Addenda to the "Best of 2010" List

So much for hindsight.  Just two months ago, I delivered my revised Best of 2010 list after a year of careful reflection and frantic Netflixing.  Then, wouldn't you know it, just a few weeks into 2012, I find three films that deserve spots on the list and I've gotta re-order the whole thing.  This is important, because one of the new selections has actually unseated Inception as My Pick for Best Film of 2010.

Last Night: A directorial debut for writer/director Massy Tadjedin, Last Night feels like a play.  There's basically only a dozen people with speaking roles (and only four of them major parts), there aren't many locations, and the whole thing takes place over the course of about 36 hours.  What's more, not a single word of dialogue is superfluous.  All of that, in case you can't tell from my writing, is something I like very, very much.

And yet Last Night does much that a play can't.  I tried to surf the internet while watching this film and it didn't take but five minutes for me to realize that that would be completely impossible, as so much of the drama is translated through the visual.  The subtle looks that characters shoot each other, the things that their hands are doing during conversations.  That's generally too subtle for the stage.

But wait: this would all be for naught if the story sucked.  In fact, it doesn't.  Sam Worthington and Keira Knightley play a young married couple.  Knightley gets pissed at Worthington when she finds out that his new work buddy is gorgeous, and that he had been avoiding the subject for that very reason.  Anyhoot, they fight and they reconcile.  But wait!  The next morning, Worthington heads out on a business trip with his hot co-worker in tow.  Meanwhile, Knightley meets an old flame.  Will either of them remain faithful, and practice the lessons learned in their fight?  Or will infidelity teach them something new as well?

The Town: I have less to say about this film than Last Night because it is infinitely more well-known, and it's not really doing anything different so much as showcasing all the old show-stopping tricks in the best new ways.

The Town is about a professional crew of Boston bank robbers, and it's the best bank-robbery film I think I've ever seen.  Co-writer/director/star Ben Affleck has crafted a tale so suspenseful, so touching, so smart, that I don't think I could've asked for anything better.

Career criminal Doug MacRay (Affleck) pulls off what seems to be just another spirited bank robbery, but there's a problem: one of the more hot-headed members of his crew (Jeremy Renner) wants to kill a potential witness (Rebecca Hall).  Doug decides to follow the girl for a few days to make sure she won't get hurt, but then, the Complication of Complications arises: he falls in facking love.

So much moral ambiguity!  I love it.  It's a tale of good cops we hate and terrible criminals we love, and the performances are all perfect and the scenes unfold like thunderclaps and the catharsis is frequent and explosive.  On top of all of that, it's got a veritable gallery of Boston accents to dissect and enjoy.

Trollhunter: How's this for a logline?  Three Norwegian college kids go out into the woods to make a documentary on poaching, only to discover that the government has been hiring mercenaries to hunt down and kill the various trolls that occasionally escape from their enclosures and ravage the countryside.

It's perhaps the best found-footage film I've ever seen (indeed, perhaps the only one that really works), and that's noteworthy enough, but then to add kick-ass shit like improvised exposition outlining the various species of trolls in the world and how best to kill them, and then seeing it f*cking happen, is downright awesome.

The whole story unfolds with a surprising bit of mystery and a fantastic dose of suspense.  The mercenary that the kids tail asks them before they start out if any of them are Christian.  He says he won't hunt with Christians because trolls can smell them coming a mile away.  They all deny their faith.  But once they're in the woods, it doesn't take long for them to realize that one of them has been lying, because it seems the monstrous trolls are sniffing right for them!

So here's the updated list, hopefully, this time, for all time:

10) Ondine, 9) The King's Speech, 8) Trollhunter, 7) Black Swan, 6) Last Night, 5) Toy Story 3, 4) The Social Network, 3) Robin Hood, 2) Inception, 1) The Town

--Serge