Golden Stans 2010

Films seen in 2010: 73 (matching my all-time record recorded in 1993). Films qualifying for the Golden Stans 2010: 65 (I saw Iron Man 2, Toy Story 3 and Inception twice, and saw five old films). With that many films competing, inevitably there’s a lot of good work.

But first, I shall start with the Cone of Shame: my award for the worst movie of the year. I was tempted to throw it at Catherine Breillat’s flawed Bluebeard or the shocking disappointment that was Robin Hood, but neither have the wasted ‘ambition’ of The Tourist nor the arrogance of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Biutiful. The Tourist is stacked to the rafters with real talent in front of and behind the camera, but in combination they completely misfire: you’ve got to get up pretty early to cock up the teaming of Depp and Jolie, but that’s precisely what is achieved. And Inarritu really needs to get over himself pretty damn quickly or nobody will be prepared to finance his over-bearing films. I can’t split Biutiful and The Tourist, so they each get a Cone of Shame to wear with 'pride'.

Moving on to the good stuff, the Golden Stan for Best Original Score goes to Randy Newman for Toy Story 3, if only for the score’s impact as the toys head towards the inferno and their apparent death. I should also mention (as ever) Clint Mansell, Darren Aronofsky’s composer of choice: not only is his adaptation of Swan Lake appropriately stirring and ‘heavy’, but also his own compositions add to the film’s rich experience.

My award for Best Cinematography goes to a hands down winner. There was some great work this year, notably from Martin Ruhe on The American, Matthew Libatique on Black Swan (and Iron Man 2), and Eduard Grau on A Single Man, but the outstanding winner has to be Javier Aguirresarobe for The Road. In my review of the latter, I said: “Javier Aguirresarobe’s cinematography (both the colours, the compositions, and the choice of lenses) is astounding - this backed by brilliant production design mean what’s left of the world is horribly real. Many of its images burn into the brain, there to stay.”

The Golden Stan for Best Adapted Screenplay goes without a moment’s hesitation to William Finkelstein for his reworking of Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant as Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call – New Orleans. However, he needs to share the award with director Werner Herzog, whose stamp is very clearly all over the movie. Their re-rendering of the story of a bent cop finding redemption is significantly better than the original while retaining its sheer madness.

The Golden Stan for Best Original Screenplay is a toughie: it’s Toy Story 3 v Black Swan v The King’s Speech (which although containing some adaptation is mostly original). For sheer balls, the award goes to Michael Arndt’s screenplay from the story by John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich for TS3. Definitely not a kids film!

So, on to the acting categories, and first it’s Best Supporting Actress. The nominees are:
• Helena Bonham Carter/The King’s Speech
• Lucy Gordon/Gainsbourg
• Barbara Hershey/Black Swan
• Julianne Moore/A Single Man
• Mary-Louise Parker/RED
• Soledad Villamil/The Secret In Their Eyes
It’s easy to forget how good HBC can be: the warmth and gravitas she conveys in The King’s Speech is ample reminder of her abilities. Also delivering a reminder was Barbara Hershey, botched nip n tuck and all, as the mother from hell, living vicariously through her daughter.
We’re used to knock-out performances from Julianne Moore: her fading fag-hag is another from the top drawer (and counteracts her by-the-numbers turn in The Kids Are All Right).
Mary-Louise Parker caught my eye (in every way!) in RED, her career kookiness working a treat here, stealing scenes from under the noses of Willis, Freeman, Mirren and Malkovich.
It’s easy to lose sight of Soledad Villamil in The Secret In Their Eyes, just as the hero does, but she takes a difficult role and really conjures a distinct human character out of it.
But the winner, and only the second posthumous winner of a Golden Stan, is Lucy Gordon for what should have been a career-making turn as Jane Birkin in Gainsbourg. She completely holds the attention, even against Eric Elmosnino as Serge himself, but there are hints in her performance of whatever troubled her enough to take her life at the age of 28. A great loss.

Next is Best Supporting Actor. The nominees are:
• Tom Hardy/Inception
• Jude Law/Sherlock Holmes
• Pablo Rago/The Secret In Their Eyes
• Sam Rockwell/Iron Man 2
• Mark Ruffalo/The Kids Are All Right
• Geoffrey Rush/The King’s Speech
Tom Hardy stole Inception from under the entire cast’s noses, and now finds himself as a Chris Nolan regular with a big role in Bats 3.
Jude Law was a surprise in Sherlock Holmes: he’s always better playing a foil than being the protagonist – his put-upon Watson is a joy to watch.
Another actor who seems to fare better as a supporting player is Mark Ruffalo, his rogueish charm deployed to brilliant tragi-comic effect – even though his character is unjustly treated by the ridiculous script.
Making the most of an indifferent script was Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer: quite possibly the finest comedic comic book villain on screen since Gene Hackman in Superman. It’s bad enough that you’ve got to share screentime with Downey, Cheadle, Rourke and Paltrow, but when you’ve got to play a gutless fop too you could be excused for backing away: instead, Rockwell takes it on the chin.
Making the most of an astonishing script and having to face up to Colin Firth is Geoffrey Rush. Assured throughout, Rush gets to revel in both his comedic and dramatic skills.
But the winner is Pablo Rago: the journey of suffering his widower goes on is truly something to behold, made all the more poignant by the final reveal. Superb stuff.

Next is the award for Best Actress. The nominees are:
• Annette Bening/The Kids Are All Right
• Jennifer Lawrence/Winter’s Bone
• Isild Le Besco/Deep In The Woods
• Chloe Grace Moretz/Kick-Ass, and Let Me In
• Natalie Portman/Brothers, and Black Swan
• Emma Stone/Easy A
• Tilda Swinton/I Am Love
• Michelle Williams/Blue Valentine
There are a number of new faces here. Let’s start with Chloe Grace Moretz, who absolutely embodies Hit-Girl in Kick-Ass and has a fine stab at the vampyr in Let Me In: is she the new Jodie Foster or Natalie Portman?
Emma Stone almost stole Zombieland in 2009, and, in 2010, Easy A was her introduction to the A-list: let’s hope she’s not the new Lindsay Lohan or Alicia Silverstone – do a great high-school comedy and then disappear into tabloid-led career oblivion. It will be intriguing to see how she fares as Gwen Stacey in the Spidey reboot: for my money she would make a better MJ (I would happily take a second mortgage to see her say to Pete: “Face it tiger, you just hit the jackpot.”).
Jennifer Lawrence made a huge splash with her searing performance in Winter’s Bone and should be a contender at every event during awards season.
Also excelling in difficult, challenging, grim roles were Michelle Williams and Isild Le Besco: the darker parts of the psyche is where these actresses work best.
Tilda Swinton is predictably brilliant as the wayward matriach in I Am Love, although the film left me a little cold.
Annette Bening is Hollywood royalty and delivers a 'less is more' lesson to Julianne Moore in The Kids Are All Right. Oscar might yet favour her over everyone else.
But I’m favouring Natalie Portman for her poles apart roles in Brothers and Black Swan. She suffers with grace, and always there’s that fragility, but in both roles she displayed a previously undiscovered power and indeed eroticism. Black Swan may be the role that comes to define her. The challenge for Portman now, if she chooses to accept it, is to plot her comeback from early award wins and pregnancy better than Gwyneth did…

OK, now it’s Actor. Here are the nominees:
• Yvan Attal/Rapt
• Nicolas Cage/Kick-Ass, and Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call – New Orleans
• George Clooney/The American
• Ricardo Darin/The Secret In Their Eyes
• Romain Duris/Heartbreaker
• Eric Elmosnino/Gainsbourg
• Will Ferrell/Everything Must Go
• Colin Firth/The King’s Speech, and A Single Man
• Edgar Ramirez/Carlos
• Andy Serkis/Sex & Drugs & Rock n Roll
I make no apologies for there being 10 actors on this list not very shortlist. Let’s deal with some of the less obvious choices from less seen films first. Romain Duris gave a comedic masterclass in Heartbreaker, while countryman Yvan Attal showed great control as the kidnap victim in Rapt. Another Frenchman Eric Elmosnino was riveting as Serge Gainsbourg.
Staying with the Johnny Foreigners, Edgar Ramirez was astonishing as Carlos, completely owning the role and commanding the audience’s attention, and Ricardo Darin might just be the Argentine George Clooney, conjuring so many different moods all in minor keys in The Secret In Their Eyes.
The boy Clooney added another conflicted man to his collection, while Nic Cage went mental in the best possible way in both Kick-Ass and Bad Lieutenant.
Will Ferrell delivered the goods in his best dramatic role, underplaying at the right moments.
Andy Serkis raged and soared as Ian Dury – a performance that should define him as much as Gollum.
Finally, Colin Firth delivered two career-best performances in A Single Man and The King’s Speech. In the first, he was reflective, mournful and suicidal, while in the latter he successfully overcomes carrying the weight of a nation and the weight of a disappointed father’s expectations; both roles could easily have been served by a typical Brit performance, but Firth brings extra dimensions and unexpected layers of humanity to both roles. If an award had to be made for greatest living Englishman, Firth would have to be on the shortlist.
But the award here is the Golden Stan for Best Actor, so arise Colin Firth.

Now, the penultimate award: Best Director. The nominees are:
• Darren Aronofsky/Black Swan
• Juan Jose Campanella/The Secret In Their Eyes
• Anton Corbijn/The American
• David Fincher/The Social Network
• Tom Ford/A Single Man
• Werner Herzog/Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call – New Orleans
• Tom Hooper/The King’s Speech
• Christopher Nolan/Inception
• Lee Unkrich/Toy Story 3
• Matthew Vaughn/Kick-Ass
Again, the shortlist is not short: there’s so much great work to recognise. There are distinct auteurs in the traditional sense on the list: Aronofsky delivers his best vision yet with Black Swan; Herzog takes Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant and makes it his own (complete with his own madness: you gotta love the iguanas!); Nolan justified Warners’ faith in him with the most talked-about film ending of the year; and Fincher confirmed the maturity he displayed on Button (with the exception of the one, hokey stunt shot).
Ford and Corbijn brought a great visual sense to their works, although the former was guilty of over-egging as I reviewed at the time.
Hooper and Vaughn should be celebrated as British directors displaying terrific range; indeed the latter may just be our most versatile mainstream director (delete the mainstream from that phrase and you must settle on Michael Winterbottom).
And Unkrich and Campanella serve their stories first admirably.
But the outstanding winner for conjuring an unforgettable film has to be Darren Aronofsky, collecting his second win in this category. Black Swan simply defines the term auteur: there is no part of the film that does not bear the stamp of Aronofsky.

Finally, the big one: Best Film. There were so many great films in 2010 that completely held my attention, that made me happy to be in the cinema. In alphabetical order, here they are:
• A Single Man: eye-watering visuals and Colin Firth’s performance.
• Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call – New Orleans: Herzog takes another auteur’s film and creates his own vision; defies description!
• Carlos: vast, sprawling terrorist chic; falls short of its ambition ultimately, but it demands to be seen.
• Everything Must Go: a lighter companion piece to Up In The Air, another reflection on the impact of the recession.
• Exit Through The Gift Shop: immensely enjoyable fraud!
• Heartbreaker: probably already being remade by a Hollywood studio, the French show how rom-com should be done.
• Inception: Nolan’s big risk paid off big time for Warners and captured the imagination of audience’s worldwide; in a sense, old school film-making – it all starts with a really strong idea.
• Iron Man 2: oh, it had its issues, but there were so many individual elements that I enjoyed. Bring on Thor, Cap and the Avengers!
• Kick-Ass: the best superhero movie of 2010 by some distance. Next for Vaughn: X-Men First Class…
• The American: I really liked the grounded, 70s feel of this excellent thriller. Surely the George Clooney weekender can’t be far off…
• The King’s Speech: Colin Firth again; only one film made me blub more than this (TS3, natch); at a time when the UK is in the doldrums, a more fitting example of not accepting failure, indeed a rallying cry, is hard to think of.
• The Secret In Their Eyes: its impact is unexpected given the potential for the script to have been executed in a run of the mill fashion; sometimes a cast and crew can create chemistry that is greater than the sum of its (already excellent) parts.
• The Social Network: massively enjoyable, but undoubtedly a little over-reviewed; a massive indictment of what will happen to humanity if we leave inter-personal communication to those who can’t communicate.
But the two films that took me to other worlds, that were genuinely immersive, experiential cinema, that made me squirm in my seat (for completely different reasons) were, of course, TS3 and Black Swan.

I’ve already debated at length their merits, and so far they’ve both won two Golden Stans. They are both genuinely brilliant films made with love, care and intelligence. Having to choose one to receive the Best Film award and let the other walk away with nothing leaves me uncomfortable, but a singular winner there must be.
It would be easy to be swayed by the melancholy and joy that is shot through TS3, but in the end the sheer artistic vision and execution of Black Swan gives the lesbian ballerina psycho-chiller the Golden Stan for Best Film.

Bring on 2011!