Favorite Movies of 2010

Monsters

Sadie and I found Monsters randomly via Comcast On Demand one evening. We figured that if we didn't like it we'd just turn it off and do something else seeing as none of the other films on there looked remotely interesting. After killing our Netflix acct earlier this year, On Demand and the tiny video store down the street have been the primary vendors of our cinematic entertainment, which, in a given month is usually plenty for us. But on this particular night we picked Monsters and certainly were not expecting much.

Fortunately, it turned that this micro-budget, indie, one-man-show sci-fi pic was much more than we could have hoped for. The plot is simple but interesting, borrowing some tricks from District 9 to present the audience with a world post-alien invasion, where a large portion of northern Mexico is overrun by aliens, a place that the characters in the film call "The Infected Zone". Throughout this area the US military battles these tentacled creatures, most of which they have beaten back from a giant wall they've built along the US-Mexican border to keep them out. Yup- it's got a few political jabs in there for sure.

But this is all just the backdrop for - believe it or not - a love story between two people that have missed their boat (quite literally) back from Central America and must now return to the US by traveling directly through The Infected Zone on foot. As opposed to the wastelandish imagery you might expect from a lot of sci-fi genre pictures these days, and perhaps an array quirky characters the protagonists might meet during their travels over the length of the film, Monsters has a much more meditative ambiance, emphasizing the natural landscape and the symbiotic relationships that have formed between the alien creatures and the local vegetation (trees, plants, etc). Because of this narrative device, this film ends up a surprisingly nuanced piece that left us inspired (while a bit melancholy) and overall impressed with the storytelling and characters- much moreso than so many sci-fi pictures with a much larger budgets that we've seen over the last several years. Also some extremely well-done visual effects!

Inception

If you thought director Chris Nolan had disappeared into Bat-Land forever, Inception showed up just in time spin that notion out into oblivion. It's a breathless action/science-fiction extravaganza that borders on psychosis in terms of its narrative structure. It's nowhere near something like a David Lynch film mind you, but the subject of dreams and human consciousness in cinema leaves a lot of doors open which, assigned to the wrong creative mind, could easily turn a well-meaning narrative into utter crap in the span of 120 minutes.

There was a large faction of viewers that felt like Inception was a complete waste of time, as well as a percentage of others were just flat-out confused. Obviously my view of the film is largely positive. I'm a huge fan of psychological thrillers when they are done right, and am even more impressed when the story challenges the viewer to change their preconceptions of how movies are supposed to be presented. Nolan is no stranger to this territory, given his virtually flawless Memento and it's chronologically-reversed narrative. Who knew that such a storytelling device could work before he'd actually done it in a film? I feel as though Nolan has single-handedly changed the way that we watch films as a culture and Inception has only served to further that endeavor, with its nested structure and deft ability to shift from one level of reality to the next while not letting the overall pacing of the film become monotonous.

The aesthetics of this film are top notch. The costumes, the sets, the lighting, the cinematography and the visual effects are off the scale. The soundtrack is also excellent. Aesthetics are the first line of defense for me in terms of a Hollywood home run. If you're going to take me on a journey into new territory, everything else must be completely new as well, or at least seem like something we haven't seen in quite that way before. While Inception is certainly informed by the imagery of such visually striking predecessors as The Matrix, Dark City, Heat (Michael Mann) and some of the later James Bond films, I found Inception to be mostly unique in terms of its presentation, or at least enough so that I didn't find myself pointing and saying "yeah they totally ripped that off from ____." If there were nods to other films beyond those I listed, they were definitely subtle. But if I had to pick Inceptions most obvious influences, I'd lean more towards surrealist art, specifically that of M.C. Escher and Salvador Dali, both of whom I adore.

So it almost seems as though this movie was made just for me. It just hit all of my cinematic buttons- simple as that. One last note is that although Nolan didn't use her to her capacity, I was very excited to see Marion Cotillard on the screen again, having last seen her in the epic docudrama La Vie En Rose. It was also kind of ironic that the core of Inception's soundtrack was heavily supported by an Edith Piaf song, a role for which Cotillard won an Academy Award (for La Vie En Rose). In fact it wasn't until recently that I realized how heavily it was actually used...



The Social Network

I think the real Mark Zuckerberg was left a bit disappointed by this film- not just because it made him look like a bridge-burning, over-determined, power hungry, no holds barred Harvard dorm-room genius turned Silicon Valley master, but because he isn't nearly as cool as the character written by Aaron Sorkin and portrayed by Jesse Eisenberg in the film The Social Network. Same goes for pop star Justin Timberlake's firebrand portrayal of Sean Parker- co-founder of music download service Napster. Really nobody's that cool... except perhaps for Timberlake himself.

Like many of the more "artful" historical dramas that come out of Hollywood, the Social Network takes many artistic liberties with the actual facts of the genesis and evolution of the internet juggernaut known as Facebook- embellishing upon events, settings, and as I mentioned, the characters who took part in said events. This is necessary to create a decent drama out of an otherwise mundane story (the core narrative jumps between two separate legal depositions). Even with all of these narrative obstacles, Sorkin and Fincher did a fantastic job making this an adrenaline pumping, genuinely exciting film, with expertly-crafted dialogue and acting performances as well as coherent, albeit nonlinear storytelling. I'll admit, the rapid-fire exchanges between the college-era characters in the early scenes of the film left me a bit hazy at first, but once I got used to the accelerated pace, it only added to the film's enjoyable, unrelenting forward thrust.

I already discussed The Social Network's incredible soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross at length in my above review so I won't go into it again, but suffice it to say that it worked perfectly for the film. Jeff Cronenweth's cinematography was expectedly dark and moody, but consistent with the narrative- not repeating the utter blackness that Fight Club provided 10 years ago (Fincher and Cronenweth's last collaboration). Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall's supreme editing pulls the whole endeavor together flawlessly.

Beyond it's technical prowess, I feel as though this film will be remembered as a milestone achievement of modern historical fiction, an artful document of the Facebook era in which we currently live, as well as a mark of, hopefully, the last throes of the 20th century Hollywood Boys' Club misogyny. So yes, while I loved the film as a whole, we still have a long way to go as far as gender equality within film is concerned, as evidenced by this exchange of dialogue from The Social Network:

Girlfriends of Facebook founders: "What can we do?"
Facebook founders: (pause) "Nothing!"

Case in point. You hear me Fincher? Sorkin? Ya'll need some more quality time with the ladies, I'm afraid.

Black Swan

Natalie Portman is a great actress, but only when she is used correctly. So far I can count only three performances in her silver-screen past where she truly shined, those being The Professional, Garden State, and Black Swan. I never thought I'd see so much darkness in a single character pulled through her until I had seen her this film, so perhaps director Darren Aronofsky finally figured it out- because Natalie Portman IS the Black Swan.

Excruciating, abrasive, at times head-swimming but undeniably original, Black Swan is a stylistically-hybrid mix of many of Aronofsky's previous films, from the fantastical eye candy of The Fountain to the documentary-like grittiness of The Wrestler. If I had to guess, this is the genesis of many cinematic ventures that will built upon this new structure. I also think, a la Denzel Washington in Training Day, that this is only the first evidence on film of Natalie Portman's foray into the darker side of her personality. At least I hope so!

Black Swan is simply stunning and is not to be missed. While I could have probably done without the blatantly exploitative lesbian sex scene, this is the guy, after all, who made Requiem for a Dream. C'mon. What did I really expect?

How to Train Your Dragon

Ooooh. Sorry, Pixar. Toy Story 3 was great, but Dreamworks has got ya beat this time. All I can say is WOW. How to Train Your Dragon takes the cake this year as far as cross-audience-appealing animated films go. This sleeper hit is largely divergent from the run-of-the-mill, coming-of-age type of film that regularly saturates the big-budget landscape. If you look at the weekend box-office numbers on IMDB, it's the opposite of most Hollywood Films. It starts out with a relatively small return and steadily builds up the kind of popularity that can only occur via word of mouth through viewers. Not surprisingly I hadn't seen the film until well after its box office run, but even then I had already gotten more than a few firm recommendations before I finally saw it.

When I finally saw it I fell in love with it. The film is laced with oddball but endearing characters, fun dialogue and a well-honed characterization of the awkward trials of teenage life- the attempt to keep up some kind of backwards cultural tradition that you don't really believe in while trying desperately to fit in with your peers- and failing. This is the essence of essence of our teenage years that is generally missed on film. In real life of course, these things so rarely if ever happen- that an adolescent is somehow able to transform the mindset of an entire community progressing towards a better way of life. Usually what happens is the uphill battle becomes too much to bear, and the individual is either repressed or simply leaves the community, to peddle his ideas someplace where they are more likely to be heard. So in that way, this film is highly unrealistic- which is one of the reasons we like these kinds of films so much. They invite us to imagine a better future than the one we feel is so many times inevitable.

Even deeper within this film is the a structure of idealism that I recognize from my years of study as an adult- a call to use science and observation to improve our understanding of the world, while making no stalwart assumptions about the way that things "are" just because the old view is popular. So what's actually being presented by the plot of this film (and what is so intriguing to me) is not just a linear progression towards a more efficient way of dealing with long problems a community faces, but a complete revolution of thought in the face of a failing policy and the ability for us to learn from our past mistakes, which makes the film even more inspiring and in our present societal disposition.

But wait, now isn't this an animated movie about DRAGONS??? Yes, and it's probably the best movie about dragons that I've ever seen. But the breadth of issues that this film covers goes far beyond just another popcorn feature-length cartoon. How to Train Your Dragon pushes Dreamworks beyond their usual fart joke, pop-culture-lathered Shrek territory, well into the heart of Pixar-like genuineness. And wins.