Top Five Films of 2010 | Now on DVD

Oscar season is over; the accolades for 2010’s best films have all been handed out. What this also means is that most of the award winning, critical darlings of 2010 are now available on DVD. I have picked my five favorite American films of 2010 that are available for home viewing.  

If you find yourself scratching your head wondering why your favorite film from 2010 isn’t on this list, it may be that I simply haven’t seen it yet, though I have seen most that I would think are up for consideration. Perhaps we must agree to disagree. If you happen to see a film on my list that you haven’t seen yet, I implore you to see it the next time you plan to sit at home and watch a movie. Without further ado, I present my picks. 

5. The Town 

Critics are branding The Town as the new Heat, or The Friends of Eddie Coyle, it is neither. The Town paid homage effectively to those films, in the fact that it is a stripped down action crime caper, but it is not those films. Heat and Eddie Coyle are both all time classics. The Town is a marginally great film in a relatively weak year for American films. Ben Affleck directs with confidence, one could now say that he is two for two (Gone Baby Gone) as a director. To me Jeremy Renner felt the most authentic of the Charlestown crew. Jon Hamm, mostly known as Don Draper from Mad Men turned an otherwise dull roll as an FBI agent tracking the bank robbing crew into quite an interesting supporting turn. The latest entry into the Boston crime film genre is one that Bostonian’s can be proud of. 

4.  The Kids Are All Right

Annette Benning and Julianne Moore play a couple that live with their two teenage children. When daughter Joni is about to go off to college her younger brother Laser asks that she contact their sperm donor father, played with heaps of hip that is somehow not annoying, by Mark Ruffalo. Throw in some gorgeous California sceneary and complex familial issues and you have yourself a very interesting independent film. Thoroughly enjoyable and lush while being utterly uncomfortable at times to watch, The Kids Are All Right is painfully unique and interesting. You will be asking yourself many questions by the time its over. 

3. The Fighter 

I assure you I am not being regionally bias by including another Boston area based film on my list. I love David O. Russell as a director, each of his films are so daring; from one film to the next the subject matter is always varied.  He is truly a one man motley crew and should be endlessly commended as a director. Want proof? His last film 2004’s I ♥ Huckabees couldn’t be more different than The Fighter. I wanted to love The Fighter, love it in the way I love Raging Bull, but I do not. Mark Wahlberg’s lead performance as Mickey Ward was not strong enough. However, of the four Oscars awarded for acting, no one deserved one more this year than Christian Bale for his shocking and sad performance as crack addict and former boxer Dicky Eklund. Watching all of Lowell and his family love him unconditionally is heartwarming but as a viewer you know they are all doing Dicky a huge disservice by doing so. In retrospect it is Dicky who is the most memorable character in the film, and by the end we realize that he may just be the fighter that the title suggests. 

2. Greenberg 

No one in Hollywood is writing jokes that balance subtlety and humor in the way that director Noah Baumbach does, and Greenberg is full of them. Baumbach’s inspirations are so clearly from some of my favorite filmmakers. He routinely borrows from Louis Malle, Peter Bogdanovich, and Eric Rohmer. For the Califronia set Greenberg undoubtedly, Paul Mazursky (Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice) was a major influence. Los Angeles has never felt so real. Baumbach set out to show us the side of Los Angeles that actual people actually live in, not just a romanticized version of Hollywood. Greenberg will not launch the actress Greta Gerwig into stardom, but that doesn’t diminish the fact of how perfectly cast she was as a dutiful personal assistant and confidant to Roger Greenberg. Ben Stiller as Roger Greenberg has never been more deliciously odd. The film closes with an interesting party scene in which Serge Gainsbourg and Duran Duran tracks set the mood and frame the film perfectly. 

1. The Social Network 

Call my crazy but I've never loved David Fincher films including, but not limited to Zodiac, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and Fight Club. Something about their long windedness and sepia toned hues has never been able to hold my attention. – Readers, I hope I still have your attention -- This was not the case with The Social Network, it was fabulous and I was genuinely surprised that it didn’t get more Oscar love. I mean sure it has its flaws, (weak fringe cast, at times annoying dialogue) but its peaks are so high (Eisenberg’s lead, cinematography, score) and with its new, and if you think about it un-filmable subject matter, it felt unlike any film ever. The degree of difficulty in making this subject matter so entertaining in film form cannot and should not be ignored. 

In closing I will leave you with my eleven honorable mention picks. These are films I thoroughly enjoyed in 2010 that just missed top five consideration. All are easily worth watching however. They are in no particular order. Unlike my top five, not all of these films are available on DVD as of today. 

All Good Things, Blue Valentine, Dinner for Schmucks, Due Date, Exit Through The Gift Shop, Somewhere, The American, The Extra Man, True Grit, Winter’s Bone, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger