The Best Movies of 2010 (Part I)

Jeremy BeckTop 10 Lists

Movie critics are supposed to publish year-end top 10 lists. It’s part of our job (and while I receive no income for holding this alleged “job”, I’m still labeling myself a critic and that’s that). Sure, you can grouse about how it’s morally objectionable to rank subjective works of art against one another or how 10 is an arbitrary figure (I particularly enjoyed New York Times critic Manohla Dargis seething that our habit of composing 10-item lists functions as tacit approval of the Ten Commandments), but readers have a ravenous appetite for easily digestible summaries of the year that was, and it’s our duty to oblige them.

Back in 2007, I defied this silent edict and published a list of the top fifteen movies of the year rather than my usual decathlon. My rationale was entirely laudatory – there were simply more stellar films than there was available space on a catalog of 10. And while I couldn’t quite label titles such as Charlie Wilson’s War or Juno as one 2007’s 10 best films, I couldn’t in good conscience exclude them from my commemoration of the year’s superlative features. I had no choice: I had to expand the list to 15. Read More

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The Manifesto’s Guide to March Madness 2011

Jeremy BeckUncategorized

In the 2004 remake of the movie Alfie, Jude Law plays a Manhattan playboy who casually sleeps with dozens of women but resists a real relationship, partly because he’s British and good-looking and just can’t pass up banging countless hot chicks, but more because he can’t be with a woman without seeing her flaws. “Hair on her arms,” he grumbles about one former fling, dismissing an otherwise knockout blonde due to an excess of follicles. He even throws away guaranteed happiness with a perfect 10 played by Marisa Tomei (still in her extended and perhaps infinite prime) just so he can maintain some nebulous sense of masculine freedom. It’s a classic character study of a commitment-phobe: Every time Alfie sees something good, he winds up running the other way.

Well, that’s exactly how I feel about college basketball this year. Every time I think about backing a potential NCAA tournament champion, all I can see are its flaws. The main difference between Alfie and me – well, other than the fact that he got laid six times a week, whereas I spent roughly four hours every day watching basketball for the past three months – is that Alfie was an idiot who couldn’t appreciate the beauty of what sat right in from of him. I, however, am not so deluded, as the objects of my affection – namely the 68 teams vying for this year’s NCAA title – are all more flawed than the characters in The Social Network. Read More

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2011 gets off to a hot start

Jeremy BeckFeatures

I call it “December Syndrome”. It’s the strategy whereby movie studios, believing that Oscar voters have short memories, wait to release their best films until as late in the year as possible. Case in point: Of the 10 Best Picture nominees in 2010, four arrived in theatres in December, while only one (Toy Story 3) was available to the public at large prior to July. Similarly, of the past 14 Best Picture winners, eight were released in December, while only two (Gladiator and Crash) came out in the first half of the year.

It’s hard to blame studios for sticking with a pattern that works, and as long as voters keep paying homage to movies released late in the season, the months of October through December will continue to constitute a glut of cinematic glory. But the unfortunate byproduct of December Syndrome is that it turns the multiplex into a veritable wasteland for the first half of the year. If you crave high-quality entertainment prior to the summer solstice, you’d better be prepared to burrow into your Netflix account. Read More

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Oscars Analysis 2010: Recap

Jeremy BeckOscars

For someone who’s completely obsessive about the awards handed out at the Oscars, I’m somewhat indifferent about the actual Oscars themselves. That’s because the Academy Awards telecast, often dubbed the “Super Bowl for women”, is a showcase for high fashion (“you’re talking about fashion? you?”), banal stargazing, and inoffensive self-congratulation, absolutely none of which interests me. Don’t get me wrong, I still view the Oscars as the most important event of the year in terms of cinematic recognition; I just think the show itself is a bit of a bore.

That said, this year’s telecast has taken a relentless drubbing of criticism, and I’ll venture that it wasn’t that bad. Yes, James Franco was lifeless and disinterested, the original song performances remain a gigantic snooze, and most of the speeches were bland and uninspired. But the show had its share of moments, including Robert Downey, Jr.’s and Jude Law’s rat-a-tat chemistry, Kirk Douglas reaching back for a mid-90s fastball, Billy Crystal’s welcome cameo, and Jennifer Lawrence showing up in a stunning red dress and sending thousands of horny teenagers to their laptops to desperately Google “Jennifer Lawrence Esquire photo shoot”. Plus Anne Hathaway did her damnedest to compensate for Franco’s apathy with an abundance of boisterous energy, most memorably in an amusing rendition of Les Misérables’ “On My Own”. So while the 2010 Academy Awards telecast was hardly memorable, it was by no means a catastrophe. Read More

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Oscars Analysis 2010: Prediction roundup

Jeremy BeckOscars

Last year, my friend K-Bails told me that she printed out all of my Oscar predictions and scrutinized them while watching the actual telecast. I have no idea why she did this; all I know is that when she told me, it was the proudest moment of my life since I made a game-winning over-the-shoulder catch in my first ever rec league softball game. Moments such as those are all too elusive – you have to treasure them.

Accordingly, I’m consolidating my 2010 predictions in this post for handy reference. Go nuts, K-Bails.

Also, in general, this is one of the more difficult Oscar slates in recent memory, as a number of races are incredibly close, while several others could go a number of ways. As such, I’m supplying a confidence level for each of my predictions, just to illustrate where I’m reasonably comfortable and where I’m completely grasping at straws. Of course, I’ll probably wind up drilling the difficult categories and whiffing on some of the easy ones, but I suppose that would only prove my point (sort of).

Here goes nothing. Categories are listed in order of least to most confident (as always, I’m omitting the shorts): Read More

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