Black Swan is the latest cinematic opus offered by Darren Aronfsky, a still-young director who is definitely keeping on his toes. And here’s the thing about Aronofsky (and I hope he would hear this as the high compliment I intend it to be): I am never in the mood to watch his films, yet they win me over every single time.

Rhombus’ resident film critic Jordan Petersen reveals his top ten movies of 2010 — along with a smorgasbord of other year-end lists that will make your head spin. They’re all here: the good (and the really good), the bad (and the really bad), and the ugly (and yes, even the really, really ugly — after all, it’s Hollywood.)

When I was a kid, TRON stood out as one of those landmark movies that shaped the way I thought about some things. I imagined that if you could get inside a computer, that was pretty well what it might look like. And the film transported my young mind to an entirely different world. The emotional impact was deep enough that I’m pretty sure it had a hand in convincing me, much later down the road, that I wanted to be a computer engineer.

With a name like Inside Job, the tone of the film really shouldn’t shock me. Yet I’m still caught off guard when, in the middle of an interview, the voice behind the camera interrupts the Columbia economics professor with “You’ve got to be joking me!”

I, the viewer, already know this professor is covering his tracks. I know he’s a Wall Street villain. I know he is, in part, responsible for the collapse of the American economy. The filmmakers spent the previous 90 minutes of the film showing me all this. They don’t need act so unprofessional in interviews.

It happens many times throughout the film. The subjects — Wall Streeters, members of the Bush administration and other presumed wrong-doers — grow increasingly angry with the interruptions until they explode and demand the camera be turned off. I eventually side with the “villains,” because at least make an initial attempt to follow conversational etiquette.

In the third installment of the Narnia series, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, we once again meet up with Edmund and Lucy Pevensie, who have been trapped in the real world since the second installment. Surrounded by logical (a.k.a. boring) people doing logical (a.k.a. boring) things, these two find themselves frustrated and highly suffocated by the mundane nature of their lives and the contempt with which their peers esteem them.

But not to worry, this liminal phase only lasts about ten minutes before Edmund, Lucy and their obnoxious, know-it-all cousin Eustace Scrubb are transported to the magical land of Narnia and find themselves in the company of Prince Caspian aboard the Dawn Treader.

Deep breath… Okay.

This is such good filmmaking. I could go on and on about how great and amazing and whatever Danny Boyle is, but that would be foolish. Instead, I’ll do my best to try to capture with words and sentences some part of how I felt about his latest film.

It’s about this time of year that people start shouting out what they believe to be the “essential” Christmas movies. What makes my list any more significant than anyone else’s? Nothing. And so I’ll begin. These are roughly in order from least Christmas-spirited to most Christmas-spirited. Enjoy.