Oscar predictions ahoy!

It's that time of year, folks. One week left until the Oscars! And while I'm sure few in the general populace really care about that fact at all, and certainly don't care enough to get invested in making actual predictions about who is/should win the awards, I somehow still hold onto my traditional obsession despite all logic suggesting it's not such a big deal. At any rate, below I will take a look at the eight major categories, point out who I think will win (highlighted in green), who I think should win (highlighted in red), and if I think the winner is deserved, then I will highlight it in blue. (Hopefully, this jives with my layout. We'll see, I suppose.) I will also give reasons for my choices and say who I thought was brutally robbed of a nomination if I have particularly strong feelings about it. Cool? Cool. Let's get this train a-rollin'!

Best Picture

127 Hours
Black Swan
The Fighter
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
The King's Speech
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter's Bone

should have been nominated: This is actually pretty good. Maybe A Prophet? This ten nominees thing so far has meant that most of my favourites actually get in there, as my top four movies from last year are all among the nominees. So... cool.

Like I said, my four favourite movies of last year (Toy Story 3, The Social Network, The Kids Are All Right, and Winter's Bone) all scored a nomination, and 127 Hours and Inception was pretty darn stellar as well. The best of these was Toy Story 3, however, a timeless classic that proves indelibly the merits of animation, three-quels, and bright, beautiful multi-leveled big-budget entertainments that speak to folks of all generations. If I had my way, it would take down the formidable competition next Sunday. (As it is, it's certainly going to win Best Animated Feature.) Unfortunately, the odds are against it, as the Academy seems to like real people rather than 3-D playthings in their movies. Almost everyone has suggested this will be a race between the brainy Social Network and the heart-warming King's Speech. While I would be thrilled if The Social Network won, The King's Speech has just built up far too much momentum in all the other awards ceremonies so far for it to be derailed at this point. If you're into betting, you should be thinking, "Long live the king!" at this point.

Best Director

Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan
Joel and Ethan Coen, True Grit
David Fincher, The Social Network
Tom Hooper, The King's Speech
David O. Russell, The Fighter

should have been nominated: Christopher Nolan, Inception; Lee Unkrich, Toy Story 3; Danny Boyle, 127 Hours; Lisa Cholodenko, The Kids Are All Right... seriously, screw this category! I'd be OK with everyone except Fincher and maybe the Coens not being there.

David Fincher is so clearly the winner in this category that it's a good time to get your consolation cards to the other nominees in the mail, if you haven't already. While I do expect Tom Hooper's The King's Speech will take home the biggest award of the evening, I suspect the film's director will be seen as a bit too inexperienced to take this particular prize. And, really, I'm pretty OK with it, since The King's Speech succeeded almost entirely on the actorly strengths of Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush... not so much on the competent but unexciting direction of Hooper. Fincher's film was perhaps the most lively, endlessly engrossing, timely, and smoothly directed of last year. Every touch, from the colour palette to the angles at which it was shot to the quietly unnerving musical score to the bravura showcase of rapid-fire dialogue, added to the overall effect. Fincher was economical and cunning in bringing off the zingy wonder of The Social Network with such little fat left on it to trim off. He will almost certainly win, and I'll be grinning like a schoolgirl when he does.

Best Actor

Javier Bardem, Biutiful
Jeff Bridges, True Grit
Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network
Colin Firth, The King's Speech
James Franco, 127 Hours

should have been nominated: Leonardo DiCaprio in either Shutter Island or Inception

Another no-brainer of a category, at least in terms of who will win. Colin Firth is so handily going to take this that it's almost unfair to everyone else. I mean, really. It's almost harsh even having the other guys there. Firth's portrayal of the uneasy would-be king is truly towering work, effortless but never unimpressive. I thought Jesse Eisenberg certainly did comparably amazing work in The Social Network, with James Franco falling not too far behind. But it's Firth's night -- all the factors, especially that his film is a period piece about royalty, are so completely Oscar catnip -- and the man certainly deserves it.

Best Actress

Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right
Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole
Jennifer Lawrence, Winter's Bone
Natalie Portman, Black Swan
Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine

should have been nominated: Kim Hye-Ja, Mother

Keep in mind I've only seen three of these five films, so please take my opinions with a grain of salt here. While Jennifer Lawrence was stunning in Winter's Bone, she's certainly too new, and a tiny bit outclassed, here to take home the trophy. Natalie Portman will pretty much certainly take home the statuette, and while I found her work to be basically the piercing, subtle, graceful, and compelling saving grace of the somewhat overbearing and cheesy Black Swan, she didn't quite (by like an inch) dominate her movie as thoroughly and winningly as did Annette Bening in The Kids Are All Right. Her Nic was the most fully formed female character (possibly the best character period) from last year, and this was due not only to the sparkling writing and loose-but-serious direction of Lisa Cholodenko and co-writer Stuart Blumberg, but by the whip-smart, committed, easy-going but emotionally complex work done by seasoned veteran Bening. While Portman certainly put on a great, flashier show in Black Swan, and I reckon the Academy will honour this, and was a worthy competitor, I liked the subtle and more grounded and more instantly identifiable, equally brilliant work done by Bening just a little bit more.

Best Supporting Actor
Christian Bale, The Fighter
John Hawkes, Winter's Bone
Jeremy Renner, The Town
Mark Ruffalo, The Kids Are All Right
Geoffrey Rush, The King's Speech

should have been nominated: Andrew Garfield, The Social Network; maybe Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Inception

This category is a bit tougher... thankfully. I do hate when it's a complete blow-out of a race. While my personal favourite is Mark Ruffalo from The Kids Are All Right -- a great, subtly surprising match of an actor's personality to a character's -- I'm not sure the Academy will quite agree with my reasoning... especially when he was surrounded by equally wonderful performers giving equally, and more, great performances. I'm thinking a horse race between Geoffrey Rush and Christian Bale, and since Rush has (unduly, in my view) been overshadowed by talk of Colin Firth in all the chatter about King's Speech, I think Christian Bale will pull a win here for his Method-complex work in The Fighter... and that will sit pretty darn well with me.

Best Supporting Actress

Amy Adams, The Fighter
Helena Bonham Carter, The King's Speech
Melissa Leo, The Fighter
Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit
Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom

Another tough category, although it might just be because I haven't put much thought so far into this particular race. But it's undoubtedly a solid line-up here: you may have noticed the lack of a "should have been nominated" section here. I'm at least somewhat of a fan of all of these choices, but I predict it will be a race between Melissa Leo and Hailee Steinfeld, both unbelievably vibrant in their particular roles in their particular movies. Since this is a category fairly well-known for its wild-card wins, (which begs the question of how I can even predict it at all, but shush) I think young Hailee Steinfeld might just have the chutzpah as well as the sincerity to pull off a win here. To be sure, she was the heart and soul of the Coens' rollickingly entertaining but occasionally detached Western revival. And I would be all for Steinfeld, until I saw Animal Kingdom and thrilled to the way Jacki Weaver slipped so casually between lovey-dovey mother and cruel, conniving jungle cat. It was downright electrifying, but unfortunately too few people saw this movie, ultimately, for it to register as much more than a blip on the Academy's radar.

Best Adapted Screenplay
127 Hours, Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy
The Social Network, Aaron Sorkin
Toy Story 3, Michael Arndt; story by John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, and Lee Unkrich
True Grit, Joel and Ethan Coen
Winter's Bone, Debra Granik and Anne Rosellini

should have been nominated: The Ghost Writer

Pretty OK with all these nominees, once again. Awesome! But c'mon... as much as I liked all of these movies script-wise, particularly The Social Network and Toy Story 3, Aaron Sorkin has this one in the figurative bag. His script was a thing of beauty, unspooling streams of stylized, fully modern patter without ever letting his tightly knit story go off the rails. He will win, and by the Flying Spaghetti Monster, so he should.

Best Original Screenplay

Another Year, Mike Leigh
The Fighter, Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy, and Eric Johnson; story by Keith Dorrington, Tamasy, and Johnson
Inception, Christopher Nolan
The Kids Are All Right, Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg
The King's Speech, David Seidler

should have been nominated: Fish Tank

I direly wished I could have seen Another Year before this. Ah well, life is a bitch. Frankly, this could very well be another chance for the Academy to shower its gold upon The King's Speech, but I predict they will take this as their opportunity to honour Inception and its mind-boggling chutzpah. I, too, was pretty darn impressed that anyone could even write something like this in a filmable fashion, so undoubtedly Inception would be a shrewd choice to win, and it probably will win here. However, The Kids Are All Right was not only smartly written, but full of the type of heart and well-rounded characters that, for all its invigorating mind games, Inception didn't quite pull off. I think Cholodenko and Blumberg's achievement was just a tad more towering than the formidable Nolan's. I want to stress that I'd be OK with a Nolan win, though, quite OK; a bit less OK with a King's Speech win, though that is a definite possibility.

Other categories? I think it would be a hoot and a most deserving win if Exit Through the Gift Shop took Best Documentary Feature, though the sobering, intellectual, and dazzlingly put-together Inside Job will probably pull ahead, not without merit. Toy Story 3 will undoubtedly win Best Animated Feature, as it damn well should. I would be thrilled if The Social Network track by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross won Best Original Score, but it's facing stiff, strong competition from the likes of Alexandre Desplat, the likely winner, Hans Zimmer, and John Powell's soaring work on How to Train Your Dragon. And on a rather anticlimactic note, I hope Inception wins the two sound awards because, well, it sounded fucking amazing in theatres.

Agree? Disagree? Want to talk and ramble on? Feel free now to do just that. Happy Oscars, and I'll see you on the other side! (Unless I decide to do a live blog of them again like last year... Hmm...)

Gates of Heaven (Errol Morris, 1978); Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, 1978)

I recently watched some truly "heavenly" films, if you catch my drift (and my ridiculously obvious pun). It seems my Netflix viewing has become oddly patterned. First off, I watched Gattaca and then Dark City, a pair of dark, serious, almost convoluted sci-fi movies. Then, I watched two great (albeit for completely different reasons) French movies, The 400 Blows (which earned an immediate spot on the best-of-all-time list) and Caché (which thrilled me even more the second time around -- I had seen it before, a while ago). And now, two movies in the same day with "heaven" in the title. And not only that, but both were released in 1978. My mind works in mysterious ways, sometimes, my friends.

Gates of Heaven was a quirky documentary from Errol Morris about the owners and customers of a pet cemetery. Despite this completely not-promising-at-all set-up, the movie is profoundly philosophical and moving, with plenty of points to make about life and death, companionship, the relationship of pets and their owners. Strangely captivating stuff that could have been played for laughs, yet remains sincere throughout. Roger Ebert famously went nuts over this movie, at times including it in his ever-changing lists of the 10 best movies of all time. While I think Hoop Dreams has this one beat over all, Gates of Heaven is still one of the best documentaries I've seen in quite some time. A

Days of Heaven is pure Terrence Malick, and probably the finest, loveliest, simplest distillation of his trademark style (reliant on poetic narration and eye-popping, nature-oriented cinematography) out there. It's an easygoing story about pioneer/farm life and a particularly strange yet strangely beautiful love triangle. I loved the crap out of The New World and The Thin Red Line, with a few reservations, and if you did, then I have no hesitation in recommending this. Richard Gere, who often strikes me as a bit too smarmy, has rarely if ever been more effectively used than he is here; dare I say, he has a lighthearted charm here that is downright infectious.

I found the film oddly distracting, though, for a couple of silly and personal and esoteric reasons. (Hey, I told you up there that this blog could be esoteric sometimes.) It was filmed right around where I live, and throughout much of the film, I was taken out of the narrative, through no fault of the director's, by seeing things and landscapes with which I was intimately familiar. Particularly distracting were the final scenes, featuring the High Level train bridge in Lethbridge which I drive past everyday on my way to work, and Heritage Park in Calgary, which obviously negated some of the historical impact of it for me. I mean, I know it's supposed to be set in 1910s-era Texas, but gosh-darn-it, I know it's not really there because I know these places too well. (I mean, look at that still up there. Seriously. Those are the god-damned Foothills in Alberta with the god-damned Rocky Mountains off in the distance.) It ruined some of the otherwise magnificent flow of the film and, especially, the temporal and geographic reality it tried so hard to create.

But this is really an odd problem for someone to have with a film, and I fully admit my bias here. This is still a wonderful film, probably the best introduction someone could want to the particular cinematic genius of Malick. A-

The 3-D debate rages on...

A particularly interesting post from Roger Ebert, a man, in my opinion, of many interesting posts.

I've enjoyed the 3-D technique from time to time, finding it particularly effective in Avatar, Coraline, and a couple other animated movies, off the top of my head. It can be done well, if incorporated into the original story and vision of the movie, but do the pros outweigh the cons? Is it really worth the extra cost to see something like Green Hornet in an extra dimension, even if that dimension often tends to blur out the other two? Especially odious are films where the technique has obviously been slapped on in haste: for example, Clash of the Titans.

Walter Murch, an incredibly esteemed film editor and sound designer, who worked on some of my favourite movies, notably Apocalypse Now, goes further, and suggests in the above-cited article that the 3-D technique is at odds with science in terms of our visual perception. We have simply not evolved as humans to percieve images in this way, with our eyes focusing at one point and converging on another. It's just weird and difficult, like, to use Murch's example, patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time. It can be done, sure, but it's challenging and frustrating.

It's merely one opinion among many, but Murch is certainly an expert in this field, and would have to deeply understand how people watch movies in order to have achieved the level of success he has in his career. So, it's worth some serious consideration. Then again, people have been known to make some scientifically baffling decisions now and then, so the 3-D trend might just rage on.

The best films of 2010

2010 might have signalled the start of a new decade, but as for the year in cinema, it was hardly anything fresh or revelatory. There were certainly fewer movies last year than in 2009, or even the two years before that, over which I was absolutely gaga. I know, call me crazy, but I, unlike apparently everyone else on the planet, thought 2009 was absolutely crackerjack. As for the previous year, there were plenty of good films, plenty to admire, but only a few which I would have no hesitation in calling great. This year's list only goes to ten, therefore, unlike last year's, but with ample honourable mentions. Hopefully, it will provide a ray of cinematic sunshine in a year marked, in the news, by a dismal variety of environmental and economic tragedy.

Of course, it's entirely possible that I missed out on quite a few of the year's gems. In the interests of full disclosure, here are some of the films I direly wished I could have seen before diving into this list, but, in the interests of not keeping everyone waiting until about March, had to fall by the wayside: Another Year, Blue Valentine, Carlos, Inside Job, The Illusionist, and Last Train Home. This saddens me as I'm sure some of them would have made the list had I been able to see them in a timely fashion. Sometimes, these lists can be cruel mistresses.


Close calls...

Maybe it's not such a bad year after all if movies as dazzling and enjoyable and otherwise remarkable as these next few don't even make the proper list.

Ajami (Scandar Copti, Yaron Shani), an intense and heart-wrenching exploration of religious and cultural conflict in Tel Aviv, from an intimate perspective.

Despicable Me (Pierre Coffin, Chris Renaud), the year's best, most charming exploration of the lighter side of super-villainy, with a great voice performance from Steve Carell and a lovely, textured, almost Gaelic style of animation to boot.

Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold), the year's most startling coming-of-age story, with a gritty realism in direction and writing that expertly evokes its blue-collar English setting and a revelatory, assured lead performance from newcomer Katie Jarvis.

The Ghost Writer (Roman Polanski), an elegant, stylish, richly characterized, almost effortlessly gripping thriller from a master of tension, who proves he's still more than got it. Of course, the stunning cast, from a deviously smarmy Pierce Brosnan to a quietly intense Ewan McGregor, doesn't hurt either.

I'm Still Here (Casey Affleck) One of this year's crop of possibly fake documentaries. Viewed from the perspective most had of it when it was released, this portrait of the nearly surreal downfall of Joaquin Phoenix into drugs and dissolution was a dark, bizarrely captivating portrait of Hollywood hubris. Now that it has been revealed as a hoax, it's become a cunning bit of insider satire of the ridiculousness of celebrity.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Edgar Wright), an exuberantly entertaining movie that deftly interweaves the media of film and of graphic novels far more successfully than something like Sin City. Endlessly clever and dazzling, and wickedly well-acted from (who else?) Michael Cera, Jason Schwartzman, Anna Kendrick, Kieran Culkin, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead... although its energy peters out towards the end.

Splice (Vincenzo Natali), the year's most unfairly overlooked bit of lurid, darkly comedic B-movie fun mixed with smart, serious, high-concept sci-fi. Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley make an incredibly winning team.

True Grit (Joel and Ethan Coen). While not the year's grittiest or most emotionally involving Western (you'll see), it is a resplendently beautiful and satisfying entertainment, with marvellous performances from Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, and, most astonishingly of all, Hailee Steinfeld, and snappy writing -- largely based on Charles Portis's novel -- that just about pops off the screen.

The list!

10. Mother (Bong Joon-Ho)
Mother can be called downright Hitchcokian in its suspense, but Bong Joon-Ho's finished product is startlingly new, defying such simplistic descriptions. A mother sets out of a mission of discovery, then maternal protection and crazed revenge, when her mentally challenged son is accused of murder. The cinematography here is gorgeous, and Bong's assured shifts in mood and tone, from the darkly funny to the seriously disturbing, prove mesmerizing. Most amazing of all is the performance of Kim Hye-Ja as the mother, a breathtaking study in maternal affection and delirious obsession. Until Mother, I hadn't seen any of Korean director Bong's previous efforts. On the strength of this dizzying and ever-surprising horror gem, I may have to remedy that.


9. Inception (Christopher Nolan)
So maybe it isn't that great. Does it really all fit together in the end? Do dreams really work that way, with architecture and structure? It may not be the most psychologically probing thriller out there, nor is it quite Christopher Nolan's masterpiece, but Inception is still far more ambitious, imaginative, and engrossing than nearly any big-budget Hollywood feature this year. Rigorously structured and invigorating, Nolan's sure directorial hand keeps us riveted from beginning to end while somehow wrangling all of his numerous Big Ideas into a form that is not only manageable but downright brilliant. As the dream-explorers, Nolan has also wrangled himself a uniformly excellent cast, from Leonardo DiCaprio as the tormented leader of the dream heist, Marion Cotillard, furiously strong-willed as the imagined figments of his wife, Ken Watanabe as the smooth-as-silk corporate backer for the project, and the radiant Ellen Page and the dashing Joseph Gordon-Levitt as DiCaprio's assistants. In terms of emotionally engaging storytelling, Inception is better than such a determinedly heady project as any right to be. In terms of pure style and brainy exhilaration, Inception is downright masterful.

8. 127 Hours (Danny Boyle)
While the eclectic Danny Boyle is hardly a slouch in delievering quality films of wildly varying genres (although Slumdog Millionaire, while initially impressive, seems less remarkable the more I think about it), 127 Hours is his most resonant effort since Trainspotting. Boyle's bursts of cinematic theatrics are well-suited to the true-life story of Aron Ralston, a hiker of boundless energy whose lifestyle gets him trapped by a boulder in a Utah canyon, who then uses this tragedy as a wake-up call and, in his resourcefulness, cuts through his own arm to free himself. James Franco gives a virtuoso performance as Ralston, making us feel his reckless enthusiasm as vividly as his inner demons. Boyle makes the mostly stationary action (after all, the guy is forcibly trapped in one place for nearly the entire duration of the film) thrilling, evoking Ralston's sensory experience (his hunger, thirst, etc.) and his gradual mental deterioration (flashbacks and hallucinations come to dominate his mind), and his eventual capability for grisly, violent determination with mesmerizing style. 127 Hours shows a triumph of the human spirit in the most electrifying sense possible.

7. Animal Kingdom (David Michôd)
A searing Australian crime drama and family saga so brash, meaty, and assured it warrants comparison to Scorsese. Newcomer writer-director David Michôd works with uncommon style and urgency, while at the same time deftly showcasing the balance between family and justice, punishment and loyalty that come to dominate the central Cody family, a pack of wild thugs (none more malicious than its outwardly cheery, inwardly cut-throat matriarch) from Melbourne. Better than Ben Affleck's The Town, Animal Kingdom is evocative of its particular gritty neighbourhood as well as achieving a smart balance between violent criminal outbursts and twisted displays of family bonding. And it features sizzling performances from Ben Mendelsohn, as the most screw-loose, rage-prone member of the family; Guy Pearce, as a gruff and determined cop trying to bring justice to his beat and, perhaps, save some of the more innocent members of the Cody clan from their violent fate; Jacki Weaver, stuning as the wicked den mother; and James Frecheville as 'J,' the young, fresh-faced cub trying to balance his loyalties, exact vengeance of his own, and emerge as a strong survivor.


6. Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy)
The shrewdest and funniest of the year's potentially "fake" documentaries, an unintended indictment of the art world, and a pointed commentary on the deceptive, malleable powers of cinema in general. Initially purporting to be Thierry Guetta's never-ending chronicle of the world of street art (or is it just graffitti?), to which the affable, perhaps a bit dim Frenchman was introduced by his cousin, the movie quickly becomes Banksy's chronicle of the rise to (improbable) fame of Guetta. His endless hours of footage prove too much for Guetta, and so Banksy, one of the most legendary of the world's street artists (creator of a Guantanamo-themed blow-up doll at Disneyland and a bent-and-smashed London-style telephone booth), takes control and turns the tables on the supposed director, becoming the story of how Guetta became "Mr. Brainwash," and even got his own well-attended exhibition in swanky digs in L.A. Exit Through the Gift Shop provides irresistible fun and energy while tantalizing us with the question of who is the real subject and who is pulling the strings. It's absurdly hilarious, with some genuinely thought-provoking points to make about art, filmmaking, commodity, integrity, and subjectivity. And thankfully, it's all organized around the tantalizing, cool, anonymous figure of famed, controversial street artist Banksy and his groupie/partner in crime/screw-loose student Guetta. Dizzying, deep entertainment from the most unexpected of sources.

5. A Prophet (Jacques Audiard)
It seems 2010 was the year of riveting, epic crime drama. This is a note-perfect French film about Malik, a young criminal who gets sent away to prison, only to rise through the ranks and re-define himself, painstakingly, as a new breed of crime boss. Targeted initially for his half-Arab roots by César, the Corsican leader of the prison pack, a mafia boss, Malik sneaks his way into César's inner circle and becomes his right-hand man, before his own ambitions rise above the mob boss. Jacques Audiard lets the story speak largely for itself, trading showiness for the real, shocking violence of prison life. (Suffice it to say, if you weren't already wary of accepting oral sex in prison, you certainly will be now.) Audiard takes his time and gives his characters dimensions and motivations that lend uncommon intensity to the story. Tahar Rahim is mesmerizing as Malik, and Niels Arestrup is downright throat-gripping as César, one of the great villains of the year. A Prophet is grounded, meticulous filmmaking, representing a new breed of prison drama that is all the more lively for its calm naturalism.

4. Winter's Bone (Debra Granik)
Debra Granik also uses calm naturalism to intense effect in Winter's Bone. There's no fakery to this tale of poverty and desperation: Ree is a frightfully determined teenage girl facing seemingly insurmountable problems. Her family -- a younger brother and sister and their mentally ill mother -- will lose their home if Ree doesn't track down her father, a fugitive meth dealer who has seemingly skipped town after promising the house as collateral on a bail bond. Jennifer Lawrence is the big discovery here, imbuing Ree with uncommon intelligence, heart, and determination. It's a fierce, radiant performance that haunts the memory long after the lights come up. But director and co-writer Granik's most remarkable achievement is using her realistic approach to create a magnificent sense of hard-scrabble community, using real settings and real locals to tell her uniquely Ozark story. John Hawkes is also mesmerizing as Teardrop, a scary-druggie relative who pushes Ree away only to come to her aid. Winter's Bone is an unflinching, achingly moving, strangely beautiful all-American story.


3. The Kids Are All Right (Lisa Cholodenko)
A funny, bright, heart-warming, sexy film that's also one of the most perceptive films about family (gay or straight) to come around in a long while -- The Kids Are All Right hits all the right notes. Lisa Cholodenko's film could easily have wound up as excessively colourful or indie-clichéd, but the energy and humour she brings to the proceedings is infectious. Annette Bening is Nic, a harried doctor with a quick wit and a habit of hitting the bottle a little too hard to soften her hard edges. She's married to Jules (Julianne Moore), a flighty woman wandering between jobs (her current project is as a landscape designer). Their children, Joni (Mia Wasikowska), a bright student crumbling under the weight of expectations, and Laser (Josh Hutcherson), a curious teenager, become fascinated with meeting their birth father. Their search leads them to Paul (Mark Ruffalo), a hip, almost improbably easygoing restaurateur.

This sunny film marches along with confidence, erasing the blunt quirkiness of its subject matter (a gay couple! with a dysfunctional, patched-together family! oh my!) and letting its characters breathe and the story unfold naturally. Cholodenko's direction is so assured here that it makes the movie's wise observations about family life and its snappy humour seem practically effortless. The screenplay, from Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg, is smart and detailed, allowing the cast room to bring their characters to life. And that cast is downright sublime. Bening is marvelous as Nic, making her a woman in tune with her faults and complexities, and with a strong will and confidence that is downright inspiring -- it's a wonderful match of star to character. Moore is equally confident and sexy, with an easygoing aura and a sharp comedic timing. Ruffalo gives some of his best work to date as Paul (his scruffy charm has never fit this well), and Wasikowska, barely notable at all in Alice in Wonderland, is downright radiant here. The Kids Are All Right is more than alright -- it's damn near perfect.

2. The Social Network (David Fincher)
David Fincher's latest (his most accomplished work to date) is a timely drama about the genesis of Facebook full of such technical, brainy dazzle that it practically rewires your senses. It's therefore a shrewd match of form to content: after all, Facebook has rewritten not only the rules of the internet, but changed the very way we interact with each other. From first frame to last, The Social Network is a film simply brimming with zesty talk and twisty human interaction -- it's a complex thriller that's also a bold statement on the way we live now. And it's such a layered drama that it may take more than one viewing to truly absorb its nuances. Indeed, it's easy to take Fincher's casual genius for granted here, as I did, to some extent, before watching it again. But genius it is, and a particularly spiky and durable form of genius, at that.

Jesse Eisenberg gives an electrifying performance, easily one of the best of the year, as Mark Zuckerberg, the anti-social jerk-genius who founded Facebook -- or did he have some (uncredited) help? Certainly that is what his Harvard colleagues Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss (identical twins both played with a hilarious air of smarmy entitlement by Armie Hammer) claim. Zuckerberg's best friend Eduardo Saverin (a wonderfully sincere Andrew Garfield) is also suing him for bilking him out of his share of stock in Facebook. A final key player is Sean Parker (a -- and I never thought I'd type these words -- gripping and entertaining Justin Timberlake), the founder of Napster who sallies his way into Zuckerberg's inner circle and wrests some control of the project for himself. The dramatic question is whether or not Zuckerberg screwed over his friends, ironically, in producing a website designed for connecting with friends, and, of course, what led him to this idea.

Fincher stages bravura scenes here that add up to more than the sum of the parts -- at times, it might almost be a Citizen Kane for the digital age, albeit with a disgruntled ex-girlfriend instead of a sled. The performances are endlessly surprising and layered, delivering Aaron Sorkin's rich, whip-smart dialogue at breathless pace. The score, from Trent Reznor (of all people) and Atticus Ross, subtly but noticably underlines the proceedings with similar briskness. The technical elements work together brilliantly, but more importantly, they highlight and deepen the story. The Social Network is grand entertainment, a magnificent triumph of form and content that may come to define the new generation and set a tone for a new brand of filmmaking.


1. Toy Story 3 (Lee Unkrich)
If The Social Network is the timeliest film of the year, Toy Story 3 may just prove the most timeless. If I were voting with my brian, and maybe my gut, I might have easily put The Social Network at the very tip-top of this list. But I went with my heart, and my heart loved Toy Story 3 without bounds. And even amidst massive amounts of anticipation -- Toy Story and Toy Story 2 are such enduring classics that their legacy is all but untouchable -- and even more massive amounts of doubt -- Pixar may be able to pull off a sequel, but a three-quel? And not only that, but a three-quel to some of the most perfect (read: self-contained and self-sufficient) films of this generation? -- Toy Story 3 stands tall. No movie this year drew more knowing laughs, rollicking excitement, and meaningul tears than this wonderful finale of the Pixar saga about the secret lives of a child's playthings. No movie this year featured characters as identifiable in situations so intense, heart-warming, and imaginative.

Andy has grown up and is about to leave for college. The toys, who have long been relegated to an old treasure chest, will wind up either with Andy, in the attic, in the trash, or at a day care centre. After some close calls, the gang wind up at Sunnyside, seemingly a dream come true, as they will be played with day in and day out by dozens of eager new children. But there's a dark side: Lotso (a delightful Ned Beatty), a purple teddy bear with a charming Southern drawl masking his fascist tendencies, the leader of the Sunnyside toys (which also include Ken [a hilarious Michael Keaton], who has a fateful run-in with Barbie), keeps Woody and the gang in the room with the younger, more violent and destructive children, and keeps the place locked down at night. Toy Story 3 then becomes a daring escape adventure as thrilling as anything in The Great Escape, as the gang must struggle to break free of the prison-like day care and return to Andy, even if it means life in the attic.

Toy Story 3 is delightful and antically original in the early at-home scenes and the Sunnyside scenes, with old favourites like Tom Hanks and Tim Allen gamely providing the voices for Woody and Buzz once again. As it reaches its dazzling conclusion, however, it becomes almost elegiac, as the toys must face their own obsolescence. A final scene *obvious spoiler alerts ahead* featuring Andy giving the toys over to a much younger neighbourhood girl is a joyous and wonderfully touching moment of passing the torch -- of saying goodbye to the glory of old and greeting a new era full of promise. And it works like clockwork both from Andy's perspective and from the toys. Toy Story 3 is funny, thoughtful, adventurous, exciting, imaginative, visually eye-popping, and vividly touching entertainment -- so layered with real-life meaning (rife with wisdom about growing old, reaching out, living up to expectations, staying loyal and saying goodbye) that it may captivate adults even more than children. In cinematic terms, it really does go to infinity and beyond.

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The worst films of the year

And now for something completely different: These are the worst films I had the displeasure of seeing from last year. Now, once again, I'm the type of guy who goes out of his way to avoid the true stinkers, and I've got a rather good nose for them at this point, so there are probably worse movies out there than these (well, not worse than #1, which was downright abominable... but we'll get to that). And I'm only doing four this year, because, well, I don't feel like wasting space on more than four of these lemons. With that out of the way, these are the films from last year that most made me want to throw up my hands in frustration...

4. Legion (Scott Charles Stewart)
A dead-in-the-water January release that is an insult to the month of January with its sheer dreary laziness. The apocalypse has rarely felt less urgent than it did here, and despite an enjoyably blasphemous premise of angels descending to earth to wipe out humanity, which has apparently fallen out of God's favour, the movie never really takes off and ends in the most muddled way possible. Paul Bettany and Dennis Quaid somehow got suckered into appearing in this, and while Quaid is quite pointless, Bettany isn't too terrible, so that's... something?

3. Robin Hood (Ridley Scott)
Well, it's safe to say that Errol Flynn, the dashing star of The Adventures of Robin Hood, one of the most lovely movies of all time, has never been so thoroughly crapped upon as he has by this movie. It's a long way from the joyous and charming merry-making of the '30s Technicolor era, folks. Scott's historical epic aimed to be a truer portrait of the legendary outlaw Robin Hood, but simply wound up being a duller, greyer affair (literally, that's pretty much the only colour they seemed to have used in shooting the movie) that saps the figure of both his mythos and his appeal. Russell Crowe slogs his way grumpily through this mess like a fly trapped in molasses.

2. Cop Out (Kevin Smith)
Kevin Smith, a filmmaker widely renowned as a better writer than a director, directs someone else's hackneyed script (Robb and Mark Cullen). The result, as expected, is a visually bland and tiresomely written affair that manages to deflate even the resiliently energetic, bug-eyed comedian Tracy Morgan and leaves Bruce Willis floating in the wind. Also, it's oddly long for such a small concept, adding excess to injury.


1. The Last Airbender (M. Night Shyamalan)
It's finally happened. The Last Airbender is the absolute nadir of M. Night Shyamalan's decline in status as a director, a master class in wrong-headed, incompetent filmmaking. All sense of pacing, intelligent, unmechanical writing, consistency, exciting action, visual splendour, and even racial sensitivity (some of the characters from the original Nickelodeon series, upon which this bombastic misfire is based, have somehow arbitrarily changed races) falls by the wayside in Shyamalan's quest to find the perfect storm of cinematic awfulness. On its own, its a towering achievement in incompetence. After viewing some of the quite solidly constucted series upon which it is based, this abomination is downright insulting and mystifying.

Blasts from the past!

For a slice of perspective in anticipation of my forthcoming best films of 2010 list (don't worry, it'll be here soon, my pets), I decided to drudge up some of my old "best-of-the-year" lists from my old haunts at Rotten Tomatoes, posted now here for your enjoyment. Some caveats: As the lists get older, they probably reflect my current feelings less and less (meaning it's possible that I could thoroughly disagree with my 2003 list if I were to watch them all again). A recent viewing of Caché has also shifted around my 2005 list from what it originally was. But if you're in the mood for some intriguing curios from my movie-going past and enjoy a good list, press on...

Best films of 2008

10. The Class (Laurent Cantet)
9. Still Life (Zhang Ke Jia)
8. Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt)
7. My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin)
6. Waltz With Bashir (Ari Folman)
5. Milk (Gus Van Sant)
4. Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman)
3. The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan)
2. Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme)
1. WALL-E (Andrew Stanton)


Best films of 2007

10. No End in Sight (Charles Ferguson)
9. Zodiac (David Fincher)
8. 4 Weeks, 3 Months & 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu)
7. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Andrew Dominik)
6. I'm Not There (Todd Haynes)
5. Juno (Jason Reitman)
4. Once (John Carney)
3. Persepolis (Vincent Paronnaud, Marjane Satrapi)
2. No Country for Old Men (Joel & Ethan Coen)
1. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson)


Best films of 2006

10. Old Joy (Kelly Reichardt)
9. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu)
8. United 93 (Paul Greengrass)
7. Half Nelson (Ryan Fleck)
6. Casino Royale (Martin Campbell)
5. The Departed (Martin Scorsese)
4. Borat (Larry Charles)
3. Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón)
2. Pan's Labyrinth (Guillermo Del Toro)
1. Letters From Iwo Jima (Clint Eastwood)


Best films of 2005

10. Nobody Knows (Hirokazu Koreeda)
9. 2046 (Kar Wai Wong)
8. Me and You and Everyone We Know (Miranda July)
7. Broken Flowers (Jim Jarmusch)
6. Murderball (Henry Alex Rubin, Dana Adam Shapiro)
5. Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee)
4. King Kong (Peter Jackson)
3. A History of Violence (David Cronenberg)
2. The Best of Youth (Marco Tullio Giordana)
1. Caché (Michael Haneke)


Best films of 2004

10. Osama (Siddiq Barmak)
9. Moolaadé (Ousmane Sembene)
8. Before Sunset (Richard Linklater)
7. The Aviator (Martin Scorsese)
6. Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood)
5. Maria Full of Grace (Joshua Marston)
4. The Incredibles (Brad Bird)
3. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry)
2. Kill Bill - Vol. 2 (Quentin Tarantino)
1. Sideways (Alexander Payne)


Best films of 2003

10. All the Real Girls (David Gordon Green)
9. The Man Without a Past (Aki Kaurismaki)
8. The Fog of War (Errol Morris)
7. Kill Bill - Vol. 1 (Quentin Tarantino)
6. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Peter Weir)
5. Finding Nemo (Andrew Stanton, Lee Unkrich)
4. American Splendor (Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini)
3. Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola)
2. Mystic River (Clint Eastwood)
1. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Peter Jackson)


I hope that will sate your list hunger until I post last year's list, hopefully by the end of this week, almost definitely by the end of the month.