Reviews by Matt

This was not a good year for me to see movies. I have been busier than ever and have loved every second of it. Sadly though this has severely limited my chances to go see movies. I had very few movies truly worthy of this list. I barely saw 10 movies this year and that makes this list harder to defend. I was tempted to do a top five, but where is the fun in that? So to give myself a challenge, I kept the top 10 format and came up with one of the more interesting top 10 lists you are bound to see.

10) Kick-Ass

Honestly this is only on this list because I did not see that many movies this year. It was a fun movie that is really meant only for the comic book fans of the world. I loved it because it was something different. The main character was the very definition of an average kid and just wanted to do something. There was the shock value of seeing a little girl curse like a sailor. All and all a really fun movie for the under 30 set in the Levy clan.

9) Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Again this is a movie made for a very specific audience. Anyone who grew up in the 80’s with the 8 and 16-bit video games like Mario or Street Fighter will get this movie. It is funny and geeky and did not make diddley-squat at the box office. Sadly the world is not as geek friendly enough for this to be the box office smash it should have been.

This is also the first movie starring Michael Cera that has not made be physically ill. He actually did a good job of playing Scott Pilgrim and giving him a believable dweebey toughness.

8) Let Me In

This would have been No. 10 had I gotten to the theater more often this year. I really liked the original “Let the Right One In,” but this Americanized version added some things that made it better, but also took some things out that made it worse. Unlike the previous two, this movie is for anyone who likes movies. I also highly recommend the Swedish “Let The Right One In” too.

The real standout it Chloe Moretz. She is still very young but has some real talent on screen. She can play both creepy and sweet (sometimes at the same time).

7) The Town

Ben Affleck has come full circle. He has been redeemed from all the bad movies he made over the past 5 years or so. With “The Town” he is actor, director and co-writer. His performance is great if clichéd “bad guy with a heart of gold. ” The direction, especially in the heist scenes, is really quite good.

It was just the ending I did not like. I was unsure of how to take it. It is not that it ruined the movie for me, but it kept it from being a great movie. Granted it had a lot to contend with in other movies in the top 10.

6) Inception

This should be higher on my list. I really did love this movie, but I think that since I last saw it in July, my love as diminished. Don’t get me wrong, the movie was amazing. The way each dream was different from the one before it, made it easy to follow. But absence does not always make the heart grow fonder.

Nolan makes puzzles, not movies and this might be his masterpiece. He has one more Batman movie to make, “The Dark Knight Rises” which will come out in 2012, but he an make whatever movie he wants after all the success he has had and I will be in line to see whatever it is.

5) The Social Network

I need to start this by saying I hate that Facebook has become my go to site when I am bored on the Internet. It could get shut down tomorrow and I do not think my life would change that much. All that being said, I loved “The Facebook Movie.” The dialogue was amazingly written and beautifully performed.

The fact that a movie about the founding of Facebook could be so fascinating and done so well that I am actually looking forward to seeing it again even though it is very much a dialogue driven movie.

4) How To Train Your Dragon

I so very much wanted to put this higher. I love this movie. The problem is that my top three movies were better movies over all. Sadly someone in my position has to balance love of a movie with best movie I saw. If this were a list of movies I love from 2010, this would take the top spot easily.

What started out as a movie I had no interest in turned into my surprise of the year. The story, at its core is a boy and his pet and his attempt to fit in. The core relationship in the movie is not between Hiccup and his father or Hiccup and Astrid (his love interest). It is the relationship between Hiccup and the dragon Toothless. You cannot help but get teary-eyed in many places during the movie. I love this movie and cannot recommend it enough.

3) True Grit

Just saw this on New Year’s Eve, so my review is not up yet, but I was impressed with this movie. I heard a lot of talk about how amazing it was and I was not that impressed. I still really liked it, but it was not the best movie I saw this year. I fell victim to hype, something I rarely pay much attention to and it colored how I saw this movie. I wanted more when I left the theater.

The performances are great. Jeff Bridges can act, I think we all know that given his track record of the past few years. The true surprise was 14-year-old Hailee Steinfeld as Mattie Ross. She holds her own with stars like Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin and some of the other stars. If she keeps this up, she should have an amazing career.

2) Toy Story 3

A great way to wrap up the story of Andy’s toys. This was the first trilogy that I was able to see all the parts in a theater (I don’t count Spider-Man 3 because it does not exist). I am not going to gush over the awesomeness of Pixar because I have done that every year and in every review of one of their movies, but they rock and can do no wrong.

If you did not cry in this movie, check your pulse. The final scene in the movie is something that everyone can relate to. Not going to spoil it if you have not seen it, but you really need to see it.

1) 127 Hours

No other movie this year affected me as much as “127 Hours” did. It is an amazingly simple movie. A man trapped beneath a rock in a canyon way out in the Utah wilderness. He is going to die unless he does something drastic. What is more amazing is that it is a true story. Aaron Ralston, played by James Franco, had to cut off his forearm in order to survive.

In an interview I heard with director Danny Boyle, he addresses the idea of could anyone cut off their arm if they were in Aaron’s position. He said “(the movie) says could you do this? And people go, ‘I couldn’t do that’ and they talk about it like that. What we wanted to convey in the film is that yes, you can. And not only yes you can, but yes you would. You would do that. And people say ‘No I wouldn’t, I would just die’ and you go ‘No you wouldn’t’…and that thing that combines us all, which is that we will keep living.”


Bring on 2011!