Albert Nobbs (the main character in a movie of the same name) has a pretty ironic name. In the United Kingdom, the word “nob” is slang for penis, but Albert doesn’t have one. That’s because he’s not really a “he” at all, even if he has lived that way for most of his life. Albert (or whatever her name was as a child) was abandoned as a baby and had been adopted by Mrs. Nobbs. It was a good, if modest, upbringing and Albert lived as a girl (which she was) until Mrs. Nobbs died leaving Albert alone again. Needing a way to support herself, she saw an advertisement for a butler and was able to get the job while posing as a young man. The career stuck, and Albert would continue to masquerade as a man even switching employers several times. In his current job, Albert (played by Glenn Close) buttles in an upscale Dublin inn catering to well-to-do patrons who are often quite rude and self-important but nevertheless seem to like Albert. He’s been saving his tips for years and has built up a decent nest egg, but doesn’t really have anything to spend it on.

One day, the inn’s owner Mrs. Baker (Pauline Collins) hires Hubert Page to paint some of the rooms. It’s going to be a multi-day job, and Mrs. Baker offers to let Hubert stay at the inn until it’s done. Unfortunately, all the rooms are taken so she has Hubert share Albert’s room. Albert is understandably nervous about having his cover blown, but is completely shocked to learn that Hubert (played by Janet McTeer) shares exactly the same secret, and in fact is in even deeper cover because s/he has a wife, Cathleen (who is actually a woman, played by Bronagh Gallagher) at home. Albert is intrigued by this possibility, and has his eye on Helen (Mia Wasikowska) who works as one of the maids at the inn.

Albert Nobbs is certainly not the first gender-bending movie, although it is the first I’ve seen to take place as a period piece. It’s also by far the least convincing performance of any in this class of films. At no point in the film does Glenn Close look anything like a man, and in fact the first time I saw the trailer I didn’t realize she was supposed to be playing a man until about halfway through. Janet McTeer’s disguise wasn’t much better, and it eliminates any possibility of surprise on the part of the audience when Albert learns Hubert’s secret. It’s certainly not in the same league as Boys Don’t Cry or even Just One of the Guys, but perhaps it’s about as convincing as Victor/Victoria (in which Julie Andrews plays a cross-dressing man).

Even if we ignore the unconvincing portrayals, it’s still a very disappointing movie. There are other kinds of believability issues, like why Albert continued to live as a man into his adult years after changing jobs, and the extremely unlikely nature of how Albert and Hubert met each other. It’s also incredibly boring, even compared with other period films, and the end is very unsatisfying. I’m not sure if it’s a movie by idiots or for idiots, but it’s definitely not for me.

There are a lot of good heist movies that make effective use of misdirection to pull off a job while everyone is looking the other way. There are a lot more not-so-good heist movies that also use the same trick. Man on a Ledge is one of the latter.

It starts off innocent enough. Nick Cassidy (played by Sam Worthington) checks himself into a nice, tall hotel early one morning, orders himself a big breakfast from room service, and then calmly steps out the window and onto the ledge many stories above the busy street below. Before too long, someone sees him, and the police are called in. But Nick is no stranger to the police, since he used to be an officer himself, but more recently he’s been on the other side of the law. While Nick was moonlighting as a security escort for the ultra-rich David Englander (Ed Harris), the $40 million diamond they were transporting went missing. Englander got an insurance check for $40 million, and Nick got 25 years in prison.

When his father died, Nick was allowed to attend the funeral, albeit in the company of a couple of armed police officers keeping a close eye on him. But Nick didn’t let the opportunity go to waste, and he managed to escape and stay out of sight until he was spotted on that ledge outside of his hotel about a month later. However, his time outdoors wasn’t as much about killing himself or getting some fresh air as it was about distracting the police (including officers played by Elizabeth Banks, Edward Burns, and Titus Welliver) while his brother Joey (Jamie Bell) and brother’s girlfriend Angie (Genesis Rodriguez) broke into Englander’s high-rise across the street.

Although I was intrigued by the idea behind it, I was really put off by how thoroughly the film turned out to be. It spent most of its time ripping off The Negotiator, in which Samuel L. Jackson plays a police officer who was accused of stealing and must commit a crime and deal with dirty cops in an attempt to try to clear his name. But it does occasionally take a break from that to steal from Die Hard (moving through a high-rise using the elevator shaft and ventilation ducts, stopping a big industrial fan to crawl through, and introducing a sleazy reporter that became too involved with the story) and a little from Mission: Impossible (dangling by a rope from the ceiling to avoid setting off pressure sensors on the floor of a secure room, and the need to fake out temperature sensors). And even when it wasn’t taking from some other much better movie, it was still rather obvious and uninspired. I was disappointed to see Ed Harris in a shockingly one-dimensional role, but I’m guessing that the fault lies more with the writing than the acting.

There are still things to enjoy about the movie. There’s plenty of ridiculousness, and it’s frequently the kind of bad that can be fun to watch. It is particularly ludicrous in its need to tie up every single loose end, and even goes out of its way to address things that didn’t need any further attention. Genesis Rodriguez is rather voluptuous and is often attired in a way that accentuates that, and Elizabeth Banks isn’t too shabby either. And of course you can always play “spot the plagiarism” to help pass the time.

This year’s Academy Awards nominations are really bizarre. I absolutely loved The Artist and Midnight in Paris. I really liked The Descendants, The Help, Moneyball, and The Tree of Life. I was largely indifferent to Hugo, and didn’t like War Horse, but there was enough buzz around them that I wasn’t surprised by their nominations (even if I thought there were literally hundreds of better choices than either of them). But never in my wildest dreams did I expect Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close to make the cut. I found its trailer to be absolutely repulsive, and I never heard anyone say anything even remotely complimentary about it. But apparently at least a handful of people consider it one of the greatest films of the year, so I felt compelled to see it at least once, and I really tried to go in with an open mind. It really is awful.

The film stars Thomas Horn as Oskar Schell, the kind of kid who probably gets beat up a lot, but not nearly as much as he deserves. He is very selfish and disrespectful, at least when he’s not oblivious to the world around him. He’s afraid of everything, from bridges and elevators to old people and other kids, and even for some unexplained reason (except that it’s convenient to the plot) playground swing sets. And that was before his father, Thomas (Tom Hanks), died in the one of the World Trade Center buildings on 9/11. Oskar had been extremely close to his father and they were always going on adventures and quests together, apparently giving his mom, Linda (Sandra Bullock) the cold shoulder. When Thomas was killed, Oskar dug deep and became even more unbearable than he had already been. He refused to take public transportation and wouldn’t go anywhere without a tambourine that he would shake any time he felt nervous or uncomfortable, which was all the time.

Even a year after Thomas had died, his clothes were still hanging in the closet, with Linda unwilling and/or unable to get rid of them and Oskar hesitant to go near them. But one day he did, and while rooting around the top of the closet he knocked over a vase, shattering it on the floor. Inside that vase was a small brown envelope with only the word “Black” on it, and a key inside. Just like the treasure hunts he and his father used to have, Oskar took it upon himself to figure out what the key was for. It was something he intended to do alone, lying to his mother about where he was going and what he was doing, but eventually an old man (Max von Sydow) renting a room from his grandmother began tagging along.

While there is far less “policemen and firefighters are wonderful” pandering than I had feared there might be, there was nevertheless a revolting amount of fear mongering, made all the more unpleasant by being buried in Oskar’s neuroses. The kid won’t stop whining and refuses to see the world in any way other than how it affects him. In his quest to discover the key’s purpose, Oskar is downright rude to and intrusive upon others, and his mother simply lets it happen.

The only thing satisfying about the film’s conclusion is that it did, in fact, end. At over two hours, it took far too long for the end to arrive, and even then it leaves a number of story lines unresolved. I am thoroughly baffled that anyone would consider it to be a passable film, let alone anywhere near the nine best of the hundreds of the year’s theatrical releases.

I think that boxing is one of the dumbest sports in the world, and wrestling is about at the same IQ level but has the added detraction of being largely staged and injected with stupid story lines and unnecessary drama. That dislike has also spilled into martial arts, although there are exceptions (for example, I enjoy watching martial artists demonstrate their board/cement/baseball bat breaking abilities, and I often love karate and kung fu movies). Since I don’t follow MMA, I wasn’t familiar with Gina Carano, and I was pleasantly surprised to find her to be much more pleasantly proportioned than many female fighters, and yet no less capable.

In the film, Carano plays Mallory, who works for a private company that contracts to the U.S. government for all kinds of nasty top-secret jobs that no one else wants or is qualified to take. She had recently been called to Barcelona on a hostage rescue mission, and then no sooner had she returned home than she was out again to Dublin as a favor to British MI6. But things went all kinds of crazy on that job, and she found herself on the wrong side of the law and a target of the police and other government contractors. To clear her name, she’s got to stay alive, outwitting or outfighting those coming after her, while she tries to figure out who’s got it in for her.

I prefer going into movies knowing as little about them as possible, so Haywire had a lot of surprises in store for me. The overwhelming impression that I’d gotten from others was that it is wall-to-wall action, but I didn’t find that to be the case. There are lots of fight scenes, and most of them are pretty amazing, but there’s also quite a bit more downtime and a more intricate plot than I had expected. When Carano is fighting, it’s incredible. She also makes for impressive eye candy, and the scenes in which she’s both gorgeous and deadly are by themselves worth the price of admission. But acting is definitely not her strong suit, and her delivery of dialogue is much less convincing than her delivery of kicks and punches.

Fortunately, Carano isn’t required to carry the acting load on her own. Hers was the only name I’d heard in connection with the film, but I was quite surprised to learn of the extensive, well-credentialed supporting cast which included the likes of Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Bill Paxton, and Channing Tatum. For the most part, they played their parts well, and when something didn’t work it was often more the fault of the weak screenplay (written by Lem Dobbs, who doesn’t have any other credited films in the last decade) than the actors inhabiting it.

I think that ultimately the film tries to be too smart for its own good. The best parts were the dumb action sequences, and the weakest were those that got bogged down with plot and dialogue. It’s a fun movie, but I think it would have been a lot better with a little less conversation and a little more action. Or maybe a lot more action.

Meryl Streep is an incredible actress and is superb at playing fictional characters, but she takes it to another level when portraying real people. She completely transformed her appearance when playing Julia Child in Julie & Julia, and she outdid herself once again as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady. It’s a real shame that her talent was wasted on an otherwise disappointing film.

Margaret Thatcher (nee Roberts) was born into a relatively modest life. Her parents ran a grocery in a small town in which her father also served as mayor. She had to work hard for everything she got, and had the added difficulty of being a woman in a world in which the term “male-dominated” is a pretty significant understatement. And when she made it to the top of the British political system, she was faced with civil unrest, attacks on British territory, and the persistent threat of Soviet aggression. She was famous for sticking to her guns and refusing to compromise on important issues, and was willing to make tough decisions when the need arose. She held her nation together through tough times, and had a hand in the end of the Cold War.

You’d think that with such a resume, a biography would focus on her political accomplishments and struggles, and on the events that led her into that life. And yet The Iron Lady spends most of its time on a point in her life about two decades after stepping down as prime minister. Her husband Dennis (portrayed by Jim Broadbent) had been dead for about eight years, and since he died in 2003 then that would set the film in the year 2011. At this time, Thatcher is old and frail and often senile. She can still see and talk to her dead husband, tends to get confused when she’s around real people. What we do learn about the great accomplishments of her life comes in the form of flashbacks, often instigated by an only-in-her-mind exchange with Dennis.

I’m utterly shocked by the direction they chose to take the film. We only get momentary glimpses of the powerful, world-changing woman that she once was, interspersed among scenes showing her current state of failing mind and failing body. Meryl Streep was at the top of her game and her portrayal of Thatcher absolutely deserves the award victories and nominations she’s already received and those that are still to come. But I came away feeling cheated by their insistence on looking at the frailty and vulnerability of her current state rather than what she had once been. Someone who is only momentarily distracted might completely miss the fact that she helped bring about the fall of the Soviet Union, but it’s made quite clear that Dennis couldn’t make toast without burning it, and couldn’t eat it without slathering it with butter.

To put it bluntly, the film borders on being offensive and embarrassing. I’m not saying that it doesn’t accurately portray her current state, but to so completely minimize her accomplishments and underscore her weakness does a disservice to both the Mrs. Thatcher and to the audience.

I really don’t understand Mark Wahlberg’s movie selection process. In the past few years, he’s done some great films like The Fighter, The Departed, and Invincible, some perfectly adequate movies like Shooter and The Italian Job, and some absolutely horrible movies like The Happening and Rock Star. I didn’t expect Contraband to be great, but I’d hoped it would still be worth watching. Too bad that wasn’t the case.

Once upon a time, Chris and Kate Farraday (Mark Wahlberg and Kate Beckinsale) were an elite smuggling team able to get just about anything past customs. But after having a couple of kids, it was time to settle down and go straight. Kate became a stay-at-home mom, and Chris started his own company installing security alarms. There were still plenty of bad people who wanted to bring bad stuff into the country, but they just had to find other people to do it. Kate’s younger brother Andy (Caleb Landry Jones) decided to try his hand at it, but when border security agents got a little too close to his boat he dumped the cocaine overboard. This kept him out of jail, but didn’t endear him to Tim (Giovanni Ribisi) who had hired him to do the job. Tim put Andy into the hospital and made it clear that if Andy didn’t come up with the cocaine or its street value in cash, he’d be going to the morgue, and then Tim would come after his family.

Chris had done plenty of work for Tim in the past and tried to reason with him, but the best deal he could get was two weeks to come up with the coke or the cash. Chris wasn’t about to be a drug runner, so he decided to go with counterfeit. As luck would have it, he just happened to have an in with the crew of a cargo ship that was just about to leave for Panama, where he knew a guy who could create “supernotes” that were virtually indistinguishable from legitimate currency. They’d have to work fast, since apparently the ship was only going to be in port in Panama for about four hours before turning right back around to get them back home in time for the deadline, but it was their only shot.

Your ability to enjoy Contraband is probably directly related to your ability to switch off your brain. It is full of logic holes and stupid plot points, but it’s also got a decent amount of action, so it can be fun if you try not to think about it too much. Unfortunately, I’m not very good at doing that, so the utter stupidity of the film hit me with full force while I was watching it. Like Tim’s insistence on continuing to intimidate Kate and the boys while Chris and Andy were doing the job for him. Like how incredibly convenient it was that a ship full of people he knew was ready to take him right where he needed to go right within his very tight time constraints, and how convenient it was that the counterfeiter had no problem coming up with a whole van full of supernotes at the drop of a hat. Like how the thousands of shipping containers would be unloaded and replaced (and the ship refueled and resupplied) in a four hour window. And those are just problems I can mention without spoiling anything.

Since it’s simply not possible to miss the absurdity of the story, you’d think that they would put in enough other content to try to overcome that, but I didn’t really find that to be the case. It’s not boring per se, but there are only a few scenes where there might be enough action to forget how stupid it is. There’s also not much in the way of comedy or interesting dialogue, so it’s pretty much a one-trick pony that doesn’t even do that trick very well.

Michael Biehn has been in a number of great films, including The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, and Tombstone, and a number of others of varied quality. When The Divide came to Austin, the Alamo Drafthouse invited Biehn to introduce it, during which time he gave away a lot of the important plot points and spoiled large portions of the film. But as it turns out, the movie really isn’t worth seeing, so perhaps it’s better to have him tell you want happens than to watch it for yourself.

The film opens with a city (presumably New York) devastated by a massive explosion, probably from some kind of nuclear device. Mickey (Biehn) had been a firefighter during 9/11, and that experience forever changed his life. He gave up being a firefighter to become a building superintendent, and he lived his life under the assumption that it was only a matter of time until the next big thing hit. So as a haggard survivalist, he turned the building’s basement into a bunker where he would be able to ride out whatever might come in relative comfort while the rest of the world was destroyed around him. But he hadn’t expected he’d have to share that space with about nine of the other building’s residents who managed to make their way in before he sealed the door.

For someone so certain of an impending violent end to civilization, he stocked his bunker in a rather unusual way. He had a supply of food and water, although it had been intended for just one man and would be a stretch to sustain ten people until the radiation subsided enough to make it safe to go outside. And yet despite his solo intentions, he had plenty of mattresses for everyone to sleep on (which they made an effort to point out, and yet no effort to explain). He had a gasoline generator, although it was employed in a pretty uneconomical manner to operate a refrigerator and big screen TV. He had lockers and walkie-talkies and plenty of cigarettes, but no guns.

Almost instantly, factions arose within the bunker. Certainly seeing the world they knew come to an end didn’t put them in a great mental state to start with, and cabin fever, hunger, and boredom set in very quickly. It also didn’t help much that they fell under attack pretty early on by a group of soldier-scientists who set up some kind of laboratory right outside their door in a plot line that was never explained and never addressed again. But a complete lack of any form of logic is one of the defining characteristics of the movie, and because it’s about two hours long they have a lot of time to fill with things that don’t make sense and people you don’t care about.

The film is ultimately more psychological thriller than horror, and deals more with the breakdown of civilization in this closed, high-pressure environment. But merely having characters lose their minds and do irrational and impolite things doesn’t really make for much of a thriller. And although they were brought together by a nuclear blast that leveled the city, it really doesn’t really fit in the post-apocalyptic category either. If it is necessary to try to classify The Divide, I’d say it best fits in the “not worth watching” category.

I know that it’s a subject that I rant about frequently, but I absolutely hate movie trailers. There’s never been a case in which seeing a trailer for a movie before seeing the movie has improved my experience, but there have been many cases in which the trailer has detracted from the film or convinced me to not see it. Pariah is yet another great movie with a horrible trailer, and it really prevented me from experiencing the full effect of the film.

Alike (played by Adepero Oduye) is a smart high school student and aspiring writer. Her name is pronounced uh-leek-ay, but everyone except her father Arthur (Charles Parnell) just calls her Li. She’s also a lesbian, wears mannish clothes, and tries to do whatever she can to avoid looking “girly”. She and her best friend Laura (Pernell Walker) frequent lesbian night clubs, and she doesn’t do anything to hide her orientation at school, but she hasn’t come out to her family and she’s in the habit of changing her clothes after she leaves home in the morning and before she returns at night.

Although Alike’s parents have their suspicions, they’re grasping at whatever straws they can to hold out hope that she’s straight. Her father is a police detective who becomes aggressive if anyone even hints that she might be gay, and he tries to spend as much time as possible away from home to avoid interacting with her. Her mother Audrey (Kim Wayans) is a devout churchgoing woman who is also in denial and tries to buy her cute outfits and force her to spend less time with Laura and more time with Bina (Aasha Davis), the daughter of a coworker and fellow congregation member.

Had I not seen the trailer ahead of time and had it spoil some of the most significant scenes for me, I probably would have been a lot more devastated by this movie than I was. It’s relatively short, but it packs in a lot of emotions like fear and denial and anger and inadequacy. Part of the film’s power comes from the great performances, but it also stems from the realization that her parents are concerned more about how her lesbianism will reflect on them. Her father becomes enraged if anyone even broaches the subject with him, and her mother seems more concerned about Alike’s appearance than her feelings.

The roles are all played expertly, but I was prevented from becoming truly engrossed in the story because I had (based on the trailer) a pretty good idea how it was going to end. It’s a movie that is definitely worth seeing, but I’d recommend trying not to learn much about it before diving in.

I can’t imagine what it must be like to grow up as a kid in today’s world. When I was a kid, I played on dangerous playground equipment and in homemade tree houses. I rode in the back of station wagons and pickup trucks without being restrained in any way. And with entertainment like The Karate Kid and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I spent a lot of time fighting with friends. It was all in fun, but occasionally someone would get hurt by a punch or kick that landed just a little too hard. But today’s idiotic “zero tolerance” policies seem like a way of immersing children in the police state culture before they get a chance to have fun or make mistakes they can learn from.

Penelope and Michael Longstreet (Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly) and Nancy and Alan Cowan (Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz) are just these kinds of overprotective parents, with the added bonus that they’re very concerned about how the behavior of their children reflects on their image. When their sons Ethan and Zachary get into an altercation, it’s imperative that they (the parents, with no sign of the children) get together and discuss it. When Penelope and Michael invited Nancy and Alan to their apartment, they thought it would be a relatively quick ordeal to craft a statement that both parties could agree on. When the film begins, they’re just finishing that statement and Nancy and Alan are about to leave. And they’re still just about to leave for the next hour and a half.

Their interaction starts off in an excessively civilized way, with everyone going far out of their way to be more polite and sophisticated than they really are (with the possible exception of Penelope, who at least believes that she’s as refined as the image she’s trying to present). Penelope and Michael live in the kind of apartment that may be nice to look at, but that would be horrible to live in. The coffee table littered with art books is front and center, the walls are lined with decorative sculptures and at least one well-lit but completely empty frame, and the television is high up in the corner right next to the window, with none of the furniture really facing it.

Nancy and Alan make their way out the door several times, and yet they always seem to be drawn back in for some reason. First, it’s for coffee and cobbler. Then it’s for more coffee. Then it’s a phone call that Alan can’t take in the elevator because there’s no reception. And then it’s the arguing. As they day wears on and the alcohol comes out, the politeness and civility is dropped and their real personalities are exposed.

The film is based on a play, and that really comes through in its direction. With the exception of bookends shot at the nearby park where the fight occurred, the whole movie takes place in Penelope and Michael’s apartment (or in the hall just in front of it), and mostly just in the living room. But they make good use of that space and the film doesn’t really feel constrained in any way. It’s a good “pressure cooker” kind of environment, but they find increasingly interesting (and funny) ways to vent that pressure.

John C. Reilly is a great choice for Michael because his comedy experience really comes through, but so does the more heartfelt performances from recent films like Cyrus and Terri. Christoph Waltz also gives a great performance, although his is the only character that doesn’t really undergo any significant transition in the film. He starts off as a disinterested, self-involved jerk and stays that way throughout the movie, whereas it takes time for the others to drop their personas and devolve to his level. Kate Winslet and Jodie Foster also do well enough in their roles, although in many ways it feels that they’re playing more supporting roles than starring even if everyone has roughly the same amount of screen time and dialogue.

I was pleasantly surprised by the movie’s comedy. Although I was initially concerned about the “sophisticated” humor which is only mildly funny and won’t get more than polite laughs, I was happy to see that as the walls are broken down between them, their interactions get funnier. It’s still not going to go toe-to-toe with the best pure comedies, but there’s enough substance layered underneath to make it a thoroughly enjoyable movie.

I’ve mentioned in the past that I like to watch movies. I watch a lot of movies at home (on DVD/Blu-Ray, TV, Netflix streaming, Amazon Video on Demand, Hulu, etc.), but the home experience just can’t match seeing a movie on the big screen. Fortunately, I live in Austin, TX, which is the home of the Alamo Drafthouse cinemas, some significant film festivals (including SxSW, Fantastic Fest, and Austin Film Festival), and a decent arthouse theater. This means that I have plenty of opportunities to see a wide variety of movies, and I take advantage of them. Last year, I saw a little over 100 movies in theaters. Back in 2007, I saw nearly 130. But this year, a combination of factors made the number a bit higher. I expanded the range of theaters I attended on a regular basis, I was a badge holder at Fantastic Fest for the first time (and took full advantage of that), and I started watching less TV. But all that together still doesn’t quite account for my final in-theater movie count for the year. I really don’t know how, and I’m kind of embarrassed to admit it, but I attended 512 theater showings in 2010.

Some basic statistics about the movies that I saw this year:

• I saw 254 different movies during or before what I consider to be their initial theatrical run. I wrote up my thoughts on nearly all of them at http://www.witamis.com/.
• An additional 43 showings were repeats of those first-run movies.
• An additional 3 showings were repeats of first-run movies I first saw in 2009.
• I saw 97 additional movies that were not in their first theatrical run but that I had never seen before.
• I saw 39 different movies at Fantastic Fest, which is the most a non-press attendee was able to attend.
• I saw 26 different movies at Austin Film Festival, which I believe to be the most an attendee was able to attend.
• 98 of the showings (nearly 1 in 5) included someone directly involved with that movie (e.g., an actor, writer, director, producer, or other crew member) in attendance.
• I attended 20 other showings with some other notable guest who wasn’t directly involved in making the movie but added significantly to the experience.
• I attended 20 Master Pancake presentations (a showing in which the movie was mocked by comedians in the style of Mystery Science Theater 3000).
• I attended 22 quote-along presentations, in which the audience is encouraged to recite key lines from the movie at the same time it’s said on screen.
• I attended 39 Terror Tuesday showings and 20 Weird Wednesday showings.
• I attended 2 Alamo Drafthouse Rolling Roadshow presentations, in which a classic movie was shown in a symbolic location.
• 61 of the movies I saw were primarily in a language other than English.

My Favorite Movie of the Year

This one is easy: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. This is the only movie that I’ve ever seen twice in the theater on the same day, and it’s the only movie I’ve seen in the theater seven times during its initial run. The first time I saw the movie was a special presentation with writer/director Edgar Wright, co-writer Michael Bacall, and cast members Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Anna Kendrick, Brandon Routh, and Jason Schwartzman, and that was my favorite single showing and favorite Q&A of the year. I got the Blu-Ray/DVD set on the day it was released and have seen it many times, including all four commentaries, and most of the other extra features. I bought the soundtrack and have listened to it many times. I bought and read all six graphic novels on which it was based, and it may be somewhat sacrilegious to say but I actually think that the movie is better than the comic (despite a line in the movie which states otherwise).

I was extremely excited about this movie before it came out, and my expectations were greatly exceeded when I saw it. The more times I see it, the more I’m impressed by the tiny details that the vast majority of people will miss. It has a truly unique visual style that’s impossible to adequately describe without actually seeing it. It’s an absolute travesty that it didn’t even make back its budget, but for some reason people just didn’t go to see it. Hopefully it will make a ton of money from people buying it on DVD and/or Blu-Ray.

The Overall Best Movie of the Year

This one is also easy: Bedevilled. I saw it at Fantastic Fest and was blown away. I love Korean vengeance movies, and this is one of the best. It’s the first effort from director Jang Cheol-so (who was in attendance to introduce the movie and provide a Q&A afterward), and I can’t wait to see what else he has in store in the future.

Although neither The Man From Nowhere nor Kidnapped were quite as good as Bedevilled, they were both better than any other new movie I saw in 2010. Incidentally, I also saw both of them at Fantastic Fest.

The Best Mainstream Movies of the Year

Unfortunately, many of the movies that I consider among the best of the year were ones that only played at arthouse cinemas (and were therefore available only to people fortunate enough to live in a city with such a theater) or film festivals (and were therefore only available to an even smaller population). However, there were still a number of very good movies that I consider to be more “mainstream” and widely available. In my opinion, the following are the ten best movies that grossed at least 10 million dollars at the US box office and that I first had the opportunity to see this year:

• 10. Kick-Ass
• 9. The Town
• 8. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
• 7. The Social Network
• 6. Toy Story 3
• 5. The Book of Eli
• 4. Inception
• 3. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
• 2. Black Swan
• 1. True Grit

There are a couple of honorable mentions that would have been on this list if they hadn’t fallen just short of the $10M cutoff. They include 127 Hours (which made $9.86M) and Get Low (which made $9.11M). And if The King’s Speech had been released a little earlier it might have also crossed the threshold before the end of the year. But I am both shocked and happy that The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo did make the cut with just over $10M in the US (and another $100M worldwide) despite a runtime over 2 and a half hours and being entirely in Swedish with English subtitles. Incidentally, it is available for streaming on Netflix, along with its sequel The Girl Who Played with Fire, and the third movie of the triology The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest should be available for streaming by the end of January 2011.

Other Movies Worth Mentioning

All of the following movies made far less than they should have and/or weren’t as widely available as they deserved to be, but are still worth checking out if you get the chance. Many of them are already available on DVD and/or Blu-Ray, and a couple of them (Mother and The Good, the Bad, the Weird) are available for streaming on Netflix.

• A Somewhat Gentle Man
• Best Worst Movie
• Birdemic: Shock and Terror
• Drones
• Exporting Raymond
• Four Lions
• Golden Slumber
• I Didn’t Come Here to Die
• Marwencol
• Micmacs
• Mother
• Stingray Sam
• Temple Grandin
• That Evening Sun
• The Good, the Bad, the Weird
• The Secret in their Eyes
• The Square
• Under the Boardwalk: The Monopoly Story
• Winnebago Man
• Winter’s Bone