The Brog's Best Movie Of 2010: How To Train Your Dragon

Why? Because Inception and True Grit didn't have dragons this adorable

Up until the last minute, How To Train Your Dragon was a shoe-in for the honorable mention section of The Brog's 2010 movie of the year. Reflecting on the movies I saw and reviewed, there were few that had an emotional impact on me. And to be honest, I still haven't seen True Grit and Black Swan [we'll just leave Tron: Legacy out of this]. So The Brog is playing the cards dealt, and what I once considered being a 'cool animated flick' has actually morphed into a film that has made the biggest emotional impact on me far from what I would have expected.

Inception and The Social Network are fantastic movies in their own right. Inception is doing more for Christopher Nolan than the movie did for fans. Instead of being known as the guy who 'does Batman' fans can breath easy in knowing he still has it. Inception, as a movie, is more of a complex ribbon tied several times over and me [as a viewer] is trying to figure out how to untie and clearly see the various paths the plot travels. Attachment to the fictional characters seems to be optional and never encouraged.

The Social Network struck me more as a surprise than a masterful achievement in film making. It functions as more of a straight-forward retelling of how a person [Zuckerberg] experienced an event that very few do. It is almost as if a court stenographer was reading me the notes from various cases that made Facebook what it is today.

When I think of the aforementioned movies, and the many not listed, I think of what they leave me with. In all cases I think of how technical pieces of dialog were difficult to pull off. I think of set design, the wardrobe and how moody the soundtracks were [Social Network especially].

How To Train Your Dragon left me feeling an actual emotion. Joy. There are a great deal of animated movies plugging the cinema channels year-in and year-out. All of which, promote family friendliness. Most of which are condescending to children and adults alike. How To Train Your Dragon isn't the darkest animated movie, however, the resolution isn't the happiest. Where Inception and The Social Network left me wanting to know more about the events and the world they inhabited, How To Train Your Dragon left me wondering about every characters' well-being. I wanted to know what happens to Hiccup after his unfortunate accident and subsequently Toothless' after his own disfigurement. So there you have it and no one is more surprised than me.

Honorable Mention: Inception, The Social Network, Cyrus, Joan Rivers: A Piece Of Work, The Crazies, Edge Of Darkness, Up In The Air, Let Me In