My Favorite Movies of 2010

For a wanna be movie buff I don't get to the theater nearly as often as I should. I much prefer waiting for a film to hit the home video market where I can watch it in peace. This means making a true top ten list of the best films of the year probably isn't as well informed as it should be. I really only see movies in theater's that I'm almost positive I'll really like. Unless they were released theatrically early in the year and have come out on video there's a good chance I haven't seen them. I did have my usual late December theater rush so a lot of recent releases I have seen.

For reasons of full disclosure here is a partial list of films I am interested in seeing that I haven't yet. Some of these may warrant top ten consideration after I do see them but I'm sure most would not:

127 Hours
Blue Valentine
Biutiful
Despicable Me
Dogtooth (possibly considered 2009)
Due Date
Fair Game
Get Low
Hereafter
The Illusionist
Jack Goes Boating
Let Me In
Mother
The Next Three Days
The Other Guys
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale
Salt
Secretariat
Somewhere
Stone
Tangled
The Tillman Story
Tron Legacy
Unstoppable
Waiting For "Superman"

Now that that's out of the way, here are some quick thoughts on a bunch of movies I liked but aren't in my top ten. In alphabetical order they are available after the jump.

The Best Blu-Ray's of 2010

Lots of great stuff came out on Blu-ray this year. In addition to some great new releases, a lot of older films made their debut on the format in 2010 with excellent transfers. There is far too much stuff worth writing about for a measly top ten list to suffice so while I'll do the fun list thing, there are also a bunch of side categories that all lack remotely creative titles.

When ranking blu-rays, the categories I use (in order of importance) are:
1. The movie itself.
2. The video transfer.
3. The audio track.
4. The bonus features.

I also didn't include any multiple disc box sets (The Alien Anthology, The Back to the Future Box Set) or TV shows (The Pacific, Lost: Season 6) because I didn't get to view most of them due to a lack of funding.

EDIT: I completely forgot to include Black Dynamite and that is a travesty. I've added it in the Honorable mentions in it's own category.

My Favorite Albums of 2010 (and Other Yearly Musings)

2010 was a pretty awesome year for music. There is a lot of really good stuff to cover and obviously it's difficult to narrow things down to a standard top 10 list, so I won't. Here are some albums I listened to and my thoughts on them plus a top 25 list of my favorite records released in 2010. I'm sure I missed out on listening to a lot of great stuff and there are at least 20 more albums that I thought about including but didn't for one reason or another. On a side note, it's quite obvious that americana/roots rock has become my favorite genre of music in the last few years and the list tends to reflect that.

Restrepo (2010)

I'm writing this literally minutes after finishing my viewing of Restrepo so it's a little odd to proclaim a movie to be unforgettable at this point but that's what I'm doing. I have never seen a film that puts the viewer so into the middle of a war zone with actual, first hand footage. This is a movie that quite simply, everyone must see.

Restrepo follows the Second Platoon, B Company, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment (airborne) of the 103rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley for a year. The film is named after an outpost the soldiers defend which is in turn named after PFC Juan, S Restrepo who was killed in action. These soldiers took fire literally every day and the Korengal Valley was dubbed "The Valley of Death" by U.S. forces.

I'm not going into too many specific reasons and example of why the film is so amazing and memorable but after people view it for themselves, I'm positive they'll have the same reaction I did. The film is loosely structured and there isn't an overriding narrative. It just shows honestly and accurately what these men went through. There are a large number of face to face interviews that are just as powerful as the filmed footage. Restrepo also, and unlike almost every single documentary that comes out today, doesn't have a political angle. The filmmakers (journalist Sebastian Junger, and photographer Tim Hetherington) don't push a specific point of view. They keep themselves entirely out of the film and let the audience take in what was happened and make judgments for themselves.

I encourage everyone to watch Restrepo as soon as possible. If you have a Netflix account, it's streaming there and if you don't it is well worth your time to acquire a copy. I don't know if this film will win the Oscar for best documentary, due it's lack of a strong narrative, but I doubt you'll find a more honest or moving documentary in this years crop.

Rating: 5/5

Ranking the Albums: The Ike Reilly Version

Ike Reilly is my favorite artist making music today. I love every single one of these albums so the ones that rank at the bottom are still better than 90% of music in the world to me. If you're unfamiliar with his work the easiest (and most generic) description I can give him is a "Rock and Roll, Bob Dylan." That doesn't really do justice to all of what Ike does, as he rocks harder than Dylan ever did, but it's a valid comparison (especially in the way sly humor seeps into the songs). Most of his music is pure styled rock with folk and punk influences along with a few nods to hip-hop along the way. The real secret to Ike's music lies in his lyrics. I've listened to some of his songs what seems like a million times. There are still lines that I didn't notice before that will crack me up or hit me as being much more poignant that what I had realized. Unfortunately the things that make Ike's music so great are also likely the things that hold him back from finding a wider audience. His music just too lyrically dense and unfortunately smart, while the styles he writes in don't really have a natural radio outlet. While that may suck for Ike's pocketbook it does make being an Ike Reilly fan a fun little secret for everyone else.

As an aside, some of the albums are billed to Ike solo and some are credited to his full band, The Ike Reilly Assassination. for the purposes of this entry I will not be distinguishing between them.