Mila Kunis

The Best Movies of 2010

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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Black Swan

  • Title: Black Swan
  • IMDB: link

Darren Aronofsky is a weird dude. Talented, but weird. The latest from the director who has given us The Fountain, Pi, and Reqiuem for a Dream is a journey into madness. Black Swan, his companion piece to The Wrestler, examines the the insular world of ballet through the tormented mind of a rising star.

Nina (Natalie Portman), a sheltered but talented ballet dancer, is on the cusp of stardom after being chosen by a demanding director (Vincent Cassel) for the lead role in his new interpretation of Swan Lake. The pressure of the role added to the smothering affection of an over-attentive mother (Barbara Hershey), and the arrival of a talented new dancer (Mila Kunis) begin to fracture Nina’s world as she starts to have experiences that cannot be rationally explained. These include, but are not limited to, hallucinations of strange bird-like creatures, seeing herself on the street, a growing paranoia, and an odd rash on her back as well as fingers which bleed without cause. No one else notices what is happening to her.

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The Book of Eli

  • Title: The Book of Eli
  • IMDB: link

Stop me if you’ve heard this before. In a post-apocalyptic wasteland a wanderer (Denzel Washington) travels across a ruined landscape avoiding robbers, thieves, and cannibals.

He carries with him something important and valuable which the intelligent but mean-spirited head of a small town (Gary Oldman) will kill to possess.

This is The Book of Eli, and no one will ever accuse it of having a single original idea.

Part western, part post-apocalyptic thriller, and part psuedo-religious mess, the Hughes brothers (the guys who also screwed up From Hell) deliver a trainwreck of a film about one man’s quest to deliver the last bible in existence to the West Coast and the many, many men he kills who get in his way.

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Payneful

  • Title: Max Payne
  • IMDB: link

“I don’t believe in heaven.”

Sometimes I think the best job in the world would be as a writer for video games.  The plots don’t have to make sense, you don’t have to worry about logic or character development and the story is always a distant third to gameplay and effects.  If this is true then the hardest job around just might be the guy who has to take the nonsensical storyline of a video game and attempt to turn it into a feature film.  The result, more often than not, is something like Max Payne

The film is based on the Max Payne video game, so stay with me as I attempt to explain the plot.

Max Payne (Mark Wahlberg) is a police detective assigned as a file clerk to the Cold Case room in the bowels of the department.  Mostly Max looks angry/constipated as he sits at his desk going over files and in his spare time tries to solve the murder of his wife (Marianthi Evans) and daughter.

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