Most film critics start off each year with a list of their top 10 movies for the year before, an act of timing that often masks the fact that the first week of a new year is used to dump on an unsuspecting public the absolute worst garbage produced. This year is no exception, with the godawful-looking “Season of the Witch” coming out on Friday.

And so it is that I’ve taken a look back over the more than 100 movies I’ve seen in 2010, picking my 10 personal favorites. I won’t presume to say that they’re objectively the 10 best — I would have had to see more than 250 films last year to give an honest assessment of that. And while I know “The Social Network” is great filmmaking and appears to be the unanimous favorite for this year’s Best Picture Oscar, I think it’s too easy to simply agree with the pack. So, instead, I’m offering up 10 flicks that moved me, made me laugh, or thrilled me the most. Many of them were underrated and little-seen, but they are well worth renting now.

1. “Cyrus.” This indie film came out in July and served up what appeared to be the most unusual love triangle ever: Marisa Tomei as a lonely single mother, John C. Reilly as the even lonelier guy who is saved by her love, and Jonah Hill as her grown-up son, Cyrus, who seems way too close to his mom. Thankfully, nothing is as it first appears, and this crazily funny and surprisingly touching film winds up being my favorite gem of the year. (more…)

There is a scene in the movie “The Crazies” where a couple of men investigate to see if there was a plane crash in the area. Instead of going for easy thrills (i.e. people popping out of dark places to frighten the characters), the scene builds up drama and then ends with a  creepy camera shot.  Unfortunately, unlike this particular scene, the movie often relies on quick and easy scares rather than building up tension and intelligent thrills. 

“The Crazies” revolves around a small community where a virus takes over the population. One of the first scenes in the movie shows a tranquil baseball game with the sheriff (Timothy Olyphant) in attendance. Out in the distance, a man walks onto the baseball field carrying a gun. A confrontation ensues between the sheriff and this seemingly drunk man and soon thereafter other people in town start acting strange. As more people begin acting out of character, the sheriff  investigates what caused this change in behavior and why people are acting like zombies.

For its scares, the movie often relies on “the crazies” popping out of places and scaring people. Wherever the characters go, there always seems to be someone hiding in a bedroom, in a kitchen and even (in a creative sequence) in a car wash. Unfortunately, this is part of the film’s problem. Instead of relying on interesting and original sequences, the plot just moves the characters from one setting to another where zombies appear from nowhere. (One wonders how long crazies stand in one place silently waiting for the lead characters to show up so that they can jump out and surprise them. Do crazies pay board games while they wait for potential victims?) (more…)

Hollywood’s problems are such right now that the only way they can make any money is through soul-killing popcorn films that everyone sees, no one likes, and fewer of us are buying on DVD. We are simply no longer willing to pay for any film that looks anything close to “serious.” But can you blame us? After a decade-plus of being relentlessly beat over the head with anti-American, anti-troop, anti-Bush, anti-Southern, and anti-anything that isn’t elitist Blue State and all things Meterosexual, if the trailer doesn’t contain a whole lot of explosions or some kind of romcom meet-cute, we just aren’t going to risk being insulted.

One way Hollywood might earn a smidgen of our goodwill back would be to lay off the American military. If these Hollywoodists were just a little flexible and willing to meet us halfway — if they were just willing to treat the American military with half the respect they show for a child-rapist director, there could be a mutual quiet area in this ongoing culture war that would benefit all of us. 

After all, how hard would it have been to make “The Crazies‘” evildoers — those who bully, terrorize, and murder the innocent civilians of a small Iowa town, something other than our military? There’s a whole world of bad guys out there but as our guys risk and sacrifice everything to liberate 50 million people they’ve never met in Iraq and Afghanistan, as they do God’s work in Haiti, I’m supposed to sit back and accept them being portrayed as no better than concentration camp Nazis? (more…)

The payoff for sitting through a dozen craptacular releases is that one movie where you actually say, “Damn, that was worth the $11.50 and the kidney I spent to see it.”  As a modern moviegoer, you must be an eternal optimist.  You must hope against hope that the trailer you liked didn’t contain every single good scene and funny joke in the movie, and that the reviewer who raved isn’t covering up some pinko agenda that’ll make you choke out on your Goobers. 

You have to believe that out there somewhere is an action movie director who knows what a tripod is.  That there is a young lead actor who has never starred in a CW television series about beautiful but sensitive teenage male models with supernatural powers.  That there is a comedy screenwriter who can imagine a “funny” situation not involving a bodily fluid.  That Michael Cera will one day play a different character.

In that spirit, a spirit of Pollyannaish hope in the face of overwhelming evidence indicating that Hollywood’s product will almost certainly continue to demonstrate that evolution is a two-way street, I present ten movies that are coming within the next six months that might actually be good – or at least not make me throw things at the screen and slap around the ushers. (more…)