Hollywood won't honor this film, but you should!
The Oscar nominations will be out soon. Ho hum. Chances are you won’t have seen several of the films nominated for Best Picture. That’s because they only need to have been released in New York or Los Angeles within the calendar year to be nominated and won’t actually make it to your town until some time this spring. Keep this in mind as you look over this list of Best Films for 2010--some of these are movies considered 2009 releases, but we count them as 2010 entries because we happen to live in the parts of America that lie between Tribeca and Sunset Strip. Those in blue link to a longer review.
1. Winter’s Bone. Will not win any Oscars--it has no stars, was made on a shoestring, and is deeply disturbing. It’s also head and shoulders above anything coming out of Hollywood in ’10.
2. White Ribbon--This take on hysteria in one German village during early-twentieth-century is a searing portrait of what made Nazism possible. Utterly brilliant and I offer no rebuttal to anyone who ranks it as number one.
3. A Single Man--Colin Firth got jobbed for not winning Best Actor last year for his portrayal of a gay professor whose lover’s death plunges him into reckless despair.
4. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus--Terry Gilliam’s latest is a surrealistic update of the classic tale of bargaining with Satan to gain immortality. Heath Ledger’s last film is equal parts wacky and creepy.
5. MicMacs--Jean-Pierre Jeunet (“Amelie”) matches Gilliam in humor and surrealistic weirdness. What if we collected life’s lovable outcasts, orchestrated them, and let them take revenge on their tormentors?
6. Logorama--Winner of last year’s Short Animation Oscar, this 16-minute film is among the most subversive you’re likely to view. A witty and devastating look at a dystopian future in which America has become so thoroughly corporatized that its logos come to life.
7. The Social Network--This (barely) fictionalized look at Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg is almost as creepy as The Silence of the Lambs and you may come to see Hannibal Lecter as more honest!
8. The Grocer’s Son--A sweet French film that was made in 2007 but didn’t find its way here until last year. A young man discovers his humanity amidst a cast of rural eccentrics, lonely hearts, and elders.
9. The King’s Speech--Colin Firth may collect the Oscar this year for his portrayal of the stammering and never-wanted-to-be-a-King George VI. Geoffrey Rush steals the show, though.
10. Fair Game--Need another reason to despise George Bush? Check out this dramatization of the outing of spy Valerie Plame, the victim of a Bush vendetta against her husband.
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2 comments:
Wot, no 'I Am Love?' Scandalous!
Ah, now I finally have figured out why I put "The White Ribbon" on my Netflix queue and watched it last month. Thank you! What a brilliant, disturbing film. The self-congratulatory bonus features were bit much, but the movie itself was arrestingly better than the other movies I saw last year.
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