#117: Winters Bone(4/10)

It's been a couple weeks since I posted anything. I took some "time off" as we welcomed our baby girl. I had planned to write a few posts ahead of time and space them out, but that didn't happen, mostly because I hadn't seen enough movies lately that I wanted to write about. Even though I haven't been writing the last couple weeks, I have taken the time to see a few films. I decided to try Redbox for the first time so that I could see The Social Network. Alas, they didn't have it on bluray, so I went with another one I really wanted to check out... Winter's Bone.

If you haven't heard of Winter's Bone... It is the story of a 17 year old girl who has to track down her father in order to keep their house, as he has put it up for his bail. It is set in the Ozarks of southern Missouri, not too far from where I sit right now. This film has received tons of critical praise, especially for the lead performance by Jennifer Lawrence. A lot of critics found a spot for Winter's Bone on their top ten of 2010, which made me want to see it even more.

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#116: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (6/10)

What happens when a video game and a film love each other very much? They make a baby, and that baby is Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.  This movie is visually interesting and the detail of the auditory queues are impressive.  There is a lot to love about it, as long as you are up to speed on all your geek culture references. I found it humorous, but down the stretch my interest started to wane.  The movie's driving force is a romance, but it lacked emotional stakes. Director Edgar Wright succeeded at keeping my eyeballs happy, but left my heart out in the cold Toronto winter.

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#115: Im Still Here (6/10)

2010 was a year where movies blurred the line between fact and fiction.  There were films like Shutter Island and Inception where the difference between the real and the contrived was very difficult to identify.There was The Social Network, that presented a highly fictionalized version of a true story. 2010 also had three psuedo-documentaries that presented themselves as 100% fact. One has come out definitely as a ruse, the other two still claim to be real, but there is a lot of debate as to whether that is the case.  These three films are of course; I'm Still Here, Exit Through The Gift Shop, and Catfish.  I'm Still Here is the only one that is admittedly a fake. Strangely it felt the most real of the three as I was watching it. I expected a tongue-in-cheek look at an actor's life spiraling out of control. Instead I got a very somber tale of depression and loss of identity.

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#114: True Grit (9/10)

Sometimes you just watch a movie and there isn't anything in particular you like about it other than the fact that it is a damn good film. True Grit is all that and a bag of cornbread.  As I sat there watching young Mattie force her horse into the river to catch up with Cogburn I could just feel it. This  is a great movie. I don't care what happens from here until the end, my eye balls are going to love every minute of it.

The Coen brothers like to make movies in which something is a little bit off. They love to play with expectation; subvert the commonplace.  Going into True Grit I expected the Coen flair. And what did they give me but a straight up western. An amazing, wonderful, tangible feeling of being in the old west.  I liked 3:10 To Yuma really well, but this might be the best western I've seen since Tombstone.  I can't say enough about the quality of the casting, the authenticity of the setting, and the perfection of the dialog.  It was so enjoyable to watch, and totally worth going to the theater to see. If you haven't seen it yet, go out and do so asap.

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2010 Stats

Back in 2005 I did a summer semester in college. Nobody was around and I had the Blockbuster pass to watch as many movies as I wanted. I was burning through dvds like you wouldn't believe. I decided to start keeping track. Since then I have documented the title, date, and some other random info for each and every movie I watch. Here are my stats for 2010.

I watched 124 movies in 2010.
63 dvds from Netflix
49 streamed on Netflix Instant
6 in the theater
6 (other)

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