Home | About Mark | Work | Trips | Travel |> Entertainment <| Photos | Seattle | Site Map

Appearances | Celebrities |> Films <| Hollywood | Music | Theatre | TV | Other Links

I saw these movies in 2010, ranked in descending order:

A Town Called Panic (****-).  A hilarious off-the-wall Belgian stop-action animated film that tells the story of Cowboy, Indian and Horse, who live in a rural area with a farm across the street, a local music school and a town policeman.  Cowboy and Indian discover that they forgot that it was Horse's birthday.  But when their order for 50 bricks to build Horse a barbeque mistakenly leads to the delivery of 50 million bricks, things fall into a rather bizarre bit of chaos.  Although I'd like to say more to convey just how much fun this movie is, I wouldn't want to take anything away from experiencing it.  Avatar may have the big budget animation, but I'd rather have great characters and a great story.  (in French)

Spider (****- Short).  An Aussie bloke is on the outs with his girlfriend, so when they stop to gas up the car, he runs inside to get her a makeup gift - and something for a fun practical joke.  But practical jokes sometimes have a way of backfiring.  (Seen in combination with The Square, which was made by the same guy.)

The Square (****-).  A hairdresser discovers that her husband has stashed a large bag full of cash, so she plots with her married lover to steal the cash and finally make the escape that he's been promising her.  Except that in film noir, things never go as planned, and that was especially true for this couple - and for just about everyone (including their dogs) caught up in their mess.  In spite of having all the common noir elements, the story was not predictable, and I didn't expect the ending at all.  A fun, dark, twisted movie.

Up In The Air (****-).  A for-hire corporate layoff specialist lives his life on the move as he flies from one site to another to do his job.  Assigned to take a young hire on the road with him to help her learn the ropes of the business helps him to become a little more grounded.  A emerging romance with another road warrior provides its own set of consequences.

Mother (***+).  An overprotective mother of a slow son does whatever it takes to prove that her son is innocent after he is convicted of killing a local school girl.  A 4-star ending with a twist makes the movie well-worth seeing, but only a 3-star middle pulled my rating down a bit.  (in Korean)

The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus (***+).  A deal with the Devil gives a man eternal life.  He goes through the centuries as a storyteller with a magic mirror that serves as a portal into a world of imagination where visitors are confronted with choices of good and evil.  His life is complicated when a second deal promises the Devil the soul of his daughter on her 16th birthday.  The battle for her daughter takes place in the world through the mirror.

Alice in Wonderland (***+ 3D).  You can't go wrong when Tim Burton and Johnny Depp team up on a movie version of this classic.  Great characters, terrific vision, fun visuals, and the best supporting role for a pig.  But I was not enamored enough with the story to give this four stars.

Terribly Happy (***+).  After some trouble at home, a Copenhagen police officer is assigned duty in an isolated village where the locals apply their own justice, making problems disappear in a nearby bog.  When the officer gets entangled in a wife abuse case, he upsets their traditions.  (in Danish)

Broken Embraces (***+).  The soap opera story of a director/writer who relates the complicated set of relationships that surrounded the events that led to the loss of his eyesight to a caretaker who is tied to those relationship.  It is a very soapy Pedro Almodovar tale.  I enjoyed the characters and the twisted plot, but I started getting a tad bored with it towards the end.  I'm not sure where I would have trimmed 20 minutes from the tale, but that would have helped.  (in Spanish)

A Single Man (*** GG).  In the early sixties gay couples existed but most had to be severely closeted.  When the partner of one man dies, his grief must also remain in the closet, becoming a powder keg behind the straight face he must wear.

Shutter Island (***).  A pair of federal investigators show up at a hospital for the criminally insane on the remote Shutter Island to investigate the mysterious disappearance of one of the patients.  But the doctors and staff are vaguely uncooperative, suggesting that something else is amiss.  I'll leave my description at that because a review I saw weakened my viewing experience.  Expertly filmed, and for a change I saw the character that Leonardo DiCaprio played instead of the actor, but all in all not as suspenseful as I would have hoped.

Sherlock Holmes (***).  Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson investigate a case in London.  A decent enough movie, and I generally like director Guy Ritchie's work, but in this cross between the hero of the literature and Ritchie's style ended up being more style than substance.  The mystery in many ways seemed to be almost inconsequential to the film.

A Girl On The Train (***-).  An aimless young French woman gets involved in a relationship with a young man who is ultimately busted for a drug-related crime.  She decides to fake an anti-Semitic attack on herself, not appreciating the furor that such a claim would provoke in the media.  It was made by one of my favorite directors, André Téchiné, so I saw this as more of a character study than as a story about the attack itself.  But I never felt sympathetic to the young woman.  (in French)

Nine (***-).  A film based on the Broadway musical of the same name, and made by the guy who successfully brought Chicago to the big screen.  Except the story about a fading movie director and the women in his life didn't really work.  I guess that I didn't find the story of a womanizer to be very interesting, even with the impressive set of women cast here.  And that said, I was also distracted by what struck me as more than a few similarities with the much better movie All That Jazz.

2010 movie counts:

Back to top

Year 2009 Movies Seen and Reviewed

Like 2008, only four of the movies I saw in 2009 made it into the Box Office Top 100 rankings.  But whereas three of last year's four made it into the Top 12, the top grossing movie I saw in 2009 - Paranormal Activity - only made it to #29.  However, there are a few late 2009 releases that I hope to catch in 2010.

I saw these movies in 2009, ranked in descending order:

Sin Nombre (****-).  A member of a Mexican gang brings a young boy into the gang as he himself finds that his own heart isn't in it.  A Central American girl, her father and uncle are riding train tops north, hoping to make it to the U.S., where her father has a new wife and family.  When a gang attempt to rob those on the train of what little they have, the gang member changes sides and decides to escape to the north as well, befriending the girl whose life he saved.  But the gang is well-connected in the towns along the railroad and attempts to kill him before he reaches the Rio Grande.  This is one of those rare movies that really brings me into a world that is unlike anything that I will ever experience.  (in Spanish)

Frost/Nixon (****-).  The story of the events leading up to and surrounding David Frost's interviews with Richard Nixon after the president's Watergate-related resignation.  

Make the Yuletide Gay (****- GG).  He's out!  He's proud!  He's gay!  At least on campus.  But when he heads home to his Wisconsin family for the holidays, he straightens up his look and heads back into the closet.  Then his boyfriend shows up.  Will he work up the nerve to come out to his parents?  And how will they react?  Okay, so his folks are perhaps a bit too goofy, and some of the jokes we can see coming a mile away, but the cast was appealing, there were many laugh-out-loud moments, two big pay-offs, and the central story was plausible.  Like a lot of feature-length gay-themed movies the low budget was apparent, and southern California is a poor stand-in for Wisconsin in December.  But the filmmaker avoided a lot of common mistakes in such movies (no cramming every idea they ever had into one movie, no gratuitous nudity, no distracting pointless side plots, no trying to fit in every stereotype of the rainbow into an assortment of characters).  It's a very funny, warm-hearted coming out story.

Doubt (****-).  I went to see this for the actors - Meryl Streep and Phillip Seymour Hoffman - as much as anything.  A traditional nun does not agree with the approach a new parish priest brings to the church and to its associated parochial school in the early 1960s.  His attention to and actions involving one of the male students, the school's only black student, catch her eye, even though there is no specific evidence of any wrongdoing.  She acts on her concerns, but is her response looking out for the welfare of the boy, or is it a means to push back against a priest with whom she does not agree?  The movie had the feel of a play, and the performances were outstanding.  The movie captivated me, at least until they needed to figure out how to wrap things up.  As an indie film lover, I have a great appreciation for movies that don't end neatly, and this one certainly doesn't.  But not ending neatly doesn't mean not ending well, and I just didn't care much for the way this one ended.  I may end up rethinking my rating slightly.

Patrik 1.5 (***+ GG).  A gay professional couple in Sweden tries to adopt a baby.  But a typo on one form has them expecting a 1.5 year old child rather than the 15 year old homophobic, crime-committing teenager who shows up.  This severely strains the relationship between the men, but one of them is willing to give the boy a chance.  (in Swedish)

In The Loop (***+).  Government officials who support the U.S. president and British prime minister in foreign policy and defense comically spar as they push the debate around how their leaders should respond to a rogue Middle Eastern country.

Sombrero (***+ GG Short).  This could be seen as just another blind date-mistaken identity meet up in a restaurant film short, but it had a nice twist and likable characters all around.

The Island (***+ GG Short).  A gay film maker from northern Alberta imagines what that island would be like where some homophobes would like to send all gay people so that they could give each other AIDS (a once common threat/wish thrown into gay rights threads).  Told through animation that pops up around him as he walks through the barren snow-covered Great White North.

City of Borders (***+ GG).  A documentary about gay life in Jerusalem, centered on its lone gay bar and some of its patrons, both Palestinian and Jew.  I visit a lot of gay bars when I travel, and I've been taken by how similar so many of them are in often culturally different areas.  Here the cultural differences impact the bar more than I've seen anywhere in my travels.  (in a mix of languages)

Waltz with Bashir (***+).  A veteran of Israel's invasion of Lebanon can't remember his involvement in the war, so he sets off to find those who served with him in order to help him remember and understand why he blocked it out.  Told with an unusual animated style.  (in Hebrew)

Revolutionary Road (***+).  A young NYC couple marries and settles into 1950s suburban life because that was what was expected.  Except the wife, much like me in Springboro, discovers that it is a really poor fit.  Although her husband says he's willing to break with the situation, a job offer promises to turn him into a company man.  Being trapped by expectations is still being trapped.

Dirty Magazines (***+ GG Short).  A teenage boy's stash of gay men's magazines is discovered when his mom was surprising him with a new bed for his 16th birthday.  There was a nice mix of laughs and serious family drama with a touch of fantasy.

Paranormal Activity (***+).  A young couple suspects that their new home is haunted, so the man gets a camera in an attempt to record events.  It is indeed haunted, apparently by a demon that is somehow attached to the woman.  This low-budget but effective movie is basically the "found footage" from the man's camera, a la The Blair Witch Project.  Because much of the movie is footage from the camera mounted in position as the couple sleeps, it creates its suspense not with gore but with a shadow here, a sound there, much of which taking place just out of range from what we can see.  Blair is the obvious comparison point, but Blair mostly struck me as silly in no small part because I'm at home in the woods, and its characters just came across as mouthy and stupid.  The couple in Paranormal were generally much more believable, other than the camera would have been running way too much for real life - an obvious necessity for a "found footage" film to tell a complete story, but utterly unrealistic otherwise.

A Serious Man (***+).  A Jewish professor lives his mundane life in Midwestern suburbia only to have it fall apart in one incident after another.  The movie doesn't so much end as it stops, leaving us hanging as two more incidents are on their way.  It's a dark comedy by the Coen Brothers, who see Midwestern suburbia a bit differently than most people do.

The Paranoids (***+).  A paranoid young man with show business (script writing) aspirations makes ends meet as a costumed entertainer at children's birthday parties.  His mentor/antagonist heads out of town, leaving his girlfriend in the care of the man.  She manages to start bringing him back to a real life.  Although it more or less just ends - following the advice of a scriptwriter in the movie itself, I noticed - I saw the movie as an interesting slice of life picture.  (in Spanish)

B******* Lickin' (***+ GG Short).  You're going to kiss me with that mouth?  After where it's been?  A couple women confront those questions.

Revelations (***+ GG Short).  The wife of an anti-gay minister makes a film explaining why she participates in her husband's campaigns against gays.  But it was actually satire, and funny satire at that.

Non-Love Song (*** GG Short).  Best friends are about to leave for different colleges.  Whenever one of them tries to express his friendship (affection? love? we never learn for sure), the other dismisses it as sounding kind of gay.  Because it played at a gay film festival, the suggestion is that the one guy feels a "secret longing".  But it could also be a look at how difficult it can be for straight males to verbalize their feelings for one another. 

The International (***).  An Interpol investigator and NYC cop investigate crimes associated with a major international bank that is moving into arms sales.  Just good enough to be an acceptable time-filler, but not as complex, suspenseful or action-filled as the really good movies in this genre are.

Slumdog Millionaire (***).  With the all the awards that this movie got, capped by the Oscar for Best Picture, some might suspect that my rating might have been due to disappointment resulting from excessively high expectations.  But I really had a hard time buying the "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" premise that drove the story.  It made the "rise from the slums" story seem too far-fetched in spite of how engaging the young actors were.  My favorite movie of 2005 - Innocent Voices - told the story of another slum child raised in an unfamiliar culture, but did so in a much more interesting way.

The Reader (***).  In post-war Germany, an illiterate woman and teenage boy trade sex for reading literature, connecting the two for life, even after the woman is imprisoned for her role in the deaths of prisoners during the war.

The Informant! (***).  Based on the story of an ADM exec who helps the FBI nail company executives in a price-fixing scam.  Fictionalized with a comedic bent.

Mano-a-Mano (*** GG Short).  In a tough economy, two guys vie for one position at a phone sex chat line service.

Looking for Romeo (*** GG).  A documentary about hustlers and johns, and what they think about what they do.  At 41 minutes, this feature movie at the annual gay film festival was just a couple minutes longer than the longest short of the festival.  And that length made it hard to provide as much insight into that world as it could have.  But in the Q&A session with the director that followed the presentation, he talked about how hard it was to find subjects who were willing to open up to him AND agree to be filmed doing so.  So although the documentary does a nice job letting us in on the lives of those willing participants, it didn't provide us with any sense of how representative these subjects were.

Humpday (*** GG).  In a story inspired by Seattle's local amateur porn contest of that name, two straight guys contemplate making a movie together to submit to the contest.

Chef's Special (*** GG).  A gay Madrid chef tries to balance getting a star for his restaurant, the reappearance of his son and daughter in his life after their mom dies, and a sexy new neighbor in a fairly ordinary screwball comedy.  (in Spanish)

Donkey Punch (***).  A twist on the isolated horny good looking young people get picked off one by one horror genre, when the mistake made by one of the people brings out the evil, revenge and survival instincts of the others, complete with the requisite clever killings and dumb choices.

Zombieland (***).  Most Americans have turned into Zombies.  A few remaining humans find each other as they make their way across the country, in a spin on the zombie theme told more for laughs.  Includes a fun feature role for a well-known comic actor.

575 Castro Street (*** GG Short).  Several shots of the set used as Harvey Milk's photo shop in the movie Milk accompanied by the playing of one of Milk's tapes.

Fruit Fly (*** GG).  A Philippina performance artist moves into a San Francisco/Castro rooming house, where she interacts with her assorted roommates, tries to line up a space for her next show, and discovers a photo of herself as a baby in the arms of her long-lost mother with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background.  For the most part, it doesn't lead anywhere, and none of the major storylines are really resolved, but every few minutes everyone breaks into song.  Often funny song, in fact, as it comments on gay life in San Francisco, the lives of the young people involved, etc.  But unfortunately often funny song where the soft voices of the singers were often overwhelmed by the loudness of the music.  It would have been a funnier movie if I could have heard all the jokes in the lyrics.  It would have been a better movie if they had skipped the go-nowhere storyline about long-lost ma.

Bi-definition (*** GG Short).  The perils and pitfalls of being bisexual in a world where most people only see things in black & white, er, gay & straight terms.

Were the World Mine (*** GG).  An all boy's school is preparing to stage Shakespeare's "A Midsummer's Night Dream".  A put-upon gay student lands the role of Puck and discovers the formula to direct a person's affections towards the first person they see.  He decides to apply it to those who have harassed him, which of course at an all-boy's school leads to a lot of gay affection.  A fun story idea for a gay flick, and generally done well, but the attempts to make a musical out of it seemed like some feeble afterthoughts.  It was fun seeing Wendy Robie again (as the drama teacher).  The actress looked darn familiar, but I couldn't place the face.  It wasn't until the closing credits that I had been watching "Nadine" from Twin Peaks fame.  But that was almost 18 years ago.

Country Teacher (*** GG).  A gay Czech teacher moves from Prague to a rustic village school where he finds that he can't keep his past nor his urges behind.  His friendship with a farm woman leads to inappropriate contact with her son and the consequences of that act.  (in Czech)

Transatlantic (*** GG Short).  There is an odd connection between two pairs of lovers, each on opposite sides of the Atlantic.

Rudo y Cursi (***-).  Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal team up as brothers with bigger dreams than life on a banana plantation.  They get recruited into a Mexican soccer league, and we see the rise and fall of each.  The actors continue to be appealing, and both made the most of their roles, but I never really bought into the story.

Absurdistan (***- GG).  In a forgotten corner of southern Asia, an isolated village loses its limited water supply.  The women of the village decide to withhold sex and just about everything else until the men fix the problem.  But most of the men aren't terribly motivated.  It's up to a young man looking forward to his first time with his girlfriend to take care of the situation.  A promising premise, but a slow and underwhelming realization.

The Watchmen (***-).  Superheroes come out of retirement after one of their own is killed, to track down the killer and save the world.  Based on what many regard as the top graphic novel and directed by the guy who made the visually appealing 300.  But too much of the film provided soapy back stories for superheroes I had never heard of before, the main story seemed to move forward in spite of the main characters, and it was much less visually interesting than either 300 or Sin City, the movies that first drew me to this genre.  I was going to give it *** but dropped it to ***- after remembering what rating I gave to last year's The Spirit, another movie in this genre.

Frequent Traveler (***- GG Short).  A man attempts to get himself searched by the hunky security agent who mans an airport checkpoint.

Boy (***- GG).  Young Philippine man lusts for a dancer at local gay bar that is apparently willing to put on a show even with just one customer in the place.  He hires him for an evening, apparently for his first time, but brings him home, where he lives with his mom and several aquariums filled with exotic fish.  There they have a traditional New Year's Eve dinner with Mom, who is by far a more interesting character than her son is.  The cultural aspects of the movie were a lot more interesting than the story itself was.  (in assorted languages spoken in the Philippines)

After All That (***- GG Short).  Life along the Mississippi Gulf Coast a couple years after Katrina still impacts the locals, seen through the eyes of an older man, his nephew and his nephew's lover.

The Headless Woman (**+).  A woman driving back to the city checks her cell phone, only to hit something when her eyes were off the road.  We see a dead dog, but we know that the dog was with a few young boys playing along the road earlier.  She drives off, feels guilty, goes back to check the scene, finds out that a local boy is missing, and his body is eventually found in a canal that runs parallel to the road.  Did she kill him?  More a study of the woman's mental state than a hit-and-run, we never find out.  But we also never get vested in the woman.  (in Spanish)

Wig (** GG Short).  A generally well-done film short about a man who grieves the loss of his mother by donning one of her wigs, much to the concern of his boyfriend.  But the short was marred by an offensive fat joke.

Newcastle (**).  Australian surfer has older surfing champion-turned-dolt brother and younger gay brother, and can't quite reach the level he needs to win surfing contests.  All comes to a head during a weekend getaway with his buddies.  Lots of scenes of pretty boys surfing, but the story feels contrived and rather slight.

Hairbox Thrillers 11 (** Short).  Characters played by the faces on hair product boxes are involved in some multipart soap opera.  This was episode #11.  Cute concept, I suppose, but not terribly interesting, and I'm not sure what it was doing in a collection of gay film shorts.

Chlamydia Is Not A Flower (** GG Short).  The film festival program characterized this as a sexy public service announcement.  Darned if I know why.

Raging Sun, Raging Sky (* GG).  A couple years ago I saw festival movie called Broken Sky, an artsy, nearly dialogue-free movie about the romantic get-togethers and breakups of a pair of young gay Mexicans.  It might have been alright had the 90-minute story not dragged on for 140 minutes, making it feel like we were watching the relationship in real time.  When I chose to see Raging Sun, Raging Sky at this year's Seattle International Film Festival, the descriptive blurb I saw neglected to mention that this movie was made by the same guy who made Broken Sky.  For the first 2 1/2 hours (!!!) we basically endure an equally artsy, dialogue-free story of Mexican gay men meeting in a theatre bathroom, one stalks a second, a third is destined to meet the second, and when the three collide, their conflict morphs into a story based on an old myth.  The guys were eye-candy, but by never really establishing that the guys who met as bathroom tricks were actually in love, I had no reason to care about the quest by the third man to rescue second guy from the clutches of the first.  The movie ran for 191 minutes.  I gave up on it somewhat earlier, the first movie I walked out on in years, joining at least a third of the audience by that point.  (in Spanish, for what little is said)

2009 movie counts:

Back to top

Annual Favorite Movie List

These are my favorite movies of each year, going back a few years.  Sometimes my favorite movie was actually released the previous year, but I didn't see it until the year listed.  For those years, I've added in parentheses my favorite movie released during that year.

The numbers listed with each are the number of movies and film shorts I saw that year.

Back to top

Mark's Movie Ratings Guide

I generally prefer independent and art house-type movies over most mainstream movies.  The independents tend to be more creative, and they often challenge the audience to the extent that even some misfires are often more interesting than most mainstream movies are.  Most mainstream movies, with their vapid stars and audience-tested endings, have become way too formulaic for my tastes.

I use a four star (*) rating system, but in my system I take genre and budget into account.  If a movie basically meets expectations for its genre, ambitions and studio or independent status, I award it three stars.  Thus, a low budget independent movie that tells its story in an interesting way can get the same four stars that a big budget Spielberg Saving Private Ryan-type movie can get.  This isn't the Oscars after all.

For this reason, most movies I see get three stars (+ or -).  Some rise well-above expectations to truly entertaining or mesmerizing levels.  Those get four stars.  Those that fall short of expectations tend to get two stars.  Truly awful movies only get one star.  Unlike a movie reviewer who has to see all movies, I can be rather selective about what I see, so there aren't that many two-star movies in my system, and one-star movies are extremely rare.

I support gay-themed cinema, using my ticket-buying to encourage more films in this genre (which does mean that the worst movies I see are more likely to be gay-themed because I often lower my standards to select them).  I rate movies on their gay content, using GG to indicate a gay-themed movie.

Back to top

The contents of MarkWasson.com The Mark Wasson Site are copyrighted by Mark Wasson.  All rights reserved.