The consensus is in: 2011 wasn’t really the best year for films. Sure there were plenty of great movies released, stretching over multiple genres and involving numerous artists, both revered and wet behind the ears, but there was definitely a lack of really strong, amazing, knock out movies – but while there really wasn’t anything that took the country by storm and made everyone fall in love with the art of moving pictures all over again, there were more than enough movies released this year that were indeed memorable, interesting and well made.
And despite the perceived lack of great films for 2011, it was still tough picking ten favorites. Rango was the only good movie released in a span of months, but the year finally looked like it had a shot to turn around when Warrior and Contagion were both released in the same weekend and we both thoroughly entertaining and well done. Joseph Gordon-Levitt had quite a year, with both Hesher and 50/50 being bery different but both very good movies, with two very different JGL performances. There were some great documentaries that almost made the cut, like Beats, Rhymes & Life: A Tale of a Tribe Called Quest, Into The Abyss and Cave of Forgotten Dreams. There were a number of great foreign films (foreign to me anyway) - movies like The Guard from Ireland and 13 Assassins from Japan and Trollhunter from Norway.
There were even some big budget “popcorn” movies that were very satisfying, like Mission:Impossible – Ghost Protocol and Rise of the Planet of the Apes, both films the most stylish and well made entries in their respective film franchises. Bellflower is a very impressive indie film that made some waves and struck a chord with me and seems to signal the arrival of a new great filmmaker in the form of Evan Glodell. We got a new Muppet movie and it didn't suck in the least bit at all! And when Steven Spielberg makes his first 3D animated film, you damn well better sit up and pay attention.
But it had to be done, so here they are, my top ten of 2011:
10) Melancholia
I am not really a Lars Von Trier fan, as I respect the man’s work and ambition more than I actually like his movies. But with Melancholia, gone are all of his cinematic tricks of provocation and exploitations, and in their place is a strong meditation on depression and what it can do to a person. Wrapped up in a sci-fi movie about the end of the world, as Earth’s existence is threatened by the presence of a larger planet on a collision course with our home, the story is actually a well done character piece about a young, well-to-do bride and how her severe depression ruins everything for her, no matter what she does about it. Reportedly Lars Von Trier went through his own intense bouts with depression, and he managed to take this unfortunate experience and successfully portrayed it in cinematic form, and also came up with a beautiful allegory for depression in the form of the planet Melancholia threatening to bring permanent doom and gloom to everyone on Earth, and the result is a very well made and beautiful movie about an apocalypse that most of us would never see coming.
9) Take Shelter
Take Shelter thrives on two things; first there is the incredibly tense and atmospheric mood of the whole movie, as the idyllic flat lands of mid-western America have never looked more menacing and full of dread and the mounting sense of doom becomes almost unbearable before reaching the tipping point. And then there’s Michael Shannon, who is incredible as a possibly mentally ill family man who sees visions of an apocalyptic storm, and he goes internal for most of the film, as he tries to rationally deal with his visions, but like the building atmospheric mood of the movie, he’s only being set up to explode, and what an explosion it is. This is a great little movie with some bigger ideas and an ending will foster some interesting conversations among those who have seen it.
8) Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
The anti-James Bond movie, this is a cold war era British spy film featuring great work from great actors and solid, assured direction from the director of Let The Right One In. There is very little actual action in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but the suspense just gets more intense as the story goes on, as retired super spy George Smiley (a most excellent Gary Oldman) goes on a hunt for a mole in the highest ranks of the British secret service. There is a definite 70’s vibe to this movie, with more than enough smoky backrooms and paranoia to satisfy Sydney Pollack, and the story is dense enough that multiple viewings would be rewarding. A lot of layers on this onion, that’s for sure, and well worth peeling back.
7) Moneyball
From the writer of The Social Network and the director of Capote comes a baseball movie that deals with the small market teams with very limited payrolls trying to compete with the big teams like the Yankees and Red Sox, and it’s actually a rather thrilling and exciting movie, despite the fact that it’s mostly about statistics and baseball team payrolls. But in telling the story of Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane and how he transformed the lowly Athletics from basement dwellers to playoff contenders, Moneyball portrays one of the aspects of baseball that is hardly dwelled upon in films and television, and that is the backroom dealings and behind the scenes work that makes a baseball team operate, and thanks to strong acting, solid direction and great writing, this is one of the best baseball movies since the baseball movie heyday of the 1980’s.
6) The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Usually when good old reliable “Hollywood” sets up an English-language remake of a popular foreign film, the resulting movie is reviled upon arrival and often rightly so, since it is rare that a remake simply for the sake of changing the language (and sometimes the skin color of the characters) finds any way to improve upon the original. David Fincher, however, has forges a career of making subversive and out of the ordinary films from within the Hollywood studio system, and here he delivers one of those rare gems, an improvement upon the original, in this instance leaps and bounds beyond what was done before. My problems aside with the basic story of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, this is one of the slickest, most well made and most confident movies of the year, and perhaps the fastest two hours and forty minutes you can spend in a theater.
5) War Horse
If 2011 gave us anything special, it was the fact that we got two Steven Spielberg movies in one week. Released a few days after The Adventures of Tintin, War Horse is Mr. Spielberg’s first foray in World War I, and his scenes of trench warfare are intense and vivid, wholly different from what he’s done in the past but still with the same touch that he brings to all of his movies. And of course the main character of the movie is a horse, which everyone seems to be overlooking which is ridiculous because this is tough to pull off, making the lead character that your audience is supposed to care about and follow that of the beast variety. Yet they do everything short of insert CGI thought bubbles over the horse’s head to convey what it is feeling and the motivations for the decisions that it makes and it’s a fully realized and fleshed out character, more developed than many of the human characters in the movie, and that alone is an accomplishment. It’s an epic war film, a drama that touches many lives and it’s all presented with the confidence of a person who has been doing this for quite awhile and obviously still enjoys it.
Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life has everything. What kind of mad man needs to start at the beginning of time itself in order to tell the story of his childhood in 1950’s Waco, Texas? Most of the film follows a young family in the Texan suburbs, and instead of presenting a traditional plot and sequence of scenes, Mr. Malick presents this upbringing as a series of memories and emotional moments, all tied together to form a whole picture. This is definitely the most beautiful film of the year, both in cinematography and subject, and it is rewarding in a way that few movies strive. It may not be my absolute favorite of the year, but it is definitely the most ambitious and the most impressive, as well as the most singular film of 2011
One of those “we all have problems, even rich people” kind of movies, The Descendants is a sly blend of wry comedy and fairly heavy drama, and it would have taken me by complete surprise if it wasn’t from writer/director Alexander Payne (Election, About Schmidt, Sideways), who traffics in this kind of pitch perfect “dramady” zone that so many people ritually abuse. The Descendants is filled with real and believable characters flung into an extraordinary situation, and it’s incredible how this story unfolds and gets deeper, taking this tough family down with them and changing them for better and for worse. It’s a satisfying story and an entertaining movie, and what more could you ask for?
2) Hugo
Hugo is an ode to the origins of filmmaking, a love letter to the wonders of cinema, and a plea for film and art preservation, all wrapped up in the friendly confines of 3D family movie. What makes this particular 3D family film different from all the rest? The man behind the camera, Martin Scorsese, who made his first foray into both family entertainment and 3D moviemaking a successful one with this excellent movie. And of course it’s a little longer and a little heavier than your typical family film, but this is part of why it works so well and why it’s better than your average family fare. There's some comedy that works well enough, and the story gets kind of dark as the characters contemplate death and the loss of loved ones which adds an extra element of drama that one wouldn't expect from a movie like this, and the 3D is second to none - no one else would have found a way to tie this modern technology with the first films ever made in the same way as Scorsese. The 3D not only adds aesthetic depth, but it directly ties into the story of the initial screenings of Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat and how the audiences lept out of their seats in fear of being run over by a train approaching, and Scorsese reappropriates both the original film and the audience's perceptions of the footage into his 3D, and come on, really, who else is doing shit like this? Smart.
1) Drive
Of all the movies this year, Drive is the one that I keep coming back to, the one that blew me away when I saw it in theaters and which I currently love unconditionally. The story of a boy and his car, and the girl that he loves but can’t bring himself to actually do anything with, Drive is a stick of dynamite with a very long fuse – the fuse gets lit early but then simmers for quite awhile as we get closer and closer to the TNT, and when the movie finally does explode in a scary and fascinating burst of violence, you’re going to feel it. Ryan Gosling’s wordless performance is quite mesmerizing, as he manages to tell a lot about his character in just the way he moves and speaks (or really, in how he doesn’t speak), and every element of this movie comes together to make a really special film. I know this is not the unanimous choice for best of 2011 among all the film lovers out there, but it is my choice and I am sticking by it. This movie may not be for everyone, but it is for me.
Hear Christopher Crespo on SBK Live! every Monday night at 8:45 PM for a review of the prior weekend's box office and films.
Email Christopher Crespo at crespo11882@gmail.com.
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