Black Sheep's Top 10 of 2010!

(Scroll over any film title to read the full length Black Sheep review.)

It is the first day day of the new year and I'm happy. I'm happy to put certain aspects of the last year behind me, happy to look ahead toward what waits for me and happy to look back at my most celebrated moments as a film critic in 2010 as well. There are three in particular that come to mind ...

I've been published before but never in high gloss colour. My interview with the Academy Award winning documentary filmmaker, Louis Psihoyos, about his first feature, THE COVE, was published in Movie Entertainment magazine, the magazine of The Movie Network in Canada. It was a thrill to see my name in print like that and to know that possibly tens of thousands of film lovers across Canada would be reading my work. Movie Entertainment still publishes my monthly column on their website, letting people know what to watch on TMN that month, and intends to publish my interview with Ryan Reynolds, for his film BURIED, this summer.

If you read Black Sheep at all regularly, you would know that this year I was a fully accredited member of the press at the 2010 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival for the first time. I saw 30 films, met tons of great people, interviewed a variety of filmmakers that I never dreamed I would ever meet and I even worked my first red carpet, for Woody Allen no less. My coverage of the festival on Black Sheep brought in the highest readership numbers I've seen in the five years the site has been around and led to my being published on other great sites, like Toronto Film Scene and The Mark News. I hope TIFF invites me back to the party again next year because I'm not sure I can go back after feeling the power of the press pass.

The third thing is perhaps the most important. I've only lived in Toronto for a year and a half now and I haven't had the easiest of times making friends. In January of this year, I took my first real steps towards changing that when I met a group of local film bloggers for their monthly meeting. It isn't so much a meeting though as it is a bunch of film geeks getting together, drinking and shooting the shit about movies really. And while it may not sound like much to some, it has allowed me the possibility to meet people that make me feel a lot more like I belong here. A big shout out to James McNally of Toronto Screen Shots for the original invite!

Like my personal life, 2010 was a bit of a rocky year for film as well ... or at least I thought it was at the time. I griped all year about how there were no good movies coming out but when it came time to actually narrow down the 120+ films I saw all year to a list of 10, I had a very difficult time doing so. Difficult is relative here as how hard is it really to sit down and think about movies you like? I managed to get her done though and I am ready to share this list with you today.

(insert drum roll here)

Here is Black Sheep Reviews' Top 10 of 2010 ...

(in alphabetical order)

BLACK SWAN

Directed by Darren Aronofsky

I love when I am truly excited for a film and it does not disappoint. BLACK SWAN is that experience for me. The moment it ended, I wanted to watch it again and again. I still do. It effects all who see it, regardless of how much they enjoyed the film. It just crawls under your skin and stays there until you start to sprout feathers of your own.

THE FIGHTER

Directed by David O. Russell

I knew after five minutes of watching THE FIGHTER that I was about to see one of the best pictures of the year. The film has an energy that really gets you in the mood for a good wallop. The entire ensemble knocks the movie out of the ring and Russell finishes by making the best film of his career.

I AM LOVE

Directed by Luca Guadagnino

Every once in a while, I go to the movies just to go. I don't take notes; I don't write about it afterward. I just sit back and enjoy the experience. I saw I AM LOVE like this and it was like heaven. It is beautiful in every regard it can be - from picture and sound to performance and dialog. I too was love when it was done.

INCEPTION

Directed by Christopher Nolan

When I saw INCEPTION in theatres, I was disappointed. I wanted it to be more emotional, to be more revealing about humanity and our collective subconscious. When I watched it again at home, I realized I wanted it to be something it just wasn't. And what it is, is pretty freaking awesome.

THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT

Directed by Lisa Cholodenko

Some will say that indie film director, Lisa Cholodenko, sold out when she made THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT but I commend her for making the marginalized, accessible. The incredibly talented cast is so earnest in their love for each other as a family that you can't help but feel it too. This is what a family looks like.

THE KING'S SPEECH

Directed by Tom Hooper

I am very happy to see that THE KING'S SPEECH family is the buzz of awards season this year. Director Tom Hooper's emerging career is so promising and his work here is seemingly effortless. And with Colin Firth on the throne, it wouldn't surprise me to see the film crowned king come Oscar time.

SHUTTER ISLAND

Directed by Martin Scorcese

Martin Scorcese's psychological thriller, SHUTTER ISLAND, was the first truly great picture of 2010. It is not without its flaws but it presents itself and its ambitious agenda with great confidence, so much so that you feel as if you too are thrown right onto the island with everybody else, at the center of an elaborate mind game that you may not survive.

THE SOCIAL NETWORK

Directed by David Fincher

THE SOCIAL NETWORK is something like a perfect picture. Every element comes together to provide both entertainment and insight in a way that is as astonishing as it is unexpected. People scoffed at the idea of a Facebook movie (I may have done some scoffing myself) but how could we ever have known that this is what they would do?

TOY STORY 3

Directed by Lee Unkrich

For the second year in a row, the Pixar people have made me cry like a baby at the movies. TOY STORY 3 seemed like unnecessary pandering in concept but its execution is so daring and delightful, that it is easily the best of the three. The fact that some of the most tense and emotional film moments of 2010 came from an animated feature is a great feat for many.

WINTER'S BONE

Directed by Debra Granik

Debra Granik's chilling thriller, WINTER'S BONE, was one of the year's most unexpected surprises for me. It is an incredible testament to the human spirit and it showed me a side of people in a little corner of the world that I had never imagined. Jennifer Lawrence gives the breakthrough performance of 2010 in this film.

There you have it, folks. My 10 favourite films of 2010. Stay tuned for some very big changes around here and, of course, the announcements of the 2010 Mouton d'Or Awards coming later this month. In the meantime, here are my 2010 honourable mentions:

BIUTIFUL

Directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

CATFISH

Directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman

EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP

Directed by Banksy

HEARTBEATS (Les Amours Imaginaires)

Directed by Xavier Dolan

A PROPHET

Directed by Jacques Audiard

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Boys Dont Cry (1999)

Genre: Crime/Drama/Romance/Biography

Starring: Hilary Swank, Chloe Sevigny, Peter Sarsgaard, Brendan Sexton III, Alicia Goranson, Jeannetta Arnette

A young girl, Teena Brandon (Swank) has a sexual identity crisis and although she has all the sexual organs of a female, she behaves like a boy and is attracted to women. She flirts with Candace (Goranson) a woman she meets at a bar and later gets acquainted to Candace's sister, Lana (Sevigny). Teena gets attracted to Lana and flirts with her and the duo eventually fall in love. John (Sarsgaard) and Tom (Sexton III) are friends of Lana and  Lana's mother (Arnette) and they all regularly go out at night partying. Teena manages to gel well with the family, Tom and John and feels that she is leading a whole new life. Teena has a shady background and is wanted back home for stealing cars. Her legal summons come back to haunt her and its not long that her true sexual identity starts coming out for everyone to see. The most outstanding feature of this movie are the performances, especially that of Hilary Swank. Being able to carry such a difficult role with such finesse gave her the Oscar she truly deserved. Other supporting performances of Sarsgaard and Sevigny added positively to the movie and made it a better watch. The only downside in the movie are the middle forty-five minutes which get a bit slow and boring, but it give it some time and it would throw up a fabulous climax. The movie is a critics delight but an average audiences nightmare.

Thumbs up: Hilary Swank and other performances

Thumbs down: It has its own slow and boring moments

Rating: 7.2/10

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BLUE VALENTINE

Written by Derek Cianfrance, Joey Curtis and Cami Delavigne

Directed by Derek Cianfrance

Starring Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams

Cindy: How do you trust your feelings when they can just disappear like that?

Gramma: I think the only way to find out is to have those feelings.

When they say, “For better of for worse,” in wedding vows, I believe they are referring to BLUE VALENTINE in regards to the worse part. Novice feature filmmaker, Derek Cianfrance’s latest is a very particular snapshot of a very specific place in a relationship that far too many people know far too well. And only few of those people live to tell the tale with their wits still about them. In reality, this space is an incredibly difficult test of the mind, the spirit and the heart and every effort is usually made to avoid getting there. It is one of the darkest stages a relationship can reach but Cianfrance is not the least bit afraid of the dark.

Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams, an indie dream couple if I’ve ever heard one before, are Dean and Cindy, a young couple with a little girl, living their married life in rural Pennsylvania. They have been together for six years but those years have been far from kind. At the moment we meet them, Dean is feeding his daughter breakfast while Cindy is getting ready for work – an ordinary morning for many a couple, I’m sure. The difference here is that this kitchen is weighted down with a crushing tension that is evident in every look given and every word spoken. She seems appalled by his every action and influence over their daughter and he seems to know it. The room is rotten with the stench of hatred.

Dean and Cindy know they don’t have much time left and decide to get a room at a cheap motel in New York City for the night in hopes of working through their issues and rekindling their romance. Their intentions are sincere but the fight is so insurmountable at times, they each struggle with their resolve. Gosling, while somewhat overwrought in his character’s intensity, must be commended for the amount of evident effort he made to make Dean real and not just a bad husband. That said, Williams is heartbreaking every moment she is on screen. Even the manner in which she clasps her fists during one of the film’s many sexual moments is emotionally devastating. Together, they genuinely feel like two people who have been oscillating between love and hate for years, so much so that it can be too much to take at times.

Cianfrance is a brave man for going to as many places of despair in BLUE VALENTINE as he does but he’s not stupid. He knows that an audience needs to breathe so he tells the entire story of their relationship in moments so that we can see that there once was a time when these two knew happiness, that there is another reason other than their daughter that they are fighting to stay together. The device is somewhat manipulative at times as its obvious point is to make us feel even worse that their relationship doesn’t seem to be salvageable. BLUE VALENTINE did make me feel pretty bad. I had been in some variation of that relationship in my life and it was hard enough to deal with then so, as fantastic as the film is in its most candid moments, I’m not sure everyone is ready to go back there again.

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SOMEWHERE

Written and Directed by Sofia Coppola

Starring Stephen Dorff and Elle Fanning

Johnny Marco: I'm fucking nothing. I'm not even a person.

We are all somewhere. Even nowhere is another form of somewhere, which is good because there is an awful lot of nowhere and nothing going on in Sofia Coppola’s latest attempt at exploring just how mundane life can be, called SOMEWHERE. I’m not sure how Coppola, the Academy Award winning writer/director of LOST IN TRANSLATION and THE VIRGIN SUICIDES manages to get out of bed every morning if this is her view of the world, but at least I can say she knows how to capture that particular feeling of numbness better than most. The trouble is, even that shtick is starting to get boring now.

Stephen Dorff plays an aging movie star named Johnny Marco. It is never really clear just how bright his personal star shines – he is still making movies and he has some international notoriety – but he is stumbling through the motions of success his fame has afforded him. He lives in a hotel, where the party is seemingly never over, and has the same set of stripper twins visit him on a regular basis. These things might seem exciting to some but its all pretty much second hat for Johnny. Coppola uses static shots and repetition to reinforce just how slow everything is moving and how much of it is the same again and again. She makes her point as strongly as she can but I’m not clear how she feels that life being boring is revelatory at this stage. And painting the picture with a celebrity backdrop doesn’t make it any more original.

What does give SOMEWHERE some purpose and heart, albeit strained, is Johnny’s relationship with his 11-year-old girl, Cloe, played with strength and ease by Elle Fanning. Cloe has found herself abandoned by her mother for the summer and has to spend a great deal more time with her father than she is used to. Coppola is smart to allow their relationship to soar in its shared simplicity, whether that be through ice cream indulgence or video game wars, rather than have them just combust in their forced close quarters. Cloe’s increased presence in Johnny’s life is what prompts him to see it for the shallow existence that it is, and even though I did feel a little bad for the guy, I still don’t see why his story mattered any more than any other lonely existence out there.

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RABBIT HOLE

Written by David Lindsay-Abaire

Directed by John Cameron Mitchell

Starring Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhart, Dianne Wiest and Sandra Oh

Becca: I like that thought. Somewhere out there, I'm having a good time.

There are times in our lives where we all find ourselves falling down a hole we didn’t see coming. We are just merrily making our way through the world we know when suddenly, and when we’re not necessarily paying attention, we find ourselves plummeting. While falling alone can be horrifying enough, tumbling down the same hole with your partner can be incredibly difficult and alienating. Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart play parents who have recently lost their young son, Danny, to a car accident, in the delicate drama, RABBIT HOLE. Fortunately for them, director John Cameron Mitchell is there to catch them before they hit the ground.

Mitchell made a name for himself when he first wrote, directed and starred in the film adaptation of his own Off-Broadway show, HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH (click title for review). His exploration of the marginally sexual not only continued its prevalence in his second feature, SHORTBUS, but it would go places most would never dare. In his third and decidedly most accessible work to date, RABBIT HOLE, Mitchell almost abandons sexuality entirely and turns his focus on grief and loss. I use the word, “accessible” loosely, as there is nothing easy about going down this particular hole. David Lindsay-Abaire’s adaptation of his Pulitzer Prize-winning stage play, looks at a couple suffering the unbearable loss of their only child, a story that we have seen a number of times before, and makes it feel like the individual experience it has to be.

Joining Kidman and Eckhart along their journey towards catharsis feels like a privilege, like we don’t really have the right to be there. Each of their experiences is so separate from the other’s, but you can always feel that they are fighting somewhere deep underneath their own hardship to find their way back to each other. Eckhart is strong as a husband who is struggling with doing everything he can not to forget but Kidman is just plain unforgettable. She is doing everything she can to heal, including reaching out to the young boy who was driving the car that killed her son, but she can’t tell if anything is actually working. After all, what level of sadness is needed to let go and see the world the way it once was? That’s the thing about rabbit holes though, both in metaphoric terms and in regards to this film, you’re not the same for having gone down them.

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TRUE GRIT

Written and Directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen

Starring Jeff Bridges, Hailee Steinfeld, Matt Damon and Josh Brolin

Rooster Cogburn: I'm a foolish man who has been dragged into a goose chase by a girl in trousers and a nincompoop.

To have grit, one should have an indomitable spirit. For that grit to be true, one would need to subscribe to the theory that grit can achieve some sort of altruistic state of constant existence but that’s just not how grit goes, far as I see it. From where I’m standing, grit is something that, for those fortunate enough to have it inside, shows itself when life requires it, in those situations when you suddenly find yourself needing to get through something you can’t imagine getting through. In TRUE GRIT, directors Joel Coen and Ethan Coen exhibit a whole whack of grit getting through their first “remake” but I’m not convinced they ever reached any real truth along their journey.

TRUE GRIT is said to be an adaptation of the Charles Portis novel and not the 1969 Henry Hathaway film that starred John Wayne and won him an Academy Award for his performance as Rooster Cogburn. The role has now been appropriated by another Oscar winner, Jeff Bridges, and, while I cannot comment on the how the performances differ having not seen the original film, I can say that Bridges definitely lays down the law as a dirty boozer of a U.S. Marshall who has agreed to help one feisty, young lady (Hailee Steinfeld) find the man who killed her father, so that she can have him brought to justice. Matt Damon plays a bounty hunter who is also looking for the same man and so the three reluctantly embark on their mission. This is a western though so the pace of this mission is much more trot than gallop, leaving a lot of time to talk about the weather. The performances drive the film but not fast enough to have kept my interest in achieving the goal.

The Coen Brothers are indisputably two of the most talented contemporary film directors around and this is abundantly evident in TRUE GRIT. They take their craft very seriously and have clearly done their homework here. That said, the aimless nature of the western genre might have been too much for them as it seems to have exacerbated their philosophical tendencies to the point of meandering ramblings. The film can be gorgeous, thrilling and engaging but it took a little grit of my own to get through the leaner parts.

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Little Fockers (2010)

Genre: Comedy/Drama

Starring: Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro, Owen Wilson, Dustin Hoffman, Barbara Streisand, Blythe Danner, Teri Polo, Jessica Alba

The third installment of the comic epic continues to narrate the life and lies of Greg aka Gaylord Focker (Stiller) and his father-in-law Jack Byrnes (De Niro). Gay is happily married to Jack's daughter Pam (Polo) but Jack continuously interferes with Gay's family life and tries to dictate terms on family management and parenting. Jack fears that his death clock is ticking and his time is coming. He wants someone to continue the Byrne family history in the same manner in which it was held high for so many centuries. In order to do this, Gay must fulfill Jack's standards and Jack only keeps on dictating and judging Gay's moves. Meanwhile, a drug sales agent, Andi Garcia (Alba) is trying to convince Gay to become the spokesperson for the drug to get a higher salary. Unknown to him, his and Andi's meetings have been interpreted wrongly by Jack who thinks his family needs a 'course correction'. The first thing anyone would notice is that the movie has unnecessarily pulled ahead the previous movies storyline thinking that the audience would still enjoy it. Sadly, the first half of the movie is a complete waste and its only right towards the end that the humour seems to get a bit better but not altogether amazing. If you enjoyed the first two movies, this one would never live up to your expectations. Stiller and De Niro could have done much better.

Thumbs up: Different humour which had scope for improvement but only towards the end

Thumbs down: Tries to bask in the glory of the previous movies

Rating: 5.8/10

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