Best of 2010: Film

I saw a lot of movies this year, thanks to my membership in the WGA and the flood of screeners that arrived at the end of the year. So, I caught almost all the big Oscar movies, and, ironically, few of them actually made it to the list. But, some did in what I'd consider over all a fantastic year for movies.

10. The Fighter

There were a bunch of movies in contention for this tenth spot on the list (and I still haven't seen a couple of big 2010 movies I'd like to have seen [Blue Valentine and Mesrine in particular]), but The Fighter ultimately won out over True Grit, Somewhere and The Runaways. The reason is it was one of the most emotionally engrossing films I'd seen this year. There was some cliché plotting along the way, and it sort of fizzled at the end, but through the Sanchez fight, this was a consistently intense, and emotionally gripping film. I hated Christian Bale's character so much, and Amy Adams really jumped out as a hard edged lady who took no shit from anyone. Her performance totally changed my perception of her as an actress, it's one of the most electric roles of the year, and really made the movie. I just wish it had kept up that momentum and ferocity to the ending.

9. The Kids Are All Right

I've written a lot about how TV is the trend setting, innovative visual storytelling medium now, so consider a huge compliment to say that The Kids Are All Right had the character depth and easygoing realism of a great TV show. Tonally, it recalled Six Feet Under in its depiction of a family that has its issues, but loves each other and is trying to do good in a world full of temptation. The loose narrative leaves plenty of room for character exploration and the uniformly excellent cast makes it all work. Julianne Moore is fantastic here, reminding me why she was once my favorite actress out there. But, Mark Ruffalo really steals the show as the ne'er do well, but charming absent father. He's so charismatic and engaging, it's easy to see why the whole family falls under his spell. A really satisfying adult targeted film. This is one of those movies that people say they don't make any more.

8. Inception

Inception is one of the most visually ambitious films of the year, and features some of the most dazzling action sequences I've ever seen. It's the action movie as crazy videogame, stacking level after level of crazy obstacle on top of each other, and indulging in a mix of intense psychology and pure action movie joy in sequences like the snow attack or zero gravity battle. It's a great looking movie, with a phenomenal score. What holds it back from greatness is the reliance on a dour, tormented hero who can't express himself emotionally (i.e. every single Chris Nolan character ever). It's a film about dreams that feels so utterly controlled and without any random elements sinking in. That stops it from being an all time great movie, but there's so much good in here, I can forgive the flaws.

7. Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance

The second new Evangelion film didn't quite pull all its elements together. But, it was full of very haunting moments, and its finale was exhilarating and points to a bold new direction for the rest of the films in the series. This whole project remains caught between breaking new ground and paying homage to the past series. This one manages to strike a pretty good balance, and presents a nicely distilled version of the original series' psychological troubles. But, I would still point a new viewer to the original series over this version.

6. Toy Story 3

Pixar continues one of the longest hot streaks in film with their most emotionally potent film yet. Toy Story 3 is about 80% really good, fun film. The whole imprisonment at day care is funny and full of well executed set pieces and gags. But, it's the other 20% of the film that just emotionally anhialates viewers. There's hints of this in the opening, particularly during the videotape sequence, but it comes to the fore most notably in the inferno sequence, where the characters confront their own mortality and prepare to face death. Lingering in the fire past the point where it's a cliffhanger and to the moment where everyone accepts death, it's intensely harrowing. After crossing through death, they make it out to a new life in the emotionally overwhelming finale. For what's ostensibly a kid's film to be so emotionally effulgent is a real feat, and a testament to Pixar's skill.

5. Tron: Legacy

In a year of visually stunning films, none could match the production design and overall aesthetic of Tron. Updating the 80s style for the present day, everyone in the film looked intensely stylish as they moved through gorgeous environments, backed by the fantastic Daft Punk score. Beyond the fantastic look, the film offered a solid take on the hero's journey, definitely calling back to Star Wars at times, but delivering a story that satisfied. Its video game based universe might not make any sense objectively, but in the world the story it all hangs together for a visually dazzling, emotionally engaging ride full of really cool moments. I wish everyone dressed like the characters in this movie do.

4. Black Swan

Black Swan is another great Darren Aronofsky film about obsession and a character's desire to be the absolute best, at the cost of their sanity. I love the intensity of the film and the frequent surreal indulgences. Natalie Portman is fantastic, and everything in the film draws you into her mental world, which is less intriguingly ambiguous when everything wraps up in the end. It's a totally engrossing film, and one of the most refreshingly insane movies I've seen in a while.

3. The Social Network

The so called 'Facebook' movie is actually a rather classical look at the corrupting influence of power and money. But, thanks to David Fincher's ice cold direction and Trent Reznor's alien electronic score, it becomes something more. It's a deconstruction of a world that becomes increasingly separate even as technology brings us together. I don't usually love Fincher, but the really strong Sorkin script proves the perfect anchor, filled with biting humor, keeping him from drifting off into the excess darkness of some of his other works. This is a great example of two auteurs coming together to make one great film.

2. Runaway

This Kanye West film wasn't a feature, but it demonstrates a wonderful understanding of what film can do as a medium, an audacious half hour full of incredible visuals and strange ideas. The film throws back to European art cinema motifs, with a portentious symbolic storyline that recalls Fellini, and a strangely mannered acting style that is at once alienating and intriguing. But, combined with an incredible soundtrack, it becomes a really unique package full of amazing moments, like the opening slo-mo shot of Kanye in front of a fiery explosion, or the final Phoenix ascent. So many films fail to make use of true visual storytelling, this one is a consistently riveting experience, one that lingers with me far more than most traditional features.

1. Enter the Void

Speaking of experiences, Enter the Void is attempting something entirely different from virtually any film made this year, or any other year. Gaspar Noe isn't telling you a story about someone else as he is in making you feel and experience things. The movie's title is a command, you must enter the void, and by the end of the film, you'll have passed through death and rebirth and experienced a dizzying array of images and sounds. At times, it's an assault, at times it's soothing and beautiful, this movie did things that no other film ever has. I think it's less cohesive and emotional than Irreversible, but it's just as technically dazzling and has more moments of abstract transcendence than Irreversible did. Watching the final half hour or so, in which the camera winds its way through Tokyo's sky before settling in a hotel to watch a variety of couples have sex, you reach a total altered state, and what could be vulgar becomes absolutely beautiful. This film is an experience, and I'd love to see more filmmakers approach the medium like Noe does. Film can be a great narrative medium, but it can also be so much more, and this film shows you that.

Best of 2010: Albums

10. Chromeo – Business Casual

This album marks an embrace of the implicit 70s pop elements that had always been present in their sound. While previous albums were mostly 80s dance inspired, this one is a bit more Hall and Oates style, and it generally works really well. It's a bit less kitschy and ironic than previous albums, and the best songs here really showcase Chromeo's strength as song writers. It's not the production that's attention grabbing, it's the ultra smooth melodies and really fun lyrical conceits. The lush string arrangements and wonderful disco bass keep things moving.

9. The New Pornographers – Together

A couple of my longtime favorite bands (notably Belle and Sebastian) released albums this year that weren't notably different from their previous work in form or quality that just didn't hit me for whatever reason. This album is to some extent one of those. I absolutely love the first three New Pornographer albums, but to some extent, I feel like I've absorbed everything they can do. That said, this album stands well next to those first three, hitting power pop highs on “Crash Years,” and going more anthemic on “We End Up Together.” If not quite as classic as their first three albums, it's still a really satisfying set.

8. Mark Ronson and the Business Intl. - Record Collection

Ronson follows up the great 60s inspired covers set Version with the 80s inspired Record Collection. Full of really great synth pop songs, set off with some well chosen hip hop guest spots, this album sounds very fresh, while still paying respect to Duran Duran and other 80s bands. I love the attack of opening track “Bang Bang Bang.” The vocal contributions of ex-Pipette Rose Elinor Dougall are a highlight, particularly on the soaring chorus of “Hey Boy.”

7. Gorillaz – Plastic Beach

A bit more downbeat and low key than previous Gorillaz albums, this one took a while to grow on me, but after listening to it several times, it's clear there's a lot of real beauty in the album. Albarn's orchestration is lush and epic at times, and his combination of traditionally rock instrumentation and atmosphere with well chosen hip hop beats and cameos never worked better. It's not about the clash of styles, it's about their seamless integration. Highlights include the sugar high of “Superfast Jellyfish” and driving bass of “Stylo,” but the album's great moment is the entrance of an electronic hop hop beat on “Empire Ants,” and the layers of dreamy vocal layered on top. It's a very cohesive album, and a great progression for Albarn and the “band.”

6. Bryan Ferry – Olympia

I really got into Roxy Music this year after spending the past couple of years listening only to their first glam rock album. I was surprised to find that their later work was even better, particularly the enveloping atmosphere of Avalon. Olympia picks up the sound of late period Roxy Music and applies Bryan Ferry's unparalleled voice to a series of lush soundscapes you can get lost in. His epic transformation of “Song to the Siren” is the high point, but the driving, U2 in a steam room sound of “Heartache by Numbers” jumps out as well. Like a lot of the albums on the list, it's throwing back to an 80s sound, but doing so in a way that emphasizes the timelessness of the best of that music. Ferry was making it back then, and he's still making it now.

5. Goldfrapp – Head First

It really bothered me when Goldfrapp's previous album, “Seventh Tree” came out, and people wrote about how this one must be more confessional and real, since it was based around acoustic instrumentation, not synthesizers. To me, the synthesizer can be one of the most emotional instruments out there, and a lot of the songs that really hit me on a deep level are based around electronic soundscapes. Head First drew attention for its big 80s sounding pop hits like “Rocket” or “Alive,” and those songs are fantastic. There's nothing at all wrong with doing a big, fun pop song, but the songs that jump out to me on this album are the ones that use the same style of instrumentation with a slightly darker tone to make for an even more intense emotional experience. “Hunt” and “I Wanna Life” are the ones that jump out to me. “Hunt” uses a wonderful acapella bass line, taking full advantage of Alison's unique voice. “I Wanna Life” is a bit more triumphant, but it's an earned triumph, still a pop song, but one that goes the full gamut of emotion.

4. MGMT – Congratulations

A hugely ambitious, and at times frustrating album, Congratulations is a really bold statement for a band that seemed reluctant to claim its role at the forefront of a zeitgeist. To be honest, I wish they had indulged their poppy side a bit more, and not run away from anthemic songs like “Kids” and “Electric Feel.” But, I hugely respect the sonic experimentation and sheer amount of ideas on here. There's about twenty great songs on a ten song album, and that's both the blessing and curse of it. There are moments I wish went on longer, “Someone's Missing” in particular had epic potential, but seemed to end too soon. But, at its best, the sheer variety of sounds and approaches on here is a joy in and of itself. Not every track is great, but it's full of exhilarating moments from the surf rock crescendo that opens the album to the melodic close of “Congratulation.”

3. Scissor Sisters – Night Work

In most other years, this would be number one on this list. I already love the band's first two albums, but this takes it to a whole new level, consistently great from beginning to end, this is one of those albums where it feels like every song could be a breakout single. Fusing 70s disco rhythms with gnarly 80s bass and some harder rock influences, it's topped off by Jake Shears' amazing falsetto voice. The dancefloor workout “Any Which Way” is an early highlight, with a chorus bass line that tears things up, but you could just as easily point to the pounding bass of “Whole New Way,” disco ecstasy of Sex and Violence of the simultaneously sweet and still uptempo sentiments of “Skin Tight” or “Fire With Fire.” It's capped with a prog disco rock epic “Invisible Light” that takes their sound in a slightly satanic direction and manages to both encompass and go beyond everything that's come before.

2. Arcade Fire – The Suburbs

Probably the best band in the world today puts out an album that only reinforces how vital and exciting Arcade Fire is. This album is a suite, full of gorgeous songs, energy and yearning that just sound massive. “Empty Room” is a great example of the album's strengths, a song that's bursting with energy, like a firework about to explode. Regine Chassagne jumps out as the album's greatest strength, and her voice is the soaring counterpoint to the instrumental churn. This is another album that in almost any other year would be number one on this list.

1. Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

It's been pretty remarkable to watch this album come out and get to know an album that already feels like a timeless classic. It's unanimously been chosen as best album of the year, and there's really no way to argue. A lot of bands on here are doing work that's good, even great, but feels like somebody just doing their thing. With Kanye, as with a lot of really great artists, there's a drive to not just do good work, but a need to be the absolute best. It can lead to idiot moments, like the outburst at the VMAs, but it's that same burning desire that drives him to make an album that goes so far beyond what anyone else in hip hop is attempting that it makes it look like virtually every other artist out there isn't even trying. He's taking what worked in the past and pushing it further, as on “Devil in a New Dress,” and creating an entirely new kind of epic hip hop song in “Dark Fantasy” and “All of the Lights.”

The opening moments of “Dark Fantasy” announce this as not just a bunch of songs but an album length artistic statement, one that's starting off with the startling slow motion explosion of beats. This is an album that rocks harder than any rock album in recent memory, as on the guitar solos in “Devil in a New Dress” or the prog stomp of “Power.” This is how I imagine hip hop would have sounded if it had come out of Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd instead of Funkadelic and Sly and the Family Stone.

When you've got an album so good that even a Chris Rock comedy skit feels like a heartbreaking moment, you know this is something special. I love all the previous Kanye albums, but this is an artistic leap so massive, it's hard to think where he could go from here. Even if it's not a concept album per se, the songs all feel of a piece and flow together such that I would point more to great 'moments' on the album than I would spotlight specific songs. It's a real journey, and just as the opening is the perfect primer for the journey to come, “Lost in the World” is a perfect capper for everything that's come before, a delirious journey out of the darkness and into a kind of acceptance. It's an epic tribal celebration that incorporates elements of contemporary indie rock, gospel choir, tribal drums and a spoken word 60s piece to bring it all to a conclusion. This is a real work of art, and an album that I think will be topping best of the decade lists nine years from now.

Kanye West's 'Runaway' and Pop Avant Garde Music Videos

I've been a big Kanye fan for a while, his concert at the Nokia Theater is one of the best I've been to, and I've always enjoyed his blend of pop, accessible songs with more avant garde art and high culture influences. 808s and Heartbreaks is one of my favorite recent albums, but I still was not prepared for what he'd bring as director of the Runaway short film.

The thing about cinema is that so few people really understand how to fully make use of the medium. The greatest moments in most films are those elusive blends of visual, music and narrative context that become something transcendent. A lot of good movies never hit that kind of subconscious power, other than Enter the Void, I can't think of a recent film that made it there. But, Runaway features countless moments that are just dazzling. My favorite moment in the video is near the beginning a cut from the woods to a sudden burst of music and a silhouetted Kanye carrying the Phoenix away from a gigantic explosion. It's a really powerful image, made all the more powerful by its juxtaposition with the stillness beforehand.

I don't know that the film means that much, and you could argue that the dialogue is either intentionally stylized and unnatural, or just bad, but it's hard to deny the visual power of the film, and the wonderful dreamlike logic it uses to move from the fiery explosion in the woods to a giant head of Michael Jackson being carried forth in a parade. Other smaller moments, like the jam session with Kanye pounding out the 'Power' beat on a drum machine work equally well. I've watched the film twice now, and was dazzled both times. The production design is incredible, the cinematography is great and the music is top notch too. This was a really fantastic piece of work.

It also raises some interesting questions about the role of pop music as art object. So much of 'indie' music is about the departure from image based artists to ones known only for their music. There's certainly validity there, you can't listen to image, but the construction of a pop mythology, as Kanye does here, is an interesting artistic exercise in itself. It's frustrating that so many indie rock videos are either bland performance shorts, or ironic, jokey videos that often undercut the emotion of the song.

The most interesting videos, and some of the most interesting filmmaking I've seen all year, is coming from big videos from people like Kanye West and Lady Gaga. The sheer excess of Gaga's videos for 'Telephone' or 'Alejandro' gives the songs a gravitas they might otherwise lack. 'Telephone' the song doesn't seem that spectacular, but wedded to the grindhouse artsploitation video, it becomes a great pop object. In fact, it was the amazing video for 'Bad Romance' that helped lead a critical reevaluation of Gaga and earn her a lot more respect. 'Alejandro' is an equally successful video, fusing together a lot of Kenneth Anger and Warhol influenced avant garde pieces into an accessible pop fusion.

The video for 'Runaway' is similarly successful in pulling together various influences from art culture past and putting them into a more accessible mainstream package. Because it runs for so long, 'Runaway' is even more challenging than the Gaga videos, but I think it also makes it a more successful work. By sustaining that level of hypnotic imagery and dreamlike consciousness for thirty-five minutes, it makes the video an even more successful work. And, for a first time director, Kanye exhibits a remarkable strength of vision. I'd love to see him work on a full length feature and bring the same energy and innovation to it.

I should also mention a slightly less avant garde, but similarly exciting video coming out of the mainstream, My Chemical Romance's video for 'Na Na Na' The video initially drew my attention because of the Grant Morrison cameo, and he proves once again why he's such an iconic camera presence. But, beyond that, it's a great example of a pop act building an image for themselves to add to the impact of the music. The Black Parade album was a great example of using videos and ancillary promotional materials to create a very specific aesthetic that enhances the experience of listening to the music, and I love that this is a totally different approach.

I also like that the band switches so totally away from the previous image. Bands like The Beatles used to shift images and styles from album to album, but it seems like now bands usually stick with one approach and ride it to death. But, why just keep doing the same thing?

Unlike the Kanye video, which slowed things down to immerse you in the world, 'Na Na Na' is an overflow of information, cut almost like the trailer for a much larger story, and the low budget pop aesthetic works fantastically. It's superdense, and full of great images and moments, just like Grant's comics! It's also designed to lead into more videos chronicling the same struggle, which one day may cut together into something resembling the longer structure of Kanye's 'Runaway' short.

Ultimately, 'Na Na Na' just makes me smile. It's awesome to see Grant getting out there in something so mainstream, but it's also awesome to see something mainstream that feels so cult and specific and personal.

It's exciting to see videos like this getting out there and being successful, and being events, particularly in an era where it seems like every mainstream film is so dour and run down. I loved 'The Dark Knight,' but I don't want every big movie to be so heavy and nihilistic. It feels like mainstream film, particularly superhero stories, are in the late 80s grim and gritty stage of their development, and hopefully we'll see the avant garde and pop design influence come together to create cinematic works that jar the culture out of its love of faux serious stories and into a new day-glo age.