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| Jennifer Lawrence (above) starred in my favorite movie of 2010, "Winter's Bone," a film that reminds us that the reason we don't go into the woods uninvited isn't the monsters, but the people. |
Sometime in early January a co-worker asked me for a list of my favorite movies for 2010. I hadn't thought about it much at the time. I planned to answer with a blog post. Then I got lazy. Then I started watching "The Big Lebowski" over and over again. Here we are in the middle of March and I haven’t answered. I am absolutely worthless without deadlines. Many, especially my editors, would argue I’m not much good then, either. Ah well.
Anyway, here are my 2010 picks, each in about 140 characters.
1. Winter’s Bone makes you feel like a stranger in your homeland in a tale of a girl’s struggle to save her family home in the dirt poor Ozarks.
2. Get Low stars Bill Murray and Robert Duvall. If that is not enough of a recommendation, than I'll add it's very funny, warm and touching.
3. Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Ryan are painfully shy people make one another better in Jack Goes Boating, a small, lovely romantic story.
4. The Dude outdoes the Duke in True Grit, which is almost as much fun to listen to as it is to watch. Contraction-free dialogue is captivating.
5. The Other Guys is a supposed to be a send-up of buddy cop movies, but it’s really the best buddy cop movie since Lethal Weapon.
6. The Town proves Ben Affleck has a lot more to contribute to movies than being a punchline and Jon Hamm is more than the maddest of Mad Men.
7. The Social Network is really about the increasing disconnection of people from their humanity despite technology designed to do the opposite.
8. Inception feels like walking in an MC Escher drawing while in the middle of a heist being chased by spies and trying to fix a relationship.
9. Salt is a great action movie. Angelina Jolie stomps adversaries in sequences worthy of the Bourne films but becomes a hero we root for.
10. Toy Story 3. Woody. Buzz. Rex. The Potato Heads. Barbie. Ken. Pixar. Adventure. High jinks. Coming of age. All heart. Aw, hell. Just see it.
