I had planned today to put together my end of year piece but as I have yet to see Avatar (don’t worry folks, I’m seeing it tomorrow so that’s the end of that), Peter suggested that I write out my 8 Most Anticipated Movies of 2010 list.

Good idea, though I did stop making these lists a while back when my most anticipated of 2007 had both Spider-Man 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End near the top and they both sucked so hard, I honestly thought I had jinxed them. Let’s hope the following movies don’t suffer the same fate.

The following is the 8 movies I will see opening day in theatres, come hell or high water. They are the 8 movies I am more than willing to drop everything to see. The following 8 are what I live for each and every year and why I run this website, really.

On this list you won’t find Harry Potter, Shrek 4, The Last Airbender, Prince of Perisa, Narnia 3, Nightmare on Elm Street or many other big budget, culturally important or huge cast movies. Sometimes it’s because I’m genuinely NOT looking forward to seeing them (movies above), or as in the case of pics like the Brighton Rock remake, I’m intrigued but it doesn’t hit my top 8.

This is simply my Top 8 and hasn’t been designed as an exhaustive list. Not at all. It’s 8 because that was the number I felt most strongest too next year. 8 is all you need…

1. INCEPTION – JULY

By now, there’s no point in me waxing lyrical on the genius of Chris Nolan. He has been the director of the decade, beginning with the smartest genre movie this particular 10 year period has seen with Memento and ending with a movie that will surely go down as one of the greatest of all time with The Dark Knight.

His movies are never showy and nor do they crave attention, but yet with each new chapter to his ever expanding filmography comes a captivating originality, and they always make compulsive viewing.

[youtube RSyQ3K0xnYg]

His tools come from studying and learning from the best. He has the suspense of Hitchcock, the way of creating epic world settings like an early Ridley Scott, he has the casting eye of a Coppola – and he lets the scenes breathe like Scorsese. And lastly he has the personal vision of a Stanley Kubrick for dealing with existential themes and unsettling dissections of the nature of humanity.

If The Dark Knight was truly his Godfather Part II as we all said it was, then will Inception turn out to be his Apocalypse Now?

A movie with a trailer that shows you more than a usual trailer but yet tells you nothing. Half the fun with Nolan is that he wants you to play the game with him. Memento and The Prestige were both puzzling movies at first, but he loves playing the cat-and-mouse game with you. He thrives on it, and I love that about his work.

2. SHUTTER ISLAND – FEBRUARY

I’ve chosen the Japanese poster because it’s way cooler than the English-language ones. The creepy factor is yanked up by about ten notches.

Of course it really sucks that we haven’t seen this one already but if Martin Scorsese wasn’t all together pleased with his final cut late last summer then I’m more than happy to wait for him to release it the way he wants it to be.

[youtube c4bznTvfP6k]

The trailer for Shutter Island was absurdly crazy, like a Hitchcock movie made by Sam Raimi with a hint of The Wicker Man. It’s Scorsese back to his B-movie Cape Fear days but with more sophisticaton and two decades further of mastering his craft. And with an injection of classic pulp into his work.

Leonardo DiCaprio reminds me of Humphrey Bogart in the trailer, and I can’t wait to see what he brings to this one and a cast that includes Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Jackie Earle Haley, Max Von Sydow, Michelle Williams, Elias Kosteas, Patricia Clarkson.

3. TOY STORY 3 – JUNE (US)/JULY (UK)

Toy Story 3 is not only my third most anticipated movie of the upcoming year but it’s also without a doubt the movie I am most frightened of. Let me explain…

I grew up with the first two Toy Story movies. They make-up part of my DNA, and were an early example to me of the priceless value of true friendship, of the time we have on Earth being to help our fellow man and that we should live in the hear and now, because it won’t last forever.

Yes. Pixar movies taught me that!

[youtube u0j3bNh-PQs]

Yet – I can’t help but think Pixar are going one movie too many with this one, and I sincerely hope they don’t take these characters into places I don’t really want them to go. I hated the fact that I had to grow up, become a teenager and now an adult and yeah – there’s a huge part of me that would be quite content still being a big kid playing with my action figures if Christopher Lloyd offered me the time to go back, but it’s weird seeing Andy as a teenager and I don’t know if I like it.

But then that’s the message I took from Pixar isn’t it, that people get old (like me myself), nothing lasts forever and you must enjoy the time you have on Earth whilst you have it. So maybe I don’t hate the plot as much as I think I do and I’m contradicting myself.

Whatever. It’s just I didn’t like the trailer as much as my huge expectations would allow (this movie has a impossible standard to live up to) and the plot about toys becoming redundant for Andy is the same as it was before if you really think about it. It’s not that much of a change. I really hope this one is great because even if it’s only good – I will have a tinge of disappointment because too much time has passed for this simply to be a movie that was made for entertainment.

4. KICK-ASS – APRIL

The movie that rocked Comic Con with an early glimpse stealing the thunder away from Iron Man 2 and Avatar, and then totally flawed the crowd at Butt-Numb-A-Thon – everyone who saw it weren’t bothered anymore about James Cameron... they just wanted to tell us how cool Kick-Ass was.

It’s premise is so simply. A superhero in the real world. No I don’t mean Batman in a realistic Gotham. I mean a superhero who lives in the here and now, who has grown-up with comic book properties and is able to reference them. An ordinary teenager, not one bitten by a radioactive spider, who takes on crime.

[youtube 9x62_LL0Nfw]

From what I’ve heard, Mark Millar’s comic book is Spider-Man for the 21st century and under the direction of Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake, Stardust), we should be set for a superhero classic and the best thing is – it’s a comic book that is enduring it’s peak years right now. The Stan Lee/Jack Kirby days of Spider-Man are long gone, as are the best of Alan Moore and Frank Miller for Batman, but Mark Millar is at his peak RIGHT NOW with Kick-Ass and this is a comic that really has no limits.

Vaughn’s got an agenda with this movie, of course. He’s out to show the world what he can do with a comic book property and he probably has one eye on the Superman franchise if all goes well with this movie.

5. IRON MAN 2 – APRIL

I’m of the opinion that Iron Man was better than Batman Begins, so that’s a hell of a platform to span a sequel from, and I’m excited as hell to see Tony Stark’s second adventure under Jon Favreau as they move one step closer to The Avengers.

Mickey Rourke looks so cool as Whiplash, that scene he and Stark share on the racing field looks immense. I wanna see how Scarlett Johansson, Sam Rockwell and Samuel L. Jackson play in this universe and how it’s all set-up for future films and spin-off’s.

[youtube siQgD9qOhRs]

Favreau moved quick with a sequel to this, about the same speed as when Sam Raimi made the second Spider-Man movie and when Bryan Singer made X-Men 2 – which is encouraging because both of those flicks were superior to their original counterpart.

Will we say the same of Iron Man 2 in a couple of months time? I hope so.

6. CEMETERY JUNCTION – APRIL

The next step for Ricky Gervais is to win an Oscar. He’s won all the awards going in both Britain and America for his t.v. work, has become an Icon of the decade for his comedy, global sell-out tours, record breaking podcasts and this year, he made a profitable studio film which he wrote, starred and co-directed. Not bad Mr. Gervais, not bad.

Oscars are the only place he can go now, and with Cemetery Junction, a movie about becoming a man in working class Reading in the 1970s and the trappings of life in that period of England, where you were likely to be born, live and die in one town, in one household, this subject matter is of course his best chance to date. If anything it feels like the 2009 version of An Education.

The movie is written and directed by Gervais and his Office and Extra’s co-writer Stephen Merchant – and they described the film as a Brit version of Saturday Night Fever or Rebel Without a Cause, a cool look at youth and growing up like the 80′s movie Diner. We haven’t really seen this period explored before in British film history, as working class movies such as Kes and The Fully Monty – are about as far away from cool as you could imagine.

And well it’s Gervais. His track record is spectacular. This is the second movie from the new U.K. division of Sony Pictures, the first was this year’s The Damned United – and if it’s as good as that movie then we are onto a winner here.

7. SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD – AUGUST

A movie that Gregg Mottola and Jason Reitman have absolutely flipped for but Edgar Wright has decided not to show us anything yet but I guess it is eight months or so away from release.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is of course just the latest in a long line of movies featuring the desperate attempts of Michael Cera to get laid with the girl of his young adolescent dreams (the gorgeous Mary Elizabeth Winstead) but of course this time it’s not his insecurities that are holding him back, it’s his new gals seven evil ex-boyfriends who he must defeat to win her heart as his own.

Three of the ex-boyfriends are played by Brandon Routh, Chris Evans and Jason Schwartzman.

Wright – co-writer/director of Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead, tackling his first Hollywood picture? I’m there.

8. HEREAFTER – DECEMBER

I wrote on Dec. 11th…

Be under no allusions. Clint Eastwood’s currently filming Hereafter, scripted by Peter Morgan (Frost/Nixon, The Queen), will be a fascinating motion picture in the legacy of a rare cinema icon when it comes out in Dec. 2010.

Quite possibly more than any other picture he has made in his life, Hereafter could be the one that most exposes Eastwood’s true feelings towards death, as he himself reaches closer to the hereafter with each passing year.

He’ll be 80 by the time the movie comes out. When directors reach this age, I guess they are all looking to leave behind their version of The Seventh Seal, if they haven’t already kicked the bucket, or gone insane.

The movie is billed as a quiet drama about three damaged characters trying to look beyond the landscape in front of them, to work out if anything exists after we die and it will be lead by Matt Damon. Eastwood’s movies are annually among my most anticipated each and every year, and when he decides to tackle a drama with supernatural elements – I’m excited as hell.

That’s your lot folks. 2050 words so far, so I thought given the length of the article, 8 movies would be a healthy number. Shout at me all you like for the movies I’ve missed if I have missed the one film you can’t wait to see next year but this isn’t your list, it’s my list. No good list was ever made to please anyone else.

WHICH MOVIE ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO NEXT YEAR AND WHY?