SOME RECOGNITION FROM THE BOARD - A Look at the Best Films 2010

It is time to tackle a decade of film that I don't talk about much on this blog. A lot of that does seem to do with the fact that I tend to be very focused on films from the 50s-90s, but I also feel like the 2010s weren't exactly the strongest decade for film overall. 

While my own personal life in the early 10s kept me very preoccupied (college, theatre, relationships, moving to NY), there was also a noticeable dip in the quality output for me.

However, when the films were good, they were exceptional. 

These posts, at least for most of the years, will be a lot shorter as I only tend to focus on 10 films per year rather than list any Honorable Mentions, but I am going to single out just ONE film as an Honorable Mention for this go-round.

I already discussed 2013 back in 2023 as part of my Anniversary Retrospective series, so you can check out that post here.

While not the strongest year of the decade, 2010 will definitely be on the higher end. In fact, I came into doing this top 10 with the expectation of being slightly contrarian...but that isn't how it will pan out as you shall soon see.

ONE HONORABLE MENTION:

INCEPTION

Written & Directed by Christopher Nolan

I almost feel like I have to mention Inception considering how widely discussed and praised it typically is by people who marvel at its entangled, weaving plotting where you never truly understand what is happening. 

My opinion on the film is pretty in step with most of Nolan's work which is that its good, but it never drives me to a point of passion. However, for what it is, this is clearly a remarkable achievement from a spectacle standpoint. 

AND NOW...

THE TOP 10

#10 - BEGINNERS

Written & Directed by Mike Mills

Mike Mills is one of those filmmakers who seems to be on the fringe in a lot of ways, and I would like to think that he is only a film or two away from having wider recognition bestowed upon him much like Sean Baker recently got for Anora.

I still stand by Mills' 2021 film C'mon C'mon which I absolutely loved and even named the best film of that year...although it was really a tough battle with 2 other films. 

Beginners would've been the first time I took notice of his work as I don't think I had seen his 2005 film Thumbsucker at that point, but what I found was a filmmaker who had such a delicate and humanist voice whose work was brimming with passion.

Inspired by his own life, the film revolves around a graphic designer named Oliver (Ewan McGregor) who is coping with the death of his father Hal (Christopher Plummer in his Oscar winning performance) and navigating a new relationship at the same time with a French actress named Anna (Melanie Laurent, fresh off her star-making turn in Inglorious Basterds). 

The fanciful twist of sorts is that we learn more about Oliver's relationship with Hal via flashback, and that after 44 years of marriage and losing his wife, he comes out of the closet at 75 and lives a gregarious gay lifestyle complete with a younger boyfriend (Goran Visnjic) before dying of lung cancer at 80.

This is such a beautiful and delicate piece of work, which you might not expect when you have an elderly man living a life that some might say would be more appropriate for someone half his age...but Mills is a filmmaker who works with such compassion and heart. 

Sometimes it can feel weird to take comfort in a film where we watch broken people living their lives, but few filmmakers can make that feel like a rejuvenating experience quite like Mike Mills.

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#9 - DOGTOOTH

Written & Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos

Co-written by Efthymis Flippou

If Mike Mills is someone whose work deals with delicate humanist compassion, Yorgos Lanthimos is out to challenge you and leave you wondering what in the bloody hell is going on. 

Nowadays, Lanthimos has had a bit more acceptance in Hollywood with him and Flippou getting a Screenplay nod for 2015's The Lobster while making a bigger splash himself for directing Best Picture contenders The Favourite in 2018 and Poor Things in 2023. 

Dogtooth would've been my introduction to Lanthimos and what a way to start...

In a 2012 interview, the late great David Lynch called Dogtooth "a fantastic comedy"...seems fitting from his mindset, but regardless of how you may view it, Dogtooth is a subversive and almost diabolical in how it presents this story of a family living in a guarded compound.

The father (Christos Stergioglou) seeks out a worker from his factory named Christina (Anna Kalitzidou), who just so happens to be the only character in the film to get a name, to come to their home to have sex with his son (Christos Passalis). When the son refuses to go down on her, she then turns to the two daughters (Angeliki Papoulia & Mary Tsoni) for sexual assistance. 

Dogtooth feels like an even darker take on familial seclusion than what we would've seen with the likes of The Virgin Suicides. This is as dark and depressing and unsettling as it is absurdist with its introduction. In many ways, it feels like a metaphor for what some children could experience growing up in highly sheltered religious household...and while I wouldn't say my life was anywhere near as severe as some people of a religious upbringing, I can definitely relate to the feeling.

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#8 - ANOTHER YEAR 

Written & Directed by Mike Leigh

Anchored by two wonderful performances from Ruth Sheen and Jim Broadbent, Another Year is one of those Mike Leigh films where you watch it and go "Yep. Another very solid effort". 

The duo plays Gerri and Tom Hepple, a couple facing retirement but are seen as a bit of an anomaly to others in their lives as they are stable and happy. Entering their orbit is their friend Mary, played to perfection by Lesley Manville, who is one of the most insufferable and troubled people you can imagine.

Somehow, Mike Leigh is able to do so much with similar varying themes in a lot of his works, and I do think a lot of that has to do with his love of having the performers improv most of their lines and working closely to plot out the characters' histories with the actors involved.

I do love when Leigh likes to place unlikable but often troubled or even misunderstood characters within the orbit of those who are far more compassionate. You see it with Brenda Blethyn and Claire Rushbrook in Secrets & Lies, you see it with Sally Hawkins and Eddie Marsan in Happy-Go-Lucky, you see it with Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Michele Austin in Hard Truths...and most certainly between Sheen, Broadbent, and Manville here. 

A simply beautiful, bittersweet, somewhat bleak character study that you can always expect with sterling confidence from Mike Leigh.

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#7 - I SAW THE DEVIL

Directed by Kim Jee-woon

Written by Park Hoon-jung

While this film has since developed a bit of a stronger reputation, the fact I have it as high as I do on this list might be a bit unexpected.

I Saw the Devil is a horror film that is so cold and unforgiving in its approach that it might be one of the very few that I watched that left me a bit unnerved.

We fellow an NIS agent named Kim Soo-hyeon (Lee Byung-hun, who is currently experiencing a bit of a career surge with his work on Squid Game and No Other Choice) who is seeking revenge after his fiancée is murdered by a serial killer named Jang Kyung-chil (Cho Min-sik, playing the opposite end of spectrum compared to Oldboy).

Cho's Jang, as fitting with the film itself, is easily one of the most diabolical, cold-hearted, psychopathic, and evil villains ever depicted in any art form. 

It isn't like the film has a lot of crazy twists and turns, but the simple truth is that if you were to watch a film that could flirt with being an example of the dreaded "torture porn" genre or anything involving a serial killer, this is a great example of how it is done.

Incredibly effective and disturbing to the core. Certainly not for the faint of heart...and not a film I admittedly intend on seeing again.

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#6 - BLACK SWAN

Directed by Darren Aronofsky

Written by Andres Heinz, Mark Heyman, & John MacLaughlin

The interesting thing about Black Swan is that it falls into a category of films that I didn't necessarily get the hype of as I watched it, but it picked up in energy as it went along, and I felt more positive of the film's story by the end. Over time, the more I think about the film as a whole, the more I would say it is a defining film for Aronofsky's career, and it seems to be the defining film to date for Natalie Portman as well.

Black Swan also feels like a film that perhaps hit a bit too close to home for me...and no, I have never attempted ballet nor was blessed with the art of the dance. 

However, the performing arts can be a very cruel place where you crave to have a moment in the spotlight but might have someone near you who always gets the roles you crave. You get put under a microscope and you may be told you aren't handsome or pretty enough or maybe you are too heavy, this list goes on...

It can become an obsessive process, and I do think the spiral of Portman's character of Nina and her envy of Mila Kunis' Lily is something that a lot of artists can relate to. 

Portman's performance was highly lauded, and it led her to sweeping the awards season with ease. The rest of the ensemble is strong with Kunis doing good work as Lily the rival; Barbara Hershey as Nina's concerned mother; Winona Ryder in her first comeback role as a former ballerina who was forced into retirement; and the imitable Vincent Cassel as the George Balanchine-esque stand in Thomas Leroy.

In terms of final film acts, I would say Black Swan offers up one of the finest in recent memory. All the tension and the bloodshed until Cassel asks Portman what happened:

"I felt it. Perfect. It was perfect".

In that moment, it was a sentiment very well earned. 

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#5 - INCENDIES 

Written & Directed by Denis Villeneuve 

Co-written by Valerie Beaugrand-Champagne

One of the greatest filmmakers working today is Denis Villeneuve. Considering certain filmmakers like Scorsese and Nolan have finally won their elusive Oscars...and god willing, Paul Thomas Anderson won't be far behind them this year...I think we will be seeing a surge of Denis Villeneuve receiving the "Why hasn't he won?!" talk.

In many ways, he reminds me of Spielberg's track record only in the sense that he received two very high-profile Oscar snubs (for The Color Purple and Empire of the Sun) after already being overlooked over for films like E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, Close Encounters, and not even getting nominated for Jaws.

Villeneuve didn't get nominated for Best Director for Dune or its Part Two, which was honestly some of the finest spectacle direction I think we've ever seen on screen. 

The first film of his I saw would've been Incendies, a gripping drama about twin siblings from Canada who make a trip to the Levant in order to uncover her past as the region is under civil war. 

Some of have criticized the film for dipping its toes into melodramatic territory, but I have always considered this a film that simply took a brash approach at showing the horrors of the violence in the Middle East without trying to sugar coat anything.

I wouldn't say it is Villeneuve's best film, but this is a prime example of a film where you see the master behind it coming into their own. I also still think it is an absolute joke that this film lost the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar (now called Best International Film) to In a Better World. Not only that, two films that I have already mentioned (Dogtooth and Biutiful) also lost to In a Better World which is a film that felt a weaker in its approach to trying to tell a darker story.

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#4 - POETRY

Written & Directed by Lee Chang-dong

It is still crazy to me how not a single South Korean film ever received a nomination for International Feature at the Oscars...and I think of that a lot when it comes to Lee Chang-dong as not only is he one of a few Korean filmmakers who consistently turned out ignored work, he has one of the most glaring snubs in that category's recent history...but that's me getting ahead of myself. More on that as we get further into the decade.

This is the second time I have talked about Lee on one of these lists, having called out his film Peppermint Candy as an Honorable Mention for 1999. Poetry is one of his finest works and also one of the best classics to come out of Korean cinema since 2000.

A grandmother named Yang Mi-ja (the late Yoon Jeong-hee) goes to the doctor when she has grave concerns about forgetfulness. After being referred to a specialist, it is determined she is suffering from Alzheimer's. As a way to cope with this diagnosis, she decides to take a poetry class to get her thoughts and feelings on paper.

Mi-ja lives on welfare, but has two jobs caring for an elderly man who had a stroke and her rebellious 16-year-old grandson Jong-wook (Lee David), who has gotten involved with a group of boys who are being pegged for the rape and murder of a teenaged girl.

For all the genre-bending chaos of Bong Joon-ho and the hyper-crazed worlds of Park Chan-wook or the meekly humble Hong Sang-soo, I think there is something so human about the works of Lee Chang-dong. His concepts are often simple but heightened. They don't typically feel crazy, but they hold an intriguing dramatic weight to pull you along. 

With Poetry, he gives such a glorious spotlight to the late Yoon Jeong-hee, who had won a very deserving Best Actress prize from the LA Film Critics that season. It is always fun when Lee tackles themes of putting toxic masculinity to task, but he is often brimming with heart and pathos when he gives a vehicle a female protagonist. 

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#3 - CERTIFIED COPY 

Written & Directed by Abbas Kiarostami

It feels like these lists will never escape Abbas Kiarostami, but the truth is that he had a bit of a slump throughout the 2000s and then gave us his last great film before his death in 2016.

Unlike his other films, Certified Copy steps away from his native Iran to set a film in Tuscany with French actress Juliette Binoche and British actor William Shimell. 

Shimell is a writer named James Miller, who has a book tour stopping off in Tuscany for his new work entitled "Certified Copy", which pushes forth the idea that art authenticity is irrelevant because every reproduction is its own original.

One of the attendees of the event is a French antiques dealer (Binoche) whose name is never given, only being credited as "she". When she has to leave the event early thanks to her 11-year-old son, she is able by chance to arrange a meeting with Miller himself, and they end up spending the day together...though it isn't as bewitching as it might seem. 

The vibe of this film does play into the more naturalistic tone that Kiarostami was known for, but it is as if he was dipping his toes into the style of Roberto Rosellini, but it also has elements of more modern romance films like Before Sunrise and Sunset. 

Our two leads are sublime as well. Shimell has a quiet and sterling restraint, but it is Binoche who steals the show as she so often does. When she won Best Actress at Cannes that year, she took the opportunity in her acceptance speech to call out Jafar Panahi, another Iranian filmmaker who was being held prisoner by the Iranian regime as his works have always challenged their authority. 15 years later, as the head of the Cannes jury, Binoche gave Panahi his long-elusive Palme d'Or win for It Was Just an Accident. 

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#2 - THE SOCIAL NETWORK 

Directed by David Fincher

Written by Aaron Sorkin

Not having The Social Network at #1 is perhaps going to be an eyebrow raiser, but I decided my top 3 placement going with my heart instead of my head this time around. Truth be told, this is a pretty strong top 3, and I think any of them could be justified as a #1 selection.

When The Social Network came out, it was one of those rare films that seemed to be embraced by critics, film buffs, and the general public pretty handily. While at college, even people in the theatre program I was in talked about the film and a lot of them were not as into following film like I was. 

It seemed like a film that was destined not to work: the litigation surrounding the ownership of Facebook between Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), and the Winklevoss twins (...gulp...Armie Hammer). Would it really be THAT compelling?

Well, to be fair, the script simply pops. This might very well be Aaron Sorkin at the peak of his writing powers, and then you have Fincher directing, whom up to that point didn't seem like the obvious choice to tackle the project as he had mostly been known for more volatile and grittier works like Se7en, Fight Club, and Zodiac. 

The two of them made magic though as this became one of the swiftest and most engaging pieces of film that I had seen up to that point. The dialogue crackled, the performances were simply fantastic, and the score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is iconic. They always seem to hit it out of the park and considering this was their first outing working with Fincher, it appeared to be a match made in heaven.

The film was expected by many to be coronated all award season long until, to the surprise of pretty much everyone, The King's Speech snuck in and managed to win Best Picture and Best Director. 

That is a fine film, but there is no way in hell that it deserved to win either of those prizes at the expense of The Social Network, Black Swan, Inception, or the film I will be ranking at #1.

Which film will that be?

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#1 - TOY STORY 3

Directed by Lee Unkrich

Written by Michael Arndt

Story by Unkrich, John Lasseter, & Andrew Stanton

 I wouldn't say it is crazy to rank Toy Story 3 as the best film of 2010, but I will admit that a lot of film people reading this would likely single out The Social Network or Black Swan or even Inception as the bigger achievements of that year.

This isn't the first time I have referenced Toy Story 3 on the blog, but it is one of those films that deserves to have its successes shouted from every rooftop in my book.

When the film was first announced, I rolled my eyes a bit. I have admitted before that I grew to appreciate these films more as an adult than when I was a kid. I think the main theme of this installment, Andy going off to college, made a lot of the emotion hit close to home. More on that in a moment. 

I just wasn't sure a 3rd film was necessary, but then the reviews started coming out and they were positively glowing to the point that it seemed like it surpassed the glory of the first two installments. I went into the film trying to temper my expectations, because I just wasn't sure what to believe.

I will gladly sit here today and say that Toy Story 3 is one of the greatest sequels ever made. It is one of my favorite films of all time. It is practically perfect and hits all of the notes it needs to hit. It would then go on to become only the 3rd animated film to be nominated for Best Picture (and I believe the only film sequel to get nominated without its predecessors doing so). It also remains, as of this writing in 2025, the last animated film to date to achieve that. 

As I stated, Andy is set to go off to college. While the age is a bit convoluted, he was similar in age to me. When the first film was released, I had just turned 7. When this one was released, I was approaching my final year of college.

I really didn't expect the emotional impact this one would have on me. This isn't even getting into the whole plot of the film, which involves Andy's mom accidentally donating all of the toys to a daycare center when they were supposed to just go up into the attic. Oh, and interesting point of note, Andy actually intends to take Woody with him to college as a memento which goes to show with age, he has come around on him in comparison to Buzz Lightyear. 

The whole film is plotted and scripted with such an intriguing story. It also helps they got Michael Arndt to do the script as he was fresh off his Oscar win for the absolutely wonderful Little Miss Sunshine.

However, the addition of Lotso the Bear (voiced by the late great Ned Beatty) as the villain was a stroke of genius with his cuddly appearance and aroma (Rex: "And he smells like strawberries!!"). His final act of sending the toys to burn in the incinerator is pure evil, but what most people remember about watching that scene for the first time was trying to fathom how these toys would survive the predicament.

The setup of the little aliens and the use of a massive claw as a Deus ex machina (and a callback to the original film) was one of the best and most gratifying "saved from disaster" moments I have ever seen in a film. In the screening I saw, it got the loudest gasps, laughs, and then a relieved round of applause. It has got to be one of the best examples of audience response and comradery that I have been a part of.

And that ending? When Andy gives all of his toys to young Bonnie and plays with them one last time, I started to get misty. Then - Andy drives away and the score swells and Woody says "So long, partner"...I broke down into sobs and so did several other people around me: men, women, children. I was still crying when I got in the car to go home!

I have watched Toy Story 3 maybe seven more times in the years since, and EVERY SINGLE TIME, the ending makes me cry. Only a small handful of films have elicited tears or made me feel misty, Toy Story 3 is the only one I can think of that has routinely made me cry every single time. 

That has to count for something.

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FINAL THOUGHTS:

2010 is a small but pretty mighty list. A lot of film fans still think very highly of 2010, and I will have to agree that we do have some strong heavy hitters in this group. I knew 2010 was a good year, but this turned out to be a bit more of a pleasant surprise. I do like when that happens as I go through making these lists. 

As I mentioned before though, I am not really sure I think too strongly about the years to come. 2011 does have some strong efforts, but it and 2012 were years where I ended up struggling to make a top 10 because I wasn't sure if I wanted to include a certain film that high. 

Not a vote of confidence, I will admit...but there are still some films from those years I am very much looking forward to talking about, so please be on the lookout for those soon!