By Tara Kyle
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — If there was a theme to the cinematic portrait of New York on screens in 2010, it was this — the dangers of banking, banking and more banking.
From Hollywood hits, such as "Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps" to hotshot documentaries, the camera's focus in New York this year was on greed in the Financial District.
Critically acclaimed documentarians Alex Gibney (who won an Oscar for "Taxi to the Dark Side") and Charles Ferguson (who was nominated for an Academy Award for "No End in Sight") used the city as a backdrop in their latest films to tell the story of financial ruin.
Gibney spun "Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer" to focus on the world of high finance, arguing that Wall Street's big bosses' helped engineer the former governor's loss of power.
While Ferguson used his "Inside Job" to track the recession to its origins through almost 30 years of Wall Street deregulation amid lingering shots of gleeming Learjets, mansion and megayachts.
Even lowbrow buddy comedy fare got in on the beating up Wall Street. In "The Other Guys,"Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg play NYPD underachievers who take on a villainous equity fund manager.
"Sex and the City 2," however, had to get out of town to focus on glitz by moving the bulk of its action to Abu Dhabi — but not before putting viewers through a Hamptons wedding, more ultra pricey fashion, and the year's single worst application of Jay Z's "Empire State of Mind."
In contrast, director Darren Aronofsky won over moviegoers with his Oscar-contending psychological thriller "Black Swan," set within an elite Manhattan ballet company, and guaranteed to appeal to neurotic New Yorkers.
On the indie circuit, 24-year-old native New Yorker Lena Dunham earned raves for her graceful take on post collegiate angst in "Tiny Furniture" — finally giving voice to the city's thousands of under-employed hipsters.
Sharp-tongued comedienne Joan Rivers let a camera crew into her ostentatious Upper East Side penthouse (since put up for sale) and opened up about family tragedies and her fear of failure in acclaimed doc "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work."
And first time director Payal Sethi presented her farewell letter to New York in "Grant Street Shaving Co.," part of the short film slate at the South Asian International Film Festival.
Finally, PBS veteran filmmaker Michael Epstein offered a similarly loving look at Manhattan in "LENNONYC," released amid a slew of fanfare over what would have been the year John Lennon turned 70.
"I think for a lot of New Yorkers, John's story is our story — the coming to New York to achieve something that you couldn't achieve at home,"Epstein said. "John is a very typical New Yorker in that he came from some other place seeking a kind of refuge."
