game-to-movie adaptations (hitman, doom ugh!). Well fret no more because the perfect most scintillating, inventive, cool, & visually awe-inspiring comic book/video game movie is here.
Based on a series of graphic novels by Bryan Lee O’Malley, Scott Pilgrim is an indie rock/comic book/video game saga in which a young, Canadian bass player, while dating a teenage girl named Knives Chau, falls for Ramona Flowers, a cool American girl with funky hair, but discovers that in order to become her boyfriend, he will first have to vanquish her Seven Evil Exes in combat, each battle of which is presented in the style of a mid-1980s/early-1990s era console game. But wait a minute, Scott Pilgrim's story isn't based in this feeble real world of ours where jumping from tall building will result in broken limbs. No, this movie is based in hyper-reality where a high school bad boy can literally punch a hole into the moon, or Veganism can give people superpowers, or the loser of a fight will always explode into a pile of coins like they do in video games.
Scott pilgrim Vs. the world oozes every characteristic comic book/videogame cornerstone, so phone rings & fist punching are illustrated with text flowing across the scene- “RIIIIIIING!,” “POW!,” “KAZAAM!”, there are power-ups, one-ups, status bars for boss fights, cheesy electronic video game music & sounds to cut scenes.
Michael Cera is superb as Scott Pilgrim a role he was probably born to play. The set & character designs are breathtaking right from the way the characters look, to how they speak & move
Scott Pigrim Vs. the world totally kicks ass. Which brings us to our next movie...
(b). Kick Ass
In a 'normal' movie if an 11 year old girl pointed a gun to the camera & quipped with full aplomb "show's over motherf****ers" & then went on to pull the trigger you'd be extremely offended. Nope, not in this one. And that's pretty much Kick ass's audacity in a nutshell.
This 11 year old kid with bright pink hair is a hyper kinetic powerhouse named 'hitgirl' (Chloe Grace Moretz) who along with her father 'Big Daddy' (Nicolas cage) are caped crusaders who fight crime in gruesome ways you cannot imagine. Now they fight crime 'for real'. In another part of the city is a comic book loving nerdy teenager Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) who puts on a patchy green coloured costume & 'aspires' to fight crime. He fancies himself to be called 'Kick ass'. Well, his plans of figting crime don't entirely go the way he plans but he doesn't give up.
Trouble occurs when Hit girl, Big daddy & Kick ass cross paths & all hell breaks loose.
Based on the graphic novel of the same name by Mark Millar & John Romita Jr. 'Kick Ass' was developed side by side as a movie along with the comic books, hence it works in close proximity with some scenes being exact reproductions of how they looked in the comic pages.
Kick ass is kinetic, colourful, aggressive, humorous & playful all at once & yes has a very healthy & heavy dose of violence & profanities. There were criticizms about showing a kid involved in the midst of this violence but come on, the film is too much fun & cool to be taken that seriously. In case they haven't noticed action comics/graphic novels aren't exactly about selling tea cups & playing with unicorns.
6. The Town
This gritty crime drama proves once & for all that Ben Affleck can totally nail it behind the camera. Based on the novel 'Prince of Thieves' written by Chuck Hogan The Town is set in Charlestown, Boston, an area which has bred the most number of bank robbers in the U.S & quite presumably so as we see in the movie that bank robbery is more of a family business in that part of the city. We follow Doug (Affleck), Jem (Renner), Gloansy (Slayne), & Dex (Burke) prowling the streets & robbing banks with intimidating masks, keeping up the family business.
That is until the emotions sizzle with Doug falling for Claire (Rebecca Hall), a bank manager his crew took hostage and then released. Jem, thinking Claire knows something, wants her dead. Doug wants her to live, & has hope for a future.
The Town is one of the most solid, potent cops & robbers gangster flick that I've seen in a while. The shoot-out & chase squences though filmy are still meticulously coreographed, especially the climax. The characters & situations are familiar, yet enticing & attention worthy. Acting performances are stingingly good all around, But The Hurt Locker's Jeremy Renner steals the show, & Mad Men's John Hamm totally aces it as the FBI agent.
5. Rabbit Hole
'Rabbit hole' is full of those hundreds of tiny instances in our day to day life which occur when we lose a loved one. Motherhood is most special to every woman, and so how does a woman cope when the motherhood is suddenly snatched away from her?
The film is about Becca and Howie- played by Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart- a couple whose 4-year-old son ran out into the street in front of their handsome suburban house and was hit by a car 8 months ago resulting in the child's death, and how the parents are trying to restore a measure of normalcy to their lives, or the more preferred term-- "move on" with their lives.
Based on an acclaimed play by David Lindsay-Abaire, this John Cameron Mitchell directed film is heartbreaking yet hopeful, poignant yet humourous. In spite of the fact that the subject matter seems very grim & maudlin, the film is not. Instead it's sensitive & considerate. The humour in the film basically comes from the situations these characters are in, & their response to it. It's humour but not comedy.
Nicole Kidman delivers one of the best performances of her career, Aaron Eckhart is superb & Dianne Wiest shows a deft hand.
'Rabbit hole' is a conventionally made yet extremely well-acted film. Despite the fact that maybe not many of us have experienced death closely we can't help but nod in approval with the characters, because these characters are trying to get off a heavy load of burden from their shoulders & move on with their lives, & God knows all of us have our burdens we're trying to unload.
4. Shutter Island
'Insanity' is the key word in Shutter Island. Very few films this year extracted as keen a level of involvement from me as this one did. It will make you question your principles, your psyche, your "reality". Martin Scorsese gives us a prison movie that's right up there with the likes of 'The Shawshank Redemption' & 'Green Mile'.
The prison in question here is the dreaded Ashecliffe asylum for the criminally insane (which believe me can give Gotham city's 'Arkham Asylum' a run for its money as far as the inmates go) located on Shutter island where US Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) & his partner Chuck (Mark Ruffalo) arrive to investigate the disappearance of a patient who supposedly vanished from a locked room. Sounds spooky? Well, that's just the beginning. As Teddy questions the other inmates & staff of the asylum under the supervision of the creepy & foreboding, yet suave & affable Dr. Cawley (excellently portrayed by a very un-Gandhian Ben Kingsley) things only get further convoluted & twisted. Also there's the torrential rain & heavy storm which makes it impossible for them to escape the island if need be.
It's extremely difficult to map out a plot summary for a film like this because everything seems to turn right on its head in the last 15 minutes.
What I like about Shutter Island is that it makes no qualms about what it's going to be- a straight up noir psychological thriller. And the ominous background score, dreary grey skies, drizzly weather & scraggy landscapes only help in getting the point home. DiCaprio gives one of his most inspired performances because unlike other characters that he's portrayed in Scorsese films like 'The Aviator' & 'Gangs of New York' Teddy Daniels doesn't have a set agenda or aspiration here, in fact quite the opposite, throughout the film we witness Daniels as a disturbed individual haunted by a horrific World war past & a lost wife. The flashback scenes are as ghastly as they are beautifully shot.
Shutter Island is at times a deeply unsettling & disturbing film but that's exactly how it was supposed to be. Some people called the film formulaic, but I don't see anything wrong with it as long as the formula is done to perfection note for note.
3. Toy Story 3
It's almost next to impossible that Pixar releases a film & one doesn't put it on a top 10 list of the year, but let's just step back for a minute & see the scale of what we're talking about. This is Toy Story for heaven's sake. One generation of kids had Snow white & Pinocchio, another had Peter Pan & Cinderella, yet another had Luke Skywalker & E.T. Well, my generation of kids had Woody & Buzz Lightyear. They're a part of the perfectly & heartily etched collage of childhood memories in our minds. And we don't want it to be disturbed even to the slightest. So when Disney announced that after 11 years they were coming out with a third installment of Toy Story I had mixed feelings, "will they ruin that perfect childhood portrait by making a substandard or (gulp!) mediocre movie?" But then as I sat there in the movie hall watching these visuals pass by in front of my eyes I realized that director Lee Unkrich is giving us kids of the 90's a much needed closure.
Toy Story 3 was a joy to behold this year like no other, it hit all the right buttons & took us through a whirlwind of emotions- from laughter & adventure to tears & heartbreak.
Our beloved toy characters Woody, Buzz, Jessie, Hamm, Rex, Barbie & the Potatoheads are in a crisis. Their "human" Andy has outgrown his playing age & is off to college. He plans to put his toys in the attic but they mistakenly end up in a box of toys to be donated to the Sunnyside daycare centre. Upon reaching the centre Andy's toys meet new toys, Barbie even gets to hook up with Ken! & all is hunky-dory till they meet Lotso the plush 'hug me' bear with cruel ulterior motives. This teddy bear is pretty easily the most sinister villain I saw on screen this year :)
The epic sized adventure of the toys is punched at regular intervals with dollops of fun & humour. The part where Buzz gets his language button switched to spanish is the funniest in the movie
And then it all culminates to that climatic scene where Andy is finally giving away his toys to a cute as a button shy little girl named Bonnie. This is when the fiercest of stone hearts will start to bawl like babies. There's no embarrassment in those brimming tears though. It's one of the most moving climaxes you'll see. Pixar did it last year with the sequence of Carl Fredrickson looking at his late wife's photo album in 'UP', & they do it again here. It's heartbreaking but its the perfect ending.
It makes us realize that these characters are much more than just cartoons, they belong to "infinity & beyond"
2. Inception
It came, we saw, & it freakin' conquered.
Do I need to sketch out a plot summary? You all saw it, you all raved about it, you all spend hours trying to figure out what exactly that ambiguous ending meant, one particular website went as far as measuring the tilt of Dom Cobb's top in the last scene to decide if it had tilted enough to fall or keep spinning. It was the most discussed movie on the internet of 2010. It gave a shot in the arm to psychology classes around the world because people want to know more about lucid dreaming & dream reading. What more do I say?
For once people didn't give a damn for their cell phone interjections, you pretty much slapped the guy next to you if he tried to make conversation, you came out of the cinema hall & you thought, you went home & you thought some more, you went to bed & thought about it further, & then the next morning when you woke up you weren't sure if you were actually awake or still dreaming! :)
I have raved & ranted in detail about Inception & other Christopher Nolan films here, so in this particular entry I'd just like to add a few more points.
As a film about architecture & architectural procedures, Inception is visually stunning, even if you keep the visionary plot & fantastic screenplay aside, Inception is just a fabulous movie to look at. Whether it's the eerily silent beautiful beach on which Dom Cobb wakes up on in the beginning, Saito's lair which looks like a cross between a chinese restaurant & a mafia conference room, the fantastic skyscrapers & city landscapes or the snow capped mountains or the plush hotel lobbies, or a bustling market place in Mombassa. The visuals are stunning & mark a clear line of demarcation of one dream sequence from the other which was so very essential in the last half hour of the film.
Hans Zimmer is first-rate with his musical score whether it's the haunting piano melody during Cobb & Mal's flashbacks, frantic African drum rythms during the Mombassa chase sequence or the loud, full blown, imposing orchestral powerhouse during the last 30 odd minutes of the film which more than aides in building up the tension.
There are those who criricize Nolan's films for being too mechanical & lacking the emotional quotient. Well I beg to differ, I think Cobb's agitations with his & his wife's past are what is at the crux of the film
It's one thing to make a great film, & quite another to make 2 great films back-to-back in a very short span of time. After giving us the superb & groundbreaking 'The Dark Knight' in 2008 Christopher Nolan found some further ground to break with this meticulous mind bender in just the next 2 years. Inception came with gargantuan expectations on it's back & still left us breathless. Now that's something.
And the no.1 spot goes to...
Drumroll...
1. The Social Network
Yup, no prizes for guessing this one. 'The Social Network' surpasses all other movies this year as far as impact, craft & characterization goes. I have seen it 6 times & can sit down for 6 more viewings without the slightest of hesitations.
So is this the story of how Mark Zuckerberg founded facebook? Well, yes. But it isn't just about the finding of facebook. Facebook is used almost as a metaphor to hold up a mirror to the way we live in today's world. How we are willing to fore go human contact & comfortably become slaves to technology. How unlike the good old days where working hard brought you benefits its working smart that reaps the benefits in today's day & age.
I don't know why Zuckerberg had a problem with him being portrayed the way he is in this movie, because quite frankly if anything, he seems way more cooler than he probably is thanks to this film! He is played to potent perfection by Jesse Eisenberg, & this movie's Mark doesn't seem to be driven by the greed & lust for power of the millions that he will eventually earn but as someone who is driven by an obsession with an abstract system, who finds satisfaction in manipulating systems, a genius who is a social outcast. Those types often go on to change the world.
Andrew Garfield's performance of Eduardo Saverin raises the emotional stakes of the film & he is the only one who comes across as the "good guy" in the movie. Justin Timberlake is terrific as Sean Parker the founder of music file sharing website Napster (see the irony of how a musician is made to play a music pirate?), Armie Hammer shines as Cameron & Tyler Winklevoss (yes he played both the parts).
The Soundtrack by Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross is eclectic & literally pumps life into the story. Sample a scene in which the Winklevoss' are competing in a rowing boat competition with a hyper kinetic 'electronified' version of "In the hall of the mountain king" playing in the background. Pure genius.
The Social Network doesn't come across as some boring step-by-step procedural of setting up a company, instead it plays out as a fast paced thriller, keeping you at the edge of your seat. The dialogue is sharp enough to rival a Tarantino flick, & the screenwriting stupendous. Credit for that goes to Aaron Sorkin who does his most ballsy work here.
David Fincher defined a generation's frustrations with his gritty action drama 'Fight Club' in 1999 & 11 years later he does it yet again with 'The Social Network'. Just like Sean Parker says in the movie "this is once-in-a-generation holy shit idea", The Social Network is a once-in-a-generation holy shit movie.
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Runners up:-
These didn't make the top 10, but were still very good. Definitely deserve a dekko...
Green Zone:- Matt Damon stars in what can best be described as a Bourne movie set in Iraq.
Date Night:- Tina Fey, Steve Carrell. Need I say more?
Despicable Me:- A fun filled animation film where a supervillain is caught in a dilemma of destroying the world & playing daddy to 3 cute little girls. The minions are the epitome of awesomeness.
Tron: Legacy:- Every guy's cult favourite 1982 video game flick finally gets a sleek & glossy makeover. The story still sucks, but the orgasmic visuals more than make up for it, the soundtrack by Daft Punk is a winner & did I mention a super hot Olivia Wilde?
Iron Man 2:- Robert Downey Jr. puts on the metallic red suit once again to kick some Russian Mickey Rourke ass!
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The Worst:-
Where there's good, the bad is bound to follow. Below are 5 films that came with tons of expectations but eventually turned out to be epic sized duds...
Due Date:- Todd Phillips' follow up to the rib tickling 'The Hangover' wasn't half as funny. Even the superb Robert Downey Jr. had nothing more to do than be a spectator to Zach Galifianakis's odd screwball act. Agreed it's a little harsh to call it a bad film. but it sure was a disappointing one. Gimme the air-drumming Mike Tyson over the masturbating dog any day.
Robin Hood:- It's quite ironic that in a year in which the Oscar winning team of Sir Ridley Scott & Aussie bad boy Russel Crowe re-teamed to make a film called 'Robin Hood', I still preferred Salman Khan's 'Robin Hood Pandey'.
Salt:- We've enjoyed Angelina Jolie kick butt before but this time round it was just plain uninteresting & stupid. Not only does this one lack salt but also every other spice required to make a film tasty.
Clash of the Titans:- 3D or no 3D 'Clash' sucked in every dimension. The special effects were patchy & I've probably seen school plays with better dialogue. Sorry Sam Worthington you don't look half as cool in 3D if James Cameron isn't directing you.
The Last Airbender:- Why Shyamalan Why? This is probably the film they screen in hell to make you pay for your sins. That's all I can say about it.
