2010 DYLA Anniversary Awards
Celebrating the best movies on the year of their 10th anniversary
It’s hard to believe it’s been a full decade since the year of Inception, The Social Network, Toy Story 3 and so many other indelible movies. 2010 was a fascinating year of cinema. Chapters in the Harry Potter and Twilight franchises dominated the box office along with Toy Story 3, Alice in Wonderland, and Iron Man 2. The King’s Speech robbed The Social Network at the Academy Awards, while Colin Firth (The King’s Speech) and Natalie Portman (Black Swan) took home lead acting Oscars.
This was a time right before comic book movies truly took over theaters and before Star Wars returned with a new slate of movies later in the decade. It was a year where smaller films were able to find some time in the spotlight, like when the indie drama Winter’s Bone got nominated for Best Picture.
To remember the movies of 2010 around their 10th anniversary, we are handing out some awards for the best of what that year had to offer. We recognized eight movies released in 2010 to remind you how last decade got off to such a great start at the movies. (Note: not all of these are on streaming services, but if they are we made sure to include where you can find them.)
Best Drama
Billy: Winter’s Bone (streaming on HBO)
The Social Network is the best drama from this year, but it has been spoken about enough. Winter’s Bone brings us the 2010’s most bankable actress and a director that seems to send young actresses into stardom with each of her movies. Jennifer Lawrence stars as Ree Dolly who is trying to find her estranged father. Director Debra Granik creates tension without showing much that overtly creates it. This movie is not violent or vulgar, but is bleak and gray. The winter Missouri setting helps with that. The atmosphere that is created gives Lawrence an opportunity to show something she doesn’t seem to be in real life. In real life she is bubbly, loud, and unpredictable. In this she is meek and MacGyver-like, finding a solution to survive with the things she is given. Granik and Lawrence are a combo I hope team up again, but if this is the only collaboration it is more than a worthy effort. Winter’s Bone will go down as a classic film because of the quality, but also because of the status it holds for introducing one of the world’s biggest stars.
Best Comedy
Drew: Easy A
Easy A took a novel that students pretend to read and spun it into a clever high school comedy, making Emma Stone a star in the process. Inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, this very funny film reimagines Hester Prynne as teenager Olive (Stone), a straight-laced student that takes advantage of false rumors that she sleeps around in order to make money and become more popular. After establishing herself as a scene-stealing supporting actress in Superbad and Zombieland, Stone was nothing short of captivating in her first lead role. If you were buying stock in actors back in 2010, you would’ve been smart to spend it all on Emma Stone after Easy A.
Best Action Film
Billy: Unstoppable (streaming on HBO)
Unstoppable is a movie that I saw at the time and thoroughly enjoyed, but forgot about. It wasn’t until Quentin Tarantino jumped on The Rewatchables podcast singing its praise. There is not a more entertaining simple movie to come out this year. It seems like a lot of prerequisite to show how this movie works, but it works for the most obvious reasons. That’s what makes it borderline great. Denzel and Chris Pine star as the two leads. Denzel being the grizzled veteran and Pine being the young buck tracking down a runaway train. Director Tony Scott breathes life into this simple tale by letting the actors shine and making the runaway train feel like a dinosaur from Jurassic Park.
Best Animated Film
Drew: Toy Story 3 (streaming on Disney Plus)
“What’s the best Toy Story movie?” will generate endless debate, but I’m going with the third installment and feeling good about that choice. Toy Story 3 has everything you want in an animated kids movie: humor, adventure, nostalgia, and a bottomless well of emotion. As the toys try to escape a daycare, there is a sense of real danger and a fairly shocking brush with fiery annihilation. Of course, it’s also a fun good time with all of your old pals that also happens to feature the most tear-inducing finale of any Pixar movie.
Toy Story 3 won the box office in 2010, earning $415 million dollars domestically. The film also grabbed five Oscar nominations that year (including Best Picture), a major rarity for an animated movie.
Best Blockbuster (over $100 million domestic box office)
Billy: Inception (streaming on Amazon Prime)
Not to give away next week’s episode, but this might be a repeat. Inception is Christopher Nolan’s dream blockbuster that is expository-filled, but uses all that explanation to tap into our intrigue of the dream world. Through visual mastery and efficient direction the audience is taken on a ride that is hardly ever seen in modern day action movies. The dream world normally seems out of reach, but Inception makes it feel real, creating a visceral experience that is easy to come back to.
Best Low-Budget Film (under $15 million budget)
Drew: Animal Kingdom
This Australian crime drama will knock your socks off. Based on a real-life Melbourne crime family, Animal Kingdom is a dark and thrilling peek at a ruthless matriarch and her violent kin. With only a $5 million budget, filmmaker David Michod ratchets up the suspense with the help of some of the finest Aussie actors around, including Guy Pearce, Ben Mendelsohn, Joel Edgerton, and Jacki Weaver, who was Oscar-nominated for her work.
Best Foreign-Language Film
Billy: Incendies
Denis Villeneuve is one of our greatest living directors and one of his first directorial efforts was given its due by being nominated for Best Foreign-Language Film at the Oscars. From the beginning there is a family drama that is entangled in uncertainty. The journey follows twins traveling to the Middle East in search of clarity. While they get deeper the clarity comes, but the danger follows. Villeneuve shows how masterful he can be with Incendies and the ride is an interesting open to the path he sent himself on for the next decade.
Best Documentary
Drew: Exit Through the Gift Shop
Street artist Banksy has pulled off many impressive stunts throughout his career, but none may top Exit Through the Gift Shop, his wildly engaging and possibly hoax-filled 2010 documentary. What begins as a semi-conventional introduction to the realm of underground street art morphs into something altogether more exciting, strange, and unforgettable. Banksy successfully draws you into the art world before pulling the rug out from under you, causing the viewer to question it all. I promise you haven’t seen a documentary like this before.
Links
Both Ben Affleck and Michael Keaton will be reprising their role as Batman in the upcoming DC movie The Flash. Apparently something to do with alternate timelines.
Olivia Wilde has signed on to direct a potential Spider-Woman Marvel movie. The actress and Booksmart director has become one of the most in-demand people in Hollywood lately.
New movie trailers are starting to come out again as theaters slowly reopen. We got our first look at Death on the Nile, based on the Agatha Christie novel. The Kenneth Branagh-directed murder mystery stars Gal Gadot, Armie Hammer, and Annette Bening.