Matt Damon

The Best Movies of 2010

/ / Top Tens & Lists

This wasn’t a year to wow you. 2010 may have been somewhat of an off year for movies, but there are several quality films that hit theaters this year which are worth noting. A couple things struck me as I was putting together this list. First, how actresses stepped up huge this year. Whether in lead or supporting roles, it was a year dominated by the performances of the fairer sex. And second, 2010 was a year of raw emotion, almost visceral, brought to screen. You might argue that one or two of my choices didn’t have elaborate plots, but each delivered on an emotional level.

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True Grit (2010)

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: True Grit
  • IMDB: link

More than four decades ago John Wayne won an Academy Award for his performance in True Grit as the drunken U.S. Marshall hired by a young woman to track down the man responsible for killing her father. It would be the first, and only, time the actor would take home an Oscar.

Deciding to remake the film, the Coen brothers went back to the original novel by Charles Portis to give us their reinterpretation of the story. The result is the brothers most mainstream film to date: a traditional western filled with strong performances and splashes of the filmmakers’ trademark wit.

The film begins and ends with the narration (provided by Elizabeth Marvel, who plays the character in later scenes) of Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld), who at the age of 14 travels to collect the body of her recently deceased father and hire a bounty hunter to track down his murderer (Josh Brolin).

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Bourne Again

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Bourne Ultimatum
  • IMDb: link

“I remember…I remember everything.”

bourne-ultimatum-poster

When I heard the words above in the trailer chills went up my spine.  I enjoyed The Bourne Identity (read December’s review) but I was blown away by the second installment The Bourne Supremacy.  So here was the sequel I was waiting for all summer.  The result was a good, though slightly disappointing, film that is still better than most of the sequels this year.

We begin, seconds after Jason Bourne’s (Matt Damon) survival in the tunnel, with his escape from Russian police.  The final scene from The Bourne Supremacy, the phone conversation between Bourne and Pamela Landy (Joan Allen) is later expertly woven into the main plot of this film.  From there we move to the shadowy government forces still attempting to track Bourne down and hide the dirty secrets which are locked in his brain.  Both Allen and Julia Stiles return, and although Stiles is given a larger (and somewhat continuity-questionable) role, Allen is demoted into the lone good guy in a room full of snakes who will do whatever it takes to keep their dirty little secrets hidden.

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