2010 Is the Worst Year for Movies Ever, Just Like Every Year Before It

Yes, yes, 2010 is the worst year for movies EVER, screams Joe Queenan of The Wall Street Journal. There have been plenty of years where I felt 'this is the worst year/summer ever', especially as, yes, I've gotten older. Part of it is nostalgia, as I remember the years past through rose-colored glasses. I remember the great moviegoing experiences (my dad taking me to a jampacked advance-night screening of Jurassic Park... best moviegoing experience of my life) more than the bad ones (my dad taking me to see an afternoon matinee of Airheads that had me feeling guilty that it turned out to be such a stinker). But looking back at years that I didn't care for, there are still more than a few movies that are so good that they all-but redeem the year. We forget about the bad movies and only remember the good ones. When people discuss 1972, they discuss The Godfather, Deliverance, Sleuth, and Sounder. They do not mention Horror at Snape Island, The Revengers, or The Last of the Red Hot Lovers. When we think of 1996, we remember (depending on our taste) Fargo, Independence Day, Paradise Lost: The Child Murders At Robin Hood Hills, Get on the Bus, Mission: Impossible, Big Night, or Star Trek: First Contact. But I'm betting most of us haven't given a second thought to Sargent Bilko, Eddie, or Striptease in fourteen years.

Sure, I may have complained that summer 2001 was a stinker, but who among us really knew how wonderful The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring was going to be just a few months later? I would never think for a moment to trade away the crap of Pearl Harbor or Planet of the Apes if it meant losing the sheer triumph of The Lord of the Rings or the curtain raiser that is Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. 2010 has been one of the lesser years in my memory, but it has still given us Toy Story 3, Inception, How to Train Your Dragon, Mother, the awesomely awful Mega Piranha, and Winter's Bone. When looking back over a year in film, we don't need every film to be good, we just need an occasional Pulp Fiction or Being John Malkovich to remind us why we're still in this game. If it means we have to sit through Iron Man 2 to appreciate Inception, it's worth it. If experiencing Toy Story 3 means that I'll also have to watch the upcoming Alphas and Omegas, it's a fair trade to me.

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