Hopefully one of Orson’s other minions will step in to complete this Top 10. Here’s my half of it, anyway – the best of 2010. (Mea culpa: living with only an Apollo in walking distance, I had precious little to go on this year, hence the rather suspect idea that the following could be claimed as the ‘best’ examples of anything. The Apollo only showed one, by the way – guess which.)
5. Exit through the Gift Shop (dir. Banksy). Misunderstood, I think, by an embarrassment of eminent critics, this fun-but-harsh mockumentary is another of Banksy’s occasional assaults on the absurdities of the arts establishment – but what makes it great is that instead of standing heroically apart from the horror, he includes himself as one of the age’s worst offenders. Banksy is Thierry Guetta.
4. The Kreutzer Sonata (dir. Bernard Rose). Orson’s already rambled on about Rose’s achievement on a couple of occasions. Suffice to say, it’s a magnificently literate film on all levels: as an adaptation of Tolstoy’s story, as a tale of charity gone awry (I think it has a lot of moral freight), and as a masterpiece of editing (Rose himself) and sound design (Nigel Holland).
3. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul). After Syndromes and a Century, I expected to be further stunned by ‘Joe’ Weerasethakul’s other films, and Palme d’Or-winning Uncle Boonmee is suitably terrific. It has the same demandingly slow pace as before, but this is here married to a pulp-fiction cheekiness: out-of-body experiences, ghosts, and monsters done the old-fashioned way (men in suits with LED eyes).
2. The Bad Lieutenant – Port of Call: New Orleans (dir. Werner Herzog). My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? came out as a too-loyal homage to its producer, David Lynch, but Werner Herzog’s other US film gave Nicolas Cage his best role for years, and offers a shot in the arm to the identikit thrillers Hollywood prefers to spend its money on. It was the best comedy of the year – I watched it a second time to remind myself how outrageous it was.
1. The Social Network (dir. David Fincher). Fincher redeems himself after insipid Benjamin Button by historicising Facebook and working with Aaron Sorkin, whose charming, geeky dialogue is a near-perfect match for Fincher’s restless camera. The pomp of Sorkin’s banter means rooms and corridors are usually enough for any scene – except Fincher always wants to be poking his way into the corners of the stage. And they both get their way. For a film about a website, it is chock-full of weird sounds and fine compositions. It’s a feast second to none in 2010.
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