I hope everyone enjoyed their Christmas. I was glad to see some relatives that I don't normally get to see. Its a great excuse to eat way to much... Anyhow, my favorite gift this year was a pair of Senheiser over-the-ear headphones. They sound ridiculously amazing. I'm looking forward to listening to every album I own on them, just to see what it sounds like. Blur's Parklife was added to my CD collection. I've been getting into this band's singles lately (ten years late) and we'll see if their albums hold up. I've heard good things so far. I also received Pink Floyd's Live at Pompeii DVD. From what I've seen so far, this is some super dope footage of the band back in their prime (to me, this means before Waters' pretentious crap took over). Oh well, enough rambling, on with the show...
I was considering calling this a "Best-of" list, but that wouldn't be useful or productive in the slightest. I don't watch nearly enough movies to have any sort of authority on deciding what movies are actually "good." Half the time, I just watch crappy movies with my friends. Don't get me wrong, this is awesome, but very few are actually from 2010, so this doesn't help me here. As a poor college student, I'm not going to spend my money on a movie thats going to suck while its still in theaters. So for this list, I am just going to choose the best movies out of the ones I actually saw this year. This will make this list essentially incomplete, as there were many films I didn't get around to seeing this year that got good reviews, such as The Social network and Black Swan (which I thankfully still have time to catch).
Before we get started, I'll hand out a bonus award to the worst movie I saw this year:
Clash of the Titans - Louis Leterrier
Now I could have easily given this award to Twilight: New Moon or Letters to Juliet, but this one disappointed me in so many ways. It's not like I had super high expectations for this one, cus its an action movie. It's hard to screw it up too much. But alas, I was wrong. The storyline itself seemed like it was pulled straight out of a 7-year-old's playtime imagination. "Let's go here and fight the giant scorpions. Oh no, now we have to fight the Medusa, etc." On top of that, the dialogue was worse than I thought was possible to be allowed in a Hollywood movie. Several attempts at meaningful dialogue turned out beyond cheesy. I unfortunately saw this one in 3D. Not the real 3D, but the tacked on 3D that makes your eyes bleed. Everytime there was a new shot, I had to re-adjust my eyes, which is unpleasant after an hour and a half. Even Liam Neeson's badass "Release the Kracken!" was not enough to save this movie for me.
Now that I got that out of my system, here are the Top 5 movies I saw this year:
This was an unexpected hit for me. I basically stumbled into the room just after it had started and watched it out of boredom. I was drawn into the story very quickly and it just kept getting better from there. I think the main reason I enjoyed this movie so much was because it was an exciting and thrilling movie, but it didn't resort to Hollywood's usual thriller tactics. No jostling camera quickly cutting between face-paced shots, instead it relied on plain good storytelling. One way to think of it is if you compared 1964's Goldfinger to 2008's Quantum of Solace, this movie would definitely be closer to Goldfinger. Shot in a classic way I would say. The ending of this movie was fantastic and since it didn't seem to generate much buzz when it was released, I would suggest it to anyone who has not seen this one yet.
Little Leo sure has grown up hasn't he? And he's sporting that East Coast accent like a pro. Scorsese always aims to please in my book, and this movie was no exception. This one kept me on the edge of my seat the whole way through. This movie did a good job at being really friggin creepy while at the same time making you want to explore said creepyness. The ending was great, as I always enjoy a good mind-f*** (not literally, mind you). The ongoing Scorsese/DiCaprio lovefest has been successful, but I'm interested to see how much longer it will continue. Not that I'm complaining.
This was the closest thing to a Tarantino movie, but it was of no less quality. Over-the-top the whole way through, Machete was everything I expected it to be. Obviously the plot isn't going to be spectacular; I think I forgot the plot halfway through. But it had everything I was looking for: action, gore, ladies, and one-liners (Machete don't text!).
Honestly, who's list isn't this on? I feel like this movie might become the Fight Club for my generation (even though my generation and the Fight Club generation are almost the same thing). It's one of those movies that people can't stop talking and speculating about and then you go watch it again to pick up on little details that you didn't notice the first time. No matter how many different interpretations I read about its meaning, the ending continues to baffle me (again with those mind-f***s), which to me, is a hallmark of a great movie.
You know, I just noticed that every other movie on this list has the movie title in red text. Go ahead, check. They all do. Well, except this one. Whether that has anything to do with why this is number one is anyone's guess. Regardless, this movie was incredible in every way.
I'll go ahead and say it: this is the only movie to ever make me cry. Some have come close, but I was balling by the end of this one. It hit me like a one-two punch. First there was the scene where all the toys realize they are about to be melted and they just look into each other's eyes and silently hold one another. Goodness, I'm getting worked up just thinking about it. But the real kicker was when Andy was giving away all his prized toys to his neighbor's little girl. When he started to hand her Woody and said "This one was my favorite..." I was long gone. At the time I saw this movie, I was preparing to go to college and leave all my fun high school activities behind, so this scene hit me extra hard.
Now that we're done talking about how much of a crybaby I am, I'll just go ahead and reiterate how great of a movie this is. It's probably one of the most complete movies I have ever seen. Its phenomenal in every way.
Sorry, Iron Man 2, you didn't make the list this year. Maybe you'll do better with IM3. Hope you enjoyed my list. As a side note, I am going to see Black Swan this afternoon, which if it's as good as everyone says, could very well over take TS3 as my number 1 for the year. True, I could have waited a little longer to make this list and include it, but I figured I'd get this one out of the way so I can have time to list my favorite music before the year is up.
Happy Boxing Day!
The Wolf
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