2010 Film Awards: Part 1

That's right, part one.

This year, my annual film awards have been delayed and put off and just plain forgotten about, which is why I find myself here in the not so timely time of late April with nary a reflection on my part on the best that last year had to offer.  And come to think of it, last year turned out all right, despite whatever reservations I was still having in the fall.  Turns out that I spent the first half of the year watching all the wrong films, and between some stellar year-end releases and a few I was foolishly holding out on from earlier, things came together very nicely - almost too nicely - and I'm still in denial that 2010 may have been one of the better year for film in the last decade (still got nothing on 2007 though).  In fact, I went from initially planning to downgrade my usual Top 25 to a Top 20, but found that nothing short of 30 was going to cut it.

Top 30.  Out of how many, you ask?  I counted 67 for certain, but it's possible that a few others slipped through the cracks.  And so maybe it's excessive that almost half the films I saw last year are making my countdown (and more still will manage nominations in other categories), but what can I say, they were all worth mentioning.

Not quite yet with the Top 30 countdown, though.  We're saving that for the epic finale of Tristan's 2010 Film Awards: Part 3.  There's a lot of ground to cover before we get to that, although I'm doing my part to keep things interesting by judiciously choosing which categories are actually worth keeping around.

There are 13 in all.  Part 1 covers the technical awards - Editing, Cinematography, Score - as well as Ensemble, Screenplay (original and adapted combined) and Scene.  Oh, and a personal favorite that I like to call: Films That Weren't Supposed To Suck (But Totally Did). 

Part 2 will follow shortly (really, I promise) and consist of the acting awards - Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Actor and Actress - and I'll work Director in there somewhere.

Part 3 is all about Best Picture.

Oh, and in an effort to distance myself from every awards show ever, these categories will all unfold in list format, counting down from 5, 10, or in the case of Best Picture, 30 nominees.  So no more guessing who came in second or who barely made the cut.  My thought process is an open book.

One last note: I'm considering two films that I saw in 2009 (and listed, in fact, in my awards last year) as being fairly in play.  This is in an effort to synchronize my awards to US releases, so there's a very very small amount of repetition on my list from last year.  We cool with that?  No?  Oh, you don't care.  Shall we begin?



Films That Weren't Supposed to Suck 
(But Totally Did)
It's too easy to pick on the true disasters of 2010.  Alice in Wonderland was terrible.  Clash of the Titans didn't fair much better.  But this we all know, and seeing them show up again and again on worst lists just becomes redundant.  How about instead we have a round of applause for these films that aimed for something, whether that something was art or heart or social commentary, and failed spectacularly.  Okay, maybe not spectacularly, because that implies there's some joy in watching the catastrophe.  No, these films just didn't cut it for one reason or another, and while I only have outright contempt for my winner, I won't be revisiting this lot any time soon.  Runners up: Life During Wartime and Four Lions.

5. Shutter Island

4. I Am Love

3. Dogtooth

2. Somewhere

1. The Fighter

 

Best Ensemble

Not a weak category per se, but one where the choices were all pretty obvious to me right away.  All of the following films pulled in multiple acting nominations in my awards (one has four!) and I'm sure I could have worked in more members for every cast had I a few extra slots.  If I had to stretch this, I'd have included Black Swan and Carlos.

5. Ondine

4. Never Let Me Go

3. Animal Kingdom

2. The Social Network

1. Another Year

 

Best Editing

There's a few different approaches to the art of editing covered in my choices below, and I certainly had to make a few judicious cuts just to make it to these respectable five.  One selection brilliantly depicts the passage of time along with a growing cult of personality through nearly every trick in the book.  On the other hand, I've also chosen a rare minimalist masterpiece, the cuts never flashing, but extremely important to the overall mood.  Next comes a picture superbly cut in time to the grandiose score, followed by a trippy, kinetic comic book style adventure.  In all, editing was crucial to success.  But the winner, there's a case where editing (not performance, contrary to what you've read) carries the entire film on its shoulders.  I can't imagine any film last year being more deserving.  Runners Up: Mother, Carlos, A Prophet

 5. Vincere

4. Bluebeard

3. Black Swan

2. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

1. 127 Hours

 

Best Score

Original/Adapted/Whatever.  I very rarely can think back on a film and recall the score.  It's rare.  I can count three times in the previous decade where this happened and that's about it.  That doesn't mean that I don't absolutely adore some compositions, and leave little notes to remind myself which ones are worth revisiting.  In the case of last year, I wrote five such notes, and from that am confident that these are the five scores most worth celebrating.  Runners Up: The Illusionist, The Social Network

5. Vincere

4. Night Catches Us

3. Black Swan

2. White Material

1. The Ghost Writer

 

Best Cinematography

Always my favorite of the technical categories, probably because I'm attracted to pretty pictures and shiny objects and things in general that distract me from boring, unimportant stuff like plot and content.  There were lots of stunning looking films last year, more than I could find room for fairly on a runners up list, but forced to narrow the field down to five, it would look something like what follows.  My winner here is one for the books.

5. The Ghost Writer

4. The American

3. Black Swan

2. Enter The Void

1. Ondine

 

Best Screenplay

Here's a category that I do think is a bit weaker than in most years.  Which isn't to say any of these is less than great, but it was an odd year where I found most of the landmark films owed very little of their success to the screenplay.  So, here's the ten I came up with, though the last few could probably have been swapped out for other favorite films of mine from last year just as easily.

10. A Prophet

 

 9. True Grit

8. Carlos

7. Mother

6. Winter's Bone

5. Animal Kingdom

4. The Social Network

3. Terribly Happy

2. Another Year

1. Never Let Me Go

 

Best Scene

Finally, our last category of Part 1 will countdown my 10 favorite scenes of last year (a few of them boasting quite a length).  There were definitely films that I wish I could have worked in here - and honestly I tried, but short of mentioning the entirety of Enter the Void, I just couldn't break it up - but I'm totally content with the 10 I came to choose and I hope you'll see why.  There's a lot here that come at the end of their films, and so I solemnly swear not to include anything approaching spoiler territory.  And I technically cheated with my winner, because it's really a set of two scenes, but they're thematically connected and in fact bookend the entire film.

10. Mary bonds with Ronnie - Another Year

9. Dean & Cindy sing and dance - Blue Valentine

8. Evil Doctor Porkchop - Toy Story 3

7. Passing the note/the end - The Ghost Writer

6. Target practice - The American

5. The extended O.P.E.C. takeover - Carlos

4. The Magician leaves a note and skips town - The Illusionist

3. Teardrop and the Sheriff have a standoff at the truck - Winter's Bone

2. The climactic performance of Swan Lake - Black Swan

1. The dance sequences bookending the film - Mother

 

Not bad, huh?  Part 2 will be along before you know it, so stay tuned kids.

Archer: Season 2

I've not found much love for cartoon TV since the heyday of Adult Swim, so it was only appropriate that Adam Reed's FX spy show Archer would be the one to bring me back into the fold.  I caught up late on the first season, taking it all in over the course of a week (at 10 episodes, hardly an accomplishment) but was ready to go by the time season two kicked in this past January.  Season one was a winner, enough to hook me on the concept and characters, and it managed a handful of truly hilarious episodes on part with some of Aquateen and Sealab's better work.  What I was fully expecting going into season two was more of the same: more of Archer's oedipal workplace struggle with Mallory, more of Cyril's pathetic freefall, more of Cheryl's erotic asphyxiation urges.  What I wasn't expecting was the drastic deepening of plot and character that makes season two of Archer one of (if not the) best seasons of comedy since Arrested Development was on air.

That's right, I skipped over comparisons to Archer's fellow animated shows and right straight for the AD mention.  Yes, it's an easy one since Jessica Walters, Judy Greer and occasionally Jeffrey Tambor are all on board, but no show since (and much as I liked them, I'm including 30 Rock and Community in this) has been more consistent in its hilarity week in and week out.  It's gotten even better this season, and that's because rather than being content with strictly standalone episodes that aim only for laughs, Archer has allowed the complexities of its character relationships, and the often drastic ramifications of its plot turns, to accumulate, creating not only stronger punchlines, but just plain good storytelling.

It's something that happened several times this season.  The introduction of the Wee Baby Seamus turns out to be something that Archer is going to have to live with, and instead of finding a way to disregard the little bundle of joy, the show finds a way to make it a recurring part of his character experience.  Same goes for the developments of "Stage Two" and the even better followup, "The Placebo Effect" - Archer is saddled with some serious baggage this season, and while it is never less than fucking hilarious, it's also not just going to be written off.

Same goes for the entire cast.  It was a treat this season to watch backstories unfold for the majority of the supporting cast, and nearly all of them (save for Cyril's undercooked father issues) really deepened our insight into what makes these characters tick.  Krieger, who this season overtook Cheryl as my favorite character on the show, turns out to have a rather dark and horrific past, but it all seems to so perfectly define who he is that it doesn't seem cooked up just for laughs.  We even got a much welcome expose on Woodhouse and his lifelong relationship with Archer.  These kind of stories are balanced out by the handful of world-traversing missions that Archer, Lana and Gillette embark on with usually mixed success.  Those episodes trade in some of the hearty laughs for amusing action set-pieces, but they are rarely a letdown and keep the show from slipping into a weekly routine.

Character development and plot aside, Archer is still at its heart just a very very funny show.  Jokes comes in all colors here, and can range from physical comedy (often out on missions) to repulsive humor (Pam) to the myriad out of nowhere pop culture references.  Then there are stunts such as Archer's gut-busting Family Feud interrogation of some warehouse goons all while hooked up to chemo, or Krieger's bizarre antics, especially the creation of his digital bride, and his unfortunate mishap with Len Trexler and Rabbert Klein.  If none of that makes much sense to you, then I envy you, because you clearly have a lot of Archer to catch up on.

Hanna

So here's my beef with action films - and as a 20-something male I feel obliged to speak up here - it is a broken genre, indifferent to the interests of half the audience while fooling the other half into thinking this is as good as it can get.  These films have lately devolved into simulacra of simulacra (when Bond starts copying Bourne that's a cry for help) and even some of the more ambitious outings recently have fumbled the through-lines on their stories because they're trying to be just too damn complicated.  You know the system is broken when they try to fix it just by rearranging the same pieces in a different order.  I really don't care to ever see another action flick with Jason Statham or Sylvester Stallone, and especially not when the story and direction take a backseat to serving star power.  The other problem here is the near total void of female-centric action films.  Sucker Punch you say?  Sucker Punch doesn't fucking count, and if you imagine what the porn on a 13-year-old's computer looks like, it will occur to you why.  Action heroines defined so shamelessly by the male gaze are neither progress nor worth any of your time, juvenile males excepted.

Ok, rant over.  Here's why Hanna is the remedy.

After a decade's worth of action films that feasted on the regurgitated remains of their former selves, it was high time for something fresh.  So here we have Joe Wright - as in, director of Atonement and Pride and Prejudice, Joe Wright - stepping up the the plate, and what do you know, he finds an even better home for his somewhat untethered stylistic extravagances.  Because much as I adore Atonement, flashy camerawork and period romance don't go hand-in-hand for many, but his impulses are perfectly suited to Hanna's modern day fairytale, with roughly equal measures of guns and Grimm.

His casting is another welcome sight.  Saorise Ronan, who's previous work with Wright is not so secretly one of my favorite performances of the last decade, is certainly not who jumps to mind when you imagine the next great action heroine.  Hanna may not quite be Ripley or The Bride, but she could hold her own against either, and frankly, the competition lately has been scarce.  She aces the role, quite apparently a physically demanding one, but not without some subtle emotional strain too.  The supporting players do exactly what fairytale characters (or, why not, action characters) ought to, each leaving a significant mark on the story as they intersect it.  Cate Blanchett plays a big bad wolf of a villain (seen earlier sharpening her teeth, figuratively, and later in the maw of a wolf, literally).  She relishes the part and it's a wonderfully devilish turn, far more threatening than her Soviet shtick in Indiana Jones and the Stupid Alien Ship.  There's also Tom Hollander, playing totally against type as an ambiguous German hitman with a song in his heart, and a terrific newcomer in Jessica Barden as Hanna's first and only friend, who hasn't quite figured out what lesbians are.  Eric Bana, as Hanna's rogue huntsman father, is fortunately not forgotten by Wright after his significant role in the opening scenes, and he's treated to a few nifty ambushes later on.  With so many actors - Bana excepted - playing against type, Hanna never once feels like something you've seen before.

But, mind you, I did say it's an action film, and a damn great one at that.  There's a simple, but more importantly unflawed storyline to carry any entertainment-hungry audience from thrill to thrill.  There's nothing needlessly complicated and no big surprise waiting at the end (the twist that does come is neither preposterous nor played up for wow-factor).  There's also a lot of fantastic action set-pieces, a few small ones that play out with the secondary characters, and a handful of epic chases that send Hanna across a futuristic underground holding center, a shipping yard under cover of night, and a decrepit theme park, among others.  What makes these sequences such thrills - on top of Ronan's unflappable presence - is the brilliant fusion of Wright's kinetic direction and the spot-on compositions by The Chemical Brothers.  The main theme in particular - which Hollander's character adapts into his own demented whistle after hearing it in a bar - is the kind of infectious tune that you actually don't mind getting stuck in your head.

 And just for those wondering, the comparisons to last year's Kick Ass are totally misguided.  Despite embracing the idea of a fairytale, Hanna appears to exist in the real world, one where characters, however exaggerated, still behave with some kind of logic.  It's also well aware of the moral ramifications of a teenage killing machine, and yet never resorts to the equally off-putting attempt to attach a message at the end.  It's not destined to be some great box office success, but my hope is that it can at least hold up against...I don't know, the greasy double-threat of Russell Brand...or whatever ever else it was that I've been staying clear of these last few weeks.  I don't know where it will rank among my favorites come the end of the year, but if I didn't see a better action film all year, I'd hardly be surprised...but to be fair, nor would I be disappointed.  And I think I'll sleep safe at night quite sure that they won't be attempting a sequel.