Best Movies of 2010...

"Andy's going to college. Can you believe it?"

Even for a consistently-reliable studio like Pixar, the notion of Toy Story 3 seemed risky due to the time-honoured tradition of part threes being unnecessary and below-par. The Godfather: Part III, Lethal Weapon 3, Batman Forever, Terminator 3, Alien 3, Jurassic Park 3 and Superman III are a few examples of "threequels" which took a drastic nose-dive in quality after two solid forerunners. But Toy Story 3 is not an addition to this list. Not even close. The folks over at Pixar Studios have done it again; extending their unparalleled streak of success stretching all the way back to the original Toy Story in 1995 (their feature-length debut). Arriving 15 years after the first film and 11 years after the sequel, Toy Story 3 is every bit as brilliant as its predecessors and one of the best movies of 2010.

"Hey there, Aron! Is it true that you didn't tell anyone where you were going?"

In mid-2003, Aron Ralston developed into a media sensation when he became trapped in a canyon for 127 hours, and was forced to amputate his arm in order to save his life. Ralston's physically and spiritually transformative experience was chronicled in his 2004 book Between a Rock and a Hard Place, and has now been dramatised to harrowing effect in Danny Boyle's 127 Hours; the director's follow-up effort to his Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire. Unflinching in its depiction of what constitutes the will to live, 127 Hours is at once ruminative and frenzied, intimate and vast - it's a thoughtful, compelling character study, yet it's as energetic as its protagonist. Although the film bears little resemblance to Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours was largely created by the same crew: Boyle co-wrote the script with Simon Beaufoy, Anthony Dod Mantle contributed to the camerawork, and Indian composer A.R. Rahman wrote the score. It's a testament to the talents of these men that - superior craftsmanship notwithstanding - you would not guess the connection between the films unless you had prior knowledge.

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"If I am King, where is my power? Can I declare war? Form a government? Levy a tax? No! And yet I am the seat of all authority because they think that when I speak, I speak for them."

Essentially the Rocky of speech impediment movies, The King's Speech is an engaging, well-made period piece featuring excellent performances, sublime character nuances, a touch of wit and top-notch production design, and it was all stitched together by Tom Hooper's consummate direction. Not to mention, the film delivers solid drama with a rousing climax, and it manages to be a both highly satisfying and uplifting picture which achieves its dramatic potential without sacrificing historical accuracy. In short, it's precisely the kind of Oscar bait that's distributed each December, but it is nonetheless one of the most accessibly entertaining and satisfying films of its kind to be released during 2010.

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"If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you'd have invented Facebook."

2010's The Social Network is a two-hour motion picture consisting almost entirely of dialogue that's about nerdy guys from Harvard who write computer code, get rich and sue each other. Literally, that's The Social Network in a nutshell. And yet, this is easily one of the most exciting, enthralling and compulsively watchable movies of 2010. How does that work, I hear you think? It's simple: great actors, great screenwriting and great filmmaking. Written by Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing) and directed by David Fincher (Zodiac, Fight Club), the film manages to flesh out a gallery of fascinating characters while chronicling several key events in the development and growth of the popular social networking site Facebook. Additionally, through mining Facebook's origin story, Sorkin and Fincher have produced a motion picture that's about far more than its ostensible subject matter.

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"You grew up right here! Same rules that I did."

When Gone Baby Gone entered multiplexes in 2007, Ben Affleck soared from a tolerable star with a tattered professional reputation to an unexpectedly graceful filmmaker. Much like his directorial debut, a lot was riding on Affleck's follow-up effort, 2010's The Town - and, more directly, there was a lot riding on Affleck himself. For one, the actor had to prove that Gone Baby Gone (one of the best movies of 2007) was not the Hollywood equivalent of a one-hit wonder, and he also had to overcome the fresh new challenge of directing himself; a potential hazard he prudently avoided the first time around. Affleck was up to the challenge, however, and the result is this compelling, masterfully-realised crime saga that's worthy of Michael Mann's Heat. To be sure, The Town was put together using a litany of familiar genre elements, but the manner in which Affleck assembled the clichés results in an engrossing two-hour cinematic experience. Affleck afforded a spellbinding pulse to the proceedings; composing a bravura suspense piece that effectively examines the anxiety of criminal behaviour.

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"You've gotta decide. You've gotta work out where you fit."

Written and directed by David Michôd who makes his feature-length debut here, Animal Kingdom persuasively demonstrates that plenty of life still remains in the contemporary Australian film industry. Fundamentally the Australian Goodfellas in the suburbs of Melbourne, it ostensibly looks as if Animal Kingdom was specifically produced to capitalise on the recent success of the acclaimed TV show Underbelly. Truth be told, though, the picture was a decade-long passion project for writer-director Michôd, who spent years working on the script while often doubting the quality of his writing. Michôd's insecurities may have persisted throughout Animal Kingdom's filming and post-production, but his efforts have paid off in spades with this enthralling, thematically dense and award-winning masterpiece.

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"I'm just grateful to be here and have the shot for the title."

From Rocky to Raging Bull to Million Dollar Baby, boxing films have existed as Oscar staples for decades. Suffice it to say, it's challenging - if not impossible - to find anything new or fresh to mine in the frequently-exploited genre. Hence, 2010's The Fighter does not flourish as an original offering of filmmaking since it's both an underdog story of boxing glory as well as a tale of brutes in a harsh working class corner of Boston. The Fighter retrieves inspiration from deep within its heart, though, as it dissects the true-life story of Irish boxer Micky Ward and his brother Dicky. Much like its real-world inspiration, this is an agitated picture which possesses overwhelming spirit to overcome its dreary familiarity. Plus, freed from any real narrative suspense, a viewer is given the chance to focus on what's fresh and new: the matter-of-fact filming style, the lived-in atmosphere, and a handful of absolutely exceptional performances courtesy of an unbelievably talented cast.

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"With no power, comes no responsibility."

Adapted from the comic book of the same name by Mark Millar, and under the direction of British filmmaker Matthew Vaughn, 2010's Kick-Ass quite simply kicks ass. While this particular analogy may seem lazy and obvious, it's appropriate. Relentlessly audacious, devilishly hilarious, gloriously violent and electrifyingly entertaining, Kick-Ass is a refreshing, decidedly adult reboot of the stale comic-book adventure genre that works on practically every level.

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"Only thing you need to know is the job's real, and the money's real."

In the same vein as 2010's Predators, Sylvester Stallone's ambition with The Expendables was to transport modern audiences back to the action cinema zenith of the 1980s, when enormous muscle-bound stars utilised equally enormous firearms and slaughtered thousands of bad guys with ease. After resurrecting the '80s aesthetic with 2008's Rambo, Stallone has given the ailing style a new life to deliver an old-school, action-packed wallop of a cinematic experience. Armed with the most charismatic ensemble of badasses to grace cinema screens since 1987's Predator, along with enough testosterone and manliness to make your spleen explode, The Expendables is a blast; a fucking epic old-fashioned manly movie with infinite replay value.

"Don't you get it? You're a rat in a maze."

It's a curious decision on the part of Martin Scorsese to follow the success of his Oscar-winning crime saga The Departed, with Shutter Island; a psychological thriller that seems beneath the director's cinematic abilities. It's interesting to note this fact, since Scorsese did exactly the same thing two decades ago when he followed GoodFellas with his Cape Fear remake, which could also be labelled as a psychological thriller that's beneath Scorsese's cinematic prowess. This is something to be admired about Scorsese: despite his tendency to create gangster/crime pictures, he refuses to be pigeonholed.

Based on the novel by Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island is an atmospheric, riveting, masterfully-crafted mind-fuck of a thriller which delights in playing mind-games and is endowed with a dense narrative.

"I fish these waters, mate. I know what's out there!"

When was the last time you remember seeing a genuinely good shark movie? Steven Spielberg's Jaws from 1975 is likely the most popular choice, and it's perhaps the only good shark film in existence. In subsequent years, a few subpar Jaws sequels entered cinemas along with films like Deep Blue Sea, and then in the noughties we began seeing a glut of awful, low-budget, straight-to-DVD shark features (Shark Attack 3: Megalodon, anybody?). Thank goodness, then, for 2010's The Reef; an incredibly intense Australian thriller from writer-director Andrew Traucki, who was last seen at the helm of the similarly-themed Black Water back in 2007 (a crocodile flick). Traucki has visibly improved his cinematic technique since his 2007 feature debut, most notably in terms of staging visceral attacks and in his ability to build tension. Consequently, The Reef is a competently-crafted thriller machine that's worthy of Spielberg's Jaws. Those who complained that 2004's Open Water - a similar vérité-style thriller - was too boring or low on shark action should find The Reef to be a far more satisfying experience.

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