2010: A Cinema Retrospective

Looking back over the 12 months that have gone by I feel that 2010 was a somewhat lacklustre year for film, for me. Though the worldwide box office saw three films surpass the (cue Dr. Evil impression) $1billion mark – ‘Avatar’, ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘Toy Story 3’ – it wasn’t always a reflection of their quality; in fact I am yet to meet anyone in defence of ‘Alice in Wonderland’.

Maybe my disappointment is a reflection of a sense of cinematic malaise that has overtaken my viewing habits these past 12 months? In 2009 I saw 52 films at the cinema, 20 more than in 2010, though I was working far less! It’s also interesting to note that the films I’ve enjoyed most at the cinema this year were screenings of vintage classics; ‘Back to the Future’ and ‘Labyrinth’. Then again two of my favourite screenings in 2009 were ‘Brazil’ and ‘Manhattan’.

This is not to say there haven’t been films I’ve enjoyed immensely this year, ‘I Love You Philip Morris’, ‘The Illusionist’, ‘Four Lions’ and the aforementioned ‘Toy Story 3’ sit at the top of the heap; but none really make me giddy with cinematic joy when I reflect upon them. And indeed they’re more than matched by films that I didn’t like and filled me with a grumbling sense of bewilderment at their popularity, not least of ‘Inception’ which I’ve ranted about previously, but ‘Alice in Wonderland’, ‘Red’, ‘Clash of the Titans’, ‘Prince of Persia’ were all hugely disappointing in various ways.

Then there are the films that were simply “meh”, hundreds of millions of dollars seemingly invested in creating ambivalence, the likes of ‘Predators’, ‘Knight and Day’, ‘The A-Team’ even, surprisingly, ‘Kick Ass’ and ‘Shutter Island’ failed to really connect for varying reasons.

It’s not all been cynical doom and gloom, a few of the films that have lingered in my memory are those that I wasn’t exactly doo-lally with to begin with and they’ve matured in my brain-box over time; Rian Johnson’s ‘The Brothers Bloom’ was a charming little caper, Joe Dante’s ‘The Hole’ a surprisingly nerve-shredding kid’s horror, and most alarming ‘Solomon Kane’ an absolutely entertaining, good ol’ fashioned eighties-style sword and sorcery yarn.

Perhaps it was a slightly hindrance to 2010’s reputation that I saw a couple of its best films at 2009’s London Film Festival, if my mind associated ‘The Road’ and ‘A Single Man’ more with 2010 then maybe I wouldn’t be so hard on the poor year. Besides, looking back at my film’s to watch in 2010 list I see that four of them have had their releases pushed back, which hopefully bodes well for the coming 12 months of movie magic.

Here’s hoping that 2011 will turn up a fair few surprises, it’s somewhat worrying that the only Pixar offering is going to be ‘Cars 2’, and it’s always a dark cloud of doom to note that another ‘Transformers’ film is imminent. 2011 is also plagued with a glut of superhero movies and will undoubtedly be filmed with fervent fanboy salivating over Christopher Nolan’s third (and final) ‘Batman’ movie.

But overall I just hope that there’s enough going on in the cinema to remotivate me to want to spend my evenings staring at the flickering 24 frames per second again, and maybe, on occasion, don a pair of stupid 3D glasses to watch some Hollywood gubbins.

Happy New Year all!

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