Top 20 Films of 2010

To coincide with the 2010: Year in Review edition of The Daily Gamecock, here are my choices for the 20 best movies of 2010.

The best films of 2010 encouraged us to see the world through our dreams and our mythologies, to escape inside our minds, to think about the power of ideas and the changing shape of geo-political and cultural landscapes.

In watching over 50 films from 2010, I was continually struck by how much honesty, how much inventiveness, how much our filmmakers are willing to make us think about the medium itself and how technology matters for our society. But more than that, this is really a year for the new vanguard. As much as seasoned filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Roman Polanski succeeded in producing provocative, ethereal works, this is really a moment for people like David Fincher, Darren Aronofsky, and David O. Russell – filmmakers who bring their obsessions and quirks to the screen. With an exotic blend of new voices, veterans, and our next great generation of American directors reaching what feels like a brand new echelon in nuance, control and vision, 2010 was nothing but rewarding.

We went there to escape, but we discovered stimulation in so much projected at us.

1. The Social Network (dir. David Fincher)

New media played as grand tragedy, richly plotted and unsympathetic in tone. Its unwillingness to produce answers about the merits of its characters and their business (the seemingly all-powerful Facebook) instead forces us to confront our own perceptions of the Internet. "We lived on farms, we lived in cities, and now, we are going to live on the Internet!"

2. Black Swan (dir. Darren Aronofsky)

Natalie Portman is as overwhelming as the oppressive close-ups in this psychological thriller masquerading as a ballet drama. Film's use of mirrors create a world where people can seem to exist infinitely and not at all, its unstable creation and destruction of reality mirror its protagonist's mental descent. A nightmare of a horror movie.

3. Inception (dir. Christopher Nolan)

Bends the mind while its special effects bend cities and hallways. In flattening out "surreal imagery" into cinematic convention and a variety of genres, Nolan actually purports that the cinema has become our dreams, and we live out our dreams through the cinema. A profound way of hijacking ideas, indeed.

4. Kick-Ass (dir. Matthew Vaugn)

Puts the violence and vigilantism of the superhero film front and center, forcing us to engage our attraction to the idea of masked men attacking criminals only to repulse us seconds later with the intensity and level of violence. A shocking act of putting the genre's machinations on display.

5. Shutter Island (dir. Martin Scorsese)

Haunted houses, mad scientists, wild conspiracies, decadent visuals and eccentric lighting -- it's all running rampant in Scorsese's mad homage to the 1950s, where ideological conflicts butt heads and America's guilt over the Holocaust acts as a means to destroy the image of the nuclear family. Our society runs deep with violence, and our dreams become our reality.

6. The Ghost Writer (dir. Roman Polanski)

Political intrigue and misdirecting mystery are only the surface value of Polanski's accomplished thriller, which excels most at creating an atmosphere of dread and paranoia, where each carefully crafted shot -- all the way to the devastating finale -- only add to an increasing sense of power running violently amok.

7. Winter's Bone (dir. Debra Granik)

The Ozarks become a sight not for poverty to be put on full display, but for myths and stories to be bred. As much as this little thriller is about a family's survival, it's also about systems of transmission, about the develop of culture and formalities. Rituals take on utmost importance, and Jennifer Lawrence's fearless protagonist not only confronts her family's codes of living, she challenges it to try and break it.

8. True Grit (dir. Joel and Ethan Coen)

Its vistas and its acute eye and ear for costume and language make it enjoyable as a straightforward Western, but the real power comes from the Coens' desire to confront the mythic status of the West, to not so much deconstruct it as think about how myths are created in a critical fashion, to help us understand what constitutes memory and how history is formed.

9. Dogtooth (dir. Giorgos Lanthimos)

It's a nightmare of a film, like an unsettling cocktail of Michael Haneke, Lars von Trier, and Lanthimos's own sensibilities. Following a family oppressed and manipulated into staying in their home, it's a quiet, deliberate look at how repression creates sexual and violent rebellion through extreme means.

10. Somewhere (dir. Sofia Coppola)

Coppola's films are all like small poems, gently watching events unfold without ascribing greater importance. "Somewhere" is about redemption, love, and family, but it makes no grand claims about these themes; rather, it follows tired film star Johnny Marco's transient existence as he, and we, wish for something more.

11. The Fighter (dir. David O. Russell)

A jazz riff of a boxing movie that uses Mark Wahlberg's Mickey Ward as a blank slate where others try to graft their divergent aims. Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Melissa Leo and Amy Adams are all stunning, as the film embraces the flaws of its characters and questions how they create a workable life through boxing, and how violence permeates lives in deep ways.

12. I'm Still Here (dir. Casey Affleck)

Cuts a deep vein into the idea of "celebrity." A piece of performance art that trips over so many wires, pushing out into the very culture it's wanting to dissect, making "Joaquin Phoenix" a total construction so hell-bent on destroying himself we can only watch with sick amusement, dying to see how others will react.

13. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (dir. Edgar Wright)

A vibrant, energetic collision of film, video game and comic book conventions, where rapid cutting and surreal imagery create a playground world where life's anxieties are played out through a media-saturated existence.

14. The King's Speech (dir. Tom Hooper)

Hooper's unique visual style and historical sensibilities bring wit, elegance and sophistication to a film that could have otherwise felt trite and simplistic. Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush are terrific, but its best stroke is in how invested it is in sound technology, how it thinks about what the microphone can do for the state.

15. Toy Story 3 (dir. Lee Unkrich)

A bittersweet love note to growing up, letting go, and never forgetting to let the imagination run wild.

16. Rabbit Hole (dir. John Cameron Mitchell)

Grief becomes a system for working out deeper issues within the family, a means of facing destruction and choosing to grow.

17. Mother (dir. Bong Joon-ho)

An elaborate, convoluted mystery about perception and difference with a ferocious central performance and a director with a keen eye for plotting and pacing.

18. Exit Through the Gift Shop (dir. Banksy)

Is it satirizing street art? Is it an honest presentation? Is it even real, or is it just a big hoax? It's everything and nothing; a Molotov cocktail of a movie.

19. I Am Love (dir. Luca Guadagnino)

The dilemmas and constrictions of the Italian bourgeoisie are confronted through intense passion and a yearning for independence, featuring beautiful cinematography and a powerhouse Tilda Swinton.

20. The American (dir. Anton Corbijn)

The hitman, a man of action, is forced to become a man of inaction, patiently waiting and obsessively building a gun for his "one last job." A film obsessed with looking at and muting any narrative action.