Feb 14, 2010

Why I'm looking forward to 2010

I am reluctantly coming to the conclusion that the 2000s sucked. I'm loath to make such a sweeping generalisation, because sweeping generalisations are statistically uncool, as are nostalgics, elegists, heritage nuts and others singers of the cinematic blues. But all the evidence seems to point to a dull burnish of non-exceptionalism to the last ten years at the movies. First, the difficulty I had in coming up with Top Ten films of the Decade, then my realisation that the Oscars had a tough time of it too; throw in the slow soul-siphon of the Bush years and I am more than happy to throw the 2000s under the bus. By contrast, the nineties emerge as one of the great decades in filmmaking, worthy of placement alongside the seventies and the fifties, which in turn raises my hopes for the next decade. Cinematic goodness appears to come in bi-decade bursts, one up, one down. Come on, 2010s. Take me. I'm ready. Post haste with the following please:—
— Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan, with Natalie Portman as a ballet dancer who may be imagining her nemesis
— David Fincher's The Social Network, from an Aaron Sorkin script with Justin Timberlake
— Anton Corbijn's The American, with George Clooney as a Local-Heroish assassin in small-town Italy
— Doug Liman's Fair Game, the Valerie Plame story with Sean Penn and Naomi Watts
— the Coen Brothers True Grit with Jeff Bridges in the Rooster Coburn role
— Sofia Coppola's Somewhere, with Steven Dorff and Elle Fanning
James Mangold's Knight And Day with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz
— David Gordon Green
's Your Highness, with James Franco, Natalie Portman and Zooey Deschanel
— Alexander Payne's The Descendents starring George Clooney as a lawyer on the road with his two daughters
Chloe, Atom Egoyan's thriller with Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore and Amanda Seyfried
Peter Weir's The Way Back, escape from a Siberian labor camp with Ed Harris and Colin Farrell
— Aaron Schneider's Get Low, with Robert Duvall and Bill Murray
— Steven Soderbergh's female martial-arts thriller
Knockout
— Lisa Chodolenko's The Kids Are Alright with Annette Bening, Mark Ruffalo, about same sex marriage
— Nicole Holofcener's Please Give with Amanda Peet and Rebecca Hall
— Debra Granik's Sundance winner Winter's Bone
Departed writer Bill Monaghan's London Boulevard

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