Inception (dir. Christopher Nolan, 2010). Much loved by pseudo-intellectuals and people whose brains have been bombarded by the stardust of too many bong hits, Inception is a movie in an argument with itself: on the one hand, it has (well meaning at first) intellectual aspirations, and on the other, it wants to be a big, dumb, stylized action movie. Somewhere around the third dream level, when the aspirations turn into delusions of grandeur and the movie starts to resemble a bloated adaptation of Metal Gear Solid with no end in sight, I decided to turn off my brain and let the rest of the movie happen on its own. Why does Hollywood still think it has the capacity to deal with actual issues? D-.
True Grit (dir. Joel and Ethan Coen, 2010). While the Coens don't exhibit the same command of the source material nor the creative subversion of genre conventions as they have in previous adaptations (see especially The Big Lebowski, their riff on Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep and film noir), their True Grit works as a decent if not so revelatory Western. C.
The Social Network (dir. David Fincher, 2010). I personally have my doubts about Fincher's directorial abilities, but Aaron Sorkin's smart and witty script (alternatively acerbic and poignant in all the right places) compensates for Fincher's merely adequate direction. B.
