Daughters of Darkness (1971)

Chic lesbo vampire flick starring French legend Delphine Seyrig. A pair of newlyweds check into a Belle Epoque seaside hotel during off-season and find the only other guests at the hotel are a mysterious countess (Seyrig) and her timid secretary. As the couple get to know each other, the husband's shady past and sadistic tendencies start to bubble to the surface. They soon find the countess is getting quite chummy and might have something more in mind for them than polite conversation. This moves at a very slow pace, but in an intriguing way. It draws you in with it's languidness. This could have been an exploitation film (there are moments of cheese), but it has restraint, looks expensive, and relies heavily on Seyrig's considerable acting abilities and electrifying screen presence (her wardrobe in the film is delicious). Tony Scott's The Hunger (1983) owes this film plenty. It is ridiculously similar in style and content.

The Tillman Story (2010)

Documentary about the professional football player who quit the NFL to enlist, and ended up being killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan. Tillman suspected from the outset that he'd be a poster child for the war, and that's exactly what happened. Then the obfuscation perpetuated by the army brass surrounding the circumstances of his death, all to avoid bad publicity. War is hell, the army is inept, good publicity sells wars...no big revelations here. The movie is no big deal, except for his little brother's drunken appearance at his televised funeral. In front of hordes of generals and politicians, he punctures all the pomp of a military funeral in just a few sentences. One of the best eulogies.

Let Me In (2010)

American/British remake of the Swedish horror film Let The Right One In about a bullied 12-year-old boy who befriends a young girl who turns out to be a vampire. The original was quite good and, surprisingly, the remake is just as good. At times, it is a little too similar (long stretches are shot-for-shot identical to Tomas Alfredson's original) but writer-director Matt Reeves subtly plays up key moments and tones down others. It's like the experience you'd have listening to the same piece of music led by two different conductors. Kodi Smit-McPhee is perfect as the shy lead. He can cry effortlessly and, as in The Road, is called upon here to do so often. Indeed, he may be our generation's Margaret O'Brien, except more feminine. Oh, and Chloe Grace-Moretz as the vampire.

Ondine (2010)

We live in such a cynical time, that it's hard for filmmakers to get audiences to swallow a pure fairy tale. I mean no "tongue-in-cheek" stuff, fairy tale played straight. The last time a major director attempted an honest to goodness fairy tale (that I can think of) was Jacques Demy's "The Magic Donkey" (1970), and even he couldn't get it right, it seemed forced and precious. Writer-director Neil Jordan now gives it a try, and succeeds beautifully. Colin Farrell is a lonely fisherman with a critically ill daughter and an alcoholic ex-wife, who pulls in his net one day and finds a beautiful girl in it. Is she a water nymph/mermaid type thingy? Is she lying? See the movie, no one else did. This lovely film came and went, which means I'll probably have to wait another forty years for a director to have the assurance and vision to give this kind of thing a go.

The Social Network (2010)

The meteoric rise of toxic nerd and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin cleverly uses two lawsuits brought by former associates of Zuckerberg as the framework for the flashback structure of the film. Sorkin's crackly, to-the-point dialog really catches the ear, the kind of talk that used to be commonplace in the movies, but is usually found only on television these days. Director David Fincher curtails his tendency towards green filters (many of his films look as if they were shot through a Heineken bottle) and presents a handsome looking film. Most of the buzz about this film was that it made Zuckerberg look like an asshole, I disagree. At most, he comes off irritating. It's hard not to root for him when his adversaries are a business partner who couldn't put together one friggin' meeting, and not one, but a pair of overprivileged jocks. A "Revenge of the Nerds" for the 21st century.

A Film Unfinished (2010)

Documentary from director Yael Hersonski about the discovery of film canisters containing never before seen footage of the Warsaw ghetto. Holocaust documentaries are inherently dramatic and disturbing, but this one has a detached and analytical style that makes it more chilling than most. The raw footage, seemingly random images of the deplorable conditions, day to day goings on, and bizarre staged scenes like a woman seated at a vanity applying lipstick, are looked at in close detail until the truth starts to seep out. The project, carried out by the Third Reich mere months before the deportations to the death camps, curiously shows all of the horrors of the ghetto (curious because this was intended as propaganda, after all). This starts you thinking, why are they filming this, when they also stage scenes of Jews living "happily"? Also, the Nazis always left plenty of documentation on all their film projects, yet oddly, this one has no paper trail. The ultimate intent may not be known, but nauseating clues emerge when the filmmakers stage scenes of the "wealthy" ghetto inhabitants ignoring their fellow citizens starving in the street, as if to say "Look, even in the ghetto." Ultimately, Hersonski lets the footage speak for itself and leaves it to the viewer to solve the mystery. He also does something that gave me a nightmare when I went to sleep that night: He'll freeze on a face in the crowd, and just let you look into the eyes of a human being, and contemplate his fate.

Salt (2010)

Angelina Jolie in an action-packed bio-pic of the life of Waldo Salt. Actually, she plays underfed secret agent Evelyn Salt, able to take down hundreds of men three times her body weight. Not as bad as it could've been, probably due to the efforts of director Phillip Noyce. However, everything is left open and unresolved, sure as they were that there'd be a sequel. But I don't want to see the fucking sequel, and I need closure, dammit! About as good for you as salt, but ineffective in clearing ice from sidewalks and preventing goiters.