2011 has been the Year best described as “Different”, to some it’s better than last year and according to the NY post it’s a bad year because “I haven’t given more than two movies 4 stars”. Well nor have I, and with the evidence shown below to you the Jury, it can be safely asserted that his hypothesis is incorrect. 2011 has given us the return of modern visionaries, the auteurs of their craft, the founding fathers of the weird and the wonderful. Terrence Malick returned after, a presumably shorter hiatus than usual, and expanded our knowledge of the universe, from its beginnings right the way through to its reconciling ending. It was an epic tone poem in the most personal of ways, one that touched even though it contained those dinosaurs. It’s flawed, with an almost fan boy like appreciation taken over the many who have lauded it as the best film of the year, but it will leave with a distinct impression on you afterwards, whether you take that as positive aspect or not is up to you.
Lynne Ramsey returned for the first time in 7 years with her adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s celebrated book “We need to talk about Kevin” a film that has unusually, since seeing the film in October, has garnered as much acclaim and aggressive criticism as any other this year. It’s an unflinchingly fearless film with Tilda Swinton at her usual best. However, new comer Ezra Miller almost steals the show as a rampaging teen with a heart as black as death itself. Whatever you take from Kevin, it is a dizzying, poisonous and gripping experience. The return of others has been met with a final “hurrah, you have made a good one”. Martin Scorsese returned with the fun and delightful “Hugo” all about the indescribable feeling that one gets from cinema. Pedro Almodovar gave us an intoxicating mix of melodrama and body shock horror in “The Skin I live in” with Elena Anaya as Antonia Banderas human guinea pig.
The genre that has dominated this year, however, has been the presence that something isn’t right and that the world may just end. Greg Akari gave us the not so serious “Kaboom”,a raunchy teen sex end-of-the world comedy, where the world ends at the push of a button. Soderbergh returned, as you can almost guarantee he will, with “Contagion” , a revamp of the disaster film played through a modern setting where Gwyneth Paltrow sets the world into chaos (it’s either that or “Country Strong”). Lars Von Trier became infamous in 2011 for this years most overblown controversy where he was issued a Persona Non Grata for being a bit of a Nazi. His vision of the world ending was played through the eyes of Kirsten Dunst where she brings the world to its end with the planet“Melancholia” . David Mackenzie may have given us the best however with the flawed but fascinating “Perfect Sense”, where the world begins to lose all there senses and have to learn to adapt. Maybe this is, as depressing it is to be writing on a Sunday morning, a message for our times. Cinema, with its screens being clogged up with countless 3D film’s, is stopping the amount of other, smaller more original films to be shown in your city and with the end of the UK film council what is the hope for us the continuing growth of original British films. Will this year be the last “Hoorah” for British cinema?
Why be depressive, its Sunday, it’s a week before Christmas and this is the crowning achievements of 2011 as listed below to the shock and awe of some that there is no Superhero films listed below.
10. Le Quattro Volte/ Love like Poison
I am cheating, I know, but it is a testament to the amount of films shown this year, in my eye’s, which are worthy of these positions. Number 10 represents the best in Arthouse even though they both deserve equal acclaim in their own right. Le Quattro Volte (or “The Four Times”) has been described by Mark Kermode as the “Silent goat farming film”. The film is almost indescribable, it’s wordless almost listless tone at time’s gives the film an almost meditative feel, while a man, a goat, a tree and coal symbolise the four stages of life. It sounds all so “Tree of life” but this would be doing the film an injustice. It’s moving, profound and has a beguiling sense of humour which will charm even the most hardened of “Arthouse” cynics.
Love like Poison is a French film, which premièred in the 2010 Cannes film festival, however it has only just got its release in the UK. Poison represents the best dysfunctional family film of the year, with it tackling different strands from teenage love, death, family breakdowns, intruding on a young girl’s sense of innocence and pulls it off effortlessly. Wanting to see the film again and prying deeper into the film is something that has to be done
9. Meeks Cutoff
Not for everyone, so the warning goes out to you all before attempting to watch Kelly Reichardts contemplative and ravishing western. As much a survival film as it is a Western, the “Meek” of the title is Bruce Greenwoods almost unrecognisable appearance as Stephen Meek take families across the Oregon Trail. Its use of the 4:3 aspect ration gives the film the refreshing look of something old. It flips all the conventions, showing precisely the painful journey to find civilisation. Instead of Men as the hunters they become the hunted at the hands of Michelle Williams Emily Teethrow, examining there look at why they are doing what they are doing and what the ensuing capture of a slave does to them. Unusually centred around, it continued the work of the likes of Winters Bone in getting rid of the final taboo of women no being a fierce presence in modern cinema. It’s barren, expansive and open to the possibility of danger at any moment, isn’t that the essence of a true Western?
8. Rango/Arriety
Rango is Gore verbinskis best film, having gone through the sludge of Pirates of the Caribbean and the witless and dull Nicholas Cage vehicle The Weather Man, with Johnny Depp playing a lost chameleon on the search for his purpose. It’s an inventive, funny and bonkers tale, with the added bonus of not being in 3D. If Rango doesn’t suit your tastes then Studio Ghiblis magical Arriety, based around a tale adapted from the Borrowers, is thrilling in different way. It’s even a different fair from classic Ghibli, moving away from the childish, but still brilliant, fare of the previous films such as Ponyo. It’s an unashamedly simple love story about two people in two different worlds fighting to be friends. The film can be described in one word-Lovely.
7.127 hours
Danny Boyles thrilling take on Aron Ralston's experience of being stuck between a boulder and a hard place-the world. Through his ordeal he begins to contemplate about, not just what has happened to him but the person he is. It’s a thrilling adventure film even though the setting is largely one man, an arm, a boulder and a knife. It’s survival of the fittest and 127 hours turns out to be one of the year’s best most uplifting stories, even with the whole “cutting the arm, I’m looking away” sequence.6. Tinker Tailor Solider Spy
After the flawless Let the right one in Tomas Alfredson makes the decision to do another adaptation, this time John Le Carre’s famous and windingly complex novel. Gary Oldman is George Smiley, a retirement agent hunting a mole in the secret service in this cold war set spy thriller. It’s a spy film without the antics of bond and is instead interested on a character level. Seeing it twice reveals all of its little clues, making the payoff even more intense the second tie. It’s a film that compromises nothing for its audience, and as the story takes a back step, we have Alfredson knack for creating atmosphere to knife cutting levels. It’s a film about trust and keeping that time honoured tradition of keeping your friends close and enemies even closer.
5. Benda Bilili/ Pina
“Life Love Music” is the tagline for Benda Bilili but it could easily sum up both these films.Benda Bilili is this year’s best unseen film. It’s delightful and inspiring without seeping into a TV like sentimentality of there impoverished conditions. Five filmmakers went on a trip to make a film about ethnic music and instead came back with Benda Bilili, a tale of triumph over adversity in the best sense with one the most joyous celebrations of humanity you bound to witness all year. Pinais a different beast all together, Wim Wenders pushes 3D (or so I am told, sorry saw it n 2D) to a level in which we can credibly see why we have 3D in the first place. As the Times states, it’s an experience which goes beyond live performance, becoming a swoon of colours and performances which in capitulates the highest form of human emotion all the way down to the darkest of all emotions. Surreal and moving and like all Documentaries it get’s you interested in a subject which you may never of thought could grab you but yet in it entrances you instead.
4. Blue Valentine
Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams make a perfect pair bringing unhappiness upon each other in Derek Cinafrance’s perfectly realised Blue
Valentine. A love story with a more realistic edge, showing the high points and the low points of a relationship at the hands of a destructive husband who cares too much and a wife who cares to little. Through the performances we are given a perfectly realised version of relationships, from the highs and the lows, turned all the way up to an extreme, at time cathartic level. Apparently with the writer had made over 60 drafts of the script and we can’t thank him enough for doing so.
3-Submarine/Animal Kingdom/Ture Grit
2. A Separation
Described as Hitchcockian whodunit, this Drama set in the midst of Iranian culture continues the trend of increasingly important and vital films from Iran, leading the trend with the likes of No one knows about Persian cat’s. After an accident causes a rift in the household between the father, an award worthy Peyman Moaadi, and their maid to watch over his sickly father, we are increasingly drawn into a moral maze, where we judge everyone and no one at the same time. With tension and pacing as flawlessly executed as this you want every drama to be as gripping and involving as this.1. Weekend/13 Assassins
If you can find a similarity between these two films then please let me know.Weekend is here because it’s a film which as enticed me in a way that no other film has this year. It’s the story of two men who quickly begin to fall for each other over one weekend. What seems typical as a one night stand for Glen and Russell, quickly turns into something that they didn’t expect. To put “I” Into the equation I believe you be entranced by the sheer effortless nature of the script in portraying a modern relationship which is both traditional and modern, while also being emotionally resonant, and searching for, between these two characters, answers to questions which are deeply personal to everyone when in a relationship. The performances are so seamless that you would think the film had turned into a documentary. It may be one of the best pieces of filmmaking, seeming to be in comparison to the look of Joe Lawlor and Christine Molly’s Helen, you are likely to see. For craftsmanship and sheer (I hate to use this word) epicness, Takashi Miike’s bloodthirsty epic grabbed m attention and didn’t let go for over two hours. It’s Miike’s version of Seven Samurai which adds something that Seven Samurai really needs-Flaming Bulls.
If I had to pick, for conformist’s sake (even though this year it can’t be done), an official top 10 then it would be …..
10. le Quattro Volte
9. Meeks Cutoff
8. Arriety
7. 127 hours
6. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
5. Benda Bilili
4. Blue Valentine
3. True Grit
2. A Separation
1. Weekend
Plenty that have been missed like Peter Mullan’s NED’S, Documentaries (which have been the crowning achievements as always throughout 2011) such as Senna, Project Nim, Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Even Horror made a comeback in the shape of Kill List, part revenge thriller, part kitchen sink drama and part the Wicker Man; this was a confounding and unsettling horror film, which I hope continues a new wave in “extreme but smart” horror films. And there were quite few more, in this healthy year of film, that I would mention and those are listed in a video attached below
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mutst4AooX4
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