The Best and Worst Films of 2011
While
compiling my list of the best films of the past year, I was actually most
struck by the titles that didn’t make the cut. Throughout what the movie
industry commonly refers to as “awards season,” several films have frequently
popped on many, if not most critics’ lists: Hugo,
The Help, The Descendants, The Tree of
Life, Extremely Loud and Incredibly
Close, Moneyball and others. Most
of these are good solid motion pictures, a few are risible, and all of them are,
in my estimation, highly overrated.
This
was a good but not great year for movies – frankly, there’s no further proof is
needed for this statement beyond the fact that the perennially bankable Pixar
offering was a dud (Cars 2). There
were a plethora of above-average cinematic choices, but none that I would label
instant classics. To that end, my Top 10 selections are well-reasoned but also a
bit perfunctory – there’s not a lot of daylight between most of these choices and,
say, a film such as Martha Marcy May
Marlene, which did not make the list. Increasingly, whether a movie is
“good” or “bad” is governed more by whether it exceeds or fails to live up to
expectations.
Top 10 Films
1. Shame: Atmospheric and
affecting, director Steve McQueen’s lays bare the secret life of a man
paralyzed by sexual addiction, disrupted when his kid sister (Carey Mulligan)
unexpectedly moves in. Michael Fassbender gives the performance of the year
with a role that’s a little bit Last Tango in Paris and a little bit
American Psycho. This is no dark comedy, however, but instead an individual
tragedy that lingers long after the closing credits.
2. A Separation: The fact that
Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi was able to make this movie within the
restrictive confines of his country’s rules on censorship is noteworthy enough.
That such a seemingly simple story about family on the verge of dissolution
spawns such complex questions about gender, religion, class and justice speaks
to the film’s power…and necessity.
3. Warrior: The film’s MMA tableau
is incidental – the film could just as easily be about boxing, tennis or even
chess. Its real themes of betrayal, familial strife and America’s widening
stratification are universal. Directed by Gavin O’Connor, this surprisingly
smart, poignant film features a trio of awards-worthy performances from Joel
Edgerton, Nick Nolte and especially Tom Hardy.
4. We Need to Talk About Kevin: “Hard to watch
but impossible to look away” describes this plaintive parable about a mother
(brilliantly portrayed by Tilda Swinton) living with the grief and guilt of a
high school killing spree committed by her disturbed/demonic teenage son. Part
deep family drama, part tragedy, and part a high-stylized horror movie, it’s
not a film for the faint of heart…or expectant mothers.
5. War Horse: Steven
Spielberg checks a few more things off his bucket list: a World War I movie, a
visually stunning John Ford homage, and a story about a boy and his horse.
Although held together by a glue of schmaltz, it’s a strikingly beautiful motion
picture in the most classic sense.
6. Win Win: A great ensemble cast, led by Paul Giamatti with his best role
in years, guides this winsome seriocomedy about a small-town lawyer and his
relationship with a client’s wayward son. Sans the
smart-aleckiness of many Sundance-era indie comedies, writer-director Tom
McCarthy (The Station Agent) fashions a subtly subversive film that
celebrates the virtues of middle-class America while laying bare the unpleasant
underbelly of human frailties.
7. Drive: The pleasure of this
vehicle is a matter of style, not substance. It’s a hypnotic noir-ish fable told using muscle cars
and a nihilistic L.A. tableau, with a Danish filmmaker channeling enough
Hollywood influences – Sam Peckinpah, Walter Hill, William Friedkin, Steve
McQueen, Taxi Driver – to fill a film school syllabus.
8. Project Nim: Oscar-winning director
James Marsh (Man on Wire)
employs two rather ordinary documentary filmmaking devices – copious reels of
archival footage and talking-head interviews – to assemble an extraordinary
expose whose true, brilliant purpose is to reveal more about the flawed people
at this story’s center than the titular real-life primate, removed from its
mother at birth and raised like a human child.
9. The Artist: French director
Michel Hazanavicius reaches back to filmmaking’s earliest format to venerate
the medium. Yes, the story itself is piffle. But, the transition from silent
film to talkies speaks to an art form in which technological progress is both
constructive and destructive.
10. Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows: Part 2: A suitable conclusion to the mega-popular franchise. But, what
sets this finale – which finds Harry is full Messianic bloom – apart is the utter symbiosis it both forms and acknowledges between art and
audience, underscoring the porous line between fiction and individualized
reality as insightful as François Ozon’s Swimming Pool or anything written by Charlie Kaufman.
Worst Film of the Year: Your Highness – So awful is this waste of celluloid and
so misbegotten is its premise that it is barely conceivable that real studios
spent real money on it, or that real actors with real careers – James Franco,
Natalie Portman, Zooey Deschanel, even Danny McBride – wasted weeks out of
their professional lives participating in this dumpster fire of a film.
Other Bottom Feeders
– The
Change-Up; The Greatest Movie Ever Sold; I Am Number Four; Jack and Jill;
Johnny English Reborn; Larry Crowne; Mr. Popper’s Penguins; One Day;
Transformers: Dark of the Moon; Twilight Sage: Breaking Dawn Pt. 1
Most Pleasant Surprises
50/50;
Arthur Christmas; Captain America – The First Avenger; Crazy, Stupid, Love.;
Everything Must Go; Fast Five; Horrible Bosses; Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol;
Puss in Boots; Rise of the Planet of the Apes; Super 8; Warrior; Winnie the
Pooh
Most Disappointing
Cars
2; Cowboys & Aliens; The Descendants; The Ides of March; Like Crazy; Tower
Heist
