The Best Films of 2010

I've heard a lot of people say that 2010 was not a great year for movies and that ticket sales were down, partly because there wasn't anything out there that appealed to moviegoers. I think that idea is both right and wrong. This was a bad year for Hollywood movies. There are none on my Top Ten list and only one in my top 29 movies of the year (Toy Story 3).

At the same time, I think 2010 was a great year for movies, filled with lots of really great pictures. When it came to boiling down my list, I couldn't cut it off at a Top Ten with a few honorable mentions. I had to list all 19 of them - because I like them all and they all deserve another mention. 2010 was a great year for foreign films and eight of the top ten are foreign. Three are French, two are German, one was Portuguese and one was Greek (I'm not sure I had seen a Greek movie before Dogtooth). The Oath was made by an American and produced partly by PBS (dirty socialists!) but is about two Yemeni men, so that's only partly "American". Winter's Bone is deeply American.

I should say that you won't necessarily find a correlation between the stars I gave to the films and the relative rankings on the list. When making this, I listed of all the movies that are 3 or more stars and then ranked them in terms of how they sit in my mind today. In some cases I looked over my reviews and notes on them to refresh my memory. There might be movies with more starts in the honorable mentions than in the top ten itself. This happens when one movie gets better with time (I generally review things within a week or so of seeing them) and other things fade as I consider them more. So, yes, I'm aware, the stars might be confusing here, but you can ignore them. The placement on the list should supersede the relative star ratings for each film.

I had the pleasure of watching A Prophet three times in the theater (twice because I wanted to see it a second time and once more because I wanted to show it to a friend). It got better, deeper and more interesting with each viewing. I think it is one of the best films of the past decade and it will last for a long time as a masterpiece of filmmaking.

When I first saw The Human Centipede I thought it was fun and silly and sorta dumb. But it has stuck with me. I recently posted on my other blog some more thoughts I've had about it. I am proud to put that on my Top Ten list. I think it's a fabulous work of art and if it were a Samuel Beckett play, we would all think it was beyond brilliant rather than disgusting.

So here it is - enjoy!

The Top Ten Films of 2010:

1 A Prophet
2 Bluebeard
3 Everyone Else
4 Dogtooth
5 Eccentricities of a Blond-Haired Girl
6 Mademoiselle Chambon
7 Human Centipede
8 Alamar
9 The Oath
10 Winter's Bone

Honorable Mentions:

Another Year
October Country
Four Lions
White Material
Inspector Bellamy
Lebanon
Secret Sunshine
The Strange Case of Angelica
Tiny Furniture
Spring Fever
Toy Story 3
Exit Through the Gift Shop
No One Knows About Persian Cats
Terribly Happy
Last Train Home
Boxing Gym
Marwencol
The Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo (Again no link- stupid Blooger clearly hates me and my year-end list)
Fish Tank