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Thread: BEST MOVIES OF 2010 -- so far

  1. #91
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    Exit through the Gift Shop gave me a lot to think about. Your question deserves an essay-long answer. For now, I'll just say that two statements made at the beginning resonate throughout the rest of the film.
    1) Bansky's proclaiming that Guetta is a more interesting documentary-subject than he is, even though Bansky correctly thinks (but doesn't say until later) that he himself is clearly more talented as both street artist and filmmaker. It is important to think of the reasons why in this culture , at this time, the less-talented Guetta is indeed a more important documentary subject than Bansky.
    2) Shepard Fairey's comment about the nature of power and how a person acquires it in our culture. How the illusion of power, or a "perceived power" can be turned into a real thing by manipulating the sources of mass communication.
    There are other significant issues in the film, including material about the concept of art and what it's good for and how it relates to other aspects of the culture, and how things acquire value in society, the authorship of cultural products,etc.

  2. #92
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    Thanks. I see what you mean. EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT shop does give one a lot to think about. And it plays clever tricks on the viewer. Too bad we didn't discuss it at the time when the thread on it was opened here way back when it was in theaters.

  3. #93
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    Here are my lists

    I'll start a new thread with this too so people can put their best lists on a new clean thread.

    CHRIS KNIPP'S 2010 BEST MOVIE LISTS

    I prefer not to make pronouncements about the general cinematic quality of the year compared to other years. What difference does it make anyway if it was a lousy year if there was one great film? There are still some I need to catch up on, but I think I saw more new movies this year than ever before and yet I don't think it was an outstanding year for releases. Might this be due to economic factors limiting what can get released or even made? I don't know. There are always a few very fine films and a few terrible ones and the majority of them are of average quality, neither very good nor very bad. That's why an evaluation of the year as a whole is such an arbitrary thing. Yet there were still some excellent movies especially in the US Oscar-bait system of year-end releases. And some fine ones early in the year we have to be careful not to forget. My system is to group my favorites in categories, best in English, best foreign, best documentaries, shorhtlisted, etc. but list the films alphabetically without ranking them against each other within the groups. If you make it into the club, you're in and that's enough. But I'll tell you a secret: The Social Network was the selection of the New York Film Festival I was most excited to see, and it's still my favorite more or less mainstream 2010 US release.

    In addition to these lists Blue Valentine (Derek Cianfrance 2010) is worth mention, despite faulty structure, for awesome performances by Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling -- clearly among the edgiest, most convincing work by any film actors this year. It's only because I am rating movies and not individual facets of them that Blue Valentine isn't in these lists. The Company Men is a good serious movie about downsizing and shows John Wells' potential as a writer and director of feature films. There are many other films worth seeing that there's no room for, such as Gaspar Noé's Enter the Void. Of the best films in English, The Ghost Writer, (surprising no doubt to some) Life During Wartime, and above all The Social Network are a real pleasure to watch. The others mostly are not, especially when they depict events as disturbing as a forced amputation, an imploding criminal family, sex with minors, drug addiction, or terminal boredom, but harsh or indigestible experiences make good films. I don't very much like Toy story 3, because the Pixar style and its sentimentality are not to my taste, but I recognize the skill and the humanity that went into this accomplished animated film. There are other good documentaries this year besides those on my list, some I didn't see such as The Tillman Story, The Two Escobars, and Marwencol. I chose ones whose subjects are significant to me. I'd say this was not quite a stellar year for foreign films in the US but then, if a year or so late, there was Audiard's masterful A Prophet. Though I listed Denis' White Material merely as a runner-up, that's only because she's so good I expect more of her. I wish I didn't look so much like a Francophile. Latin America produces a lot of exciting films, but unfortunately not enough of them are released in North America.

    (Not ranked.)

    FILMS IN ENGLISH
    127 Hours (Danny Boyle 2010)
    Animal Kingdom (David Michôd 2010)
    Fighter, The (David O. Russell 2010)
    Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold 2009)
    Ghost Writer, The (Roman Polanski 2010)
    Greenberg (Noah Baumbach 2010)
    Life During Wartime (Todd Solodnz 2010)
    Social Network, The (David Fincher 2020)
    Somewhere (Sofia Coppola 2010)
    Toy Story 3 (Lee Unkrich 2010)
    Winter's Bone (Debra Granik 2010)

    BEST FOREIGN
    Carlos (Olivier Assayas 2010)
    Eyes Wide Open (Haim Tabakman 2009)
    The Father of My Children (Le père de mes enfants, Mia Hansen-Løve 2009)
    Hadewijch (Bruno Dumont 2009)
    Mademoiselle Chambon (Stéphane Brizé 2009)
    Making Plans for Léne (Non, ma fille, tu n'iras pas danser, Christophe Honoré 2009)
    Mother (Bong Joon-ho 2009)
    Prophet, A (Un prophète, Jacques Audiard 2009)
    Vincere (Marco Bellocchio 2009)
    Welcome (Philippe Lioret 2009)

    SHORTLISTED
    Ajami (Scandar Copti, Yaron Shani 2009)
    American, The (Anton Corbijn 2010)
    Anton Chekhov's The Duel (Dover Kosashvili 2009)
    Daddy Longlegs (Josh and Benny Safdie 2009)
    Hereafter (Clint Eastwood 2010)
    King's Speech, The (Tom Hooper 2010)
    Rabbit Hole (John Cameron Mitchell 2010)
    Solitary Man (Brian Koppelman, David Levien 2010)
    Terribly Happy (Henrik Ruben Genz 2010)
    White Material (Claire Denis 2009)

    BEST DOCUMENTARIES:
    Alamar ((Pedro Gonzalez Rubio 2010)
    Art of the Steal, The (Don Argott 2010)
    Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy 2010)
    Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould (Michèle Hozner, Peter Raymont 2010)
    Inside Job (Charles Ferguson 2010)
    Ne Change Rien (Pedro Costa 2010)
    Nénette (Nicolas Philibert 2010)
    Thorn in the Heart, The (L'Épine dans le coeur, Michel Gondry 2009)
    Waiting for Superman (David Guggenheim 2010)
    William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe (Emily and Sarah Kunstler 2010)

    BEST UNRELEASED IN US
    Double Hour, The (La doppia ora, Giuseppe Capotondi 2009)
    In the Beginning (À l'origine, Xavier Giannoli 2009)
    Of Gods and Men (Des hommes et des dieux, Xavier Beauvois 2010)
    Poetry (Lee Chang-dong 2010)
    Post Mortem (Pablo Larraín 2010)
    Rapt (Lucas Belvaux 2009)
    Robber, The (Der Räuber, Benjamin Heisenberg 2010)
    Strange Case of Angelica, The (O Estranho Caso de Angélica, Manoel de Oliveira 2010)
    We Are What We Are (Somos lo que hay, Jorge Michel Grau 2010)
    You Think You're the Prettiest, But You're the Sluttiest (Te creís la más linda, pero erís la más puta, Che Sandoval 2008)

    MOST OVERRATED
    Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky 2010)
    Boxing Gym (Fred Wiseman 2010)
    Inception (Christopher Nolan 2010)
    Kids Are All Right, The (Lisa Cholodenko. 2010)
    Restrepo (Sebastian Junger, Tim Hetherington 2010)

    _________________
    ©Chris Knipp 2011

  4. #94
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    Lists
    I will add my list eventually but I think I would rather wait until the end of the month because, unlike you, I haven't seen everything from 2010 that I want to.
    When I do publish my list, they will be ranked in order from 1-20. They will also be my choice of my favorites not divided into any categories.
    I do understand your desire to do this, however, because you have seen so many more films than I have and it would seem daunting to have to limit it to 20. On the other hand, however, one does not get a clear sense of which films you liked the most when your list consists of 40+ films.. -- HOWARD SCHUMANN
    It's unusual for me too to be done so early, but I don't think there are any serous contenders that I haven't seen. I say definitely that my favorite American film of the year is THE SOCIAL NETWORK. I'd definitely say my favorite foreign one is A PROPHET. Beyond that, as I said, if they get into the list, that should be enough, and it's a finicky game to try to rank 10- or 20 or 40 films in order of merit. Would you like to do that with books? With friends? I don't think so. I did see upwards of 250 new movies this year and a lot of them were good, more than I can put in the list. A few stand out, and they are at the top of my lists. But I don't think it's a matter of how many movies one's seen. It's just been a principle of mine for years that I preferred to list groups alphabetically rather than rank every single film into a strict pecking order, which seems to be too arbitrary. There are lots of different approaches to the end of year selection process, many equally valid. Of course my method of having lists for English language, foreign, documentary, and shortlisted allows me to list more movies, but I also did that before I was seeing as many as I am now.
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 01-13-2011 at 11:58 PM.

  5. #95
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    Lists

    I fully understand your thinking on this.
    "They must find it hard, those who have taken authority as truth, rather than truth as authority" Gerald Massey

  6. #96
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    My thinking has been that way for years. However, I might try to make a shorter list and pick my top favorites besides THE SOCIAL NETWORK and A PROPHET.

  7. #97
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    Choices

    Quote Originally Posted by Chris Knipp View Post
    My thinking has been that way for years. However, I might try to make a shorter list and pick my top favorites besides THE SOCIAL NETWORK and A PROPHET.
    A Prophet was on my list for best films of 2009 as was Mother. I didn't say what I did to try to get you to change anything. I don't. However, from my point of view only, we all make choices in life, either consciously or unconsciously. While we don't rate our friends, we do say "He/she is my best friend" or "He/she is one of my best friends." This means that we have in mind those people we consider close friends ans those we consider "mere acquaintances".

    Likewise, I think if anyone asked you what are your favorite fiction and non-fiction books, some titles would immediately come to mind. When I went to New York, I wanted to find out what was considered the best Pizza and the best Hot Pastrami sandwich and I wanted to know others that were considered as perhaps not the very best but worthy of being in a top ten. For me anyway, that's how my mind works. That is why I rate movies from A to D primarily as a way of making a choice about it. I know there are good things and not so good things about a certain film, but having to rate it allows me to sort out in my own mind where I stand and to clarify my own thinking on the film. Also ranking films at the end of the year forces me to make choices of what films really reached me and which did not.

    Let me say again. This is my point of view and I am not looking for agreement. I respect the fact that you feel differently.
    "They must find it hard, those who have taken authority as truth, rather than truth as authority" Gerald Massey

  8. #98
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    you're quite right. It's just that I don't like exactly ranking films in the top ten or twenty. But of course one does have favorite friends and favorite books, and a small handful that matter most.

    I am thinking of reformatting or rewording my choices not to please you but for other sites, and because redoing them makes me think.

  9. #99
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    The Golden Globes were announced on Sunday, January 15, 2011.


    GOLDEN GLOBES 2011, WINNERS AND NOMINEES:

    Best Motion Picture - Drama
    WINNER
    The Social Network (2010)

    Other Nominees:
    Black Swan (2010)
    The Fighter (2010)
    Inception (2010)
    The King's Speech (2010)

    Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy
    WINNER
    The Kids Are All Right (2010)

    Other Nominees:
    Alice in Wonderland (2010)
    Burlesque (2010/I)
    Red (2010/I)
    The Tourist (2010)

    Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama
    WINNER
    Colin Firth for The King's Speech (2010)

    Other Nominees:
    Jesse Eisenberg for The Social Network (2010)
    James Franco for 127 Hours (2010)
    Ryan Gosling for Blue Valentine (2010)
    Mark Wahlberg for The Fighter (2010)

    Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama
    WINNER
    Natalie Portman for Black Swan (2010)

    Other Nominees:
    Halle Berry for Frankie and Alice (2010)
    Nicole Kidman for Rabbit Hole (2010)
    Jennifer Lawrence for Winter's Bone (2010)
    Michelle Williams for Blue Valentine (2010)

    Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy
    WINNER
    Paul Giamatti for Barney's Version (2010)

    Other Nominees:
    Johnny Depp for The Tourist (2010)
    Johnny Depp for Alice in Wonderland (2010)
    Jake Gyllenhaal for Love and Other Drugs (2010)
    Kevin Spacey for Casino Jack (2010)

    Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy
    WINNER
    Annette Bening for The Kids Are All Right (2010)

    Other Nominees:
    Anne Hathaway for Love and Other Drugs (2010)
    Angelina Jolie for The Tourist (2010)
    Julianne Moore for The Kids Are All Right (2010)
    Emma Stone for Easy A (2010)

    Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
    WINNER
    Christian Bale for The Fighter (2010)

    Other Nominees:
    Michael Douglas for Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)
    Andrew Garfield for The Social Network (2010)
    Jeremy Renner for The Town (2010)
    Geoffrey Rush for The King's Speech (2010)

    Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
    WINNER
    Melissa Leo for The Fighter (2010)

    Other Nominees:
    Amy Adams for The Fighter (2010)
    Helena Bonham Carter for The King's Speech (2010)
    Mila Kunis for Black Swan (2010)
    Jacki Weaver for Animal Kingdom (2010)

    Best Director - Motion Picture
    WINNER
    David Fincher for The Social Network (2010)

    Other Nominees:
    Darren Aronofsky for Black Swan (2010)
    Tom Hooper for The King's Speech (2010)
    Christopher Nolan for Inception (2010)
    David O. Russell for The Fighter (2010)

    Best Screenplay - Motion Picture
    WINNER
    The Social Network (2010): Aaron Sorkin

    Other Nominees:
    127 Hours (2010): Danny Boyle, Simon Beaufoy
    Inception (2010): Christopher Nolan
    The Kids Are All Right (2010): Stuart Blumberg, Lisa Cholodenko
    The King's Speech (2010): David Seidler

    Best Original Song - Motion Picture
    WINNER
    Burlesque (2010/I): Diane Warren("You Haven't Seen The Last of Me")

    Other Nominees:
    Burlesque (2010/I): Samuel Dixon, Christina Aguilera, Sia Furler("Bound to You")
    Country Strong (2010): Bob DiPiero, Tom Douglas, Hillary Lindsey, Troy Verges("Coming Home")
    The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010): Carrie Underwood, David Hodges, Hillary Lindsey("There's A Place For Us")
    Tangled (2010): Alan Menken, Glenn Slater("I See the Light")

    Best Original Score - Motion Picture
    WINNER
    The Social Network (2010): Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross

    Other Nominees:
    127 Hours (2010): A.R. Rahman
    Alice in Wonderland (2010): Danny Elfman
    Inception (2010): Hans Zimmer
    The King's Speech (2010): Alexandre Desplat

    Best Animated Film
    WINNER
    Toy Story 3 (2010)

    Other Nominees:
    Despicable Me (2010)
    How to Train Your Dragon (2010)
    The Illusionist (2010)
    Tangled (2010)

    Best Foreign Language Film
    WINNER
    In a Better World (2010)(Denmark)

    Other Nominees:
    Biutiful (2010)(Mexico/Spain)
    The Concert (2009)(France)
    The Edge (2010)(Russia)
    I Am Love (2009)(Italy)

  10. #100
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    I have a Top 10 overall list. The same 3 undistributed and 7 distributed films I have listed since the summer. Nothing released since then impressed me enough to make the list. Busy year for me. Just received a commission to write three pieces for a book on French Cinema. It will keep me occupied for the next couple of months. I am reluctant to post list because I missed some films by some of my favorite directors, including Sofia Coppola, Mike Leigh, and Jacques Rivette. However, I watched all the films nominated except 127 Hours.
    Last edited by oscar jubis; 02-19-2011 at 05:07 PM.

  11. #101
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    Best Films of 2010 (in rough preferential order, asterisk denotes undistributed films)

    Grandmother (Brillante Mendoza/Phillipines)*
    Greenberg (Noah Baumbach/USA)
    Shirin (Abbas Kiarostami/Iran)
    Sweet Grass (USA)
    Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench (Damien Chazelle/USA)
    Wild Grass (Alain Resnais/France)
    The Milk of Sorrow (Claudia Llosa/Peru)
    Eccentricities of a Blonde Girl (Manoel de Oliveira/Portugal)
    Moloch Tropical (Raoul Peck/Haiti)*
    The Illusionist (Sylvain Chomet/France)
    The Last Summer of Boyita (Julia Solomonoff/Argentina)*
    No One Knows about Persian Cats (Bahman Ghobadi/Iran)

    Runner-Ups

    FISH TANK (UK)
    BOXING GYM (USA)
    TOY STORY 3 (USA)
    THE FIGHTER (USA)
    ANOTHER YEAR (UK)
    BLUE VALENTINE (USA)
    AROUND A SMALL MOUNTAIN (France)
    SOMEWHERE (USA)\
    ALAMAR (Mexico)
    CRAB TRAP (Colombia)*


    Highly Recommended
    Carlos (uncut version)
    Hideaway (France)
    Dogtooth (Greece)
    City of Life and Death (China)*
    Bluebeard (France)
    The Wind Journeys (Colombia)
    Medal of Honor (Romania)*
    The Ghost Writer
    Exit through the Gift Shop (USA/UK)
    Winter's Bone (USA)
    Chloe (Canada/USA)
    The King's Speech (UK)
    The Social Network (USA)
    Everyone Else (Germany)
    Secret Sunshine (South Korea)
    Women without Men (Iran/Germany)
    Mademoiselle Chambon (France)

    Not Seen Yet: Inside Job, 127 Hours, Enter the Void, Rabbit Hole,Chekhov's The Duel, Eyes Wide Open.

    A look back: The best films of 2009

    GOODBYE SOLO (Ramin Bahrani) USA
    THE HEADLESS WOMAN (Lucrecia Martel) ARGENTINA
    ************
    LIVERPOOL (Lisandro Alonso) ARGENTINA
    PARQUE VIA (Enrique Rivero) MEXICO
    THE WHITE RIBBON (Michael Haneke) AUSTRIA/GERMANY
    *************
    24 CITY (Jia Zhang ke) CHINA
    35 SHOTS OF RUM (Claire Denis) FRANCE/GERMANY
    HUNGER (Steve McQueen) UK/IRELAND
    MUNYURANGABO (Lee Isaac Chang) USA/RWANDA
    OF TIME AND THE CITY (Terence Davies) UK
    Last edited by oscar jubis; 06-10-2011 at 10:00 AM.

  12. #102
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    Since I posted my list 3 months ago, I have watched 3 movies released in 2010 which merit inclusion. These include two "miniatures": Sofia Coppola's almost perfect Somewhere, and Rivette's charming and free Around a Small Mountain. The movie that belongs among the very best of the year in my experience is
    GUY AND MADELINE ON A PARK BENCH, young American Damien Chazelle's delightful child of Shadows and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.

  13. #103
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    Glad to see another vote for Somewhere, which as you know has had some very negative reviews as well as positive ones; the Metacritic rating of 67 shows the opposite pulls at work. I had a hard time with Around a Small Mountain but managed to decode it to a considerable extent with a lot of help from a French critic, as you'll see in my Nyff 2009 report. You are a Rivette fan; I find I am not, though he has tended to grow on me more of late.

    I didn't know about Guy and Medeline; it apparently came and went in NYC during one of the times when I was not there, between a NYFF time and a Christmas stay. It was shown at Cinema Village, the small NYTimes review shows, so if I'd been there then I'd probably have seen it.

  14. #104
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    I really appreciate your being fair to Around a Small Mountain especially because you are not a fan of Jacques Rivette. Grossly underexposed in America to say the least, Rivette is. This was even more true last century than this one! It is also strange that perhaps his most enjoyable, representative work, Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974) is not one out of a dozen Rivette films released on DVD. It's the best rated among IMdb voters.

    Films like Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench give me hope about the future of cinema and the future of America.

  15. #105
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    I respect the Film Society of Lincoln Center and make every effort to understand and appreciate all their or the NYFF jury's choices each year. I'm more neutral about Rivette than in any way opposed. I can enjoy a leisurely meander through his films from time to time. I enjoyed La Belle Noiseuse, Va Savoir. The big French favorite of yours I really have a harder time with is Alain Renais, except for his two early masterpieces, which I love. Guy and Madeleine can be watched on Instant Play on Netfilx right now, you know. I plan on giving it a look.

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