Sarah's Key (2010)

Drama directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner and adapted from a novel by Tatiana de Rosnay. 

In 1942, Paris is occupied by the Germans and the Jews are deported in the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup. Sarah, aged 10, hides her brother in a cupboard before fleeing with her parents, vowing to return. The implications of this promise affect many lives, rippling outward in time.

It’s highly engaging. Kristin Scott Thomas gives one of her best performances as Julia Jarmond, a journalist who begins researching Sarah’s life and finds it’s unexpectedly connected with her own. 

Somehow, all the jumping around in time and geography doesn’t quite work. I wished it was a true story rather than a slightly convoluted work of fiction. And in the final third, there are some slightly silly decisions. For example, there’s an incongruous father/son scene that feels completely out of place. And the scenes of Julia with her journalist colleagues feel hammy and lack the ring of truth. All that said, there’s a touching story at the heart of this drama and the two female leads are both superb.

Black Swan (2010)

Brilliant, engaging drama about a young ballet dancer (Natalie Portman), who gets the lead role in a new production of Swan Lake. Her manipulative and abusive teacher drives her to increasingly extreme actions in the name of training her for the role. She also has a controlling mother to contend with.

Portman is excellent as the ambitious but conflicted dancer who undergoes a remarkable transformation into the swan in the interests of achieving technical perfection. 

Directed by Darren Aronofsky, it’s filmed in a striking way, with tropes from horror films cleverly deployed to add suspense and scary drama.

Tamara Drewe (2010)

Skilfully directed by Stephen Frears, this is a comedy-drama adapted from the comic strip by Posy Simmonds, which itself was loosely based on Thomas Hardy’s novel The Mayor of Casterbridge. 

Once an “ugly duckling” and now a much-desired beauty, Tamara returns to the small Dorset village of Ewedown and causes havoc of various kinds, with three different men all in love (or lust) with her. 

It’s funny, but it’s also brilliantly plotted as a drama. All of the characters are three-dimensional and believable. Best of all is Tamsin Greig as Beth Hardiment, the long-suffering wife of the lying, cheating author Nicholas (Roger Allam). 

In visual terms it uncannily evokes the comic strip. 

There’s also a refreshing moral ambiguity. I don’t think we’re even supposed to like the main character.

Leap Year (2010)

Romantic comedy. 

An American woman (Amy Adams) travels to Ireland to propose to her boyfriend, who after four years hasn’t asked her to marry him. (She’s honouring an old tradition in which it becomes acceptable for the roles to be switched every four years.) Once in Ireland she meets the unrefined but free and independent Declan O'Callaghan (Matthew Goode) and inevitably they fall in love. 

The film tries to trade on Irish clichés but doesn’t even do that very well. The focus-grouped checklist gives you nice scenery (admittedly excellent), an Irish wedding (visually and tonally flat: a missed opportunity), Irish music (sometimes replaced by American music: another missed opportunity) and an Irish castle (which doesn’t look real and may be just a matte painting). 

There’s very little wit in the script, and dialogue that might have sparkled simply falls flat. The main couple are watchable and likeable, and Amy Adams is always a delight, but there’s very little here for them to go on.

The Wolfman (2010)

1891. A mysterious attack takes place in the woods...

This is a less-than-inspired retelling of the standard werewolf myth starring Anthony Hopkins, Benicio del Toro, Emily Blunt and Hugo Weaving. It’s a remake that didn’t need to be remade. 

There’s a lot of gore but very little dramatic tension, partly because you see way too much of the werewolf. No mystery or suspense can survive close-up scenes of a monster that looks slightly ridiculous.

A far better film is American Werewolf in London (1981), in which director John Landis addresses similar subject matter with wit and imagination.

The Next Three Days (2010)

An intelligent thriller directed by Paul Haggis. 

Russell Crowe stars as a man who wants to spring his wife (Elizabeth Banks) out of prison after she’s wrongly convicted of murder. It’s fascinating because he’s a school teacher – not your standard film action hero – and he makes mistakes.

It’s tense and exciting. To the film’s credit, there are sufficiently imaginative twists that I could never guess where the plot was going. 

Crowe has an elaborate chart on his wall revealing all of his illegal plans and I found that slightly ridiculous, but the fate of this chart is cleverly worked into the story in such a way that makes you appreciate it. 

Liam Neeson has a curious cameo as an expert at escaping from prisons. I thought he would return to the film at some point but he only features in that one scene.

Shutter Island (2010)

US marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) is sent to a Boston Harbour island. With his companion (Mark Ruffalo), he is looking into the disappearance of a patient from the Ashecliffe Hospital for the criminally insane. But he’s quickly swept into a deeper mystery about what’s really going on at the asylum. 

Directed by Martin Scorsese, this is a genuinely terrifying psychological thriller. Leonardo DiCaprio is superb as a complicated character making a horrible discovery. 

It’s closer in tone to Cape Fear than anything else I’ve seen by Scorsese. What seems to be a noirish thriller acquires extra depths as it becomes stranger and even more disturbing. It’s difficult to say any more without giving away the big twist. 

The superb cast also includes Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams and Max von Sydow.

Never Let Me Go (2010)

Based on Kazuo Ishiguro's novel, this is possibly the most depressing film I’ve ever seen. 

1978. Three young friends, Kathy, Tommy and Ruth, are at a mysterious boarding school called Hailsham. One day, a teacher tells them that they only exist to be organ donors. They will “complete” (i.e., die) in early adulthood when they are no longer strong enough to donate further organs. The film is split between their childhood at Hailsham and their adulthood – in 1985, and then in 1994 – once the donor process begins. Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley and Andrew Garfield star. 

What makes it work is that the plot functions as a romantic love triangle, but it’s set against an extremely subtle dystopian backdrop. There’s a lot that isn’t explained – such as why they barely seem to resist or even question their destiny. Is that because of brainwashing or did the film just avoid the most obvious issues? As it stands, their resigned behaviour just adds to the sense of grim fatalism, which is probably intentional. 

The bleakness comes from the way it’s shot as well as the overall message. It leaves you almost no glimmer of hope. In its own it's way quite brilliant, but ultimately I regretted watching it.

The Ghost (2010)

Political thriller directed by Roman Polanski and adapted from a novel by Robert Harris. Ewan McGregor stars as a ghostwriter employed to help an ex-prime minister (Pierce Brosnan) complete his memoirs. That’s because the previous ghostwriter died in mysterious circumstances that soon threaten McGregor as well. 

It’s extremely odd. Parts of it are unintentionally funny. McGregor has a cockney accent and at times sounds like a young Michael Caine, but beyond that isn’t given any personality at all. Brosnan also speaks oddly, and his usual natural quality is absent. The two women in the ex-PM’s life (Kim Cattrall as Olivia Williams) are both played in a hammy, overwrought fashion. Cattrall has few lines and little to do. The set is also strange: a peculiar designer house on an island just off the US mainland. The Martha's Vineyard area is meant to be attractive – sought after by a wealthy elite – but it looks like a remote, unloved stretch of the Suffolk coastline. You think the fancy "Bond villain" house is going to have a significance, but that never arrives, so the flashy location ends up being a distraction that has nothing whatsoever to do with the story.

The Ghost isn’t very exciting, either. Even the mugging and car chase scenes are lacklustre and strangely flat. Badly mocked up photos shown countless times. Important parts of the story don’t add up.

Eat Pray Love (2010)

Extremely annoying adaptation of the popular memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert. 

Julia Roberts stars as an American who leaves her husband, finds a boyfriend, leaves her boyfriend and then travels to Italy, India and Indonesia to “discover” herself. There’s no explanation of why she was unhappy in either relationship, nor of how she can afford these open-ended wanderings. 

She comes across as a pampered, fairly self-obsessed individual. That would probably be fine – the film isn’t obliged to create a character you like or identify with – but for the shallow presentation of her journey to enlightenment. There are long, lingering shots that dwell on the foods she eats and the landscapes she passes through. The film fetishes food in a way that’s genuinely intrusive on the narrative. Italians are beautiful people eating beautiful food and speaking a beautiful language, the film suggests – in a woefully simplistic and two-dimensional manner. But if the character loves Italy so much, why does she move on to India? 

Most annoyingly of all, she’s forced to make a big decision at the end of the film and she makes the wrong one. It takes a man with no teeth to point out what she should stick with another man (Javier Bardem). So the film shows us that she still lacks wisdom and appears to need men to guide her. So much for being enlightened.

Easy A (2010)

Emma Stone stars in a witty, postmodern teen comedy that references the John Hughes films of the 1980s, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter from 1850 and the Demi Moore film adaptation of that book from 1995. 

Olive is a smart, fast-talking 17-year-old student in California who makes up a story about sleeping with a boy. It becomes a rumour that spreads around the school, and this in turn transforms her reputation and leads to a sequence of escalating fictions that threaten the wellbeing of Olive and many others.

It’s extremely clever. Some of the lines are so fast that you miss them. You almost need the script in front of you. Stone is magnetic and vibrant. Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson are funny as Olive’s warm, ultra-liberal parents. Lisa Kudrow has an awkward energy as the school guidance counsellor who only makes Olive’s problems worse. 

On the down side, there are some plot issues. Olive appears to have a happy, stable family life with understanding parents, so nothing explains why she would go to such lengths to derail her entire existence. Also, it’s unclear why the rumour becomes such a major scandal anyway. In a mixed school, with teens of that age, in that part of the USA, was it really such a big deal that someone lost their virginity?

Also, there’s very little in the way of emotion. That’s surely intentional, but it does mean the film makes less of an impact than it might.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)

Oliver Stone’s disappointing and unnecessary sequel to his original 1987 Wall Street hit, which was itself patchy. Michael Douglas returns as Gordon Gekko. He’s out of prison and says he wants to reconnect with his estranged daughter (an unconvincing Carey Mulligan). That daughter’s fiancé (Shia LaBeouf) is himself a Wall Street wizard and begins his own wheeler-dealing with Gordon Gekko. Josh Brolin plays a smooth, ruthless banker who gave evidence against Gekko in the past.

It’s a frustrating film that feels slow in parts and plain odd in others. Naff visuals don’t help: sometimes there are fussy split-screen effects, and at a couple of points we see crudely literal representation of “dominoes falling” and “science”. 

Susan Sarandon has a bit part that doesn’t really work, and Charlie Sheen has an awkward cameo purely as a nod to his role in the first film. He wasn’t very good in that either. 

Michael Douglas is always compelling, but it’s a genuinely baffling story that simply did not need to be told. The bolted-on happy ending suggests that Oliver Stone is muddled about how he feels about Gordon Gekko. He seems to be in love with the character and unable to make up his mind about whether he’s a nice guy or a baddie. Instead, he gives him a line about all of us being mixed bags who should give each other a break. After two films, that just seems like a cop-out.

The Debt (2010)

Remake of a 2007 Israeli film called Ha-Hov. 

In 1965, three young Mossad agents attempt to capture a Nazi war criminal called Dieter Vogel. Their plans go wrong and he escapes. The agents choose to give a false account of what happened and live with that lie permanently. That is, until Vogel shows up 30 years later and their deception risks being exposed. 

This is an excellent drama that successfully tells parallel stories separated by three decades. It’s centred on Rachel, who is believably played by Jessica Chastain in the 1960s scenes and Helen Mirren in the 1990s sequences. Sam Worthington and Ciarán Hinds both play David Peretz, while Marton Csokas and Tom Wilkinson both play Stefan Gold.

Jesper Christensen is suitably creepy as the so-called “Surgeon of Birkenau”.

The Debt asks deep questions about morality, and the plot is pleasingly unpredictable. It's scary, too.

Green Zone (2010)

Exciting thriller loosely based on real events and directed by Paul Greengrass, with the familiar, dynamic style that makes his best films so watchable. 

It’s 2003 and Matt Damon is a US soldier in Baghdad, leading a unit in the search for Weapons of Mass Destruction. But working with a member of the CIA (Brendan Gleeson) and a journalist (Amy Ryan), he comes to realise that there aren’t any weapons to find and that the government has acted on false information. 

It’s a thriller, a war film and a conspiracy drama. 

Matt Damon – rarely less than brilliant – is as riveting as he ever was. 

The fast cuts make it especially exciting, and I like the "low-res" visuals (which were no doubt exceedingly expensive).

The Town (2010)

Ben Affleck (who also directs) stars as Doug, a member of a gang of mask-wearing robbers in Charlestown, Boston. While doing a bank job they briefly take a female hostage, Claire (Rebecca Hall), but their situation is complicated when Doug forms a romantic attachment with her. It’s also messy because Doug’s intense gang partner Jem (Jeremy Renner) won’t let him leave the group to start a new life, and nor will Irish mobster Fergie (Pete Postlethwaite). 

It’s a tense and exciting thriller that keeps you guessing. Can Doug escape his past and his criminal associations to run off with the woman he loves? Or is he destined never to leave Charlestown except by following his father into prison?

Cleverly, it gets you to empathise with Doug rather than with the FBI agent investigating him (Jon Hamm). And the romantic story is all the more affecting because you know it’s doomed. The only criticism is that Affleck looks too healthy and well-presented to be as desperate as his character is supposed to be.

The Kids Are All Right (2010)

Directed by Lisa Cholodenko, this is an absolutely superb family drama full of smart comic observation. 

Julianne Moore and Annette Bening star as a lesbian couple whose lives are turned upside down when their children get in touch with the sperm donor who fathered them. 

It’s like a play in that almost everything relates to conversations between the main five characters. 

Moore and Benning are brilliant at playing absolutely insufferable know-it-alls. It’s quite painful to watch their self-importance, expertly rendered through gestures, phrasing and body language. 

Also brilliant are Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson playing the children who seem wiser than their mothers, and Mark Ruffalo who plays their newly discovered father. 

It’s a fascinating exploration of how relationships and family units work – and don't work.

Submarine (2010)

Comedy-drama about Oliver Tate, a 15-year-old boy (played by Craig Roberts), his life at home and school, and his relationship with his classmate Jordana (Yasmin Paige). In parallel, the film examines his parents’ failing marriage and his mother’s relationship with “mystic” Graham. 

It’s quirky and unusual. Some of the narrative is handled in a slightly tricksy manner, but it works because it’s from Oliver’s perspective. 

There’s a huge emotional range. It’s funny and sad. It’s realist and also fantastic. Not really like anything else I've seen.

Hereafter (2010)

Drama directed by Clint Eastwood. 

Matt Damon stars as George Lonegan, a psychic who has chosen to no longer give readings. But then he’s brought into contact with a French journalist (Cécile de France) and a London schoolboy (played by the twins Frankie and George McLaren), both of whom have had close brushes with death. 

It’s an extremely unusual film that’s in no way typical of Clint Eastwood’s usual themes or narrative style. The three threads take a long time to join up. For most of the time we follow their stories in parallel, wondering how they can possibly come together. It’s oddly lit, too. Some of that is down to the poor English weather, but even the sections in San Francisco seem strangely washed out. It’s not clear if this was an aesthetic choice or some kind of technical failing.

Bryce Dallas Howard appears as a possible love interest for Matt Damon, while Derek Jacobi has a surprise cameo as himself doing a reading at the London Book Fair in Alexandra Palace. 

It’s strange and quirky, with neat details. Matt Damon is a Charles Dickens fan. Best of all, it doesn’t try to explain or glorify the supernatural gift. Instead, it’s a fact of life that Lonegan feels burdened by. And that makes it all so much more believable.

The American (2010)

Stylish and refreshingly different thriller directed by Anton Corbijn, who brings his photographer’s eye to every scene with the effect that the film looks stunning. 

George Clooney plays Edward, a hitman who moves from Sweden to an Italian village after his cover is blown. Taking on a new job, he’s then commissioned to build a specialist gun by an assassin named Mathilde (Thekla Reuten). While working on the weapon, he develops a relationship with a prostitute named Clara (Violante Placido). He also gets to know the local priest (Paolo Bonacelli) and begins a process of redemption. But dangerous people are out to kill him and he’s unsure who he can trust. 

It’s a little slow, initially, but you are encouraged to luxuriate in the beautiful shots Corbijn sets up until the narrative starts pulling you in. By the final third, it’s edge-of-the-seat stuff. 

Clooney is at his very best as an amoral man who begins to discover new depths in himself and starts to hope for a better life.  

There’s a lack of cliché, with enough twists that the ending cannot be predicted.

Fair Game (2010)

Superb thriller. Adapted from the memoirs of the two protagonists, it tells the story of CIA operative Valerie Plane and her diplomat husband Joseph C. Wilson. The pair were responsible for exposing the US government’s fabrication of the evidence about Weapons of Mass Destruction that was used to justify the invasion of Iraq. 

Naomi Watts and Sean Penn deliver remarkably convincing performances in the lead roles. There’s the political saga, but also the story of their marriage and family, and the strain that these events put on them. 

I admire the realism of it, such as the way that every scene featuring the couple’s children had them constantly asking questions and demanding attention. I also respect the film for delving into the moral ambiguities of the topic – should you tell the truth even if it puts loved ones at risk? – and not providing any simplistic answers.