Day: December 11, 2010

I’ve now seen almost every worthwhile 2010 film except Country Strong. (That was a joke.) So here’s my pure and un-politicized distillation of the finest 2010 films, without regard to any notions of any of them winning anything. Just quality and enjoyment and the stuff that plucks my deep-down chord…however you want to put it.

My favorite film of the year, hands down, is David Fincher‘s The Social Network, in part because it’s so perfectly made and clearly focused, and so primal in its portrayal and understanding of human nature, and partly because it isn’t the least bit interested in trying to emotionally touch the viewer. It’s far too good for that.

Except I was touched by Jesse Eisenberg‘s Mark Zuckerberg. He’s a brave little shit with a genius intellect — duplicitous, disloyal, covert, under-handed. Not so hot with the humanity friendo stuff. Genius is as genius does. And yet you can feel the emotion churning under Eisenberg’s steel-rivet glare in each and every scene. The sadness and solitude that fills him at the finale is a dramatic construct (i.e., the real Zuckerberg has had the same girlfriend since Harvard), but it’s one of the best endings ever, not just on the level of Citizen Kane‘s sled-in-the-furnace finale but Some Like It Hot‘s.

I can’t riff on the others (mainly because I have a train to catch) but Darren Aronofsky‘s Black Swan is #2 and David O. Russell‘s The Fighter is third. And then comes Noah Baumbach‘s Greenberg (#4), Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer (#5), Matt Reeves‘ Let Me In (#6), John Cameron Mitchell‘s Rabbit Hole (#7), Chris Nolan‘s Inception (#8), Lee Unkrich‘s Toy Story 3 (#9), and Tom Hooper‘s The King’s Speech (#10).

Followed by Derek Cianfrance‘s Blue Valentine (#11), Danny Boyle‘s 127 Hours (#12), Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s Biutiful (#13), Jean-Francois Richet‘s Mesrine: Killer Instinct and Mesrine: Public Enemy #1 (#14), Olivier Assayas‘ Carlos (#15), Lisa Cholodenko‘s The Kids Are All Right (#16) Mike Leigh‘s Another Year (#17), Doug Liman‘s Fair Game (#18), Aaron Schneider ‘s Get Low (#19), Sofia Coppola‘s Somewhere (#20), Roger Michell‘s Morning Glory (#21); and Anton Corbijn‘s The American (#22).

True Grit gets an A for execution and a D-minus for content and theme, and that’s as far as I’m willing to go

I’ll finish this (including the best docs) when I get on the 11:06 pm train to Connecticut. I have to shut down and run.

No excuse for failing to acknowledge the triumph of Roman Polanski‘s The Ghost Writer at the European Film Awards last weekend — Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Ewan McGregor), Best Screenplay and two other awards that news accounts haven’t described. It was announced during the nadir of my wifi agony at the Marrakech Film Festival, so that’s a bit of an excuse…no? I guess not.

Roman Poalanski, Ewan McGregor during last year’s filming of The Ghost Writer

The Ghost Writer was and is a deliciously well-made thing — easily one of my top 2010 favorites. Here, in honor of it and to make up for last weekend’s dereliction, is a re-posting of my original 2.17.10 review:

Roman Polanski‘s The Ghost Writer (Summit, 2.19) is a brilliant and masterful adult thriller. I just saw it this evening, and less than ten minutes after it began I knew I was once again in the hands of perhaps the most exacting filmmaker alive today, and as sharp as he’s ever been. This film is so gloriously not run-of-the-mill-Hollywood I can barely stand it.

Anyone who says “very well made but not enough action, not emotional enough and not a big enough payoff” is asking for commonality from the wrong guy. Polanski has never been one to massage and titillate the Eloi. He makes films for people who get what he’s up to. The Ghost Writer knows exactly what it’s doing and how to play cerebral thriller chess. It really is a masterpiece of its type.

It’s now a settled issue in my head that Variety‘s Derek Elley is a highly unreliable reviewer. I’m basing my judgment on the fact that Elley wrote that Polanski “brings not a jot of his own directorial personality or quirks” to The Ghostwriter. That is a complete flabbergast. The film throbs with Polanski’s personality and mentality. The same calmly intelligent approach to story — the sharp dialogue, subtle hints and clues, exacting narrative tissue, patient accumulation of facts and intuitions — that characterized Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown are here in abundance.

I’m in an Upper West Side cafe that’s closing down but I’ll write more about this tomorrow. I haven’t had such a complaint-free time with a thriller of this type in ages. The crowd I caught it with was totally enraptured — I could feel the concentration in the room — although I suspect that the Eloi will sidestep it for the most part. (Isn’t that what they generally do? Avoid intelligent adult fare?)

So often the protagonist in this type of thriller will be slow on the uptake or speak clumsily or be tongue-tied in some way when the occasion calls for the opposite, but Ewan McGregor‘s lead character — a bright and astute Brit hired to ghostwrite a political memoir for an ex-Prime Minister in the Tony Blair mold (Pierce Brosnan) — is wonderfully alert and articulate all the way through, even when he’s scared or uncertain or conflicted.

And the story never loses or confuses you. It moves along step by intelligent step. I can’t for the life of me figure why Marshall Fine called the middle sections “frustrating.” The film is never that. As long as you’re not looking for a Michael Bay or Martin Campbell-esque experience, The Ghost Writer delivers a kind of heaven that smart moviegoers will flutter over.

The only bad element during the screening was a 60ish asshole with swept-back gray hair who kept going “uhm-hmm” out loud whenever a significant detail or direction was revealed. He was sitting on the other side of my aisle — seven or eight feet away — and he really wanted everyone in his vicinity to know that he was getting all the twists and turns. I hate guys like this. Every so often I would look over and burn death-ray beams into the left side of his head.