People like to put down movie critics for being cranky sourpusses, but the truth is most of us want to like the movies we see. “TRON: Legacy,” “Salt,” “Due Date“… I wanted those to be awesome. They weren’t.

Luckily for me, there were just over 10 movies that were awesome, which means I have enough for a list, yay! And here they are, along some movies that were most decidedly not awesome. Happy new year, everyone. Now let’s all close our eyes and pretend we don’t see the 3D. Maybe, that way, it will go away.

1. Black Swan
The beauty of Darren Aronofsky’s psychological thriller about a fragile ballet dancer is that there is rarely a point where you know whether you’ve swallowed the blue pill or the red pill. The mirror work alone demands repeat viewings, if you’re brave enough.

2. The Social Network
Where Jesse Eisenberg officially stops being ‘that guy who acts like Michael Cera’ and puts on a showstopping performance as the brilliant but socially inept Mark Zuckerberg. Rooney Mara, meanwhile, is on screen for about six minutes, but makes every second count. And she’s right about the Internet – everything’s written in ink.

3. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
The most wildly entertaining movie I saw all year. From the dialogue to the editing to the on-screen sound effects, I had a stupid grin plastered to my face from start to finish. Even better to see Chris Evans and Brandon Routh poke fun at their superhero images. And I want to swim in Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s eyes.

4. Inception
There is a backlash growing against Christopher Nolan. I do not understand why. His movies are well-plotted, well-acted, smart and gorgeous. What’s not to love? Yes, “Inception” was chatty, but pardon the pun, it dared to dream, and I love movies that go for it. And so did a lot of other people, as its $290 million box office take will attest.

5. Toy Story 3
There isn’t a movie out this year that touches the last 10 minutes of “Toy Story 3” in terms of emotional impact. Terrifying one minute, heartbreaking the next, and armed with a bittersweet yet pitch-perfect ending. I still can’t make it through the ending, or even the beginning, without crying.

6. 127 Hours
When I originally heard about this movie, my first thought was, “It’s a real-life ‘Saw’ scenario. Who the hell wants to see that?” But Danny Boyle showed me by giving an unthinkable premise a surprising amount of humor and pathos, and James Franco stepped up big-time as the reckless adventurer Aron Ralston.

7. The King’s Speech
Don’t let the cast of characters fool you – this is no stuffy English period piece. And take it to the bank: Best Actor is Colin Firth’s Oscar to lose. Don’t be surprised if his co-star Geoffrey Rush walks away with one, too. Both are exceptional.

8. Exit Through the Gift Shop
It’s unclear whether a lick of it is true, but unlike the self-indulgent fake doc “I’m Still Here,” street artist Banksy spins his possible lies into something entertaining, a wild tale about how all revolutions ultimately get exploited, sometimes by their biggest supporters.

9. Kick-Ass
God help the Academy if Chloe Moretz isn’t nominated for Supporting Actress. She not only stole this movie, but her character Hit Girl was the #1 Halloween costume of the year.

10. The Secret in Their Eyes
Last year’s Oscar winner for Foreign Film, and deservedly so. Think “The Remains of the Day” in a ’70s Argentinean police district, with a jaw-dropping finale and a scene that would make Dirk Diggler blush.

Honorable Mentions

Easy A
When my daughter grows up, I hope she’s as awesome as Olive Pendergast.

Micmacs
Jean-Pierre Jeunet uses the power of a talented sound department to pull a monster con on the audience, but you won’t mind. Moral of the story: be nice to the little people. You just never know.

How to Train Your Dragon
Terrible title, very good movie. And good for DreamWorks for going against type and casting the roles based on who was the best voice for the part, as opposed to the who was most famous person available.

The Fighter
You know what, forget what I said about Geoffrey Rush possibly getting an Oscar. Christian Bale’s getting it instead.

Marwencol
The victim of a brutal attack – which leaves him with virtually no memory of his life before – seeks solace in building an imaginary town where his alter ego is a WWII hero and women love him. Uplifting and heartbreaking at the same time.

For the most part, listing these movies is like shooting fish in a barrel. But I’m not the type to list a bunch of more ambitious movies that underperformed just to make examples out of them. “Prince of Persia” may not have been good, but these movies were worse.

1. The Back-Up Plan
So bad it actually made me angry.

2. When in Rome
As a card-carrying member of the Kristen Bell fan club (well, not really, but I did like “Veronica Mars” a lot), watching her non-“Sarah Marshall” movies is just painful. She’s way too funny and smart to be doing swill like this…isn’t she?

3. I’m Still Here
Ha ha, very funny. You made the whole thing up. Fuck you, nobody’s impressed.

4. The Bounty Hunter
I think it’s finally safe for Angelina Jolie to send Jennifer Aniston that two-word text message she’s been sitting on since 2004: “I win.”

5. The Last Airbender
It’s easy to kick M. Night Shyamalan right now, but we still hold out hope that he’ll turn it around. Still, sweet Jesus, was this movie bad. When someone begins a speech to a room of people with “As you know…,” it’s time to pull the plug. And the 3D was the biggest scam of the year.

6. Remember Me
Spoiler alert: they used 9/11 as a twist. It might have meant something if I hadn’t been rooting for Edward Cullen’s character to die from the very beginning.

7. Leap Year
Sigh. I love Amy Adams, but ten bucks says she did this movie so she could hang out in Ireland for a few months. And to be fair, we would have done the movie too if we were in her position. As long as she knows it comes with a price.

8. Clash of the Titans
More bad 3D, with bad CGI to match.

9. The Virginity Hit
At the very least, this movie should serve as a warning to kids everywhere to be wary of doing anything that could go viral. Thank God YouTube didn’t exist when I was in high school. It’s hard enough going through it, but the thought of someone’s most embarrassing moments out there for the world to see for time immemorial is just cruel.

10. Grown-Ups
Much like “Leap Year,” if Columbia paid me millions to take a summer vacation with my best friends, I’d do the movie too, critical drubbing be damned. And now I’m critically drubbing it. Lame, lame, lame.

Didn’t see (thank God)…

The Human Centipede
Little Fockers
Gulliver’s Travels
Vampires Suck
Sex and the City 2
Eat Pray Love

How the hell did this make a billion dollars?

Alice in Wonderland
I love Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, but this movie is a mess. Off with their heads, indeed.

Better luck next year

CBS Studios
They released three movies this year, and none of them rated more than two stars, despite featuring some pretty big names (Harrison Ford, Dwayne Johnson, Billy Bob Thornton, Jennifer Lopez). Whoops.

Rabbit Hole
It’s about a couple dealing with the loss of their four-year-old son in a car accident. For the love of God, who would pay money to see that? Are there really that many unhappy people that it’s become a demographic? And do the filmmakers get satisfaction making art for unhappy people? Misery loves company, I suppose, but you can count me out.

Movie Quote of the Year

“You are probably going to be a very successful computer person. But you’re going to go through life thinking that girls don’t like you because you’re a nerd. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won’t be true. It’ll be because you’re an asshole.” – The Social Network

Runner-Up:
“Jews invented spark plugs to control global traffic.” – Four Lions

‘Snakes on a Plane’ Movie Title of the Year

Hot Tub Time Machine
Come on, was there any question?

Over the three day Friday-Sunday weekend, Summit’s “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” earned an estimated $69 million according to the Box Office Mojo chart. For the broader and potentially confusing numbers covering the extended movie weekends for the two new major new releases this week, I’ll rely on Anne Thompson’s pal Anthony D’Alessandro. He tells us “Eclipse” earned an estimated $175 million and change, just a few million bucks below the similar six-day frame of 2004’s “Spiderman 2,” though not adjusted for ongoing movie-ticket inflation.

This is the point in the series ordinarily where some might wonder if interest is starting to flag, but this is a long-running movie/book soap opera and a continuing tale similar to the Harry Potter in terms of fan interest/involvement. Also, this entry overall got significantly better reviews than the second film in the series, which might indicate the film itself is more boyfriend friendly for this very female-driven franchise.

D’Alessandro notes a Twilight “halo effect” and it didn’t hurt M. Night Shyamalan and Paramount’s animation adaptation, “The Last Airbender.” The martial arts fantasy is getting horrendous reviews that make the somewhat legendary critical hate mail for “Tranformers: Revenge of the Fallen” look like love letters. However, before someone starts whinging about critics being “out of touch,” the audiences who doled out their hard-earned cash to see the movie (and their kids, of course) gave the film an overall rating of C on Cinemascore’s moviegoer survey.

Still, dole out the cash they did and the film earned a $40.5 million over the weekend and a very nice $70.5 million over its entire holiday period (one day shorter than it was for “Eclipse”). That has the film edging closer to the halfway point of covering its $150 milliion budget — an awful lot for a film that didn’t impress with its effects and without any major stars.

Of course, younger men are driving this film, and I’m sure the fact that it’s a PG-rated version of a TV series aimed at kids makes this a family film, whether or not parents really want to be there at all, isn’t hurting. Still, let’s see if that uninspiring Cinemascore rating and the general feeling that the movie kind of stinks comes home to roost next week. The film did score below average on one metric, which is that its heavily slammed retrofit 3-D accounted for only 54% of sales, which is 6% below the average right now.

Overall, it was just a very nice weekend for big mainstream movies. Disney/Pixar’s  critics and audience beloved “Toy Story 3” earned $30.2 million and “Grown-Ups,” which was hated by critics about  as much as “Airbender,” grossed $19.1 million, and so on.

There was also so decent action in the world of limited releases. Indeed, “Cyrus” managed to become break into the bottom of the top 10 with only 77 screens, earning $774,000 and looking like a real possibility for this year’s break-out indie comedy. It’s less cuddly than a “Juno” or a “Little Miss Sunshine,” which is one of the things I admit to liking about it — though it’s also arguably not as dark as it should be. Still, funny is funny, and it’s very funny.

Other movies looking good according to Indiewire’s Peter Knegt are “Winter’s Bone,” which is looking like this year’s “Frozen River” in more ways than one, and the critically praised and apparently rather sexy Italian drama, “I Am Love.” I admit that one has flown under my radar despite getting very good reviews and the fact that Tilda Swinton apparently learned both Russian and Italian to appear in it.

On the other hand, there is “The Killer Inside Me.” I suggested on Friday that it might continue its trend of underwhelming business, because, I suspect, people are not in the mood for ultra-violence right now, outside of a horror fantasy context, in any case, and I’m not sure even then. Certainly, writer-director Michael Winterbottom’s commitment to making a couple of key scenes as realistically unpleasant to sit-through as possible isn’t exactly the box office come on of the year. But “Kick-Ass,” which was marketed as purely goofy entertainment, was a commercial disappointment to some degree. Could the movie audience have finally hit a wall in terms of pushing the violence envelope, at least outside the very limited extreme horror market? These things tend to be cyclic, an d I have no clue, but I also have no clue as the grosses of “The Killer Inside Me.” It doesn’t seem to have registered.

The other issue might be that indie films need to get a substantial majority of critics to like them to do well. The week’s other big indie disappointment — with a super-meh $49,500 from eleven screens — was the critically dissed Helen Mirren/Joe Pesci/Taylor Hackford collaboration about the early days of Northern Nevada’s legalized prostitution, “Love Ranch.” Sex sells a lot of the time. However, at art houses today, it really helps if the critics are excited.

Well, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Pixar formula — i.e., dollops of laughter and heart (what a concept!) and now a dash of 3-D ticket prices — has once again worked wonders and “Toy Story 3” took on all comers, earning an estimated $59 million for Disney in its second weekend. Meanwhile, it was also a good weekend for the eternal appeal of low humor and, it seems Adam Sandler, at least when accompanied by four other comic known quantities of varying degrees of box office hotness. It was clear that the scatological-joke loving masses were only encouraged by, I’m guessing, entirely correct godawful reviews of Sony’s “Grown-Ups.”

Perhaps also reflecting a dearth of comedy right now, the film actually was a personal box office best — not adjusted for inflation — for Sandler, earning $41 million. Personally, though I like him in actual quality films like the, I think, severely underrated “Funny People” and the brilliant “Punch Drunk Love,” I’ve never gotten the comic appeal of Sandler, going back to his SNL days, and can’t even remember gong through a phase where I found farts inherently hysterical, so I can only throw up my hands here.

On the other hand, there is little joy in the five or six buildings the Church of Scientology owns on Hollywood Blvd, as the Tom Cruise (and Cameron Diaz) action comedy vehicle, “Knight and Day” earned an estimated $27.7 million. Not bad, actually, except considering Cruise’s far better past performances back in the day when stars like him could routinely “open” a film and, according to Finke, the budget for the film was either roughly $117 or $107 million, depending on whether you calculate tax breaks. In other words, Cruise’s thetans might take longer to clear.

In other news, I’m happy to say, that things are hopping on the indie scene. The new wartime documentary “Restrepo” and the Duplass Brother’s enjoyable entry into the semi-mainstream, “Cyrus,” are both doing quite well, as are other newish films.

On the other hand, the controversially violent “The Killer Inside Me” appears to be suffering, perhaps, from an older indie audience that might be turned off by the fuss, which some say has been exaggerated to a certain degree and appears to have surprised its skilled, if highly uneven, director Michael Winterbottom. Interesting how an adaptation of a once obscure fifty-eight year old pulp novel can still raise hackles. Also shows that while a perception of too-little blood and guts can harm a horror film, a perception of too much can perhaps harm even a “hard R” thriller/drama. Advice to the suits: know your audience.

As usual, Indiewire has the indie scoop.