Best (not recent) movies I saw in 2010

A few days ago I posted notes on the 10 best movies I saw in 2010, but that top-ten list was all of recently released films (released either in theaters or on DVD in 2010 or late 2009 maybe in some cases). But a true best-movies list should also pay homage to some of the classic or at least not-recent movies I saw during the year, so here are notes on the 5 best older movies I saw in 2010, some of them classics, one a seldom-seen but ought-to-be classic, and two too recent to be classics but really good movies that have slipped through the cracks of critical acclaim and ought to be better-known. Here's my list, in alphabetical order:

Cinema Paradiso. I saw the tedious, bloated 3-hour "uncut" version, and I recommend you ignore that monstrosity and find the original 90-minute version and watch that. The original Cinema Paradiso is a charming picture about a boy from a small town, where the entire social and cultural life centers on the movie theater, who goes off to the big city and becomes famous but loses touch with his origins, and returns home for a funeral and finds that everything has changed - and then, that amazing ending!

I Was Born...But. Ozu's 70-year-old silent about two schoolboys boys and their relationship with their father. By today's standards, the story is slow and the somewhat stagy - but still far, far ahead of so many other stilted silents - some beautiful shots of the family gatherings, of the two boys in the landscape of the industrial suburbs of Tokyo, of their father walking the boys to school. You can see the beginning of Ozu's sensibility - which will culminate in great Tokyo Story.

Lantana. Australian. ca 2002? One of those movies with multiple point of view, several strands to the story, you're not clear how or if the strands will intersect, then ultimately the whole design become clear to you. Unlike so many movies and TV series with "surprises," the surprises and twists in Lantana are all credible and in character. And the film also has a serious dramatic dimension. On the surface, it's about a murder investigation, but it's truly about people coming to terms with marriage and trust and faith and infidelity.

Red Road. This Glasgow-set picture from ca 2006 is taut and grim and graphic and very much accomplishes its ends of holding our attention from the first mysterious frame - protagonist Jackie watching multiple screens of video surveillance as part of a police/security anti-terrorism system - and hitting us with various twists and surprises along the way, building to a bang-up conclusion that challenges our assumptions.

Rome Open City. Filmed in the late 40s in what is obviously still a war-ravaged Rome, mostly on location settings, on the cheap, while another, Rome Open City is about resistance to the Nazi occupiers. You're always on edge watching this movie. Anyone could be arrested or shot at any time. The reality of the film is brutal. In so many similar movies, you know the lead characters will survive, because they're stars - but here any character can go at any time. Totally worth watching.