As I began to make this list, I was looking at the ones I've compiled in years past, which, while bittersweet and occasionally depressing (due to some of my choices), fit in perfectly with the 2011 movie year. The past played a crucial role in many of the best movies of the year, mainly in the way it's made the present unable to let it go. We saw many characters stuck in a strange warp, trapped from moving forward due to events (often sins) of their past. In many cases, it involved sons and daughters struggling with fathers. What the movies showed me mostly, as we continue to steamroll forward, is that no matter how old you get, you cannot completely free yourself from the past, for better or worse. It was that kind of a movie year. And I'll be damned if it wasn't a most potent one. Happy 2011!
-Lee
Dishonorable Mentions (in alphabetical order): The Adjustment Bureau, Another Earth, Cowboys & Aliens, The Green Hornet, Red State, Scream 4, The Thing, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Trespass, Vanishing on 7th Street, The Ward.
Honorable Mentions (in alphabetical order): Attack the Block, Bridesmaids, A Dangerous Method, Drive Angry, Hobo with a Shotgun, I Saw the Devil, Margin Call, Moneyball, Rango, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Source Code, Stake Land, Super 8, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Woman.
The Next Ten
20) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo dir. David Fincher
19) Warrior dir. Gavin O'Connor
18) Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol dir. Brad Bird
17) Cave of Forgotten Dreams dir. Werner Herzog
16) Fright Night dir. Craig Gillespie
15) Meek's Cutoff dir. Kelly Reichardt
14) Young Adult dir. Jason Reitman
13) The Adventures of Tintin dir. Steven Spielberg
12) Shame dir. Steve McQueen
11) 13 Assassins dir. Takashi Miike
TOP TEN
10) Poetry (Shi) dir. Chang-dong Lee
Similar to Joon-ho Bong's Mother but with less quirk, Poetry follows Mija (an extraordinary Jeong-hie Yun), a woman in her 60s who, in addition to dealing with early stages of dementia and a dead-end job, enrolls in poetry classes as a way to cope with the knowledge that her grandson has taken part in a truly heinous act. He's a brat and shows no remorse for what he's done, but these factors don't change Mija's stance...instead, she drowns the unpleasantness surrounding her by trying to create something beautiful through words based on the creations of nature around her, creations that are unable to be cruel or deceptive.
9) Hanna dir. Joe Wright
Proof that Joe Wright needs to ditch melodrama altogether, his first outing in the action genre is truly mesmerizing, a scorching Red Riding Hood tale about teenager Hanna (an intense Saoirse Ronan), raised in the Arctic by her ex-CIA father (Eric Bana) to be a killing machine. He knows Too Many Secrets in other words, and wants his little girl to be ready in case their location is compromised. Naturally it is, springing Hanna into action for her first dose of the real world, a place where normalcy is a curious thing and the sins of the father become the sins of the daughter. Whether Hanna knows it or not, that is what she is running from and ultimately fighting for.
8) Midnight in Paris dir. Woody Allen
Possibly Woody Allen's most magical movie to date (outside of maybe Everyone Says I Love You), his latest casts a lovely spell. It finds Owen Wilson as a surprisingly appropriate Allen stand-in, and, by having him meet all his favorite authors and artists of past (Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Picasso, Dali, to name a handful), is able to learn the dangers of depending on the past to make oneself complete as an artist. As cathartic as it may be to meet the ones who influenced you the most, it doesn't change the fact that they don't necessary hold the solutions to your problems. Don't be fooled into thinking the movie is a downer...Midnight in Paris has the kind of charm that sticks with you long after it's over.
7) Nostalgia for the Light (Nostalgia de la luz) dir. Patricio Guzmán
The Atacama Desert in Chile is the main setting for this amazing documentary, a beautiful, haunting, and deeply mournful examination of the way the past is discovered through the efforts of science and history. While astronomers comb the sky for clues pertaining to the secrets of the universe, archaeologists dig in the desert in hopes of finding the remains of love ones lost during Augusto Pinochet's terrifying reign. This link to the past is all that keeps them going...the hope of finding some piece of their family member's existence. Guzmán doesn't treat them as simple subjects but people who, like him, cherish the memories of years gone but need concrete evidence to ease their sorrowed souls.
6) Drive dir. Nicolas Winding Refn
What's there to say about this picture that hasn't already been said time and time again? Drive is the most intoxicating movie of the year, a visually splendid, impeccably acted, and surprisingly romantic movie that somehow manages to be equally thrilling, beautiful, and scary, often all at once. See it if you love the movies. And have a strong stomach.
5) Take Shelter dir. Jeff Nichols
Michael Shannon is one of the very best actors alive, and no one understands it better than writer/director Jeff Nichols. After his stunning debut, Shotgun Stories and now this, I'd be fine if Shannon and Nichols stayed glued together. In Take Shelter, Shannon plays Curtis, a man with a loving wife (Jessica Chastain, in one of several dynamite performances from 2011) and daughter who begins to test their loyalty once he starts having visions of a disastrous storm. The fear that it will come true consumes Curtis's life, but what's so refreshing about the movie is that he acknowledges that something is wrong with him. All the while, he prepares for a storm that may never surface, in the process depleting his already limited funds. Take Shelter is a convincing family drama, a chilling thriller, and a depiction of how troubled times could possibly drive a man over the edge.
4) Certified Copy (Copie conforme) dir. Abbas Kiarostami
I haven't seen any of the movies Abbas Kiarostami has made in his home country of Iran, but his first outside venture, the Italy set Certified Copy, is as joyous an experience as I had at the movies all year. An absorbing and delightfully intellectual journey about the perception of art, its history, and identity and relationships, the movie follows two (supposed) strangers (a luminous Juliette Binoche and real-life opera singer William Shimell) as they wander the streets and argue like an old married couple. Did they just meet? Or are they acquaintances? One of the many great pleasures of this movie is attempting to decide, and Certified Copy is a testament to why we love to debate art.
3) Beginners dir. Mike Mills
Personal projects can be disgustingly self-indulgent, which thankfully is not the case with Beginners, Mike Mills's fictionalized account of how he responded to his father coming out of the closet in his 70s. The characters and dialogue have a genuine and authentic feel, matched by a soft visual style. It creates a fine line between realism and whimsy, always staying with the former even when it threatens to spill into the latter. It's the best balancing job I've seen in years, and is the first movie in ages that's had a cute dog that didn't annoy me to death. Ewan McGregor plays Oliver, a depressed artist still mourning the passing of his father (a career best Christopher Plummer), who announced he was gay just months after his wife died. This revelation combined with the cold relationship his parents had when Oliver was a child has made him afraid of getting too close to someone, a hardship that comes into play when he meets Anna (Mélanie Laurent, lovely). Their disconnect strikes a chord that brings them together in the most enchanting ways, even if they are always at risk of falling apart. Beginners is as good as it gets when it comes to understanding relationships by looking into the past and viewing things literally because it's the only way we may know how to comprehend them.
2) Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Loong Boonmee raleuk chat) dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Lyrical and spiritual, the latest offering from Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a visual stunner that follows the final days of Boonmee (Thanapat Saisaymar), a farmer with a kidney illness who is visited by deceased loved ones who still watch over him. They end up being his guides to his final resting place, and the journey leads Boonmee through forests inhabited by ghostly beings and caves that literally look as if human spirits have become part of their walls. With deep faith that the afterlife is when man finally becomes one with the elements of nature, Weerasethakul's movie asks a series of rich and challenging questions and does so with much poignancy and occasional subtle humor. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is unlike any movie I've ever seen...I feel fortunate to have experienced it and, after two viewings, can't wait to again.
1) The Tree of Life dir. Terrence Malick
Many viewers, critics and audiences alike, have claimed they didn't "get" The Tree of Life. Others said it was disjointed and the sections don't fit together. My response to them is that they didn't really watch it. Unlike the latest Transformers movie, where you can just stare at the screen and watch action unfold, Malick's latest labor of love requires some effort on the viewer's part. The movie jumps back and forth through time, at one point going all the way back to the beginning in order to show us that the beauty of this world began with the creation itself. But it's also there to show us how freedom of choice trickled down from one species to another, and how it was able to lead to humans questioning not only their own existence, but the reasoning behind the events of their lives, good and bad. And that barely scratches the surface! In addition, The Tree of Life is also one of the most honest portraits of adolescence ever made, ranging from a child's free-spirited behavior, to the rebellion against their parent's rules, to the startling way the movie captures the familiar looks and sounds of a summer's day/night. And I haven't even gotten into how Malick subtly explores how the son grows up wrestling the inner demons of the father, which still fits on an even larger scale when held in context with the rest of the movie. I have no issue with someone not liking The Tree of Life, as long as you give it the attention it deserves before criticizing. This is the work of a master filmmaker who, with only five films, has achieved a bliss some directors never reach after making twenty.
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