As is tradition for me here at TheClevelandFan.com, I use the last weekend of the year to look back on what we saw at the theaters in 2010.

And what a horrible year for movies it was…at least until November, when the decent movies came out, and have somewhat saved this year; at least in terms of good movies.  The Top 10 I’m giving is just as strong, I feel, as what we’ve seen in any year since 2006.  Now overall, I think 2010 is just as strong at the top as 2006, but it’s missing an all-time great movie like “The Departed” to really stand out.

The summer is what really sank 2010.  While there were the usual barrage of crap movies from January to April, May is when things were supposed to heat up; and it flopped miserably.  “Iron Man 2” kicked things off with what was to be the theme of the summer; Sequels and Remakes that were 100% worse than the originals.

“Robin Hood”, "Clash of the Titans", “A Nightmare on Elm Street”, “Shrek Forever”, “Prince of Persia: Sands of Time”, “Sex and the City 2”, “Get Him to the Greek”, “The A-Team”, “The Karate Kid”,  “Jonah Hex”, “Grown Ups”, “Knight & Day”, “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse”, “The Last Airbender”, “Predators”, and “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”.  I’m getting a headache just reading that list.  The only things that saved the Summer were “Toy Story 3” and “Inception”.

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 The Coen Brothers’ remake of the iconic John Wayne film “True Grit” completely snuck up on me.  Try as I might, I couldn’t quite shake The Duke from my thoughts as I watched it, no matter how different Jeff Bridges played the role of Rooster Cogburn.  Watching the film was almost disconcerting; it seemed so original and fresh; but also so familiar.

As the story went on, however, I was drawn more and more into it, and accordingly left my preconceived notions further and further behind.  When I left the theater, I was immediately thinking that I saw a very good movie.  But the more and more I have thought about it over the past 24 hours, I am convinced I have seen one of the best movies of the year.

The entire concept of this movie seems a bit off kilter.  Why remake a movie from over forty years ago…especially a Western; a dying genre?  And then to choose one that is forever linked to Wayne’s one and only Academy Award?  Just what the hell were Ethan and Joel Coen thinking?  Had their egos swollen up so much after “No Country for Old Men” that they thought they could do no wrong? 

Perhaps their egos are larger than they should be; but that’s not what I’m judging here:  I am judging THIS film, and trying to do so on its own merits.  Trying…but it’s almost impossible to do that; which is a shame.

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“The Fighter” is in many ways a very difficult movie for me to review.  It has a great script, incredibly talented actors playing extremely fascinating characters, and a good director keeping everything moving in the right direction.

On the other hand, the fight sequences are boring and predictable, secondary characters in the form of seven sisters are thrown together in a hodgepodge, and it turns out that once again we have a “biography” of a real person where the screenwriters continually disregard what really happened in the subject’s actual life.

On the final point, perhaps it’s just time for me to let it go.  Anyone who has ever read any of my reviews of films “based on real events” or “based on a real story” (what’s the “real” difference?) knows that I just go nuts when I find out that the screenwriters have made a script about a real person and his real life…and then totally made crap up just so it would be more dramatic.  No need to continually re-hash it; it happens, and that’s just the way it is.  Personally, I’m glad I didn’t know much of the story of “Irish” Micky Ward prior to seeing the movie, which meant I could enjoy it without getting bent out of shape regarding the discrepancies until later, once I did some research.

 In fairness, it seems that 90% of it was correct, so let’s just focus on that.

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I was never that much of a fan of the original 1982 cult classic “Tron”.  I found the special effects cheesy and woefully inadequate when compared to other films released earlier, such as “Star Wars”, “The Empire Strikes Back”, both Superman movies and “Alien”.  I also found the story itself to be mind-numbingly bad and the characters completely one-dimensional.  So I was a bit confused as to why someone thought a remake/sequel was in order.

But it seems that Hollywood is on an 80s reunion tour lately…especially in 2010 with “The A-Team”, “Karate Kid”, “Clash of the Titans”, and “Nightmare on Elm Street” remakes, along with 80s nostalgia from “Grown Ups” and “Hot Tub Time Machine”.  We even had a resurrection of icons of the 80s, Gordon Gekko, in “Wall Street 2”, and Sylvester Stallone in “The Expendables”.  So I guess it was inevitable that someone would try for a sequel to the old “Tron” chestnut.

In doing so, Joseph Kosinski, in his first effort as a director, has made a film that is better than the original, but is still weighed down by some of the same problems seen in 1982. 

On the plus side, “Tron: Legacy” is a marvel to watch on the big screen.  No one will ever complain that the special effects in this film are “cheesy” (at least for another 10 years).  The visualization of a world inside a computer (or “grid”) is stunning.  It may end up being the exact same vision the filmmakers had in 1982, but now the technology supports bringing it to the screen, and like “Avatar” from last year, it is a film that is tailor-made for 3D.

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