Your favorite film or movie moment of 2010

“What 2010 movies do film insiders love best?” That’s the premise of a year-end reflection at Salon.com, and I’d like to pose the same open question to our own distinguished insiders — the worldwide readership of Awards Daily. Here’s a chance to show some retrospective respect to the movie or filmmaker that touched you or thrilled you most deeply this year. (I’ll pick a reader at random to receive a DVD or Blu-ray of his or her choice).*

Salon has assembled a slide-show survey asking 14 prominent filmmakers to talk about the most memorable movies of the year. John Cameron Mitchell, Scott Rudin, and Alejandro Gonz√°lez I√±√°rritu are among the participants. I especially like this tribute to the script for The Social Network from Eric Roth (whose own screenplay for Fincher’s Benjamin Button was a magnet for considerable flak):

What’s going on here? They don’t let people make movies anymore that have a wit of thought, with great ideas expressed articulately by artists … these are movies of another time and place when giants roamed the Earth, and not Middle-earth either. That was the time of the Bonnies and the Clydes and the mean streets and the godfathers and the Kubricks and Leones and Godards and the names that are part literature, part poetry, all youth. So what is this movie that has something to say about the culture, about the way we think about each other and the ways we don’t? What is a movie doing today where the hero is unlikable and nasty and greedy and incredibly smart and lonely and part of a generation that has to announce who they are when they open a door to make sure they are noticed? What kind of a movie is that? Where does that happen in this landscape where Clashes and Crashes and Smashes are king. Where does it happen that a movie can make you talk about it all night, where it makes you remember why you went to the movies in the first place? Where does it happen that people with golden tongues and vision get to tell stories anymore? Where does it happen that a movie has near unanimous praise of critics afraid of their own shadows, and the public decides to give it a shot and it makes you want to be an awful lot younger and start all over again? Did I mention David Fincher’s “Social Network”? We all should be so lucky and so good.

Amir Bar-Lev (director, The Tillman Story): “Animal Kingdom” is a taut crime family drama by a first-time Australian director, full of riveting performances and unexpected plot turns. That this film came and went with such little notice speaks very poorly for the state of film audiences these days. One million at the box office? Are you kidding me? Perhaps the most villainous mother ever brought to the screen. Yikes!

Jeff Lipsky (founder, October Films): in terms of the best film of 2010 there’s no contest — “Winter’s Bone” is unforgettable and its star Jennifer Lawrence deserves the best actress Oscar. What is infuriating about these sorts of December accolade lists, though, is that everyone writing them seems to be forgetting the only brilliant release of January, Andrea Arnold’s indelible “Fish Tank.”

*(Dear eventual prize-winner. Go easy on me, and choose a DVD or Blu that I can get for under $25 on Amazon. Don’t be asking for Criterion’s 25-disc Kurosawa set.)