Trying to figure out the themes that the 2010 year in cinema gave to us is not a hard task at all. If anything, this year’s best films had an irrepressible surge that impelled them all toward themes focusing on alienation, instability, conformity, and deception, all different routes that lead to the same destination: at an arrival of self-discovery.

Below are my picks for the Top 30 films of 2010, all of which, in one way or another, had characters that had to confront the danger that was permeating their existence, as a bullfighter bravely confronts an oncoming bull. This confrontational theme knew of no cinematic boundaries. It hit hard in Toy Story 3 and The Kids Are All Right just as hard as it did in Winter’s Bone and Black Swan. It did not matter if Andy had to confront college or if Nina had to pierce a deep wound into her own being just so an answer could be derived. All characters in all 30 films were just as much bothered with universal issues as they were with personal demons. King’s Speech demonstrates this as King George VI has to face WWII and his stammering issue. And the directors of these films did not revile such themes, as they satisfyingly indulged in them by creating unwelcoming atmosphere fostering trite and brutal themes and making them into something glowingly artistic.

Here are my picks for the best films of 2010:

True Grit
Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
Starring: Hailee Steinfeld, Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin and Barry Pepper
Release date: December 22, 2010

Let’s see who justly possesses true grit: Is it the grizzled, one-eyed U.S. marshal Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), whose depleted, wobbly, massive stature is indicative of his many battles with criminals and alcohol? How about LaBoeuf (Matt Damon), a prideful Texas Ranger who has a sinister appearance and a ruthless mentality that conceals a heart of gold? What about the murderous villains such as Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin) or Lucky Ned Pepper (Barry Pepper)? Unquestionably, all these men have grit, but is it true grit? All of them have been around many years and seen and done many heinous things. They are regular frequenters of this Wild West world that knows of no remorse, killing individuals as if it were a seasonal sport. But what about Matty Ross (Hailee Steinfeld, in a commanding film debut), that 14-year-old girl whose appearance is as pure as the snowfall? Do not let this hide the inner strengths she possesses. She wants to enter this western world of wildness only to avenge the death of her father’s who was killed by Chaney. She has grit for even thinking of entering this environment. And it is true grit because this is a personal journey that she needs to fulfill.

Very furtively True Grit instigates the idea of Matty becoming consumed by vengeance more so than any man in the movie because she is willing to put at risk her purity. She has not yet been tainted by evilness, but she puts herself in a position to be acquainted with it. Joel and Ethan Coen construct a tale of lost innocence by making Matty their center of devotion. Watch her as the Coens do, as she puts herself in the company of men whose innocence was taken away from them a long time ago. They have nothing to lose. She has an abundance to lose.

NOTE: For structural reasons and to ensure that this list is super-duper pretty at all times, we’ll be posting this same intro for all sections of The Decade List. If you’ve already read all of this, you can just head down to the continuation of our list!

Let’s just get it out of the way right off the ol’ bat: yes, we know it’s been month since we left the decade. Most folks undertook this heavy task pre-2010, but we decided that it would be a little bit better to let the new year settle in a bit before hitting you with something of this magnitude.

So here we are, geeks: we’ve officially arrived in FUTURE *cue retro ’50s sci-fi music* and still we have no freakin’ flying cars yet. What’s the deal with that? While it is pretty exciting to be inside of the year 2010 — a year that always seemed unreachable to us mere mortals — we are also exiting another entire decade that leaves us staring at one majorly epic task. That task? To search, dig, locate, retrieve, organize, polish, and present the very best films of the past ten years!

A Serious Man – *1/2
Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
Starring Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Sari Lennick, Peter Breitmayer, Fred Melamed
Release date: October 31, 2009

The Coen Brothers‘ catalogue of films displays verification, in the grander scheme of things, of how meager and unimportant human life actually is. Verification also of our incompetency as humans to realize what awaits us. To quote a line from the Coens’ film No Country for Old Men, “you can’t stop what’s comin’.”

Joel and Ethan Coen love to show their characters being submissive to the realms of evil; accepting what is coming to them regardless of the outcome. The perilous paths they travel down usually have connotations resembling desperation, greed and envy, all of which can lead to death. Acting against these overt connotations becomes imperative to the characters, almost to a point where discerning them becomes a natural instinct to ensure the longevity that life offers us. By not taking any action against these explicit sins a logical story cannot bloom, leaving an audience in dismay at what they just watched.

Stiffened in the fate that causes him to question his entire being, Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a middle-aged man married with two children in suburbia Minnesota circa 1967, is falling through a portal of infinite darkness, plunging full throttle into this pool of black and not possessing the slightest will of halting this bleak voyage.

Burn After Reading
Blu-ray Edition
Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
Starring George Clooney, Frances McDormand, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich
Universal Home Entertainment
Release date: December 21, 2008

Burn After Reading opens with a view that seems to be from outer space, pinpointing the east coast of America — the land of opportunity. As it slowly descends closer, eventually delving into Virginia’s CIA Headquarters, we realize that this view might be from a bomb; a Coen brothers bomb that extracts moral values from its characters, twisting and turning them before they’re all led blindly to a state of misanthropy. Humans have no regard for other’s emotions. What means the most to one person means absolutely nothing to the next. An evil world indeed, but it is a Coen world where the real world pales in comparison as far as evil goes.

What Joel and Ethan Coen have done throughout their career are pit casual people against odds that are much more lethal and powerful than any human being could possibly be. This is their formula, and although they’ve been constantly changing venues, the ramifications that follow have always stayed true to their original formula. But there’s something new in Burn After Reading that one can’t quite put their finger on. The brothers make a movie containing 96 minutes of pure comedic delight and, strangely, the same amount of dread that no other film so far this year can touch. It’s something rare, something that can’t possibly be missed.