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 [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

The second match of Round Two finds a Korean favorite up against a German award winner. The Good The Bad The Weird earned its spot with its sweeping beauty and strange cast of characters, as well as the defeat of Brides in Round One. Meanwhile, The Lives of Others got here by delivering politics and strong characters, and by eking out a victory against the favored The Proposition It’s a pairing that even the experts are having trouble predicting, so it’s really anybody’s ball game. Who will make it to Round Three?

The third match of Round One finds the insane Western The Good The Bad The Weird going head to head with stirring drama Brides. Both films are set in the early 1900s, and both are critically acclaimed, but Korea has the edge here because of it’s status with those who obsessively import Blu-rays and DVDs.

Murder, detectives, politics, gadgetry, circus workers, and at least one spectacular foot chase in a period piece!

Westerns are a uniquely American type of film, are they not? So why, with that in mind, would two Asian filmmakers both go into the western shoot-em-up business at the exact same time? We explore the facts.