Top Ten 2011

Top Ten 2011

2011 was, at best, a middling year, with no standout like No Country for Old Men, and among the Oscar favorites, all of which we saw, no favorite like Hurt Locker. I do count 15 very good movies that, in the ultimate test, I had no trouble recommending to others. Rather than rate them individually, which would involve too many close calls, I can stick to tradition by listing a Top Ten and will then add five runners-up. (I am not copying the NY Times critics, although astute observers will note that this was their m.o. this year, as well.)
The Double Hour. My top discovery from the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, this Italian mystery-thriller did play in Edina for a week later in the year, and I would’ve liked to have seen it again, not only to judge the plot twist that flips the mirror at the end but to spend more time in the company of the two stars, who were both attractive and real in the manner of anonymous-to-me European actors.
Margin Call. The anonymous stars here stood for you and me, the regular people working under Jeremy Irons and Kevin Spacey. How would we fare in the crucible of a collapsing business? While the story was purportedly inspired by the demise of Lehman Brothers, it echoed in news stories for weeks to come. Together with Michael Lewis’s The Big Short , this film explained the implosion of the American economy – and the character of Wall Street – better than anything else that came my way.
Just Go With It. Frothy yes, but everything one could want in light entertainment: romance, humor, cute kids, hysterical secondary actors and the best and prettiest comic actress going, Jennifer Anniston. Adam Sandler infused the story with a kindspirited tone that allowed me to relax and laugh out loud, which I did at scene after scene, especially the one with the goat.
Of Gods and Men. At the opposite spectrum end from Adam Sandler, what could be more serious than a movie about monks in a foreign land, evaluating their vows in the face of rebel fanatics intent on their destruction. The cinematography, music, costumes and characters’ faces all matched the beautiful severity of the largely true story.
The Mill and the Cross. Answering my own rhetorical question is this reenactment of a Breugel painting. Making better use of silence than The Artist, the movie explains little while it wraps you into the world, and the horror, of daily existence in the year 1570. I could’ve done without Michael York and Charlotte Rampling, but the peasants captivated me as the movie confounded life and art, just as Breugel confounded 1st century Palestine with 16th-century Belgium.
Drive. A taut, tingling, stylish and supercool action thriller, with background drumbeat and technomusic that push suspense and violence that is shocking. Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan (the “It” actors of the moment) are brilliant, and generate their own electric charge without saying a word. The ending rather resembles Hamlet, surely no coincidence from a Danish director.
The Help. Along with Bridesmaids, the best female ensemble cast of the year, only this movie has a legitimate pedigree, a serious subject, an identifiable locale and a hard-won feel-good ending. To those who found it corny, I’m happy to show my softer side, and I trust some of these actors, if not the film itself, will be around come Oscar-time.
Incendies. The bridge between the West and the Muslim world is, today, one of the hardest and most necessary to cross, and this film vividly showed how hard that can be. It personalized the sectarian strife that tore apart Lebanon, making us imagine how different life in that world is from ours, while at the same time neatly reminding us that we do inhabit the same planet, if barely.
Bobby Fischer Against the World. A mesmerizing subject, told with appropriate drama and objectivity. The talking heads were uniformly insightful and the historic clips were fascinating, reminding us of a bygone era when the two most famous athletes in the world were the heavyweight champion and a chess player.
Super 8. E.T. updated for the video-game age, five youngsters making their own movie get caught up, a la Blow-Up, in bigger game. The kids were wonderful actors, except in their own movie, and the adolescent romance was the hottest love affair I saw all year. This movie was as full of cinema clichés as Hugo, The Artist and War Horse, but without taking itself seriously. What fun!
Honorable Mention:
My Week with Marilyn. No King’s Speech this year, but this came closest.
Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Next to Bobby Fischer, the best doc of the year.
Cedar Rapids. A feel-good farce, bested only by Just Go With It.
Jane Eyre. A perfect period piece, if less original than The Mill and the Cross.
Hanna. Second only to Drive for intense, non-stop action and stylishness.

J’Aime Regarder Les Filles – 6.5

A very French film about the working-class student who is madly in love with the rich beauty until he wakes up to/with the slightly less beautiful girl who has been vainly chasing him. What either girl sees in Primo is a total mystery unless they, like the director, see him as a reincarnation of Jean Pierre Leaud. The total fixation on young love, despite vague socio-economic-political rumblings in the 1981 background, is also very French, if a bit vapid.

Darling Companion – 8

Kevin Kline is the best comedic actor of his generation, Diane Keaton is an unfailingly charming but a little ditsy comedienne, and together they anchor this hilarious but touching Big Chill-at-60 reprise by director Lawrence Kasdan. The plot is ostensibly about a lost dog, Freeway, but I needn’t have worried: Freeway is lost for much of the film, the McMuffin, if you will, for the deeper story about relationships among the three couples. None are easy, all require quite a bit of faith as well as work, and this is what makes the world go ’round. With lots of witty lines thrown in.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – 6

A rather mystifying, unneeded retelling of the classic John le Carre/Alec Guinness spy story. The main characters are represented by chess pieces, and that’s about how much they come to life. Gary Oldman is widely praised for his Smiley, but his expression changed only on the few occasions his ex-wife was mentioned. I found it strangely unimportant that secrets were being stolen, I cared little about which was the spy, and I have no idea why Prideaux was left alive and sent home to England when Karla was through with him. I can’t even remember if this was in black-and-white, but it should’ve been.

The Artist – 5

Like War Horse, this was an hommage to an era of movies past, and, also like War Horse, for me it was devoid of originality or emotional involvement. Unlike the Spielberg film, which actively annoyed me, this one merely left me cold. Featuring a lead character who was vain, proud, mean to his wife and sporting a pencil-thin mustache was not the way to win my sympathy. Having the studio’s meal ticket arrive at the lot only to learn from a janitor that the studio had switched from silent films to talkies overnight did little to win my belief. Yes, making a silent film in 2011 is a cute trick, but the reasons the studios switched back in the day remain just as valid now. I kept thinking how much more I would be enjoying watching – and listening to – Rocky Horror Picture Show. In the category of film-homage movies that are up for awards this season, I will credit Scorsese’s Hugo for creating characters worth caring about.

Girl With a Dragon Tattoo

I can’t think of a book whose plot I remember so well as Girl, which made this relatively faithful adaptation more a checklist for me than a separate cinema experience. I had no objections to the presentation, although neither Daniel Craig nor Rooney Mara matched my imagination; but I have to wonder what someone who hadn’t read the book would think. Whole characters, such as Blomkvist’s lawyer sister, would never have appeared in the film, except to appease viewers familiar with the novel. And the story’s most glaring flaw – why the villain would flee the scene of his crimes (to go where?) instead of returning with one of his many guns to eliminate our heroes – stood out more in the movie.

War Horse – 2

This is the worst movie I’ve ever seen – at least for this year. Attempting an homage to “sincere” movies of the ’40s and ’50s, Steven Spielberg came up with an epic that was not merely corny, but phony. Every scene was absurd, every character a cliche: the dastardly landlord, the dissolute father, the long-suffering mother, the courageous youth, etc., etc. Nor was the story interesting or enlightening: a horse survived four years of brutal treatment by the Huns in great shape. It didn’t save anyone’s life, it wasn’t a beacon of hope that kept the soldiers fighting on. It – unlike most of the soldiers, who were largely glossed over – survived. Every scene, cued by John Williams’ trite orchestration, blatantly aimed for the heartstrings. And missed. Disney would’ve done it better.

Shame – 7.8

This was a minimalist movie, like, say, a Donald Judd sculpture: stark, clean lines, eerily beautiful, solid and ambiguous in meaning. The opening shot established the director’s style – monochromatic (usually blue), intense, with long, slow takes. The epitome was Carey Mulligan singing “New York, New York.” Not only did she sing at half-speed, but the camera let her sing the entire song, something you’ll never see in today’s cinema, geared toward the MTV 2-second-attention-span generation. One felt assaulted by the end, and not from the frequent sexual couplings. Every minute was a challenge to understand Brandon’s emotions, what he was thinking, what his addictive illness was. This Michael Fassbender character would have been an ideal patient for the Michael Fassbender character I saw two movies ago.

Young Adult – 7.5

Charlize Theron was sensational as a case of arrested development, the fast blonde whose life peaked senior year in high school. She was also, I’m advised, a convincing alcoholic. Beyond that, there was not much of a story and only one other interesting character, Matt, the schlubby guy who viewed high school from the opposite end. The movie’s sensibility recalled its precursor, Juno, but whereas that was a tale of affirmation, this was a downer – mildly amusing with lots of good Minnesota touches – but still a downer.

The Dangerous Method – 7

Most interesting as a history lesson in the lives and characters of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, so I hope the screenwriters did their research. Top billing, however, went to Keira Knightley, who certainly did a lot of acting, although I could have done with less jaw-jutting as a sign of repressed tension. Fassbender, Mortenson and Cassel were all exquisite as pioneer psychologists; their own personal hangups and foibles left one as unclear as ever as to the merits of psychoanalysis. The movie itself was such a total talkie that its origin as a stage play was obvious. As a play it might even have been better.