Now, where was I?

The Movies of 2010

During the past year, I kept track of movies in two ways: 1) ticket stubs and 2) a spreadsheet that included the movie title, date when I saw it, IMDB link, my rating of the movie on IMDB, and where I saw it (specific theater, Netflix, rental, purchase, etc). This made it easier for me to come up with the rankings below. They are ordered by how good I think the movies actually were combined with how much I enjoyed them. For the most part, the better I think a movie is (objectively) the more I enjoy it. However, as in the case of Inception, a movie can have terrible flaws or tendencies but I can still love the hell out of it for other reasons.

So, here are my rankings of the movies released in 2010 that I actually saw:

1. The Social Network
2. Winter’s Bone
3. The King’s Speech
4. Black Swan
5. 127 Hours
6. True Grit
7. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
8. Inception
9. Toy Story 3
10. Greenberg

Biggest surprises: Inception being a disappointment, seeing my first Noah Baumbach movie, outstanding performances by Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone) and Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit)

Movies I still need to see that would possibly mess up the rankings above: A Prophet, The Kids Are All Right, Exit Through the Gift Shop, Enter the Void, Dogtooth, Mother, The Illusionist, The Ghost Writer

Favorite closing lines: “It was perfect” and “Oh, this is you”

Favorite performances: John Hawkes in Winter’s Bone and Natalie Portman in Black Swan

Favorite screenplays: The Social Network and The King’s Speech

Favorite scores: Inception and The Social Network

30 Day Movie Challenge: Day 20 - Anything Film-Related

I’m going to cheat today because I’m running out of time. Since I was in the process of writing about movies anyway because of the question below, I will just keep writing it here.

This is my mini-review of “Black Swan.”

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dreamsofsleep asked:

Tough question, because I know I’d be tempted… Without saying anything about it, how was Black Swan?

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Natalie Portman is a revelation in “Black Swan.” I sort of don’t like using that word for two reasons: I really need to tone down the hyperbole in general, and the word suggests that Portman hadn’t really shown where she could go with a role before this. But it’s really the only word that works here. As great as she was in the past, her acting in this movie will define her for a long time. And it’s not just because it was a case of a pretty actress “slumming it” like others have done in the past.

Vincent Cassel, who is probably my favorite French export after Edith Piaf and bordeaux, is pretty great as the ballet company director. And Mila Kunis is perfectly cast as the antithesis to Portman’s character. Barbara Hershey and Winona Ryder round out the main cast and do very good jobs with their smaller roles.

The cinematography involves a good deal of steadicam work which allowed me to flow in and out of the ballet sequences with ease. It was very immersive and elegant. Otherwise, the movie featured fairly straightforward camera work. Lighting seemed pretty normal as well, not slightly over-saturated like “The Fountain.” On a technical level in general, the movie was minimalistic and it served the story very well.

After watching about five minutes of the movie, the story goes pretty much where you expect it to go, and that’s not a bad thing at all. People who only watch movies to find out what happens might want to skip this one. In fact, they should probably stop watching movies altogether and just read plot summaries. “Black Swan” is a great example of a fairly straightforward and common story being told in a very different way. This is what makes movies original. And I will quote Ebert (for maybe the third or fourth time on this blog) by saying that “it’s not what a movie is about, but how it is about it that’s important.” This statement is so very true when it comes to enjoying “Black Swan.”

(Source: imdb.com)