My Favorite Movies of 2010

Last year was a pretty weak year for movies, so instead of writing a 2009 list, I had a Best of the Decade list.

This year we’re back in business. Five movies received the coveted 5-Star Stegmaier rating, and several others (Inception and How to Train Your Dragon) came very close. Here’s are my five favorite movies of 2010 (movies I watched for the first time in 2010–some of these came out in previous years), with my favorite coming first.

  1. The Social Network: This movie will entertain you from beginning to end and leave you with plenty of fodder for conversation. It doesn’t matter if it’s accurate–there’s so much going on here to discuss.
  2. The Fantastic Mr. Fox: One word comes to mind when I think of this movie: Joy. I had a big, goofy smile on my face while I watched it, and I have the same response thinking back upon it.
  3. District B13: The best action movie I’ve seen in a long, long time. This movie is what I wanted Kill Bill to be.
  4. Toy Story 3: Entertaining, funny, and emotionally moving, all in one tight little package. Pixar wins again.
  5. Moon: One actor and a simple, sparse script. This is the movie that you keep bumping back on your Netflix queue so you can watch bad rom coms. Put it back on the top of the queue and watch a masterpiece that I would argue is better than 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Also, I feel the need to mention some terrible, terrible movies I saw this year. Never see these movies. The worst is first.

  1. Skyline: If I wanted to watch 90 minutes of people sitting in a hotel room talking about going outside, I’d…okay, I’d never want to watch that. No one does.
  2. Greenberg: I’ll give Ben Stiller another chance. I will never watch another movie by the director of Greenberg. Terrible.
  3. Love and Other Drugs: I could dissect this movie a million ways, but I won’t. I can’t believe I actually looked forward to seeing this.
  4. Charlie St. Cloud: This should have been a movie of the week on Disney Family. And it shouldn’t have gotten any further than that.
  5. Funny People: There are some good jokes in this movie, but this biggest joke is on the audience. Your protagonist has to be at least minutely likable for a movie to work. Apatow, you know better.
  6. Sherlock Holmes: A fair number of people will disagree with me about this one. Frankly, I don’t know what you all are thinking. This movie is a dizzying array of quick cuts and surreal sequences. And it was boring. Really boring. This wins my I Can’t Believe They’re Making a Sequel award.

In total, I saw 44 movies in 2010, rating them an average of 3.25 out of 5 stars.

What were your favorite and least favorite movies of 2010?

16 thoughts on “My Favorite Movies of 2010”

  1. I can’t believe I actually spent money seeing Love and Other Drugs. Definitely wasn’t the rom com I was thinking/hoping it would be. At least I saw it alone and didn’t force anyone else to waste their time seeing it with me.

    You forgot to put Saw VII in there 😀 The Saw movies are instant mood boosters and are therefore good movies lol.

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  2. I’ve decided that we share some opinions on indie & action movies, but that we like vastly different things in a romantic movie. I think I’ve given kudos to two that you’ve despised in the last year! I’ll have to stay away from recommending anything romantic in the future!

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  3. If you haven’t seen it, Jamey, I recommend *Black Swan.* If that doesn’t make your best of 2010 list I will do bad things to you.

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  4. Well, I may not even see it, Dave. It’s one of those movies where I can tell it’s good–well acted, well directed, makes you think–but it just doesn’t appeal to me.

    I have actually seen other movies since I made this list: Tron Legacy and True Grit. True Grit is a five-star movie–it’s fantastic. Tron is visually cool and the soundtrack fits the movie like a glove, but it’s a four-star movie at best.

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    • Makes perfect sense to me. To each his or her own, as they say. I mean, I haven’t seen any of the movies on either of your lists–except for Sherlock Holmes, which somehow made me less of a man.

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    • Of course! I think I’ve read all of Dahl’s children’s books. He has a huge number of short stories for adults, so I’ve barely made a dent in them.

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  5. Black Swan was incredible, but I can understand why you don’t want to see it — you hate hot lesbian sex scenes. HOMOPHOBES!

    My other two favorite movies of the year were (1) The King’s Speech; and (2) City Island. I’d highly recommend the King’s Speech. Awesome movie!

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  6. Okay, so I had to come here from this year’s list and the only movies I’ve seen on this list are Moon and Sherlock Holmes. Moon was just kinda “eh” in my book. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t necessarily good either. It’s one of those movies I’ll probably only ever watch once.

    I loved Sherlock Holmes.

    Another movie that came out last year (at least I think it did?) was Blue Valentine. Great acting and all that, but Ryan Gosling’s character creeped me out so much that I almost turned it off. He did a tremendous job with that role.

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    • I really wanted to like Sherlock Holmes, and I think some things about it were done in an interesting way (like the way he breaks down fight scenes in advance of the fight), but as the movie continued, I found myself disoriented by the pace, editing, cinematography, and plot to the point of boredom. It’s one of the few movies that nearly put me to sleep in the theater.

      I’ve heard mixed reviews about Blue Valentine, but I appreciate good acting. I’ll check it out.

      Reply

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