My Top 10 of 2011

It’s been a good year for movies.

I can say that because my year-end wrap up has a Top 10, 2 Runners-up, and 23 Honorable Mentions. Just ranking my Top 10 was a struggle, as I fought with myself with my 10th, 11th, and 12th favorite movies. You can see my frustration as I have two runners-up that could’ve easily made my Top 10. At the time of writing this I think I’ve made the right decisions, but ask me a week from now and I might give you a different answer.

That’s really one problem with these end-of-the-year lists. They are reflective of what the writer is feeling right now. I can look back at my previous year-end lists and I can re-arrange and add movies to those lists. For example, I saw 2010’s Enter the Void just a month too late, and it’s only taken me a full year to really appreciate what that movie accomplished. It didn’t make an appearance on my Top 10 of 2010, but looking back I can place it high up on there. Also, don’t get me started on my favorite movie of 2007; it seems like I go back and forth between No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood.

At this point in time I can say that this list clearly reflects how I feel about 2011.

Before I go into my Top 10, here are films I didn’t see in time to make my list. Some were just completely unavailable to me, while others I was just too lazy to sit down and watch.

Films I Missed That I Heard Were Great
A Dangerous Method, A Separation, Another Earth, Bellflower, Carnage, Certified Copy, Into the Abyss, Margaret, The Interrupters, Uncle Boonmee, Weekend

Here are several honorable mentions. I can say that was plenty to like about each and everyone one of these films. Again, it goes back to how I saw the year. I could make four top ten lists with the amount of movies I really connected with.

Honorable Mentions:
Moneyball, The Adventures of Tintin, Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop, Source Code, Insidious, 13 Assassins, Young Adult, We Need to Talk About Kevin, Beginners, Warrior, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, X-Men: First Class, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Take Shelter, War Horse, The Skin I Live In, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Page One: Inside the New York Times, Margin Call, The Arbor, The Descendants, The Muppets, The Artist

Now for two films that came incredible close to cracking my Top 10. With time I wouldn’t be surprised if either one, or even both, climbed into my Top 10 of 2011.

Second Runner-Up: 

The Ides of March

A naive political strategist unwittingly stumbles onto a scandal that could bring down the campaign he’s been working his heart and soul on. What he does in the course of surviving through these treacherous political waters is surprising in that he ultimately becomes a condemnation of our current political system.

The reason why it’s so surprising is where it’s coming from. One of the most cynical political films ever made comes from one of the most outspoken liberals in Hollywood, actor/director George Clooney. In a time when America was supposed to enter an era of “hope,” we instead continue to suffer through political scandals and needless anti-bipartisanship. The Ides of March doesn’t veer away from this or shine a positive light on our current political system. The world that Clooney helps create in The Ides of March is devastating and depressing only becomes it feels all too real.

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First Runner-Up

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

I love the spy genre.

There are the quintessential twists and turns, the moles and double agents, and the matters of one’s national security being so easily dismantled in a war of the minds that the unsuspecting public is oblivious of. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy encapsulates all these and is everything I love about spy movies.

In the film, Gary Oldman plays a retired intelligence officer who gets thrown back into the mix after several high-level agents are suspected of being double agents. Oldman’s performance is layered, somber, and reserved. It really is one of the best performances of the year. Accompanying him is a cast of top British actors including Mark Strong, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt, Toby Jones, and Benedict Cumberbatch. There isn’t a false step in the acting, which is crucial in a film like this, which trades the action of modern spy movies for slow burns driven by dialogue.

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And without further ado…

10. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

David Fincher elevates the Swedish source material in his The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Sure, it’s been “Americanized,” but it’s as brutal and vicious as the original Swedish film. Fincher was the perfect choice for this new version of Dragon Tattoo. The man has directed two essential murder mysteries of the last twenty years, Se7en and Zodiac, respectively. I don’t personally think Dragon Tattoo ever reaches the level those two hit, but Fincher does his best and it doesn’t hurt that he leaves his trademarks all over the film. The script’s problems are padded over by Fincher’s expert direction.

It also doesn’t hurt that Rooney Mara gives an incredible performance. She plays the titular Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a social outcast, who turns out to be the smartest and strongest character in the film. She is constantly thrown around and forced into the most horrific experience anyone can go through. She fights back, but not like any level-headed thinking person would. In her ultimate retribution scene, with a frightening extreme close-up, she says into the camera “I am insane,” and I certainly believed it.

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9. Shame

Michael Fassbender gives the best performance I’ve seen all year in Shame.

Steve McQueen’s Shame is an incredible portrait of an incredibly damaged man, Brandon Sullivan, who suffers from an addiction to sex. He roams New York City trying to find his next sexual prospect. There’s a scene in a subway that has no dialogue, and is just Fassbender eyeing a beautiful woman. She glances back and the two have a sexually charged exchange with no words spoken. Fassbender does so much with his eyes and his facial expressions in this movie. He expresses an emotionless, anti-social mindset with just a look.

New York City is the perfect setting for movie like this. You could read Shame as an allegory for the financial crisis of 2008. Or as a look into the repressed sexual life that’s living under the surface of New York City, and America in general. Or home-grown terrorism…well, that’s a stretch, but these kind of themes and ideas were running through my head as I was watching Fassbender walk, and run, around NYC landmarks. It’s inescapable.

Shame is a film that settles inside you days after you see it. It’s dark, anti-sexual images, carried by a mesmerizing performance by Michael Fassbender, is what is unsettling and memorable.

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8. Contagion

Steven Soderbergh’s film about a viral outbreak on the path to wipe out the human race is the most “antiseptically” shot movies of the year.

Soderbergh has been using digital cameras for about a decade now, but I think Contagion.is his most gorgeous looking digital movie to date. It helps that Soderbergh serves as his own cinematographer, under the pseudonym Peter Andrews. The film looks beautiful, while also making looking absolutely disgusting. The one mission the movie had was to make the virus feel real and it does. Soderbergh focuses his camera on metal polls and door handles right after the infected have touched it. I think it’d be a mistake to see this movie while eating or if you’re an obsessive compulsive.

The cast is superb. Soderbergh’s go-to Matt Damon doesn’t phone it in, as usual. He plays husband to one of the virus’ first victims, Gwyneth Paltrow. There’s also Marion Cotillard, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Bryan Cranston, and John Hawkes. Each one is more than just a glorified cameo, as we spend just enough time to connect with them.

For me Contagion is a slicker and leaner Traffic, with Soderbergh’s cold and unyielding touch front and center.

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7. Super

This is the anti-superhero movie to end all anti-superhero movies.

Movies like Watchmen, Kick-Ass, and even the small but good Defendor, are movies that deconstruct the superhero archetypes. But I don’t think any of those movies do it quite as well as Super. What was missing the in the previously mentioned films was a heart. Super has heart, albeit one that is sick, twisted, and demented.

Rainn Wilson plays Frank, whose wife, played by Liv Tyler, leaves him for a low-life drug dealer. Frank is an utter mess until he receives a message from God, which is one of the most bizarre and strangely beautiful scenes I’ve seen all year. He then becomes the superhero The Crimson Bolt and goes on to obliterate criminals with a monkey wrench. He teams up with the adorable and unhinged fellow vigilante Boltie (Ellen Page).  Her character arc in the film is probably the most shocking of the film. It’s both hilarious and dark, and that is the one big reason why Super ranks so high for me.

Director James Gunn is a true talent. He incorporates gore, comedy, and emotion with such ease that it’s frightening. Super accomplishes so much that several movies before have struggled to do, and that’s to make a superhero that defies all the stereotypes while also being anchored by a heavy heart.

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6. Hugo

Martin Scorsese is an unabashed film lover. He’s shown it in his films as a director and in his work in film preservation. But never has it been more apparent and clearer than in Hugo.

Masquerading as a kid’s movie, Hugo is really about one of the pioneers of film, Georges Méliès. The film begins with the titular kid, Hugo, trying to decipher the secret of an automaton that he helped his late father (Jude Law) rebuild. On his quest he runs into and learns about Méliès and his contributions to film.

As soon as Hugo shifts into telling the backstory of the real life Méliès, then and only then does Hugo become magical. The story between Hugo and his late father is an emotionally gripping one, but what had me nearly in tears was the moving tribute to the silent, black and white movies of Méliès and other classic filmmakers.

This movie hit me personally, as for the last year I’ve been in a few film history classes and it was fitting that everything I read about and appreciated was put up so livingly on screen. Scorsese’s first kids movie is something entirely his own. It’s his personal love letter to cinema and it was a pleasure to share in it.

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5. Drive

You could insert an moronic quote about how the movie Drive has a well-built engine. It’s a movie that goes full throttle. It runs on all cylinders. This movie doesn’t need an oil change…and so on.

The truth is Drive is damn near a perfect movie.

It’s a throwback to the slow burn crime thrillers of the 70’s and 80’s. It’s effective in building the tension to an incredible level. We’ve seen this kind of movie before, but Drive turns the genre on its head.

Ryan Gosling is a stunt driver who is hired by professional criminals as a getaway driver. He’s the lead but I don’t think he says more than ten lines in the entire film. He’s stone cold silent for the majority of the film, and while at times it reaches almost laughable height, Gosling continues to carry himself like the dangerous, unpredictable man that he is. Meanwhile, the villain of the movie is Albert Brooks who plays against type but is as frightening in the movie as he’s funny in real life.

Drive is an experience. I was on the edge of my seat for the majority of the movie. I don’t understand people who were disappointed or were expecting Fast Five. This film is ten times more thrilling and one hundred times smarter than any Vin Diesel action movie.

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4. 50/50

Knowing who wrote the screenplay for a movie rarely helps with the experience of watching said movie. In this case, knowing who wrote the movie makes the movie a much more personal experience.

Six years ago screenwriter Will Reiser was stricken with cancer. He lived through it, fighting the cancer into remission and wrote a fictionalized, yet personal, account of what happened to him. He included many of his real-life experiences into that ultimately became the movie 50/50.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Adam, who finds out he has cancer and what follows is how the cancer affects him, his friend (played by Reiser’s real-life friend Seth Rogen), his girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard), his mother (Anjelica Huston), and his psychologist (Anna Kendrick).

The movie never veers into Lifetime Movie of the Week territory. For one, Dick jokes are abound. Seth Rogen tells some dick jokes, but these dick jokes seem like the most honest dick jokes a Seth Rogen character has ever made. Place yourself in Rogen’s position, how could you not make dick jokes and not try to make your best friend laugh as he deals with the fight of his life?

50/50 feels like the most honest movie of the year and balances tragedy and comedy effortlessly.

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3. Melancholia

It’s going to be hard not comparing these two movies, so I must.

My second favorite movie of the year, The Tree of Life, deals with the beauty of life and trying to coup with the demise of all things. My third favorite movie of the year, Melancholia, deals with the topics of life, death, and nature very differently. While The Tree of Life paints a portrait of life as immensely beautiful, Melancholia is much bleaker.

Melancholia is a film in two parts, preceded by a prologue. The prologue has the film’s players in a beautiful collage of images. After the prologue, the film is focused around Kirsten Dunst who plays Justine, a deeply depressed bride on her wedding day. The second half of the film is centered on Justine’s sister and her family, along with Justine, as they deal with the planet Melancholia, which is set to move right past Earth.

You may have seen the ads for the film that include the “moving portraits” from the prologue. Yes, this is the most beautiful part of the movie, as the rest is much more gritty, shot using handheld cameras. The beauty of the prologue carries through the remainder of the movie. Dunst’s Justine is an ad executive and the beauty she sees is the beauty seen in the prologue. She sees these beautiful images but these images are of destruction and a stark contrast of her real life. Depressed beyond no end, Justine becomes more and more obsessed with the planet Melancholia as it approaches Earth, on what she thinks will be a collision course.

Director Lars von Trier captures the state of depression like few directors have before. Maybe it’s because he knows about depression on a personal level, as he’s said himself. Wherever writer/director Von Trier pulls this feeling of deep sorrow, I can say by personal experience, that he captures it like few other directors can.

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2. The Tree of Life

The Tree of Life was released earlier this year within the same week as The Hangover Part II and X-Men:First Class, smack dab in the middle of summer blockbuster season. Because of this, one theater in particular had to warn its patrons that The Tree of Life wasn’t normal summer fare.

I overheard some of this sentiment after the screening I attended: “What a waste of time,” and “Really, that was it?” Those expecting a traditional drama, sci-fi spectacular, or a Brad Pitt-starer were tested beyond no end. It’s no surprise, as anyone who knows of director Terrence Malick knows he’s not one to make “straight forward” movie.

The Tree of Life is a long journey capturing the relationship between a father (Pitt), a mother (Jessica Chastain), and their son (Sean Penn). The film starts with Penn’s character’s birth and a death in the family. He grows up and as a teenager (Hunter McCracken) he struggles to accept the judgment of his father and the love that he mother gives. Then the film takes pulls back immensely, and then shows the creation of the Universe, Earth, and Life itself. That may seem unnecessary and the definition of pretentious, but while it’s heavy handed, it helps to solidify the relationship between a son and his parents, life and death.

In terms of plot…Wait, you got me; The Tree of Life doesn’t have a “plot” per se. We see a boy grow up through free-flowing montages and we see him as an adult, just dealing with his own existence in disjointed dreams/fantasies. The film tracks the life and, ultimately, the death of, well, all things. Immensely heavy and not for the less attentive movie-goer, The Tree of Life approaches mortality like very few films do.

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1. Midnight in Paris

One of the best things I did this year was not reading too much about Midnight in Paris before going to see it. All I heard was this was Woody Allen doing what he does best. From the trailers it looked just like Allen’s recent endeavors. Midnight in Paris looked something like Vicky Christina Barcelona (which I loved, by the way); a collection of some of the best actors working today thrown in front of a beautiful European backdrop. In the end I was pleasantly surprised that Midnight in Paris is everything a Woody Allen film should be, while also being fresh and original, and a timely take on the attraction to nostalgia.

Owen Wilson plays Gil Pender, a successful, but disillusioned Hollywood screenwriter. The inclination of any lead in a Woody Allen movie is to play it how Woody Allen would play it. This could be completely ill-advised (please see Jason Biggs and Will Ferrell in Melinda and Melinda and Say Anything, respectively), but Owen Wilson makes for a solid Allen lead. He doesn’t go all out by making Gil a caricature, no, he actually acts and is a fully realized character. By leaps and bounds this is my favorite Owen Wilson performance. He’s honest and funny, but also full of wonder. Those looks of utter surprise mixed with excitement on his face are both hilarious and extraordinary.

The rest of the cast includes actors like Rachel McAdams and Kathy Bates, each fulfilling either regular Woody Allen romantic comedy archetypes or, well, something else entirely. Here’s the thing, either you know or you don’t know about the “twist” in the movie. And if you don’t know the twist by now I don’t want to spoil it for you. All I can say it’s akin to Allen’s romantic comedy, fantasy film The Purple Rose of Cairo. But I don’t want to tell you who Tom Hiddleston and Alison Pill play, but I will tell you they fit their roles quite well. I don’t want to tell you who Corey Stoll plays, but I will say it would be a tragedy if he didn’t end up being the next great movie star.

I will tell you that Marion Cotillard is effortlessly beautiful and I can totally buy Owen Wilson’s character would fall head over heels for her, and her final moments in the film make the movie a more tragic look at the attraction of nostalgia. You see, while Midnight in Paris is part romantic comedy and fantasy film; it is also a movie with message. What does happen if you hold the past in too high of esteem? Is it best to hold onto the past or to just move on? Really, what’s best for the soul? Nostalgia was major theme for the movies of 2011 and none other than Woody Allen, in his own unique way, takes the best and brutally honest look at it.

If you needed a reminder that Woody Allen is still alive and capable of making some of the most original, heartwarming, and poignant films ever made, then you just need to see Midnight in Paris.

–Happy New Year