Russell’s 2010 Movie Wrap Up

What am I waiting for?!

The Great

• Toy Story 3
• Inception
• The Book of Eli
• The Social Network — A remarkable piece of work.  Jesse Eisenberg is fantastic, and Justin Timberlake is surprisingly good at being smarmy.  Kudos also to David Fincher for dialing down the Fincher.
• Tron: Legacy — Does exactly what I wanted: it updates and surpasses the look and feel (and story) of the original 1982 film without tossing out the mythology.  And the 3D for this one looked gorgeous.
  
• Predators — A more than worthy follow up to the original film, and way better than that thing with Danny Glover or either of the alien crossover films.  Adrian Brody as a bad ass?  Who knew?
  
• Kick-Ass — I can't believe I didn't already review this.  This is to underground comics what The Dark Knight is to mainstream.  Unbelievably violent and funny.
  
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
• Countdown to Zero

The Good

• Iron Man 2
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1
• The Karate Kid
• Shutter Island — Nifty little psychological drama.  Nice to see Scorsese still has it.
  
• The Other Guys
• Salt
• Robin Hood
• Date Night
• Resident Evil: Afterlife
• Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps
• Black Swan — Creepy!  I realize marrying ballet and body horror is kind of obvious, but Aronofsky does it with style!  Best performance I've ever seen from Natalie Portman.
• True Grit — Nice visuals and solid performances of an essentially one-note revenge story.  But a much more enjoyable Coen Brothers western than No Country for Old Men.
• Machete

The Okay

• The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
• Clash of the Titans
• The Expendables
  
• Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
  
• Red — Gotta love old people kicking young punks' asses.
  
• Unstoppable — Wanna bet they stop the train?
  
• The A-Team
• The Wolf Man —Benicio del Toro and Anthony Hopkins are good, but the story is a little boring.
  
• Daybreakers
• Repo Men — The premise alone is worth watching the film.  If you're not squeamish.
  
• Let Me In — Liked it until the ending.  Predictable.
  

The Meh

• Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief — What if Harry Potter and Bella Swan had an illegitimate child… who kind of sucked…
  
• Knight and Day — Oh, Tom, you're better than this.  So are you, Cameron.
  
• Legion — What's fascinating is that the character moments are better than the action sequences.  But not by much.
  
• From Paris with Love — Honestly, I don't remember anything about this movie.  So there's that.
  

The Terrible

• Skyline
• Piranha 3D