Guilty pleasures. Some say there's no such thing. I believe they're out there, though, those junk-food flicks ripe for enjoyment almost in spite of themselves; in fact, here's ten of the year's most shameless entertainments for your consideration, thematically paired.
1. 'Piranha 3D' and 2. 'Jackass 3D' -- Sure enough, 2010 was the year where game-changing technology backfired on us, first as vicious fishes devoured porn stars and then as Johnny Knoxville's band of hooligans let loose with all the full frontal floppiness that audiences could stand. If neither was worth the surcharge, then I'm not sure what is.
3. 'Machete' (pictured above) and 4. 'Repo Men' -- Two of the year's more giddily grisly efforts, both boasted scenes we shouldn't have seen (cell phones and intestines coming out of bodies in the former, sexy internal scanning in the latter) and offered up valuable lessons: 1) when your organs aren't yours, don't fall behind on those payments and 2) Machete don't text.
5. 'MacGruber' and 6. 'OSS 117: Lost in Rio' (pictured above) -- Spy spoofs didn't come much more low-brow than SNL's very violent and crude "MacGuyver" send-up (featuring what has to be the funniest sex scene since 'Munich') and the second in Michel Hazanavicius' series of nutty espionage adventures with secret agent Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath (think James Bond if he were more anti-semitic and sexist).
7. 'The Losers' and 8. 'The A-Team' -- This year's slicker men-on-a-mission efforts (sorry, 'The Expendables') weren't met with the most muscular box-office numbers, which is a shame, because both were sprightly, fun action flicks when our summer needed them the most.
9. 'Faster' and 10. 'Centurion' (pictured above) -- If #7 and #8 were the loosey-goosey actioners that went ignored, then #9 and #10 are their no-nonsense neighbors. One was a dusty throwback to '70s vigilante flicks, the other a gruesome homage to epic swords-and-sandals adventures of yore, and neither got as much attention as they deserved.
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