Tuesday, January 5, 2010

New year's tradition by virtue of last year's movies

For the past couple of years, I've taken David Edelstein's top 10 Movie's of the year going out list (in this case top 13) and watched each movie. David Edelstein is the film critic for the NPR program, Fresh Air and New York Magazine. . Edelstein always has a interesting commentary on how what's happening in society mirrors itself in the films we make and watch. For example, he said at the end of the last decade, the movie, the Matrix (1999) was all about that our reality was not real, and that we must break through an illusionary life to something that is tactile and real; versus, the new movie, Avatar where the shift is that we can go into a make-believe fantasy world to fulfill potential and rewrite history. It's like, Edelstein says, "We hunger for our virtual selves to take on the final frontier."

Here's Edelstein's list:
1. Summer Hours
2. Everlasting Moments
3. Brothers
4. The Fantastic Mr. Fox
5. Tyson
6. A Serious Man
7. Coraline
8. In the Loop
9. Food, Inc.
10. The Hurt Locker
11. Of Time and the City
12. Where the Wild Things Are
13. Avatar

Have you seen any of these? I just watched Edelstein's number one movie, Summer Hours. I watched it on Netflix instant movies. Exceptional. A.O. Scott of the New York Times says that Summer Hours is "Quietly Ravishing". He continues, "...it's a coherent and complex exploration of the current shape of the world." Edelstein remarks that it deals beautifully by exploring the losses we suffer as we move toward becoming a more global community.

I found two other top 10 lists, both from gentleman who write for the New York Times, A. O. Scott and Manohla Dargis. Click on their names to see their lists.
I'll keep this blog updated as I watch ;-).

2 comments:

C. Beth said...

Will have to add the first to our Netflix instant queue! Thanks! No, haven't seen any of them, but I don't see a ton of movies these days.

Laurel said...

I believe these are in release order, not necessarily best to less best order.