Peter Rainer at The Christian Science Monitor stakes out a Top 10 that doesn’t infringe on many others.
- Another Year (“Beneath its deceptively casual surface is an entire world of feeling.”)
- I Am Love (“One of the rare movies that makes your eyes swim without also clouding your mind.”)
- Inside Job (“the most lucid and straightforward cinematic rendering to date of the 2008 financial collapse”)
- The Last Train Home (“An epic portrait, intimately told.”)
- The Ghost Writer (“simultaneously scabrous and comedic… The Ghost Writer finally sounds a note of pervasive dread.)
- The Illusionist (“ineffably sweet and melancholy”)
- The King’s Speech (“Two better performances together you won’t find all year.”)
- Toy Story 3 (“A triumphant conclusion to a series that just kept getting better and better.”)
- Vincere (“in many ways the most jolting experience I had in the movies all year.”)
- Winter’s Bone (“Jennifer Lawrence is probably the most gifted actress of her generation”)
Michael Phillips at The Chicago Trib with his lists, after the cut.
By naming his list “the top 10 ways to start an argument”, Michael Phillips at The Chicago Tribune comes with such a good-natured chip on his shoulder we feel like assholes if we don’t hug it out.
- The Kids Are All Right
- The Secret in Their Eyes
- Boxing Gym
- Last Train Home
- Greenberg
- Carlos
- The Social Network
- The King’s Speech
- The Ghost Writer
- The Fighter
11 through 20, alphabetically:
“Black Swan”; “The Crazies”; “Daddy Longlegs,” “The Duel”; “Exit Through the Gift Shop”; “Get Low”; “Inside Job”; “Lebanon”; “The Tillman Story”: “Tiny Furniture.”
The Worst:
“”Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore”; “Charlie St. Cloud”; “Cop Out”; “Dinner for Schmucks”; “I’m Still Here”; “Kick-Ass”; “Killers”; “Knight and Day”; “The Last Airbender”; “Yogi Bear.”