Ten Fave Projections on the Wall from 2010

It’s been a busy Christmas, New Year – spent nicely at Rothesay with my folks and Crieff with Rowan’s folks – and now back at college and work, trying to meet brief deadlines, sort out my finances, not to mention discovering Fallout 3 on the damn XBox (big mistake for the time-hungry)…all of these things have conspired against me penning a punctual top ten of my favourite trips to the Cineworld on Glasgow Renfrew Street of last year. Cue 90’s Top of the Pops music…

10. The Other Guys

Will Ferrel’s Gator creation brought this film from really rather good to a bit of a classic. Really. You don’t see it coming.

9. The Kids Are All Right

Trendy and smug Californian gay parents (Annette Benning and Julianne Moore) discover trendy smug Californian restaurateur Mark Ruffalo has every right to be jealous of their homelife. I still think about the great characters in this one. Good soundtrack too.

8. Another Year

Another likeable but suspiciously smug couple made of the ever brilliant Jim Broadbent who was fab in Channel 4’s Any Human Heart not that you watched it probably as nearly everybody I know didn’t and Ruth Sheen growing old elegantly while their loopy friend Mary (the showstealing Leslie Manville) unravels like a ball of sparkly yarn. I found this was like being given a window into a

7. The Illusionist

6. A Single Man

After seeing this with Rowan and my mate Paul we left the cinema and he said without a hint of irony – It wasn’t as stylish as I expected it to be.

5. 4 Lions

The master (Chris Morris) proved he hadn’t lost his touch with this. Could be seen again and again and again and you’d still keep catching legendary lines…

‘Fuck mini babybel!’

4. Inception

More than a few of my friends HATED this and on reflection I can see why with its portentous plot and frankly bizarre concept of special agents infiltrating the dreams of the rich and powerful. Thing is, I actually love bizarre concepts like that – I felt like I’d been sucker punched when I left the cinema. Eye boggling visuals and a brain melting soundtrack by Hans Zimmerman (based around the plot-integral Piaf rendition of Rien de Rien). I even went to see it again the week after.

3. Winters Bone

A total surprise this was like stepping into another world, a young carer in a ditchwater town in the US has to hunt down her wayward father to prevent the family home being repossessed. Stylishly low-key with a great cast of characters it ran like classic greek fable but despite the rural setting is defiantly contemporary in these austere times.

2. Monsters

Just released last month it’s The Motorcycle Diaries meets Cloverfield meets Before Sunrise meets something I really really like.

1. Bad Lieutenant

Best film of the year by a long, looong shot.

What else can I say? Oh yes…”His SOUL is still DANCING!”