Serge's Top Ten Films of the Year

This list did not actually make it to ten titles. It stops just short, at nine. It's not that I didn't see ten films this year -- I saw dozens. I just didn't want to list more than nine of them on a top-ten list. I saw Tron Legacy, Predators, Salt, Repo Men, Frozen, and Kick Ass, but none of them are going on the list just because I saw them. Likewise, I should probably mention the films I haven't seen which are making a lot of critical waves: The Kids are All Right, The King's Speech, How to Train Your Dragon, Valhalla Rising, The Town, The Ghost Writer, and The American. With all of that said:

9. Winter's Bone -- While Veronica Mars probably did everything anyone can do with the idea of creating a film noir with a young female protagonist, Winter's Bone proved that the idea was always, and probably always will be, pretty awesome.

8. Shutter Island -- You had me at "Scorsese does psychological horror." People complain that it's too convoluted, too bleak, too slow -- I hear all the complaints, and I don't care. I think the film is densely detailed, honestly abject, and unafraid to take its time, which are all pluses in my book.

7. True Grit -- As I sat in the theater watching this movie, I was convinced that it would certainly wind up occupying the number-two spot on this list, the first two acts being so gosh-darned awesome, but then the final ten minutes arrived. Simply put, this film is really anticlimactic. And I'm not even one of those people who was dissatisfied with the ending of No Country for Old Men (2007). This film's ending unspools so fast that it leaves one feeling -- in an otherwise perfect film -- that everything ends a little too easily. The epilogue feels more like an afterthought and did more to confuse me than give me closure. Something tells me that repeat viewings might make me change my mind, though. Look for this film to jump a few spots on next year's review of 2010.

6. Ondine -- What a cool little film. A poor but good-hearted fisherman, who is also a recovering alcoholic, pulls in his nets one day and finds a beautiful girl trapped inside. Is she a mermaid, or something much more common? This brilliant set-up eventually yields a surprising, cathartic, and really sweet conclusion which doesn't feel cheap or easy. With every new development of the plot, until the final scene or two, it remains equally likely that Ondine is either a mermaid searching for a husband, or simply a runaway, dodging a troubled past.

5. Toy Story 3 -- Leave it to Pixar to get the final installment of a beloved trilogy right. I haven't seen the main characters of a kids movie come so close to death before, and I'm glad that the franchise has matured alongside secondary protagonist Andy, who, in this installment, is going off to college and must decide whether or not his toys ultimately stay or go. It's nice to see Andy become an actual character for once, as the last two films in the series relegated him more to the role of plot-device.

4. Robin Hood -- I can't imagine why the studio made Ridley Scott cut 16 precious minutes from his version of this film. No doubt, the sub-par theatrical cut doomed this film to critical and box-office mediocrity. The director's extended cut is the far-superior version of the film, and it's also the one which I would hope gets lots of nominations, come awards time.

3. The Social Network -- Aaron Sorkin should write every script. That's what I've decided. He's taken a subject as silly as the founding of Facebook and elevated it to the rank of a Shakespearian tragedy.

2. Black Swan -- Ballerina-horror! I've never tried it myself, but I imagine there are far more ways for a project like this to go wrong than to go right. The CGI hallucinations could've violated the aesthetic distance and looked really silly, but they weren't. The internalized conflict could've gotten stale, but it didn't. The themes could've been lost in the frenzied sexual bedlam, but they didn't. It could've been a box-office flop, but it wasn't. Kudos to Aronofsky and co.

1. Inception -- Well, of course, the Chris Nolan film gets the top spot on my list. Not because I'm just a Chris Nolan fanboy, mind you. I like to think it's because this, like all of his other films, is at least a minor masterpiece.

And those are the films everyone needs to see from 2010.