PHOTO BY ANDREW COOPER; COURTESY PARAMOUNT PICTURES
Sun Screen
The beauty, the horror Ed. note: Our Sun Screeners put their lives on the line every week when they step into a darkened theater. Here’s there summary of 2010 winners and awful, awful losers.
The Best
Brent: Looking back on the review, apparently I only gave Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island $8.50! Yet I remember immediately PHOTO COURTESY DREAMWORKS ANIMATION LLC thinking that it was going to wind up on the Best of the Year list! Roberta: It was suspenseful, exciting, and thought provoking. DiCaprio was fantastic as a federal marshal who goes to investigate a mysterious disappearance at an island institution for the Lots of character! Toothless, the criminally insane. So dragon star of How to Train Your was the entire supporting Dragon, won Brent Parker’s heart. cast. It kept you on your toes; you weren’t sure what was real or not. It had a lot of levels, and it stays with you. Brent: Then there's Christopher Nolan’s Inception. Both films starred DiCaprio as a man haunted by events from his past, in a world that brings reality into question. In Inception's case, it’s the world of dreams, where he tries to steal—and plant—ideas. Roberta: A scene of weightlessness in a hotel stands out. The film had so much going on, and it was very, very, very creative. Both films are intriguing and fascinating and unique ... except that they’re both alike, but they’re not like PHOTO COURTESY INDUSTRIAL LIGHT & MAGIC AND PARAMOUNT PICTURES other films. Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer was an intriguing, Hitchcockian kind of story. Daniel (Roberta’s film snob husband): No, it was Polanski-esque. Roberta: I remember gulping as I was realizing what was happening. I felt protective of Ewan Ugh: M. Night Shyamalan destroyed everything good about The Last McGregor’s character, Airbender’s animated source material. the ghost writer. Brent: Even when he was scrambling over a fence to get away from some bad men, he still seemed like a regular guy, and that’s what made it work. We don’t want to give too much away, so now let’s talk about a completely different movie: DreamWorks Animation’s How to Train Your Dragon. Geeky teen Hiccup and his big tough Viking father failing to connect to each other felt kinda contrived. But Toothless the dragon was my favorite new character of the year, and his friendship with Hiccup is truly beautiful. I love the inventive character designs (if they don’t stop making merchandise of these dragons, I’m gonna go bankrupt.) And now, Pixar’s annual reserved spot on this list: Roberta: Toy Story 3 was so delightful, warm, and charming—so PHOTO COURTESY CBS FILMS
Extra lame: Extraordinary Measures had Roberta Slutske saying, “Please end, please end, please end!”
beautiful to watch. I liked the whole story. There were great voices and very memorable characters. The bear made me nervous! There was also fantastic animation, and the 3D worked so well. It was a poignant story with the boy, Andy, growing up and having to part PHOTO BY STEPHEN VAUGHAN; COURTESY with his toys. You forget WARNER BROS. & LEGENDARY PICTURES you’re watching just animated toys. Brent: Meanwhile, the creative minds behind Pixar continue to restore Disney’s longlost Disney-ness with Rapunzel (Disney likes to call it Tangled, but if they want this “Best of the Year” honor to Mind blowing: Inception marked an become official, they’ll amazing movie-watching experience. have to change it to the real title). The studio’s first CGI fairy tale musical has a lot of the charm of its hand-drawn counterparts. Roberta: People say to me, “Wow, you review a lot of children’s movies!” They’re animated features, and they’re for all Best Runners Up ages. Brent: That’s my Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1* mom who said The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the that! I’ve trained Dawn Treader* you well. On the The American subject of parents Despicable Me and children: Megamind indie comedy Youth in Revolt Cyrus, is about a Scott Pilgrim vs. The World desperately lonely The Kids Are All Right guy (John C. Reilly)
*originally included but cut for length. whose budding relationship is threatened by his girlfriend’s jealous adult son. Roberta: It was quirky. The whole story was a fun, clever premise. It was funny, and yet touching. The boy (Jonah Hill) was really a brat! And I can’t get over how much I like John C. Reilly. Brent: I’m happy to have another excuse to say Kick-Ass in print. I loved its combo of genre satire, exploration of the comic book geek psyche, over-the-top action, and emotional connection. The titular hero was played by Aaron Johnson, who was also the lead in another PHOTO COURTESY LIONSGATE AND MARV FILMS Best pick, Nowhere Boy (released in 2009 in England, but not in the United States until 2010), as a young, pre-Beatles John Lennon. Roberta: When we were going, I thought, “How could any actor do John Lennon?” But when we saw it, I forgot all about it and just started Super! Kick-Ass had everything a geek watching him. I thought could want. it would just be a nice little story of everything I already knew about John Lennon. I knew how his mother was going to die, but it was so well done, I was still crying. Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours was one of the best, wasn’t it? It’s amazing that it’s based on just one person (James Franco). There’s such a range of emotion. PHOTO COURTESY DISNEY ENTERPRISES, INC. He’s suffering, and you’re really suffering with him, but there are parts that were very touching—when he’s saying goodbye to his parents—and very funny, like when he pretended he was on a talk show, and when he was thought he saw Pixar wins again: Toy Story 3 brought Scooby-Doo. the celebrated computer-animated Brent: This and The series to a touching close.
Sure thing: Brent Parker knew Shutter Island would be on his Best-of-the-Year list as soon as he saw it.
Social Network, both were based on true stories and introduced us to great characters. One critic described this movie’s take on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) as “scathing,” but I found him to be a complex and distinctive lead. Even though he does some jerky things, I still Worst Runners Up found myself liking him—at least Cop Out in part because his sharp dialogue Like Dandelion Dust (by Aaron Sorkin) is hilarious!
The Worst
Roberta: Flipped. Once again, we want to make it clear we haven’t read the book by Wendelin Van Draanen, and this is no reflection on it. The movie was trying to be a slice of life. First the girl liked the boy and he didn’t like her, and then he liked her but she didn’t like him. He threw away some eggs, and she climbed a FREAKIN’ TREE! And that’s it! Gimme something! Brent: As I said in the review, I didn’t walk out of the theater wanting PHOTO BY GUY FERRANDIS; COURTESY SUMMIT to smack Rob Reiner the ENTERTAINMENT, LLC way I wanted to smack M. Night Shyamalan for what he did to The Last Airbender, a live-action remake of the (very cinematic) animated series. I am an anti-fan of this movie. Five months after its release, I still love ripping it apart! If you took five randomly Spooky! Ghost Writer brought suschosen episodes of the pense into a real-world setting. series and played them in a theater, you would have a more coherent, more satisfying moviegoing experience than this. Not one character or element from the original survives the transition. Roberta: Aang is supposed to be this exuberant, quirky, very powerful “chosen one.” And the way he moved, it looked like he was a little ballerina! Shyamalan—the poor man must have had a breakdown. If somebody asked, this would be my real Worst Film of the Year. Brent: Well then, what about Extraordinary Measures? Roberta: Oh, jeez. Well, they’re gonna have to share it. In Airbender, I didn’t hate the kids. In Extraordinary Measures—and the poor actress is probably really a sweetie—I hated the character of the sick little girl, so I couldn’t be on her side. She was like a bitter old spinster, bossing people around. A few scenes of that, and we would have laughed, but they kept her in that mode. Why couldn’t they have had her be a kid? Brendan Fraser as the dad—they didn’t use him right. And the doctor played by Harrison Ford was too over-the-top-mean to be entertaining. I was thinking, “Please end, please end, please end, Movies We’d Like to See please end.” These three True Grit movies on our Worst The King’s Speech list didn’t even leave you The Fighter a morsel. I feel almost Black Swan drained just talking The Company Men about them. m The Illusionist (not to be confused with the 2006 film) Brent M. Parker is a Biutiful writer, artist, and aspiring Machete animated filmmaker. Exit Through the Gift Shop Roberta Slutske is his Tron: Legacy proud mother who taught MicMacs him everything he knows. Rabbithole Contact them at mail Never Let Me Go @santamariasun.com.