Reviews

Year in Review: Our List of The Best Lists of 2010

By  · Published on December 29th, 2010

If you thought we were meta enough with our list of best editorials, you were wrong. You were also wrong about that pub quiz question you missed last night but kept claiming, “the wording was confusing.”

That’s okay. Soothe your second place loss to the “Long Beach Pub All Stars” by digging in deep to this list of lists.

What criteria did we use to pick them? Simple. The key was finding those lists which acted as a catalyst for discussion, for reverie, for passion, and for self-reflection. The subjects might seem ridiculous, but there’s nothing like looking back on the year and seeing where movies took our minds.

Time to get meta and do our part to bring about that ETEWAF Patton Oswalt keeps talking about.

10. 10 Movie Inventions Better Than The iPad

By: Kevin Carr and Cole Abaius

Along with the 5 Cool Things Movie Lovers Can Do with Their iPad, it was clear that Apple products were on our mind (and the mind of the citizens of 2010). It’s nice that iPad has a killer Mahjong app, but I’m still waiting for my commercially available Tardis.

9. 10 Horror Films That Should Be Remade

By: Robert Fure

We’ve grown to accept the remake fad at a severed arm’s length. It’s here to stay, and even it’s a bitter pill to swallow, a spoonful of suggestion can make the medicine go down. A perfect companion piece to the (appropriate) Worst Freddy Krueger Moments, the remake craze hit horror in a major way. If these flicks have to be redone, we might as well toss our two cents in on what we’d like to see most.

8. 8 Great Directors You Should Know More About

By: Landon Palmer

If there’s one thing we’re about here at FSR, it’s finding more great movies from more great filmmakers. Does it matter if one of those filmmakers made Lair of the White Worm? Sort of. But we’re comfortable overlooking that fact.

7. 8 Comic Books That Should Be Movies

By: Jorge Del Pinal, Jeremy Kirk, Amber Humphrey, and Jorge Sosa

We’re currently in the death throes of the comic book adaptation era. It may seem like it’s going strong, and it may still be unduly influencing the decision makers, but the apex has passed. Even so, there are plenty of great comic books out there that deserve to be seen on the big screen because of their stories and cinematic elements. The people demand an Ambush Bug movie immediately.

6. A Brief (and Mostly Terrible) History of Video Games in the Movies

By: Dustin Hucks

Speaking of adaptations, video games have had a rough go of it. No one who has tried seems to really understand how to bring the video game experience into the narrative format. Except maybe the people that made Silent Hill. Whatever the future brings, this article proves that it will be better (has to be better) than the past.

5.20 Movie Icons You Didn’t Know Were In the Military

By: Cole Abaius

Every so often, it’s important to look back on what shaped directors and actors and writers. The external parts of their personal lives are usually ephemeral (I don’t care what airline Kevin Smith flies either), but these filmmakers were, in various levels of intensity, shaped by their experience in the fighting forces. Plus, it’s pretty funny to imagine Alan Alda and Audrey Hepburn fighting wars.

4. 4 Films That Inspired Let Me In Director Matt Reeves

By: Cole Abaius

All too rarely, the up-to-the-minute rush of the film blogging world leaves the films behind the films aside in favor of the latest picture of Amber Heard having lunch with Ang Lee (scoop!). Along with the 7 Films That Inspired Cowboys & Aliens, these kinds of lists are important to see where filmmakers are coming from (and to show they’re just as geeky as all of us when it comes to Rosemary’s Baby).

3. 12 Writers/Directors Better Suited for Dark Tower Than Goldsman/Howard

By: Rob Hunter

We do a lot of dream casting around here, especially when the personnel announced for a project is less than favorable. For example, when Akiva Goldsman is announced for just about anything that’s not lean and lifeless. The Dark Tower would prove to be a cinematic challenge for almost any writer or director, but wouldn’t you rather have Frank Darabont and Alfonso Cuaron at the helm?

2. The 15 Best Miramax Films

By: Rob Hunter and Cole Abaius

The lights were turned off on Miramax earlier in the year, and we’re still seeing the business fall out from the decision. There’s no doubt that the banner will start cranking out new films at some point (apparently all of them sequels), but the first phase is over, and it produced some incredible films. Feel free to explain why we’re wrong about all of them.

1. The 30 Most Anticipated Movies of 2010

By: Cole Abaius

This may be an unfair entry, but there’s nothing like looking back to the past to do some internal judging and some judging of how the year truly panned out. “Panned” is a great word for 2010, because the movie experiences were mostly bland – failing to capture the imaginations of the world at large.

There were a few stand outs, but featuring Robin Hood, The Wolfman, and Iron Man 2 (in the #1 spot) of our Most Anticipated List was telling. We also called it for The Social Network, Black Swan, and Scott Pilgrim, but even more fascinating is seeing the films on the list that we wanted to see…but didn’t even end up making it to theaters this year. There’s always 2011, right Paul?

Honorable Mentions: 8 Things We Demand From the Next Superman Movie, 7 Completely True Chuck Norris Facts, 5 Cinematic Vigilantes You Didn’t Know Were Vigilantes

Now that our list of lists is complete, the site will now collapse in on itself. It was nice knowing you.

Thanks for all the fish.

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Movie stuff at VanityFair, Thrillist, IndieWire, Film School Rejects, and The Broken Projector Podcast@brokenprojector | Writing short stories at Adventitious.