Something like a list...

I'm not constitutionally a list-maker. Lists usually imply a hierarchy, and like Francois Truffaut, I abhor any kind of hierarchy in cinema. This goes along with my usual refusal to assign a grade or rating to the movies I see. I mean, I make grocery lists occasionally, and I actually DO keep a list of the movies I own for insurance purposes, but a ranked list? Oh, no. Put a gun to my head and ask me what my favorite movie is and you might as well pull the trigger for all the veracity contained in any answer I might give.

However, some of my friends have asked me about a year-end list, and because I like my friends, I'll play along. Here are ten of the movies I liked this year:

Winter's Bone
The Red Riding Trilogy
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Please Give
Mother
Broken Embraces
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
The Kids are Alright
Everyone Else

For good measure, here are ten more:

Salt
The Girl Who Played with Fire
The Crazies
The Square
The Secret of the Kells
Vengeance
Prodigal Sons
Animal Kingdom
Shutter Island
The Ghost Writer

Clearly, this isn't anything like an authoritative list. I don't know what order these all go in. Hell, I don't know that I wouldn't switch out The Crazies for The Wolfman, Please Give for True Grit, or The Secret of the Kells for The Secret in their Eyes. This is all freely associated. There's no system to it, much like my writing about movies in general.

For what it's worth, I didn't write about all of the movies I saw this year, although I made a pretty good effort. I think I saw a shade over 250 movies this year, new and old, which makes this a down year for me. Among the movies I haven't seen: The Social Network, The Black Swan, 127 Hours, Toy Story 3, Inception, The King's Speech, Never Let Me Go, and so on. I can't see everything, unfortunately, however much I might want to. I'll catch up to most of this eventually.

I can give my impressions of the state of movies, I guess. I can't say that I like the state of popular cinema. 3-D gives me a headache (hence the absence of Toy Story 3 from my year), but to my eye, 2010 was an excellent year for movies as movies. The kinds of meat and potato movies that sustain the art form may have been squeezed out of the multiplexes, but they still play the art houses. There are always good movies being made, and this year was no different. Contrary to all the gloom and doom, the audience has never had an easier time finding movies, either.

So, yeah, it's been a good year. Hopefully, next year will be a good year, too.