Ten Favorite Films of 2010

Better late than never.

Even though I didn't necessarily think of this past year as being a stellar one for big screen entertainment, I had trouble making this list, and I feel I left off several movies I really enjoyed. I mention some of them in the Runners Up below.

One decision that wasn't difficult was picking my number one film of the year. I thought it was going to be The Social Network till I saw True Grit. The Coen Brothers have made one of the best films of their career.

Here they are, more or less in order:

10. Shutter Island

Stylistically a B-movie homage but it worked for me, helped along by stellar set-design, cinematography and an unbelievable score of avant-garde classical music.

9. Fish Tank

A beautiful and scary kitchen-sink drama about a girl in a dead-end housing development and her attachment to her mother's boyfriend (a sinister and sexy Michael Fassbender).

8. The Kids are All Right

First half was just okay for me, but the second half, dominated by Annette Bening's performance as a betrayed wife, made this one of the most emotional movies I saw this year.


7. The Eclipse

Ciaran Hinds gets to play the lead in this romantic ghost story that is alternately mysterious, sad and scary.

6. The Ghost Writer

The best-paced thriller I've seen in years, and Olivia Williams should get an Oscar nomination tomorrow. She won't.

5. The King's Speech

Not a surprising film but one that's rich and rewarding, and very well made. Colin Firth brings out the frustration and sadness of a disability.

4. I Am Love

Totally nuts, and sometimes it went over the line, but when it didn't, this was such a watchable film. A Sirkian melodrama with beautiful music from composer John Adams.

3. Black Swan

Riveting psychodrama about the pursuit of perfection. Hardest film for me to sit through but I'd sit through it again right now.

2. The Social Network

Crammed with ideas and human understanding. I spent more time thinking about this film than any other this year.

1. True Grit

An adventure movie, and maybe a classic. The nighttime ride with Rooster, a snakebit Mattie and Little Blackie (I can't remember the last time I got attached to a horse in a film) was the best scene of the year. 

Runners Up: The American, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1, How to Train Your Dragon, Inception, The Town, Toy Story 3, Winter's Bone

Haven't Seen: Another Year, Let Me In, Somewhere, Tangled

Best Posters of the Year

I haven't seen all of these films but these were my favorite posters of the year.

And the award for the worst poster of the year, although to their credit, this one was quickly scrapped:

This is how I hear the conversation going:

PR person: Quick, we need a poster for The King's Speech.
Designer: Okay. What kind of poster?
PR person: I was thinking just get photos of the three leads and photoshop them together.
Designer: I can do that.
PR person: One more thing. We need it in an hour.

Ten Favorite Books of 2010

My ten best reads of 2010, heavy on Mr. MacDonald.

10. From Doon With Death by Ruth Rendell (1964)

Her first book, and it's as good as anything she's written.

9. A Man of Affairs by John D. MacDonald (1965)

Is it as good as this cover suggests? Pretty much.

8. Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis (2010)

Is it a detective story? A veiled autobiography? Moral satire? A horror story? I'm not exactly sure but it's pretty close to all of the above. Not for the faint of heart.

7. The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie (1961)

Outlandish, then clever. I have a particular fondness for the Christie novels that initially seem to be about something supernatural but then turn out to have a perfectly logical solution. The prototype for every Scooby Doo mystery by the way.

6. The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis (2010)

He almost lost me in the muck of his self-conscious prose but the epilogue pulled me back in. Some of the finest writing Martin Amis has ever done.

5. The Deceivers by John D. MacDonald (1968)

A story of suburban infidelity that's as suspenseful as a murder mystery. John D. Macdonald is all about those truthful little details that make the world come alive, and this book is no exception. He really makes you feel both the thrill and the devastation of adultery.

4. The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (2009)

A ghost story for a cold winter night. Well, several cold winter nights. It's a long book but with a huge payoff.

3. The Soft Touch by John D. MacDonald (1953)

Long before Travis McGee breathed fictional air John D. was writing perfect pulp novels.

2. A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle (1887)

A perfect introduction to Holmes and Watson, and even though the Mormon sequence is historically inaccurate it makes for great pulp fiction.

1. Condominium by John D. MacDonald (1977)

Maybe his greatest achievement.

Essential Amis

In honor of Martin Amis releasing his new book, The Pregnant Widow, yesterday, I thought I'd put together a top ten list of my favorite Amis books, both by father Kingsley and son Martin.


Lucky Jim by KA

It’s hard to imagine that this story of an unhappy first-year professor in Postwar England was considered shocking in its day, but it was. Authority-snubbing and youthful dissatisfaction has come a long way since 1955, but it has never been rendered as cleverly as in Kingsley Amis’ first novel. This is the only book that I can honestly say is “laugh out loud” funny. Not the deepest of Amis’ novels but the most pleasurable by a long shot, and the book I've read more times than any other.

Money by MA
Martin Amis pulled out all the stops for this, his fifth novel, a blistering, crackling satire of film financing in early eighties New York City. The main character, John Self, is both Amis’ most grotesque and funniest creation, and Amis’ writing is never better. It’s a long book that bulges with style. There is hardly a dull sentence in the whole thing.


The Old Devils by KA
A late masterpiece by the elder Amis. A group of aging friends in Wales drink and talk, then drink and talk some more, and without drawing attention to it, Amis touches on all the big themes of existence. Love, friendship, fear, mortality. His most touching novel.

Experience by MA

A brilliant memoir by Martin that focuses primarily on his relationship with his father, while wandering into other equally fascinating subjects, including an abducted cousin, and Martin’s teeth.

Everyday Drinking by KA

A collection of KA’s newspaper columns on the subject of drink. As KA said, he didn’t agree to the column in order to have an excuse to drink more, he arranged for the column in order to recoup some cash for all the hours he spent studying the subject.

The Green Man by KA

A ghost story in which the adulterous, alcoholic proprietor of an inn begins to believe that the rumored ghost he uses to lure in customers might actually be for real. What makes this so entertaining is the unreliability of the narrator. Is it a haunting or is it the whiskey?

London Fields by MA

Another sprawling black comedy of urban sins. This one has MA’s second greatest creation after Money’s John Self, a low-level criminal named Keith Talent.

The Life of Kingsley Amis by Zachary Leader

A beautifully written, warts-and-all biography of KA. He was a man of enormous appetites and enormous contradictions. A misanthrope that couldn’t stand to be alone. A drunkard with incredible work ethic. A misogynist in the constant company of women.

The Rachel Papers by MA

This was Martin Amis’s first novel, a slim funny coming-of-age tale about a precocious teen. Not as ambitious as his later works, and that might be a good thing.

Collected Poetry by Philip Larkin

Not an Amis, of course, but Philip Larkin, a close friend of KA’s since Oxford, is the dedicatee of Lucky Jim and the Godfather of Philip. He also wrote a lovely poem for Sally Amis, the tragically short-lived sister of Martin, called “Born Yesterday.” Like nearly every other poem he wrote, it’s a keeper.

Adios Miramax

In remembrance of the passing of Miramax film studios (the official passing--they've been on life support forever now) I thought I'd do a list of my favorite Miramax films. There were quite a few. Here are fifteen in alphabetical order.