2010 Year In Movies

So after waiting weeks The King's Speech finally came online.  Seeing that it is a major awards player I figured I should see it before doing a top 10.  Of course I just finished it and it probably won't factor in anywhere in here so serves me right for waiting but so be it.

2010 was an interesting year in movies.  For me, it was very top heavy with a good, strong 13 movies that any year could make up a top 10.  There was also a lot of very good movies which made up most of the year.  These movies range from 127 Hours to Get Low to even Easy A which are good but not necessarily great movies but certainly good.  These, to me, make up the majority of the year.  Of course there was a lot of crap too which I might touch on.  So without further ado, the top 10 movies of 2010.

10.  FAIR GAME:  Political movies are always a tough sell in the U.S. and this one came and went with barely anyone noticing it.  It is about the outing of Valerie Plame as a covert CIA agent by Karl Rove to get back at her husband for printing an article saying that the Bush administration had faulty intelligence which led to the war in Iraq.  Politics aside, the movie is well-paced and doesn't get bogged down by so many political movie cliches that could have ruined it.  Sean Penn is great (when is he not) and Naomi Watts continues to show how versatile she is.  Hopefully more people will find this On Demand or Netflix later on

9.  TOY STORY 3:  If you saw this and didn't start tearing up at one of the now two infamous scenes then frankly you don't have a heart.  I didn't love the second one and Pixar, for me at least, is usually hit or miss, but this one is as good as the original one 15 years earlier.  Frankly, there is no better way to end this story then how they did.  I tend to go toward darker movies but I have a sweet side when I want to have one and this movie can bring it out in everyone.

8.  THE GHOST WRITER:  Another movie that seems to be on no one's radar and hopefully puts Roman Polanski back on it.  It's a movie about a former British Prime Minister (Pierce Brosnan) writing his memoirs that might reveal a secret that would have awful consequences on the rest of the world.  His previous ghost writer was found dead so a new one, Ewen McGregor, is called in to finish the novel, but of course he gets caught up in trying to figure out the mystery himself.  It's a fantastic thriller with a twist ending that does not insult the viewer.  And Tom Wilkinson has a quick cameo which is always welcoming.  Frankly he might be one of the top 5 actors working today.

7.  SHUTTER ISLAND:   Fuck everyone that says the movie was predictable.  Yes I have heard from many people that the third act ruined it for them but I didn't see it that way.  Scorsese is a master and even though this movie isn't one of the best Scorsese movies he has ever done (it's no higher than 9 and even that might be high) but it shows how he can do any genre.  The music choices were brilliant as was the entire mood and feel of the movie to make us feel that we are trapped on this island.  The leads were great (rarely are DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo not great) but it is the one and done scenes by Patricia Clarkson and Jackie Earle Haley that really steal the show.

6.  GREEN ZONE:  Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass made two spy classics in the Bourne Supremacy and Ultimatum so it's not surprising that their latest collaboration was so good yet criminally underseen.  It is an Iraq war movie which most of the public has no desire to see but that doesn't take away the fact that it is a fantastic war movie.  The latter half of the movie was shot beautifully and provides action scenes that have not really been seen in movies.  It's another movie in which its politics I agree with and that certainly can turn people off but as a visual experience, it should interest everyone...especially those who like just kick-your-ass action movies.

5.  TRUE GRIT:  Let me start by saying I hated the original 1969 True Grit.  John Wayne is the most overrated and boring actor of all time and that movie was no different.  So when it was announced that The Coen Brothers were going to remake it I was less than thrilled but said I would see it because rarely do The Coen Brothers make a bad movie.  And this is easily the surprise of the year.  The movie takes everything that sucked about the original and made it entertaining.  Most of that has to do with the casting.  Jeff Bridges is a great Rooster Cogburn and Matt Damon shows again why he is one of the best.  But it's out-of-nowhere newcomer Hailee Steinfeld that stole the show from both veterans in one of the best debut performances I have ever seen.  That girl is going to be a star and will hopefully win an Oscar for this performance.  Unfortunately the Academy has said Carter Burwell's score is ineligible due to some BS rules which is a disappointment since it was the best music in a movie all year.

4.  BLACK SWAN:  It's amazing that this movie isn't even the biggest mindfuck of the year (that's still to come).  But Darren Aronofsky, the genius behind PI and REQUIEM FOR A DREAM has given us another masterpiece.  Not many movies centered around ballet can interest me but this movie certainly did.  The last 40 minutes were some of the most emotionally draining scenes I have ever seen in film and I would watch it again in a heartbeat.  And for the people I recommended it to, I tried stressing that although the Natalie Portman/Mila Kunis lesbian scene is incredibly hot, it is also tasteful and important to the movie.  Overall, Portman should cake walk to the Best Actress Oscar this year (and rightfully make us forget that Sandra Bullock won last year for the THE BLIND SIDE which still is leaving a shitty taste in my mouth)

3.  THE TOWN:  Black Swan is the better movie but The Town ranks higher because of rewatchability.  Ben Affleck's second directed movie is a fantastic heist movie with 2 iconic scenes which will go down in the genre's history.  The fact that no one staged a shootout in a baseball stadium before is pretty odd but Affleck pulls it off.  Everyone in it is fantastic including Chris Cooper (in another one scene and done performance) and the late Pete Pothleswaite.  Heist movies can be hit or miss and most of the time they are terrible or just plain good.  But The Town manages to overcome all of the cliches and become a staple in the genre.  Hopefully Affleck continues making interesting film like this

2.  INCEPTION:  The fact that Inception is not #1 just shows how strong that movie is.  Frankly, what is not to like about it?  It's an insanely intelligent sci-fi/action/adventure/heist movie that makes the viewers follow every detail to put the story together and even then it might not make any sense.  Frankly, Christopher Nolan had my loyalty after MEMENTO but now after THE DARK KNIGHT and INCEPTION he is officially the best filmmaker working today.  Inception 100% holds up on second and third viewings and yet I still can't say I fully know what happened and whether or not it was a dream all along.  Frankly though, I can see this overtime moving into the #1 slot of 2010 but for now it will have to settle at #2.

1.  THE SOCIAL NETWORK:  The sign of a great movie for me is if I felt it could have gone longer and I wouldn't have cared.  After 2 1/2 hrs of The Social Network, I decided I could have watched another 2 hours and would not have been bored once.  Frankly, there is not a single flaw in this movie.  From the first scene, which harkens back to HIS GIRL FRIDAY from 1940 (the best screwball comedy of that era) to the last scene, it is just a perfect movie experience.  Jesse Eisenberg, who has been great and underseen since breaking out in RODGER DODGER almost a decade ago busts down every barrier and gives a legendary performance.  Even Justin Timberlake is fantastic here and I'm actually excited to see where his acting career goes.  For the people holding out on seeing it because "it's a movie about Facebook" I hope they realize how stupid that reasoning is and how not truthful it is.  The movie is about so much more than Facebook.  I can only hope that everyone takes the time to watch it and appreciate it.

THE THREE RUNNERS UP


I said before there were 13 movies that can really make up this list so here are those three very briefly.

#11 Cemetery Junction.  It is a Ricky Gervais directed coming of age drama set in 1960s England but it's really fucking good.  From what I can get, it's like Dazed And Confused just set across the world in a different culture but the same themes are relevant.  It also has the best usage of a Led Zeppelin song ever

#12 Animal Kingdom.  Movies from Australia I usually find overrated but this one about a crime family with a mother that would do anything to save her sons from prison is a true gem.  Ben Mendelsson is the breakout star here with an extremely evil performance.  The accents are tough to understand but hopefully that won't stop people

#13 The Fighter.  It's not as great as some reviewers have made it out to be but Christian Bale and Amy Adams are absolutely terrific in a very fine boxing movie.  Micky Ward's best fights were with the late Arturo Gatti so if you want to watch the real Micky Ward fight then find that trilogy of fights cause it's a marvel what they did and the director made the right choice by not even attempting to film it.

WORST DEVELOPING TREND:


What's with all the good movies being set in Massachusetts?  Five of the top 13 movies are set in Massachusetts which makes me kind of sick.  We need to stop giving this state credit and we really need to stop letting them make great movies there

MOST OVERRATED:


Every year there is a movie that sneaks into the end of the year discussion which I just don't get.  Last year there were more obvious choices (see THE BLIND SIDE and AVATAR as the big culprits).  This year you had to dig far to find WINTER'S BONE, a movie that people found "chilling" yet I found "fucking unbearably boring."  Don't even bother watching it.  It's not even a good bad that its funny.  It's just unbearable

WORST YEAR FOR A BIG STAR


Enough with Russell Crowe.  Seriously.  First he gives us Robin Hood which was 2 hours of an extended yawn including the great "I declare him to be an outlawwwwww" which was laughably bad in the trailers and even worse in the movie (yes I know that wasn't Crowe but it hurts the movie).  He then follows it up with the even more asinine The Next Three Days which was so insipid, I spent the entire time wondering why Liam Neeson showed up for a one and done scene paycheck.   Nicolas Cage might get the notice for making shitty movies, but I've stopped seeing them.  Crowe needs to be put on this list.

SCARIEST SEX SCENE


For those of you who haven't seen SPLICE, please let me apologize for ruining what might be the most insane scene ever in a movie.  But Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley are superstar genetic scientists trying to splice a kid from god knows what.  Basically the spliced female/animal hybrid starts getting feelings for her father scientist Brody and somehow by the 75 minute mark, they are going at it on a makeshift barnyard laboratory.  It's appalling and hysterical all at the same time.

BEST COMEDY


Will Ferrell is an enigma.  He can make genius movies like ANCHORMAN and make such huge crap like BLADES OF GLORY and LAND OF THE LOST.  But he obviously finds the right connection while working with Adam McKay because THE OTHER GUYS is a hugely funny movie that the jokes I feel can work multiple times.  I feel this can be a great quotable movie like Anchorman once more people see it but its one of the better titles in the Will Ferrell category.

BEST QUOTE


Finally, the line of the year goes to the cult hero Danny Trejo with three simple words:  "Machete don't text"



Back to Korea stuff next time.  For now, enjoy this and have fun bashing my opinions as most of you do anyway.

Yes, It's A New Post

So I haven't written in about two weeks.  No specific reason, just haven't had much to say and everyone else was busy with holidays and all that stuff so decided not to bother everyone during the holiday season.

But now that that is over I find the time to be perfectly appropriate to bother you all once again.  For starters, Christmas here isn't that big of a thing.  The stores put up Christmas decorations and all the stores have the same Christmas songs on repeat (actually, it's really just N'Sync followed by Mariah followed by N'Sync again) but when it comes to the actual holiday the celebration is fairly lax.  Stores are open like usual, restaurants were full and packages were delivered so unlike the U.S., the world does not stop because Christmas is happening.  A nice change of pace from the usual holiday season that I have been used to for the past 24 years prior.

New Years also does not seem to be a big thing here (well at least in Jinju).  Koreans save their New Year celebrations for the Lunar New Year which is in the beginning of February.  So the foreigners here basically all just went to a bar and did New Year's how I have always been used to it, just minus the ball in Times Square since that ball dropped at 2pm Saturday which was already New Year's Day here.  So two of the biggest days of the year in the U.S. take a back seat over here which is just another thing to add to the long list of major differences between the two places.

This past Wednesday, my boss at the school took the entire staff out for dinner.  Like most dinners with your bosses, since the bill is on them you don't feel bad eating as much as you want.  But we went to one of these places (I don't know a name so forgive me) where essentially they put down a tray of raw meat and you cook it yourself.  But the tray has to be a few pounds heavy.

The plate is in the back of the giant metal thing blocking it which sucks up all the heat from the makeshift grill in front of us.  The table was split up into 3 parts and each table had 2 plates full of this meat so needless to say it was more than enough food.

Now is also a good time to introduce you to the drink of choice for so many people here which is soju.

Soju is like vodka in that it is a clear, odorless, mostly tasteless alcohol that when you have it, at least at first try, tastes like unadulterated trash.  Most foreigners I have seen use it as a mix drink, quite similar to vodka again, with a soda or something like that to disguise the taste although some do drink it straight (I have been told by multiple people that you get used to it but even those people seem to make fantastic faces of disgust after a shot of it).  At dinner though I was told to try what the locals here call "The Bomb" which is soju mixed into beer.  The name is poetic as when my co-worker made me one it wasn't that bad but then my boss made me one which was probably almost a half-glass of soju and then a half of beer and it does not take long to feel the effects of it.  If he kept making them I would have felt like the aftermath of Hiroshima.

Some other notes:

• I have no clue if these people read this blog but regardless if they do or not, I have come to the conclusion that I have no clue what Scottish people are saying (and if you are reading this then you know it's fucking true).  I know it is English but the actual context of what is being said is an utter mystery.

• Some kids I used to teach (schedule doesn't permit me to teach them anymore) are pretty smart and are also baseball fans.  When going over pronunciation of the "ph" words I asked if they knew who won the World Series in 2008 and they said it was the Philadelphia Pillies (half right isn't bad).  This then went on to a brief discussion of Chan Ho Park (whom even they know sucked) and Shin-Soo Choo, the outfielder for the Cleveland Indians and Korean hero (he is plastered on a truck that is outside my apt building everyday eating what looks to be ice cream but I can't be sure).  They call him Choo-Choo Train here which is a great nickname and the people of Cleveland should start using that if they don't already (he's a free agent at the end of the 2013 season so it will be a while before we casual fans begin to know who he is).

• I have one movie left to see before I can do my obnoxiously long Best of 2010 post I have been planning on boring you all with.  So for your sake you should hope it's a while before I get to see The King's Speech and that I'll ultimately scrap the idea but I'll give it another two weeks or so to pop up online

That's about all for now.  No clue when the next post will be but I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays and New Years.