Netflix Queue: My Favorite Streaming Movies of 2010

Turns out we watched a ton of Netflix Instant during 2010. What's great about the service is that it's easy to explore esoteric or classic movies at the touch of a mousepad. Here were my favorite streaming movies of 2010 -- the list doesn't include the fact that I watched the entire series run of "Buffy The Vampire Slayer," and or other TV series, and I'm not including movies I'd already seen but re-watched during the year. This is just the most notable stuff I saw for the first time this year, thanks to streaming video:

• AFTER THE THIN MAN: The first movie we watched in 2010. I don't even remember what it was about. But Nick and Nora are always delightful and almost always drunk. A fine start to the year.

• DEAD SNOW: Watched this because it had the most awesome trailer ever. The movie is more of the same.

• TYSON: James Toback's largely sympathetic documentary about his friend, Mike Tyson. I came away with a bewildering mix of contempt and pity for the man.

• LET THE RIGHT ONE IN: One of the better vampire movies of recent years--possibly because of its Swedish provenance--remade in America this year as "Let Me In." This is a movie I still feel myself pondering from time to time.

• YOJIMBO: In which I discovered that Clint Eastwood stole his shtick from Toshiro Mifune.

• NEW YORK, I LOVE YOU: Is it great? No. But this anthology of short films set in NYC made me nostalgic for a city I never lived in. And an Eli Wallach sighting is always welcome.

• METROPOLIS: No, not the famous Fritz Lang film. The animé ripoff, which contained one of the most extraordinary climaxes to a movie I've seen this year. (Spoiler.)

• RED CLIFF: John Woo goes back to China to make a historical epic. Only the truncated version was available on Netflix Instant, but it still kicked ass.

• MOON: Nice, quiet Sam Rockwell movie that hearkens back to "2001."

• VON RYAN'S EXPRESS: Frank Sinatra escapes from the Nazis, buddy boy, and does it with panache.

• THE QUICK AND THE DEAD: Sam Raimi + Sharon Stone at her peak + Great Cast + Western = Surprisingly entertaining flick.

• THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW: No, I'd never seen it before. Let's do the Time Warp again.

• CASINO: It's as though Martin Scorcese was trying to make an homage to Martin Scorcese. A lesser work, but still fun and macho.

• IP MAN: The last movie of the year, a biopic about the real-life mentor to Bruce Lee, set in the 1930s as Ip Man kicks Japanese butt during the occupation of China. Great movie? Probably not. Lots of fun fight sequences, though.