2010 was a bland, mediocre year for movies, with few moments of galvanizing light or heat. You know it’s a down year when European and Asian filmmakers, counted on respectively for penetrating character studies and innovative genre films, are largely MIA. The main culprit, though, as it’s been for quite a while, is the ongoing malaise in American movies.
Now it’s not as easy, or as fun, as you might think to come up with a fresh year-end rant about Hollywood. I take no pleasure in harping yet again on the vapid state of American cinema, and the infantile obsession with teenage vampires and boy wizards, maniacal serial killers and animated, anthropomorphic animals, vapid rom-com heroines and cliche-riddled hero’s journeys. Every studio is single-mindedly focused on a young, male audience, and as a result computer graphics and 3D are devouring the multiplexes.
Anybody paying attention is well aware that Hollywood has turned the first eight months of the year into a virtual no-man’s-land for adult moviegoers, with the return of juveniles to school in September finally allowing for a parade of serious, thoughtful movies. But this year only a handful of such titles — The Town, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, The Social Network, Conviction, Stone, Hereafter, Fair Game — opened between Labor Day and Thanksgiving. Now, finally, we’re in the midst of a blizzard of worthwhile fare, but instead of four months of interesting, challenging movies, we’re reduced to one.
“The Social Network”
An unnecessary trend, as long as I’m venting my spleen, was five movies set in Boston, complete with the requisite overplayed accents. As a guy with both Chicago and San Francisco connections, I’m mystified why those fascinating cities are ignored or used as generic background while Boston was overexposed in the blue-collar tints of The Town, Conviction, The Fighter and The Company Men. At least The Social Network, which began in the cosseted world of Harvard, had the good sense to jump to Silicon Valley midway through.
