We're very nearly at the end of 2010, and with much of the Christmas dinner still working its way through my system, it's time to sit back, take stock and put forward my Top 10 list comprising the best films of this year.

I could waste time repeating all the usual caveats about having not seen everything, and all this being just opinion, but to be honest if you've been reading my reviews you probably know that already. Instead, let's just dive straight in.

10. The Arbor
A gripping if uneven documentary about the life and legacy of playwright Andrea Dunbar which straddles the divide between fiction and reality. By having the cast lip-sync to recordings of Dunbar's friends and relatives, what could be a straightforward biopic is transformed into a Rashomon-like exploration of the fractured nature of truth and how the past lingers in the present. One of the most unusual films of the year and a must-see for anyone interested in the documentary tradition.
Full review available here

9. The Illusionist (L'illusionniste)
Seven years after he charmed the pants off us with Belleville Rendez-Vous, Sylvain Chomet returns with an equally charming and uniquely crafted effort based on an unfilmed screenplay by Jacques Tati. While not as compelling or rounded as his debut, the film is still a visual delight with beautiful design and characterisation rooted in dry wit and subtle pathos. The film marries a well-judged relationship between an ageing illusionist and a young fan with social undercurrents about the decline of variety and the age of rock'n'roll.Full review available here

8. Burke and Hare
John Landis returns to the big screen in style with a really good black comedy about enterprising 18th-century murderers. Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis enjoy strong chemistry as the gags flow thick and fast, and the film is rooted in Landis' brilliant combination of horror and humour. Its lush period setting accurately recalls the classic Ealing comedies of the 1950s, and the film's knowing economies with the truth work largely to its advantage. Worth seeing just for the cameos from Paul Whitehouse and Tim Curry.Full review available here

7. Green Zone
One of the most underrated films of the year and another solid addition to the Paul Greengrass canon. A very well-constructed, technically accomplished and ultimately substantial conspiracy thriller, with Matt Damon cementing his status as one of Hollywood's best leading men. Bourne-style action set-pieces are ably intertwined with relevant discussions of the role of media in modern warfare and the fragmented nature of both the enemy and the allies. A film which ticks all the action movie boxes and hurls The Hurt Locker into the middle of next week.Full review available here

6. The Ghost Writer
What looked at one point like Roman Polanski's last film now stands as a fine addition to a stunning back catalogue. While ultimately a minor work which draws heavily on The Tenant, the film is a great old-fashioned thriller in its own right; a film which is less about political allegory and more about the powers-that-be and the faceless, nameless figures which try in vain to keep them in check. Ewan McGregor gives his best performance in years as the title role and the final shot is textbook Polanski: chilling, bitter and cynical.Full review available here

5. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Edgar Wright's third film is a visually astounding and heartfelt love letter to all things comic-book and video game, with a beautifully-judged coming-of-age story at its centre. Career-best performances from Michael Cera and Mary Elizabeth Winstead elevate the film above other quirky teen affairs to create a film as much about accepting responsibility as it is about defeating psychic vegans. A hilarious film which never misses a beat.Full review available here

4. Kick-Ass
After grabbing our attention with Stardust, Matthew Vaughn turns comic-book conventions on their heads in this flesh-ripping adaptation of Mark Millar's comics. The film combines knowing humour with rich pastiches of Batman and Spiderman, approaching the darker and tougher aspects of comics while keeping its tongue firmly in cheek. Visually outstanding and with brilliant stunt choreography, this represents a real departure from the light-to-dark cycle of comic adaptations and set the bar high for Christopher Nolan's next work.Full review available here

3. The Social Network
David Fincher returns to form spectularly with an intelligent, intriguing and labyrinthine examination of the founding of Facebook. Combining the visual intimidation of Zodiac with a razor-sharp script from Aaron Sorkin, Fincher manages to do what Noah Baumbach never managed: to take a bunch of hideous, chauvinistic intellectuals and make them engaging and entertaining. But the film is also a gripping analysis of the way in which technology comes between friends, the ruthlessness of capitalism and the changing nature of nerds.Full review available here

2. A Single Man
Colin Firth gives a career-best performance in Tom Ford's ravishing and heartbreaking debut based on a story by Christopher Isherwood. Ford's outstanding visual palette, which draws on the work of Michelangelo Antonioni, is the fitting sheen to a tender examination of grief and the powers of deception which we employ to protect ourselves in everyday life. The film is less a thesis on sexuality than a poignant and meticulous portrait of one man struggling to appear in control when everything about him hints towards chaos and meltdown. An emotional triumph.Full review available here

1. Inception
Having come perilously close with The Prestige, Christopher Nolan finally delivers his masterpiece with a daring blockbuster notable not only for its intelligence but its nuance and emotional resonance. What begins as a heist movie set inside the minds of its protagonists blossoms into a full-blown examination of dreams, addiction, grief and redemption, contained in a brilliantly designed cinematic world and underscored by spectacular action. Inception is the pinnacle of Nolan's career, marrying thematic complexity with visual astonishment to create a memorably mesmerising masterpiece.Full review available here

Honourable Mentions
Shutter Island (USA, dir. Martin Scorsese)
The Kids Are All Right (USA, dir. Lisa Cholodenko)
The Killer Inside Me (UK, dir. Michael Winterbottom)
Winter's Bone (USA, dir. Debra Granik)

Roll on 2011 :)

Daniel x

Shutter Island (USA, 2010)
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Max von Sydow

It's very common for directors to indulge themselves after winning awards, using the heft of their new-found acclaim to splash out on a pet project. And considering how long Martin Scorsese had to wait for his Oscar, no-one could complain about him letting his hair down and doing something a little less cerebral. While it never reaches the heights of his earlier work, Shutter Island is a fun and engaging thriller which more or less holds together, and which is made with the same affection for its genre as Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong.The comparison with King Kong extends further than just two great directors kicking back a little. Both Jackson's remake and Shutter Island are upmarket re-workings of rich B-movie traditions, namely the monster movie and the asylum-based thriller. Both take films or genres which are well-worn or familiar, and re-imagine their stories as they would have been told had the technology or the money been available the first time around.

The core ideas in Shutter Island are easily recognisable to film fans, and even casual Scorsese-ites will be able to spot the master returning to old themes. The idea of a mental institute in which the lines between patients and doctors are blurred is a big lift from Shock Corridor, or its slightly more upmarket cousin The Ninth Configuration. The idea of foul play involving Nazi or ex-Nazi scientists is taken from The Boys from Brazil, which itself was rather ripe. And the device of an island or isolated location being cut off by the elements is as old as the trees; Stanley Kubrick was pastiching it when he made The Shining.This revamped B-movie aesthetic is reinforced by Shutter Island's pulpy, glossy visuals. The film is often art directed to within an inch of its life, as Scorsese seeks to wring out every inch of suspense and terror from the claustrophobic setting. Like The Killer Inside Me shortly after it, Shutter Island's visuals are rooted in 1950s noir, not just in costumes and lighting decisions but in the measured and deceptive staging of certain sequences. Scorsese utilises every possible camera angle to tell the story, from tough dolly shots when the German soldiers are executed, to tight zooms on the spiral staircase which recall the ending of The Red Shoes.

As if you needed any more convincing that this is not a 'serious' work, you only have to listen to the dialogue in the first 30 minutes. The running of the island is explained in such a way that you know which elements will come into play later on. And there are a number of deliberate continuity errors which are common in low-budget films, such as glasses disappearing and re-appearing. The film is edited by Thelma Schoonmaker, widow of Michael Powell, and both she and Scorsese are too talented to let such things slip by unnoticed.The central idea or twist of Shutter Island is that of people pretending to be other people, and living out their lives as highly complicated fantasies or repetitions of past lives. Again, we are on familiar ground, not just with The Shining but with Roman Polanski's The Tenant. Both of these films succeed by completely disorientating their audiences: the goalposts are constantly shifting and what seemed a watertight explanation ten minutes ago is no longer anything of the sort. On a slightly lesser note, the actual revelation involving Teddy Daniels' name is a clouded reference to Robert De Niro's character in Angel Heart.All that has been said so far makes Shutter Island out to be a failure, a film packed with enough references to satisfy fanboys but nothing for the uninitiated. Considering that so much of the film is well-worn to the point of being ridiculous, and that is knowingly well-worn at that, the film must then succeed or fail on whether or not it is entertaining and thrilling in its own right. And broadly speaking, it's is, albeit not completely.

The most illuminating comparison is with The Ghost Writer, another Polanski film which is also at heart an old-fashioned thriller. Both Polanski and Scorsese are fantastic visual artists, who know how to use colour and music both thematically and symbolically, and who can achieve a real sense of thrill whatever the subject or situation. But The Ghost Writer is the superior film because it is much more certain of its own purpose and identity, not just in terms of its politics but as a piece of genre filmmaking. The Ghost Writer is so constantly aware of what it wants to be, and of the manner in which it wants to achieve that, that even when aspects like the final twist don't quite work, it still feels reasonably sure-footed.Shutter Island, for all its knowing ripeness and unapologetic B-movie trappings, can't quite make up its mind how serious it wants to take itself. For its first half hour, where the dialogue is expository to the point of being parody, you are expecting a kind of knowingly cheesy film in the manner of High Anxiety. But as the various plot twists start to unfold, including some very graphic dream sequences involving murdered children and the Holocaust, we begin to feel like the film is wanting to carry more weight that its setup seems to allow.

To its credit, most of Shutter Island does hold together rather well. The dream sequences involving Teddy Daniels' wife and children are beautifully done; seeing his wife turn slowly to ashes as the house burns is very striking. And taken purely as a thriller, it is an exciting romp with a series of plot points which fit together while throwing us off. The scenes of Leonardo DiCaprio wandering along dark corridors by match-light are like the action sequences in The Time Machine married to the haunted house traditions of The Haunting or Alien.On the other hand, as many reviews have pointed out, the final reveal involving Teddy's true identity is somewhat disappointing. It's not that the twist comes out of nowhere and makes no sense, nor conversely that we could see bits of it coming a mile off. The disappointment comes from the fact that we have to definitively settle for one version of events over another; once we leave the lighthouse, the sense of threat has largely gone. It would have been braver and more effective to have left the audience hanging, to decide for themselves whether Teddy was real or not. There is not the same level of ambiguity as in The Shining, or Inception, or indeed Mulholland Drive. But it would have satisfied both the conventions of the genre and created enough debate for a couple of water-cooler moments.The performances in Shutter Island are as ripe and enjoyable as the material. DiCaprio may have assumed Robert DeNiro's mantle as Scorsese's actor of choice, but his performances have been much more larger-than-life than his predecessor. While his Howard Hughes in The Aviator occasionally drifted into pastiche, here he is in full-on scenery-chewing mode, playing up every emotion and being constantly on edge. Ben Kingsley and Max von Sydow are clearly enjoying themselves, revelling in the chance to play with the material and send up their earlier, 'serious' selves. And Mark Ruffalo is also solid, even if his role does become more of a cipher as things play out.Shutter Island is ultimately a good fun thriller which is a great deal more stimulating than Quentin Tarantino's efforts at B-movie homage. It's not a 'serious' or 'proper' Scorsese work both by design and execution, but it is slightly hamstrung by its occasional desire to take itself a bit too seriously for the circumstances. In all it's an enjoyable, atmospheric work crammed with enough suspense for thriller fans, enough references for film geeks, and just about enough entertainment for the rest of us.

Rating: 3.5/5
Verdict: Cheesy, romping and ultimately good fun

The Social Network (USA, 2010)
Directed by David Fincher
Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Armie Hammer

When a director you admire drops the ball, it's bad news. It becomes worse news if other parties choose to reward said director with good reviews and awards nominations - the more encouragement he or she gets, the more likely it is that it will happen again. So as the months roll by and the director's next project looms, you sit there on tenterhooks, hoping that it was just a blip and that this time it will be different.After The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, David Fincher's future seemed to hang in the balance. When it emerged he was making a film about Facebook, it was hanging by a thread. Even when the first trailers emerged, trepidation remained as to whether it would be even faintly compelling for those of us who can't write HTML. How wrong we all were. The Social Network is one of the best films of 2010 and about as big a return to form as you can get.

Within ten minutes of The Social Network starting, you can put to bed all fears that Oscar buzz had somehow gone to Fincher's head. His new film is better than Benjamin Button in every conceivable way: it's tauter, has more substance, is more engaging and doesn't keep collapsing into a bottomless pit of sentimentality. The Social Network is classic Fincher in both its subject and execution: intelligent, multi-layered, complicated and icy cool.Purely from a visual point of view, The Social Network is a sight to behold. Following on from his work on Zodiac, Fincher uses the cutting edge in digital photography and visual effects to create a uniquely enveloping cinematic world. Like his contemporary Christopher Nolan, Fincher has a real gift for finding reality in the fantastical, grounding all his bright and lofty ideas into something which we would easily recognise. Jeff Cronenweth, who also shot Fight Club, shoots the opening scenes with a perfect balance of gloss and brooding, bringing out the best in Harvard's intimidating architecture.Fincher has managed to do what Noah Baumbach never managed - to take a bunch of horrible people and make them engaging and interesting. This becomes an even bigger coup when you consider that most of the so-called action scenes in The Social Network consist of writing code and hacking into servers. Like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World earlier this year, The Social Network manages to take something which on the surface is impenetrable to anyone with a life, and find the interesting stories within that.

The Social Network is not primarily about Facebook, any more than Scott Pilgrim is primarily about video games. It is instead about an extraordinary paradox: the world's biggest friendship tool was invented by someone incapable of friendship, who may also be a tool. The Mark Zuckerberg presented on screen is someone of immense intelligence and programming skill, but who is completely inept when is comes to physical interaction (of whatever sort) with other human beings. It takes him a minute to realise that he is being dumped, and a whole hour of the film to talk to the girl in question (ranting online about her bra size didn't help matters).The casting of Jesse Eisenberg is significant, considering he played a similar character in The Squid and the Whale. But there is a crucial difference between Walt and Mark, and this is the difference which makes the film compelling. Walt is so utterly assured of his own intelligence that he feels the need to constantly belittle others; both he and his close circle of friends are so completely up themselves that we just don't care what happens to them. Mark may appear to be the same - obnoxious, privileged, highly intelligent - but he is completely unaware of how socially inept he is. He expects so much of other people but doesn't know how to deal with it when they fall short. As the lawyer remarks at the end of the film, "you're not an asshole Mark, you're just trying really hard to be one."

Despite the presentation of this character, The Social Network is not a thinly-veiled attack on the real-life Zuckerberg. Neither does it attempt to compensate for this portrayal with bald hagiography on the part of his classmates. Our sympathies shift between the characters, and the only constant is that all of them have incredible intellects and are living extraordinary lives beyond our wildest dreams.The film is on one hand a character study of Zuckerberg and the highly intellectual undergraduates which Harvard unleashes on the world. Where Revenge of the Nerds' characters were well-meaning and loveable, the nerds in this film are ambitious, aggressive and uncompromising. They're not a million miles from the modern-day jocks, embodied by the Winkevoss twins. The party scenes in The Social Network refine the template founded in Animal House, keeping the sense of chaos but disposing of anything distractingly adolescent. The fact that Fincher keeps his cool even when two characters are being fellated in a toilet is a clear demonstration of the film's self-discipline.

The film is also a detailed examination of just how ruthless and cut-throat modern capitalism is. Harvard students are presented as born-and-bred winners, who invent jobs rather than taking them and don't know how to take coming second. The film examines how painfully easy it is to get left behind, both in the fall-out between Eduardo Savarin and Shaun Parker, and in the fate of the Winklevoss twins. The last time we see them on screen, they have just come second in a very close race. The film ends on a spiky note, commenting that they "finished sixth" at the Beijing Olympics.Most of all, The Social Network is about the nature of modern-day friendships and the rapid speed at which life seems to move. Aaron Sorkin's Rashomon-like screenplay balances three timeframes and shows us different versions of what occurred in those fateful days in 2003-4. The characters talk with a natural impatience, demanding that you keep up with them or get left behind; it takes a good few minutes to get in the zone and be a part of their conversations. The film brilliantly demonstrates how Facebook and its counterparts have become a proxy or substitute for genuine friendship. The computer screens act as an artificial barrier between individuals; regardless of how much information we share, we are drifting apart even as technology brings us together.

The film is not quite flawless due to a couple of problematic scenes. Having spent so much of its running time in claustrophobic rooms with the intensity building, the boat race is like someone taking the lid of a pressure cooker; we feel like we need it, but the film is never quite the same again. This sequence feels like a very deliberate way to end the twins' part of the story, as if the film couldn't deal with four stories running side by side. The ending also drags a little for the simple fact that so much of this is recent history; how do you put a definite ending on something which is still ongoing?In spite of these little niggles, The Social Network is one of the best films of the year and a high point in Fincher's illustrious career. It is every bit is intense and atmospheric as The Ghost Writer, and every bit as entertaining as Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. It raises all the right questions about its subject and contains a number of very fine performances, particularly from Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield. If nothing else, it's the most exciting film you could make about a bunch of unlikeable men sitting in dark rooms arguing about copyright. Inception remains the best film of the year, but this is a very close second.

Rating: 4.5/5
Verdict: One of the year's best films

The Ghost Writer (Germany, 2010)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Starring Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Kim Cattrall, Olivia Williams

Empire magazine began their review of The Ghost Writer with the phrase: “Roman Polanski also makes films”. The furore surrounding Polanski’s recent detention has become so bound up with his latest film, that there has to be a conscious effort to separate the filmmaker from the films he makes. To some extent this is impossible, since filmmaking is a highly personal medium. But for all his controversies (none of which I care to defend), Polanski’s films have never attempted to defend or condone his actions. To appreciate his work we don’t have to forgive and forget, but we shouldn’t let our personal feelings towards the artist prejudice our judgement of his art.

Taken outside of the current imbroglio, there can be little doubt that The Ghost Writer is a brilliant thriller. Polanski takes all the best elements of Robert Harris’ novel, elaborates upon its themes and draws on common motifs in his classic work to create a highly gripping and intensely political film. It isn’t as insightful or ultra-modern as The Bourne Ultimatum, and its political analysis is occasionally shallow, but nobody could accuse Polanski of soft-pedalling or displaying contempt for the source material.

The Ghost Writer draws heavily on Polanski’s earlier work, applying the classic techniques of his early horrors and thrillers to examine a thoroughly modern subject. The recurring shots of the beach and the desolate feel of the island owe a lot to the opening of Macbeth, in which the witches conspire upon the sands to effectively bring down Scotland from within. There are also clear hints of The Tenant in the interior scenes, particularly the shots of Ewan McGregor wandering around the house. Polanski has always been fascinated by the idea of architecture being the expression of some hidden evil or psychosis, and he shoots the various offices like rooms in a prison.On a more indirect level, the film owes a debt to both Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick in the slow build-up of suspense and the chilling feeling of déjà vu. On one level the Ghost (who is never named) is retreading the steps of his predecessor, and there are a couple of occasions in which he feels he has been here before – something examined prominently in The Shining, and to a lesser extent in Vertigo.

But the central theme or technique of The Ghost Writer is one which runs through most of Polanski’s work. The Ghost is a classic Polanski protagonist who over the course of the film is irreversibly drawn into a situation which is growing ever darker and more desperate. There is a feeling of things becoming increasingly complex and spiralling out of control, to the point at which our hero feels the need to leave as much out of panic as of disillusionment. And throughout there is the same sense of bitter cynicism which worked so brilliantly in Chinatown: the idea of a dark world closing in around our hero, who inevitably concludes that you just can’t win.
As a means to explore global politics and the manipulation of the truth, you couldn’t have asked for a more refreshing approach. One of the side effects of the Bourne series, as brilliant and engrossing as they are, is that many modern political thrillers lack a sense of atmosphere, the sense of intimidating claustrophobia which is created by the visuals. The Ghost Writer is visually ravishing and the colours pull us into the emotional development of the characters. Pawel Edelman, who was Oscar-nominated for his work on The Pianist, bathes the screen in stark whites and regal blues; whether we’re looking at the roaring sea or one of Pierce Brosnan’s suits, we’re aware of authority and the resulting unease which comes from being so close to so much power.
The politics of The Ghost Writer are more complex than many have concluded. The allusions to Tony Blair and the surrounding issues of war crimes have been widely discussed, and the film is on one level allegorical. But even if the film wears that part on its sleeve, the central conceit is still executed in a really exciting way. We are teased by the initial prospect of the allegory, and then the subsequent little threads which are explored through different media help to add a real sense of depth.

The true complexity of The Ghost Writer, however, lies less in the political allegory and more in the character of The Ghost. Why is he nameless? Who does he represent? On one level, the Ghost is the insignificant public, the ‘normal people’ over whom the politicians rule. Although seemingly passive and docile, he occasionally pushes things and asks questions which those in power deem he shouldn’t ask. Just as politicians claim to represent their public and yet make a habit of ignoring them, so the Ghost is largely ignored by Lang, who keeps calling him ‘man’ since he can’t remember his name.

On another level, the Ghost is a challenge to the received knowledge of history. He is a nameless force of resistance, rebelling against the means by which politicians twist the truth and rewrite their legacy. The confrontations between the Ghost and Adam Lang are a symbolic conflict between the official version of what happened, the ‘legacy’ of his government, and the hidden reality or ‘truth’. It is a battle of wits between image and truth, and the Ghost is the reality of Lang’s past following him around.The Ghost Writer combines a series of great performances with a script that bristles with tension and black comedy. After the Ghost marginally escapes being killed on the ferry, he meets with the former Foreign Secretary who reassures him: “They can’t drown two of you – you’re not kittens!”. Ewan McGregor really comes through, mastering the London accent and delivering his best performance since Big Fish. Despite a couple of OTT moments, Pierce Brosnan is very convincing, using Adam Lang to send up his former self like he did in The Tailor of Panama. Kim Cattrall is a pleasant surprise as the icy secretary, proving there is more to her than Sex and the City. And both Olivia Williams and Tom Wilkinson give very strong supporting performances, the former bolstered by her execution of the final twist.

The ending has come in for a lot of stick from both critics and fan of the novel. It is a partial failure, since the final twist is rather obvious compared to the rest of the film. It feels too close to John le Carré or the Cambridge spies to really cut the mustard in 2010. That said, the final shot is absolutely perfect: having been knocked down by a car, the pages of the original manuscript (which the Ghost was carrying) are one by one blown away in the breeze. Having led us to believe that the truth will out, and evil will get its comeuppance, Polanski’s cynicism wins the day: the truth is blown away, lost forever, and nobody notices or cares.The Ghost Writer is a brilliant marriage of everything you could possibly want from a thriller – it’s exciting, it’s relevant, it’s beautifully made and it has a sense of humour. Most of the little imperfections which emerge are either compensated for the substance or swiftly forgotten in the thrill of the chase. It’s isn’t Polanski’s finest film by quite some distance, and will end up being seen as a minor work like Tess or Frantic. But it is still a damn fine piece of filmmaking from one of the true originals of cinema. If this turns out to be Polanski’s last film, it’s a very fine way to bow out.

Rating: 4.5/5
Verdict: A great (possible) finale to a great career