This is what repeated viewings can do for a film, either kill it or reinforce how much you love it. People always tend to ask me why a film I gave an A+ is ranked lower than a film I only gave an A in my top tens. The answer is simple, opinions change as time wears on, an appreciation for one film can grow while an appreciation for another can diminish. Even if slightly.
As for Joel and Ethan Coen’s True Grit, I only first saw it 19 days ago, but since then I have seen it three more times and with each viewing it hasn’t lost an ounce of its luster.
The magic with True Grit is in its simplicity and the beautiful way in which the story is told. The dialogue lifted directly from Charles Portis’s novel is brilliant and ways in which the Coens massaged the story into this feature film are simply perfect along with the bits they added that weren’t in the original story.
I’ve always been a fan of westerns and this film reinforced that love on top of exceeding my every expectation. It was fun reading Portis’s novel after watching it just to explore the ways in which they changed the story for the screen. It’s impossible to say the Coens don’t know what they’re doing and it has come to a point where it seems no matter what they try it will be something significant.
With that, we’ve come to the end of my list, but I would love to hear your opinion in the comments. This won’t be the last time we explore the films of 2010 as later on down the road I’ll be taking nominations for the best film of the year from you guys just as I did last year to come up with something of a collective top ten from the readership.
For now, I’d love to hear your comments and get your opinion on the year that was in the comments below. Have at it… the floor is yours.
Finally, just below are my top ten lists from previous years. The farther back you go, the more obvious it was how green I was at all of this not to mention how many more films I obviously saw outside of the traditional Hollywood fare.
The difference is understandable when you look at how many movies I reviewed each year. In 2003 I was just getting started and reviewed 67 movies (poorly I may add), 100 reviews in 2004, 57 in 2005, 39 in 2006 when Laremy was reviewing several for me, 58 in 2007 and then things picked up in 2008 when I reviewed 138, then 143 in 2009 and then this year I reviewed 142 movies that released in 2010 along with another 19 that either don’t have release dates yet or will be seen in 2011 for a whopping 161 reviews. It was a good year that saw me going to Cannes and Toronto for the first time and hopefully 2011 will be just as great. I hope you’ll join me along the way.
