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6. The Social Network

All the critical acclaim has landed on Fincher’s latest, but I’m not convinced it is the modern masterpiece they are calling it, nor am I convinced that it defines my generation. What it does do is provide a modern day tragedy and shows us the fraying of a relationship. Fincher has made better movies (Se7en,Fight Club and Zodiac) but his kinetic direction may be his best here, coupled with terrific performances by Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield. Yet, I’m not as sold on the screenplay as everyone else is. For me the dialogue was too strained, too witty and too perfect to be anything but from a writer’s pen.

7. The King’s Speech

Whereas its main competition for the Gold shows us the end of a friendship, the King’s Speech shows us the beginning of a deep relationship between men. It may be typical Oscar bait, but the story is so well told that it is hard to mind. Helping matters from my perspective was my own experience with speech therapy and my struggle with self-image resulting from it. Those Oscar campaign ads about it being a movie you “feel” are not far from the truth.

8. The Kids Are All Right

One of the funniest movies of the year and featuring Annette Bening’s best performance since American Beauty was one of the 2010’s best surprises for me. The movie may mine familiar territory aside from the lesbian angle but the movie succeeds by creating real characters that have strengths and flaws and not making any one of them the “bad” guy. Now if we could have only had seen more of the kids.

9. Winter’s Bone

Despite a trio of great performances, Winter’s Bone left me a little underwhelmed and not quite getting all the hype. Strong characters don’t always make for strong story and the end result was of little consequence, a story set in the back-roads of the Ozarks. Yes, the movie captured the region and yes, the movie has a strong central female character that wants to break from those bonds of poverty, but it still didn’t hook me.

10. 127 Hours

I have a problem with many of Danny Boyle’s films and 127 Hours is no exception. I loved 28 Days Later as a college Freshman, I thought it was a smart, terrifying movie. Then I realized that Boyle had no ending to his movie so he took a page from George Romero to comment on the abuses of the military and that man is evil (also a favorite motif of James Cameron). Sunshine started as a fairly smart science-fiction movie before devolving into an unexciting monster movie. Slumdog Millionaire, while engrossing, is a Dickensian tale told in India with a heavy Anglicized point-of-view. Now 127 Hours uses Boyle’s typical tricked-up filming to cover the fact that he has little story. James Franco saves the movie from being a pretentious mess, by allowing the viewer to sympathize with Aron Ralston’s plight. In a year with a top-notch mainstream thriller (The Town), Scorsese's play on psychological camp (Shutter Island), a harsh family crime drama (Animal Kingdom), actually engaging gimmicks (Buried), an emotionally wrenching relationship drama (Blue Valentine) and a documentary that makes you question the truth (Exit Through the Gift Shop), the Academy was not without a share of worthy replacements.

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