To set the record straight these are movies I saw in movie theatres,
not on a computer monitor or on a TV screen or a cell phone. I believe
in seeing a movie on a movie screen that it was made for. Now that I got
that out of my system let's go!
I saw 80 movies in 2010 and
breaking it down 19 were bad, 44 ranged from so-so to okay and 17 were
good to excellent. The sad part is that I remember very few of them
including the excellent ones! The truth is that I didn't find 'one MUST
see' movie in 2010,
A few performances stood out such as the ones
by Michael Douglas in both his movies "Solitary Man" and "Wall Street:
Money Never Sleeps". There were the battles of the mothers from Annette
Bening in "The Kids Are All Right" to Jacki Weaver in "Animal Kingdom"
and Melissa Leo in "The Fighter" to Barbara Hershey in "The Black Swan".
Talking
about "The Black Swan" a movie I didn't particularly liked but right
now it looks like Natalie Portman will win the Oscar for Best Actress if
the fact that she is pregnant and not married doesn't work against her
though we are far from the Ingrid Bergman days.
A few other
performances that moved me were those by Benjamin Bratt and Jeremy Ray
Valdez as father and son in "La Mission" along with Michael Caine in/as
"Harry Brown". Amy Adams as the girlfriend in "The Fighter" and Mila
Kunis, as a different type of girlfriend in "The Black Swan".
Among
those on my good to excellent list, in no particular order, are: "Mao's
Last Dance", "Toy Story 3", "the Kids Are All Right", "Conviction",
"Alice In Wonderland", "La Mission", "The Fighter" and "An Education".
For
the curious and/or those who want to know if our tastes are similar
here are a few from my bad list: "Sex And The City 2", "Death At A
Funeral", "The Social Network" (yes, I am in the minority), "Harry
Potter 7" (there I go again), "The Prince Of Persia", "Murder In
Fashion" and "Chloe".
Here's hoping 2011 will have more than 17 good to excellent movies and less bad ones!