It’s that time of the year again. The post I look forward to and dread in equal parts.
Bear in mind that this is a list of movies I’ve seen at the cinemas in Australia [with the exception of two that I saw in The States] this year, so quite a few that are ’09 releases to some of you, are in fact 2010 releases in this lagging country of ours. I can already see the same thing happening next year, with True Grit, Black Swan and The Fighter getting releases mid-January here.
Once again, this has taken 3+ hours to do. With the notable exception of Inception being best of the year by a clear margin for me, I think in future years, I’m going to have to create this list in some other way [maybe grouped by star ratings], because frankly, this is excruciatingly difficult, and probably not a completely fair way to rank movies either.
Anyway, here they are, ranked best to worst.
EDIT:
I’d omitted Scott Pilgrim vs the World and Knight and Day, so I’ve updated the list to include those two, and got to 100 in the process!
- Inception
- The White Ribbon (Das weisse Band)
- A Prophet (Un prophète)
- Catfish
- Let Me In
- The King’s Speech
- The Hurt Locker
- Kick-Ass
- Enter the Void
- I’m Still Here
- The Kids Are All Right
- Animal Kingdom
- Monsters
- The American
- A Single Man
- Up in the Air
- In the Loop
- The Road
- Exit Through the Gift Shop
- Blue Valentine
- The Killer Inside Me
- Fish Tank
- The Loved Ones
- The Town
- The Disappearance of Alice Creed
- Fair Game
- The Social Network
- Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
- Fantastic Mr. Fox
- Please Give
- Shutter Island
- The Secret in Their Eyes
- Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire
- The Blind Side
- Toy Story 3
- Welcome
- Caterpillar
- Tron: Legacy
- Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
- Dinner for Schmucks
- Red Hill
- Machete
- The Game of Death
- The Expendables
- How to Train Your Dragon
- Cell 211
- Megamind
- Harry Brown
- Food, Inc.
- The Lovely Bones
- Four Lions
- Green Zone
- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Män som hatar kvinnor)
- Chloe
- Confessions (Kokuhaku)
- Brothers
- Boy
- Edge of Darkness
- Invictus
- Micmacs
- Iron Man 2
- Despicable Me
- Piranha
- Robin Hood
- The A-Team
- The Girl Who Played with Fire (Flickan som lekte med elden)
- Resident Evil: Afterlife
- Date Night
- The Concert (Le concert)
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I
- The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
- Hot Tub Time Machine
- About Her Brother (Otôto)
- Due Date
- Winter’s Bone
- The Father of My Children (Le pere de mes enfants)
- The Other Guys
- A Lone Scalpel (Kokô no mesu)
- Get him to the Greek
- Knight and Day
- Easy A
- Crazy Heart
- Tomorrow, When the War Began
- Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole
- Nine
- My One and Only
- Red
- Ip Man 2: Legend of the Grandmaster
- Alice in Wonderland
- Buried
- Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
- Chicks (La Vie au Ranch)
- Clash of the Titans
- The Book of Eli
- It’s Complicated
- The Wolfman
- Daybreakers
- Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
- Skyline
- The Last Airbender
A year’s worth of hype EXCEEDED. This will NEVER happen again. You just blew my mind, Christopher Nolan
Ok, so, Christopher Nolan’s Inception filled the gaping pop-culture obsession void that was left after LOST ended. I’ve seen it five times now, and I love every single thing about it. I have read countless articles, viewed numerous parodies, seen every theory known to man, and played Hans Zimmer’s score to death. I’ve always said that a sure sign of a movie’s greatness to me is how long after I spend after I’ve walked out of the theatre thinking about said movie, and in the case of Inception, it’s been months now. A clear winner.
…mind-bendingly bad. Worst plot, acting and dialogue of the year by a clear margin. M. Night Failamalan
It was really close between The Last Airbender and Skyline. I said similar things about both, but, well, I don’t know, it was like I was mourning Shyamalan’s career at the same time, and it feels like it really deserves worst movie of the year. Skyline was a complete joke, but The Last Airbender invoked a lot more hate from me.
You should rate them based on like 3/4 different features like story, originality, cinematography etc and just fill out a google doc to track it – or is there something similar when you rate them on flixster?
I’d like to, but even that is not always fair in cases, because a lot of the movies appeal in different ways >.< I was also going to use my tweets as reference, but looking back on some of them, they weren’t the most insightful *sigh*At the end of the day, it’s an overall enjoyment factor, and of course, how long after I walk out of the theatre I still keep thinking about the movie, and it’s pretty hard to quantify.I started using Flixster late into last year, and I’ll definitely use it for every movie this year, so hopefully grouping them by star ratings *should* make it somewhat easier.
Great list, will add a bunch of these to my to watch list.Surprised the Social Network wasn’t higher…and very surprised Dinner for Schmucks is so high (watched it last night, was pretty disapointed)
Danké, Christopher.I loved The Social Network, but primarily for the Aaron Sorkin dialogue, and yeh, I guess a lot of the others above it appealed to me more o_OI don’t quite know what the deal is with Dinner for Schmucks; maybe I was in a silly mood or something, but I do remember laughing out loud pretty frequently to it.Let me know how you go with ’em!
I haven’t seen Inception yet – might watch it this weekend.
Oh dear, I may have overhyped that a tad for you then.. :O