Well, to be honest, I haven’t seen anywhere near enough of 2010′s cinematic slate to offer a particularly authoritative Top 10 list. But, strictly speaking, I suppose one only needs to have seen eleven movies in a given year in order to separate out ten of them as being better — and that much I’ve managed to do. So, here they are.
I’ve never been a Tony Scott fan. While acknowledging his restless visual style – which has the effect, lately, of turning whatever he films into a sort of macho-impressionistic smear – I’ve never found him much of a storyteller. With the possible exception of True Romance – which somehow feels more like a Tarantino film than a Scott film – I’ve never walked away from a Scott film feeling a reaction to much of anything except the visual style. Characters, plot, attitude, all sort of drift away. That’s much the case in Unstoppable, except that this time it feels like a “feature, not a bug.” The best thing about this movie is how stripped down it is. Characterization is blessedly perfunctory. The script is skillfully structured in the way it juggles points-of-view and gradually escalates the crisis in question, but there’s not a whole lot of what traditionally would be called “plotting.” The filmmakers correctly guess that the logistical problem of a train running away from its minders can provide sufficient drama to keep us entertained for two hours. I’m not sure I’ve had more mere fun in a theater this year.
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I made a point to watch the complete 5 ½ hour version of Oliver Assayas’s quasi-historical epic Carlos, because I had been hearing so much about how maybe it was the movie (or multi-movie, or TV miniseries, or Cinema Event, or whatever) of the year. To me it wasn’t that, but it’s nonetheless an impressive recreation of a time before terrorism acquired the apocalyptic gloom that 9/11 gave it. Is it bizarre for me to feel a sort of glow of nostalgia watching this tale of airport shootouts and OPEC-targeted hostage-taking? It all seems almost naïve now – small groups of gun-toting Euros exercising their (relatively) surgical violence in the name of an unrealized leftist utopia, operating on a scale that mere law enforcement (as opposed to massive military strikes) felt empowered to grapple with. Edgar Ramirez ably portrays the titular antihero, capturing both the leonine sexual magnetism of his youth and the pot-bellied decay of his middle-aged years, as he increasingly finds himself running out of friendly countries who are willing to host him and his loved ones. Toward the end, hustling around with hen-pecking wife and adorable baby in tow, he becomes a de facto bourgeois in spite of himself, dramatizing how political perspective is often merely a reflection of what stage in life we happen to be in.
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Director Danny Boyle and actor James Franco set themselves the challenge of dramatizing a situation (man stuck in tiny canyon) that is essentially static and that is moreover perpetually overshadowed and distracted by the audience’s awareness of the Moment that is coming (arm, meet knife). The filmmaking strategy is a long way from subtle – Boyle throws in hallucinations and flashbacks a-plenty to bring the material up to his typically kinetic standards. The film resonates most strongly not only as a classic, surprisingly moving survival tale in the Jack London tradition, but also as a sort of crazed apotheosis of of Mountain Dew-style “extreme” culture. Here’s a guy who saw the commercials, drank the Kool-aid, lived the life, and accepted the consequences with almost superhuman aplomb.
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I’ve heard it said that this is a rare Coen Brothers film in which they remove themselves – and their signature style – from the material and simply adapt a book faithfully. I’m not sure I agree with that. Not having read Charles Portis’s source novel, I can’t comment as to the faithfulness of the adaptation, but the tale’s combination of darkly violent action and ultra-precise, ornate dialogue seems tailor-made for the Coens. Perhaps it’s just a case of a happy confluence between subject matter and adapter. I’m reminded of Roger Ebert’s criticism of Raising Arizona, that the contrast between the highly formalized dialogue and the low-down lives of the protagonists punctured his suspension of disbelief. Well, I doubt many people in the Old West actually talked like they do in this movie, unless they were giving a sermon. But I consider realism to be a generally overrated virtue in cinema; at least, it’s certainly not a prerequisite to aesthetic success. Hailee Steinfeld turns in a performance of remarkable strength and intelligence, and accomplishes the not-inconsiderable task of turning all those mouthfuls of King James Bible ornateness into something that actually feels spontaneous and real. Jeff Bridges, on the other hand, just slurs like a champ, and makes it all work. The film is directed with the Coens’ usual quasi-psychotic precision. They are heirs to Hitchcock in the way their every shot seems controlled to within an inch of its life. The result, while very much “just so,” is admirable all the same; the craftsmanship is unusually apparent, as with a beautifully made piece of oak furniture.
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Though it lacks the excruciating poignancy of its superlative predecessor Toy Story 2 – for my money, still the best film Pixar has ever made – this sequel lives up to the exacting standards of pop craftsmanship that we’ve come to expect from John Lasseter and the gang. Of particular note: the thoroughness with which the sharp, propulsive screenplay services the large cast of supporting toy characters (everyone gets their moment, their gag, their memorable line, their emotion-laden payoff), and the masterful break-out sequence – a hilariously suspenseful knock-off of The Great Escape – that serves as the anchor for Act II. The vision of Toy Hell evoked at the climax is so overpowering that I actually found its suspense working, and wondered to myself as I watched, “how are they ever going to get themselves out of this one?” To a jaded 21st century moviegoer, being made to feel – however briefly – just as silent-movie audiences might have felt when they first saw a damsel in distress tied to a railway, is a small miracle of its own.
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Aaron Sorkin is not one of those writers who give all of their characters distinct voices. They all sound pretty much like Aaron Sorkin, which means they all talk in a hyper-articulate, humorous style, punctuating their conversations with pithy and musical one-liners. Screenwriters often neglect dialogue (their first mandate is to focus on structure), so there’s a sense of relief when a film comes along that’s packed with so many smart, cracking good lines. (I have the same response to Tarantino, whatever his failings in other areas.) Sorkin’s take on the rise of Facebook impresario Mark Zuckerberg is rather crudely psychological – he created the world’s biggest social network because Harvard clubs excluded him and his girlfriend dumped him – but this very simplicity imbues the film with clean, propulsive narrative lines. Strong acting across the board – dominated by Jesse Eisenberg’s award-worthy turn as the irritable anti-hero – further elevates the proceedings. Zuckerberg, as interpreted by Eisenberg, is never really unlikeable because he’s so damn smart, and because he has the guts to seize a glimpsed opportunity by the throat and never let it go. The film never manages to become a grand statement about What It All Means in this wild and crazy futuristic Internet frontier, but that’s almost a relief. What it is is a solid, whip-smart, consistently entertaining drama, the latest in a long line of tales about self-made American tycoons.
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Am I placing Lena Dunham’s indie comedy so highly on this list partly out of allowance for it having been shot on a shoestring and produced outside the good graces of traditional film financing and distribution? There’s always that possibility, but the fact is that Tiny Furniture – a droll exploration of post-collegiate malaise – entertained me more than most entries last year, however much money was spent in making it. What’s most impressive is Dunham’s refusal to use her film’s outsider production circumstances as an excuse for low standards masquerading as being anti-Hollywood. The widescreen cinematography is genuinely accomplished; the acting – even from nonfactors in Dunham’s own family – is consistently strong; and the script is sharply structured, by turns hilarious and moving. This film heralds a serious talent.
Derek Cianfrance’s relationship angst-o-rama is one of the most emotionally draining experiences of the year, but I mean that in a good way. The film’s central structural conceit – juxtaposing the intoxicating early days of a budding romance with scenes set years later when it’s all falling apart – has an effect not unlike the reverse chronology of Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible. As with that film, the unconventional structure makes powerful use of dramatic irony, forcing us to watch happy characters who have no idea what they’re in for, and thereby causing us to reflect that our own circumstances may for all we know be similar. Ryan Gosling, as the husband, turns in what for my money is the best male performance of the year. Blue Valentine climaxes in a marital-discord scene of devastating ferocity, followed by another of no-less wrenching sadness.
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Campy? Absurd? Over the top? Thunderingly unsubtle? I suppose Darren Aronofsky’s psychological-terror tale is all those things, but I might just as well call it operatic, impressionistic, and willing to embrace its subject matter whole-heartedly, without the comforting distance of irony. Those are nicer words, so I’ll use them. The film recycles familiar tropes – the hesitant heroine struggling to release her inner passion, the sexually magnetic impresario, the theme of the Doppelganger, the Big Show on which all depends, the “is it real or isn’t it?” head-games – but applies them to a clear and consistent purpose, which is to dramatize the rocky, even self-destructive path to artistic fulfillment. A filmmaker who has had his share of ups and downs, comebacks and go-aways, Aronofsky seems deeply in tune with his subject matter here, and the brilliant cinematography by Matthew Libatique – which whirls obsessively around Natalie Portman’s troubled ballerina and cloaks the New York City dance world in perpetually crepuscular hues – perfectly suits the material.
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I saw Mike Leigh’s latest opus in an almost-empty theater (there was one other person in the audience) and confess to having been somewhat bored for the duration. It wasn’t the boredom that comes from watching something poorly made, or lacking in dramatic substance, or needlessly abstruse; it’s just that for a moviegoer familiar with the rhythm and tempo of Hollywood fare, it can take a while to downshift to Leigh’s more leisurely pace, which requires a deep sympathy not just for the bones of the story but for the moment-to-moment emotions the characters are experiencing. This is a film that demands much of its actors – their faces must always be showing something relevant to the material – and, in turn, gives them a showcase from which to display almost dazzling virtuosity. Lesley Manville, playing a perpetually nervous, birdlike, alcoholic secretary, inhabits her character totally and with an absence of actorly vanity that recalls Ellen Burstyn in Requiem For A Dream. Intriguingly, the film’s central couple – Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen as an almost supernaturally happy husband and wife – functions as a sort of dramatic Necker Cube, shifting in form depending on how you view it. Are they good and wise and happy and generous, as they at first seem to be? Or are they narcissistically surrounding themselves with desperate lonelyhearts, enabling their dysfunction in order to display, and revel in, their own domestic bliss?
Unlike Solitary Man (of which see below), this is not a film with an explicit moral, yet I found myself taking away some of the same lessons from it. Another Year presents an uncompromising depiction of a world in which some people are happy and some people are wretched, and it offers no comforting resolution of this conundrum. It does, however, imply that happiness derives from a surfeit of human connections – from being engaged in the world and in other people, and from having an underlying strength in one’s own circumstances that allows one to be tolerant and giving toward others. It offers signposts, however fleeting, of the way toward a life well lived. I can’t stop thinking about it.
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Calendrical Ignorance Addendum:
(Apparently this film actually was released in 2009, despite its main theatrical run occurring in 2010 — which I only just discovered. It originally occupied the #7 slot in my list.)
This is one of the most relentlessly moralistic films I’ve ever seen – and that’s meant as a compliment. Every page of Solitary Man’s tight, purposeful screenplay is ruthlessly dedicated toward making a specific argument about the Right Way to Live. Michael Douglas’s protagonist – a man whose life is dependent on the projection of an image of success, and who eschews long-term emotional commitments in favor of glad-handing room-working and transient sexual conquests – finds himself inexorably humbled, reduced, and almost pushed off the edge of the world in a story that, but for a bit of indulgent compassion on the part of the writers, could have ended very grimly indeed. Douglas’s unstrained, deeply assured performance, though not outside his usual wheelhouse, is remarkable in two ways: it sustains and supports the edifice of a feature film in which hardly a frame does not contain him, and it shows a willingness to distort his oily star persona to the point of appearing downright pathetic – which is a bolder and rawer bit of acting than embodying a charismatically villainous cad such as Gordon Gecko.
For more reviews on film check out Gordon’s blog at Picture’s Up.
