My Year in Crap 2010

Based on how many “legitimately” good films show up on my list, I think 2010 may have been a good year for cinema. Then again, I also thought Mega Piranha was better than Black Swan or Shutter Island, so take that statement any way you want. Point is, this year I fell in love with the art of storytelling hard. What’s funny is that some of these films aren’t even perfect. I have plenty of problems with, say, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, but it’s such an entertaining film, and such a great companion piece to its source material, that I hold it up high. How many adaptations can boast that?

I do want to set some ground rules before proceeding. In order to be considered for 2010, a film has to receive some degree of prominent distribution, whether it be a wide theatrical release or DVD one. Black Dynamite is technically a 2009 film, as that’s when it was first screened, but it wasn’t made available to the masses until this year. A Single Man opened in New York City and Los Angeles in 2009 so as to qualify for the Oscars, but fuck that shit. It didn’t go wide until 2010, so I’m counting it here. As my tolerant, beautiful girlfriend will tell you, I have little tolerance for films released to tactically take advantage of awards seasons. I think art belongs to everyone.

OK, rant over. Let’s talk about boobs and explosions.

15. Edge of Darkness

I’m surprised to find Edge of Darkness, a tepid Mel Gibson thriller here. At the time, I sneered it off the last gasp of Gibson’s career after all those drunken racist/anti-Semitic remarks, but the film delivers great drama, complete with ridiculous death scenes and unbelievable dialogue. Gibson might be washed up and/or a terrible person, but he still knows how to do a cop action flick.

14. Predators

Predators is about as good a sequel as anyone could have hoped for. The original is untouchable in my eyes, but the string of cash-ins and spin-offs have left this brilliant sci-fi staple diminished. Predators actually brings new ideas to the table, as well as a great cast, including Adrien Brody, Topher Grace, Danny Trejo, and Lawrence Fishburne. There are some great action set pieces (Yakuza vs. Predator? Hell yes) and a nice smattering gore. The original is still king, but at least we can finally call this series a franchise without snickering.

13. Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever

It’s a shame rising horror auteur Ti West couldn’t settle on a final edit of Cabin Fever 2 with his producers: The film he turned is a manic dark comedy in the Troma vein, which is a huge departure from West’s more slow ‘n’ cerebral approach on The House of the Devil and Trigger Man. As is, the movie flows nicely from bit to bit as horny teens contract a flesh-eating disease. Having watched both a director’s cut and a final version, I ultimately prefer the DVD edition that the producers chose – it’s grosser and funnier.

12. Shutter Island

…and we’ve got a serious film on the board. Leonardo DiCaprio had a great year with Shutter Island and Inception, which have the same set-up (Guy with a hot dead wife has trouble separating reality from fiction) but are still awesome anyway. Director Martin Scorsese takes an admittedly flimsy plot – you see the ending coming well in advance – and still turns it into a riveting psychological thriller. Anchored by strong performances and direction, Shutter Island was an early knockout.

11. Machete

Robert Rodriguez has had a long, fruitful creative relationship with Danny Trejo, so it’s about time he gave Trejo his own starring vehicle. Machete isn’t quite perfect – I’d get rid of a stunt-casted Lindsay Lohan and maybe tweak Robert De Niro’s part – but it delivers plenty of baddassery courtesy of Trejo as a wronged Mexican ex-cop looking to avenge his family. And hey, I can finally say I like a Jessica Alba movie. And who knew Steven Seagal had a sense of humor?

10. Expendables

Sylvester Stallone’s latest franchise takes the best action stars of the ’80s, ’90s, and today and puts them all in one movie. It’s sort of a belabored, tongue-in-cheek nod to the over-the-top testosterone movies of yesteryear, and just a straight-up throwback. Stallone wrote and directed in addition to starring, and he deserves credit for giving each cast member a shining moment. Jason Statham is the best overall – he beats up a shit-ton of dudes and ends up with Charisma Carpenter – but Expendables shows love to everybody. It’s like one of those little league soccer games where everybody gets a trophy, even the kids who suck so hard. My favorites here are Dolph Lundgren (the funniest) and Mickey Rourke (who takes hammy dialogue and turns it into fuckin’ Shakespeare).

9. Mega Piranha

That’s right, a ScyFy (ne Sci-Fi) Channel Original Movie cracked my top 10. But you have to understand something. Mega Piranha utilizes its televised roots to its advantage, staging its action-y bits early and often in bite-sized portions. It titillates, it rocks, it has a guy bicycle kick piranhas!

8. The Town

Ben Affleck directs and stars in this homoerotic heist movie. His character wants to quit robbing banks, but his unhinged buddy Jeremy Renner (always great) keeps sucking him back into a life of crime. But when Affleck falls for a pretty lady (who he “may” have taken hostage during a job), things come to a head. The Town is solid in all areas – good cast, decent dialogue, and plenty of great scenery. No one scene is particularly amazing, although I do love Affleck’s shooting style. He so clearly favors the actors above all, packing plenty of close-ups in. The highlight: A topless shot of himself doing chin-ups, with some softcore lighting thrown in. The Town has been done plenty of times by Hollywood, but this outing is thoroughly enjoyable.

7. Black Dynamite

Michael Jai White’s love letter to blaxploitation proves that, in addition to being one tough kung-fu master, the guy is really, really good at comedy. Black Dynamite succeeds no matter what happens. Some jokes revolve around how cheap the blaxploitation films look. Other jokes stem from legitimate budgetary cuts and technical snafus. Meanwhile, White dishes out awesome one-liners and snaps necks, all whilst wearing a sweet mustache.

6. Toy Story 3

Pixar continues its streak of beautiful/traumatic kiddy movies. Granted, Toy Story 3 isn’t as emotionally affecting as Wall-E or Up, but its themes of growing up and moving on still hit hard. The characters go from facing irrelevance to death and back, in scenes that forced audiences to respect Pixar as a storyteller for all ages. Plot-wise, it nicely rounds out the series while leaving things open-ended. Overall, it’s yet another artistic triumph for the studio, although Cars 2 will probably ruin the party.

5. True Grit

Jeff Bridges is the hi-lariously ornery cowboy. Matt Damon fails at everything. Hailee Steinfeld is too smart and headstrong for her age, and that applies to her character and her acting. Give that girl more roles. But more importantly, let’s hear it for Ed Corbin as a character I call Dr. Bear. Dr. Bear rides around bragging about his bear skin, even if you didn’t ask. Dr. Bear will sell you a dead body, but he gets to keep the teeth. Dr. Bear should have his own TV show.

The rest of the movie is good too.

4. Inception

What I love about Christopher Nolan is that he takes basic movie concepts and gives them a highly involved, rewarding effort. Memento is a murder mystery. His Batman films are still just superhero movies. But he has a firm grasp of drama and takes traditionally B-movie premises and elevates them to high art. Inception was perhaps Nolan’s most difficult, un-mainstream movie yet. Not since Memento has he expected so much of an audience. Leonardo DiCaprio leads a gang of thieves as they attempt to plant false information in Cillian Murphy’s mind through a process called inception. It’s essentially a bank heist movie with sci-fi trappings, but it’s artfully done and compelling. Inception takes the old cliché “It was all a dream... or was it?” and makes it new again.

3. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

I was a little hard on Scott Pilgrim when it first came out. It attempts to house seven books of plot within one movie, and it can’t. The best adaptations stand on their own. They don’t necessarily hit every plot point (The Godfather, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), but they recreate the tone of a certain world and make you believe. The worst adaptations butcher the tone and fuck with the facts, or worse, hit the key points but go about it all wrong. Those versions depend on you already loving the source material. Pilgrim is somewhere between the two. I have friends who loved it without having read the books, but I still feel that it works best with prior knowledge. Having read Bryan Lee O’Malley’s wonderful series, I can say that Edgar Wright’s adaptation functions well as a companion piece. It captures the comic’s spirit. It gives some characters the shaft (Kim Pine), but it also fleshes out others (Knives Chau). It has a bitchin’ soundtrack and a great sense of humor. It’s the greatest video game movie since Mortal Kombat, despite not actually being based on a video game.

2. How to Train Your Dragon

DreamWorks Animation is still second-tier to Pixar overall. But thanks to How to Train Your Dragon and Kung Fu Panda, they’ve finally begun to move away from disposable pop culture riffs into something less cynical and more heartwarming. Furthermore, this is the first year they actually beat Pixar. As much as I love Toy Story 3’s emotional resonance, How to Train Your Dragon is the movie I see myself viewing more often. It’s a thrill ride about Vikings fighting dragons with a message of tolerance thrown in. The voice cast is stellar – check out my man Craig Ferguson – and the animation is pretty darn neat. Between this and last year’s Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Pixar finally has some real competitors.

1. A Single Man

Oh man, this list gets topped by a “legitimately good” movie that wins on a technicality? Lame sauce. Still, A Single Man, the story of a gay English professor coping with the death of his lover, was my favorite film of the year. First time director Tom Ford utilizes his fashion background to create an impossibly beautiful film. No other movie on this list better uses color to convey mood. You know exactly what Colin Firth’s character is feeling at all times thanks to the work Ford puts in. Of course, Firth is a stellar actor (I still need to catch The King’s Speech), so he fills in where Ford can’t, projecting a performance equal parts melancholy and sexual longing. Brokeback Mountain made a big splash a few years ago for delivering a gay love story, but I found it too over-the-top. A Single Man is the better film, simply because it stays away from politicizing homosexuality and instead focuses on common human feelings like love and longing. That I, a heterosexual jackass, could identify with Firth’s character is much more important than the fact that the character is gay, and in a way is also the more important sociopolitical statement. It’s a movie about love. That the kid from About a Boy, now all kinds of grown up, shows up super tan and super naked, is beside the point.

And hot. My gosh that guy turned out alright.