My Top Ten Films of 2010

First I should mention I have not yet had a chance to see True Grit or The King's Speech, but of the 118 titles in 2010 I've thus far seen, these were my favorites:

Honorable Mentions:

BLACK SWAN - Frenetic, suspenseful examination of a ballerina slowly losing her mind as she studies for the dual role of the Swan Queen. It's an electrifying performance from Luke Skywalker's mom, and yet with its disturbing imagery, it's not a movie I'd recommend to very many people.

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO - Noomi Rapace embodies one of the more interesting female protagonists to come along in a while in this Swedish murder mystery.

GREEN ZONE - Surprisingly effective fictionalization of the US invasion of Iraq. Matt Damon plays a soldier happy to serve his country but continually frustrated that their "intelligence" on where the WMDs are hidden is consistently incorrect. If only WikiLeaks had access to more of the 2001-2003 Pentagon paperwork, we might know more of how so many people got it wrong.

HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART I - The ultimate hammock movie of the series. It takes time to let our central three characters (Harry, Ron, Hermione) breathe and be real characters coping with some very big battles coming in the very near future.

THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT - But The Parents Are Screwed Up. Annette Bening gets her best part in years as one-half of a lesbian couple who feels threatened when her two children locate their sperm-donor and start to bond with him. It minorly suffers from too convenient of an ending.

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 - A rare sequel that doesn't desecrate the original, even if it doesn't equal it. It does its job in providing the scares and suspense on a minimal budget.

RESTREPO - A solid "you are there" documentary that immerses the viewer in what it's like being a soldier in Afghanistan.

SALT - Ms. Jolie certainly knows how to kick some butt. Hat-tip to the most fun action movie of the summer.

SOLITARY MAN - Michael Douglas returns to form as a once-successful businessman who learns he may be dying, but rather than make things right, he goes on a selfish binge, cheating at his business, cheating on his wife, hitting on girls half his age. We root for the cad to find redemption, and it's a credit to Douglas we care at all, but its one flaw is the ambiguous ending. Sometimes I don't mind those, but here, I wanted the extra five seconds to show what happened, and THEN the credits can roll.

TANGLED - Disney animation is on the right track with this return to classic fairy-tale storytelling combined with the expected modernish humor. One would hope Disney would keep investing in stories like this and less on tripe like Chicken Little.

And now...

.... My Best Ten ...



10. THE FIGHTER - A boxing movie with realistic fighting, and a sibling story meatier than any actual fighting. Mark Wahlberg sits back and lets Christian Bale, Amy Adams and Melissa Leo take turns in career-bests for all three.


9. CATFISH - It's still unknown just how much of this is staged, and elements of it obviously are, but that doesn't take away from the fascinating story that unfolds. A young man in New York takes up an online correspondence with an eight-year-old girl and her family in Michigan, which leads to phone calls, but after several months he decides to stop by and surprise them. There is genuine suspense as to what he might actually find when he does, and the movie's an interesting expose about what is real online.


8. WINTER'S BONE - Jennifer Lawrence in a star-making performance about a teen girl in the Ozarks forced to grow up when her deadbeat daddy skips bail. She has to find him before the bank forecloses on their house. Since said daddy is involved in the local drug ring, odds aren't too good he's still alive. The measured stares between these hillbillies can be just as unnerving as well-dressed mobsters.


7. 127 HOURS - Danny Boyle's follow-up to Slumdog Millionaire is a vibrant celebration of life by focussing on one guy who almost lost his due to his own bad luck and stupidity. James Franco has rarely been better, and this basic one-man show is in good hands. *cough*


6. SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD - The perfect movie for a youth culture overly drunk on video games, MP3 players, and up-to-the-second pop-culture updates. Had fun from beginning to end. It made me forgive Michael Cera for Year One. It deserves to garner a following on DVD. I'm still mortified - mortified, I say! - the Golden Globes didn't nominate it for Best Comedy.


5. HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON - DreamWorks Animation's best film to date. It finds the heart of the story of a boy and his dragon. If it weren't for Pixar it'd be a shoo-in for Best Animated Film of any critics groups that rewards that category. I hope the planned sequel doesn't tarnish it.


4. THE SOCIAL NETWORK - It has delicious dialogue that just made me wish Aaron Sorkin put out more screenplays. It has breakthrough performance from Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield. It has flawless CGI with Armie Hammer playing a set of twins. It's exciting and alive, which seems unlikely from a movie that's basically about a lawsuit.


3. THE TOWN - Ben Affleck writes for and directs himself in his best paht in years, as a Bahston bank robbah. (Okay, I'll stop). He has a knack for pace, for action, for slow spots, for choreography, and letting his co-stars shine, especially Jeremy Renner as the hothead best friend, like an Irish Joe Pesci. The central love story may seem constrained, but it actually all winds up the way it should. And hey, he allowed the late Pete Postlethwaite to go out with a good character in a good movie.


2. TOY STORY 3 - The rare third installment that lives up to the first two. The characters have followed natural progression, and yet stasis, and find themselves in a prison-break movie. Lotso Huggin Bear is the best villain of the year. Pixar rules.


1. INCEPTION - Christopher Nolan can do no wrong in my book. He has ruled the second half of my decade. Inception is one of those deeply layered movies that's fun to dissect months after viewing. It's one of those infrequent opportunities where a studio will give a ton of money to an original idea.

Tangled - Movie Review

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If Disney wanted to continue cranking out fairy-tale movies, and I think they'd be idiots not to, they've found the winning formula once more with Tangled, where Rapunzel gets all the classical notes right while never forgetting it's a comedy. Maybe it's the Pixar touch; maybe it's the desire to return to the Little Mermaid/Beauty & the Beast glory days by bringing back composer Alan Menken. The scope and depth of the animation is top-notch. Bottom line is it works.

Black Swan - Movie Review

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Visually impressive, unnerving journey of a ballerina slowly losing her mind while rehearsing to be the lead in Swan Lake. Natalie Portman gives a career-best performance, and yet there are several people I would warn away from seeing it due to its disturbing content. Like the family with four young kids who were in the third row.

SHO's Episodes - TV Review

This one has promise, as I like the set-up. I don't know how long a series like this can go, but the first season should at least be good. A popular British TV series is being made into a US one, but oh, the compromises the producers must make! Watching a TV show about making a TV show can be tiresome, kinda like reading a book about an author. But if it's well done, hooray for the viewer. I'd watch a second episode. Matt LeBlanc seems to be a good sport.

SHO's Shameless - TV Review

This one I did not like. Unquestionably Emmy Rossum is going to have many great acting scenes as the oldest daughter of a poor family where the mom's dead and the dad's a useless drunk, but since almost all the kids engage in illegal activity to pay the bills, I don't think I really want to watch William H. Macy let his family down week after week. The poster makes it look like a wacky family, but it's actually more serious (preview for episode 2 shows he hits one of his kids). The reality is Macy would lose custody and these kids would be in foster care.

Catfish, I am Love, Case 39 - DVD Reviews

CATFISH
(llll) - It's still unknown just how much of this is staged, and elements of it obviously are, but that doesn't take away from the fascinating story that unfolds. A young man in New York takes up an online correspondence with an eight-year-old girl and her family in Michigan, which leads to phone calls, but after several months he decides to stop by. There is genuine suspense as to what he might actually find when he does, and the movie's an interesting expose about what is real online.

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I AM LOVE
(ll) - Every once in a while I'll see a movie that critics love and throw on their Top Ten lists, and then I see it, and I'm baffled. Seriously? Cinematography hides many narrative sins in this drama about a wealthy Italian family. Tilda Swinton is very good here, doing all her dialogue in Italian with a Russian accent, but it's the type of movie where the camera lingers on a staircase, or follows the butler as he takes the soup from the kitchen to the dining room, or watches the wind blow through some grass for a few seconds. It means a movie with about an hour of story is stretched to two hours so we can have atmosphere. It also means we're an hour in before I said to my wife, "I think this is where the plot begins." Then the plot goes through some clumsy machinations, and while the soundtrack said we're ending on a triumphant note, my head said "That's it?" Maybe this was supposed to be homage to the Italian soap-opera style. If so, then I know I'm not missing out on anything for having never watched an Italian soap-opera.

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CASE 39
(l1/2) - This sat on the shelf for almost four years. It took marketers that long to figure out how to fool just enough moviegoers into giving it a chance. Renee Zellweger, who was doing better four years ago than she is now, plays a social worker who rescues a girl from her seemingly abusive parents. Jodelle Ferland, the go-to spooky girl of movies like Silent Hill, at first seems a victim haunted by otherworldly forces. Eventually though the "eerie" truth comes out, but there are no scares here. It does have the usual jump-scare jolt attempts (aah! the phone suddenly rang!) but none of them work. It's amusing to watch a pre-hangover Bradley Cooper act like bees are coming out of his ear, but really, there's nothing here worth remembering beyond its general stupidity.

Dinner for Schmucks - DVD Review

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Starring Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, Jemaine Clement, Zach Galifianakis, Bruce Greenwood, Stephanie Szostak, Lucy Punch, Ron Livingston, Kristen Schaal, Jeff Dunham, David Walliams and Larry Wilmore.
Directed by Jay Roach.

Plenty of talent behind this effort, so where does it go wrong?

Let's start with Steve Carell's Barry. Who or what is he? Most of the time he's clueless, just a naive idiot. Every once in a while though he has flashes of awareness. Usually a well-defined character will get laughs from acting in expected ways. Non sequitur behavior here is just off-putting.

Next is Paul Rudd, nice guy. The straight man role here would've benefitted if he were more of a schmuck, someone who might deserve his life to be destroyed a bit by Barry.

This movie is like a recipe full of delicious ingredients on their own but they don't mix well together. The best parts for me were with Jemaine Clement as a self-absorbed artist, and the dinner itself. Everything else was more like cluttered noise.

Side-note: Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Concords) was also the best thing about the otherwise terrible Gentlemen Broncos. I'm sensing a trend here.

Box Office of 2010

Here's the tally.

Some things to note:

24 movies grossed over $100 million. True Grit will make it 25.

Of those 24, 6 were animated. 10 of the 20 were G or PG. 8 were PG-13. Two were R.

The highest-grossing R-rated movie of 2010 was Shutter Island at #17. Jackass 3-D is #20 and will likely be bumped out by Little Fockers and/or Tron Legacy in the next week or two.

7 of the top 10 grossers were remakes or sequels. The other three were Inception, Despicable Me and How to Train Your Dragon. The latter two now have sequels in the works.

In 2009, 6 of the top 10 were remakes or sequels. The other four were Avatar, Up, The Hangover and The Blind Side. Only one R-rated movie (Hangover) made the top 20.

In 2008, 5 of the top 10 were remakes or sequels. The other five were Iron Man, Hancock, Wall-E, Kung Fu Panda and Horton Hears a Who. Four of the top 20 were rated R. Sex & the City (#11), Gran Torino (#12), Slumdog Millionaire (#16), and Wanted (#18).

Devil - DVD Review

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Starring Chris Messina, Logan Marshall-Green, Geoffrey Arend, Bojana Nokovic, Jenny O'Hara, Bokeem Woodbine, Matt Craven and Jacob Vargas.
Directed by John Erick Dowdle.

After the bland, overexposed trailer, I did not have high hopes for this. I liked the opening sequence, flying upside-down over the city, but when the narration kicked in explaining the mythology of the devil of how he behaves, I started having Lady in the Water flashbacks in a bad way. I guess I'm just unfamiliar with the denomination where the devil takes human form and slowly torments his victims one by one before personally killing them.

But this is a horror movie aware that its audience has seen many horror movies and are familiar with the trappings. It therefore has fun with it.

Five people are trapped in an elevator and they start dying, with a strong likelihood that one of them is the devil in human form. It's simple and 80 minutes long. It does have a couple good scary images. Not a bad rental at all.

The Fighter - Movie Review

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Starring Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Amy Adams and Melissa Leo.
Directed by David O. Russell.

This movie triumphs in many areas, but the biggest is the acting showcase it provides. Christian Bale has long been one of the most versatile actors of his generation, but his work in movies like Rescue Dawn just never quite got the awards attention. Now here's one where he can shine. He's lost weight and made to look skeletal, pale, really burying himself of a former boxer turned crack-addict. Also duking it out are Amy Adams, in her toughest tough-gal role yet, and Melissa Leo, a mama bear who can't quite see when she does more harm than good.

It also succeeds in being a realistic boxing movie. By that I mean the choreography isn't elevated to this unworldy Rocky sequel where the fight would have been called off ten rounds before it actually is.

This movie's really more about family. Boxing's secondary. It's about older-brother screw-up Dicky (Bale) and younger brother Micky (Mark Wahlberg) who still might have a future. It's all filmed in Lowell, MA, with actors that look like real people, on locations that don't look like sound stages.

My Worst Ten Films of 2010

I still want to catch a few reportedly good movies (True Grit, for one) before I do my Top Ten list, but I feel safe to do this one.

First I should mention I had no desire to see such alleged stinkers as Leap Year, The Spy Next Door, The Tooth Fairy, Dear John, Remember Me, Our Family Wedding, The Last Song, Why Did I Get Married Too, Death at a Funeral, Boogie Woogie, Furry Vengeance, Love Ranch, Life During Wartime, Cats & Dogs 2, Step Up 3, Middle Men, Twelve, Lottery Ticket, Resident Evil: Afterlife, Legendary, Alpha & Omega, You Again, Chain Letter, Hatchet 2, Life As We Know It, I Spit on Your Grave, Skyline, Little Fockers, and you'd have to pay me a large sum of money to sit through The Human Centipede, on ClearPlay.

Dishonorable Mentions:

AFTER.LIFE - Half-hour Twilight Zone concept stretched out to 90 minutes, with Christina Ricci on the slab at the morgue. Her mortician (Liam Neeson) insists she's dead and only he can talk to her, but is that really the case? It's a bad sign if you can watch the first ten minutes and the last ten minutes and not really miss anything.

CLASH OF THE TITANS 3D - Maybe the 2D version isn't too bad, but the 3D version was one of the ugliest renditions I've seen since the glasses had one red lens and one blue. It only underlined everything I wasn't enjoying about this remake. Shouldn't Perseus be in the love with the princess he's trying to save? Shouldn't Perseus's men, dying left and right, beat him until he agrees to use the gifts the gods have given him? Since when does Zeus have more in common with Jehovah than Jupiter?

MARMADUKE - CGI talking animals is no longer cute or original or novel for a movie to take such a gimmick and rest on its laurels. Buuut at least my six-year-old liked it.

SAW 3D - The weakest installment of an ever-weakening franchise finally ends four chapters after the main villain died. Costas Mandylor's Hoffman was nowhere near as interesting as Tobin Bell's Jigsaw. About time the game's over.

ST. JOHN OF LAS VEGAS - Steve Buscemi's all dressed up with nowhere to go in an alleged comedy with no real plot or laughs. Just Buscemi wandering around in the desert.

VAMPIRES SUCK - Friedberg & Seltzer are getting better, which means this spoof movie just lands in my Dishonorable Mentions instead of my Worst Ten list. Maybe someday they'll figure out the Zucker magic, but I highly doubt it.

WHEN IN ROME - Girl meets boy, girl suddenly has four stalkers magically obsessed with her. The Pepe le Pew movie has written itself. It'll make you never want to see Jon Heder or Dax Shepard act again, and sad that this is how Academy-Award winner Anjelica Huston needs to pay her bills.

And now...

.... The Worst Ten


10. THE KILLER INSIDE ME - Repugnant character study of a deputy sheriff in the 1950's who discovers his inner psychopath and finds he enjoys killing women by beating them to death. The goal seems to be punishing the audience for watching it.

9. 44 INCH CHEST - Some talented actors from across the pond, among them Ray Winstone, Ian McShane, Tom Wilkinson and John Hurt, spin their wheels in a movie where 95% takes place in one room, where no characters are revealed to be deeper than when we first meet them, and where everything's about the same at the end of the movie as it was at the beginning, minus one decision.

8. VALENTINE'S DAY - All-star cast attempts to be the U.S. version of Love Actually and fails miserably. So many characters that nothing sticks, nothing surprises, no insight, no actual laughs happen. It's like watching a game of Telephone played by Hallmark executives. I'm glad everyone got their paydays for such easy work.

7. LEGION - Dull thriller where God's decided to wipe out the human race, starting with a diner in the middle of nowhere. Fortunately for the handful that survive, one angel has decided to fight for them. If you've seen the preview, you've seen the movie.

6. JONAH HEX - Whatever good idea might have been on the page at the beginning of the filmmaking process was left on the bloodied cutting-room floor, leaving us a 73-minute movie full of holes. Josh Brolin does his best Heath Ledger-as-Ennis impression behind burnt-face makeup, and John Malkovich pulls out stock mustache-twirling as the bad guy who must be hunted down. Makes Wild Wild West look like Silverado.

5. A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET - Egregiously unoriginal reboot of a classic franchise. Jackie Earle Haley is fine as Freddy Krueger, and that's about the only bright spot. If you're going to do a remake, try to at least do something creative with it.

4. SEX & THE CITY 2 - Two and a half hours of shallow, middle-aged Barbie dolls waltzing through Abu Dhabi without a care in the world. It's the big-budget soulless blockbuster of the year, the female equivalent of Transformers 2.

3. REPO MEN - I have a hard time deciding which was worse. This, or Repo: The Genetic Opera. RTGO was going for Rocky Horror territory and missed the mark by a gruesome mile. This seems like it should be better, but the logic of the laws in this future make no sense. To release a movie like this, in this economy, goes beyond being a bad idea. It also has the honor of featuring the worst twist-ending of the year. The best thing about this movie? Rolling the closing credits to "Dream a Little Dream."

2. COP OUT - Bruce Willis looks bored and Tracy Morgan looks lost in this mish-mash of 1980's cop-buddy cliches. Is it homage? Is it parody? Can't tell. Regardless, Kevin Smith isn't an action director, and unfortunately he's directing someone else's screenplay, one that lacks witty dialogue or a reason to care. The lesson to remember is that some 1980's cop-buddy cliches were lame and don't deserve to be recycled. But I would say the greater misfortune of this movie existing is that Kevin Smith is convinced it's good and will burn bridges with anyone who claims otherwise.

... and now, my least favorite movie of 2010 ...

1. GROWN UPS - Lazy gathering of SNL buddies who slap together an excuse to hang out together and make millions doing so. But at least David Spade falls face-first in poop. Hardy har har. I am pretty sure this is Adam Sandler's worst movie. At least Little Nicky had a story in mind. Really, what was the point of this?

Legend of the Guardians: The owls of Ga'Hoole - DVD Review

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Starring the voices of Jim Sturgess, Helen Mirren, Geoffrey Rush, Hugo Weaving, Abbie Cornish, Ryan Kwanten, David Wenham, Anthony LaPaglia, Sam Neill, Richard Roxbergh and Emily Barclay.
Directed by Zack Snyder.

It's tremendously gorgeous and lovingly created. It'd like to be this generation's Watership Down or Secret of NIMH, but there are a few elements that prevent it from doing so. First, this is based on a book series, and reading books, it's easier to keep characters apart in your head. Here the photorealisitc animation means we have a bunch of owls and it's not always easy to tell them apart, therefore making it harder to empathize with the right ones. Secondly, the story itself isn't that original.

It centers on Soren (Jim Sturgess, who sounds just like Elijah Wood's Frodo), an owl kidnapped to be trained to be "pure" due to his species. So we have child slavery and Nazi imagery in the first few minutes. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but you're going to lose young kids there, and then older kids will dismiss where it goes from there. Soren escapes and seeks out the Guardians, a legendary group that fight for owl justice. Then you have a showdown between the good owls and the bad owls.

I'm glad I saw it for the visuals alone, but it's more of a curiosity, not a modern classic. And my 13-year-old daughter had the same problems.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps - DVD Review

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Starring Michael Douglas, Shia LaBeouf, Josh Brolin, Carey Mulligan, Frank Langella, Susan Sarandon, Eli Wallach, Austin Pendleton, Vanessa Ferlito and Jason Clarke.
Directed by Oliver Stone.

The 1987 movie holds up surprisingly well, and this sequel is a pretty decent, timely follow-up to how a handful of greedy people can ruin the lives of millions. Shia LaBeouf, he who risks overexposure between Indiana Jones 4 and the Transformers franchise, does well here, playing a hotshot Wall Street type named Jake who actually has a pet project he believes in - green energy. He's also really good at what he does; he makes money.

This one hits some of the same stanzas as the first one, but Gekko is different. Still wily and untrustworthy, but he acts as a mentor to Jake, whom he learns will be his son-in-law.

The movie does an amusing job of making it look like the 2008 financial collapse was the responsibility of a handful of old men with pocket-watches in a room with finely varnished furniture. It also shows how another handful of men were able to make millions off short-selling and then buying stock in those companies whom the government bailed out.

I kept thinking about how math geniuses at Harvard don't invent tangible things; they get into Wall Street. They make millions of dollars off of nothing but credit defaults swaps and derivatives and market manipulation. But that's neither here nor there.

Stone is back to form here. He's had some indulgent projects recently (Alexander, anyone?) but the narrative is smooth and the editing is swift without feeling choppy. And it's an absolute pleasure to see Douglas revisit his Gekko role.

The American - DVD Poster

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Starring George Clooney, Paolo Bonacelli, Violante Placido and Irina Bjorklund.
Directed by Anton Corbijn.

Very, very watchable, but ultimately doesn't add up to much.

George Clooney is a gruff American assassin who has his life threatened in Sweden. He flees to Italy to hide out while the heat dies down, but his contact gives him one last assignment. All of this is conveying minimally. Not much dialogue, very little explained. We're outsiders watching events unfold.

This has all the feel of a foreign film that just happens to mostly be in English and with George Clooney as its star. Clooney is subdued, measured, careful, focussed. But the movie is a Keyser Soze. It ends, and then *poof*, it's gone. I can see many people really digging this, and I can see many others exclaiming, "Well, that was a waste of time!"

Agora - DVD Review

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Starring Rachel Weisz, Max Minghella, Oscar Isaac, Rupert Evans and Michael Lonsdale.
Directed by Alejandro Amenabar.

Usually when we get Roman Empire movies, the Christians are the good guys, and then a few centuries later when the Catholic Church grows in power, the Christians are the bad guys. This movie takes place right about in that period of time where the balance of power shifts, where the underdogs/martyrs get control and a little revenge. It's interesting and a little daring, and it revolves around the destruction of the Library of Alexandria in 391 AD.

The Romans still rule, and the Christians have been increasing in power, but the Roman pagans/atheists/ Jupiter-worshippers still think they can push them around. When they draw some swords to put them in their places, they get a rude awakening of just how many Christians there are, and how they're done turning cheeks.

In the middle of this conflict is Hypathia (Rachel Weisz), an atheist who doesn't really care about religion, she cares about science. She's on the cusp of larger discoveries, but what incalculable knowledge was lost when the Library burned. The movie's chief argument seems to be that if Christianity hadn't come along, the world's scientific knowledge would be about 1000 years ahead of where it is now.

This is not done in a preachy or condescending manner. The movie does well with its low budget, and it feels similar to the swords-and-sandals epics of the 1960's, those ones that also could have several slow spots.

Cyrus - DVD Review

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Starring John C. Reilly, Jonah Hill, Marisa Tomei and Catherine Keener.
Directed by Jay & Mark Duplass.

I suppose this is a comedy, but it doesn't contain belly laughs. There's an underlying sadness to it and definite creepiness. Change the last ten minutes to everyone getting killed and this is a horror movie. As is, that creepiness, that off-kilter realism keeps this interesting, and that is primarily due to Jonah Hill as the title character of Cyrus.

Jonah Hill's been the fat clown in a few comedies (Superbad, Funny People, Get Him to the Greek, etc.) but he's usually assertive. Here he's passive-aggressive. Cyrus loves his mother, played by Marisa Tomei, to a degree that would seem inappropriate to outsiders. One such outsider is John (John C. Reilly), a recent divorcee who takes a shine to Cyrus's mom at a party. John and Cyrus are civil, they dance around each other, but it doesn't take long for John to figure out that Cyrus has a 3-D chess game in motion to make sure John does not become a permanent fixture in their lives.

I can imagine this could have easily been made into a loud, obvious pratfall-laden comedy starring Adam Sandler or Jim Carrey. But the veteran mumblecore directors Jay & Mark Duplass keep it simple, keeping everything off-balance to where we don't know what's going to happen. It feels like the quiet, level-headed manipulative Cyrus could snap at any moment. The camera tends to zoom in or out on people's faces at odd times. Where should my focus go? Should I be on the edge of my seat?

The ending seemed a little easy, but I liked seeing this different side of Jonah Hill.

Top Ten in TV 2010

I have not watched this year's seasons of HBO's True Blood or Boardwalk Empire. But I hear good things.

Stuff I liked:

The scenery of CBS's The Amazing Race, master manipulator Russell getting to the finals again on CBS's Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains, likeable dim-bulb Fabio on the otherwise unpleasant CBS's Survivor: Nicaragua, the smartest men in the room with body-language experts Simon Baker on CBS's The Mentalist and Tim Roth on FOX's Lie to Me, the perservering Dundler Mifflinites of NBC's The Office, the love for Simon Cowell on his last year of FOX's American Idol, the gawky baby-giraffe of a model Ann on CW's America's Next Top Model, the enigmatic Michael Imperioli on ABC's Detroit 1-8-7, Patricia Heaton's exasperated mom in ABC's The Middle, the line-reads of Scott Caan on CBS's Hawaii Five-0, the strong second season of STARZ's Party Down, the mournful post-Rita season of SHO's Dexter, the round-table segments under Jake Tapper's brief tenure on ABC's This Week, the fresh talent of Jay Pharaoh on NBC's Saturday Night Live, the sportswriters spouting on ESPN's Around the Horn, and the 2010 midterm election coverage by Fox News and CNN.

Honorable Mentions:

ROBOT CHICKEN STAR WARS EPISODE III (CN) - Absolutely hilarious.

DEXTER (SHOWTIME) - It wouldn't be able to top the Trinity Killer season, but the mournful aftermath fifth season gave Dexter some serious consequences, and Michael C. Hall's performance was able to hit new levels as the formerly emotionless monster deals with true grief.

... and my top ten are ...

10. CABLE NEWS COMEDY - I specifically identify The Daily Show (Comedy Central) and Red Eye (Fox News). Jon Stewart continues to be the master referee (even if he insists he's on the sidelines) and he's fair enough for a left-leaning host, and then there's right-wing comedian Greg Gutfeld hosting his middle-of-the-night party with unique guests and hilarious deadpan ombudsman Andy Levy. I DVR both and watch at least a couple episodes a week of each.

9. THE TUDORS (SHOW) - The final season was a crowning one, where Henry VIII realizes too late that killing all his old advisors just means more untrustworthy ones will pop up in their places. I've watched the series since the beginning, and it's the role of Jonathan Rhys Meyers' career. His Henry was vain, impetuous, ruthless, and had the will to change the course of history forever.

8. THE BIG BANG THEORY (CBS) - Funniest show on TV that still employs a laugh-track. Loving how they're rounding out the cast with geeky girlfriends for Sheldon and Howard.

7. THE GOOD WIFE (CBS) - The perfect combination of weekly procedural and backstage politics. I like that Alan Cumming's been given more to do as Peter's lawyer Eli Gold, I like the clever guest-casting (Michael J. Fox was great), and I like that each week we don't know what Alicia's going to do.

6. BETTER OFF TED (ABC) - This brilliant, brilliant office-place comedy deserved far better than ABC schedulers gave it.

5. MODERN FAMILY & COUGAR TOWN (ABC) - Both shows are still just as funny in their second seasons, if not more so.

4. COMMUNITY (NBC) - No show is more consistently funny. There've been many episodes from either where I've watched them a second time before deleting them from the DVR. I love the genre-poking, the theme episodes (like the action-movie parody embodied by a campus-wide paintball war), and especially Abed (Danny Pudi), the film student who's like an alien observing life on Earth.

3. JUSTIFIED (FX) - Timothy Olyphant's Raylen Givens is the coolest casual crime-fighter since Magnum P.I. The Kentucky atmosphere is rich, and it plays a nice balance between encapsuled cases with plenty of subplots that work throughout the season. I especially enjoyed the one when Olyphant's old Deadwood co-star W. Earl Brown showed up as a hostage-taking career convict. Emmy needs to remember this show next year.

2. AMC - Three of the best show on TV are on this channel. First is BREAKING BAD, which raises the stakes every season to where the tension becomes unbearable. I love how Bryan Cranston's Mr. White switches back and forth between family man Walt and hardened drug-dealer Heisenberg. Then there's MAD MEN, where the characters had another year of growth and the new ad agency is finding their financial situation as precarious as their old one. Finally there's THE WALKING DEAD, an addictive drama that has one of those premises where I can't believe it hasn't been done until now. Zombies walk the Earth and we follow the handful of survivors wondering what next. Andrew Lincoln (Love Actually) is a nice steel-eyed protagonist in his sheriff's uniform, and I'm also enjoying veteran actor Jeffrey DeMunn in a role he can be remembered for.

1. LOST (ABC) - Oh, how I'll miss you. Sad to know we'll ever again check in with Locke, Ben, Hurley, Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Sun & Jin, Desmond, Sayid, Crazy Claire, etc. I liked the flash-sideways world as this self-created purgatory where time doesn't exist, giving the chance for the core group to all reunite.

Worst Ten in TV 2010

Stuff I dislike:

Any of those iCarly/Wizards of Waverly Place shows.

Dishonorable Mentions:

JIM GRAY on THE DECISION (ESPN) - I recognize LeBron James's ill-conceived talents-traveling announcement was itself bad TV. But I single out Gray because up until now, I was supposed to believe he was some kind of sports reporter. Consider that soul sold.

OUTSOURCED (NBC) - I've seen about seven episodes and it still never became funny. I wouldn't have given it a second look except I actually work with a call-center in India. My boss tells me how they portray India is pretty inaccurate.

GRAVITY (STARZ) - A "comedy" about suicide-attempters. Yeah, so there's that...

... and the worst ten are ...

10. MSNBC's MID-TERM ELECTION NIGHT COVERAGE - I could easily put Fox News here for coddling presidential hopefuls Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich. I could easily put CNN here for their increased changes to ever-diminishing returns. But when it came to the big-news night of the year - election - both did a great job. Megyn Kelly and Bret Baier anchored on FNC and kept things flowing, CNN had endless talking-heads to give their spin on things but were never boring. MSNBC decided to let five liberals - Olbermann, Maddow, Matthews, O'Donnell and Olby's favorite bobble-head guest Eugene Robinson - anchor. (What? Did Schultz lose a bet?) They brought out the worst in each other. I felt sorry for poor Chuck Todd they went to every once in a while to give them numbers. Todd's a real journalist. The rest treated it like they were in a sports bar after the home-team lost.

9. HEROES (NBC) - I'm glad this show was put of its misery. The carn-evil could have developed into something, but week after week I just kept thinking how HBO's Carnivale was better, and that I cared less and less about these characters. I bailed on it after Adrian Pasdar left the show. Season 1 was great, and it went downhill from there. I don't know what happened in the last episode. As far as I know, they didn't save the cheerleader, didn't save the world, Sylar became President, and it was all Suresh's dream. Don't care.

8. NAONKA ON SURVIVOR: NICARAGUA (CBS) - There are dozens of reality shows that I don't watch, but of the ones I do, she was the worst contestant. Nothing worse than a bully, but that her victim was a one-legged girl made her a truly hissable villain. Top it off with her selfishly indulging in the reward hours before she quit, and you have one of those one-of-a-kind people who has a lot of growing up to do. There in the middle I put off watching for two or three episodes until I knew her position in the tribe was tenuous. And to think, she's a teacher!

7. THE SUPPORTING CAST OF $#*! MY DAD SAYS (CBS) - William Shatner demonstrates his talents by almost saving many episodes, but this deep into a show, it's clear the rest of the cast just isn't going to get there. The writing does them no favors, but MadTV vets Will Sasso and Nicole Sullivan are too cartoony, and Justin Sadowski looks like he's biting his tongue half the time to keep from cracking up.

6. SKATING WITH THE STARS (ABC) - Tries to copy Dancing with the Stars in every way and falls short to embarrassing degrees. Good thing it flopped; I shudder to think whatever ripoffs they would have attempted had it worked.

5. KELLI GIDDISH - First there was PAST LIFE (FOX), where reincarnation gets the procedural treatment, with no hint of fun that this premise should have. She played the generic blonde lead detective who flirted with the generic hunk lead detective while they were talking about who killed who in a previous life. This one only lasted a couple episodes. Then she got the lead in CHASE on NBC, where she showed no charisma as a butt-kicking US marshal who chases the fugitive-of-the-week.

4. FRED ARMISEN's OBAMA on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE (NBC) - Hey, Lorne Michaels. Listen, you have Jay Pharaoh in your cast now, who has the potential to be your best Afr-Am cast member since Chris Rock. He has a killer Obama impression. Meanwhile Armisen's Obama is getting worse and worse. You took Dubya away from Will Forte to give to Jason Sudeikis with no problem; the least you could do is give Obama to Pharaoh. Please. Oh, and Armisen, for cheating on your bride Elisabeth Moss with cast member Abby Elliott, that makes you scummier than ... New Jersey!

3. BIG LAKE (COMEDY CENTRAL) - Painfully unfunny show about a former Wall Street broker who lost everything and moves back in with his parents. Not even Chris Parnell could save it.

2. JAY LENO (NBC) - It's not just Jay Leno; it's everything around him. The decision to force Jay to retire early was a mistake, and we know now Jay never intended to stick with that. The decision to put on The Jay Leno Show five nights a week was a mistake. The idea of bumping back The Tonight Show was a mistake. Essentially forcing Conan out to keep Jay was a mistake. And Jay's ratings are as low as Conan's now. But I'm looking forward to the inevitable HBO movie about it all.

1. COMEDY CENTRAL EXECUTIVES - This channel has no problem blasting everyone else, but they showed themselves as cowards and hypocrites when they censored South Park episode 201 to death over drawing the prophet Mohammed. I understand depicting him is offensive to Muslims, but Jesus taking a dump on the American flag is offensive to Christians and they had no problem showing that. Why no problem? They understand Timothy McVeigh and his ilk are the wackjob exceptions to Christians. So what does that say about how they view Muslims?