The Academy Awards

I tweeted my way through last night's Academy Awards. As much as I wanted James Franco and Anne Hathaway to do well, I don't think the show came together. Their opening montage was great. Invading Alec Baldwin's dreams to steel hosting secrets, and discovering that Baldwin has Morgan Freeman narrate his dreams (but who doesn't?). But my question was: Why steel secrets from last year's co-host who wasn't invited back? Billy Crystal would have been a better choice, and if you're trying to "young and hip," go with John Stewart.

2010 complete film list

Here's my complete 2010 film list. For detailed analysis, I broke down into the movies I didn't like, those I didn't care about, those that were decent, and my top 10.

My top films of 2010

And now I present my top 10 films of 2010. Honestly I don't think this was a great year for cinema. Even of these top 10, only a few qualify as films that I actually loved. So click ahead to see what I spent my year watching.

2010 Movies I Liked

Now for the movies that I liked (sometimes more then they deserved), moving up from the ones that I wasn't thrilled with, and those I found forgettable. I'm still not going to run out and buy every single one of these on DVD, but I'll probably end up owning most of them eventually. Putting together the top parts of my 2010 list has been harder, because most of these films could be juggled and I probably wouldn't notice if Robin Hood and Alice in Wonderland switched places.

2010 films - Part II

Following the films I didn't really like, this next part of my 2010 film rankings is comprised of those that (a) I enjoyed while I was watching, but failed to stick with me, (b) I thought had potential or some cool ideas or scenes, or (c) I'd hoped I would like but was eventually disappointed. Basically, I don't know that I'll be running out to see any of these again, though some might make my Play-in-the-background-while-I'm-doing-something-else-list.

The films of 2010 - Part I

This list is probably going to reflect the fact that I sat through much of my film studies class thinking, “As great as the mise-en-scene is, I find this film boring.” I appreciate the difference between art and entertainment, but prefer a combination of the two. I’ll rank movies that were purely popcorn-flicks low, but when done well, those are my favorite type of film, and a lot of the movies that are supposed to be brilliant award contenders failed to get me to see them in the first place. I have yet to see Black Swan or 127 Hours. I mean to, but as good as I hear they are, they don't sound exciting enough get me to spend $10 at the cinema.

Overall, I saw forty-one of the 2010 releases and I'll start this list off with the ones that in retrospect, I would have been happy to skip. At the very least, none of these were worth the ticket price (especially with the 3D mark-up on most of them).

"Good" Movies and the Things People Watch

This post was prompted by the fact that I started to organize my favorite films of the year (an idea I got from Howard Tayler), and found I'd seen movies I knew were good that I just didn't like that much, and movies that had a ton of problems that I still enjoyed. It reminded me that "best" isn't a qualitative term when it comes to movies. It's a subjective matter of personal opinion and that's something that gets forgotten in too many critical and academic circles.

I saw a lot of movies in 2010. I think I averaged almost one every week. So when the Academy Award nominations were announced and I'd only seen three of the Best Picture Nominees it was another example of the disparity between the movies critics consider good and movies people actually go see. And I consider myself a film fan. Sound on Sight seems to have summed up the current Oscar situation pretty nicely.

But I don't think the fact that Hollywood movies are targeted at popular audiences necessarily makes them bad. Sure the storyline of Avatar was incredibly derivative and needed a good rewrite, and Transformers 2 devolved into a mindless blur of action and explosions, but other blockbusters, like this year's Inception and Toy Story 3, are extremely well-made, well-written films. I would point to the first Iron Man and J.J. Abrams Star Trek as examples of blockbusters that didn't receive any critical acclaim but were among the better films released during their years. The new 10 Best Picture nominee field lets the Academy acknowledge some films (because let's face it, they need to do anything they can to make sure people will actually watch) but if they keep not winning, it's probably just going to turn the whole ceremony into a joke.

So this was a long way of me justifying my own opinions, but I thought it needed to be stated before I put my list, which I'll have up in a couple of days.