Top 100 Most Anticipated Films of 2010: An Introduction

Welcome to the official landing page for where the 2010’s top 100 most anticipated list begins. Now in year three, I started putting the list together in an attempt to keep tabs on the projects that matter the most to the site – it acts on some occasions as an F-U to the year in film previews that fail to include important films and when we’re lucky we provide a more “robust” profile – gaining access to official first looks of the film (I personally would like to thank the foreign and local production companies, distributors, producers and filmmakers for their participation). To commence the countdown, press on the arrow.

I’ve attempted to be as accurate as possible with the info (some of those synopsis’s are a tough find) and my predictions should be received as educated guesses. I don’t feel the need to explain how I come up with the list, but for the curious you can find my criteria below, as to why particular film is included on the list, why its at the number 1 or 100 spot, or why a film has purposely been left off the list, I usually commence with a starting list of 150 and narrow it down to a sweet one hundred. Some names/titles that didn’t make the cut include: James Gunn’ Super, Andrucha Waddington’s Lope, Alexandre Aja’s Piranha 3-D, Jennifer Lynch’s crazy looking Hisss, Greengrass’ Green Zone, Paul Scheuring’s The Experiment, Ethan Maniquis and Robert Rodriguez’s Machete, Rodrigo Cortés’ Buried (playing at Sundance), doc film Freakonomics, Olivier Dahan’s My Own Love Song, Andrew Meieran’s Highland Park, Roger Donaldson’s The Hungry Rabbit Jumps, Djamshed Usmonov’s Le Roman de Ma Femme, a pair of Winterbottom films, Kick Ass, Three Stooges (looking more like a 2011 pic), Xavier Dolan’s sophomore film (which I found out was completed way too late in the game), and finally Kevin MacDonald’s Eagle on the Ninth.

This year I’ve decided to not include titles that were introduced in 2009 and are having their theatrical release this year: they include top of the list we find A Prophet and Fish Tank, a pair of cream of the crop titles showcased in Cannes, and films such as Dogtooth, Hadewijch, Tales From the Golden Age, Father of My Children, City of Life and Death, I Killed My Mother (J’ai tue ma mere), Mother, Mother and Child, Lebanon, Micmacs à tire-larigot are all worthy titles to look out for. Sight unseen, I’d add the “Mesrine” films, Mid-August Lunch, Everyone Else, Videocracy, Welcome and Alain Resnais’ Herbes Folles. and least we not forget the troubled films, which we keep an ongoing vigil for: Nailed, Black Water Transit and Margaret.

Exclusive still from Denis Villeneuve’s INCENDIES.

Criteria: I first look at who is directing and/or who wrote the project and consider their body of work and how it might have faired in my judgement. This is followed by all the early industry buzz on the film, the quality of the script when available and much of the same things you guys use to figure out if it is a must see type: trailers, pics, material on which it is based on. Film’s plotline and the actor’s involved factor into this schema and sometimes producers/production company factor into my decision making – and we can’t forget the other people behind the camera. Then there is simple personal likes – generally I’ll prefer smaller budget, indie, docs and foreign films over standard items from Hollywood and I generally my choices favor specific genres. I welcome your feedback, opinions and we’ll be offering more coverage on the titles included on this list.