Films 2010

By Lionina - 3:09 PM

This is extremely belated but I thought my end-of-year should mural up at some point. Looking back, I find I'm not very attached to "listed" films. Rather, the images that stick in my mind most are of the older movies I've been watching, firecracker comedies with Stanwyk, or House on the Hill (image below) by Kurosawa. 


The few exceptions are Everyone Else and the top two films, True Grit and How to Train your dragon. Next to these, Black Swan and The Social Network, while relevant (or socially relevant) are probably not shows I'd want to screen again. 

Utterly enjoyable for garble speechifying, real as real Ye Olde English should sound in a Renaissance movie. What were the Coen brothers thinking, making a movie this straightforward? I loved the sly humor and the dialogue, the performances and the hearty visuals. But mostly the performances. The omnipresent Coen Violence perhaps befits the material here and therefore seems less glorified or uncanny. A satisfying, entertaining Western.

Spanish edition Buzz and dark psychodrama aside, Toy Story was a competent expansion but slightly scattered revival of a beloved franchise. I suppose Toy Story 3 is on the shortlist as well, but How to Train Your Dragon seemed the more satisfying of the two IMHO, with integrated gags, exciting action sequences, and very cute critters. One niggling question, however... Are dragons like fish? Will another dragon step up to fill the uber dragon position in the dragon social heirarchy? Ok, that was two...

Aranofsky doing his familiar formula but with were-ballerina, body horror, jealousy and madness. Ostensibly about sexual awakening, aging, women angst, and so on, the director cleverly wrenched his angles by equating letting loose, getting wild, or being bad as just another form of control and letting the tragedy ensue. There is indeed a method to Nina's madness, and the director wants the audience, sometimes overly didactically, to sympathize with her logic even when it breaks. Maybe she's the endpoint of a collective drive for perfection? Or maybe, she's just plain crazy? Aranofsky reads both, and with no small amount of admiration and condemnation.

Who cares about fidelity really? The Social Network was a solid film, exciting like a trainwreck, on trend with its message, and only faltering with minor moralizing missteps at the end. The rest of the show is filled with enough hubris and caustic nerd antics to satisfy the most bitter among us. Timberlake steals the show with his charmingly cokified portrayal of Napster founder Sean Parker. Eisenberg plays Zuckerberg as the quintessential loner, a sneak peek at the internal workings of technocultural royalty, but one whose motives can only be conjectured. In the Social Network, the audience ultimately is on the outside. After you've googled, facebook'd, myspace'd all your immediate peeps, the question remains... How well can you know anyone anyway?

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