2010 Year End Movie Review
January 28, 2011
The glorious advent of reliable Netflix streaming gave rise to a veritable torrent of movies that surged into the TStation dojo last year. Those Red Box kiosks finally offering up Blu-ray rentals also padded out the "movie at home" numbers.
Trips to an actual movie theater, however, saw an all-time low. Two reasons: a serious shortage of "must see immediately" films, and our much beloved/maligned Briarwood Dollar Theater closed. It was a crummy joint, the screens were "tagged" by punks, many of the good seats were busted, and you could count on the films themselves being heavily besmirched with grime and tears by the time they were delegated to the dollar theater stratum. A paltry $1.50 per show still proved to be an irresistibly cheap night out. The ladies are always impressed with a cheap night out.
The 2010 grand total fell just a single movie shy of a two-per-weekend goal. Still, highest tally ever at the Movie Manifest.
There was a startling realization about half way through the year that I had never seen an entire Akira Korusawa film. We promptly amended that horrible cinematic deficiency with Yojimbo and The Hidden Fortress. Then proceeded to bring down another dozen or so before the end of the year. Will post up a complete report once we've completed the entire Korusawa oeuvre.
Top Five:The big winners for the year were Inception, Moon, Tron, Seven Samurai, and True Grit. That mighty field held off the likes of Red Cliff, The Hurt Locker, Following, The Town, and a slew of Korusawa films.
Bottom Three: At the other end of the scale you had 2012, The Lovely Bones, and Losers. Could've easily added The Men Who Stare at Goats, Year One, and The Red Baron. All very disappointing, even when saddled with low expectations.
Looking into 2011, these qualify as "must see immediately": Harry Potter and the Deathly Finale, Duncan Jones' Source Code, J.J. Abram's Super 8, Terrence Malick's Tree of Life, and, at the end of the year, David Fincher's take on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
See Also:
2009 Year End Review
2008 Year End Review
2007 Year End Review
2006 Year End Review
2005 Year End Review
2004 Year End Review
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