For Those About To Rock

01. Josh Ritter — "So Runs the World Away"

Date: May 4
Label: Pytheas

Josh Ritter's career is the guide book for how to convert yourself from solo folk crooner into bonafide rock star and retain artistic integrity.

So Runs crystallizes the Idahoan singer's transformation, embracing the many hats he's worn and a few he hopes to have in the future.

It's both a study of American music and an exploration of a man who confidently forges forward at his craft, whether that's in the infectious rally cry of "Lantern" or the drum-driven cynicism of "Rattling Locks" — "Black hole, black hole / How can your two eyes be empty as they look?"

Though lyrics are Ritter's shining spot, he writes some of the strongest tunes of his career thus far.

"Folk Bloodbath" is a mashup of murder ballads and characters from music history, recast in a new tale. For as steeped as Ritter is in Americana, it's apropos for him to spin a yarn about Stagger Lee, Delia, Louis Collins and Hangin' Billy Lyons.

Everything coalesces with "Another New World," inspired musically by violin virtuoso Niccolo Paganini and lyrically by Edgar Allan Poe's "Annabel Lee." Ritter's ancient, seafaring explorer protagonist seeks a passage to the north "over the edge of the world," but finds his journey a little icy.

It's the sound of one of the finest modern American songwriters at the peak of his craft.

"Another New World"

10. Toy Story 3

Rating: G
Distributor: Disney/Pixar
Date: June 18
Director: Lee Unkrich
Voice talent: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Michael Keaton

The third and likely final installment in the "Toy Story" series acts as a wonderful coda for '90s kids who are now around the same age as Andy, the film's omnipresent owner of Woody, Buzz Lightyear and the rest of the gang. The first film was a treasure and an adventure, leaving you wanting to see more of the world of talking toys. The second expanded the scope, taking the toys outside of Andy's and Sid's yards.

The third installment hinges on a misunderstanding that delivers the toys to a daycare center. That the toys take this as evidence they were destined for the trash feels unusually thin by Pixar's ridiculously high standards. Nonetheless, during their stay, the center grows from welcoming to sinister for Andy's playmates.

The toys' future rests in the balance in a picture that has all the love and attention to detail the first two "Toy Story" features celebrated. The color palette is the most lush and expansive of the "Toy Story" installments.

It tries a bit too hard to get to the nougaty center of its fun-filled coating, and in the bit sacrifices some of its lightheartedness of previous chapters for action.

But that's a minor quibble. There's something here for all ages, which explains why people flock to them to the point where this became the highest grossing animated film of all time.

09. The Kids Are All Right

Rating: R
Distributor: Focus Features
Date: July 9
Director: Lisa Cholodenko
Talent: Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo

Annette Bening turns in one of the strongest performances of the year in a film about a lesbian couples' donor-conceived children and what happens after they seek out their birth father.

Bening plays Nic, a doctor who's too serious for her own good. Her partner, Jules (Julianne Moore), is an easygoing free spirit who increasingly feels distanced from Nic.

Enter the children's birth father, Paul (Mark Ruffalo). All of the members of the family are eager to engage him and find out who he is.

The script, written by Stuart Blumberg and director Lisa Cholodenko, does hang itself on a plot point that borders on unbelievability.

That caveat aside, "Kids Are All Right" is loaded with rich, well-defined characters. This film isn't afraid to show them to you, warts and all. Jules has career aspirations that have never reached their full expression and Paul presents an opportunity for her new landscaping venture, but her free spiritedness can jive with Nic's icy demeanor, for example.

In the end, the film works because it accepts and embraces its flawed characters and shows you a wholly human family portrait of the kind of household we haven't seen much of on the big screen.

08. Shutter Island

Rating: R
Distributor: Paramount
Date: February 19
Director: Martin Scorsese
Talent: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley

The first of two psychological mindbenders starring Leonardo DiCaprio on this list, this one has Martin Scorsese calling the shots. Based on the Dennis Lehane book of same name, Scorsese gives us the set up and then mows us down as Teddy Daniels' (DiCaprio) investigation of an murderess who escapes a mental institution takes some decidedly interesting twists.

Dissecting where it winds up and how it gets there would be to do readers a disservice. The journey, not the destination, is part of what makes "Shutter Island" a rabbit hole worth jumping down and what I can wager is that even the most experienced of plot-guessers don't see this ending coming.

Scorsese does fine work, as usual, behind the camera, shading things appropriately to invoke all the right emotions. DiCaprio plays Teddy with nervy conviction, particularly the slow doubts he begins to have about the world of Shutter Island.

It is his charge to sell this world. DiCaprio does it so well that when the finale of this twisted psychological crime drama comes, it is with the force of a safe being dropped from a five-story building.

07. True Grit

Rating: PG-13
Distributor: Paramount
Date: December 22
Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen
Talent: Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Hailee Steinfeld

Oscar winners Joel and Ethan Coen take us back to 1969, revisiting "True Grit," the Western that earned the late John Wayne his only Academy Award.

Stepping into The Duke's role is Jeff Bridges, his first work with the Coen brothers since cult classic "The Big Lebowski." As Rooster Cogburn, Bridges shows a willingness to wallow in his own filth in a way the "Lebowski" main character would've abided, although Cogburn has more purpose than The Dude.

Here he's enlisted by Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld). She is the star here rather than Cogburn. Steinfeld holds her own with a cast that includes Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin and Barry Pepper.

The picture is not without its trademark Coen brothers flourishes, particularly their signature blend of dark humor and intriguing plot. But this time, they aim for a straight-up genre film and delivery a classy, well-paced Western.

06. Exit Through the Gift Shop

Rating: R
Distributor: Revolver
Date: April 16
Director: Banksy
Talent: Banksy, Shepard Fairey, Thierry Guetta

This picture opens on Banksy, a shadowy street artist dressed in all black with his hoodie pulled over his head, his face obscured in darkness and his voice modified with a vocoder. This is our director. He tells us that this movie was going to be about him, but instead, he flipped the script and now it's a documentary about the cameraman, Thierry Guetta.

Guetta filmed everything because he could. Everything. There's even a shot of him entering the shower.

This shooting obsession landed him in France with his cousin, the internationally known street artist Invader. From there, Guetta's work grows into a documentary about street artists and becomes a pursuit of the elusive Banksy.

The two do hook up and we see some of Banksy's greatest hits, including his placement of a Guantanamo Bay blow-up doll inside a DisneyLand attraction, all captured by Guetta. When the street art world moves toward art shows and auctions, Banksy encourages Guetta to make his film. It's a disaster. Banksy encourages Guetta to go make some art of his own while he re-cuts the film.

Banksy creates a monster. Guetta becomes Mr. Brainwash, a street art phenomena with an immense show in Los Angeles who winds up designing a Madonna album cover.

Whether interested in street art or not, this is where the rub comes. With the elusive trickster Banksy behind everything, who's to say if any of this is real? Banksy insists it is, but it's not beyond the realm of possibility that Guetta — who does not appear to age 10 years during the making of this film, as we are told — is Banksy's most twisted creation of all.

The movie offers no answers either way. That it is an unsolvable riddle also is its greatest intrigue.

05. The Social Network

Rating: PG-13
Distributor: Columbia
Date: October 1
Director: David Fincher
Talent: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake

Aaron Sorkin's spitfire dialogue peppers the plot, which turns the otherwise legally portentous creation of Facebook into dramatic fodder. There's little room for women in this man's world, though the spaces available even manage to make writing code and posting on Livejournal interesting.

Eisenberg ("Adventureland," "Zombieland") takes a star turn as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in a role that could land him an Oscar nomination. Known in the past for nerdy sensitivity, in "Social Network," Eisenberg shows the fierce, scorned underbelly of those characters. The fuel deep inside of him is enough anger to prove everybody wrong and emerge on top, which he does by pointedly telling off lawyers and competitors and many others who cross his path.

By all rights, this movie has no business being this good. A picture about the legal battles surrounding the founding of Facebook? "Omg, snore!" right?

Wrong.

As director, Fincher doesn't take his take lightly, treating it as seriously as he did the material for "Fight Club." Teaming him with Sorkin works out to be a stroke of unexpected genius.

Turn in a cast of talented young men and a score by Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor that includes the freakiest take on "In the Hall of the Mountain King" you have ever heard and you have the "The Social Network," the most shocking 2010 cinema success story.

04. The Ghost Writer

Rating: PG-13
Distributor: Summit
Date: February 19
Director: Roman Polanski
Talent: Evan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Olivia Williams

Roman Polanski makes one of the year's finest thrillers with "The Ghost Writer," the tale of a successful scribe (Ewan McGregor) who takes on the monumental and expensive task of helping a former British prime minister (Pierce Brosnan) with his memoirs.

But something strange is afoot. While Brosnan's Adam Lang boasts a long list of menial tropes and remains strangely secretive about the book, McGregor's unnamed protagonist unravels his facade as well as the mysterious circumstances under which the previous ghost writer died. He does both slowly and deliberately, with Polanski making the viewer wrestle each nugget of information from his hands.

It works. The pace is deliberate, quietly ratcheting the tension as it glides. Polanski sets scenes slowly, letting our thoughts toil and linger from one to the next. The film looks positively frigid, from the gloomy, overcast skies outside of Lang's office to match the gloomy, overcast mood among the characters indoors.

Working expertly with tone, pacing and mood, Polanski crafts one of the year's finest thrillers.

03. Winter's Bone

Rating: R
Distributor: Roadside
Date: June 11
Director: Debra Granik
Talent: Jennifer Lawrence, John Hawkes, Garret Dillahunt

Debra Granik directs the story of a 17-year-old who tries to track down her fugitive, meth-cooking father in the Ozarks after he puts his family's house up to make bail.

The star here is Jennifer Lawrence as Ree Dolly. Ree knows her station in life and knows the family into which she was born, so she never looks down her nose at them. She accepts whatever distasteful cards she's been dealt and makes the most of it, whether that's raising her little brother and sister or helping her mentally vacant mother.

If Lawrence plays Dolly with cool and calm, Hawkes, best known for his role as Sol Star on HBO's "Deadwood," plays Teardrop, her uncle, with a leathery, unsettling verve. When first we meet Teardrop, he is worn down, but not broken. He takes a toot of blow and then, seconds later, unleashes the bitterness roiling in him, lunging at his niece, grabbing her and discouraging her from pursuing her old man.

But this doesn't deter her. She pushes on, moving from shady family member to shady family member, ruffling feathers as she ascends the meth operation hierarchy.

"Winter's Bone" is stark, unvarnished and honest. The savage recoil throughout the Dolly family of dealing in the crank business takes its toll and Granik isn't afraid to show it.

It's uncomfortable to watch for its unflinching portrayal, but it's also why it's worth checking out.