I've seen well over 150 new films this year - far more than I have ever seen in any previous year - and so this "top 10" has been the most difficult ever. There is no room here for so many very, very good films and honourable mentions go to
Dogtooth, Four Lions, Micmacs, Life During Wartime and
No One Knows About Persian Cats. After much thought, I've included films here that weren't released in the UK in 2010, basically because carrying films over to next year is a burden I don't wish to bear as I have in previous years (carrying films over can result in your forgetting to mention them entirely, and they end up in a state of top 10 limbo). Here is my personal favourite ten films of 2010:
10) Of Gods and Men, dir Xavier Beauvois, (France)
'Of Gods and Men' is a sober and thoughtful film based on the true story of a group of French monks who lived in an Algerian monastery until they were apparently beheaded by Islamic militants (though their actual killers are disputed). The film doesn't detail their deaths, but rather spends its time observing the conversations the men have as they ponder whether to stay or leave. It's a film about ideology and the idea of morality. It is also full of beautifully composed images and the use of the monks' Gregorian chanting (actually performed by the terrific ensemble cast) is haunting and powerful.
9) Ovsyanki (Silent Souls), dir Aleksei Fedorchenko, (Russia)
A strange Russian film about ritual and tradition, set in a remote part of the country and following a forgotten people with a distinct set of cultural practices. It's a film of long, still takes in which we are left to observe these curious ceremonies in real-time. One such scene sees a bereaved husband and one of his co-workers cleaning the dead body of his young wife. How the lady died is never mentioned (was she sick? Did she commit suicide? Was she murdered?) with the film just focusing on the final journey of her body as the two men embark on a sort of macabre road movie - and we are invited along on a sort of sedate, malancholic cultural safari. All the while there is the sense that it is about more than the passing of one man's wife, but about the death of an entire culture - which we are almost lead to believe is only being practised by these two stern and quiet men. For such a slow and simple film,
Ovsyanki is also full of surprisingly bravura shot choices. For instance, director
Aleksei Fedorchenko executes a amazing panning shot which takes us 180 degrees around the inside of a moving car. Ovsyanki was one of the major highlights of this year's Venice Film Festival and a film that I sadly can't see receiving any sort of UK theatrical release. You can read my full review of the film,
HERE.
8) Police, Adjective, Corneliu Porumboiu, (Romania)
Never has the "procedural" part of that genre been so heavily emphasised as in Romanian police procedural
Police, Adjective - not even in brilliant TV shows like The Wire. In this film there is no action, no major crime bust in operation. There is just one Romanian cop doing seemingly endless paperwork in the pursuit of the most juvenile of offenders at the insistence of his pedantic superiors. Like Ovsyanki, this is a patient film of long, slow takes and the most exciting scene is one sustained shot as three men defer to a Romanian dictionary in a discussion of ethics and the social purpose behind policing. Totally absorbing and entirely brilliant, with a wicked, dry sense of humour that seems to characterise the New Romanian cinema. You can read my review of the film,
HERE.
7) Greenberg, Noah Baumbach, (USA)
Many will just flat-out hate
Ben Stiller's title character, a self-obsessed, delusional and whiny loser, but I found
Greenberg immensely moving and poignant - never more so than when
Rhys Ifans' character (whose music career was curtailed by Greenberg's selfishness) tells his friend that "Its huge to finally embrace the life you never planned on." Greenberg is a film about damaged people who haven't necessarily gotten what they expected from life. As a screenwriter and director,
Noah Baumbach has come to specialise in this sort of sympathetic portrayal of these sorts of fully-developed and deeply flawed characters. Ultimately, I love these kinds of films that are honest about human frailties yet never resign themselves to ever-fashionable apathy or hopelessness. You can read my review of the film,
HERE.
6) Mother, Joon-ho Bong, (Korea)
In retrospect I don't know that I think
Mother is as good as his last film The Host, but
Joon-ho Bong has now established himself as one of the directors to watch in "world cinema". His films are so witty, so packed with satire and so very mad whilst always somehow just clinging to credibility. Mother is a sort of detective thriller, where a lone middle-aged woman embarks on a fight against the odds to prove that her mentally handicapped son is not guilty of the murder he has been imprisoned for. It is at times quite jumpy, but the stand-out aspect of the film is the overriding creepiness Bong creates as we see the disturbingly close relationship between the mother and her son. As well as featuring many of the director's ongoing preoccupations (including the portrayal of South Korea as a seedy and corrupt place with a mobile phone fetish and overzealous media), the film works as a powerful meditation on the idea of one mother's unconditional love for her son. You can read my review of the film,
HERE.
5) Another Year, Mike Leigh, (UK)
Another Year has a stunning cast, which includes
Jim Broadbent, Ruth Sheen and
Lesley Manville, who bring to life another banal, slice of life story from
Mike Leigh - without doubt my favourite living British director. It's a film of wonderfully observed moments and rich, three dimensional characters that resonate with you on a gut level. One of the film's great strengths is that its characters are fully formed people who can be taken in many different ways. I have spoken to several different people about it and hear contrasting reactions to each of the characters. Some see the central couple (Broadbent and Sheen's comfortably middle-class Tom and Gerri) as being judgemental and even hateful, whilst I saw them as being tender and quite accommodating (trying their best to help their friends but finally accepting that there is nothing they can do to help people who aren't open to the idea of happiness). Lesley Manville's overbearing Mary was someone I felt was tragic and very real, whereas I have heard people say that her character is too extreme and too unlikeable. Enjoyment of it is subject to how much you can tolerate the idea that the life you lead owes a lot to luck and that everyone is imperfect. It also depends on how accepting you are of those people when you can see their many, obvious character defects. If you're the sort of person that just wants to slap them or tell them to "get over it", then you'll find this film (and many others on my list) infuriating. However, I found Another Year to be deeply humbling and incredibly sad, with Leigh's bittersweet, gentle brand of humour (which hones in on small character moments and speech patterns) as effecting as ever.
4) 13 Assassins, Takeshi Miike, (Japan)
13 Assassins is prolific Japanese director
Takeshi Miike's insane take on the central idea behind Kurosawa's Seven Samurai: that one noble, old samurai must protect the weak by forming an elite gang and staging an epic all-or-nothing battle against an overwhelming adversary. There are three major differences though that set this film apart from that old classic. Firstly, it is graphically violent in the extreme. Secondly, the set pieces are much more high-octane, exaggerated and cartoonish (but in a way which thrilled me immensely). And thirdly - and most crucially - this film is far more critical of the samurai class and Japanese tradition than even Kurosawa was. In fact the film could be seen as the sort of direct challenge against the old guard that was typified by the Japanese New Wave of the 70s. This film has no respect for tradition and ceremony - or for the bushido code of the warrior - although it depicts all of that stuff in meticulous detail even as it sneers at it. There is a lot going on in Miike's playful film (in terms of commentary on class, violence, beauty and on movies themselves), but its single best feature is that it is so very entertaining and inventive from start to finish. As soon as the credits rolled I wanted to see it all over again and I am more excited about re-watching this one than any other film I've seen this year. You can read my review of the film,
HERE.
3) The Happiest Girl in the World, Radu Jude, (Romania)
Another brilliant little Romanian film,
'Happiest Girl' is about a small town girl who journeys into Bucharest with her parents to collect a brand new car that she has won after entering a competition on a soft drink label. Her pragmatic mother and father, who have lived through the more frugal communist years, want to sell the car and use the money to invest in a business that will see them through retirement. However, the girl just wants to ride around in her car with her friends. It's another excellent piece of slow cinema, with long takes and little action. Most of the film takes place on the set of a soft drink commercial which the girl must complete before she can collect her prize. In the advert she must repeatedly say that she is "the happiest and luckiest girl in the world", with increasing irony as she argues with her parents about the prize between takes and becomes quite sulky and miserable. There is a lot of fun to be had from watching the filming of the commercial itself, as the director battles with the girl's incompetence and bad attitude, combined with the pushy, interfering executives of the soft drink company, who keep insisting on changes which slow down the shoot. There are so many dynamics at work in The Happiest Girl in the World, which can be seen as a tale about young Romania versus old Romania, the small town versus big city, communism versus capitalism and also about filmmaking, and this is what makes it is such a rich and enjoyable film - again laced with dry, sardonic humour.
2) The Social Network, David Fincher, (USA)
I saw this film twice within twenty-four hours and it was even better a second time, mainly thanks to the joy of listening to
Aaron Sorkin's famously quick and clever dialogue. Everyone speaks like they are a genius, which given that most of this film's characters are Harvard students and top lawyers is probably not too much of a stretch. This writing is coupled with Fincher's restrained and tight directing which has the effect of making a film about nerds suing each other feel like an intense thriller. Everyone is superb in it too, from
Jesse Eisenberg - as Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook - to
Andrew Garfield and
Justin Timberlake. My favourite exchange of dialogue is this one: Lawyer: Mr. Zuckerberg, do I have your full attention? Mark Zuckerberg: No. Lawyer: Do you think I deserve it? Mark Zuckerberg: What? Lawyer: Do you think I deserve your full attention? Mark Zuckerberg: I had to swear an oath before we began this deposition, and I don't want to perjure myself, so I have a legal obligation to say no. Lawyer: Okay - no. You don't think I deserve your attention. Mark Zuckerberg: I think if your clients want to sit on my shoulders and call themselves tall, they have the right to give it a try - but there's no requirement that I enjoy sitting here listening to people lie. You have part of my attention - you have the minimum amount. The rest of my attention is back at the offices of Facebook, where my colleagues and I are doing things that no one in this room, including and especially your clients, are intellectually or creatively capable of doing. Mark Zuckerberg: Did I adequately answer your condescending question? After saying those words there are shots of everyone in the room, including Zuckerberg's own lawyers, looking embarrassed (presumably as much for him in his arrogance as for themselves at being outwitted by him) accompanied by an ominous note on the soundtrack, which itself deserves a mention. Along with
Hans Zimmer's resonating tones from
Inception and
Robbie Robertson's innovative work on
Shutter Island, the film features one of the year's best scores, written by
Trent Reznor and
Atticus Ross. The Social Network is not that "film about Facebook" everyone wrote off a year or so ago. It's a powerful document of the world we live in (where huge wealth and power rests in the hands of the likes of Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs), yet also a timeless Shakespearean tale of friendships broken by betrayal and ambition, where the protagonist - in trying to become so popular - in fact becomes even more lonely: ironically a symptom of the kind of social isolation brought about by the same Facebook Zuckerberg helped to invent.
1) Black Swan, Darren Aronofsky, (USA)
Black Swan is my favourite film of 2010, narrowly defeating The Social Network, but way ahead of everything else. I was absolutely stunned by it, and at times gripped by intense fear, when I saw it on the opening day of this year's Venice Film Festival. It comes out in the UK in the new year and I suspect it will at least be nominated for every major category at next year's Academy Awards, though I predict it will lose out on the big prizes to The Social Network (with its mighty
"95" rating on metacritic) and maybe even
The King's Speech.
Natalie Portman is simply amazing in a physically demanding role which required her to spend the last few years learning ballet to a (to my eyes anyway) high standard. This central performance is complemented by a film that is a perfect blend of sound and image. Not overly literal or dialogue heavy, Black Swan pushes at the boundaries of what cinema can be as a sensory experience. It feels as though there isn't a flabby, unnecessary shot (let alone scene) in the whole piece, which is about as meticulously crafted and tightly directed as it's possible for a film to be. Like the title character, it goes sublimely from being as delicate and beautiful as bone china, to being horrifying and bone-crunchingly brutal - a fitting analogue for ballet itself, with its mannered public face hiding years of disfiguring, back-breaking effort within a world of jealousy and intense rivalry. You can find entries 11-30 on my personal blog,
Beames on Film.