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Five and twenty reasons your'e wrong.

Posted by Harmonia on April 27, 2011 at 14:34:47:
I'm not saying 2010 was a landmark year for movies in any language but it was a year that's been rather underrated IMO. How many high water years can you have anyway? Ebb and flow, ebb and flow.

In fact, there were some terrific indies and more than a couple quality commercial releases, which is a "good" year in my book. And that's exclusive of several terrific foreign language movies.

Consider these five outstanding and compelling English language films from 2010: 1 American, 1 British, 1 Irish and 2 from Oz. I believe the first three are among the absolute top 10 films of this or any year. All five of these could be considered "genre" movies but that doesn't lessen their excellence one whit:

Winter's Bone (Debra Granik USA)* * * * * (5* of 5)
Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold, UK) * * * * * (5* of 5)
Animal Kingdom (David Michod, Australia)* * * * * (5* of 5)
The Square (Nash Edgerton, Australia) * * * * (4* of 5)
The Eclipse (Conor McPherson, Ireland) * * * * (4* of 5)

Here's the thing about the films above: they are all, with the exception of The Eclipse, directed by first or second time feature directors. (Eclipse is Irish playwright McPherson's 3rd feature film.) Yup...4 out of 5 are from relative NEWBIES. If there's any justice in this world, we'll be seeing more from this talented group. May they all find financing/distribution for their next projects and stay far, far from Hollyweird.

Then there's these interesting English language films from last year that hardly anyone saw:

The Killer Inside Me (Michael Winterbottom)
Please Give (Nicole Holofcener)
Ondine (Neil Jordan)
Another Year (Mike Leigh)
All Good Things (Andrew Jarecki)
Never Let Me Go (Mark Romanek)
Get Low ()
Cyrus (Duplass Brothers)

...and everyone already has an opinion on these widely distributed notables (which I find good to very good indeed):

True Grit
The Social Network
Black Swan
The Ghost Writer
127 Hours
Toy Story 3
The Secret Of Kells
How To Train Your Dragon
...and The King's Speech. (We're up to 22 now.)

The British Red Riding Trilogy is really good but was originally made for TV so mentioned but not included.

Then there are several critics' faves - The Kids Are Alright, Blue Valentine, Rabbit Hole etc - but which didn't grab me (YMMV of course). That makes 25, not inlcuding some popular big releases some inmates liked such as Shutter Island and Inception.

So there you have it.

Not an interstellar year but hardly a desert. A year like a lot of years and better than some.

I'm sure there's some good flicks from the festival circuit I overlooked or that didn't get national distribution. My list also doesn't take into consideration some truly fine docs such as Restropo, The Inside Story, Exit From The Gift Shop (if this on is truly a doc), 45635, Waste Land, The Art Of The Steal and The Tillman Story. We are still in a golden age of documentaries, let's enjoy while we can.

Not a terrible year for English language films at all.

Here's my first tip for 2011: English animated film My Dog Tulip. You heard it here first.