David Fincher's "The Social Network"is emerging as the consensus choice as best film of 2010. Most of the critics' groups have sanctified it, and after its initial impact it has only grown it stature. I think it is an early observer of a trend in our society, where we have learned new ways of thinking of ourselves: As members of a demographic group, as part of a database, as figures in...a social network.
My best films list also appears on my main site, but I am posting it here on the blog so that you can comment on it. In response to the reader protests of recent years, I've returned to the time-honored tradition of ten films arranged in order from one to ten. After that, it's all alphabetical. The notion of objectively ordering works of art seems bizarre to me.
Here are the year's best feature films:1. "The Social Network" Here is a film about how people relate to their corporate roles and demographic groups rather than to each other as human beings. That's the fascination for me; not the rise of social networks but the lives of those who are socially networked. Mark Zuckerberg, who made billions from Facebook and plans to give most of it away, isn't driven by greed or the lust for power. He's driven by obsession with an abstract system. He could as well be a chessmaster like Bobby Fischer. He finds satisfaction in manipulating systems.
The tension in the film is between Zuckerberg and the Winklevoss twins, who may well have invented Facebook for all I know, but are traditional analog humans motivated by pride and possessiveness. If Zuckerberg took their idea and ran with it, it was because he saw it as a logical insight rather than intellectual property. Some films observe fundamental shifts in human nature, and this is one of them.
David Fincher's direction, Aaron Sorkin's screenplay and the acting by Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Timberlake and the others all harmoniously create not only a story but a world view, showing how Zuckerberg is hopeless at personal relationships but instinctively projects himself into a virtual world and brings 500 million others behind him. "The Social Network" clarifies a process that some believe (and others fear) is creating a new mind-set.
2. "The Kings Speech" Here, in a sense, is a first step in a journey that could lead to the world of "The Social Network." Prince Albert (Colin Firth), who as George VI would lead the British Empire into World War Two, is seen in an opening scene confronting a loud-speaker as he opens the Empire Games. He is humiliated by a paralyzing stutter. The film tells the story of how his wife Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter) involves him with a rough-hewn Australian speech therapist (Geoffrey Rush), whose unorthodox methods enable him to eventually face a BBC microphone and forcefully inform the world that the empire was declaring war.
All of the personalities and values in "The King's Speech" are traditional (and the royal values are too traditional, the therapist believes). Tom Hooper's filmmaking itself is crafted in older style, depending on an assembly of actors, costumes, sets, and a three-act structure. The characters project considered ideas of themselves; "The Social Network," in contrast, intimately lays its characters bare. From one man speaking at a distance through the radio, to another man shepherding hundreds of millions through a software program, the two films show techology shaping human nature.
A difference between them is that we feel genuinely moved by the events in "The King's Speech." We identify. While some people may seek to copy the events in "The Social Network," few, I think, would identify with those characters. Mark Zuckerberg is as much a technology-created superhero as Iron Man.
3. "Black Swan" And now we leave technology and even reality behind, and enter a world where the cinema has always found an easy match: Fantasy. That movies were dreamlike was understood from the very beginning, and the medium allowed directors to evoke the psychological states of their characters. "Black Swan" uses powerful performances by Natalie Portman and Vincent Cassel to represent archetypal attributes: Female/male, young/old, submissive/dominant, perfect/flawed, child/parent, good/evil, real/mythical.
Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" provides a template for a backstage story that seems familiar enough (young ballerina tries to please her perfectionist mother and demanding director). Gradually we realize a psychological undertow is drawing her away from reality, and the frenzy of the ballet's climax is mirrored in her own life. This film depends more than many others on the intensity and presence of the actors, and Portman's ballerina is difficult to imagine coming from another actor.
4. "I Am Love" In this film and "Julia" (2008), Tilda Swinton created masterful performances that were largely unseen because of inadequate distribution. Is it an Academy performance is no one sees it? Here she easily clears a technical hurdle (she is a British actress speaking Italian with what I understand is a Russian accent), playing Emma, a Russian woman who has married into a large, wealthy and guarded Milanese family.
She isn't treated unkindly, at least not in obvious ways, but she doesn't...belong. She is hostess, mother, wife, trophy, but never member. Now her husband and son are taking over the family dynasty, and her life is in flux. When she learns her daughter is a lesbian, she reacts not as an Italian matriarch might, but as the outsider she is, in surprise and curiosity. She has heard of such things.
Now she meets a young chef named Antonio (Edoardo Gabbriellini), a friend of her son's. A current passes between them. They become lovers. There are many ways for actors to represent sex on the screen, and Swinton rarely copies herself; here as Emma she is urgent as if a dam has burst, releasing not passion but happiness. She evokes Emma as a woman who for years has met the needs of her family, and discovers in a few days to meet her own needs. She must have been waiting a long time for Antonio, whoever he would be.
5. "Winter's Bone" Another film with its foundation on a strong female performance. Jennifer Lawrence plays Ree, a girl of 17 who acts as the homemaker for her younger brother and sister in the backlands of the Ozarks. Her mother sits useless all day, mentally absent. Her father, who was jailed for cooking meth, is missing. She tries to raise the kids, scraping along on welfare and the kindness of neighbors.
When the family is threatened with homelessness, she must find her father, who skipped bail. She sets out on an odyssey. At its end will be Ree's father, dead or alive. Unless there is a body her family will be torn apart. She treks through a landscape scarcely less ruined than the one in Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Debra Granik, the director and co-author, risks backwoods caricatures and avoids them with performances that are exact and indelible, right down to small supporting roles. Ree is one of the great women of recent movies.
6. "Inception" A movie set within the architecture of dreams. The film's hero (Leonardo DiCaprio) challenges a young architect (Ellen Page) to create such fantasy spaces as part of his raids on the minds of corporate rivals. The movie is all about process, about fighting our way through enveloping sheets of reality and dream, reality within dreams, dreams without reality. It's a breathtaking juggling act by writer-director Christopher Nolan, who spent 10 years devising the labyrinthine script.
Do dreams "have" an architecture? Well, they require one for the purposes of this brilliantly visualized movie. For some time now, I've noticed that every dream I awaken from involves a variation of me urgently trying to return somewhere by taking a half-remembered way through streets and buildings. Sometimes I know my destination (I get off a ship and catch a train but am late for a flight and not packed). Sometimes I'm in a vast hotel. Sometimes crossing the University of Illinois campus, which has greatly changed. In every case, my attempt is to follow an abstract path (turn down here and cut across and come back up) which I could map for you. "Inception" led me to speculate that my mind, at least, generates architectural pathways, and that one reason I responded to "Inception" is that , like all movies, it was a waking dream.
7. "The Secret in their Eyes" This 2009 film from Argentina won the Academy Award for best foreign film of 2010. But it opened in 2010 in the U.S., and so certainly qualifies. It spans the years between 1974 and 2000 in Buenos Aries, as a woman who is a judge and a man who is a retired criminal investigator meet after 26 years. In 1974 they were associated on a case of rape and murder, and the man still believes the wrong men were convicted of the crime. The whole case is bound up in the right wing regime of those days, and the "disappearances" of enemies of the state.
Although the criminal story is given full weight, writer-director Juan Jose Campanella is more involved in the romantic charge between his two characters. No, this isn't a silly movie love story. These are adults--experienced, nuanced, survivors. Love has very high stakes for them, and therefore greater rewards. Soledad Villamil and Ricardo Darin have presence and authority that makes their scenes together emotionally meaningful, as beneath the surface old secrets coil.
8. "The American" George Clooney plays an enigmatic man whose job is creating specialized weapons for specialized murders. He builds them, delivers the, and disappears. Now someone wants him to disappear for good. A standard thriller plot, but this is a far from mainstream thriller. Very little is explained. There is a stark minimalism at work. Much depends on our empathy. The entire drama rests on two words, "Mr. Butterfly." We must be vigilant to realize that once, and only once, are they spoken by the wrong person -- and then the whole plot reality rotates.
A few of my colleagues admired this film by Anton Corbijn very much. Most of them admired it very little. I received demands from readers that I refund their money, and messages agreeing that there was greatness here. "The American" reminded me of "Le Samourai" (1967) by Jean-Pierre Melville, which starred another handsome man (Alain Delon) in the role of an enigmatic murder professional. The film sees dispassionately, guards its secrets, and ends like a clockwork mechanism arriving at its final, clarifying tick.
9. "Kids Are All Right" There are ways to read that title: Kids in general are all right, thee particular kids are all right, and it is all right for lesbians to form a family and raise them. Each mother bore one of the children, and because the same anonymous sperm donor was used, they're half-siblings. The mothers and long-time partners are played by Julianne Moore and Annette Bening, and like many couples, they're going through a little mid-life crisis.
Their children (Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson) unexpectedly contact their birth father (Mark Ruffalo), and the women are startled to find him back in their lives. It was all supposed to be a one-time pragmatic relationship. Ruffalo plays him as a hippie-ish organic gardener for whom "laid back" is a moral choice. He thinks it's cool to meet his kids, it's cool their moms are married, it's cool they invite him for dinner. I mean...sure, yes, of course...I mean, why not? Sure. In a comedy with some deeper colors, the film is an affirmation of--family values.
10. "The Ghost Writer" In Roman Polanski's best film in years, a man without a past rattles around in the life of a man with too much of one. A ghost writer (Ewan McGregor) is hired to write the autobiography of a former British Prime Minister so inspired by Tony Blair that he might as well be wearing a name tag. He comes to stay at an isolated country house like those in the Agatha Christie mysteries, in which everyone is a potential suspect. His wife Ruth (Olivia Williams), smart and bitter, met Lang a Cambridge. His assistant Amelia (Kim Cattrall), smart and devious, is having an affair with him. The writer comes across information that suggests much of what he sees is a lie, and his life may be in danger.
This movie is the work of a man who knows how to direct a thriller. Smooth, calm, confident, it builds suspense instead of depending on shock and action. The actors create characters who suggest intriguing secrets. The atmosphere -- a rain-swept Martha's Vineyard in winter -- has an ominous, gray chill, and the main interior looks just as cold. The key performances are measured for effect, not ramped up for effect. In an age of dumbed-down thrillers, this one evokes a classic tradition.
Special Jury Awards. Film festivals like to give Special Jury Prizes for films which they have a special admiration for, beyond the usual parameters of winners. My Awards this year go to:<
127 Hours. Aron Ralston went hiking in the wilderness without telling anyone where he was going, and then, in a deep, narrow crevice, got his forearm trapped between a boulder and the canyon wall. Oops.Suddenly his world became very well-defined. There was the crevice. There was the strip of sky above, crossed by an eagle on its regular flight path. There were the things he brought with him: A video camera, some water, a little food, his inadequate little tool. It doesn't take long to make an inventory. He shouts for help, but who can hear?
For most of the film Danny Boyle deals with one location and one actor, James Franco. He preys on our own deep fear of being trapped somewhere and understanding that there doesn't seem to be any way to escape. "127 Hours" is like an exercise in conquering the unfilmable. It achieves the delicate task of showing an arm being cut through without ever quite showing it. For the audience the worst moment is not a sight but a sound. Most of us have never heard that sound before, but we know exactly what it is.
"Another Year." This year I belatedly decided to award two Special Jury Prizes, because so many readers rightfully wondered why Mike Leigh's "Another Year" was not included. My answer would have been, because it hadn't opened yet. Why stand on ceremony? I love it.Tom and Gerri are a long-married couple, played by Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen, and they seem in complete accord about their life together. They garden, they work, they welcome their friends, they hope their son will find the right girl, they are in love. Their steadfast joy in each other's company is essential, I believe, to provide the film with a center around which the characters revolve. Remarkably, these days, their 30-year-old son loves them and is happy, and they have no "issues."
Theirs is the home poor Sally (Lesley Manville) comes to when she realizes she has made no home of her own. As Leigh's film grows through spring, summer, autumn and winter, it involves the lives touched by Tom and Gerri (yes, they smile about their names). In particular they observe Mary, who is single, lonely, getting older, and alcoholic. "It's a shame," Tom says at one point after she's ended yet another sad visit, and that's all he has to say.
These people are not us, and yet we know them. They attend the funeral of Tom's sister in law, and we have never been to a funeral quite like it, and yet it is like many funerals. The uninvolved clergyman, the efficient undertakers, the remote father, the angry son, the handful of neighbors who didn't know the deceased all that well, the family skeletons. In particular, notes of social embarrassment that Leigh specializes in; the ways people display their anguish without meaning to.
And now I add yet another Special Jury Prize Winner. Oh, I'm the first to agree this has grown absurd. I stupidly tripped over the technicality that it had not yet opened in Chicago. Now I must contort myself to find it a place within the arbitrary confines of this list system. Next year I will simply issue an alphabetical list of 30 good films, I vow I will. The idea is to praise films I loved. What do conventions have to do with it?
Somewhere. Sofia Coppola's film gazes dispassionately into the empty eyes of a movie star who has reached the end of his will. Johnny Marco sits in his room at the Chateau Marmont, legendary West Hollywood hotel for generations of Hollywood hideouts, and finds himself a hollow man. Sex is a mechanical process. He uses drinks and takes drugs and gets a little wound up but pleasure doesn't seem to be involved. He demonstrates the truth that if you stare long enough at a wall, it will break the monotony if blonde twins do pole dances in front of it.
Stephen Dorff plays Marco. He is famous and successful. He is divorced, and when his 11-year-old daughter (Elle Fanning) spends a few days with him, he is polite and dutiful and seems to feel nothing. He goes through the motions of a publicity tour, an awards ceremony in Milan, a detailed session for complex makeup, and hardly seems present.
Don't distinguish what he feels with the word existential. It has nothing to do with philosophy. He believes he amounts to nothing, and it appears he's correct. This is called depression, but it may simply be a realistic view of the situation. Coppola, as always, communicates her feelings by what she looks at and how. It is all gaze and detail. She was a little girl and later a young actress on the sets of her father's movies. We can only speculate about what she understood about this world right from the start. She played Michael Corleone's baby.
Now for the second ten best films. These are alphabetical, because ranking films in order is pointless after a certain point. They're all worthy of your time.
"All Good Things." In 1982 the wife of a New York real estate investor disappeared without a trace. In 2000, his best friend was found murdered. In 2001, he admitted he killed a neighbor and chopped her up, throwing the pieces away in trash bags. He said it was self-defense. The wire is still missing. No one was ever charged in the death of the friend. He is in jail for the admitted crime, with a sentence adjusted because the jury believed some self defense may have been involved. "All Good Things" is based on fact.
The facts include the deep involvement of the man's father in operating real estate in the sleazy underbelly of 42nd Street. The father is played here by Frank Langella, smooth and dangerous, and the son by Ryan Gosling, whose marriage to Kirsten Dunst becomes a country idyll before his father all but orders him back to the city. Andrew Jarecki's film clearly insinuates what really happened, and reminded me of Barbet Schroeder's "Reversal of Fortune," about the Sunny von Bulow murder. In both cases, what seems to be obvious pathology is impervious to logic.
"Carlos" came in two versions: One over five hours long, which I saw, and one closer to ordinary feature length, which most people will see in wider release or on cable. Written and directed by Oliver Assayas, a French filmmaker whose projects are usually more tightly focused, this is the epic story of the terrorist known as Carlos the Jackyl (Edgar Ramirez), who operated in the years between 1975, when he led a raid on OPEC oil ministers in Vienna, until 1994, when he was betrayed by former comrades, arrested in Sudan, and returned to France for trial.
The film suggests that much of his behavior wasn't ideological in origin, but grew from megalomanic. He kills for many causes, but the primary motive seems to be his own twisted ego, his need to dominate and enforce his will. Assayas uses an enormous canvas and many period locations to portray an elusive man who seemed for a long time to be immune to the law. Recently, from prison, he complained that this film is inaccurate.
"Chloe" Atom Egoyan's film centers on Julianne Moore and Liam Neeson, as a Toronto married couple, and Amanda Seyfried as the young call girl who enters their lives. The wife, concerned her husband may be cheating, hires the prostitute to "test" him, and listens avidly to the girl's accounts of her life. Seyfried plays the title character as a powerfully erotic young woman with personal motives that are hidden -- from Moore, and from us.
"Chloe" begins as a film involving eroticism, take the form of thriller, and then undergoes a sinister transformation into the story of hidden motives that seem to flow counter to the apparent direction of the story. Egoyan is a master of the psychosexual, and here his sensuous character reproduces the feelings and doubts all three characters inspire. Click here for video of Ebert's Conversation with Atom Egoyan.
"Greenberg" The hero of Noah Baumbach's film was years ago, part of a rock band on the brink of a breakthrough. Greenberg (Ben Stiller) walked away from it and never explained why. He fled Los Angeles and became a carpenter in New York. Now he's back in LA, house-sitting his brother's house. His life isn't on Hold, it's on Stall.
His life is upended when he meets Florence (Greta Gerwig, in a career-making performance). She is on Hold: Just out of college, and no job. She has health and abundant energy. She's happy with a purpose. On the other hand, we can't stand Greenberg. But we begin to care about him. Without ever overtly evoking sympathy, Stiller inspires identification. You don't have to like the hero of a movie. But you have to understand him -- better than he does himself, in some cases.
"Hereafter" Clint Eastwood's film was the sort of inward, spiritual film he doesn't make; it considers the idea of an afterlife with tenderness, beauty and a gentle tact. It deals with a few characters who all have issues that involve an afterlife. Matt Damon plays a man who sincerely believes he communicates with the dead, but has fled that ability and taken a low profile job. Cecile de France plays, a newsreader on French television. Bryce Dallas Howard is a young cooking student with a fearful dark place inside. Richard Kind is a man mourning his wife. Frankie and George McLaren play twin brothers, one who is struck by a truck and killed.The Damon character becomes the link between all of them. He seems to have an authentic power, though what it proves is hard to say. Nothing he says need come from the other side. There is a moment handled with love and delicacy in which he says something that is either true or isn't, but is a kindness either way. In that moment perhaps Eastwood is hinting that whether or not there is an afterlife, what we do in this one is what counts.
"Monsters" Gareth Edwards' film is one where the aliens are truly alien. It is so effective precisely because it doesn't showcase them endlessly savaging the earth. It makes them mysterious, sensed but rarely seen, their motives and even their forms incompletely glimpsed. Involving a journey from Mexico to the U.S. through an "Infected Zone," where 50-foot high spidery floaters pulse with an inner glow. It demonstrates that by making aliens too literal, it robs them of their menace and reduces them to special effects.
The film stars Scoot McNairy and Whitney Able as a photographer and the daughter of his publisher. Not by nature compatible, they share a journey that itself becomes the film. It is through wastelands of desolation like those in "The Road." "Monsters" are glimpsed but not understood. Then there's a breathtaking final sequence combining uncommon suspense and uncanny poetry, where their motives are made clear. Edwards evokes the awe and beauty he's has been building toward, and we fully realize the film's ambitious arc.
"Never Let Me Go. Mark Romanek's adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel imagining a society within the larger one consisting of children who were created in a laboratory to be Donors of body parts. They know this and accept it. They live within a closed world whose value system takes pride in how often and successfully they have Donated. Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield and Keira Knightley star as three Doners now in their 20s.
This is a meditative, delicate film, directed sensitively, with actors who find the balancing point between their understanding of realigy and ours. These poor characters are innocent. They have the same hopes everyone has. It is so touching that they gladly give their organs to us. Greater love hath no man, than he who gives me his kidney, especially his second one.
"Rabbit Hole." Eight months after the death of their child, a couple remains frozen in sadness and uncertainty. Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart are no longer sleeping together or, actually, feeling married. They try grief counseling, and join an encounter group which she rejects but he returns to. Sandra Oh provides an insightful performance of a woman who seems to have embraced recovery as a lifestyle.
The director is John Cameron Mitchell, adapting David Lindsay-Abaire's play. He treats this situation with respect, but with a certain redeeming humor -- not, comedy, but the kind of deep good humor that can finally creep in late in a period of mourning as life begins to stir again. Kidman and Eckhart are well-suited; good-looking, confident people who suddenly are at a loss about how to live their lives.
"Secretariat" was one of the most thrilling and moving entertainments of the year, the story of the greatest race horse of all time. Walking into the theater, everyone knew it would win with the Triple crown and the historic victory at Belmont. Yet the audience cheered anyway -- not in surprise, I think, but in exhilaration. "Secretariat" is a movie that allows us to understand what it really meant.
This isn't a cornball formula film. It doesn't have a contrived romance. It's certainly not about an underdog. It is a great film about greatness, the story of the horse and the no less brave woman who had faith in him. Penny Chenery is played by Diane Lane, and John Malkovich and Nelsan Ellis provide counterpoint as Secretariat's trainer and groom. The best general film of the year.
"Solitary Man" Michael Douglas in the kind of role he plays best, a sinner. His character was once a regional celebrity as "New York's Honest Car Dealer." That went wrong, but he's still as persuasive as--well, as a good car dealer. In business he can sense what car to put you in. In sex he cans sense what mood to put you on. He closes a lot of deals.
He cheated on his wife (Susan Sarandon). He disappointed their daughter (Jenna Fischer). He cheats on his companion, (Mary-Louise Parker). He uses the offer of his experience in life to charm a college student (Jesse Eisenberg), and then betrays him. Eventually he is back where he began in college, behind the same counter of a greasy spoon run by an old pal (Danny Devito). Directed by Brian Koppelman and David Levien, this is one of his best performances.
Overall, 2010 was not a great movie year, but it has many great movies. In days to come on my blog I'll write in more detail about the best in the categories of Documentaries, Foreign, Animation, Thrillers, Indies. Why categories? They provide a way to list more good films. If a "best film" list serves any purpose, it's to give you ideas.
[ 12-17: I added Mike Leigh's "Another Year" as a Special Jury Prize. It wasn't on my original list because it hadn't opened yet, but that was a silly technicality. 12-18: And I added Sofia Coppola's "Somewhere," which wasn't on my list for the same irrelevant reason. ]
Great list!
Looks like the header for "Never Let Me Go" is missing though -- would hate for people to not know what film you were talking about there!
I'm surprised to see Leaves of Grass didn't make your list.
A great list. But sir, you may want to rewatch Toy Story 3.
After seeing the movie, my interpretation of the title The Kids Are All Right was that the kids may be all right, but the adults... NOT SO MUCH.
VERY surprised to see that 127 Hours is nowhere to be seen. Does it not at least deserve an honorable mention?
I would put mine something like this:
1. Inception
2. I Love You Phillip Morris
3. The Social Network
4. 127 Hours
5. Black Swan
6. Let Me In
7. Tangled
8. The Fighter
9. The Town
10. Warriors Way
I haven't seen some of the movies you listen but really want to see Winters Bone, Blue Valentine, Rabbit Hole, The Kings Speech and I Am Love.
Great stuff, Roger, and I wholeheartedly agree with the first two on the list. Got some egregious typos in the "The Ghost Writer" section, though, including some missing copy. Maybe due to the cryptic nature of that wonderful film, it was intentional.
A decent, if predictable, best of list. Re The Kids Are All Right, there are a 4th and 5th way to read the title: the kids are correct (in their motivations, actions and desires in the film) and of course the kids are ok [it's the parents we need to worry about]. An effortless ease runs through that film and the performances wre note-perfect, it would certainly be in my top 3.
"Now for the second ten best films. These are alphabetical..."
Actually, there's only 9, and Secretariat must have moved up in alphabetical order to try to get to the front.
Ebert: Actually there really are ten, but I pushed "Secretariat" back into the alphabet. He was coming up on the outside.
Hi Roger,
Just one comment about I Am Love: As amazing a performance as Tilda Swinton gives, it, and the movie in general, are made all the more exhilarating by John Adams' score.
Except for the pretentious and iincomprehensible "Inception," this is a fine list.
Roger, did you see True Grit? I saw it last night and loved it, was hoping you'd rate it highly as well.
I've seen all but three of the films on your list and agree with you for the most part. The Social Network is definitely my number one. I'm seeing The King's Speech today.
Somewhere is the best movie of the year.
Fish Tank is next, then Network
Have you changed you mind about the three and a half star review of 'Black Swan' or are the films that you reviewed a full four stars after it on the list just given the high honor objectively for their place in their own genre?
Roger, did you forget about 127 HOURS? You gave that one 4 stars, yet it doesn't even appear in your Top 20? Meanwhile some of your Top 10 films were 3.5 star reviews.
Also, no True Grit?
Roger,
Unless you have a seperate list, I am stunned that there are no documentaries on your top 10 selection. No "Exit Through the Gift Shop", "Inside Job", "Waiting for Superman" nor "Joan Rivers- A Piece of Work". Tell me that you will have a list for documentaries.
I do agree with you that "Social Network" is the top film of 2010.
Ebert: More lists will be issued, as always. See the final paragraph.
127 Hours: 4 stars, not on your list.
Black Swan: 3 1/2 stars, #3 on your list.
Say What?
Also, what happened to not numbering your lists?
And have you seen Scott Pilgrim yet?
Adding to the "Where is...?" chorus, I am surprised that "Another Year" isn't here.
I predict that you will get the most grief from people for selecting The American, Hereafter and Never Let Me Go.
Inception is my #1 of the year, but I think it will be The Social Network that I will return to more than any other movie this year. Already, I'm salivating at picking up the Blu-ray on January 11th and watching it with subtitles to catch every word of Aaron Sorkin's brilliant screenplay and immerse myself in David Fincher's dazzling visuals.
My Top 10 as of now:
1. Inception
2. Toy Story 3
3. The Social Network
4. The American
5. The Ghost Writer (Was I the only one that chuckled at the last shot?)
6. Shutter Island
7. Greenberg
8. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
9. Iron Man 2
10. Green Zone
No Somewhere? I guess he hasn't seen it yet..
Hey Rog,
Just curious about your omission of Leaves of Grass, considering that you (arguably) didn't praise a film this year like you did that one. I know that star ratings and top 10 lists are crap to you, but it still feels weird. That seemed like your hardcore #1 of the year to me. You spoke of it like it was a very personal film to you, and you even called it a masterpiece. Maybe I looked too far into your praise? I don't know. Haha. I would really love to know why though.
Thanks,
Doug
Either love or haven't seen all of these. Props for mentioning Never Let Me Go and Monsters.
But you make the mistake a lot of people did. Just because a movie is about a good horse, does NOT make it a good movie. If anyone looked at the actual filmmaking that went into secretariat, it would move from best-of lists to worst-of lists without a second thought. It's the corniest and most manipulative movie I've seen this year.
and you're underappreciating Toy Story 3 I think.
Roger, I'm so thrilled you've included I Am Love so highly in your ranking. Your review, as always was a cut above the rest, and hopefully inspires other people to remember this little foreign film that came out at the halfway point, and seems to have been forgotten amidst the swamp of all the prestige late-year releases.
On the other hand, I am surprised you did not include Mike Leigh's Another Year in your Top Ten. I was expecting you'd rank it as a top 5. The same goes for Sofia Coppola's Somewhere.
It's probably not the best idea for us, your readers, to say which films should be included in your list, after all, we only get to see a fraction of the films you do.
That said, I thought GREEN ZONE and THE TOWN would have made worthy additons.
THE SOCIAL NETWORK only made it down here until this week. I think it is a very worthy #1 selection. There are not too many films I can recall that hold your undivided attention for every second of its 2 hours and this one is certanly it. I don't think it is the most endearing film just as is the case for, say, RAGING BULL in the sense that both are truly great films with not the most lovable movie characters but the Zuckerberg kid is very much an original, he reminds me of that which the Jamie Fox character in COLATERAL tells Tom Cruise in the same movie "the standard parts that are supposed to be in most people, you lack".
You may wonder if this lists are worthwhile to do. As your reader I have to say it points me in the way of other films I might not normally see (like KING SPEECH) so I have to say they are, very much indeed.
Hey Roger,
Some confusion here. I agree that THE SOCIAL NETWORK is 2010's Best Film. For that matter I believed FISH TANK was until I saw THE SOCIAL NETWORK (at some point GREENBERG was in the second spot too)...
Anywho, many titles missing here: 127 HOURS, LEAVES OF GRASS (as others mentioned), to say nothing of ANOTHER YEAR (which has yet to be released), RED RIDING TRILOGY, PUTTY HILL, etc. (films you will give or have given 4 stars seem to have gotten short shrift this year) - and I noticed you upped BLACK SWAN (did you see it again and realize what I knew on first viewing - that it was AMAZING!?!) and THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT (which I need to see again - wasn't in the right place emotionally to see it at the time) to the top 10 even though they were 3.5 star films initially (to say nothing of honorable mentions like GREENBERG, CHLOE, CARLOS, (not sure what you're gonna give ALL GOOD THINGS and really happy portent to see RABBIT HOLE mentioned) :)
I know you don't take the "star system" too seriously, but I can't help but notice that you ranked "Black Swan," a film you awarded three and a half stars, third best of the year in front of a whole bunch of films you awarded four. I think we'd all be curious to hear your thoughts on that.
My true favorite 10 discoveries of the year, combining films past and present that I stumbled upon. Many thanks to Roger Ebert for introducing me to some that I had never heard of before this year.
1) COME AND SEE (1985, Russia)
2) MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW (1937)
3) THE CRANES ARE FLYING (1957, Russia)
4) THE SOCIAL NETWORK
5) MARRIAGE IS A CRAZY THING (2002, South Korea)
6) TOY STORY 3
7) SOUL KITCHEN (Germany)
8) THE COMPANY MEN
9) 127 HOURS
10) A DIRTY CARNIVAL (2006, South Korea)
11) BLACK SWAN
12) THE LAST KISS (2002, Italy)
13) INCEPTION
14) HEAD-ON (2004, Germany)
15) BIRTH (2004)
Note: An apology to Roger for one of them (#12) because I know he didn't like it. What can I say, he's more mature than I am!
You really need to see Scott Pilgrim. It expands the language of cinema more than any film I've seen since Pulp Fiction.
Big whoops missing it listed as the special jury prize. Please feel free to remove my post. Cheers!
I'm really surprised to not see Leaves of Grass get a mention because of how much you praised it in your review.
Thank you for including "The Secret In Their Eyes"! I saw it with a friend on a whim, and we were blown away, not only by the acting and the story, but by the cinematography as well (there's an excellent sequence that takes place at a soccer stadium).
I have to admit though, "Ghost Writer" was tough for me. It reminded me of watching shows like "Real Time With Bill Maher" in that it seems to make the mistake of trying so hard to paint the antagonists as brilliantly evil that I couldn't help be wildly impressed by them (the people at whom I'm supposed to be outraged).
Not for one second did I regret spending my time or money on The American and I am grateful to you for recommending the film, as much as I am grateful that a movie like this can still be made and that a big star will still act in a movie as smart as this.
While I loved The Social Network and genuinely believe it is a great film, I did not feel like it went far enough in deconstructing the nature of social networking and the dehumanization that occurs over the Internet. There is no doubt that Jesse Eisenberg is perfect for this role, and maybe the movie is about his own dehumanization, but I feel like the larger questions of society as a whole were left out of the picture.
Zuckerberg reminds me a little of Eisenberg's character in The Squid and the Whale, particularly the scene where the young boy explains why he told people he wrote the Pink Floyd song that he clearly did not. He says, "I feel like I could have." It seems like that's how Zuckerberg feels. Whether or not the idea belonged to the Winklevoss twins initially, he feels like he could have done it, and that's what drives him.
The notion of objectively ordering works of art is strange, The notion of subjectively ordering works of art, however, makes perfect sense.
You thought Inception was pretentious? Really? I don't think the movie was pretending to be anything other than it was--a brilliantly imaginative take on the classic heist film. Oh well, to each their own.
Hi Roger - I may be one of the few who appreciated you giving a '20 best' list in alphabetical order. I agree that ranking movies/art seems silly, but you have to admit it makes for some good debate during the terrible film month of January. I posted something similar on Scanners but feel it belongs here as well.
As an amateur film reviewer I love that I can really pick and choose what I see. I've written about 50 reviews this year and these were my 14 favorite films, in no particular order, though I think The King's Speech and The Secret In Their Eyes stand out above all.
I would have liked to have seen more about FIsh Tank but I have yet to meet anyone else who has seen it. Did you perhaps overlook it for your list? I know you thought it was a 4 star film as well.
The King's Speech
Black Swan
The Secret In Their Eyes/El secreto de sus ojos
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
The Social Network
Fish Tank
The Tillman Story
The Kids Are All Right
Winter's Bone
Cell 211/Celda 211
Let Me In (I think the original is even better)
The American
Animal Kingdom
Get Low
(I have not seen True Grit yet)
To follow up on Tyler's comment, it is unclear if your list includes movies yet to be released this year or very recently released such as True Grit.
As for your list, I cannot understand the critical love of Inception. It had some wonderful effects, especially near the beginning, but then decides not to use them at later parts of the movie. Also. the movie is not consistent within itsown universe. I can suspend disbelief as well as anyone. I only ask that the movie use its changed reality consistently, and Inception fails that on so many levels (pun intended).
My top 10 of the year thus far:
10. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1
9. Black Swan
8. How to Train Your Dragon
7. Kick-Ass (yeah, I know what you think...)
6. Inception
5. The Kids Are All Right
4. Toy Story 3
3. Summer Wars
2. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
1. The Social Network
Unofficial Jury Prize would go to the restored director's cut of Metropolis. Still need to see True Grit, The King's Speech, I Love You Philip Morris, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, Rabbit Hole, The Illusionist, Inside Job, and Exit Through the Gift Shop. Worst Film "Award" from what I've seen would be Alice in Wonderland, though I'm sure The Last Airbender is terrible.
Have you gotten around to seeing Summer Wars or Scott Pilgrim yet? Highly recommend both. Summer Wars should have a chance at your animated list; it's incredible. Like, Miyazaki-level incredible. Would make a pretty fascinating double-feature with The Social Network as well. My review from earlier in the year: http://rubikunsreviews.livejournal.com/32465.html
The French film "A l'origine" was released on DVD a few weeks back... I'm not complaining -- this is the problem with lists and I totally understand -- but should it be on here? I remember reading somewhere you really dug it. (Maybe you could so an overlooked DVD of the week review?)
I haven't seen it yet myself. Looks good. Gonna rent it once I'm on holidays.
Ps. Thumps up bumping up 3 1/2 star Black Swan to third place. Real stars shift as the year goes along, why shouldn't ratings too?
This is very disconcerting.
I must contend that Black Swan is merely above average. It isn't half as good as people have made it out to be. I have my reasons.
Roger,
Your lists always amaze me. They are, obviously, so well thought out. You always add that surprise effect. This makes you a cut above the typical critic; well, you have always been a cut above. Let's just go ahead and make you the best. I have been watching and admiring you since the 70's.
My top ten, should you so desire to know, is as follows:
1. The Social Network
2. 127 Hours
3. Toy Story 3
4. The King's Speech
5. Black Swan
6. The Town
7. Inception
8. Winter's Bone
9. The Kid's are All Right
10. The Fighter
I want to reserve a spot for True Grit. Haven't seen it yet, but expect a top-ten performance.
Rhonda
I see from your excellent list that I have a lot of movies yet to see!
4 quick thoughts:
1. Social Network and Inception are excellent choices. Way worth the ticket money.
2. While "The American" was worth the ticket price, it's not great. You consider it "minimalist". I saw it as lack of story telling, in a story telling medium. And wasteful - meaning that by the end of the movie there was nothing left to care about. His craft was wasted. His weapon was wasted. Nothing but questions left at the end. Why does it matter that he was an "American"? What happened to the gun? Why have a crime movie where the central crime is not committed? It was so minimalist that they left out a story. :)
3. I'm going to skip Ghost Writer, and not reward a fugitive from American justice with my attention.
4. I've decided in the last year that I see movies differently than you do, and not just politically. Topically.
For example: I loved "Herefter", but don't consider it to be a movie about the hereafter. It's a movie about loss, and how to deal with loss. Here. After. Matt Damon's character and the French journalist both had to deal with losing their careers and any sense of normalcy in their lives. The little boy movingly had to deal with the loss of his brother. Eastwood did not deal with the hereafter in any meaningful way. It's just a plot device to connect the three of them in their loss.
I saw "Love and Other Drugs" differently too, I think. The heart of your review (and others) is about Maggie and her Parkinson's. I saw it (twice) as a movie about Jaime and his journey to a meaningful life, which Maggie played a role in. Also as a story like "A Star is Born" where he is on his way up and she on her way down. Loved the movie.
I guess I have my own perspective on movies, which is alright with me. Which would lead me to perhaps a different list of ten. I'll have to give that some thought.
Still, I value your reviews above all other critics.
Thank you for this. Out here in God's country, it's Netflix or nothing for good movies. Due to your tantalizing comments -- more than descriptions, really -- I added several to my queue. (I always have my Netflix tab open when I come to your site.)
FINE! Even though I hate movies about horses overcoming the odds... I guess I'll watch Secretariat after all.
I'm very happy to see The American on someone's list other than my own.
Conversely, I'm very surprised not to see Another Year which, if I remember correctly, you had indicated was the best film at Cannes. This hints to me that you might be doing another "top ten foreign" films this year.
Dear Mr. Ebert, you forgot to mention Hollywoods best film of this year...It was a world wide sensation that took remakes/sequels/prequels and based on a true story to the next level. It had an all star cast and featured some of the most uninspiring musical choices since before every teen wanted to sport The Beib 'Do. Of course I'm writing about "AlLICE doesn't live IN WONDERLAND she moved to WALL STREET where MONEY NEVER SLEEPS to help the A TEAM crane kick the KARATE KID, a real CLASH OF THE TITANS, but the WOLFMAN is fast approaching like some NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET but if he stops to have SEX IN THE CITY 2 he may be SHREKed FOREVER AFTER after which may lead to an igniTRON LEGACY of devestating magnitude" Just as in Hollywood, the only thing original about that movie is the title! Cheers!
How could you not include The Town in there. Or give credit to what Ben Affleck is doing in resurrecting his career. Come on man!!!!
You rated Black Swan 3.5 stars and 127 Hours 4 stars, but Black Swan made the top 10 and 127 Hours didn't. whats up with that?
Ebert: Many comments mention that. I'm on record as believing the star rating system i ridiculous. I use it only for competitive reasons (the Tribune uses it). Making the list is a good way to praise the films hat had the most impact.
Four more lists of 10 best films are to follow: Foreign, Documentary, Animated, and Indie/Alt/Overlooked.
Of your top ten, I've seen all but two ("The King's Speech" hasn't opened in my city, and "The Black Swan" just did today), and the only one I responded to strongly was "The Ghost Writer." There are some that I admired ("The Social Network," "Winter's Bone," "Inception," "The Secret in Their Eyes"), but aside from the Polanski, none that I really loved. Then again, I guess these lists would be pretty boring if everybody agreed all the time.
"I Am Love," I thought was kind of a mess: It's a film about messy patriarchal successions, infidelity, globalization, lesbian daughters, cooking, and how great Tilda Swinton looks in haute couture. This would be fine, except that it didn't get interesting until the final sequence, when things get really bonkers.
My problem with "The American" isn't that it was too starkly minimal, but that the twist is so obvious that I was astonished the protagonist didn't guess it sooner, and that he continues to trust exactly the wrong person much longer than is dramatically credible. For this sort of thing, I prefer Jim Jarmusch's "The Limits of Control."
"The Kids Are All Right" seemed to me overly pious in its need to confirm for liberal viewers that two women can be great parents, as if straight-jacketed by political correctness. Rainer Werner Fassbinder was more progressive in his treatment of a lesbian relationship in 1972 when he made "The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant," in which the characters are all awful, awful people. I'd love to see a contemporary American film in which two women make really lousy parents because of flaws in their own characters--not because I think that gays shouldn't raise children, but because it'd probably make a more interesting movie.
Didn't you give Black Swan 3 and a half stars? How does that make it the third best of the year when you gave plenty of other movies 4 stars? What do star ratings really mean anyways?
Ebert: "The notion of objectively ordering works of art seems bizarre to me."
Why is it any more bizarre than divvying works of art into groups of 10? You've happily done this in the past. If you're willing to accept that a movie that otherwise merits mention as one of the year's best films can't be included because you've already reached your number limit--or that one film is really not quite as good as the others, but you need to reach an even ten--ordering the works within that ten-count can't be TOO foreign a concept.
Just saying.
127 Hours is the "harrowing true story of Aron Ralston," not James Franco.
is Mike Leigh's ANOTHER YEAR left for another year??
I found the last 3 minutes or so of The Ghost Writer to be over the top and ridiculous. But everything before that was a built perfectly, jut the 'ah-ha' moment that the main character has and his actions after that weren't believable and almost ruined the film for me.
I haven't seen True Grit....but I'm shocked it isn't even mentioned...It just feels like its going to be something special...
I would argue that "Waiting for Superman" is probably the most important film of the year and "The King's Speech" is the best...by far the best script...the dialogue is beyond perfect...
Great to see you return to form with the Top 10...growing up, yours and Siskel's lists were my favorite show of the year!
Now can we get a top 10 WORST? :)
Great list Roger!
I'm surprised to see Black Swan so high on your list, since you only gave it 3 and 1/2 stars. It opens locally today and I can't wait to see it. I have to agree with Ryan though, that you should really re-watch Toy Story 3. From your initial review, you seemed highly distracted by the unnecessary 3D. Seeing it in 2D may help you appreciate the beauty of the film better. I think this is why you were so much more enthusiastic about Up! last year. You never saw it in 3D. Other than that, awesome list I plan on renting "The Secret in Their Eyes" soon.
Thank you for including 'Greenberg'. I thought the performances were excellent, especially Jennifer Jason Leigh and Rhys Ifans, supporting Ben Stiller and Greta Gerwig. It was a bittersweet film, but it stayed with me for a long time, and I really like Noah Baumbach, particularly 'The Squid and the Whale'.
I think mine today is:
1. Winter's Bone
2. It's Kind of a Funny Story
3. Inception
4. The Social Network
5. Everyone Else
6. Fish Tank
7. I am Love
8. Exit Through the Gift Shop
9. Toy Story 3
10. Splice
Of the 21 films you mention, 12 never played or will not be playing in my crap hole town, (Memphis. Yes, it's a crap hole town.) so first let me say thank you for populating my Netflix queue. "I Am Love" is available instantly, so I will be watching it tonight. Also I'm thrilled with your mention of "The Ghost Writer" and "Secretariat", two of my favorites from this year that I'm surprised to see aren't showing up in any of the awards lists. I tend to agree with the above comment that "Toy Story 3" more than qualifies as one of the best of the year, a rare thing for a sequel indeed. But then I get the strange feeling we'll be seeing it in your upcoming best of animation list. Many thanks, Roger, hope you have a wonderful 2011!
Long time reader, first time commenter.
I'm so glad you gave Greenberg a mention. I thought it was fantastic and quite overlooked. It barely got a release in England so it's good to see a critic appreciated it.
I've not seen a mention of Somewhere on your site. Any plans to review it in the near future? Personally one of my movies of the year.
I know I've read about how your star rating doesn't mean a movie is better than another, but I don't get how Black Swan got 3 1/2 stars and then is number 3 on your list of the year's best movie, is it a 4 star movie within the best of the year?
Great list, Roger. But why did you end up giving 3.5 stars to Black Swan (otherwise the rave review) and Kids and still rank them higher than other movies you gave 4 stars to. I understand that the reviews are subjective and you frequently complain about the star-system but I'd like to hear your thoughts on it here.
I'm surprised no one has asked this yet - why did you place Black Swan 3rd on your Best list, but only give it 3.5 stars? A lot of these titles, in fact, are 3.5 star movies, and you left off a lot of 4 star movies (especially Leaves of Grass, which I thought might be your #1 choice). Very peculiar...and coming from a Black Swan fan, kind of disappointing. If you really loved it that much, I'm sure your name under "4 Stars!" on the DVD box would have helped some sales, at least.
Ebert: Stars have nothing to do with it.
I vote for scott pilgrim VS the world.
It's interesting how THE AMERICAN seems to completely polorize opinion. I guess that's a sign of a great film. That being said, I DIDN'T like it!
I do love THE SOCIAL NETWORK though. I wish Aaron Sorkin wrote 50 films each year.
I'm curious as to where Another Year will appear. I assume that True Grit and Shutter Island might appear on your: best thrillers, Leaves of Grass in the indie bit, and Dragon Tattoo with Foreign
I feel bad for obviously chiming in too late for this, but I rather liked the alphabetized lists you've been doing, particular last year's when you went crazy and did like half a dozen lists to showcase documentaries and animated films and the like.
If stars have nothing to do with it, then what do they have to do with? What do the stars mean?
I've found that I no longer like year-end film lists, primarily because they make a film seem as if it's already "happened" and is receding into the past, long before it is actually even available to me.
By the time several of these films are available to me, everyone will have moved on to something else, and I'll just shrug at these relics and rent a French film from the 1960s instead.
nice list, i still have to see almost 70% of these movies but i know i'll find them real soon. my top 3 are
1. The Social Network
2. Inception
3. The Karate Kid.
my top Favorite films of the past 20 years that just beat out my previous fave movies like Pulp fiction and Crash are:
Jackass, Deuce bigalow, Resident Evil, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and my most favorite film evar is : GIGLI.
Hey Mr. Ebert...as usual, your list is great, and completely agree with The Social Network being the best of the year. It has really connected with audiences, as well as with the critics - a rare combo; I truly believe it to be the front-runner in the Best Picture race this year. Also, haven't been able to see all the films yet, so thanks for some of the suggestions. Ever since I really got into movies back in 2005 when I saw Crash, I have religiously read your reviews every Thursday morning, and you serve as my inspiration for me wanting to be a movie critic (I even have a Facebook page where I write reviews for movies I see). I have a passion for watching movies, and I really appreciate other people that have that same passion, too. There aren't many people my age (17) that really like movies like I do, so it's always pleasant to read reviews about someone that does; thanks for doing what you do. Anyway, just wanted you to know (as if you didn't already) that you still have loyal readers out there, and absolutely can't wait for "At the Movies" to come back!
lol hey Ebert i was wondering something, if they made a movie about you, how would you rate it? it kinda tough if you think about it. what if the actor playing you is Antonio Banderas? or if instead of a movie critic, you were the guy in the old spice commercial? or an action hero and Sylvester Stallone was you side kick? these question keep my up at night :P
Roger, every year it seems that your list is more populated than ever with films I've never heard of, or seen for that matter. Of course I'm not complaining. There appears to be a major shift occurring in American cinema over the past 6-7 years, where small-budget, less-marketed films are establishing a stronger presence amongst the public and are receving more critical acclaim and accolades where bigger-budget, big-studio-backed oscar-seasoners used to dominate.
From the list: seen 3, heard of 12. Lots to go.
Roger, every year it seems that your list is more populated than ever with films I've never heard of, or seen for that matter. Of course I'm not complaining. There appears to be a major shift occurring in American cinema over the past 6-7 years, where small-budget, less-marketed films are establishing a stronger presence amongst the public and are receving more critical acclaim and accolades where bigger-budget, big-studio-backed oscar-seasoners used to dominate.
From the list: seen 3, heard of 12. Lots to go.
All Good Things is great! Kirsten Dunst and Ryan Gosling deliver fantastic performances!
I always love your best of list, it is the first one I read every year. Someone said it's a predictable list, but they are good movies, so, so what?
But the films that I would really like to see on a list this year that weren't as mentioned (someone has probably posted them), are "Enter the Void", "My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?", Harmony Korine's "Trash Humpers", "Life During Wartime", and "The Killer Inside Me" (Jim Emerson has the last one on his list).
Is "Collapse" considered a 2009 or 2010 pic? There's a film that had me thinking more than any other this year at least.
wouldve love to seen Toy Story 3 get some love. I guess I'm the only one that wants it to win Best Picture
Seducing Charlie Barker would have been in my top 20. A fabulous movie with a wonderful cast, featuring Heather Gordon, and a terrific director.
I don't understand why Shutter Island has been snubbed by everyone. It was one of the best thrillers in years, and Leonardo Dicaprio's acting was excellent. Both the movie and the actor have been marginalized during awards season.
There are some good choices on your list this year, Mr. Ebert!
I think I was a little more enthusiastic for this year's collection of films than most, but you really had to work to find the good ones (the selection at the multiplexes was uniformly dismal throughout the year).
I loved some small non-American films like Fish Tank, Dogtooth, Mother and The White Ribbon (which didn't make it to my city until 2010).
Everyone Else by Maren Ade was one of my favorite personal discoveries; hardly anybody seemed to talk about it but I thought it was great!
Also, some of the documentaries out there have been really great. My favorites were Exit Through the Gift Shop, Catfish, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work. Best Worst Movie also has a special place in my heart.
I agree that Winter's Bone had amazing performances (certainly a better female performance than Portman's insane ballerina), but performances alone do not a great movie make.
What a great year for masterful female performances and Melodrama with a capital "M"!
Magnolia is one of my favorite films, and you were one of the few critics to champion that film in 1999. Now I thank you for bringing similar attention to the equally lush and operatic I Am Love in 2010.
Best to you, Roger
This is the worst list you could make and I have now lost all respect I had for you Sir. You're a historical figure of film criticism and maybe the best american critic since Todd MacCarthy and Robin Wood left us but you also have to acknowledge that being the best in a long dead profession isn't the greatest achievement on earth. I always wondered why you don't write lengthy, analytical criticism with the wit and style of a Kael or a Sarris and I think even you would know the answer to that : a simple lack of talent.
So what remains that makes me read some of your reviews : you're the only one left and you are the common sense critic, never trying to go for over-intellectual writings on the movies you see. This has served you in the past and you have history on your side. Why do I still read you ? Because you liked Bonnie and Clyde when many didn't and because you read the poetry in between the shots of such a film as Alfredo Garcia when few else did. Because you recognized De Palma's Blow Out as the masterpiece it is, giving it 4 stars.
But this list is just plain ridiculous and shows your common sense approach can be more of a single-mindedness about what makes a great film. The King Speech is a big classical drama, it is good but certainly not great. You seem to value it the same as say The Remains of The Day because your opinions lack intellect and personal thinking on the movies. What is new in the King Speech or I am Love ? Nothing. Which doesn't mean it is bad, it just mean that with these kind of film we'll never move on.
The greatest film of the year is Uncle Boonme ( and the Palm has nothing to do about my opinion ).
Roger's top ten are close to mine. Major exception is THE AMERICAN, which I thought was beautiful but formulaic and somewhat ho-hum... another hired killer with personal issues? Just didn't care enough, even with Clooney in every frame. I would put CARLOS in its place. (Note: haven't seen enough foreign, doc or other limited release titles to make a final list yet).
I am especially pleased that Roger loved both I AM LOVE and BLACK SWAN, which are high on my list.
Thank you again, Roger--not just for a list, but for the way in which you explain so carefully to us what makes a film good, great, memorable, haunting. I was personally thrilled to find Winter's Bone in the Top 10--I'm from the Missouri Ozarks, about 40 miles geographically from Ree's home and several million light years psychologically from it. But for the parents I had...
Is there a way your Web site could have a button or a something to get a person to all the lists of top 10 films, including the ones that you and Gene Siskel did together? I became your fan back in the 80s...you had me at A Room With a View. Every so often, I "happen" onto the entire list, but I can never remember how to get back there.
And those lists remind me of films I want to see again and again...or at least for the first time.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays to you. Your reviews and your blog have been one of the best gifts I have had in what was earlier a very difficult year!
(coughs) Leaves of Grass.
Whew, excuse me.
I like that you said that there were great movies this year, but it was not a great movie year, which is accurate. I saw some great films this year and hope to see more over the holidays, but they were few and far between - I don't think I saw a great film in theaters between Inception and The Social Network. A fine list, at least based on what I've seen, although I was hoping to see Leaves of Grass on here. :)
It seems a little early to make a top ten list since movies like Blue Valentine and True Grit have not come out yet, but I trust that you've seen both of them already?
Social Network was shockingly good. Every scene, even the one with Justin Timberlake's one night stand, was engaging and fascinating to listen to.
I am in total agreement with you about I Am Love being one of the best films of the year. I feel, though, that you misrepresented it in your review. I find it astonishing that you never once mentioned what elevates this movie beyond a socialite drama, which is the GORGEOUS, BEAUTIFUL, LUSH, nearly edible cinematography which was enhanced by one of the most grandiose, bombastic, and spectacular musical accompaniments to a film in a long, long time. It has to be said to the film's possible audience that when they finally see it, the experience will be exciting rather than simply being socially significant.
I'd love to see your list of best actors. Do you think the academy will be able to remember DiCaprio's best performance yet in Shutter Island and do you think they'll have enough imagination to nominate Joaquin Phoenix for his performance as an alternate self in I'm Still Here, which would award him the first best actor nomination for a documentary?
What a great year for masterful female performances and Melodrama with a capital "M"!
Magnolia is one of my favorite films, and you were one of the few critics to champion that film in 1999. Now I thank you for bringing similar attention to the equally lush and operatic I Am Love in 2010.
Best to you, Roger
I Love the fact that the 3 1/2 star movies are mixed in like that.
I've been too sleepy recently (and trying to finish "Catch-22" and "Closing Time") to watch a lot of movies and I've been torn in trying to decide which to watch first: "Black Swan" (which I wanted to just to make sure I support it) or the Jim Carrey one.
Now, I know (I still hope to catch both, and 127 Minutes).
One thing I noticed is that Shutter Island is missing from almost all "Best of 2010" lists, which is kind of a shame if you ask me. I think it was a masterfully done movie, and Roger really hit the nail in the head with his review, I love how the film lacks a reliable narrator, I love how we, the audience, go through all the doubts just as the main character does, and I love that we see _everything_ from Teddy's point of view. I can't remember well, was there even a scene where Teddy was not present?
Roger,
I think you raised an excellent point in commenting about the with respect to commenting about the social network movie, that our facebook society treating people as members of demographic groups, rather than individuals. If I may reminisce or digress, this kind of reminds me of something I noticed about the thread on the tsa breast milk incident as well:
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/politics/nbsp-nbsp.html
I always feel tremendous sorrow when watch on telivision when there is a car crash, or other disaster, the anchor man or woman at the news desk is quick to point out to his or her dismay that one of the victims of the latest disaster is a child, or a mother, or cheerleader, or heaven forbid a cute puppy dog, or perhaps someone recently befriended on a facebook page, how tragic. As if to say, "too bad the victim was not instead someone we care less about such as a black muslim or transgendered female." Or a guy whose had half his face removed because of too much cancerous radiation, or anyone of the so called freaks who doesnt fit into one of the jock strap cliques in our society. I know that people who dont know that you are the one and only roger ebert, (the great faceless, phantom of the opera-esque man that you are), grab their kids, and say dont go near that horrible man, that contagious leper, that rubber headed muppet. As a philosopher, and observer of humans, I am sorry for this. But you know as well as I do that this is true. That we dont live in a world of faceless people, and we could look beyond the outside of individuals to the illumination within.
How sad, but true, we see people as demographies. For example, to the lady that didnt want her breast milk x rayed zapped in the other article, I would rather your breast milk get zapped than a flesh and blood person.
We are creating a caste system like the fabled caste system of India, treating people from certain groups as being superior or more deserving of moral consideration. I would like to thank the conscientious respondents like Jennifer from that other post that made note of this disparity in how we treat different people. You are giving me hope for humanity. Thank you. Please fellow citizens of the multiverse, I plead with you please stop treating people as categorized, demographies and instead look beyond the mask.
I enjoy making top ten lists and have done so for more than ten years, even though I, obviously as a moviegoer and not paid critic, cannot and do not see every single film there is to see (but hopefully a good number of the important films there are to see -- I can live without seeing "Yogi Bear"). It's not about objectively ordering works of art. It's about how strongly you feel about them, subjectively. And the order can be arbitrary but the top choice, for obvious reasons, is important, and what an influential critic like you puts on an organized, selective list of the best can direct moviegoers to certain movies that are worth seeing and we might not be as familiar with. Lists perform a service.
Which is why I love your selection of under-appreciated and under-seen movies like "Winter's Bone," "The Secret in Their Eyes," and "The Ghost Writer." More people should seek them out. They're all terrific films.
As for "The Social Network" at the top of your list, it's on the top of everyone's, but sometimes I feel like I'm in disagreement with most critics; my very strong like of the film is drowned out by everyone else's overflowing LOVE. At this point, someone with "The Social Network" anywhere but at the top of their list almost seems to be panning it, which I suppose is one of those nagging pitfalls of silly, arbitrary lists. To place a film at, say #7 instead of #1 seems like it makes a statement when it really doesn't.
I'm glad to see The American on your list. I agree that the whole story depended on empathy - empathy that I thought would be impossible after the opening scene. I don't know how that character gained and held my empathy, but he did. Yes, there was greatness there.
The Ghost Writer looked good on paper; everything about it said it should work. It didn't work for me. As I was watching The Social Network, I knew I was seeing the best picture of the year. It all worked, from the first scene to the last, bookends that show that, genius and billionaire or not, this guy is just as vulnerable as the rest of us.
I know you haven't reviewed Blue Valentine yet, but I saw it a couple months ago and was sure that it was one of the best and most heartbreaking films of this year. Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling give some of the best performances I have seen. Any explanation for its exclusion? Maybe I'll just wait until your review..
Excellent choices, Roger!
For the past ten years, reading your Best of the Year lists have always been a highlight for me at this time. It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas...
I'm glad you've placed it with such welcome surprises as The American (A truly absorbing suspense thriller and love story. Did you see the little white butterfly flying up in the last shot?), Black Swan, and The Kids Are Alright. The dramatic climax of Kids was so compelling that I felt as though I was levitating above my seat!
Last October, I missed my one chance to see the five-hour cut of Carlos at the Vancouver International Film Festival so I'll gladly wait for the DVD to watch it in its entirety. Which reminds me! I have the equally long Red Riding Trilogy on my shelf to catch up with over the holidays.
Looking forward to more of your thoughts and assorted lists in the coming weeks. Merry Christmas.
Your comments on your dreams made me wonder if you've read The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro (writer of Never Let Me Go). It's about that exact same dream sensation of half-remembered streets and important places to be that aren't quite reached.
Definately worth reading if you haven't, one of my favourites.
Reigning supreme on my list would have to be "Inception," followed by "The Social Network."
Also this year, I had the pleasure of viewing the Blu-ray claymation "Mary and Max." My favorite Blu-ray find of 2010! Check it out if you haven't. Made in 2009, I'd have to rate it as high as my second for that year, right before "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orelans" and right after "A Prophet."
Speaking of animation, I am very intrigued by "L'illusionniste." Anything having to do with Jacques Tati sparks my interest!
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, stay healthier than healthier can be, and I look forward to seeing your show!!
Yes, I Am Love. Is it me, or has that film been ignored more than any other great film this year?....Ah I just read what you had to say about it. I agree about Julia, as well.
A solid list, among the ones I've seen, the only one I wasn't crazy about was The American. It's a funny thing though, it seems like more often than not with really polarizing love it/hate it movies like that I seem to always be in a very small minority who just thought it was okay (it was a stellar performance from George Clooney in what was otherwise a very formulaic and lackluster film). Black Swan opened in Tampa today, so it's high on my priority list for this weekend and King's Speech opens next week (and I'm mostly taking it on faith that it's a great movie because I have a hard time getting excited about a film about a king overcoming his stuttering problem - seems kind of low stakes you know). This weekend I'll also be picking up a copy of the Ghostwriter from one of the Blockbusters that's going out of business in my neighborhood. I'm guessing I'm not the only one here who's DVD collection has been profiting immensely from Blockbuster's crumbling empire (oh, if you could only see the shining stack of stellar movies I've picked up for $3-5 apiece; it'll be keeping me busy for weeks).
I'm also guessing by the fact that I never saw a review for it, and that it didn't appear on this list, that you didn't get a chance to see Animal Kingdom. I hope you do get a chance to see it though because it is easily one of the best films of the year, and if there were any justice in the world (and in this case there probably isn't) Jackie Weaver would get a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her stunning performance in the film. It's an absolute must see.
I hate Facebook like the plague, so I've avoided "The Social Network" like... the plague. I like Sorkin and Fincher, but can't bring myself to give a crap about Zuckerberg or Facebook.
I also hate Julianne Moore, which has kept me from the Kids Are All Right. She's okay, but there's something about her I don't find appealing.
I know you didn't see it, but my favorite film of the year is Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World. Might not be the "best" film, but one of the best I've seen this year.
Not sure if I agree with your detective work there, Lou.
Specifically regarding "Winter's Bone" and its backwoods caricatures. It seemed to me that everyone Ree met in her wanderings through Meth Mountain were gap-toothed, sneering, evil rednecks, while Ree herself was such a unerring paragon of virtue as to nearly deify her. The contrast of extreme evil and extreme good left a movie with no gray area whatsoever and left it rather inert.
I realize I am in the extreme minority in thinking "Winter's Bone" was a repetitive bore, so the problem is mine. I shall take my lumps accordingly.
True Grit doesn't rate in the top 20? Wow.
A few of these are already on Netflix instant for viewing, like I Am Love...
So, what does Angelina Jolie have to do to get on your list?
Might NOT be a rhetorical question.
Didn't see "The Tourist". Didn't see "Alice in Wonderland" or any Johnny Depp movie.
Didn't see...
TOY STORY 3
which I would have ranked above Inception. Especially for screenplay.
But the Academy will probably reward Aaron Sorkin instead of Pixar.
Since you are adding titles as they pop up in conversation, maybe just bump The Social Network to, oh I don't know, 50 or 60, and make room for the only two films this year that deserve four stars: "Mother and Child" and "Another Year". Or not. Anyway, I know you love them both, so maybe there'll be a list "What I really meant when I said best of 2010" or something. All the best to you, Roger
"Hereafter" should have been placed way higher IMHO.
Otherwise excellent chart. Impeccable taste, Roger. As always.
Here's some architecture from the architect for your dreams of Inception :-)
http://archialternative.com/2010/07/26/inception-of-architecture/
I like your top ten a lot; your next best not so much. All Good Things, Chloe, Rabbit Hole and Solitary Man would not have been anywhere near my top 20 of the year, but movies like Carancho, Lebanon, The Killer Inside Me, Boy and When We Leave would. Still, this is an excellent place to look for those trying to get some idea of what to watch, and that's what you're aiming for, isn't it?
i agree, Scott Pilgrim vs the World is amazing in a Willy Wonka, Rocky Horror cult-awesomeness way! i wish Roger would have seen it.
Surprised you didn't put True Grit on here being a fan Coen brothers. That is unless you haven't actually seen it yet.
Of the 10 films on your list, 7 are R- rated.
Speaking as a 14 year old: AAAUGH!!
P.S. I saw the other three. :)
Hmm...
I'm in an extreme minority when it comes to I Am Love, which I didn't like. I loved Winter's Bone (I'm in Missouri, too), The Kids are Alright, The Ghost Writer. I liked, but didn't love, The Secret in Their Eyes, mainly on the strength of my developing crush on Ricardo Darrin. But that's just me, I guess. I don't have an opinion on the rest.
My own list might include: The Red Riding Trilogy, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Square, Animal Kingdom, Broken Embraces (it opened here in February), Let Me In, The Secret of the Kells, Mother, Everyone Else, Please Give, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, and a few others that I'm not remembering right now. I haven't seen True Grit or The Black Swan yet.
From my perspective, it's been a pretty good year for movies, so long as you stayed away from the multiplexes. This has been a year where the major releases have had no appeal to me, made worse by the fact that 3-D gives me a splitting headache. Toy Story 3 didn't play here in 2-D, so I skipped it in theaters. That's a first for Pixar. I still haven't seen it on video. If the sequel to Cars is in 3-D, I'll skip it, too.
I won't ask the "Black Swan" question, about how it made your list despite not receiving 4 stars. I'll take a stab at how I think this makes sense.
I've seen films I really like, but which have one element or scene that I really can't defend. I might love everything else about them, but this one element doesn't do much for me. An example might be the music scenes in "A Night at the Opera", and how they are possible intrusions on the Marx Brothers lunacy. Yet, I consider it my favorite Marx Brothers film. It isn't just a matter of the film being almost perfect, it's if the film's best elements overwhelm the weaker elements in my emotional memory.
I can't speak for why you felt selecting "Black Swan" made sense. But I can see how it could be true for me.
Unless he mentioned it in the article, Mr. Ebert still has not seen the best film of the year, Scot Pilgrim. That's okay, it looks like one or two of us have. I feel sorry for those that missed out on seeing it on the big screen, but they'll get a chance very soon at local theaters that screen midnight films...
Hi Roger. You should have given a special award to "Salt". I actually loved that movie.
Pictures I admired this year...
The American
Chloe
Hereafter
Salt
The Social Network
I absolutely loved All Good Things and thought Kirsten Dunst's performance in it was brilliant, very layered and controlled. I feel like its getting only peripheral attention though because of the way the distribution has been done and the way movies like Black Swan are promoted. Will you be writing a review for it soon? I'd love to know what you think in more detail. Also, I didn't much like Chloe and its possibly the only choice here that I just can't agree with.
What about Blue Valentine and Somewhere? Not good?
I won't ask the "Black Swan" question, about how it made your list despite not receiving 4 stars. I'll take a stab at how I think this makes sense.
I've seen films I really like, but which have one element or scene that I really can't defend. I might love everything else about them, but this one element doesn't do much for me. An example might be the music scenes in "A Night at the Opera", and how they are possible intrusions on the Marx Brothers lunacy. Yet, I consider it my favorite Marx Brothers film. It isn't just a matter of the film being almost perfect, it's if the film's best elements overwhelm the weaker elements in my emotional memory.
I can't speak for why you felt selecting "Black Swan" made sense. But I can see how it could be true for me.
Mr. Ebert,
What is the best way to try to become a film critic without having gone to film school? I would like to go to film school, but the area I live in is nowhere near one. I am a film enthusiast and would like to pursue this as a part-time interest (I hesitate to use the work job)
Thank you
Ebert: Start writing film reviews. Take courses in the liberal arts, especially literature, drama, music and art history. See a lot of movies. Read a lot of books. Visit good film blogs, beginning with
http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/?p=5884
And read his books, for example this one, which is pricy because it's a widely-used textbook:
http://amzn.to/g4HU6N
I'm going to hold off posting my completed lists until I've caught up with "Black Swan," "True Grit," "The King's Speech" and others, but my FAVORITE (i.e. most entertaining) films of 2010 so far looks like this:
1. "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World"
2. "Toy Story 3"
3. "Inception"
4. "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I"
5. "RED"
6. "Hot Tub Time Machine"
7. "Shutter Island"
8. "Someone Else in the Evening"
9. "Let Me In"
10. "How to Train Your Dragon"
As for your own list Roger, I'm surprised there is no "Leaves of Grass" or "Inception" or any of the Steig Larsson adaptations in your top 10.
Hated Shutter Island, so I'm glad it's not on the lists.
Also, for what it's worth, I've seen Scott Pilgrim vs. the World seven times now.
I saw Social Network and can't deny that the writing was the best I've seen in a very very long time. The pace is great, and the cast is descent. I liked Jesse Eisenberg and Justin Timberlakes characters the most, as well as the twins, but the rest of the characters seemed like they could have been played by anybody.
As for the directing, it didn't seem like anything special to me. I felt like the cinematography overshadowed the directing and that the Cinematography, paired with the soundtrack, gave the film its style that made this historical story interesting. Without those two elements, though, I think the film would've turned out like a history channel special about the creation of Facebook, whether or not it was directed by Fincher.
Had it not been based on a true story, either, I'm sure this movie wouldn't be getting as much attention as it is.
Inception was good in a strange way, also. It was made with skill on every level by very talented people. I'm sure that no other director other than Nolan could've pulled it off (especially since he wrote it), and it was a risky film that was a very impressive achievement as far as originality goes. It did for me what Avatar didn't, in the sense that this original story from a passionate film maker actually turned into a very well put together film, and one of the best of the year. Avatar was original but was nothing without its visuals.
Inception was a film that stood on its own feet in every aspect.
I liked The Kids Are Alright as well, it was very raw and realistic.
And Greenburg was one of my favorites of the year. Very good writing in that film as well.
I have yet to see 127 Hours, and I'm going to see "The Fighter", tonight...which was a surprise addition to the Golden Globes list for Best Picture. I honestly expect nothing from it other than solid performances, but I don't expect it to be that good of a film.
Anyway, I just wanted to share my opinions about Social Network because I just feel like I'm the only one who feels that the directing wasn't anywhere near one of the best aspects of that film.
It was a good movie, and has all the qualities of a good film...but I just don't feel it's the best picture. It sorta reminds me of "Up In The Air" from last year...how it related to the times. And it was a pretty good movie. And there's no denying that it had all the qualities of a good movie...but it just isn't "great".
Don't try to tell me that you don't enjoy putting together these lists. The ranking may be somewhat silly and you may feel that you're comparing apples to oranges, but come on... they're FUN! It's a cool way to meditate on the year in movies, and sort-of a form of worship, I think.
And yes, for the record, I do make a practice of adding to my Netflix queue from movies on your list that I haven't seen, so there's that at least, right?
Did you intentionally leave 'True Grit' off of the list because it was a bad movie or because you have not seen it yet?
Rog,
It's been a while. I'm a lil' bummed not to find "True Grit" on the list. A couple years ago, I remember seeing previews for "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," and I thought by the look of it, it may well be the best movie of the year. Sadly, when I came across your top ten list (actually, I think it was your first top twenty list), "Button" wasn't included. Your review came out the Thursday night before its release, 2 1/2 stars, and the next night I went to see it, and liked it less than you did.
Do you ever hesitate to put this list out in the middle of December with so many movies to come in the next few weeks? You know, so you don't spoil the surprise of a great movie that sneaks in right at the year's end?
Where is The Town?
Great list Roger, I love Black Swan and The American. This is my list of my top ten films of the year:
1. "Inception"
2. "Shutter Island"
3. "Biutiful"
4. "The American"
5. "127 Hours"
6. "Black Swan"
7. "Capitalism a love story"
8. "The Secret in their Eyes"
9. "The Social Network"
10. "Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer"
The Best Films of 2010 (so far...)
1. The Social Network
2. Fish Tank
(the remainder is alphabetical - thank you, Roger for introducing me to this most ingenious and economic of solutions!) :) ...
3. 127 Hours
4. Black Swan
5. Dogtooth
6. Easy A
7. Enter the Void
8. Fair Game
9. The Ghost Writer
10. Greenberg
11. Hereafter
12. Howl
13. Inception
14. Inside Job
15. Kisses
16. Leaves of Grass
17. Life During Wartime
18. Never Let Me Go
19. Please Give
20. Red Riding: In The Year of Our Lord…
a. 1974
b. 1980
c. 1983
21. Secretariat
22. Shutter Island
23. Stieg Larsson’s Dragon Tattoo Trilogy
a. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
b. The Girl who Played with Fire
c. The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
24. Waiting for Superman
25. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
26. Winter’s Bone
I cannot wait to see the following (based on order of release in my town - Portland, OR):
- The Fighter (now playing)
- I Love You, Phillip Morris (now playing)
- White Material (now playing)
- Hemingway's Garden of Eden (now playing)
- True Grit (12/22)
- The King's Speech (12/25)
- The Company Men (12/25)
- Made in Dagenham (12/29)
- Tiny Furniture (12/31)
- Country Strong (1/7)
- All Good Things (1/7)
- Rabbit Hole (1/14)
- Somewhere (1/14)
- Another Year (1/21)
- Biutiful (1/28 - my birthday!) :)
- The Illusionist (1/28)
- Barney's Version (2/11)
P.S. Just saw THE TEMPEST and it makes honorable mention as a not quite great but engaging film
Um 127 Hours is in there. It's in his honorable mention.
Ebert: Um...winner of the Special Jury Prize. I've given one for many years.
I do not want to sound slow, but what does it mean when you say that Secretariat was "The best general film of the year"?
Ebert: For everybody.
Roger,
I agree with most of the movies you mentioned, but I'm stumped about one thing: the last lines of your review of "Leaves of Grass" refer to it as "One of the year's best!" Is there a reason you didn't mention it as among your favorites of 2010?
Merry Christmas!
Ebert: There are more lists to come. You will not be disappointed.
You will have five (Feature, Foreign, Documentary, Animated, and Indie/Alt/Overlooked) best lists. But some will consider this as your definitive list of the year. Or, would, Metacritic, for example, cite all of your lists? If not, ah, I bet Toy Story will be deprived one point--it's not one of your best FEATURE films, because it's ANIMATED. Hmmm...
I haven't seen nearly enough movies this year. Gonna fix that pronto!
It's great to see that you loved "Another Year". Hopefully that will help bring Mike back to Chicago. Were you at his Q&A last year? He's feisty!
The only movie I'm really disappointed not to see a mention for is "Please Give"--it got a good critical response when it opened, but it doesn't seem to be getting much of a foothold in top-ten lists. A shame, because it certainly deserves some award attention for its screenplay and for Amanda Peet's performance, in particular. There are only a handful of other movies this year that I'd describe as legitimately great: "The Social Network," "Winter's Bone," "127 Hours," "The Kids Are All Right."
Having not yet seen 'The King's Speech', '127 Hours', 'Inside Job', 'Somewhere', 'Blue Valentine', 'The Secret in their Eyes', 'Leaves Of Grass' and 'True Grit' I can't only rank the films I've seen as of now.
So here's my top 15 of 2010.
1. The Social Network - The best film I've seen in the past two or three years. It's the best Biopic I've seen since Spike Lee's 'Malcolm X'. Deserves the Academy Award for Best Picture, and Best Adapted Screenplay. With the best ensemble cast of the year.
2. Black Swan - Darren Aronosky's best film since 'Requiem For A Dream.' Him and Natalie Portman deserve Academy Awards this February. As well as awards for Cinematography, Art Direction, Makeup, and Costumes.
3. A Prophet (Un prophete) - The best foreign language film I've seen since '4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days.' It's dark, powerful, and entertaining as hell.
4. The Kids Are All Right - The best comedy of the year. Well acted, directed, and especially written.
5. Winter's Bone - The most powerful film I've seen in 2010. A harrowing film going experience.
6. Toy Story 3 - Not the best 'Toy Story', I prefer Toy Story 2. Yet it still ranks among the best animated film of the year.
7. Shutter Island - After multiple viewings it is clear, Scorsese has yet another masterpiece on his hands. A honorable homage to Kubrick.
8. Exit Through The Gift Shop - The best documentary I've seen in the past 10 years. A true work of art.
9. Inception - Not nearly as good as it's cracked up to be. Far too stressed on being (as other Nolan films tend to be) built up and captivating. The first viewing it's quite good (which is why I decided to include it in my top ten) but after two or three viewings it wears thin, and becomes somewhat unsatisfying.
10. The Ghost Writer - The best thriller of the year. Gripping, and intense. Polanski is a true filmmaker,
11. Greenberg - Noah Bambauch's best film since 'The Squid and the Whale', painful to watch at times (in a good way), and sickly funny.
12. Hot Tub Time Machine - The funniest movie of the year, easily. Is it a classic? In my eyes, quite possibly.
13. The Fighter - The best sports drama of the year. (Yet, not much competition anyways.) Christian Bale and Melissa Leo deserve the supporting Oscars.
14. Cyrus - The best black comedy of the year.
15. The Town - Nowhere nearly as good as Affleck's previous film 'Gone Baby Gone'. But it has it's moments. For me, Jeremy Renner's performance and Robert Elswit's cinematography is what's to look for here.
I'm very glad that you put out this list [I reaklize why top 10 lists are silly in general, but I love them anyway]. And while I look forward to more lists to come, I was wondering if you would also release a list of the absolute worst movies you saw this year. I daresay I almost enjoy those lists more [since I didn't have to see the movies themselves] since I must admit some joy at hating a really bad movie. For what it's worth, I'm predicting that The Last Airbender would top the list [Possibly the Battlefield Earth of this decade?].
And now we have TWO Special Jury Prize winners - the latest (and belatedest?) is Mike Leigh's ANOTHER YEAR - cannot wait! :)
Roger,
I am so glad that you put “The Social Network” on the top, and included “The Ghost Writer” in top10! But have you watched “Kokuhaku”, the Japanese contender for Oscar Best Foreign Film this year? It's not as good as last year's "Okuribito", but it's on my own top10 list.
and btw, can I translate this post to Chinese and let more Chinese moviegoers know your choices?
Merry Christmas!
Could The Last Airbender be worse than The Tourist? *shudders*
Roger, i'm guessing you didnt see Enter the Void. It was the most incredible experience i' ve had in a theater.... maybe ever. Bold, original and visionary cinema that, frankly, makes the films mentioned above seem like Disney cartoons. Gaspar Noe's masterpeice goes where no film has gone before, and for that reason alone, it deserves a mention here. In depth analaysis on my blog.
I haven't decided my 2010 movie favorites yet (so far, Winter's Bone and Toy Story 3 are top contenders) -- I'm especially waiting to see The King's Speech and Another Year.
However, I do know this -- last year's Black Swan episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm was much more humorous than the Black Swan movie.
If you like Sorkin and Fincher, see The Social Network! I don't like Facebook, either, and I have no feelings whatsoever about Zuckerberg.
Oh Roger, you opend up a whole can of worms and shook the world with this one. Black Swan with a 3 1/2 stars making the Best of list will no doubt upset purists.
I'm proud, maybe we can be rid of the stigma of the star system as I agree it's largely irrelevant.
I hope 'Inception' wins Best Picture be it on anyone's best of list or not.
Merry Christmas
Greatly looking forward to the lists to come. In particular, I hope to see Putty Hill mentioned because I agree wholeheartedly that it "looks with as much perception and sympathy as it is possible for a film to look" and could use all the help it can get in finding a wider audience.
Keeping in mind I still need to see Carlos, Enter The Void, Inside Job, True Grit, Mr. Nobody, Another Year, Amigo, The King’s Speech, Biutiful, Fair Game, Never Let Me Go, I Am Love, Tears of Gaza, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu, Tabloid, Monsters, I Love You, Philip Morris, Alamar, Wild Grass, Marwencol, Exit Through The Gift Shop, Uncle Boonme, Client 9, Buried, and Let Me In among many others, I offer my top ten of the year:
1.) Lebanon (Samuel Maoz)
2.) Blue Valentine (Derek Cianfrance)
3.) La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet (Frederick Wiseman)
4.) Putty Hill (Matthew Porterfield)
5.) A Prophet (Jacques Audiard)
6.) Animal Kingdom (David Michod)
7.) The Social Network (David Fincher)
8.) Winter’s Bone (Debra Granik)
9.) Boxing Gym (Frederick Wiseman)
10.) Meek’s Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt)
Since the last may not be officially released until 2011, it could easily be replaced by Toy Story 3, Micmacs, The American, Rabbit Hole, or The Ghost Writer.
I agree it's been a fairly lackluster year for movies.
I hated "I Am Love" with a bright purple passion. And that includes the bombastic musical score. I literally pulled my cap down over my eyes after an hour and took a nap... Just abysmal.
Dear Mr. Ebert,
I enjoyed reading your ten best list this year. A little off the subject, but related: For your "Great Movies" consideration, I submit to you a suggestion of a foreign movie you reviewed more than five years ago (I was waiting for your review, having already seen it in South Korea and wondering what you would think of it): Old Boy. You seemed to tap into its depths in your review. Also, I know you're not a music expert, but I'd love to see your list of top movie soundtracks of all time. One of my favourites is the soundtrack from "Lost in Translation", it was nice to see you add that little gem to your Great Movies collection, recently.
Happy Holidays and New Year to You!
I loved "Another Year." A small correction: Lesley Manville's character was named Mary, not Sally. I hope she's nominated, what a great performance!
can't wait for the worst of the year list. there is one coming right?
Along with "The Social Network", I watched most of movies in your list. Although I do not agree with you in case of few movies, your list always has interesting movies we cannot miss and I'm glad that there are many movies we both like.
Among the movies I have not seen yet, "The King's Speech", "Black Swan", and "127 hours" will probably be released around February or March in the next year in South Korea. I don't know when I will be able to watch “All Good Things", "Another Year", "Hereafter", "Secretariat", "Never Let Me Go", and "Rabbit Hole", but I know there will be good chances for me like when I got the chances to watch "Carlos", "I Am Love", "Winter's Bone", "Greenberg"(My least favorite in your list, by the way), "Monsters"(My admiration for this small movie is growing day by day), and "Solitary Man".
oh my god, I can't believe the comments - how come a 3.5 star movie is higher than a four?! Say, what?! Robert Christgau's top three albums of the 00's were 1. M.I.A.: Kala (A+), 2. Kanye West: Late Registration (A+) and 3. Lil Wayne: Tha Carter III (Deluxe Edition) (A-). Sometimes A-'s can be better than other A's - for example Oukast: Stankonia was twenty-third on his list. It's all about impact - like Roger said - and I think it is a very admirable list. I actually was suprised 'The Social Network' was first - although, now thinking about it, why wouldn't h ave made the top ten? I had a feeling it would have been eleventh - on further thought, now I know why I'm wrong. Some of the films I have, still, not yet seen - like 'Black Swan' and 'I am Love'. I made my own list which included 'Last Train Home' at second place. I will agree that 'The Social Network' would now be at first for me now. 'Monsters' was twelfth, 'Inception' forth (but would probably have fluctuated if I had seen the said movies above), 'The American' eighth (ha!), 'Exit Through the Gift Shop' thirteenth, 'Easy A' sixteenth and 'Salt' ninth - I am now, also, not suprised that got knocked down. I am still new to Ebert so am still adjusting to his critique styling. Robert Christgau I am pretty much down on - I accurately predict the grade of every grade he has made in the past two years. There are certain things about Ebert I am still figuring out - for example I was sure he would give 'The Clash of the Titans' 2.5 stars butgave it 3? I saw it on tv - and I guess it was an action movie (which regularly get 3) but it was still godawful..? What exasperates me is the myopic nature of people. While I may not yet fully understand Ebert, at least, I try to. Perhaps if you thought about why he gave something a four, or put a 3.5 star film over a four you would get him more pr, at least, grow a little..?! :p You rock on Ebert! ;p
Roger, amidst all these "You forgot!" comments I'd like to add the movie you truly forgot to place just above The Social Network; your list should start off like this:
0. "The Human Centipede"
I believe Black Swan should be ranked that high, but I don't understand how a ***1/2 rating qualifies it for 3rd place over others that received ****. Could you elaborate?
To me, Denis Villeneuve's "Incendies" tops the list. Period. Many films around the world are much much better than the Hollywood ones, and I'm glad I've got more chances to watch them in Asia.
Mr.Ebert, I'm really surprised both leaves of grass and stone weren't mentioned. Why is it so? You said leaves of grass was one of the year's best and stone was one of the strongest films of the year. Yet you have films like greenberg and monsters?
Where's Shutter Island????
Good day Roger, I agree with your list but I'm wondering why you didn't give True Grit a chance?
It's a good best film list for a not outstanding year.
I confess I have difficulty separating my discomfort about Facebook from my basic reaction to The Social Network. The film celebrates the triumph of artificially created virtual relationships over real personal interaction, and glorifies someone whose inability to relate to people face to face is transformed into immense success and wealth. You can't tell me that Facebook is beneficial or even benign. It was not created out of noble motives or the goodness of anyone's heart. The fact that marketers are collectively willing to pay billions for information about who is connected to whom and their likes and dislikes was not lost on Mark Zuckerberg, and it's more than enough to put me off and keep me away from his invention.
Of course this does not diminish the fact that the film is very smart and well-made.
Greetings Mr Ebert and fellow film enthusiasts! I was curious as to the complete lack of acknowledgement of one of this years greatest cinematic achievements in terms of style, vision, direction and sheer creativity entitled "ENTER THE VOID" by french film maker Gaspar Noe. Has no one seen this movie? Was it too delirious of a film? I would appreciate any feedback regarding this outlandish piece of cinema that made me finally realize that Johnny Depp had good reasons to move to France! Why he chose to do the Tourist I will never know though!
Hoping to see Please Give on your subsequent lists, and excited to see your late addition of Leigh. Thanks for the lists and the blog and the tweets!!
As many have already stated, I'm surprised by the high presence of 3.5 star films on your list, Roger. But, as you have said, there are more lists to come. I await them.
Here's my Best of 2010:
1. Fish Tank
2. The Social Network
3. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
4. Dogtooth
5. Inception
6. Black Swan
7. Greenberg
8. Winter's Bone
9. Everyone Else
10. The Ghost Writer
11. The Kids Are All Right
12. How to Train Your Dragon
13. Toy Story 3
14. A Prophet
15. Lourdes
16. Wild Grass
17. Exit Through the Gift Shop
18. Carlos
19. Samson and Delilah
20. True Grit
21. Somewhere
22. Rabbit Hole
23. Restrepo
24. Secret Sunshine
25. Leaves of Grass
I was all aboard The Social Network train until last night, when I saw Winter's Bone, which left me stunned and profoundly moved. Maybe it's the initial impact, but I suspect Bone might be the overall better film. Time will tell, I suppose, as will a second viewing of both movies.
Great movies in here, Roger, and I'm thrilled to see that someone didn't forget Shutter Island.
To the person that edited my comment/reply to superdave and added a typo:
The name of the film is "Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World" -- not "Scot Pilgrim."
I appreciate your fixing your addition to my comment.
Thank you :)
I agree with most of these, but Never Let Me Go left me disappointed, primarily because the book is so outstanding. I felt like the changes they made left many of the actions in the movie without much motivation. Or over-motivated, in some cases, overwrought without enough character development.
It was good, and it maintained the lingering and almost ultra-normal storytelling pace of the book, but it had the potential to be great - not a case of "well, these things don't translate to film very well" such as many other adaptations with changes, but simply a "well, maybe the audience needs more romance" which is ludicrous in a film like that.
still making my final list. I thought SOCIAL NETWORK was and is one of the more overrated films of the decade. CATFISH offered much more insight into the danger and impact of social media.
Having said that, I am surprised that EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP was not on mentioned here, but again, maybe you are waiting for a documentary only list to include it in. Both ANIMAL KINGDOM and A PROPHET were strong as well...and for me, stronger than your foreign pick. Viva la differance, however.
As for ANOTHER YEAR "not opening yet" - it will be out by the end of the year AND you've seen it so don't worry about having it on your list - it hasn't stopped you in the past from putting movies on the list weeks before they come out...
You should not have relented to using a numbered system. I appreciated a listing of movies you thought were the years best (or films you wanted to show respect to) without a tiered list. I always thought your "Great Movies" section was a brilliant idea because it removes the star system completely. All one requires to know is that seeing a film with a "Great Movie" listing is that, in your retrospective consideration, it is a movie of substantial importance or value, none any lesser or greater than it's neighbors on the list. I think it shows a maturity to understand that experiences do not need to be tested against one another, only to know that they are meaningful or not is enough. I hope you return to a non-numbered list in the future. As always, I appreciate your work.
I'd just like to say I'm a little disappointed in your list. It seems a bit...generic. Usually your Top Ten lists surprise and delight me, like when you named "Almost Famous" the top film of 2000 with "Wonder Boys" right behind it. It seems to me your lists of yore felt more personal than any other critics' while this year it feels more about the technical aspects of the medium rather than personal reaction.
INow, 'm not going to sit here and gripe and nitpick your list saying "Where's this movie? It's incomplete without that movie!" or "You put THAT movie on the list? Are you insane?" Having a very young child (with a second due in June) and working over forty hours a week, I rarely get to go to the movies anymore and never have the time to watch at home. Your reviews and blogs are the closest I get to the feeling I used to get when I went to the theaters, so I would like to thank you for that.
Of those few movies I did get to see this year, only one of them appears on your list--at number one, no less--and that's not at all surprising. What is surprising, and funny to me, is that two of the movies I was able to see, you either didn't see or didn't review. Strange how that happened. And while I obviously can't tell you to see these movies, I would just like to say that I feel you missed out.
Disney's "Tangled" was such a wonderful surprise. I took my Rapunzel-obsessed daughter to see, expecting to roll my eyes at the jokes, plug my ears during the songs, and gag at the happy ending. Boy, was I wrong. The musical numbers are bright and entertaining, especially "I've Got a Dream," the jokes are fast and funny and the happy ending...well, it's not spectacular, but it's much better than it could have been.
The other one I know you've gotten a lot of flack for not seeing and I won't really give you the same flack but rather explain why I think you are getting the flack. Critics everywhere considered "The Social Network" to be the defining movie of the "wired generation." It isn't. Don't get me wrong, it is a fantastic piece of work, but it does not define my generation. The movie that I feel better represents my generation is "Scott Pilgrim vs the World." It's a smart, funny and sweet film that accurately captures the twenty-somethings of today and their detachment from the world around them. In fact, "Scott Pilgrim" was the third most tweeted movie of the year, behind only "Inception" (which was sold before it came out) and the new "Harry Potter" (which already had a massive following. "The Social Network" didn't even break the Top Ten oddly enough. I think the reason so many people (most of them quite young I'm guessing) have been giving you a hard time about not seeing the movie is not that you are doing them a disservice by avoiding it, but that you are doing yourself a disservice for avoiding a film that perfectly captures the essence of who they are
Ebert: It was a mainstream kind of year. Do you want me to praise unexpected films, or those most-tweeted about?
Where is The Last Airbender???
I haven't seen a lot of these movies, but in terms of capitalization in terms of execution, I'd say that "I Am Love" and "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World" were two that were great.
"I Am Love" used music for power, pauses: it used a lot of things for powerful effect.
And I didn't really get to watch "The Secret in Their Eyes" in quite in the state I wanted to and I think I would have really like it, but that one scene was pretty great in the soccer stadium in terms of execution. It seems like there had to be some special effects there. Even so, it still was a pretty great scene and leaves you thinking about all the possibilities of camera movement.
I also liked "The American"'s minimalist style and the erotic scenes (I wish there were a few more). Oh yeah, and "Chloe" was pretty great too. And Polanski's was pretty smooth.
I don't know how Scott Pilgrim "expanded the language of cinema" as so many fanboys keep saying. Sure, it had a really cool editing trick in the first act where the two protagonists share a continuous conversation over a bunch of locations at a bunch of different times, but the film was sloppy and stupid once it got to the evil exes.
Scott learns nothing from any of his battles and none of the battles leads to the next. You could show the fight scenes from the middle hour of the movie in pretty much any order without gaining or losing any meaning. Every single one of the fight scenes is utterly meaningless. They do NOTHING. If you cut all of them except the first evil ex and the last evil ex, the movie would lose no plot.
Plus, while the fight scenes are indeed wonderfully filmed, there is never a single ounce of tension in them. It's Michael Cera fighting and so no matter how well choreographed it is, it's still goofy. I don't for a second think there is even the slightest chance of real injury to him, so the fights become extremely monotonous, in addition to being irrelevant to the narrative.
The first half hour is rather charming and I liked that Pilgrim was a total lurp. It was realistic and a new angle, then the dumb, dumb, DUMB action movie kicked in. And I say this as a guy who thinks Shaun of the Dead is one of the top 3 zombie films ever made.
"The Kids are Alright" is way overrated. It was OK, and Annette Bening was OK, but didn't see anything great about it. It;s like it was made to pound us with a hammer, that kids are fine with lesbian moms, which most people know has been "alright" for years. "Toy Story 3" , "Black Swan" (which blew me away) and "Winter's Bone" were all fantastic, IMHO.
Agreed. This year was not as good as many others, and not nearly as good as 2009. One thing about 2010 was sterling, however: it was an uncommonly good year for thrillers of one sort or another.
Since we all agree that lists are meaningless, here's mine (so far):
1. Restrepo
2. Exit Through The Gift Shop
3. A Prophet
4. Winter’s Bone
5. The Social Network
6. The Secret In Their Eyes
7. Shutter Island
8. The Ghost Writer
9. Mother
10. Inception
Bubbling under: I Am Love, 127 Hours, and The Square.
Oooh! Oooh! I wanna play! I wanna play!
This is my list of the best films of 2010 *THAT I HAVE SEEN SO FAR*. I haven't been to a movie theater in the last six weeks and I spent my vacation time this year visiting family rather than attending film festivals. Therefore, I haven't seen many of the films on Roger's list (a situation that will likely be remedied in January when they annnounce the Oscar nominees. I like to pride myself on seeing all the Best Picture nominees before the Awards telecast).
1. The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo (****) - I love film noir when it's done right!
2. The Social Network (****) - I normally hate David Fincher's gimmicky crap, but this has great acting by a great cast and a great un-gimmicky script by Aaron Sorkin.
3. Waiting for Superman (****) - This was the first time I ever left a movie theater charged up to do something because of the film I saw.
4. The Ghost Writer (****) - I love film noir when it's done right!
5. Inception (***1/2) - Along with "The Social Network", this was the other major Hollywood blockbuster that was also Oscar-worthy.
6. Greenberg (***1/2) - This is what happens when you turn forty and realize you're further away from your life's goals than you were in your twenties (something I can personally relate to).
7. Get Him to the Greek(***1/2) - This was easily the funniest movie of the year. I don't care that it won't make anyone else's top ten.
8. The Runaways (***1/2) - Along with this year's Stieg Larsson adaptations, 2010 was the year of the angry leather-jacketed bisexual woman.
9. The American (***1/2) - Good or bad, a George Clooney film is almost always interesting.
10. Exit Through the Gift Shop (***) - This is the funniest doc about the marginally talented since "American Movie".
And for the record, I disagree with Roger about "Monsters" and "Solitary Man". "Monsters" was all special effects, but I didn't believe the chemistry between the two leads (even though they were supposedly an off-screen couple). And "Solitary Man" strained all credibility--not something I want in a low-budget neo-realist drama.
My only initial surprise also came with the omission of the idiosyncratic "Leaves of Grass." Based on your review, saw it during its initial run and was most impressed. Just hope the Academy recognizes Edward Norton's exceptional work. That I won't forget any time soon. ("There are more lists to come"-- yea)
Hey, just one thing.
Why is Inception at number 6 on the list?
First off, you gave it a higher rating than BLACK SWAN #3, and also, Inception is a better movie than all of the movies on your list. (I don't know about The Kings Speech though, hasn't came out yet in my region yet). Inception is more enjoyable, smarter, much more creavite, and better acted than THE SOCIAL NETWORK. Add great cinematography and a stellar soundtrack, this is the best movie of the year.
For one such as myself, liberated from the habitual mental chains that constrain most people, I witness the heraclitean rivers of space and time flowing equally backwards and forward. While I cant say for sure whether these movies qualify as true 2010 movies or not, since I first viewed them this year, I will include them nevertheless.
These recent movie greats, dare I say masterpieces, either helped me think in new ways, or I couldn't stop thinking about them even days after the curtain closed and the magic lantern went dim. Much like greats of the past such as El Topo, Santa Sangre, Holy Mountain, Adaptation, or Synechdoche New York, Cries and Whispers, or Inland Empire, these are movies that dared to realize that we are not mere fleshy robot servants of government and corporation cronie complex.
Sorry my list is so heavily geared towards either the macabre this time, but with the world overrun by so many zombie-eyed religious people of all dogmatic flavors, sometimes I feel like I am the only living person in a world overrun by mental wraiths. So I can increasingly identify with the travails exemplified in many of these movies:
Best movies Circa 2010
PONTYPOOL
(Because of the Likes of Christian bigots Like Bill O'Reilly, and Shawn Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh, the world makes less and less sense, Yes Means no and no Means Yes, This film looks for a way to break free)
HUMAN CENTIPEDE
(We are becoming More than Human, or Less depending on your perspective)
AFTER.LIFE
(Liam Neesons Best Role by far, as a gatekeeper to the other side of the life/death divide.)
COLIN
(Told from the perspective of a recently zombie, but the fascinating thing is that we find out that the real zombies are not the zombie, but the living people who are to fear)
ANTICHRIST (WIllem Dafoe, in this allegorical jewel about the descent of life into hell)
As you and your readers are usually such insightful and clever people, I am amazed that the overhyped tripe called "Inception" made so many people's lists.
But then again, I guess that's what's fun about lists like these--being shocked that anyone could like THAT!
I would just like to ask why toy Story 3 isn't on this list. It was arguably the best threequel of all time, and is the movie that has, more than any other this year, delved deep into the hearts of almost everyone who saw it. I'm not angry that its not up here at all, I just want to know why?
Great overview. But I always find it puzzling when people get outright angry at a personal top 10 list that does not mirror their own opinion. I mean...why get so sideways on a simple list? It's just that...a list of things you liked. We are all different and each one of us has a different view on any one given film, TV show or play... and on any given day if you ask me what my favorite movie is of all times I could easily say anything from Star Wars, to Citizen Kane, Metropolis, Safety Last or Schindler's List....or my personal favorite at this very moment, Lawrence of Arabia. However my all time favorite Christmas movie is Die Hard. (or if I want to be a little different... Die Hard 2) That always gets people wondering about me...
Let me preface my comment by saying that 'Se7en' is one of my favorite films of the 1990s, so I was definitely a Fincher fan (up through 'Zodiac' anyway). I just don't get all the love for 'The Social Network'. I saw it, I liked it. Sure, Jesse Eisenberg can act and he was fun to watch/listen to. OK. But the best film of the year? There was nothing about the direction that blew me away. In fact, I had the feeling that Fincher was being a bit understated with the camera after the 'Benjamin Button' fiasco. I don't even think the story was that compelling, but then again, I am not that big of a fan of Facebook. Is that why I am not "getting it"? Perhaps I am growing really weary of the proliferation of based-on-a-true-story films - more often than not, the built-in "legitimacy" of the genre seems to be serving as a crutch for weak, cliche-ridden scripts. (Until 20 seconds into the recent 'Made in Dagenham' preview, I actually thought it was a spoof.) In any case, 'The Social Network' is this year's 'Avatar' for me - I just don't understand the critical consensus.
Of the movies you list, I'm most looking forward to "The King's Speech" with Geoffrey Rush and Clint Eastwood's "Hereafter". Those look like clear winners to me, especially 'King's'.
"Inception" was an alright movie. It's one of those stories that you have to surrender to quickly or else you run the risk of hitting these little plot speed bumps that say 'ok-that didn't make any sense'. The Matrix had similar fantasy pieces but did a great job of getting the audience on board early. Not so with Inception. Like the character who knows he's in a dream by the look and feel of the carpet, there were too many clues that reminded me that hey it looks great, but it's only a movie.
"The American" with George Clooney was another good movie that could have been a lot better. I think the director tried to do too much without dialog. No doubt a conscious choice on his part, and a brave one! But difficult to do. Clooney had that constant look of angst on his face, but I couldn't tell if he was worried about being killed, or if he was trying to figure out where the nearest bathroom was after scarfing down some bad Fegatelli.
The whole point of the movie was to observe a man at the cross-roads. An expert at a game he doesn't want to play anymore, a guy loosing the edge he needs to stay alive. He doesn't know what to do with himself but that is no reason for the film to be in the same condition. This movie needed to be cross-pollinated with Michael Mann's "Collateral" and "Heat".
As usual, I am really impressed with your rankings. You hold in high regard films like Black Swan and The Kings Speech, films which give us a new perspective that we could not get from reading some book or article of similar premise. You put quality over quantity and the films that optimize both quality and quantity properly, like The Social Network, you regard most highly. Seriously, I have yet to witness a masterful tracking shot like the Crew Racing scene in The Social Network this year. It was brilliant.
Did you watch "Animal Kingdom" this year, Roger? It's absence from your website has me perplexed.
Completely random question for you, Roger: What's the best book you read this year?
Ebert: I'm currently completing "A Dance to the Music of Time"
Listen to the first of the 12 novels with a free Kindle download:
http://amzn.to/guxueb
Not at all. I was just saying it was somewhat telling, in terms of defining a generation, that a film that didn't have a Harry Potter-sized following or layers of construction like "Inception" was the third most popular movie on a social network, while "The Social Network" didn't even crack the Top Ten. I've seen people from my generation talking and bonding over this movie more than any other in recent memory. The other nine movies on the list had something behind them bigger than Scott Pilgrim did. I was just using it as an example of it meaning more to the wired generation than Fincher's film, not as a reason for you to see it. If I wanted to cite reasons for you to see it, I would list the top ten lists it has appeared on or critics awards it has won or been nominated for, or I would just chastise you for not seeing the last film ever reviewed on "At the Movies." It got two see its, by the way. Just saying.
I have not seen all the films that have been mentioned but I have seen INCEPTION ad THE SOCIAL NETWORK.
THE SOCIAL NETWORK is a better film that INCEPTION period.
Once, just once, I would like to get to a few "best movies of the year" movies before I'm madly trying to get them from Netflix for my annual "Oscarpalooza" rush of seeing as many nominees before the ceremony as is possible. (I never get to see the shorts, especially not the documentary shorts--the Academy doesn't even put them out on DVD, which they do in the other two categories--but I do what I can.) Indeed, I'm watching Crazy Heart as I write this, because this is how long it took me. The problem is that I live on a fixed income and really only get to movies when my boyfriend wants to see them, and he doesn't like dramas. Now, I did see Inception with a group of other friends and loved it. I need to watch it a second time, too. I got Chloe from Netflix and found it strangely compelling. But that's it.
Though right around this time last year, I wrote a piece about why I don't do top ten of the year lists, which was only in part because I really don't get to that many movies in the theatre. If you're interested, here's the direct link. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/user/246086/blogs/?id=639583 I mention you in it several times, but that tends to happen when I talk about talking about film.
Just out of curiousity, were you tempted to list the restored version of _Metropolis_?
I was wondering after seeing your best ten list going back to the original way of doing it if you were going to comment on that. I'm glad you went back to it because it makes it easier for us to see what you liked. Could you maybe now tell us what was your best film of 2008 and 2009? And I don't think it is too hard to decide on what is the best ten. Isn't that part of your job to begin with? Maybe it isn't easy, but every job has things in it we don't like.
You the man, Roger.
People need to stop complaining about Movie X being higher on the list than Movie Y, even though Movie Y got more stars. The ratings are RELATIVE, not absolute. When he gives four stars to, say, Inception, he's giving it four stars compared to films like The Matrix or Memento or Dark City, not compared to a film like Black Swan.
At least, that was how I interpreted it.
You mentioned that it wasn't a great year for movies but that it was a year with many great movies. I thought the same thing as the year was progressing, but looking back there were so many good/great films that it's hard to argue that it wasn't a great year for movies. A list with 22 films on it that could easily grow to 30+ seems like a pretty damn good year, don't you think?
Well, it's official: I am in trouble.
Of the twenty-plus films you've listed here, I have only seen three of them: Inception, Hereafter, and Winter's Bone. Two of which, in all honesty, I did not enjoy as much as I thought I would (although that is not to say that I disliked them). Inception was a superb action movie, with a very creative concept (even if the ending was a little bit too much like eXistenZ or Waking Life), but frankly, I think I will remember it more for its craftsmanship than for the characters it creates. And as for Hereafter... well, I can't fault the acting or Clint Eastwood's direction, but after reading your review, I was expecting a film that discusses the afterlife in a more, let's say, objective way, as in Gates of Heaven--and instead, I feel like I got The Dead Zone.
There are definitely some movies on this list that I still want to see, including your top 3. And yet, even so, I have always preferred watching older movies at home to seeing current movies in theaters--highlights for this year include Withnail & I, Peeping Tom, The Deer Hunter, Wall Street, Runaway Train, Badlands and the Seventh Seal--and ultimately, given this year's selection, I don't feel like that will change anytime soon. As you said, this was not a great year for movies.
So the question remains: what kind of ideas will your list give me? That remains to be seen.
"The film tells the story of how his wife Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter) involves him with a rough-hewn Australian speech therapist (Geoffrey Rush), whose unorthodox methods him him to eventually face a BBC microphone and forcefully inform the world that the empire was declaring war."
I suspect a variant of the word "enables" should replace first "him" in that sentence. A verb, Senator, we need a verb. ;-)
I'm very much looking forward to seeing almost all the films on your list, Roger, and not simply because you said so, but because they're either so interesting to me, or you helped point out some facets that now seem to me worth investigating.
Thanks. As always.
Ebert: Why, "enables" is the very word!
Mr. Ebert,
Every year I wait for your list of the best films of the year and every year you list 10-20 truly exceptional works of art. I must say that I owe my love of film to you and am grateful that I am able to read your thoughtful intelligent reviews week after week. I haven't seen King's Speech, Black Swan or Rabbit Hole yet cause they have yet to open in my town, but here is my 10 best list so far. Hope you enjoy.
1. The Social Network
2. The Kids are All Right
3. Shutter Island
4. Winter's Bone
5. Valhalla Rising
6. Temple Grandin
7. Mother
8. Leaves of Grass
9. City Island
10. The Ghost Writer
Best Wishes for the holidays and a grand New Year.
Thomas
That’s a good list of movies. I’ll make plans to see all of those that I didn’t catch or already have on my short list of movies I want to see. I’m glad you remembered The Ghost Writer; movies that open in the first three months of the year are often neglected when it comes time to make award nominations and year’s best lists.
Do you always do your list before the end of the year? Maybe you’ve seen them already, but of the movies scheduled to open in New York in the next two weeks True Grit, Biutiful and The Illusionist at least inspire hope that they might be good movies.
Summer Wars is fantastic, don't get me wrong, but it felt more like a rehash of Mamoru Hosoda's previous Digimon film, Our War Game. He recycled a lot of action setpieces as well as dramatic elements from it.
It's still wonderful, though, and it's absolutely gorgeous. I wish I had a chance to see it in a theater. Alas, the possibility of such things is literally nil where I am.
Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World is the movie that I'm still wishing Roger had seen over any other film this year. There are very few times when one can say that a film is unlike anything he's ever seen before without hyperbole, but I believe it applies here.
The film got a lot of flak for its use of comic-book visual sfx and video-game bleepboops, but if those guilty of complaining looked beyond the perceived gimmickry they would notice that the film employs this stuff really, really skillfully. It's not just a random assortment of visual gags for a laugh. Every single shot in this movie, without exception, has been planned out and thought through carefully. The POWs and SMACKs and BLAMs aren't simply incidental.
It could have been one hundred percent halfassed. If Edgar didn't know what he was doing, the film could have been an absolute mess. But as it stands, it's a brilliantly built piece of film. And, 'sides, it's damn entertaining.
(re: "And now I add yet another Special Jury Prize. Oh, I'm the first to agree this has grown absurd.")
Oh, Roger...you're hilarious :P
P.S. ("Next year I will simply issue a list of 30 good films.") Sounds great to me! :)
P.P.S. :p What in hell was people's problem with simply an alphabetical top 20 and a ton of honorable mentions/categories after?!? That worked for me so well! If the point is to crown 10 worthy movies in a year of 100s you're gonna miss a lot of films - if the point on the other hand (as you've correctly indicated) is to showcase the films you love, who can put a number to that? I know I can't!
Now here's a funny thing...I don't think SCOTT PILGRIM is the best film of the year or decade (as my most prevalent PSU professor believes). I'm not a fanboy. I didn't love the movie with orgasmic intensity.
That being said I'm struck by the person who said: "I don't know how Scott Pilgrim "expanded the language of cinema" as so many fanboys keep saying. Sure, it had a really cool editing trick in the first act where the two protagonists share a continuous conversation over a bunch of locations at a bunch of different times, but the film was sloppy and stupid once it got to the evil exes.
Scott learns nothing from any of his battles and none of the battles leads to the next. You could show the fight scenes from the middle hour of the movie in pretty much any order without gaining or losing any meaning. Every single one of the fight scenes is utterly meaningless. They do NOTHING. If you cut all of them except the first evil ex and the last evil ex, the movie would lose no plot.
Plus, while the fight scenes are indeed wonderfully filmed, there is never a single ounce of tension in them. It's Michael Cera fighting and so no matter how well choreographed it is, it's still goofy. I don't for a second think there is even the slightest chance of real injury to him, so the fights become extremely monotonous, in addition to being irrelevant to the narrative.
The first half hour is rather charming and I liked that Pilgrim was a total lurp. It was realistic and a new angle, then the dumb, dumb, DUMB action movie kicked in. And I say this as a guy who thinks Shaun of the Dead is one of the top 3 zombie films ever made."
... I don't know where to begin. The POINT of the movie, it seemed to me, was that Scott didn't need to beat any evil ex's or do anything but be himself and so the pretty, weird, vaguely bisexual multi-hair-colored (young Kate Winslet in ETERNAL SUNSHINE...?) girl liked hm for himself. That was THE POINT! (Sorry, if you didn't like the movie you didn't like the movie but at least understand what the movie is doing before you dislike it)
It really disappoints me to see "Inception" listed so frequently, and "Enter the Void" listed so infrequently.
Nolan is a gifted director, but I found "Inception" to be a bloated mess, which never gets past the necessary explanation of why any of the characters are putting themselves in danger--and who are all of these people!? It's got some neat gimmicks and plot devices, a capable lead, and a massive special-effects budget, so it was mostly watchable--perhaps even enjoyable--but the concept of turning ones inner-psyche into an action film is silly. I'm sorry, but my dreams do not involve having gun battles with strangers in the mountains. I left the theater entirely confused and without any explanation that would have redeemed the film.
Meanwhile, "Enter the Void" dealt with similar themes, and was also a bloated mess. However, it was bold and original filmmaking, where Noe uses his expensive special effects in genuinely innovative ways, all in the name of unique cinematic storytelling methods. Most importantly, despite some shock tactics, gratuitous explicit sex, and mediocre acting, the film shows Noe's gift for humanizing his terribly flawed characters. Perhaps most importantly, exploring ones mind and finding a pool of memories and thoughts about trauma and sex and regret and more sex is something that I can believe. I left the theater entirely confused yet even more exhilarated at the incredible cinematic experience that was "Enter the Void."
Gratuitous gun battles with anonymous characters lose out to gratuitous sex with anonymous characters 10 times out of 10.
Animal Kingdom is a must see.
Why make these lists before True Grit and Blue Valentine are even released?
Now that's more like it! After two years of non-ranked lists of many titles, it's great to have a list like this from you. I much prefer this format for Best of Year lists because your last two retrospectives seemed to say, "Here's a bunch of stuff I liked", whereas a ranked list of ten movies says, "These were the movies that most excelled this year". Not only that, but out of the ten movies you've chosen - and I've seen them all - there isn't a single one I don't have admiration, or even love, for.
It's especially nice to see movies mentioned that were excellent, but have been largely under-appreciated by other critics, such as "Never Let Me Go", "The American", "The Ghost Writer" and "Secretariat".
But I have to disagree with you on "Another Year". It opened not too long after "The Social Network" here in the UK, and at the time I was still buzzing from the three times I had seen that movie. I love many of Mike Leigh's movies, especially "Secrets and Lies", "Vera Drake" and "Topsy-Turvy", but his last two focused on lead characters that were so inarticulate, over-excited and frankly quite stupid that I found them hard to endure.
I liked "Another Year" more than the insufferable "Happy-Go-Lucky", but then that's probably because Leigh wisely chooses to devote considerable screen time to the sympathetic characters played by Ruth Sheen and Jim Broadbent. They may not be the most sophisticated creatures ever to appear in a movie, but at least they're kind, a little wiser and a little more eloquent than Lesley Manville's character. It's when she took center stage that the movie fell apart for me. Whereas during "Social Network" I felt I had to pay full attention in order to keep up with how fast the lead characters' brains operated, during "Another Year" I felt the tedium of always being five steps ahead of the lead character. We always know what she's going to do before she does it, and what she's going to think and feel, to the extent that we lose our patience. It's not just that she wears her emotions on her sleeve, but the way in which she is portrayed is so obvious that it makes it impossible for the actress to create a third dimension. For example, we know exactly what she is going to attempt with another character late in the movie long before they even meet on screen, which made their drawn-out, monosyllabic conversation when they finally do meet seem to be carrying on truly endlessly.
Now, I'm not complaining about the slow pacing. I count "Never Let Me Go", "Somewhere", "The American" and "The Ghost Writer" among my favorites of the year. What did bother me was that the movie chose to devote more time to a transparent, predictable and quite annoying dimwit (no disrespect to Lesley Manville, who does all she can. To paraphrase your review of last year's "The Lovely Bones", this is all Leigh's fault) than on the considerably less irritating characters surrounding her. I would have liked the film a lot more if it had chosen to follow for example Imelda Staunton's character, who disappointingly disappears after a few minutes, and her relationship to Gerri. You could argue that the movie sees Manville's character clearly for who she is, and she just happens to be that way, but that's a poor excuse for the film operating at her level for so much of its running time.
However, having said all that, the movie's redeeming feature is that it does also develop Sheen and Broadbent's storylines, ensuring that, unlike in "Happy-Go-Lucky", the lead lunatic doesn't completely take over the asylum. Again, this is not to knock Sally Hawkins, who was very good in "Made in Dagenham" and "NLMG", and also her brief appearance in "An Education" last year.
I doubt you have much interest in seeing yet another reader's top ten of the year, but I can't stop myself! There are several movies I still need to see (especially "Rabbit Hole", me being a big fan of Nicole Kidman's), and the list looks almost like a copycat of yours, but here goes:
1. The Social Network - It's a little tiresome to constantly see this movie criticized for not being completely true to the facts. It's not a documentary, it's a splendidly written, hypnotic drama based on a true story.
2. Inception - Nolan is the only director I can think of who is able to make personal movies this challenging on this large a scale that appeal to such a broad audience.
3. Black Swan - What happens on screen may sound ridiculous on paper, but the movie puts us firmly and terrifyingly in the p.o.v. of someone who actually believes she sees these things happen, so try telling HER that.
4. The Secret in Their Eyes - I just can't get that ending out of my mind.
5. Never Let Me Go - So confident, so restrained, so devastating.
6. Somewhere - Like an even more low-key companion piece to "Lost in Translation", and I mean that in the best possible sense. Sofia Coppola is incapable of making movies I don't like.
7. Shutter Island - People can call it minor Scorsese all they like, but this is one slick and polished genre piece, and like all the best horror movies it's eerie, ominous, disturbing and sinister rather than just graphic and brutal.
8. The Ghost Writer - This movie made me feel like I feel when I see a good musical or western, like I'm watching an extinct art form flicker back to life.
9. Toy Story 3 - Pixar continues its routine of churning out a miraculous movie a year as if it were nothing.
10. Beautiful Kate - Heartbreaking.
I am shocked that Conviction with Hilary Swank was not mentioned.
Do readers protest that you do not offer a Top 10 list the last few years? Or did they protest that you did not list a number one? I personally understand your hesitation and the inherent silliness of producing these ordinal lists. That being said, maybe a compromise that makes sense in future years is to declare your choice for #1 ... really the only place on the list that matters (and probably the easiest one for you to come up with - given the notion of "elevation"), and list the others alphabetically.
Ebert: I've never made a list that somebody didn't complain about.
Great list. Nice to see "Io Sono L'Amore" there, it's a great film that should get its well-deserved recognition. On a personal note, I'd add "Toy Story 3" (which is my personal #1 film of the year) and "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World", which I thought was terrific. Just a bit curious about why they didn't make the cut for you, Mr. Ebert. I feel that, years from now, "Scott Pilgrim" and "The Social Network" will remind us of the time that they were made on. Kudos to that.
It's funny how, looking back during this award season, it wasn't such a bad year for film. As an example, in the animated field, we had a very good amount of flicks to check out, namely "Tangled", "Despicable Me", "Summer Wars", and at the very top, "How to Train Your Dragon" and "Toy Story 3". But, of course, only three will get recognition from the Academy. That goes to prove the subjectivity of end-of-the-year, top-of-everything lists.
Dear Mr. Ebert,
Thank you so much for putting The Ghost Writer on your annual list this year. I was both shocked and saddened to discover that despite all its acclaim, it has been overlooked by most of the major critics groups as well as the Hollywood Foreign Press. It is by far Polanski's best film in years and shining example for the thriller genre. I've seen the film now 3 times and each time the end is drawing near and a major revelation is about to show itself, my knees get weak and butterflies suddenly invade my stomach because of how effective and skillful of a sequence it is! It is for those such moments and feelings that I strive for when I see a film and The Ghost Writer certainly evokes those and other similar emotions throughout its entire runtime. I can only hope it won't be completely forgotten come Oscar time.
Best,
Frank C.
Thank you for the great list, Mr. Ebert.
I have seen The Social Network, Inception, The Secret in Their Eyes, and The Kids Are All Right, and greatly admired all of them. The Social Network was the best movie I saw this year (though I do not see nearly as many movies as you do). I didn't think there was a weak performance in that film- Jesse Eisenberg was wonderful, of course, but I also think that Andrew Garfield and Armie Hammer deserve recognition.
I wasn't sure whether The Secret in Their Eyes counted as a 2010 film, but I am glad to see it on your list. I saw it while I was in New York this summer (because unfortunately very few foreign-language films ever play in my hometown), and was so glad that I did. The scene in the soccer stadium was truly extraordinary.
I am actually going to see Black Swan this afternoon, and I look forward to seeing all of the other films on your list.
I have to ask this about the american: what scene ar you refering to? I've noticed the phrase about "Mr. Buterfily" in your initial review and I didn't get it so I've searched the internet and found some discussion and it seemed that nobody did get it. Si maybe you can be a little more explicit abot that, or maybe one of the readers who got it can explain it to me.
P.S. Sorry about the language I'm not a native english speaker.
I'm surprised to see Black Swan listed as #3 when you gave it 3-1/2 stars. Other films ranked below Black Swan were given 4 stars. Example: 127 Hours
I saw "the social network" last night and found it quite fascinating. I thought that the character of Zuckerberg was a classic Asperger's "genius" type. Unable to navigate the social world yet still aware of it's importance on his quality of life. Being accused of all manner of nonsense motives by the normal folks who can't grasp that he honestly doesn't grasp in spite of being brilliant, so they excoriate him. With pride and skill and that Asperger's nature of bloody mindedness, he perseveres and manages a feat of intellect and creativity that leaves us all bewildered.
For me, Facebook has allowed me to reconnect to my family in a way that was impossible in conventional ways. Being Asperger's myself, I've experienced that strange habit of people to go completely illogical and lose their tempers at me for reasons that are completely opaque to me. I fail horribly at meeting the social expectations and interaction requirements and so get pushed out. With Facebook, I've been able to virtually eavesdrop on lives I would otherwise miss, and in turn the knowlege this gives me about my family's lives allows me to fake the level of connection others take for granted. Suddenly I seem to care as much as I have always cared but didn't show outwardly. I don't have to try and figure out how to ask people for those little daily nuggets of life, they post it on their status and discuss further with others and myself, allowing me access to that personal information without the awkwardness that comes when I ask inappropriate questions. I just don't know what's inappropriate, that's all there is to it! Having others therefor volunteer what they want me to know without expecting me to draw it out, is a miracle.
Thanks Mark, you might be "an asshole" but you've done us all a lot of good!
What a great list of movies this year. I spit (maybe not) on those jaded reviewers who see a decline in movie making. My God, movie making its on a tremendous upward trajectory.
Think about it: The moving picture is about 100 years old and we still don't know what to expect (positively) when we go to the movies. There is still creativity in the stories. For the younger set, technology enthralls them. This is a boom time.
Rent all of Roger's picks and above all, go to the movies and experience them on the big screen. At $10 a pop movies are an entertainment steal.
Is "The Tree of Life" going to make the 2010 deadline in one of those NY/LA release strategies?
Anybody?
A nitpick you hate but that I bring up because it is pretty obvious:
You gave Black Swan only 3 and a half stars but you named it the third best of the year? The Kids are Allright, Solitary Man and Greenburg also got 3 and a half. So why are they on the list?
If you feel that they are 4 star movies, you should upgrade their ratings on your website reviews.
Ebert: Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
My favorite movie of the year is Black Swan, but I completely adore every other one on your list. Though I'm curious about your thoughts on the Derek Cianfrance film, "Blue Valentine" ? It premiered at sundance last january, and will debut in theaters on December 31st, so it technically won't be allowed in next year's list. But I was just curious because it's getting rave reviews and I figured maybe you'd have seen it and liked it.
Mr Ebert, have you not seen ENTER THE VOID. it is a true cinematic experience, and i do believe that it is a much more audacious film than Inception.
1) Inception
2) Toy Story 3
3) The Book of Eli
4) The Ghost Writer
5) The Kids Are All Right
6) Scott Pilgrim v. the World
7) The Town
8) 127 Hours
9) Greenberg
10) The Social Network (Andrew Garfield in the year's best performance)
Movies I loved (not necessarily in the following order):
1. Book of Eli
2. Despicable Me
3. The King's Speech
4. Inception
5. For Colored Girls
And an honorable mention to Frankie & Alice, a fascinating true story with a riveting performance by Halle Berry.
@Norman: I would submit that this is the worst year in film since 1988, cynicism aside. Granted there's no accounting for taste. But my opinion is based on the following criteria: I took my own personal favorite top 10s (going back to 1981) and compared them to this year's top 10 (I have seen 85% of the films that are being discuseed above, a couple have not been releaased yet). Every single year had more quality films than this year (in my opinion). Almost all of the 21 films Roger Ebert mentioned (sans the 3 I have not seen) were good. But this is the first year when I had to struggle to find truly "great" films in my top 10. Sorry, but it really has been a weak year in film. In fact, 2000-2010 (2000 and 2007 aside) was a weak decade (compared to the 1990s). And there are some objective reasons for that, including the fall of the independent studios and subs of the major studios that arose in the 1990s.
Great list. I was especially glad to see Black Swan on there. For my money, it was the most beautiful and thrilling moviegoing experience of the year. So many movies that are released are so artless and have so little impact, that when one comes along that utilizes every single resource of cinema to such powerful impact, it can't be ignored. At times, it made me feel like there wasn't even a barrier between me and the film. The screen didn't exist and I was simply experiencing it. It was... perfect. :)
Yes, lists are pointless, but they're admittedly fun. Mine:
1. Black Swan
2. The Social Network
3. Inception
4. The Kids Are All Right
5. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
6. 127 Hours
7. Toy Story 3
8. Let Me In
9. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
10. Monsters
I gotta say, I didn't think it was too great of a year for movies either, but the ones that were good were REALLY good and made quite an impact.
I still need to see The King's Speech, Blue Valentine, Rabbit Hole, True Grit and a few others as I'm sure at least one of those will make my top ten.
Side note: This is my first time commenting on your website, but I'm always impressed by how thoughtful and respectful the blog responses are. Usually internet forums are annoying and downright nasty at times. I enjoy reading all of the interesting responses and opinions from thoughtful posters on this site!
No Get Low? Robert Duvall, Bill Murray, and even Sissy Spacek were all incredible, and I thought it was aesthetically very solid as well.
There are two weeks left to the year.
Hopefully, Roger, you'll like TRUE GRIT so much you kick #6 down to the minors.
I walked out of a movie in the middle of it for the first time in my life, this year. Guess which one it was? Loud, talky, ugly, and not even a fraction as smart as it thinks it is.
Maybe it got really good during its second hour. I'll never know nor ever care.
The architecture of dreams? Really? Who dreams in crystal-clear IMAX CGI?
Who?
@Norman: I would submit that this is the worst year in film since 1988, cynicism aside. Granted there's no accounting for taste. But my opinion is based on the following criteria: I took my own personal favorite top 10s (going back to 1981) and compared them to this year's top 10 (I have seen 85% of the films that are being discuseed above, a couple have not been releaased yet). Every single year had more quality films than this year (in my opinion). Almost all of the 21 films Roger Ebert mentioned (sans the 3 I have not seen) were good. But this is the first year when I had to struggle to find truly "great" films in my top 10. Sorry, but it really has been a weak year in film. In fact, 2000-2010 (2000 and 2007 aside) was a weak decade (compared to the 1990s). And there are some objective reasons for that, including the fall of the independent studios and subs of the major studios that arose in the 1990s.
A dry, alphabetical list of 30 would be much less fun, Roger. Here's an idea: how about creating a living, changing list of films that reflects your thought process of putting together such a thing? That way, people could watch and comment or complain as your list nears its final iteration!
What about A PROPHET?
Great list Mr. Ebert! While we are happy to trip over technicalities, how about adding "Metropolis" to the list? Fritz Lang's epic - and my favorite film - returned to the screen in glorious fashion. It certainly made my list for the year! Cheers, Gary
Why is it that you have not seen Scott Pilgrim Vs The World!??!
Love you Roger! But you didn't mention Toy Story:(
Roger wrote in his post/article: "For some time now, I've noticed that every dream I awaken from involves a variation of me urgently trying to return somewhere...."
Youth? Probably not.
desmond palmerL: "Why make these lists before True Grit and Blue Valentine are even released?"
Because newspapers, originally, and all media since, want to print "best of the year" lists before the end of the year, and pay people to write them so they can publish them that way. They do this because many people wish to read them before the end of the year. Why do people wish this? Ask enough people.
Note Roger Ebert's 2008 list was published on December 5, 2008.
2007 on December 20, 2007.
Etc., for each year he's been working, each year almost every working critic published in the mass media, or otherwise following tradition, this practice has been followed for at least the last half of the twentieth century and since, and goes back distinctly further.
Mark: "THE SOCIAL NETWORK is a better film that INCEPTION period."
For you.
Ok, so THE FIGHTER earns an alphabetical place around the top to middle of my earlier posted list and here's why: it's inspiring in all of the things it does that most boxing movies don't do. This isn't a film about A boxer nor is it a film about two boxers...it's a film about a family and about the supporting characters at its heart who uplift and are uplifted by "Irish" Mickey Ward. Dicky (Christian Bale in an Oscar-worthy performance) is a demon-haunted soul, gaunt, frenzied, a wild-eyed jackal in the beginning and the unpredictable but serene and focused zen master by the end. He is the magnetic personality without whom there would be no film. Is the film "starring" Mark Wahlberg? Sure but it's an ensemble effort. What about Melissa Leo - so Machiavellian and tunnel visioned as the business-minded mother? Or Amy Adams as the wonderfully sweet and supportive bartender girlfriend? Or for that matter Jack McGee as the surprisingly levelheaded father/stepfather. This is a kinda wonderful film - Roger, I could scarcely disagree more
Roger: "9. "Kids Are All Right" There are ways to read that title...."
Including with a ""The" at the beginning. :-)
"...thee particular kids are all right...."
"These particular kids," I suspect.
Why, yes, I've been a professional copyeditor, line editor, and proof reader. Why do you ask? :-)
This has been an awful year for movies. Of course, most of the films on Mr. Ebert's list are not without merit. "The American" was very good (though it strains with pretentiousness at times), "The Social Network" is an expertly made film and a fine character study (though it is not a masterpiece on the "Citizen Kane" level, as some unobservant reviewers have suggested), and "Inception" was fascinating but burdened by a video-gamishness I disliked even more upon a second viewing. "Hereafter" was, to my mind, Eastwood's weakest film in years, and one that plays too easily into the hands of zealots eager to continue their relentless assault upon the very real progress made in secular societies. When it comes down to it, this has been a year of parts rather than wholes. No mainstream film I have seen this year is one I would call a wonderfully realized artistic whole. Come to think of it, few mainstream films I have seen this year could be called artistic in any sense of the word. It has been a year plagued by one repulsive offering of filmic offal after another.
I'm afraid the exaltation of perishable masscult pablum in cinema circles has reached absurd levels. Surely many of you vastly overrate a mere trifle like "Toy Story 3." In fact, I am perplexed by the clamor over Mr. Ebert's felicitous review of the film. It was a pleasantly fun animated feature, but nothing more. Three stars was an appropriate rating, even somewhat gracious, I think. As for the cultist championing of "Scott Pilgrim," a few words are in order to set things straight. "Scott Pilgrim" was perhaps the best mainstream comedy of the summer (clearly superior to banal trash like "The Other Guys," "Sex and the City 2," and "Grown Ups"), but the competition could have been easily bested by any writer and director with half a brain. "Scott Pilgrim" was endued with a lot of energy, visual style, and rapid-fire "in" dialogue. This is all compelling, but only up to a point. After a while, the stylized, arty shell of the film begins to crack, exposing the hollowness within. It's like a magnificently wrapped Christmas package, all ribbons and bows and curlicues, without anything inside. I appreciated the quick, clever editing, and I suppose it is fascinating material for a student interested in writing a paper about cinematic pastiche or postmodern hybridity, but it is not a movie worthy of the hosannas being spewed by gamers, comic book buffs, and intellectually limited hipsters. I'm afraid we live in a time when too many among us mistake stylization and arresting visuals for art with a capital A. Exhilarating CGI and artful flourishes don't add up to art anymore than they add up to a good movie. (Examples: "300," "The Spirit," "Avatar," "Tron: Legacy.")
I am sure Mr. Ebert has more important things to do than to worry about his star rating of an animated children's film and a missed screening of a hip fantasy for teens. Now, having said all that, I must say that I am still awaiting some of the foreign films on Mr. Ebert's list. Only after watching these can I hope to make a fully informed adjudication of the year's best. As it stands, my picks are few, but I believe a few more good ones are headed this way.
What is with the circle jerk over Toy Story 3 and why is everyone so butt hurt you left it off your list? For one, it is precisely the three-star endeavor you rated it, mining some deeper depths then How To Train Your Dragon but not as accomplished an overall film. Furthermore, why is it everyones job to monitor your list? "Why isn't Toy Story 3 on here? How could you put a movie you rated three-and-a-half stars at number three while you put other four-star rated films below it?" You would think your readers were all members of the list police.
Hi Mr. Ebert,
Always look forward to this list. It's always interesting to see what you pick and read everybody else weigh in with 'spot ons' and 'you're crazies'... my favorite movie of the year was THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT. Great writing, great acting, and really socially relevant. I thought the preview looked hokey so I was surprised to be so moved by it, and to crack up so much.
I really liked THE SOCIAL NETWORK, RESTREPO, WINTER'S BONE and GHOST WRITER, and I didn't care for BLACK SWAN or 127 HOURS much. That's my two cents.
Good luck with the new show. It looks like you picked a couple of smart critics who will provide fresh points of view. I dig it.
I can't really remember right now the few I saw, but I'm going to make a list based on capitalization of spontaneity, which is kind of more about certain moments and its elements:
1. I Am Love (powerful cut to black, drowning-out music etc.)
2. Scott Pilgrim vs the World (set-up then intensity of music numbers, fight scenes etc.)
3. Restrepo (It was real! Real Afghanistan combat)
4. The Secret in their Eyes (soccer stadium scene; steady cam comes from space, follows through crowd, gets tricked into a beating in the restroom then jumps off a ledge!)
5. Let Me In (Vampire kills; set-up w/static camera shots and then explosive)
I HATED "Somewhere". I hated Greenberg too, but I understand it making the list. But Somewhere... ughhhhh
Dear Ebert, you wrote:
"The tension in the film is between Zuckerberg and the Winklevoss twins, who may well have invented Facebook for all I know, but are traditional analog humans motivated by pride and possessiveness."
My problem is that the Winklevoss twins are less human beings and more archetypes, near-stereotypes, that are so interchangeable they almost serve Sorkin as comic relief. Where's the tension?
If anything the tension would be between Mark and Eduardo. Sadly I just don't buy it. Is it really a story of betrayal when there is no loyalty in the first place? Am I supposed to care about the "betrayal" just because the film told me the characters are friends but never even bothered to show glimpses of that "friendship". I mean, from the first scenes it is obvious these people have nothing in common -- flashforward -- surprise! they have nothing in common!
Why is Eduardo friends with this man who so clearly envies him? That first scene is great, but why was the girl his girlfriend in the first place when they seem so incompatible?
And yes, the dialogue is fast and sometimes witty but that does not make for good dialogue. The self-aware use of the word "friend" and the tied-in-a-bow "you're an asshole -- no, you're not, you're just trying so hard to be" feel more like the work of a writer writing than a storyteller.
So even though the performances are very good, the characters are just that, characters in a plot, all serving the writer's purpose. Like the twins, Eduardo and Sean Parker are nothing but opposite archetypes at both sides of Eisenberg's Zuckerberg. Take the very uninteresting dinner meeting where the dynamic between the three is so painfully obvious that the events afterwards are predictable at best. There's no subtlety, no complexity.
As for the legal procedural structure, it adds nothing dramatically to the narrative. It might as well have been written linearly and edited as flashbacks.
Watching this film was like watching a screenplay being directed with good performances... not like a great story, greatly told with great characters.
Oh well, it looks like I'm in the minority. It looks like I alone am the minority.
Hello Roger,
It is a very interesting list and I have not seen many of them because they haven't been released out here in Australia. But I was wondering if you were planning to review 'Animal Kingdom'. It is one of the most compelling Australian films in year and I was surprised to not find it on your site. I'd like to here your opinion of the film.
Roger, have you seen Peter Weir's "The Way Back"? I'm very interested in this movie since I'm a huge Weir fan and it's been seven years since "Master and Commander" Did you consider it unworthy of making the list, or you simply didn't have a chance to catch it yet?
Sincerely
JD
"For some time now, I've noticed that every dream I awaken from involves a variation of me urgently trying to return somewhere by taking a half-remembered way through streets and buildings."
When I read this, I thought for a minute to try to remember if I could recall if my own dreams are like that. I was unsure. I leafed through my 'dream log' I've kept for the past few years and read over some old entries, and realized that a large majority of my dreams do indeed fit that description! Funny how I've just never thought of it that way. Brilliant insight!
Thanks for giving "The American" a shout-out. I found it to be a quiet, slow, yet completely involving piece of filmmaking that had more in common with European cinema than Hollywood. Plus, it was nice to see a flick this year that was aimed directly for adults who needed a break from explosions and dick jokes.
I predict (with a modicum of hope) that 20 years from now, The American will be looked upon as a classic thriller in the same vein as Day of the Jackal and Le Samourai.
It disappoints me greatly that North American audiences are so focused on plot and plotting, and spoon-fed resolutions, that when something as intelligent, challenging and character-driven as The American comes out it actually makes so many people angry! Perhaps I sound like a snob but I was mesmerized and fascinated by it, and thought it was a brilliant and daring performance by Clooney.
Why did you switch back to using a numbered list? Last year and 2008 you just listed the 10-20 favorite movies and then one way or another designated your favorite. Isn't that easier than deciding which one is #4 and which is #5? Not to mention, isn't it a little bit truer too? I mean, do you really think Black Swan is better than I Am Love?
Hehe..."Good list, Roger"...like, "Good opinion, I approve buuuut, what about..."
Love your list as usual. I saw Winter's Bone after reading your review and was excited to see such a great female lead in a wonderful story. My family is from WV and the characters in that movie are as you say exact and so true to what many people are living in rural communities. I also loved The Secret in Their Eyes due to the wonderful acting and great story. I don't always agree with your reviews but I want to thank you for the many that have inspired me to see great films such as the 2 I mentioned here that I might not have seen unless you had written about them.
Somebody just recently posted they like the idea of a living, changing list reflecting your ever adapting thought process as you go forward...I like this idea and have, in a sense, done this (one of the benefits of maintaining a blog and not working for anyone to do it)... When I make lists of my favorite films of the year, if I see something new that qualifies I add it later and I almost never change my opinion about a film once I've seen it...I will sometimes like films better but rarely worse after more than one viewing... This works for me. Why not you?
Hi Roger. Naive rookie question: is there a best place to get a list of all of the 2010 movies, from which to make a "best of" determination?
Ebert: http://bit.ly/hr7u9y
"Inception" was fascinating but burdened by a video-gamishness I disliked even more upon a second viewing.
Hmmm, Oliver, I had a different reaction upon a second viewing.
I saw 3 movies in 2010 that intrigued me enough to walk out to the ticket booth, buy a ticket to the next show, and see them a second time immediately. They were Inception, The Book of Eli, and Love and Other Drugs.
From my back-to-back viewings I got this:
1. Inception: Not only did I understand the dream layers better on second viewing, but I understood that the emotional heart of the movie comes from paying attention to the first Inception. The one where Cobb plants a thought in Mal's mind. Follow that, and it's a deeper movie. (click on my name for my expanded thoughts on Inception)
2. The Book of Eli: I watched to see if the early parts of the movie are consistent with the twist ending, and not a fake out. It is consistent. It works. You're watching a deeper movie if you know the ending.
3. Love and Other Drugs: second viewing showed me that it's a movie principally about Jaime, not Maggie. Sure, Maggie's Parkinson's is a compelling story element. But her disease is an element in his story, which is a journey toward a meaningful life. Plus, I thought they had great chemistry. Just me.
I recommend second viewings. Immediately if possible, on ocassion.
(SPOILERS for "Toy Story 3" and "Social Network")
Since "The Social Network" is a clear #1, I can't be accused of influencing the vote by posting an analysis of the screenplay by a favorite of mine, John Truby. Truby says that Hollywood movies are rigidly defined by "genre" and the best screenwriters take some from "Genre A" and some from "Genre Horror" and some from "Myth" to create great screenplays that carry us rapidly through the plot, while adding texture and character.
Truby: How to write an Oscar script
... Aaron Sorkin faced a very different set of challenges when he adapted the book "The Accidental Billionaires" by Ben Mezrich.
First he had to make a true story dramatic. Events in real life rarely have the dramatic density and punch of fiction, especially when the events involve the formation of a business. Second, the actual events of the building of Facebook suggest a rise story, with no fall, a story shape that has no plot.
(This is actually an important observation. If someone tells you a story, and it has an excessive amount of "dramatic density," it's probably fiction, not history.)
Sorkin's third major challenge was a main character who was guilty of massive theft and betrayal. No one in the audience wants to identify with a thief (though they may want this much success), or see such a person accomplish his goal. So the writer is left with a character who is at most clinically interesting to the audience, much like a strange beast in the zoo.
The main technique Sorkin used to solve these challenges is the Story Frame, a technique found in a vast number of true stories because it allows the writer to solve the form's biggest restriction, which is the anti-dramatic sequence of true events.
The frame is provided by the depositions. Like most frames, the depositions are the chronological endpoint of the story. They are the story equivalent of a trial, or battle, which allows Sorkin a natural funnel point toward which all plot events build. The frame also lets Sorkin cut out the boring (mundane) but necessary steps of building a business in real time.
In the "thriller genre" the hero is placed under constant attack and increasing pressure as he goes after his goal. Like the story frame, this genre combination creates a vortex in which events assault the viewer at a faster and faster pace.
Sorkin largely overcomes his biggest challenge, the repellant hero, using a structural technique that is both rare and risky: Sorkin turns the hero into the opponent, and the ally, Eduardo, into the hero. Instead of trying to create sympathy for a bad guy, Sorkin changes the focus of the story to the question: will the bad guy lose the deposition and have to pay the people he cheated? Eduardo literally tells the second half of the story, making him the hero, and he gains the audience's sympathy because he has so clearly been wronged.
... One of the main ways you connect character to plot to theme is with the story's desire line. Desire is one of the seven major structure steps, and it provides the "clothesline" on which to hang the... (end)
Truby then posts an ad for his favorite screenplay "Toy Story 3":
The ending is where this film surpasses the other potential nominees and highlights the most advanced techniques of the screenwriting craft. The characters have all returned home, but they are divided as they have been throughout the film. The other toys go into the attic box; Woody is in the box that Andy will take to college. Woody... sacrifices his love for Andy so he can rejoin the community of his friends. Andy becomes Wendy, the adult saying goodbye, while Woody, Buzz and the other fabulous toys are the Peter Pan that will always remain young. The pain is bittersweet, and there isn't a dry eye in the house.
That is what great screenwriting is all about, and what I hope the Academy screenwriters will celebrate this year when they cast their vote. (end)
Another point: the third entry in a franchise is extremely difficult to write. Creating a strong desire line for the protagonists, and an emotional ending, is something to be rewarded.
I don't see how Social Network makes it to number 1. Good movie, but not best picture of the year. On top of that swap inception and 127 hours. way too many holes in inception - it's overblown and lacks focus. while 127 hours is a simple, tight little film with an outstanding performance. so simple, yet says so much about the human spirit.
the kids are all right, again, liked it a lot, but top 10, don't think so.
loved "i am love."
Yeah...uh... I only got to watch 2 of those - Inception and Hereafter. I don't know about Hereafter though. I did like that film, but I feel like it was poorly constructed. Like they cut away too much in the editing room. But Eastwood may have wanted us to imagine the rest. But I feel like it was all jumbled up with the 3 stories happening. The emotions were there. Well anyway, it sucks that 90% of those were not even in the commercials.
Hey, how come Salt wasn't on there. Not that I think it was a great film because I haven't seen it but you rated it 4 stars.
My list:
1) The Social Network - Works on every cylindar from screenplay to cinematography to ensemble performances to direction; a perfect film where each line carries itself as a timeless quote and reflects the cultural lifestyle of America (arguably the world) but still intimatly portrays the obsession of one young individual with no regard for anyone but an end goal that even he knows will never be attained as long as there is technology to discover. THE BEST FILM IN YEARS!!!!
2) The Ghost Writer - the best Hitchcockian film to never be made Alfred Hitchcock; absolutely engrossing; the ending is practically unpredicable and admired for its cleverness. I always wanted to know what was coming next.
3) The Kids Are Alright - A stripped, no glam look at a typical family with two kids; so what if the parents are lesbians. That's besides the point. Bottom line they are parents trying their best even when a third party wants in on the fun. They still have the same problems and crises we all have and that's what is so admirable.
4) Toy Story 3 - a film that never, ever even teeters on the edge of melodrama, but it will still make you laugh, cry and utterly convince you that toys do have a spirit and actually exist beyond whatever you believed in Santa Claus. St. Nick has got nuthin' on Woody, Buzz and the whole gang.
5) Inception - There's been nothing like this concept to ever appear on screen. A layer upon layer story that ranks up there with films like 12 Monkeys, A Clockwork Orange, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey. A film always deserving of another viewing and then another one after that.
6) Winter's Bone - Raw, to the point and never obligated to impress. Here is a film of sheer will with a "do what I have to do" performance from Jennifer Lawrence; her performance never compromises for the camera
7) How To Train Your Dragon - Once the viewer gets past the craziness of the opening scene, we are welcomed into a film about a boy and his dog...I mean dragon. Here is proof that most animated actors these days are even more worthy than the real life people we so often have to endure in our modern day films.
8) Get Him To The Greek - How an honest comedy should be made. More often people simply get on our nerves....long before we ever witness their sincerity and personal weaknesses. Fortunately, the comedy of Russell Brand, Sean Combs, Rose Byrne and Jonah Hill allow that to happen and as a result we are treated to a really fun time at the movies. The first biggest surprise of the summer blockbuster season. An absolute raunch fest and one of the best ones out there.
9) Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time - That's right. This is one terrific adventure without the 3-D. Snakes, sandstorms, ostriches and rooftop chases abound over a MacGuffin in the form of some hourglass that reverses time. This is bare knuckle adventure at its best. It deserved better more attention.
10) Daybreakers - A truly interesting concept where life must go on even if you are one of the dead. It does not hit its schlockey, jokey, gory side until it shows you how much respect it has for its own subject matter first.
Most Utterly Disappointing Movie Of The Year: Iron Man 2 - I knew it at 30 minutes into the film. To much dialogue, not enough Iron Man and ironically the ending was filled to the brim with not one but two Iron Men fighting a whole army of Iron Men. Here was a film defeated by its own expectations to be the next Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Batman all rolled into one and all we got was $10.00 less at the movies and a "Could it be?" dying Tony Stark who drinks, eats hamburgers and stares at Scarlett Johansson's chest and ass. (I was staring too as there was nothing else to see on the screen.)
Dear Roger,
I've heard 'Kids Are Alright' is a remake of the French film by Olivier Assayas' (Carlos, Demonlover, Clean, Irma Vep etc etc) very fine film 'Summer Hours'.
Is this true?
I loved Summer Hours - happy to watch it again some time, which is why I bought it.
it
However I'm really not sure about watching an American remake, unless it's really only the concept they've used, and the characters and story are different.
What say you, Roger?
I've been reading you for years and generally agree with your reviews. You have helped shape my movie viewing, and more importantly, have help me see the many layers some films have. I watch movies now with a wider lens. My deepest respects to you. Bryn
Thank you Logan. Not many seem to share your opinion. I did not think I would make it though "Inception". Never been so bored! The most overrated film since his Batman film.
Maybe the stars rating system is geared towards what others may get out of it and this list is what Roger likes. Doesn't seem that big of a deal to me.
No Chinese films, no Portuguese films, no Thai or Russian or African films, no experimental films, not even a french film. As your writing grows in thought and style, your interest seem to have narrowly focused on the English language, and mostly American, films, and these tend to be fairly straightforward or in any case, with easy to swallow narratives and dramatics. This is not criticism--you are not required to be eclectic, to be a Rosenbaum or Brody, but it would be nice for you to give us a sense of why you lean this way and not that. Aren't you the one who once loved "Floating Weeds?"
Ebert: I still do, Mr. Tact. My best foreign film list is still to come. Thinking of limiting it to Chinese, Portuguese, Thai, Russian and African films that didn't open in North America. I have a feeling that entry will draw one only comment, from you, complaining that I selected the wrong Chinese, Portuguese, Thai, Russian and African films. I can only review the films that open here. I wrote 260 reviews last year. I'm running as fast as I can.
Thanks Roger
WELL HERE ARE MY THOUGHTS OVER THE MOVIES. OF 2010 ARE
I DON'T THINK SOCAIL NETWORK IS THE BEST CHOCIE. LIKED IT BUT ITS JUST A GOOD MOVIE I FALT THAT IT WAS KIND OF SLOW YES IT IS SWEET. I LIKE IT BUT NOT THE BEST CHOICE FOR ME. KIND OF SPIERD THAT YOU WOULD SAY IT YR FAVORITE MOVIE BECOUSE IT'S A TEENGER MOVIE. 2 THE OTHER MOVIES YOU HAD ON YR LIST SOME OF THEM I HAVE'T SEEN SO I CAN'T REALLY SAY. BUT I DO THINK IT WAS A GREAT YEAR FOR MOVIES. ALSO WANT TO SAY THAT I AM LIKE YOU I AM NOT THAT INTO SUMMER MOVIES YOU GET A LOT OF CRAP. HOWEVER I THINK IT WAS A GOOD SUMMER THIS YEAR.. HERE'S MY FAVORTE TOP 10 AND WOST 10 JOHN'S LIST FOR 2010
10 HERE AFTER PG-13
9 I LOVE YOU PHILLIP MORRIS R
8 DISPICIBLE ME PG
7 THE EDGE OF DRAKNESS R
6 DUE DATE R
5 SALT PG-13
4 SHE'S OUT OF MY LEAGULLY R
3 THE TOWN R
2 INCEPTION PG-13
MY BEST PICTURE 1
TRUE CRIT PG-13
WORST CHOICE 10 ARE
WORST 10 SHUTTER ISLAND R
WORST 9 EXORDINARY MESSARES R
WORST 8 MADEMUKE PG
WORST 7 THE BACK UP PLANE R
WORST 6 COP OUT R
WORST 5 SPLICE R
WORST 4 SEX IN THE CITY 2 R
WORST 3 EAT PRAY LOVE PG-13
WORST 2 CHARLIE ST CLOUND PG-13
MY WORST CHOCE IS KICK ASS R
Ebert: JOHN SPEAK IN SMALLER LETTERS.
Roger -- Please stop with the incessant ramblings about how silly it is to rank films. An alphabetical list of 30 good films will hold about as much interest as a silent fart. No one will know that it took place and it will stink up the joint.
It isn't that hard to rank films. Man up and make some decisions. Cut some good films. Include the ones you think will hold up. If we wanted an alphabetical list, we could search for your four star reviews. Big whoop!
You may know how much I respect you... How much I quote you on my site... How much I value your opinions. But this nonsense is boring and cowardly.
Rank them 1-10. Have your special jury prize. Stick in some runners-up if you want. But have the onions to stick to a Top 10 List. The fun is not in the mass inclusion... but the specific order and the exclusions.
Skipping the Top 10 is tantamount to having a regular season in Baseball and then calling it a year. "Ok guys... it was a good season. See you next year!"
It should be the easiest and most fun column of the year for you.
I'm surprised that in a year of really interesting documentaries, hardly anyone listed "Exit Through the Gift Shop" or "Prodigal Sons" or "Waiting for Superman" or "Catfish."
If all there was this year was the Black Swan then this year ranks very nicely. Role of a lifetime was absolutely nailed by Portman. Plus the movie was raw as hell. You'll never forget it.
I'm a pretty old guy and I know that our rememberances of the past are viewed with rose colored glasses. Ever go back and see those 'great' films. 90% don't live up to what we thought of them. Those great Orson Welles films? Boring. The Wizard of Oz? Still fabulous. Zorba? Trite.
I saw most of the films on Ebert's list and none was a stinker. And many that weren't on that list which the critics dinged were pretty good, like The Tourist. Ebert wanted Depp to be more like Cary Grant. Ugh.
If you aren't enjoying movies today I feel sorry for you. You are being too critical and not enjoying them for their specific genre. I do wish, however, that the producers of current movies took more time with the scripts and rehearsed more. But I still like them. $10 for a night out? Cheap.
Thank you for