One of my favorite non-starters for articles is the very bland “as you may know.” There’s no doubt in my mind that you’ve seen me use it in the past (I’m doing it again right now). So when I thought about how to begin this year’s top ten article, I wanted to begin by saying “as you may know, one of my great honors around here is to deliver my list of the ten best films of the year.” But you may not know how much of an honor that really is. In fact, it’s difficult for me to put into words how honored I feel to have anyone read this at all, let alone the scores of readers we see on a daily basis here at Film School Rejects. It’s safe to say that I speak for everyone here when I say that I am deeply honored by the opportunity just to write about film. You, the reader, offer that to us every day with your patronage. So my hope is that I can do you proud, dear reader, as I present my list of the ten best films of 2010. This year saw a great deal of personal turmoil for me, meaning some movie-watching blind spots. But some late-year scrambling has pushed my total films seen number well north of 200. And of those 200 or so eligible films, whittling it down to ten wasn’t quite as difficult as it’s been in recent years. Does that mean that

Trash-pickers who take down major weapons dealers, animated villains looking to steal the moon, an angry one-eyed John Wayne and a team of tough guys who specialize in the ridiculous. This Week in Blu-ray is going to be a busy one. Then again, isn’t it always sort of busy for this column? With more and more classics being brought to the most modern format and a slew of pre-holiday releases hitting shelves, the war being waged against your pocketbook has never been more intense. Lucky for you that I’m here to help. I may not be a man with grit that’s true (and thus have never had a song sung about me by Glen Campbell), but I do have some knowledge about all things Blu-ray. I also have DVD reviewer extraordinaire Rob Hunter swooping in to help out. Now onward with this week’s release slate.

Most DVD Tuesdays see a random smorgasbord of titles released with no discernible pattern, and this week is ultimately no different. But it does feature a fairly hefty sampling of one genre in particular… documentaries! Who’s up for some true stories and real life drama, mystery, and comedy? Don’t turn your nose up so fast people. There are some fascinating true stories below, yes, even the one on Joan Rivers, and they’re all worth a watch or two. Titles out this week include The Other Guys, Cyrus, Exit Through the Gift Shop, The Town, Gasland, and more.

For better or worse, this summer of movies is over, and now we’re in the early-Fall transition into the inevitable season of so-called “serious” awards-friendly films, films that supposedly say a lot about human nature and our time and place as a culture. However, I’ve always contended that it is often the films that seemingly exist only for “entertainment’s sake” that have the most to say about culture, mainly because they operate in such a way that allows us to turn our minds off, passively consume them, and therefore go along unquestionably with the socio-political presumptions explicitly or implicitly embedded within their narratives. Such films that purport to exist solely for entertainment value often end up telling us a lot about how and what we think about the present, and it just so happens that these types of films are most often relegated to the summer months. Summer movies in 2010 ranged from highbrow to lowbrow, blockbuster to indie to sleeper, with head-scratchers and brain-cell-killers alike, but many of these films, intentionally or not, had something to say or assume about the present cultural moment.

Earlier this year at SXSW, I had the good fortune of sitting down with visionary French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet the morning of the Austin premiere of his latest film, Micmacs. Since then, I’ve been holding on to the 13-minute interview waiting for the right time. And with Micmacs finally making its way into theaters this month (it opens in Austin and several other cities this weekend), now is certainly the time.

We’ve been singing the praises of Jean Pierre Jeunet’s latest film Micmacs for a while now, so I’ll spare you the rehash. Instead, I will show you two brand new exclusive photos from the film.

I can count on one hand the amount of films that I’ve seen in the last few years that I have absolutely loved in an almost instantaneous way. Jean Pierre Jeunet’s Micmacs is one of them. And to celebrate its release, we’ve got a special treat for you.

Two high profile French flicks hit the San Francisco International Film Festival… one features the return of the man behind Amelie, and the other features Doug Jones. They’re both visual inventive and entertaining, but only one will satisfy fans of beautiful bouncing boobs.

It’s that time again. Every year, Film School Rejects is looked to by readers the world over to be the guiding light for summer movie-going. What can we say? We just have a knack for it. And this summer, we’re excited…

The San Francisco International Film Festival began last night with the opening night screening of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s new film, Micmacs, and runs through May 6th. The films and special presentations are playing across multiple theaters throughout the city, and they represent works from hundreds of film-makers from all around the world.

Sony Pictures Classics has released the first trailer for Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s latest film, Micmacs, which garnered some strong buzz from its recent appearance at the SXSW Film Festival. Personally, I was enamored with it.

As is the case every year at this time, we need to wrap things up. Much to our dismay, SXSW cannot go on forever. And while reviews will continue to post in the next week as we get caught up on screeners and anything we haven’t written up from the actual fest, we’re confident that we can present you with our picks for the 15 Best Films of SXSW 2010.

Micmacs concerns a social misfit named Bazil (Daniel Boon), a man who has been dealt an unfortunate proportion of bad cards in his life. After enduring the death of his parents in his early childhood and the difficulties of having a bullet lodged in his head as an adult (this is a comedy, I swear), Bazil encounters a team of fellow eccentrics and outcasts with rather unique talents…

Today, we’re looking forward to a lot of the narrative competition films and a few cool spotlight premieres. It’s the fattest day of screening here at SXSW, so gird your loins — it’s about to get messy.

It’s that time again. The 2010 South by Southwest Film Festival is upon us, and we couldn’t be more excited. For the second year in a row, we’re covering one of our favorite American film festivals as an Austin-based publication. And we kick off our official festival coverage with a list.

Traditionally, studios don’t enjoy it when they screen a movie before a film festival starts and a journalist then goes out and blabs about it all over the internet. The general rule around pre-screenings is that you hold all opinion until the day the film screens at the festival. Though, in the case of Jean Pierre Jeunet’s Micmacs, I don’t think anyone is going to give me any trouble for what I’m about to tell you.

I’ve never been this excited about South by Southwest (SXSW) this early in the year. Usually it takes at least a week of being back from Sundance to get intensely jazzed for the first of the big three film festivals here in Austin, but this year is different.