With awards season right around the corner, critics, blogs and media outlets with an eye on cinema are pumping out best-of the year lists with the verve of elves on Christmas Eve. Here's a look at the best film lists of 2010.
After recently being named Time's Person of the Year, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg grabbing headlines of another sort: the film based on his college years is nabbing the No.1 spot on many critic's lists of the best films of 2010 'The Social Network' has earned the most No.1 mentions according to indieWIRE's annual aggregation of film reviews. It scores way above the #2 ranked film 'Carlos,' a 5½ hour biopic about the Venezuelan terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal by French director Olivier Assayas. This quite comprehensive survey tallies up votes from more than 100 critics and blogs.
Bucking the 'Social Network' bandwagon, Slant Magazine's staff list tilts more towards film festival followers and the art school set. It puts 'Dogtooth,' a Greek drama about a twisted family that premiered last year at Cannes, at the top rank, and has many other lesser-known picks in the mix.
The folks of the Onion's A.V. Club give us a great outline of the year with their top 15 best films of 2010 many of which are movies that you might actually have watched this year! 'Winter's Bone,' a film about a Missouri teenager who is forced to take care of her family and tracks down her meth-dealing dad, takes the lead spot. Also in the top ten are summer blockbusters 'Inception' and 'Toy Story 3″ and the documentary about mysterious street artist Banksy 'Exit Through The Gift Shop.'
On Salon.com, film critic Andrew O'Hehir puts it all out there with 'The Movie List' an attempt to rank nearly every major film that's come out in 2010. Dead last: 'Grown Ups,' and not far behind are 'Love Ranch' and 'Valentine's Day.'
Also via indieWIRE, their blog The Playlist has asked director Edgar Wright ('Scott Pilgrim,' 'Hott Fuzz') to pick his favorite movies, best action sequences and Top Underrated or Underseen Movies of 2010. Many surprises can be found on the last roll, notably the SNL skit-cum-dumbed-down action comedy 'MacGruber.' We forgot that movie even existed.
And to be sure we don't take all of this too seriously, AOL's film blog Cinematical has put together a very chuckle-worthy list of 'The Worst Puns of 2010″ from various movie reviews. Examples: 'You'll die laughing.' ('Death At A Funeral') or 'Sex is even better the second time around.' ('Sex and the City 2＇).
And finally, we leave you with a fantastic summary of the year in 'Cinema 2010″ editor Kees van Dijkhuizen has created a masterful montage of scenes from the most memorable films into just five and a half minutes.