Doug's Favorite Movies of 2010

Day & Night
Black Swan
127 Hours
Kick Ass
True Grit
Inception
Exit Through the Gift Shop
Splice
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World
The Town

Honorable Mention:
Fair Game
How to Train Your Dragon
Cyrus

True Grit

Mattie Ross says she wants to hire a man with grit. But it is she who has the truest grit, as played by Hailee Steinfeld in one of the best child actor performances since Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense. But it’s not just an outstanding child-actor performance; it’s also a great performance, thanks to a commitment by the Coens to let her drive the story and let Bridges, Damon, and Brolin support. And she’s driven by just about the best motive any character can have: revenge. The result is a GREAT western, an epitome in many ways. So though it may be an exemplary western, does that make it a great movie? Will it be remembered for many years as quintessential? Will it be reviewed? Will it be studied? I’m not sure. I’m not sure it will transcend from the genre into some high-filmmaking echelon. And I’m not even sure it’ll be remembered as the Coens' best work. (Will there be a True Grit-fest, like Lebowskifest?) But I know one thing for sure: They’ll hold Hailee Steinfeld’s unflinching performance right up there with the Tatum O'Neils and Jodie Fosters. Let’s hope she models her career on the latter and not the former, and lets hope she never invites comparisons to any Fannings or Culkins.

Tron: Legacy

There’s no point in poking holes in this. It is what it is. In certain sequences, the design and effects were stunning. The light cycle sequence, the one the filmmakers were absolutely forbidden to fuck up, must have taken years to produce. It was truly awesome. But other effects seemed rushed and shoddy. The young version of Jeff Bridges looks like those weird, dead-eyed kids from Polar Express. Attempts at story were lazy and conventional. Like the old movie, I didn’t know what was going on most of the time. It just goes to show, no matter how revolutionary the technical achievement is, if there’s no relatable characters, or even a cohesive premise, then it’s never going to be more than a get high and eat popcorn kind of night.

The Fighter

The Fighter wants to be a lot of things. The new Rocky. A comeback for David O. Russell. A weight-losing, method-acting showpiece for Christian Bale. The authentic bean-town drama. For the most part, it succeeds. However, and I’m sorry to be such a slave to story structure, but when the hero wins the big fight and you have this empty feeling inside, that’s a problem. The Fighter is a very good movie, there’s no doubt. But it lacks a eureka moment. A resolution. An epiphany that sums up the movie’s purpose, or the purpose of the characters journey, or the reason why the people in the audience paid to watch it. It’s more or less a straightforward biopic, but Russell and company split time between Wahlberg’s Mickey Ward and Christian Bale’s Dickey Eklund with mixed results. The acting is strong from both players, and their on screen-bond is strong, but their journey feels unfinished and dissatisfying. It’s worth seeing for the performances, but nobody cuts off their own arm and sometimes you need that, story-wise.

Inside Job

A complicated and maddening indictment of all the Goldman Sachs dickheads who fucked up the entire world’s finances to inflate their own personal fortunes. While biting my nails watching this, I chipped a tooth. True story.

Unstoppable

Helicopters filming the actual train in question hover about 10 feet to the side. To justify that they’re in the shot, the copters are painted to be press and police. So, in the reality of this movie, a press helicopter is hovering perilously close to a runaway train filled with explosives. You gotta love Tony Scott.

Black Swan

** MAJOR SPOILERS **

They got the title of this all wrong. It should be called All About the Three Faces of Eve. Or better yet, Next Stop, Crazy Town! Either way, it’s Aronofsky does DePalma or maybe DePalma does the Grimm brothers. It’s a wickedly twisted psychological meditation on the craziness of artists set in the swan-eat-swan © world of a ballet company and it's... KOO-KOO!

Natalie Portman is terrific as a troubled, sexually repressed girl, her growth stunted by her overbearing stage mother (a remarkable turn from Barbara Hershey). Portman’s anxieties manifest in conventional ways, but Aronofsky and company slyly depict her decent into koo-koo-ville as originally as possible, as though mania has never been portrayed on film before, ever. For those of us who have seen a movie every day of our lives that notion is absurd, but to Portman’s character, walled-in, repressed and full of doubt, her express train to the booby-hatch is all new to her. And it’s twisted, tragic fun to watch her as she pirouettes into la-la land, where her rival (Mila Kunis, deliriously dark) may or may not be out to get her or sleeping with her, and… hey what’s that sore on her back??

While it’s true the plot has some Hitchcockian conventionalism, the filmmaking is supremely imaginative and passionate. The dancing camera, the ominous music, and the inspired special effects make this a feast of the senses. It’s so worth seeing. It’s a pure kick!