2010 Year in Review (and Two Top Ten Lists) by Helen Geib

by HELEN GEIB

THE YEAR IN REVIEW

I went to the movies 78 times. That counts three second viewings (of The Secret of Kells, The Secret in Their Eyes, and Red Cliff). It also counts a few revival screenings at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (including favorites The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Topsy-Turvy).

Around a dozen were last year’s year-end releases or foreign films in trickle-down distribution. The Secret in Their Eyes officially closed out the 2009 movie year in May, 2010.

I saw seven movies in other states. In six of those cases, I was there anyway for work or vacation- although getting to The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans was no mean feat even so. The seventh was when I drove to Minneapolis to see Warlords.

Movie that demands a mention for being a good romantic comedy: Heartbreaker (France)

I like to see a movie a week at the multiplex. Occasionally I’ll see something with my film club just to be social (that’s how I ended up at Skyline, for example), but most of the time I’m the one picking the title. Naturally I try to see things that I think will be good and that suit my taste in movies. Yet, even though I’m self-selecting in what I watch- and acknowledging that Hollywood produced a few exceptional films and a number more that were fun and well worth seeing- 2010 was still disappointing.

When I look at the weekend crop of new releases, I want to pick the movie that looks the best. There were far too many weeks this year where my criteria became which movie was least likely to be bad.

Scripts remain Hollywood’s Achilles heel. Compulsive playing it safe is close behind.

Movie that demands a mention for being such a great time at the movies: Knight and Day

Quantitatively my worst month was May when I only saw four movies. The best was December when I saw ten in a determined effort to catch all the big year-end releases before year’s end.

Qualitatively the worst month was September. That was the only month I didn’t at least break even on the liked vs. didn’t like count. December ended the year’s moviegoing on a high note with five of the films on my Top Ten list.

Five performances that demand a mention: Christian Bale in The Fighter; Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Inception; Rhys Ifans in Greenberg; Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone; Chloe Moretz in Kick-Ass

The Landmark’s Keystone Art Cinema got my business 20 times. That includes 15 out of my 19 foreign films for the year and around half of the indies.

A good number of important films again bypassed Indianapolis because Landmark declined to show them in favor of the big Hollywood movie of the week. A part-time arthouse is better than no arthouse, but I still miss the old pre-Landmark days when Indianapolis had two full-time arthouse theaters.

Movie that demands a mention for being such a great time at the movies (2): The A-Team

I saw about one-fifth of the movies eligible for Oscar consideration for 2010. Most of the other four-fifths are Hollywood movies I deliberately missed or films that didn’t get wide distribution, but that I wouldn’t have gone to even if they had.

However, as every year, a handful are movies that never opened here and that I really want to see- but will have to seek out on DVD. Several more are foreign films that will open here eventually, and that have a strong chance of being prominently featured in next year’s Year in Review.

THE LISTS

(Follow the links to read why these are the movies that made these lists.)

The ten best films I saw in the theater in 2010 that have 2009 release dates:

The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans
Castle Under Fiery Skies (Japan)
Crazy Heart
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Sweden)
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
A Prophet (France)
Red Cliff (China)
The Secret of Kells (Ireland)
The Secret in Their Eyes (Argentina)
Warlords (China)

The ten best films I saw in the theater in 2010 that have 2010 release dates:

127 Hours
Black Swan
The Fighter
How to Train Your Dragon
Inception
It’s Kind of a Funny Story
The King’s Speech
The Social Network
True Grit
Winter’s Bone

And finally, the hall of shame, the bottom half dozen, the six worst films I saw in the theater in 2010:

Kites (India)
The Last Airbender
Leap Year
Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief
Skyline
The Tourist

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Possibly Related Posts: (Commentary Track generated)

Inception reviews by Geoff Geib and Nir Shalev
Nir’s reviews of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans
2009 Year in Review by Helen Geib