Now that the end of the year is an inch away, and every film to be desired has been released, its as fair as ever to begin discussing the greatest of the year. There are some films which went unseen, like "Stone", "Conviction", "Skyline", "How to Train Your Dragon", "Black Swan", "Wall Street: Money Never Stops", "Catfish", and "Harry Brown", but I haven't been given a reason to think these films would impact a 'Top' list. My choice for 'Best Picture' this year would go to "127 Hours". Runners up:
2. The Social Network
3. Inception
4. The Town
5. Toy Story 3
6. True Grit
7. Shutter Island
8. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1
9. Kick-Ass
10. Tron Legacy
In trying to figure out my list, I was surprised to see Tron making it into the top 10, but the competition outside of the top 5 started to drift rapidly. Runners up to the 'Top 10' were:
-Let Me In
-Iron Man 2
-Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
-The Fighter
-The Karate Kid
This year has been a good year in film, there were many outings to the big screen, many with disappointments but that will come with many releases. There were certain films which I expected to be better than they were. "True Grit" was one of them, but still was a solid enough film to project onto the 'Top 10'. Other disappointments include some of the other films on my list, but the majority were films that couldn't make a top 20 list on the year.
-Get Low
-Alice in Wonderland
-The Wolfman
-A-Team
-Jonah Hex
-The Last Airbender
All in all, I would settle with this ratio of pleasing vs. disappointing any year. There are very few years in which deliver so many good solid films. With the emergence of a few more directors who know what they are doing, we are probably going to see similar ratios from now on. Perhaps with additional sprinkles on top with beloved comic-book films from Marvel. The Coen Brothers are giving us at least 1 film a year now. Christopher Nolan every other year and Scorsese about every 2-3 years. We also see other directors stepping into the spotlight with great works, like Kathryn Bigelow, John Hillcoat, Jon Favreau, Matthew Vaughn, Ben Affleck, David Fincher, and Danny Boyle. I cannot wait to see more directors come out of hiding with great talent, and would love to see these directors sacrificing much of their free time to keep producing great films.
