The tendency when doing one of these "Top 10 Films Of" lists is to get showy. By either going so obscure that the common film-goer never had a chance, nor will ever have a chance, of seeing the films listed, (read a Glenn Kenny list for enlightenment) or by ticking off films too tough and arty (I'll admit it - interesting) for most mortals to suffer through.
If Terrence Mallick's Tree of Life didn't have most of us testing the battered perimeters of our attention spans... then I'm sure the films of Lars von Trier and Steve McQueen did. Not like I didn't love, or even thoroughly like, The Tree of Life, Melancholia, and Shame. I bring them up here because these three films put me at the crux of a hell of a predicament here at the end of 2011. Though I'm a fan of each movie (Lars won more of my heart this time around) what chance will there be that I'll actually sit down and enjoy these films in the future? I certainly will buy these films on Blu-Ray (if the cryptic overlords at Criterion bear gifts in 2012, it will be with Blu-Ray editions of Melancholia and Shame to add to my collection) but I'm betting if we use the classic scale for grading comic books, my three copies of these films will be in "mint" to "near-mint" condition in 2021.
Is that love? Twilight fans... is that even like?
Call me crazy but I like it when my Blu-Ray collection degrades in value over time. I want the ten Blu-Rays on my "Best Of" list to be graded somewhere around "Terribly Poor" to "Coffee Coaster" in ten years. That means I watched and re-watched these movies - which means I loved these movies.
As far as the year in film went, critics went crazy in November and December trying to anoint the big art film the Academy Awards and the rest of us should be parading into theaters for, and diving into topical, fruitless debate over - the Johnny-Come-Lately movies that always seem to plague the cinematic landscape of the last two months of the year.
This year however, the late year film rush did pretty much did nothing for me. There wasn't a Black Swan, a King's Speech, a Social Network, or a True Grit in the bunch this year. There were a few good films - just not anything I would consider Academy Genus. The Artist, War Horse, The Descendants, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.... didn't really blow my skirt up. (especially War Horse.... lazy old bitch) Out of that lot The Descendants is the pick of the litter, but as an Alexander Payne film it's not one of his best movies.
There are two movies on my list below that were born after Thanksgiving - one received plenty of fanfare from the media, the other a little less. As far as my year in film is concerned things stopped getting interesting after September - and that was after the most anemic Summer film season in recent memory. I guess the one silver-lining in a gloomy year at the movies was that there were so many surprises in 2011. 60% of the list below I didn't see coming - or didn't expect much from.
Here's what I liked in 2011:
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10) Attack the Block
My favorite Muppet movie in 2011. So everybody in the film appraisal business has gone rabid for Joe Cornish's Attack the Block? As they should. Few genre film debuts have been as inspired. Part dubstep video. Part monster movie. Part South London gangsta' movie. The style screams grime, and anime, and all points in between. There are two major talent discoveries in Cornish's alien invasion flick - Joe Cornish himself, and newcomer John Boyega. Boyega's Moses is one of the most controlled, collected, monster-badasses the silver screen has produced in recent years. This 15 year-old kid is a samurai - both as an actor and as a warrior. Moses and his crew run on the wrong side of the law in South London - they peddle drugs and mug anyone unfortunate enough to walk through their "block." In any other film the emergency responders and police would lead the charge against an alien threat - in Attack the Block, they just get in the way. The other thing this movie had that most of its green-blooded ilk failed to have in 11'.... cool monsters. We've seen almost every creature under the sun in science fiction by this point in cinema - we haven't seen these guys just yet. If this is Cornish's first foray into film... we're in for a special film career from this chap.
9) Margin Call
Aka: A Night To Remember. Everybody introduce yourself to J.C. Chandor. Margin Call is the most impressive directorial debut since Gilroy jumped in the fray with Michael Clayton, or Martin Mcdonagh was introduced to the film world with In Bruges. The story of the recent market collapse is summed up in moments. In that respect it echoes Mamet's Glengarry Glenn Ross - but only because it tosses so many great actors into so many meaty scenes together. We could list all of the other great films about the corporate world - and point out what a lucky bastard Kevin Spacey is for scoring major roles in both this film and Foley's Glengarry - but if Margin Call has kin in tone and quality it's Greengrass's United 93. The players in Margin Call could just as well be sleeping passengers on a flight out of Boston - woken suddenly to a threat that means to doom them all. The aftereffects to which are both unknown, but grim. In Chandor's film conscience is a commodity and everybody's buying and selling.
8) Hanna
Homeschooling's greatest achievement. There's a three minute single tracking shot in Joe Wright's wonderful film Hanna that I'm sure read: Eric Bana exits bus in Berlin, goes into subway and kills four guys with his bare hands... on the shooting script that when you finally watch the final product crushes anything Alfonso Cuaron or the Wachowski brothers may have thought possible. Hanna is a daring film - to put it bluntly, Hanna isn't really like anything we've seen before. There were lots of surprises in 2011, almost none of them as surprising as Hanna. Where did it come from? Who wrote it? How did it make it onto our theater screens? And who sold their soul to grab the reclusive Chemical Brothers to score the soundtrack for the film? The answer is of course, Joe Wright. (Atonement) No, Joe didn't write the bloody movie, but he saw potential in this script, he gave it its European flavor, and best of all, he made a film about a 16 year old female assassin one of the most honest, engaging, and spellbinding films of the year. Quentin Tarantino talks about returning to Kill Bill sometime in the near future, (near future in Tarantino years means sometime after George RR Martin finishes his next Fire and Ice novel and Axl Rose releases a seventh Guns n' Roses record) bringing back the Bride and her grown daughter to slaughter anyone bearing old grudges. In my fantasy Bride and Daughter of The Bride run into a twenty-one year old version of Hanna, talk some clever shit to her... and are never heard from again. I want a sequel to this.
7) Super 8
Don't believe the backlash. In 2006 JJ Abrams rescued the struggling Mission Impossible franchise. In 2009 he delivered Star Trek from the retirement vaults of Paramount Studios. And in Summer 2011...? Abrams saved my Summer vacation. As it turns out this year he also out-Spielberged Steven Spielberg. Super 8 feels like going home - at least for me it did. The movie's detractors are going to point out how the CG killed the illusion of the film. That the final act was a dud. And that Attack the Block was the only true contender in this genre. I love Attack the Block, but I can't take my kid to Attack the Block. I can take my kid to Super 8, and what they get out of it is every bit as genuine as what I get out of it. It's a movie about growing up, losing loved ones and finding new loved ones to fill in the holes. It's a buddy movie. It's a wicked-sharp monster movie. (that attack on the military bus completely rocks) And it's a reminder why most of my generation enjoy a good movie now. We grew up in these cinematic neighborhoods. There's so much going on in Super 8 that it's hard to know where to lend your eyes and ears at any given time. My favorite moments in the film are between joel Courtney and Elle Fanning - if this relationship doesn't make you relive that first time you fell hopelessly in love with someone... sweetin' up partner, you've turned sour in your years. Go out and download The Cars greatest hits off of iTunes and find that kid you once were before all the medical bills and mortgage payments drove you to shrew-hood.
6) X-Men: First Class
The biggest struggle I had creating this list this year wasn't choosing between The Tree of Life or Melancholia, or between choosing between Attack the Block and Super 8 for this list...(which I couldn't do funny enough, screw you von Trier and Mallick) it was trying to figure out which Matt Vaughn movie I most want a sequel to. Last year's Kick-Ass? Or this year's tasty reboot of the X-Men franchise? I want both movies. I also want Vaughn in the director's chair for both. If there isn't more substantial proof that film critics make for lazy, inconsiderate lovers it's their treatment of X-Men: First Class. Last June they couldn't pile on enough adjectives and chunky adverbs writing love letters about the new X-Men movie. By January however... they'd succumbed to much less appealing mass-market choices like War Horse and Rise of the Planet of the Apes. X-Men: First Class isn't just a reinvigoration for a flailing franchise - it is the franchise. Whatever those other films were, they're certainly not nearly as well-executed (sorry Singer fans) or as well cast as First Class. Compared to Matthew Vaughn's movie those were Wolverine movies with Magneto and Professor X holding court in the wings. X-Men: First Class is like a great Connery-era Bond film - but loaded with Mutants. There's been much talk about Michael Fassbender's performance in Shame, and I honestly don't know how an actor of that size and ability packed himself into so many terrific movies this year - I just know that I liked him Shame, and I absolutely loved him in X-Men: First Class. This was my favorite Fassbender performance in 2011. Along with Nolan's The Dark Knight and Snyder's Watchmen, X-Men: First Class is the new standard in comic book cinema.
The biggest struggle I had creating this list this year wasn't choosing between The Tree of Life or Melancholia, or between choosing between Attack the Block and Super 8 for this list...(which I couldn't do funny enough, screw you von Trier and Mallick) it was trying to figure out which Matt Vaughn movie I most want a sequel to. Last year's Kick-Ass? Or this year's tasty reboot of the X-Men franchise? I want both movies. I also want Vaughn in the director's chair for both. If there isn't more substantial proof that film critics make for lazy, inconsiderate lovers it's their treatment of X-Men: First Class. Last June they couldn't pile on enough adjectives and chunky adverbs writing love letters about the new X-Men movie. By January however... they'd succumbed to much less appealing mass-market choices like War Horse and Rise of the Planet of the Apes. X-Men: First Class isn't just a reinvigoration for a flailing franchise - it is the franchise. Whatever those other films were, they're certainly not nearly as well-executed (sorry Singer fans) or as well cast as First Class. Compared to Matthew Vaughn's movie those were Wolverine movies with Magneto and Professor X holding court in the wings. X-Men: First Class is like a great Connery-era Bond film - but loaded with Mutants. There's been much talk about Michael Fassbender's performance in Shame, and I honestly don't know how an actor of that size and ability packed himself into so many terrific movies this year - I just know that I liked him Shame, and I absolutely loved him in X-Men: First Class. This was my favorite Fassbender performance in 2011. Along with Nolan's The Dark Knight and Snyder's Watchmen, X-Men: First Class is the new standard in comic book cinema.
5) Hugo
So Scorsese made a "family" movie without anyone named "Vinny" or "Pauly" or "Jimmy Two-Times"...? Who knew he could pull it off? Family entertainment grew up this year. Films like Rango, Hugo, and Tintin tempted your children away from their Nintendo Wii - but then lost them completely in a blitz of adult themes and humor. My two favorite family-ish movies this year were Rango and Hugo. (the boys could have been brothers with those names) Both had attachments to the past - Rango to Sergio Leone and early Coen brothers movies, and Hugo to something much, much older. Scorsese's movie is about the foundation of film, as a dream first, then as a reality, and then as lineage. Hugo is Cinemythology. Yeah, I made that term up, but it's the only way to describe Hugo - Cinemythology. Scorsese's film jumps over the hurdles of "cute" and "expected" early on in the feature and never really looks back after that. If you're a film buff - and there's no denying Martin Scorsese's application to the club - this is your film. If you missed this movie (as I'm sure you did, nobody went to the movies this year...) in 3D, then you've missed the best iteration of the technology. Walt Disney conjured magic on our theater screens many, many moons ago... Martin Scorsese rediscovered the formula, the ritual, the technique this year in Hugo.
So Scorsese made a "family" movie without anyone named "Vinny" or "Pauly" or "Jimmy Two-Times"...? Who knew he could pull it off? Family entertainment grew up this year. Films like Rango, Hugo, and Tintin tempted your children away from their Nintendo Wii - but then lost them completely in a blitz of adult themes and humor. My two favorite family-ish movies this year were Rango and Hugo. (the boys could have been brothers with those names) Both had attachments to the past - Rango to Sergio Leone and early Coen brothers movies, and Hugo to something much, much older. Scorsese's movie is about the foundation of film, as a dream first, then as a reality, and then as lineage. Hugo is Cinemythology. Yeah, I made that term up, but it's the only way to describe Hugo - Cinemythology. Scorsese's film jumps over the hurdles of "cute" and "expected" early on in the feature and never really looks back after that. If you're a film buff - and there's no denying Martin Scorsese's application to the club - this is your film. If you missed this movie (as I'm sure you did, nobody went to the movies this year...) in 3D, then you've missed the best iteration of the technology. Walt Disney conjured magic on our theater screens many, many moons ago... Martin Scorsese rediscovered the formula, the ritual, the technique this year in Hugo.
4) Moneyball
There were three great films about sports this year: Moneyball, the documentary Senna, and another one listed below. Each one made for great drama, but I think Moneyball works for me because it was less about athletes and more about a card-counting crew taking down the world's largest rigged game - Major League Baseball. I honestly don't believe that you could have made this film without Brad Pitt. Like the soundtrack in Drive, or the planet Melancholia in Melancholia, Pitt is a life-sustaining component of the movie. As an actor this might be his best work to date. He's amazing in The Tree of Life - I challenge that he's better here. The role of Billy Beane fits Brad Pitt's build. Of all the movies I've listed here Moneyball is the movie I'm most excited about returning to again - and again. My biggest surprise in 2011 wasn't that I enjoyed Fast Five and The Help... (who knew right? how could you know?) it was that too many film critics dumped Moneyball off of their Top 10 lists for easy company like The Artist and The Descendants. Moneyball deserves the Oscar for Best Picture in 2011. This is Academy Genus material. The three movies listed below don't have a tampon's chance in a Kardashian of winning the Best Picture award this year... but Moneyball should.
3) The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
I'm a David Fincher fanatic. Which means I that I couldn't lower myself to watch the original Swedish version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo before seeing the David Fincher version. For the last two years I've ignored the Niels Oplev film - I was saving myself for my wedding night with Dave. Now that my Stieg-cherry's been popped I know what all of the hullabaloo was about - this film hurts. In Stieg Larrson's version of Sweden ABBA and Absolut Vodka are fairy-tales - the ice age is still bearing down on the cities and estates of the country and depraved predators prowl for game in those cold places. There's a reason why Rooney Mara's Lisbeth sports so many quills and spikes - Lisbeth's a survivor, a black angel, a tech-geek with a violent thirst for retribution. The real score (outside the Trent Reznor score... which is outstanding) is David Fincher's direction. He pared down everything from the Swedish version of the movie, cast some terrific talent, and made this story much cleaner and meaner. I'll never think of Enya the same way again.
I'm a David Fincher fanatic. Which means I that I couldn't lower myself to watch the original Swedish version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo before seeing the David Fincher version. For the last two years I've ignored the Niels Oplev film - I was saving myself for my wedding night with Dave. Now that my Stieg-cherry's been popped I know what all of the hullabaloo was about - this film hurts. In Stieg Larrson's version of Sweden ABBA and Absolut Vodka are fairy-tales - the ice age is still bearing down on the cities and estates of the country and depraved predators prowl for game in those cold places. There's a reason why Rooney Mara's Lisbeth sports so many quills and spikes - Lisbeth's a survivor, a black angel, a tech-geek with a violent thirst for retribution. The real score (outside the Trent Reznor score... which is outstanding) is David Fincher's direction. He pared down everything from the Swedish version of the movie, cast some terrific talent, and made this story much cleaner and meaner. I'll never think of Enya the same way again.
2) Warrior
When walking into this last August I heard two of my fellow Seattle film critics talking about how they couldn't stand watching MMA - how brutal the sport was and how they couldn't identify with it. Right now, last week in fact, a lot of critics in the media were pouring some love on Warrior's Blu-Ray release - but all with the disclaimer that they "don't watch mixed martial arts." As if this behavior is something to be proud of. How does this read to someone - someone like myself - who loves professional fighting (boxing and MMA) and might be interested in the first real film about cage fighting? Spurious at best - weak in the chin at worst. Take heart MMA fans, I love fights, I love film, and I really love good fight films. Warrior is, at its core, a powerful motion picture - one of best in fact. When it jumps into the ring...? It's one of the greatest fight films ever made. To compare it to critical darlings like Rocky and The Fighter is to do a major disservice to those terrific movies - they're just not as good as this movie is. Christian Bale won an Oscar for his work in David Russel's The Fighter - there's no question he deserved it. Watch the work that Joel Edgerton, Tom Hardy, and Nick Nolte put in in this movie, and again... there's no question these guys deserve Oscars. What they didn't deserve was to be in one of the best films of the year and to be totally ignored by audiences across the country. I know that eventually Warrior will find its audience like The Shawshank Redemption and The Big Lebowski before it. News of it will spread as folks stumble across it at the grocery store Redbox vending machine, or happen to catch glimpses of it running on a line of 60" plasma screens at BestBuy, or by word of mouth - which is usually how these cult phenomenas develop - Warrior will finally find the audience it very much deserves. I absolutely loved this movie. This is - without hesitation - the best movie about fighting ever made.
When walking into this last August I heard two of my fellow Seattle film critics talking about how they couldn't stand watching MMA - how brutal the sport was and how they couldn't identify with it. Right now, last week in fact, a lot of critics in the media were pouring some love on Warrior's Blu-Ray release - but all with the disclaimer that they "don't watch mixed martial arts." As if this behavior is something to be proud of. How does this read to someone - someone like myself - who loves professional fighting (boxing and MMA) and might be interested in the first real film about cage fighting? Spurious at best - weak in the chin at worst. Take heart MMA fans, I love fights, I love film, and I really love good fight films. Warrior is, at its core, a powerful motion picture - one of best in fact. When it jumps into the ring...? It's one of the greatest fight films ever made. To compare it to critical darlings like Rocky and The Fighter is to do a major disservice to those terrific movies - they're just not as good as this movie is. Christian Bale won an Oscar for his work in David Russel's The Fighter - there's no question he deserved it. Watch the work that Joel Edgerton, Tom Hardy, and Nick Nolte put in in this movie, and again... there's no question these guys deserve Oscars. What they didn't deserve was to be in one of the best films of the year and to be totally ignored by audiences across the country. I know that eventually Warrior will find its audience like The Shawshank Redemption and The Big Lebowski before it. News of it will spread as folks stumble across it at the grocery store Redbox vending machine, or happen to catch glimpses of it running on a line of 60" plasma screens at BestBuy, or by word of mouth - which is usually how these cult phenomenas develop - Warrior will finally find the audience it very much deserves. I absolutely loved this movie. This is - without hesitation - the best movie about fighting ever made.
1) Drive
If you can sit down in front of Nic Refn's Drive and not view it as an action movie, but as an out of body experience... you've got the right state of mind for Drive. It's a film at peace with itself, at peace with its world, and at peace with the terrible consequences of its world. Ryan Gosling's Driver isn't the type of character they hand you awards for, but he is the kind of character that shows up on T-shirts thirty years from now. He's Malcolm McDowell's Alex. He's Mel Gibson's Max. He's Natalia Portman's Nina Sayers. The scene in the strip club, where Gosling beats Cook (James Biberi) half to death in front of the staff, illustrates everything great about Nic Refn's direction in this film. In any other movie the two men would have rolled around on the tables and floor punching each other stupid while hundreds of half naked strippers screamed and stampeded for the exits... in Drive the girls just sit there. Topless. Indifferent. If their manager deserves a beating - if he doesn't - they don't seem to care either way. A good beating is something else to watch in this place. To people like myself - and 90% of working film critics - there isn't any real money in this business. But when you hit upon a film like Nic Refn's Drive...? It certainly feels like a paycheck. There were a few great soundtracks in 2011 - The Chemical Brothers soundtrack for Hanna, Sean Spillane's soundtrack for the indie-horror movie The Woman, the Attack the Block soundtrack, and the music in Drive. Drive - as a living breathing canvas of sound, beauty, and blunt force trauma - wouldn't carry the same toxilogical impact without its music. Drive is a film to get high on. One of the best crime dramas - by anyone - ever created.
If you can sit down in front of Nic Refn's Drive and not view it as an action movie, but as an out of body experience... you've got the right state of mind for Drive. It's a film at peace with itself, at peace with its world, and at peace with the terrible consequences of its world. Ryan Gosling's Driver isn't the type of character they hand you awards for, but he is the kind of character that shows up on T-shirts thirty years from now. He's Malcolm McDowell's Alex. He's Mel Gibson's Max. He's Natalia Portman's Nina Sayers. The scene in the strip club, where Gosling beats Cook (James Biberi) half to death in front of the staff, illustrates everything great about Nic Refn's direction in this film. In any other movie the two men would have rolled around on the tables and floor punching each other stupid while hundreds of half naked strippers screamed and stampeded for the exits... in Drive the girls just sit there. Topless. Indifferent. If their manager deserves a beating - if he doesn't - they don't seem to care either way. A good beating is something else to watch in this place. To people like myself - and 90% of working film critics - there isn't any real money in this business. But when you hit upon a film like Nic Refn's Drive...? It certainly feels like a paycheck. There were a few great soundtracks in 2011 - The Chemical Brothers soundtrack for Hanna, Sean Spillane's soundtrack for the indie-horror movie The Woman, the Attack the Block soundtrack, and the music in Drive. Drive - as a living breathing canvas of sound, beauty, and blunt force trauma - wouldn't carry the same toxilogical impact without its music. Drive is a film to get high on. One of the best crime dramas - by anyone - ever created.
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Because I'm not perfect, and because I sometimes have terrible taste in movies, (I watched Sucker Punch six different times in 2011) I hounded my wife this year to give me her list of her favorite movies from 2011. She went with me to the theater more than any other person this year, and she suffered through some pretty awful movies because of it. I apologize to her for putting her through Cowboys and Aliens (twice) and Trollhunter (which was totally gawdamn awesome by the way) but I thank her for being the perfect theater buddy all year long.
Mrs. Roestel's Top 10 Movies of 2011:
10) Super 8
9) The Adventures of Tintin
8) Attack the Block
7) Bridesmaids
6) The Rum Diary
5) The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
4) The Ides of March
3) Drive
2) Moneyball
1) Warrior
9) The Adventures of Tintin
8) Attack the Block
7) Bridesmaids
6) The Rum Diary
5) The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
4) The Ides of March
3) Drive
2) Moneyball
1) Warrior
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