BEST MOVIES OF 2010 -- so far

[Chris Knipp]

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.

[Chris Knipp]

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

[Chris Knipp]

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.

[Howard Schumann]

I fully understand your thinking on this.

[Chris Knipp]

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.

[Howard Schumann]

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.

[Chris Knipp]

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.