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By Collin, on January 3rd, 2011

Top Fifteen films of 2010

My brother argued that this was a rather lackluster year in movies, but when he thought about it, he was actually quite surprised it was actually the contrary.

We did our top fifteen films of 2010 podcast a week ago before I’d seen True Grit, The King’s Speech, and The Fighter, so take that into consideration.

I’ve included the podcast at the end of this article just so it doesn’t get overlooked by this HUGE article.

Collin’s List

15. Easy-A


A controversial choice as you can tell on our podcast, but it is, nonetheless, one of my favorite of the year. Why? Well, it is fun and has a strong, female, central character that is intelligent and independent, but who is also being incredibly vulnerable and confused.

Juno, a similar film which I despise, used dishonesty, clunky dialogue, and dangerous themes to evoke the love of the white middle class. There is nothing rich white people like more to hear than their daughters are not sluts, but are just intelligent woman who made mistakes.

At least Easy-A was just a little bit of fun…right?

14. Winter’s Bone


Another intelligent film with a strong, teenage female character. I don’t like it because of this, but because it is another perspective. I like different perspectives. The film is a very good thriller and captures places in the United States that DO exist and where people dare not go or care about.

13. Harry Potter: Deathly hollows


A confusing but, ultimately, masterful film about kids who can use magic. Cool.

12. Iron Man 2


A damn good summer movie. I don’t think I’ll watch it a billion times like Watchman or Dark Knight, but it is the next best thing.

11. Splice


An amazing movie that did very poorly at the box office. Sad isn’t it that very good movies get out matched by worse ones? This movie will find a home on DVD and Blu-Ray….I hope.

10. Inception


It is certainly one of the best this year, but could have been one of the best movies of all time.

A film that gave up its psychological premise for too many action scenes. It is, indeed, masterful and Nolan shoots action scenes the way they should be shot with fewer cuts, wider lens, and little CGI. However, the psychological promise the film has was not completely taken advantage of. (Damn prepositions) My mother recently commented that she was happy she saw a late friend of hers in her dreams.

What if this could be done all the time? What about lovers we can’t get over? Events we failed at? Careers we couldn’t pursue? Even children we shouldn’t have had? The film had the possibility to explore a human side of us so utterly human that it makes my heart ache this path wasn’t taken fully. As mankind realizes more and more that our life on earth is the only one we have dreams will more and more be our access point to another reality. What if we really could manipulate this reality? What a world that would be.

9. Let Me In


A little seen vampire film that champions style, substance, atmosphere, and performance. Chloe Moretz will be a full-blown star in a few years. She gives child performances clout and weight. Dakota Fanning? Pfft. C’mon.

8. Hereafter


In a lot of way thematically this film is very similar to Inception. A film about the inability to get over the loss of a loved one. Both films are ambitious, but flawed. I loved Hereafter for its simplicity and tenderness.

Neither the screenwriter or filmmaker believe in woo-woo or an after life, but look tenderly at people who might or do. It is only human to believe in such things and for the right reasons.

7. Never Let Me Go


The most bleak film I’ve probably ever seen. Allowing no hope or redemption for the characters that the film makes the audience like. An allegory for all mankind? I don’t know, but it is certainly the most poetic film this year. It got nearly the most hits on my website and people stayed the longest. Why? I think people saw greatness, but didn’t really know why. Not that I do…but it is very, very fucking good.

6. Machete

Rodriguez’s diary on making his first Mexplotiation film El Mariachi was a big reason I wanted to be a filmmaker. His new movie is violent and sexy in every way that makes a movie cool. It is a bit too self indulgent with its political stances, but whatevs.

5. Scott Pilgrim Vs The World

This movie is so fucking cool. The video game references, the ode to fanboyism, the shamelessly weird plot.  Maybe I’ll watch this movie tonight? Yep.

4. Kickass

Good message, good action, and good violence.

3. Hot Tub Time Machine

An odd choice, but one I 100% believe in. It is a movie I watch over and over and really does mean a lot to me.

2. 127 Hours

Danny Boyle is a master of style and form. His choice of shots and angles in this movie are masterful. I love it and can’t wait to see it again.

1. The Social Network

Fincher’s second masterpiece and one of the best movies of the past five years. This movie defines a generation and analyzes the society we’re moving toward. It was entertaining to everyone who saw it, even getting my father’s recommendation (he happens to be the biggest philistine I’ve ever met).

I had not seen The King’s Speech or The Fighter before I made this list. Both would have made it on. Where? Who knows?

Devon’s List

15. Black Swan

14. The Expendables

13.Dog Tooth

12. The Disappearance of Alice Creed

11. Harry Potter: Deathly Hollow Part 1

10. Shutter Island

9. Death at a Funeral

8. Greenburg

7.Let Me In

6. Red Riding Trilogy

5. Despicable Me

4. Piranha 3-D

3. Scott Vs. Pilgrim

2. The Social Network

1. Inception

Quentin Tarantino’s list (Top Twenty)

1. Toy Story 3

2. The Social Network

3. Animal Kingdom

4. I Am Love

5. Tangled

6. True Grit

7. The Town

8. Greenberg

9. Cyrus

10. Enter the Void

11. Kick-Ass

12. Knight and Day

13. Get Him to the Greek

14. The Fighter

15. The King’s Speech

16. The Kids Are All Right

17. How to Train Your Dragon

18. Robin Hood

19. Amer

20. Jackass 3-D

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

By Collin, on January 3rd, 2011

Underground Film Review Podcast on Top Fifteen Movies of 2010

The audio is a bit shit, but still, it was a lot of fun to do and even more fun to edit. I’m not quite the sound engineer I used to be for some reason, but I promise the audio quality will be better next time. I can’t quite seem to get the background noise to behave.

Enjoy and download at Itunes if you don’t want to listen to it here. Also, there are sections left in ON PURPOSE such as the “What is Britain?” conversation.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

By Collin, on January 2nd, 2011

The King’s Speech – A quick movie review

When watching The King’s Speech I was reminded of a movie I just recently watched Amadeus. Both films take a really ballsy approach to dead-serious period dramas. They are both quirky, goofy, masterful, and emotionally effective. The King’s Speech is one of the best movies of the year, but is also one of the funniest.

It is an extraordinary movie about extraordinary people. Movies get such a boost when they assume the audience will laugh at witticisms and not just Adam Sandler getting hit in the balls. Which is funny sometimes…

Colin Firth plays King George VI in one of the best performances I’ve seen since Sean Penn in Milk. For a character based around a stammer, I never felt, not once, that Firth was performing a stammer.  This movie could so easily have been lame, but it was emotionally effective and also incredibly entertaining. One of the main reasons for this is how empathetic Firth’s Albert character is able to be.

We meet Albert long before WW2 when he’s still a Duke and is addressing an audience of thousands at Wembley Stadium. He can’t manage to get a word out without stammering, pausing, and choking on his words. To imagine such an event actually happened and that he was able to recover and become a leader is stranger than fiction.

What an odd string of occurrences it was for Albert, Duke of York to become king so quickly. His father dies, his brother gives up the throne to marry a women already divorced numerous times and all while the world was entering World War Two.

Albert tries traditional doctors who make him put marbles in his mouth, smoke cigarettes (which killed him only years later), and undertake other useless methods of speech therapy. He finally begins lessons from Lionel Lounge, (Geoffery Rush) a failed actor turned radical speech therapist. We all know the ending that is coming, but the film is so down right perfect it is really hard not to love this movie.

Much has been said about the performances and fantastic writing of the movie, but what struck me the most was the impressive visuals of the film. It would not be unfair to say this movie was as visually experimental as any movie I’ve seen this year. Tom Hooper shot the film with an unorthodox use of wide angle shots.

The film looks amazing. With camera compositions so odd and radical I hope that even people who don’t pay attention to such things will notice. Take the therapy sessions between Albert and Linonel for example. Normally a director would simply take a shot-reverse-shot of evenly composed medium shots of the subject directly in the middle of the frame taking up the majority of the space. Think of the therapy scenes in Good Will Hunting for an example of this.

Instead, in order to provide quirky, fun, and interesting elements to these compositions the director frames the camera wide with the subjects off center with loads of space around them. How odd, but incredibly interesting to watch. Moreover, the use of massive wide camera angles makes everything look just so damn big. Therefore, allowing for the audience to see just how huge and official Albert’s life is whether it be expansive estates or massive churches.

The final scenes are predictable but so damn good that when Albert walks to give his speech at the very end I really did care and almost had tears in my eyes. History is made by extraordinary men and woman and Americans often forget how important King George VI, and England overall, was in WW2. They were very much the last stand between America and Hitler. We even get to see Churchill. Who may or may not be the most important leaders of the past century.

I liked this movie. A lot. I don’t think it is better than The Social Network, which remains the best movie movie of the past few years. But The King’s Speech might be my favorite of 2010.

A+/5

-Collin

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