Anyways, what was the point of making this again...? AH YES that's right. Alright, considering that the very-biased Oscars are now over, I think it's time to list my films of 2010 (not neccesarily new ones), whether good, or bad, here they are. And note, don't take my picks as the only fact; that's how bad things start.
TOP 10s OF 2010
To start off, let's look at the Top 10 films this year that I thought to be the best. Remember, don't take these as fact; this is just my personal selection.
Top 10 Personally Best Films of 2010
Okay, I may have given this film some flack earlier on, but when I think back to it, this take on 80s exploitation movies may not have fully reached the expectations given, but it did do its job; to be mindless and action-packed. The whole moral of the immigration thing may have somewhat ruined the intended style, but nevertheless, it did its job (and no, I'm not scoring these movies here, because...I'm not good with those for some reason)
Alright, I KNOW I'm going to get some hate for this one, but once again, I didn't find it that bad. The reason why is that while the first viewing really confused the utter hell out of me, the second viewing made me think again about it. I still find the story a bit...strange, but what do you expect from a film with a disappearing cat and a queen whose head is thrice as large as some one normal? That, and the visuals are the most stunning that Burton's career has ever produced. So, odd pick, but yeah, I like it.
My god, this movie. It isn't the greatest animated movie to come out in recent times, nor the most recent involving a main leading character being a villain (ie Megamind, though Megamind came out later in the year), but this film does bring a lot of hilarity and surprisingly funny acting from Steve Carell, who voices lead character Gru in the movie. There's a lot of good visual gags that are awesome, but I shant spoil them.
Here's where the list might start to make no sense; why? Well, people might gather that I don't like this film all that much...not true; I DO in fact like it. The movies in the list I have a HIGH liking towards and the order is only such because of a VERY VERY VERY miniscule liking one over the other, and as such, all these films rank very highly in my "books," and don't go thinking that because one movie is lower on the list than another does not mean it's bad AT ALL; that's for the next list in this post. Anyways, although I saw this film not too long ago, this film DID release last year, so it still counts for this list. Firth and Rush did a fantastic job bringing their characters to life, with the same going for Carter. I can't much more about this movie, since a lot of people know quite a bit about it already, since the plot is pretty simple. Still though, this film was good.
A lot of people criticize this movie for its much darker tone in contrast to the previous films, mostly due to the promotion of the film, which showed a burning Hogwarts. For the most part, this darkness stays in tone, and WARNING, THERE ARE SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THIS MOVIE! For example, Hermione erases all memory of her existance from her family's mind, and a lot of characters, like Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody, are killed without any good final words. For the most part, the movie involves the trio of Harry, Ron, and Hermione as they travel to destroy Voldemort once and for all. A lot of character development is found in this one, and considering the film is a two-parter, this being the first, it should make sense that the next part will contain the majority of the action scenes. With the films getting darker as they go on (compare this film and the first one and tell me that you NEVER thought that shit would go down like this), it only adds up to being the most serious and best installments of the 8 film series.
Yeah, I'm putting this film over a historical drama and a film about most literally DEATH, your point? Anyways, this has to be one of Dreamworks' best animated films. The story involving the prejudice of dragons (yeah it sounds odd on paper, but if you watch the film it will make more sense) is an oddly engaging one. The ending was also excellent, considering it isn't the usual "everyone-is-happy-and-uninjured" stuff, and is actually a bit sad, but in a good way. The scope of the movie's "sets" is massive, more massive than anything that the company has ever done, and it deserves all it's been praised.
I might get some hatred for putting it in this spot, but I still believe it takes this spot because it is the greatest animated film of the year, hands down, but not neccessarily the greatest movie. The return of Woody, Buzz, and all the other toys in Andy's box takes place many years later after Toy Story 2, where Andy is now heading to college and must leave his childhood treasures behind. There's a lot of new characters, and a lot more detail to visuals, considering that Pixar has been building up their skill for 10 years between this movie and its previous installment. Some points of the movie are a bit...TOO dramatic for the market of the film, the film does good overall, surprisingly mixing many different elements of comedy, drama, and good family fun. Nothing much else to say, but...Toy Story 3.
You'd think that for a film about female ballet and the ballet "Swan Lake" that'd it be a relatively girly coming-of-age movie, right? WRONG! This film is MESSED UP! But how so, you may ask? Well, considering the roles that Portman and Kunis have done in the past, it's surprising that they put out such an amazing performance. Not only that, but the themes in this film are a bit...MATURE for a film involving the greatest ballet of all time. Not only that, but the film eerily follows the story of "Swan Lake", ironic consider that's what the film is about. The visuals are AMAZING, and the scares are not as jumpy as in other horror films released this year. I'm sure we all know that one scene from the trailer in which Portman's character pulls a black feather out her back and holds it up to her red eyes. But upon getting to that point in the movie, it goes from okayishly bizarre, to "HOLY CRAP THIS IS THE MOST MORITFYINGLY SCARY THING I HAVE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE!!!!!" Seriously, the leap is so big, and so fast, you just cringe in your seat in total fear. The ending is also brilliantly executed, and it fits for the themes of the film. If you want a film that will not only mess with your mind, but also make you wonder what would a psychological thriller be like if it involved ballet, go see it; you won't be disappointed.
WHAT!? YOU DID NOT PUT THIS AS NUMBER ONE? HOW DARE YOU GOOD SIR; HOW DARE YOU! Kill me as you might, I did not put this film of imagination and brilliance from the director who brought us the scariest Joker performance in media ever at the number one spot for a couple of reasons (don't worry, I'll get to the good points later). The first reason is that some of the acting is...well...a bit off. I know it's a bit of a nitpick, but I never ONCE saw a smile, excluding DiCaprio's off-the-rocker wife in the movie. Not to mention the ending is a giant tease, and everyone knows what I'm talking about. Besides that though, this is one of the smartest films I've ever seen. What do you mean by that, you say? I mean it's one of those films that if you lose focus for ONE SECOND, you won't have a clue as to what happened and what went where. Not saying that's BAD, but it does mean that it manages to gain our attention and keep us hooked for all the right reasons. The visuals, the story, the themes, the style, THE SOUND; everything is excellent about this movie. Even though this film didn't win the Best Picture at the Oscars, it did manage to bring home a lot of awards about the many things people remember about the movie. And so know, you're wondering what I picked for Number One, aren't you? Well, here it is...
OH...MY...GOD! This film is...the greatest film ever. Okay, not really, but it is one of the most entertaining, stylized, hilarious, and downright awesome films I've seen in my life. I knew this was going to be a great film when the first SECOND of the movie begins with an 8-bit rendition of the Universal anthem. I'M SERIOUS; 8-BIT GLORY! It's a pure gamer's film, with multiple references to Mario, Zelda, and even anime, like Dragon Ball Z. One of the complaints that I saw with this film was that Michael Cera was cast as Scott Pilgrim, but I must be one of the few who think that was the PERFECT choice. Cera is the ultimate personification of the awkward young adult who can't seem to make descisions without future regret. Moving away from that topic, the film manages to bring in some of the best visual gags ever presented in a movie, including several in the fights that take place in the film. Considering that the director has done films such as Shawn of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, the style taken from those films fits well in this one, minus the gore obviously. From beginning to end, this film is an entertaining joyride, and I love every single lasting minute of it.
And so ends my list for Top 10 Personally Best Films of 2010, all of which were new releases. Before we get INTO the bottom half, however, I would like to point out that I would've put more movies that aren't as new but I've recently seen, such as Fight Club or Pulp Fiction, but I've decided to pluck the new releases out first, then if I couldn't find anymore that I liked, I would use more older movies, which I didn't need to do. HOWEVER, the films that I absolutely DISPISED seeing this year might have some older than 2010, considering I generally don't go to see movies that I think are bad. Once again, this is my personal perference and you should NOT take it for fact. So, here are the Top 10 films that I highly regret having seen this year. WARNING: THE OPINIONS OF THIS LIST ARE LONGER, CONTAIN LOTS OF RANTING, SPOILERS, AND ANGRY WORDS. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
Top 10 Personally Worst of Movies of 2010
I put this one lower on the list due to it being a bit fun in terms of the B-movie look and feel, not to mention the makeup effects on the characters. However, the reimagining of the old 30s Universal film of the same name is a bit...underwhelming. I guess that's difficult to say when considering a film such as this, but some points of the movie were too predictable, the acting is over the top, and the scares are just cheap jump-scares. However, I do give credits for the postive points listed before and the atmosphere of the whole film.
Having never seen the previous Predator movies (Predator and Predator II) excluding the VS movies, it may have been a bad idea going into this film without seeing them. However, here's the gist for those who went in as I did. The Predator is an alien with technologically advanced equipment and weapons, allowing him to turn invisible and stuff like that. The newest installment I watched takes place on the planet in which him, and apparently more of his race, come from. The movie's star is Adrian Brody, who you might remember from The Pianist and Peter Jackson's King Kong. Personally, this was the biggest buzzkill of the movie. Adrian Brody? Really? We went from muscular Arnold to him!? Not that he's bad or anything, but...why? Also, the effects are a bit too easy to notice, a common trend among Rodriguez' films. Not that bad, but it's still one I wish would've been a LOT better.
Once again, the low placement of this film is due to it being not that bad, and personally, it's the one of the better video game adaptations to date (screw you, Final Fantasy: TSW). The whole plot of the film is basically a game of keepaway; the bad guys are trying to get their hands on the glorious Dagger and Sands of Time, allowing you to rewind certain intervals of time and using up the sands depending on how far you rewound it. A cool tool to have to say the least. However, the plot of the game is that of which the world is infested with dark beings and that the titular "Prince of Persia" has to rid the land of them with help of the daggar, which, having seen the film adaption that carries the same name, the plot has almost no relation to the game's version, exeunt the dagger, of course. My major complaints about the film are its mostly unlikable characters, and very rushed backstory for the Prince. Not to mention some the visuals are a bit...off. Still, it's okay, but a video game movie is STILL a video game movie.
Person A walks up to Person B and says, "Hey Person B, what movie are you going to see?" Person B responds by saying, "The Sorcerer's Apprentice." Person A, confused, responds, "You mean that 1950s cartoon from Fantasia? They made it a full movie?" Person B, mopingly, responds, "No; it's a corny kid's movie starring Nicholas Cage with bad jokes and story, but it's entertaining." Basically, that fictional anecdote is my summary of the movie. The jokes are so cliched, the characters are very dumb, and the story is...what? However, I did find the film entertaining, and they did throw in a reference to the original short that this movie is barely based off of, so I'll give it credit for those.
Here's what I meant by some movies on this side of the list not being released so recently, considering this was released in 2003, and this is now 8 years later. Anyways, let's get to talking about the main premise of the series. Person A is in an area in movement or near movement, then witnesses several people die (usually 6 or 7) in a particular order, then realizes that it was only a vision of the future. Person A manages to get Persons B, C, D, E, F, and G out of said area into safety, only to witness the accident seen in Person A's vision. One by one, Persons B through G die in the order of which they died in the vision of Person A. A pretty unique premise and rather new one...if it was only ONE movie. Instead, they decided to make THREE MORE SEQUELS, one of which I did watch, one I tried to watch, and the other which I have no intention on seeing. Why? Because after watching the first one, you can pretty much figure out how things will play out, and it doesn't make the movie at all scary or surprising. In fact, it makes it dumber, as the deaths in both these films turn into a game of Mouse Trap. Luckily, I was spared the liberty of seeing the third one, due to the DVD not working. Thank god too, because after seeing the deaths, and ONLY the deaths, of the third one, they just look dumb. Anyways, for Final Destination 2, and I guess 3, all these characters are unlikable, and make you wish they would die soon. Plus, where did the stories of the previous films' occurrences go? Maybe if they were still around, people would probably listen to the crazy lady more.
Let me make one thing perfectly clear here; I LIKED, yes, LIKED, the first Resident Evil movie. It had a lot of elements that were seen in the game, such as the Lickers, the T-Virus, Raccoon City, Umbrella Corporation, isolated houses, the STARS, and even a small reference to the Nemesis program from the third game. Yeah, the acting was bad in it, and the story was...well, it IS a Capcom game, but the effects was great, and some scenes were really bone-chilling, especially the laser room, which was even used in Resident Evil 4. Overall, a good film, so I went into the sequel with high expectations, at least as high as you can get with a video game movie. However, what I got was not so great. Some of the effects have improved, but otherwise, the film is a wreck, and not even that enjoyable, unlike the first one. Not to mention Jill Valentine from the first Resident Evil appears as a main character, but even though Alice is a bit of a jerk, Jill is even more so. There's also a very, very, VERY bad reference to Grand Theft Auto, GTA for short, which makes NO SENSE because this is the RE universe, not reality. Though what's weird about that is that the film was filmed in the Greater Toronto Area, where many other zombie movies were filmed, including Land of the Dead. Was the whole GTA thing meant to be a reference to that? I dunno. Anyways, there are a few cool scenes, but the overall film is dragged down by the 1-minute screen time characters given a small 5-second backstory before being killed by a Licker, the rather bizarre story about the little girl, not to mention the oddest ending ever, leading up to the NEXT Resident Evil movie I know quite a bit about. Nevertheless, considering I liked the first one so much, I was upset to see this one do SO BAD, but eh, what are you gonna do?
From this point on, prepare for a lot of very angry summaries. The 2002 horror film is about a group of young adults who travel out to "Who-Gives-A-Damn", Neveda to vacation for the week in a "cabin." There, a man with a "fever" (TITLE HA!) comes round and gets blood on one of the guys, and slowly, but surely, the group one by one get killed off in most greusomely graphic manners. The big gripe I have with this movie is what kind of movie is it trying to be? Is it trying to be a horror film, with its slasher-esque way of killing off characters, a comedy with the hillbilly mental kid who performs kung-fu to get pancakes, or a...road trip movie? Nevertheless, the film is in generally bad taste, the characters are dim as a burnt-out light bulb, and the ending...GODDAMN I HATE IT SO MUCH!
I emphasize REMAKE because I also saw the original Day of the Dead this year, to which I thought was an amazing film, and one of Romero's best, before the fifth film he did that totally KILLED THE GROWING INT...I'm getting off track. Anyways, this film...my god, this film. I'm surprised that a film based off one of Romero's could not only be BAD, but in general, be, quite possibly, the WORST film to ever rise up from the zombie horror subgenre. Why you may ask? BECAUSE IT HAS ALMOST NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ORIGINAL. And yeah, I guess you could say that the Dawn of the Dead remake wasn't either, but at least it took place in a goddamn mall, where the original one did...and it was awesome. But this one, just...WHY!? They TRY to make references to the original, for instance the last act of the movie takes place in an abandoned missile base, and the intellectual zombie's name is Bud (y'see, like BUB from the original, but it's Bud, get it, it's funny, HA) and one of the characters is named Captain Rhodes, but even then the film is just plain TERRIBLE! For instance, while the Dawn of the Dead remake's zombies were fast as all hell, these zombies can not only do that (by the way, their running in this movie is just the film footage sped up), but can also walk on walls, have super-strength, and can jump like frogs. I swear to god, I am not kidding. It's like they just took all of the Special Infected from Left 4 Dead and meshed them into one, and considering the release date of this film, I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case. Not to mention that the humans freeze if they're about to transform, so if a character sees someone freeze then turn into a zombie, you would think that they would pick that fact up, right? NOPE; THEY DON'T! Not to mention the effects are terrible, the characters are generic and very very unlikable, with maybe Nick Cannon being the only exception, and the very very slow story that goes nowhere and ends nowhere. In my opinion, this is the WORST zombie movie I have seen. Then again, what do you expect from the director who gave us Halloween H20?
There was a time in which I enjoyed watching these guys do stupid shit, but since the uprising of video-hosting sites such as YouTube, Viddler, blip and the like, there's a ton of videos that you can watch like that for free (though I don't watch many, since...well, some are kind of tragic). However, then this film arises, and not only that, but it's IN EYE-POPPING 3-D, the eye-popping part being the fact that this film is totally out-of-taste. Also, after seeing this movie, I got in a huge emotional fight with my family, and it nearly made me totally collapse mentally. The film had nothing to do with it, though, but I find it weird that such a thing happened after seeing this. There's only one cool scene; one of the guys recreates the "Ride of the Valkyries" scene from Apocalypse Now, in which you sit in a chair and play the song at full blast to give off the feeling that you're playing it while sitting inside of the helicopter. That was it; everything else was pure, pure, GARBAGE. What's even more unnerving is that people, I myself being guilty of such, paid to see a 3-D movie of people doing stupid shit that you could easily find on YouTube FOR FREE. How did this film financially do so well? I may never know. Now you might ask, why, what film could POSSIBLY, POSSIBLY be any worse than this; what film have you seen this year that you thought was worse than this? Well, I'll tell you...
You saw this coming from a MILE away, didn't you? Well, maybe you didn't since this didn't come out in 2010, but still. Having only recently seen this movie, I must say this; if you check every single thought processing organ in your body out before watching movies, this film is for you. For anyone else who doesn't have the time to dissect your brain and/or other organs, or is better than that and knows better than that, this film is just...BAD! I'll give credit that while the first Transformers movie wasn't the greatest, it did at least have an okay story with new and old faces from the franchise, such as Jazz, Ironhide, and everyone's favourite Decepticon, Starscream, plus the leaders for the Autobots and Decepticons, Optimus Prime and Megatron respectively. The action was busy, but alright, and the acting was THAT bad. There was a lot of really bad stereotypes, though I'm sure some were made up. The second one, however...HO BOY, SO MUCH TO RANT ON! First off, robots in the Mayan times; really, we're going into that territory again; haven't you learned the first time, Spielburg (I kid, I kid, though unlike Indy 4, this just makes no sense, where Indy had credit due the B-movie adventures he had in the past). Second, why is the mother of Sam Witwicky, the main human star of the film series, such an idiot? She's overprotective as hell, embarrasses her son at college, and even snorts up some drugs and goes around embarrassing her son EVEN MORE? She is a terrible parent. Third, what the hell is up with the two robots Skids and Wheelie, voiced by Spongebob himself, Tom Kenny? I didn't know that robots could be racist, but damn if I didn't expect Squarepants to pull it off. FOURTH, Megan Fox is a slightly more rounded character here, what? Seriously though, fifth, the humans in this movie are totally useless; they don't do shit, with the surprising exception being Megan Fox (again, odd, isn't it, considering what people said about her in this one?). SIXTH, yes I'm STILL GOING, the fight scenes are hard to keep track of, because the sounds of the fights in addition to the design of the Transformers make it a bit hard to find out who's who. SEVENTH, Prime gets killed, yes KILLED, halfway through the movie, and is revived later. Now wait a minute, then why the hell couldn't they revive him in the 1980s movie? BAH SCREW THAT. Eighth, the stereotypes found in this film are not only bad, but they're actual stereotypes, and by god if they don't happen to be the most OFFENSIVE stereotypes I've seen in a movie. Ninth, near the end of the movie, the gigantic Devastator is seen climbing the pyramid to expose the Sun Harvester, the weapon that will ultimately end the war of the Transformers for either side. In between his legs are two wrecking balls, which...well, yeah, you get the picture. Seriously, Bay, dude, why was that necessary? Did we NEED to see that? Did we REALLY need to see that? Finally, tenth, THE TRANSFORMERS THEME WASN'T IN THIS ONE EITHER! So, to summarize, dumb backstory, mostly unlikeable and racially-offensive characters, busy and messy fight scenes, terrible jokes, and an overall dumb plot!
Well, those are my Top 10. While they might have not been so good in terms of recent releases, by which I mean the Top 10 Worst List, I still stand by them. See you here next time I get bored and have things to talk about to no one.
