Richard's Top 10 movies 2010
January 05, 2011
By
Richard Jones
Orson gets the nod...
IT was a busy year for us as far as film-going was concerned, with no fewer than 35 movies viewed in central Victoria and in Melbourne.
The Nova Cinemas in Carlton were well patronised, with 10am or 10.30am showings early in the week among our preferred times.
We also took in four or five movies at the Kino in Melbourne’s CBD and a couple in Yarraville at the Sun Theatre, as well.
10. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (Sweden) : much better than the ones which followed, Noomi Rapace was outstanding as the anarchistic, Goth computer hacker Lisbeth.
Crusading journalist Mikael (Michael Nyqvist) needs Lisbeth as he tries to unravel the 40-year-old mystery about the disappearance of a much-loved niece from a wealthy Swedish family.
9. The Hedgehog (France): absorbing little tale about upper middle-class denizens of a Parisian apartment block. Eleven-year-old Paloma (Grace Le Guillermic) doesn’t want to reach her 12th birthday, terrified she will become just another vacouos member of the bourgeoisie.
She films everything about her. Into her life comes concierge Renee (Josiane Balasko), a cipher unrecognized by all the apartment’s residents, save Paloma.
8. The King’s Speech (UK): just snuk this one in for 2010 with a December 29th screening at our local multiplex.
Geoffrey Rush will go very close to the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role as speech therapist Lionel Logue. Colin Firth likewise for Best Actor as the stammering, self-conscious Bertie, who was crowned King George VI when his brother David (King Edward VIII) took off with Mrs Simpson.
Helena Bonham Carter was great as Queen Elizabeth, later to become a household name as the 100-year-old Queen Mother.
7. The Secret In Their Eyes (Argentina): winner of 2010’s Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, this one held terrific little twists and turns right to the very end.
The story told in flashback concerns a court investigator (Ricardo Darin) who wants an unresolved rape-murder case re-opened. His colleague at the time of the murder (Soledad Villamil) was once a judge’s associate but she’s now a judge.
6. I Am Love (Italy); unlike fellow website reviewers I found this movie absorbing.
Tilda Swinton is the Russian-born wife of the heir to a multi-million Euro industrialist family fortune. Only hitch is she falls in love with her son’s best friend and erstwhile business partner, Antonio (Edoardo Gabbriellini).
Talk about twists and turns in the storyline!
5. A Prophet (France): riveting yarn about a Muslim lad who becomes the servant and slaveboy to the dominant Corsican Mafia faction in a tough French prison.
Malik (Tahar Rahim) does what he’s told, even murdering a fellow inmate viewed as an informer by the Corsicans. Gradually down the years he builds up his influence as he runs errands for his boss when he has valuable day release passes.
Also a contender for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2010 Oscars.
4. Welcome (France): after a 3000 km journey from his homeland, a teenaged Iraqi Kurd lands up in a French coastal city only a ferry ride away from the paradise of London, and Great Britain.
So what’s the solution for Bilal (Firat Ayverdi) so he can get to the UK and link up with his beloved girlfriend? Why, take swimming lessons, that’s what, from pool instructor Simon (Vincent Lindon) and see if he can slog it out through the wild waters of the English Channel.
3. Animal Kingdom (Australia): the best Aussie movie of the year in my opinion. Jackie Weaver was sensational as the matriarch of a Melbourne crime family (read the Pettingills and Victor Peirce, here).
Newcomer James Frecheville as Josh caught all the nuances as he’s swept up into the violence and mayhem of life in his own family as it swirls around him.
He doesn’t say much, but Josh is a swift learner.
2: The White Ribbon (Germany): should have won the Oscar for Best Foreign language film I thought. Tells the story of fractured life in a 1913 German rustic village where all sorts of accidents – some fatal – occur regularly.
Despite the unbending disciplime of the Lutheran pastor and his disciples, it seems the children are wreaking revenge on those they believe imposed this regime upon them.
Or is it the children, after all ??
1. Me And Orson Welles (USA): he was only 22 when he staged a modern dress adaptation of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in New York’s Mercury Theatre, yet the mercurial Welles (Christian McKay) has bluster, charisma, talent to burn and, yes, taints of envy, ruthlessness and hostility.
Don’t worry about traffic jams in 1937. Wells has an ambulance, complete with siren, to get from the Mercury to his radio commitments and newspaper writing assignments around the Big Apple.
Claire Danes and Zac Efron (the “Me” in the movie’s title) are great, too.
WORTH A MENTION: Kiwi film Boy was touching as a young Maori boy in an isolated town finally gets to see his Dad – a bumbling, minor criminal who just can’t get anything right.
The Tree: probably the second best Aussie film of 2010. Dawn (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and Simone (Morgana Davies) believe they can communicate with their dead hubby and father through the giant Moreton Bay tree in the backyard of their Queensland home.
Everlasting Moments (Sweden); at the turn of the 20th century a battling working-class Mum wins a camera in a lottery and starts to lead a double life.
The only adult who seems to understand her is the town’s charming photographer and camera repair shop owner. They’re both Dames in a Swedish environment, so that helps.
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