Movies I watched in 2010
I was shocked and amazed to discover that I only saw 4 movies in a theater in 2010 (Avatar for the second time, Inception twice, and Salt). I love movies, and I love seeing them on the big screen, but apparently my viewing habits succumbed to the combo of Mary (my main movie buddy) moving out of town, and a lack of new releases that really interested me-and perhaps also the convenience of Netflix. It is odd to find that one is unwittingly, unintentionally part of a cultural trend...
* = best ones, bold = recommended
The best new (to me) movie I saw this year was definitely *Inception (2x). My, my, yes, Christopher Nolan is certainly earning my respect as the premier speculative fiction filmmaker of the day. Like The Prestige, Inception is another clever, intricately layered, masterfully constructed puzzlebox/ mindfuck. But it could have been just an exercise in cerebral gamesmanship, a caper film, had Nolan not, as always, buried a dark and complex emotional secret at the core. The pacing is not flawless, but it’s pretty damned good. And the movie has a pleasurably, maddeningly ambiguous ending that people will argue about for years. Just as enjoyable on repeat viewing, because then you can admire how well it all fits together. Highly recommended.
Only Nolan could make a kick-ass nail-biting suspense movie about psychological catharsis... and get away with it. Someone else could have made a movie about a guy talking to his therapist to accomplish the same goal, but this is a lot more exciting!
On a surface level, this movie is about lucid dreaming and Jungian psychology. But it’s far more a story about the storyteller’s art, an examination of the creative process itself, which I find even more fascinating. For what is art about if not the generative and reactive process, the creation and realization of ideas, and what does art do if not implant an idea in the mind of the viewer... Filmmakers, like dream architects, strive for verisimilitude, to pull you into a story and convince you that it matters--that it's real, even if it could never happen. Inception brilliantly probes the paradox of its own invention.
**************************
Hot Fuzz. City cop moves to small British town, uncovers cult. I did not expect to like this at all, but it was hilarious, clever, and utterly demented.
My Neighbor Totoro. Sweet, charming, but rather slow-moving; captures kids well, but not much actually happens...From people’s enthusiasm for this movie, I expected a bit more. It lacks the level of mythological richness of Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away (which are still my favorite Miyazaki movies). It does have his usual beautiful attention to natural detail. It was cool to see a fictional dad who not only believes his kids about the supernatural events, but teaches them how to properly greet the forest spirits.
*The Price of Milk. Whu...buh...bwzuh? Seriously, what? This one is right up there with Being John Malkovich for sheer gaping whathefuckitude. The sinister orange fuzzy hat of doooom! Magical realism, reminiscent of Like Water for Chocolate, but a whole lot less logical...both funny and creepy, and deeply deeply odd.
Saving Face. Sweet Chinese-American family dramedy.
The Shoe Fairy. Very odd, yet oddly similar in surrealist modern fairytale tone to The Price of Milk, or a Chinese Amelie. Sweet and funny and whimsical, then sad, then bittersweet.
Tokyo Godfathers. Three Tokyo homeless people-a drunk, a drag queen, and a runaway-find an abandoned baby and attempt to cope with it. Sweet and funny, with beautifully animated atmospheric cityscapes.
The Men Who Stare at Goats. Odd, mildly funny if rather aimless satire. Hard to tell what exactly they had in mind with it.
Mongolian Ping Pong. Quiet, uneventful movie with some nice images. Worth watching if you’re into Mongolian culture.
Bottle Shock. A slight, flimsy movie with a hint of oak.
The Producers (new version). Good silly fun. Nathan Lane and Will Ferrell were pretty good, but Matthew Broderick didn’t hold a candle to the original Gene Wilder’s milquetoast-quavering-on-the-edge-of-madness.
Ponyo. Sweet, whimsical. Definitely a children’s movie, like Totoro. Although the undersea life was cool, a lot of the rendering did not seem up to Miyazaki’s usual standard.
Salt. A silly, brutal fantasy in which it turns out that Angelina Jolie is actually... Wolverine’s sister. At least, that’s my only explanation for the fact that although she bleeds, she seems to be completely indestructible. At first there is a certain fun in watching her out-think and thoroughly out-fight everything else on two legs. But it just keeps getting sillier and sillier, and increasingly violent, then cuts off in an inconclusive, unsatisfying ending. As Ebert says, “This movie has holes in it big enough to drive the whole movie through.” If you must, watch it on video and fast forward to the part with Jolie in convincing male drag. But No Way Out did this premise ever so much better.
*Secret of Kells. A wondrous and poignant work of visual imagination. I just have to quell my frustration that they took liberties with the scribal accuracy. Why go to all that loving effort but get the details wrong?? Still, very beautiful and inventive. I wouldn’t mind a whole movie of just the animated illuminations!
Time after Time. Disappointing, painfully dated. I expected a lot more, well, plot.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. A quiet, contemplative, bittersweet magic-realism tale. It reminds me of something Mark Helprin would have written: an epoch-spanning picaresque life with a straightforwardly examined element of the fabulous, a story of fated love and incredible coincidence. A story about the constant intertwining of death and life. It often tries a little too hard to be profound, but overall, the elements were nicely put together, sweet but not saccharine, poignant but positive (though it's definitely a hanky movie). It had its flaws, but it’s one of those movies you go on thinking about for a while, and that is enjoyable.
Get Smart. Ugh. I’m just not into full-bore farce any more.
*The Illuminator and a Bible for the 21st Century. (Documentary of the making of the St. John’s Bible). Full frontal scribal porn. Chronicles calligraphy deity Donald Jackson’s absolutely magnificent project to make an entire modern Bible by hand using traditional methods. The daring, the ambition, the scope! The artists’ workrooms make me slaver; the resulting artwork gives me chills.
re-watched: Master and Commander; *Avatar (3-D; I preferred 2-D); *The Prestige, Stardust, *Bull Durham (so many years, so many viewings, still never gets old), *Tampopo and *Delicatessen (the former gets no less delightful, the latter no less sick and twisted, and neither less bizarre on repeat viewings).
***********************
Series I watched in 2010
I lost track of Bones, House, and Grey’s Anatomy this year due to schedule conflicts/ diminishing interest...
*True Blood. Good stuff! Raunchy, quirky, funny, dark, disturbing, suspenseful, thoroughly entertaining, consistently unexpected. I am totally hooked.
Caprica. At first hard to follow, throughout hard to like. It’s like SF for grown-ups/ realists: bleak, grey, somber, slow, and unfortunately not very entertaining. It’s intellectually interesting to see how the BSG setup arose, but not a lot of fun. I was not hooked.
some Waiting For God. Wonderfully funny and sarcastic as ever. When I grow up, I want to be Diana Trent!
Lost. I thought the final season was better than the previous several, but for me the show had largely lost (so to speak) its effectiveness by this point. The ending did make me cry, though.
The IT Crowd. Hilarious. More proof that the UK is much better than the US at creating clever, funny, offbeat sit coms.
*Slings and Arrows. Very good stuff - entertaining dark comedy about theater life - realistic yet with an apt touch of the surreal. An intriguingly rounded ensemble cast with a suitably charismatic and eccentric lead. Intelligently written, solidly real. It captures the reality of working on a theater production, the tasks, emotions and personalities, better than anything else I’ve ever seen. Highly recommended.
Castle. Fun light mystery fare, Nathan Fillion in his usual handsome witty smartass mode.
rewatched: Farscape seasons 1-2.
* = best ones, bold = recommended
The best new (to me) movie I saw this year was definitely *Inception (2x). My, my, yes, Christopher Nolan is certainly earning my respect as the premier speculative fiction filmmaker of the day. Like The Prestige, Inception is another clever, intricately layered, masterfully constructed puzzlebox/ mindfuck. But it could have been just an exercise in cerebral gamesmanship, a caper film, had Nolan not, as always, buried a dark and complex emotional secret at the core. The pacing is not flawless, but it’s pretty damned good. And the movie has a pleasurably, maddeningly ambiguous ending that people will argue about for years. Just as enjoyable on repeat viewing, because then you can admire how well it all fits together. Highly recommended.
Only Nolan could make a kick-ass nail-biting suspense movie about psychological catharsis... and get away with it. Someone else could have made a movie about a guy talking to his therapist to accomplish the same goal, but this is a lot more exciting!
On a surface level, this movie is about lucid dreaming and Jungian psychology. But it’s far more a story about the storyteller’s art, an examination of the creative process itself, which I find even more fascinating. For what is art about if not the generative and reactive process, the creation and realization of ideas, and what does art do if not implant an idea in the mind of the viewer... Filmmakers, like dream architects, strive for verisimilitude, to pull you into a story and convince you that it matters--that it's real, even if it could never happen. Inception brilliantly probes the paradox of its own invention.
**************************
Hot Fuzz. City cop moves to small British town, uncovers cult. I did not expect to like this at all, but it was hilarious, clever, and utterly demented.
My Neighbor Totoro. Sweet, charming, but rather slow-moving; captures kids well, but not much actually happens...From people’s enthusiasm for this movie, I expected a bit more. It lacks the level of mythological richness of Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away (which are still my favorite Miyazaki movies). It does have his usual beautiful attention to natural detail. It was cool to see a fictional dad who not only believes his kids about the supernatural events, but teaches them how to properly greet the forest spirits.
*The Price of Milk. Whu...buh...bwzuh? Seriously, what? This one is right up there with Being John Malkovich for sheer gaping whathefuckitude. The sinister orange fuzzy hat of doooom! Magical realism, reminiscent of Like Water for Chocolate, but a whole lot less logical...both funny and creepy, and deeply deeply odd.
Saving Face. Sweet Chinese-American family dramedy.
The Shoe Fairy. Very odd, yet oddly similar in surrealist modern fairytale tone to The Price of Milk, or a Chinese Amelie. Sweet and funny and whimsical, then sad, then bittersweet.
Tokyo Godfathers. Three Tokyo homeless people-a drunk, a drag queen, and a runaway-find an abandoned baby and attempt to cope with it. Sweet and funny, with beautifully animated atmospheric cityscapes.
The Men Who Stare at Goats. Odd, mildly funny if rather aimless satire. Hard to tell what exactly they had in mind with it.
Mongolian Ping Pong. Quiet, uneventful movie with some nice images. Worth watching if you’re into Mongolian culture.
Bottle Shock. A slight, flimsy movie with a hint of oak.
The Producers (new version). Good silly fun. Nathan Lane and Will Ferrell were pretty good, but Matthew Broderick didn’t hold a candle to the original Gene Wilder’s milquetoast-quavering-on-the-edge-of-madness.
Ponyo. Sweet, whimsical. Definitely a children’s movie, like Totoro. Although the undersea life was cool, a lot of the rendering did not seem up to Miyazaki’s usual standard.
Salt. A silly, brutal fantasy in which it turns out that Angelina Jolie is actually... Wolverine’s sister. At least, that’s my only explanation for the fact that although she bleeds, she seems to be completely indestructible. At first there is a certain fun in watching her out-think and thoroughly out-fight everything else on two legs. But it just keeps getting sillier and sillier, and increasingly violent, then cuts off in an inconclusive, unsatisfying ending. As Ebert says, “This movie has holes in it big enough to drive the whole movie through.” If you must, watch it on video and fast forward to the part with Jolie in convincing male drag. But No Way Out did this premise ever so much better.
*Secret of Kells. A wondrous and poignant work of visual imagination. I just have to quell my frustration that they took liberties with the scribal accuracy. Why go to all that loving effort but get the details wrong?? Still, very beautiful and inventive. I wouldn’t mind a whole movie of just the animated illuminations!
Time after Time. Disappointing, painfully dated. I expected a lot more, well, plot.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. A quiet, contemplative, bittersweet magic-realism tale. It reminds me of something Mark Helprin would have written: an epoch-spanning picaresque life with a straightforwardly examined element of the fabulous, a story of fated love and incredible coincidence. A story about the constant intertwining of death and life. It often tries a little too hard to be profound, but overall, the elements were nicely put together, sweet but not saccharine, poignant but positive (though it's definitely a hanky movie). It had its flaws, but it’s one of those movies you go on thinking about for a while, and that is enjoyable.
Get Smart. Ugh. I’m just not into full-bore farce any more.
*The Illuminator and a Bible for the 21st Century. (Documentary of the making of the St. John’s Bible). Full frontal scribal porn. Chronicles calligraphy deity Donald Jackson’s absolutely magnificent project to make an entire modern Bible by hand using traditional methods. The daring, the ambition, the scope! The artists’ workrooms make me slaver; the resulting artwork gives me chills.
re-watched: Master and Commander; *Avatar (3-D; I preferred 2-D); *The Prestige, Stardust, *Bull Durham (so many years, so many viewings, still never gets old), *Tampopo and *Delicatessen (the former gets no less delightful, the latter no less sick and twisted, and neither less bizarre on repeat viewings).
***********************
Series I watched in 2010
I lost track of Bones, House, and Grey’s Anatomy this year due to schedule conflicts/ diminishing interest...
*True Blood. Good stuff! Raunchy, quirky, funny, dark, disturbing, suspenseful, thoroughly entertaining, consistently unexpected. I am totally hooked.
Caprica. At first hard to follow, throughout hard to like. It’s like SF for grown-ups/ realists: bleak, grey, somber, slow, and unfortunately not very entertaining. It’s intellectually interesting to see how the BSG setup arose, but not a lot of fun. I was not hooked.
some Waiting For God. Wonderfully funny and sarcastic as ever. When I grow up, I want to be Diana Trent!
Lost. I thought the final season was better than the previous several, but for me the show had largely lost (so to speak) its effectiveness by this point. The ending did make me cry, though.
The IT Crowd. Hilarious. More proof that the UK is much better than the US at creating clever, funny, offbeat sit coms.
*Slings and Arrows. Very good stuff - entertaining dark comedy about theater life - realistic yet with an apt touch of the surreal. An intriguingly rounded ensemble cast with a suitably charismatic and eccentric lead. Intelligently written, solidly real. It captures the reality of working on a theater production, the tasks, emotions and personalities, better than anything else I’ve ever seen. Highly recommended.
Castle. Fun light mystery fare, Nathan Fillion in his usual handsome witty smartass mode.
rewatched: Farscape seasons 1-2.