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.

Deep Focus on Vimeo.

Jim Emerson of the Chicago Sun-Times studies eight definitive long takes:

I’ve chosen eight shots I treasure (the last two I regard as among the finest in all of cinema). They’re not all strictly “deep focus” shots, but they do emphasize three-dimensionality in their compositions. I’ve presented them with only minimal identifications so you can simply watch them and see what happens without distraction or interruption. Instead, I’ve decided to write about them below. Feel free to watch the clips and then re-watch (freeze-frame, rewind, replay) the clips to see what you can see. To say they repay re-viewing is an understatement.

Additional motivation: number six is super hot.

(This is part two in a series of insights into some of our personal favourite films. You can read Thom’s recent entry on Wayne’s World here.)

When I was about 15, I got into the habit of staying up late watching dodgy movies on Channel Four.

These were films that weren’t shown until after the witching hour. Not because they were x-rated, but because they were usually pretty duff. Often they were arty. Often they were in another language. Sometimes they were all three. Yes, there was a lot of dross, but there were some real diamonds in the rough. And the best thing was that these flicks came with the thrill of genuine discovery, because you knew no-one else would be watching them.

“Did you watch Hard Boiled on Saturday?” I’d ask my schoolyard chums. “It was on at half two in the morning, but it had gunfights and trenchcoats and eyepatches and loads of really cool stuff.”

“No,” they’d reply, “we were too busy having sex with girls”.

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One thing we might do at the Well from time to time is celebrate films we’re really fond of. Let me start by going out on a limb and say Wayne’s World is one of the films I like the most – closely followed by the lesser Wayne’s World 2. The story of two Saturday Night Live metalheads who pass their time making cable access television in Wayne’s parents’ basement, the film’s basic idea is to take two characters designed for ironic four-minute skits, and to keep them doing goofy, adorable stuff for more than 90 minutes. This still sounds like a terrible idea – and aside from 1980’s The Blues Brothers, Saturday Night Live’s feature film legacy is an anthology of lost causes comprising Coneheads, It’s Pat! and The Ladies Man, their relative obscurity being bizarre proof that commercial considerations can indeed save audiences time and money.

What makes Wayne’s World so charming? It is consummately unambitious; a series of sketches strung together as an undisguised parody of classical Hollywood narrative. It repeatedly breaks the fourth wall to reassure you that events have no meaning or integrity. The film sort-of lampoons the television industry, as corporate dog Benjamin Kane (Rob Lowe) buys out the ‘Wayne’s World’ format, burgles its innocence with a Faustian sponsorship deal, and steals Wayne’s Cantonese love interest (Tia Carrere). But anything goes, really – like Mel Brooks and the ZAZ films, Wayne’s World is a loving pastiche, a Frankenstein’s comedy showcase made from bits of pop culture; everything from Scooby Doo to Terminator 2.

But I’d say that the film – which according to director Penelope Spheeris was an unhappy four-way compromise between her own ideas and those of Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, and writing team Bonnie and Terry Turner – is greater than the mechanical parroting of most Hollywood pastiches. These films – the Scary Movie cycle (2000-06), Jane Austen’s Mafia! (1998), even The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977) – are at their worst cold algorithms for processing pop culture. To use a different analogy, they are like Mr Creosote from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (1983): only good for regurgitation. Freidberg and Seltzer’s Disaster Movie (2008) is not unique in that it has no jokes, but it is a particularly miserable example of this genre, a compilation of nakedly incompetent homages to film and celebrity. It is unpleasant to watch – and contains perhaps the most egregious type of ‘audience flattery’ in the history of film. You know the way an obscure reference in a movie will massage or alienate the viewer, depending on his background and areas of expertise? Disaster Movie kind of attempts to flatter you with references to only the most famous things, such as Amy Winehouse and High School Musical. In this way we all have free membership in its jaundiced, scornful club. But it gets the essence of almost all its targets wrong – there is for example something obscurely depressing about a hearing that Nicole Parker’s fanged Winehouse is hungry for “gasoline”.

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