Well, 2010 is coming to a close. Three or four years ago, I was a devoted cineaste, devouring as many films as I could see (good, bad, new, old, American, foreign, genre-based, avant-garde). But my interest began to wane as time went on. Instead of immersing myself in 100 films that were new to me (at my peak, I would have seen Winter's Bone by now, as well as unseen classics like My Man Godfrey), I found myself seeing perhaps 15-20 new releases each year, as well as maybe another 10 films that had escaped me from year's past.
This year marked the height of my lack of interest in films. It didn't help that the year's mainstream films were an astonishingly weak crop, or that it was a year in which I decided to catch up on a few of the dozens of quality television shows that have eluded me to date (in this case, the two shows were Showtime's ludicrous-yet-compelling Dexter, and the entire run of HBO's incredible The Wire, which I would currently list as the best TV drama I've seen).
Despite all this, film remains my passion, and my favourite medium. Yes, we may be caught in a slog of sequels, remakes, reboots, re-imaginings, etc., and the fad of 3D is influencing seemingly every major summer release by a studio (having yet to see more than one film in 3D, I feel unqualified to pass judgment on it). But this is still the medium that gave us Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Bergman, Kubrick, Ozu, Keaton and Chaplin. And it's the medium that is still giving us new and exciting works by Tarantino, the Coens, Spielberg, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Scorsese (well, I haven't been excited by a Scorsese film this decade...but that's a different story). I have only seen a handful of films this year, and what will follow is some random thoughts on them...but despite being disappointed so often by the state of film, I know that I'll never lose complete faith in it. Or at least, to quote Red from The Shawshank Redemption, "I hope..."
2010 Films I've Seen:
Toy Story 3 (79/100) - It was funny to hear critics talk with such surprise about how deep, poignant and melancholy an examination of mortality the supposed family film Toy Story 3 was because those were my exact thoughts eleven years ago...about Toy Story 2! I still consider Toy Story 2 to be Pixar's crowning achievement, a film that is hilarious and entertaining in the studio's classic screwball manner, but also a film that touches on the similarities between toys and parents as nurturing entities whose fate is to be eventually outgrown by their objects of adoration (children). The third film touches on many of these same bittersweet elements, and in the character of Lotsa Hug n'Kisses the Teddy Bear, it provides a villain whose motivation is clear: he wants to avoid being committed to or loved by any one particular child because he knows it just ends in rejection. Still, for all this heavy talk, the Toy Story trilogy is loved, like most Pixar films, for its inventiveness, its humour, and its breakneck pacing. This third film may not have the originality factor of the first, or the near-perfection of the second, but it still stands as my favourite 2010 film (of the ones I've seen) because it provided so many wonderful movie moments: Mr. Potato Head being forced to place himself on a tortilla; the Spanish Buzz Lightyear; Ken's "torture" at the hands of Barbie; and of course, the moment where it seems as if the toys are about to meet their maker. A near-great film, and another winner from Pixar.
The Social Network (75/100) - Critics have hailed this as the movie-of-the-moment, a defining snapshot of our times and of the generation to which I find myself a part (people approximately 21-29). Well, it's not, but the realization of that shouldn't lead to a backlash in which we ignore how much of a good movie this is. The always-excellent David Fincher (well, almost always...I'll let Fight Club slide) is in top form here in that he recedes into the background and lets the players and the story do the heavy-lifting, much like he did in 2007's compulsively-rewatchable Zodiac. That is not to say that Fincher's contribution is minimal...rather, in true classical form, he uses his techniques to keep a film that is largely about talking and communication propelling along, so that it never once seems slow or monotonous. It helps that the screenplay by Aaron Sorkin is filled with some memorably zippy exchanges (the opening scene is like a Cary Grant/Rosalind Russell back-and-forth from His Girl Friday in its pacing, although the content is somewhat more somber and focused on the protagonist's feelings of inadequacy and class resentment). The value of the movie is in its brilliant writing and impeccable performances, but if it falls short of greatness in my eyes (and it does), it's because the very nature of the story (the battle for legal ownership of the rights to Facebook), as well as the subtext of the story (an upper-middle class nerd's resentment for the upper-upper-upper class), simply didn't move me much emotionally. Similarly, the film kind-of just ends, without much of an arc...the character of Mark Zuckerberg begins the movie as a socially-inept misanthrope, and ends it as one to. Also, for a supposed "movie of the moment", The Social Network barely touches on any of the implications of Facebook...this is perhaps its most disappointing element (it almost feels as if Sorkin and Fincher don't know much about it!). Better to view the film as a timeless story of the battle over a particular invention (this could have been set in the 1910s and been about the invention of the automobile), and how greed, ego and distrust led to frayed relationships and bitter resentment. If I pick at it, it's for what it doesn't do...for what it does, The Social Network could hardly be better.
Let Me In (75/100) - Prior to its release, Let Me In was being pre-judged by hardcore fans of the 2008 Swedish film Let the Right One In. To be sure, it sounded like the trepidation was justified: this was a seemingly superflous adaptation of a novel that had already been adapted, brilliantly, just two years earlier. In other words, it was an American film for people who couldn't be bothered to see Let the Right One In for fear of subtitles. Having missed Let the Right One In, I felt I should catch up on it before seeing Let Me In, and having now seen both versions, I can say that while Let the Right One In deserves points for getting their first, Let Me In is actually better-executed in many key sequences, and benefits from more natural performances from the two child actors. Matt Reeves, who directed the (in my opinion) underrated Cloverfield, demonstrates that he's not just a "snatch-and-grab" director with handheld aesthetics (I'm looking at you, Greengrass)...in fact, as the masterful opening ten minutes demonstrates, he has quite the eye for composition. When each version of the film (Swedish and American) provides us with great moments and scenes, why choose between the two? Let the Right One In is a great Swedish horror film, Let Me In a very good American one. Above all, I valued the film for having the courage to be genuine in its emotions...there is real horror here, real sadness, real love, real longing, and even some real humour thrown in. It would have been all-too-easy for the movie to cater to modern tastes and maintain a hip, ironic distance from the material, but its braver, and more timeless, for Let Me In to ask us to believe in this story with all of our heart.
True Grit (73/100) - From two of my favourite filmmakers working, the Coen brothers, comes this remake of a 1969 film that won John Wayne an Academy Award. Stepping into the Wayne role is the great Jeff Bridges, an actor so convincingly natural that about half an hour into the movie, you forget you're watching Bridges and accept the drunken, slovenly, hard-boiled Marshall Rooster Cogburn as a living being. And Bridges is by no means alone in shining. The film basically belongs to young Hattie McDaniel, playing Mattie Ross, the 13-year-old girl who hires Cogburn to avenge her father's murder by hunting down (and possibly killing) the murderer Tom Chaney. McDaniel is wonderfully natural and brings a spunkiness that adds much-needed humour to many of the scenes. Equally delightful is Matt Damon, who here is given some of the funniest lines. As a Western, True Grit isn't deconstructionist at all...it's made with simplicity and conviction by the Coens. This isn't a film like Unforgiven or The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance about the mythmaking inherent to the Western. It's a story about two men and a girl who go on a hunt for a murderer, and the adventures they encounter. Simple enough, but for the most part, it's beautifully executed by the Coens. There are a few quibbles: Brolin's Chaney is, in an interesting twist, not a larger-than-life villain but almost an afterthought, half-witted and self-pitying. It's a typically Coenesque inversion of genre, but it robs the film of any gravitas. Similarly, the gang that eventually confronts Cogburn, aside from Barry Pepper as their leader Ned, is somewhat cartoonish. But the film's quiet power eventually re-emerges in a late horseback-riding sequence, and by the end we realize we've enjoyed another very good entry in the Coens canon. Sure, True Grit doesn't really tie in with some of the Coens other films, but it does share the impeccable craft that we've come to expect from them when they're firing on all cylinders.
The Ghost Writer (71/100) - It may not have been as perfect a thriller as I was hoping for from Polanski, but this was still a very well-done little suspense number. Ewan McGregor
