The best of Film 2010

Leonardo Di Caprio inside a dream inside a dream inside a dream inside a dream inside a dream?); Ryan Reynolds inside a coffin buried six feet underground with nothing but a phone, a Zippo lighter and the viewer for company; that skulking Swedish dame Noomi Rapace with a very large tattoo and a large grudge to match; Kim Cattrall's Samantha throwing condoms at Muslim men in Abu Dhabi; the 11-year-old Hit-Girl kicking adult ass in Kick-Ass; that lost young face of Tahar Rahim's Malik arriving into prison in A Prophet; Jesse Eisenberg's motor-mouthing billionaire in The Social Network. What will you remember of cinema in 2010?

Who can put a stop to the sequels? Shrek, looking all tuckered out after a host of boring follow-ups, called it a day. Iron Man powered back in, while Harry Potter waved the magic wand for the second-last time, in what was film number seven. And there were enough 3D movies to make you goggle-eyed. The colour of money was blue, with Avatar, which opened in 2009, becoming an unstoppable force in 2010 to become the highest-grossing film of all time. Alice in Wonderland, How To Train Your Dragon, Tron: Legacy and Despicable Me all played in three dimensions, but only Toy Story 3 gave us something great to play with.

It was also the year the '80s came back with a yawn. Wall Street picked up with somewhat less worth than where it left off. Liam Neeson chomped on a cigar in The A-Team, and that was a plan that didn't come together. Freddy Krueger came back (what a nightmare) while we had a Karate Kid film with no... erm... karate. But Jaden Smith does know kung-fu.

In an age of dumbed-down Hollywood fodder, audiences responded hungrily to high-fibre offerings The Social Network and Inception. Is there a lesson to be learned from that? Surely, if anybody is listening. In comedy, Will Ferrell reminded us of why he is the only guy in town with The Other Guys, while Nicolas Cage, after years of suggesting he was going to do it, finally did it: he went Fubar in Werner Herzog's oddball and hilarious Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call. Meanwhile, two superhero crossover comedies crackled with vim and vigour: the punchy Kick-Ass and the exuberant Scott Pilgrim vs the World.

In The Ghost, Roman Polanski made a film about being under siege while being under siege; Peter Jackson lost the plot in The Lovely Bones, but that didn't stop a top-notch performance from our very own Saoirse Ronan; and Irish documentary His & Hers made every day mammy's day all over Ireland. Mike Leigh's Another Year was another warm and beautiful film, while fashion designer Tom Ford proved he had the cut of a director with A Single Man.

Films of quality abounded this year, but there were only a handful that had the measure, the unrelenting intensity, of true greatness. In A Prophet, Jacques Audiard made a film that will sit on the shelf alongside a century of classic gangster pictures. And then there was the wonderfully titled Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives from the stunningly talented Apichatpong Weerasthakul... a film to match David Lynch for weirdness, and then some.

The best films of 2010

1. A Prophet (Jacques Audiard)

Jacques Audiard's electric French prison drama snaps with brutality and crackles with rare poetry. A chilling portrait of corruption and criminality, a secular parable of Mohammad in modern France, and simply the best gangster film made anywhere in the past few decades.

2. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

The uniquely titled Uncle Boonmee is nearly unclassifiable, but it is a poetic, mystic masterpiece no doubt. Its director Apichatpong Weerasethakul is so flagrant in his abuse of film convention, it seems to open a new door for filmmakers and may prove deeply influential.

3. Inception (Christopher Nolan)

Christopher Nolan's brainy, box-office-busting sci-fi sizzler was composed like a Matryoshka doll. Savvy and smart, it's the kind of filmmaking popular cinema needs right now.

4. Dogtooth (Yorgos Lanthimos)

A Greek film that will make you howl with laughter and shudder like you have fleas. A Buñuel-style allegory about loss of faith in the generation that caused the economic collapse? Probably.

5. Of Gods and Men (Xavier Beauvois)

A film of amazing grace and almost austere beauty, this gentle film about seven Trappist monks contemplating possible death at the hands of Muslim terrorists in Algeria becomes a meditative interrogation of faith and a psychological study of siege. It turns unexpectedly into a portrait of radiant conviction.

The next best 10 (in no particular order)

Kick-Ass (Matthew Vaughn)

Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami)

The Other Guys (Adam McKay)

I Am Love (Luca Guadagina)

Samson and Delilah (Warwick Thornton)

Another Year (Mike Leigh)

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call (Werner Herzog)

Toy Story 3 (Lee Unkrich)

A Single Man (Tom Ford)

Up In The Air (Jason Reitman)

Worst film: Sex and the City 2 (Michael Patrick King)

Most pretentious film: Enter The Void (Gasper Noé)

Best Irish film: His & Hers (Ken Wardrop)/ Savage (Brendan Muldowney)

Most over-rated film: The Social Network (David Fincher)

Most under-rated film: Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami)

Best male performance: Tahar Rahim (A Prophet)

Runner-up: Casey Affleck (The Killer Inside Me)

Best female performance: Tilda Swinton (I Am Love)

Runner-up: Leslie Manville (Another Year)

Best director: Jacques Audiard (A Prophet)

Runner-up: Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives)

Best new director: Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth)/ Warwick Thornton (Samson and Delilah)

Best cinematographer: Eduard Grau (A Single Man)

Best documentary: American: The Bill Hicks Story

Best animation: Toy Story 3 (Lee Unkrich)

Most embarrassing cinematic moment: That condom scene in Sex and the City 2

Most spine-tingling cinematic moment: That 'thing' on the stairs in Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

December 26, 2010