Dynamic Top Tens of 2011

[malpractice]

subject to change of course

The Tree Of Life (Malick)
Hanna (Wright)
Limitless (Burger)
Red State (Smith)
Midnight In Paris (Allen)
Bridesmaids (Feig)
Win Win (McCarthy)
The Green Hornet (Gondry)
Source Code (Jones)
Scream 4 (Craven)

also enjoyed

X-Men: First Class (Vaughn)
Paul (Mottola)
Your Highness (Green)
Hall Pass (Farrelly)

[Galen Young]

Melancholia (Trier)
The Time that Remains (Suleiman)
Enter the Void (Noé)
Drive (Refn)
Hanna (Wright)
The Skin I Live In (Almodóvar)
Contagion (Soderbergh)
Margin Call (Chandor)
Monsters (Edwards)
A Dangerous Method (Cronenberg)

still good...
And Everything Is Going Fine (Soderbergh)
A Serbian Film (Spasojevic)
The Future (July)
Bellflower (Glodell)
The Beaver (Foster)
Insidious (Wan)

for films first seen this year...

[Floyd]

1 Father (de Orbe) -- A spectacular experience watching this film. The understanding of what can be done when fusing life and art to me has not been done better in some time to me. Great cinema.
2 The Tree of Life (Malick) -- This is a difficult film for me to get a grasp on. I think in general it fails some areas. The acting from the adults is stiff, especially from Chastain who seems to have had to choreograph her movements in scenes and in general just attempting to understand a page not a character. Penn's sentence in the building is a groan and the ending seems to collapse. However the moments that work which are a few brought important feelings up in me and I thought the evolution part is pretty lovely to experience.
3 Meek's Cutoff (Reichardt) -- A film which bothered me at first pass when I thought about the motivations of some of the characters and how Reichardt seems to play with them like lets be ambiguous with the Indian and have him smile at the part when the wagon falls but at second thought it does well to work with an audiences knowledge of past and how the narrative unfolds.
4 Boxing Gym (Wiseman) -- Another impressive one from Wiseman. Afterwards I thought to myself that this might work blindfolded than actually seeing it because the sound is that expressive and expansive. Not often when that thought crosses your mind and in that I found it a really singular work. What the ears can learn.
5 My Joy (Loznitsa) -- Not an easy viewing experience by any stretch but a pretty fascinating working narrative. Wandering narrative taken to different levels of observing character and place.
6 Road to Nowhere (Hellman) -- It feels something of Hellman has a groove going on in this film for awhile but it starts to drag its feet as it goes on. An exploration on how film can be so insular it takes over.
7 Cold Weather (Katz) -- This is a pretty enjoyable film in many ways. It is directed very assuredly by Katz which was surprising, wonderful control on camera movement and his actors. You feel there must be a force in action from how you are instructed by Hollywood cinema and he plays with that well.

[puxzkkx]

Films with world premiere in 2011, so far:

1. Martha Marcy May Marlene (A-)
2. Sleeping Sickness (A-)
3. Breathing (B+)
4. Sleeping Beauty (B)
5. Michael (C+)
6. Super 8 (C-)

[mfunk9786]

I'm really looking forward to Michael, it's a shame to see that grade.

[knives]

It's gotten pretty mediocre reviews across the board as a lame Haneke rip off (appropriate considering the director). I'm surprised that there was something that gave you hope to look forward to it.

[mfunk9786]

I tend to gravitate towards material like that. I was downright obsessed with the Fritzl case, and I sort of hope (I guess there's no way of hoping for this without including "in a sick way") for a film adaptation of that sometime. It's one of the joys of the cinema for me - having a very realistic window into the horrible without anyone [else] getting hurt.

[zedz]

Michael's similarities to Haneke are superficial at best. I found the film extremely impressive. See below.


Ten Best

The Turin Horse (Tarr) – If this really is Tarr’s final film, it’s a hell of a way to go out. I was fortunate enough to see this twice, and it plays very differently when you know where it’s headed. An action film in the tradition of Jeanne Dielman,

SpoilerShow

if Jeanne Dielman lived at the end of the nineteenth century and the end of the world.

My Joy (Loznitsa) – Already discussed in its thread.

Mysteries of Lisbon (Ruiz) – Phenomenally intricate and self-consciously literary novel adaptation that presents itself as if it were simply a meticulous heritage picture but smuggles in all manner of Ruizian whimsy and perversity beneath its placid, painterly surface.

White Meadows / Goodbye (Rasoulof) – I know I’m cheating by smuggling a double feature into my top ten, but these two films are so different and yet both so accomplished that I couldn’t comfortably choose between them. White Meadows is a visually spectacular open-air allegory, whereas Goodbye is an incredibly tense, visually precise urban melodrama in the grand tradition of Sirk but, given its context, even more bereft of easy answers.

Le Quattro Volte (Frammartino) – More convincing metaphysics than Tree of Life, but also extremely satisfying filmmaking, with particularly attentive and subtle sound work and one particular Tatiesque long take that’s on the shortlist for shot of the year.

Michael (Schleinzer) – A rigorous son-of-Haneke film that’s so good the comparison becomes redundant. Unlike his mentor, Schleinzer has no finger to wag, and he manages the difficult feat of focussing obsessively on the life and actions of the title character without ever tipping over into de facto sympathy. So in a sense it’s an anti-Psycho, or Lolita from Dolores’ point of view, and one of the best examples of good old-fashioned suspense in a while.

Aita (de Orbe) – Already discussed in its own thread. One of the best of a flurry of filmic essays on light.

Melancholia (Von Trier) – Already commented on. In a year replete with visions of the apocalypse, this is the second best (so far).

Martha Marcy May Marlene (Durkin) – Superbly creepy portrait of a woman adrift. I don’t know how much of the film’s (reasonably) high concept is common knowledge –

SpoilerShow

Martha has escaped from a Manson-like cult

– but I’d advise going into this with minimal foreknowledge (not that the film relies on surprise for its impact).

Black Venus (Kechiche) – This extremely ambitious film is sort of clunky and unlovable in some respects, and the coda seems particularly horribly misjudged, but it’s a film I can’t get out of my head, and you have to respect a heritage film that’s so radically confrontational in so many respects, none of them fashionable. I can’t imagine who they imagined the audience would be.

Honorable Mention

Sleeping Beauty (Leigh) – Perverse, ornery first feature that doggedly transcends the inherent ridiculousness of its narrative conceit to achieve some really unusual effects.

Essential Killing (Skolimowski) – Taut and beautiful. Probably would have made the main ten if I hadn’t recently rewatched Diamonds in the Night.

The Future (July) – Discussed in its thread. Like Sleeping Beauty, this is another film that uses unlikely / unpromising concepts as springboards into some interesting and challenging thematic territory.

The Mill and the Cross (Majewski) – Life inside a Bruegel painting, as literally as Majewski can manage. Narratively tentative, as you’d expect, but some of the finest digital spectacle you’re likely to see this year.

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Ceylan) – For an hour or so, Ceylan delivers a bravura, loosely woven character piece lit entirely by headlights, then elegantly turns it all inside out and delivers another film entirely, all the while teasing us with the notion that it’s only CSI: Slomo.


Also worth catching:

Anton Chekhov’s The Duel (pitch-perfect literary adaptation), Arietty (latest dollop of Ghibli genius), Between Worlds (semi-structuralist experimental short by Phil Dadson), Boxing Gym (superior Wiseman, thus one of the documentaries of the year), A Cat in Paris (superbly designed, narratively economic animated feature), The Day He Arrives (refreshingly perplexing Hong whatsit), Kaboom! (possibly the most ridiculously entertaining film Araki has yet made), Tabloid (see Wiseman comment above, or my notes in the dedicated thread), Videogioco (Loop Experiment) (it seems very late in the day for somebody to be discovering a new analogue animation technique, but that’s what Donato Sansone seems to have done in this two minute film).

[Forrest Taft]

1. Road to Nowhere
2. Tree of Life
3. Tintin
4. Essential Killing
5. Rise of the Planet of the Apes
6. Contagion
7. Certified Copy
8. The Ward
9. Le Havre
10. Film Socialisme


Hon. mentions: Drive, Midnight in Paris, The Thing (a very pleasant surprise)
Need to see: Melancholia, The Turin Horse, Uncle Bonmee, Another Year, among others

[htshell]

My Top Ten, for now...

1. Mysteries of Lisbon (dir. Raul Ruiz, 2010)
2. Bas-Fonds (dir. Isild le Besco, 2010)
3. Finisterrae (dir. Sergio Caballero, 2010)
4. Midnight in Paris (dir. Woody Allen, 2011)
5. The Trip (dir. Michael Winterbottom, 2010)
6. Cave of Forgotten Dreams (dir. Werner Herzog, 2010)
7. Womb (dir. Benedek Fliegauf, 2010)
8. Another Earth (dir. Mike Cahill, 2011)
9. The Future (dir. Miranda July, 2011)
10. The Last Circus (dir. Alex de la Iglesia, 2010)


I've still got a fairly long list of stuff to get to including:
The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu, Attenberg, Incendies, Essential Killing, The Turin Horse, La Quattro Volte, El Sicario: Room 164, Nostalia For the Light, and and and.....

[JMULL222]

Is it just me or is has it been one of the best years in ages? I mean, obviously 2007 aside, but this has been pretty excellent and there's still a lot on the way.

[matrixschmatrix]

The year's only half over, but last year seem like it had a stronger balance between foreign and arthouse movies (Winter's Bone, A Prophet, Another Year, The Good, the Bad, and The Weird, etc) and more mainstream stuff (Inception, True Grit, The Social Network, Shutter Island, etc.) There's been a lot of killer arthouse stuff this year- and I'm guessing that's where both Drive and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy (which are definitely two of my most anticipated releases) are going to wind up- but outside of Super 8, it's hard to think of any really memorable mainstream stuff.

[knives]

Well shouldn't Midnight in Paris count as mainstream if we care about stuff like that? A good year's a good year and while it's technically from last year shouldn't the last Ruiz film ever count as cause celebre?

[matrixschmatrix]

I usually make that division by which local theater a movie plays in- mainstream in the big Cinemark, arthouse in the little local theater- and Midnight in Paris only played in the little theater here, but obviously that varies from market to market. I'm not claiming this hasn't been a good year, as I don't think any year that includes a movie as good as Tree of Life could possibly be a bad one, just that I think Hollywood's been relatively lacking.

[flyonthewall2983]

1. Drive.
2. Melancholia.
3. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
4. Bullhead.
5. Margin Call.
6. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
7. Another Earth.
8. Young Adult.
9. Rango.
10. Win Win.

[John Edmond]

Bar a couple of films guaranteed to get local theatrical release I swear Brisbane's film festival was designed around not showing any of the films listed here. I'm guessing my dynamic top ten of 2011 will start taking shape around 2013 then. How did you Melbournites get rid of Richard Moore again?

[franco]

1. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
2. Young Adult (Jason Reitman)
3. Sucker Punch (Zack Snyder)
4. Margaret (Kenneth Lonergan)
5. Martha Marcy May Marlene (Sean Durkin)
6. Take Shelter (Jeff Nichols)
7. Without (Mark Jackson)
8. The Descendants (Alexander Payne)
9. A Separation (Asghar Farhadi)
10. Miss Bala (Gerardo Naranjo)

Worst movie of all time: The Future (Miranda July)

[Cold Bishop]

You guys just aren't going to quit, are you?

[Hail_Cesar]

****
Faust
Uncle boonmee
Le quattro volte
Tree of life
Turin Horse
***1/2
Certified copy
Another year
Guilty of romance
***
Elena
Poetry

I'm seeing Hors Satan and Once upon a time in Anatolia later this week so its subject to change!

[rockysds]

The Tree of Life
This is Not a Film
Crazy Horse
Correspondencia Jonas Mekas - J.L. Guerin
The Turin Horse
Two Years at Sea
A Separation
The Skin I Live In
The Mill and the Cross
Oslo, August 31th

[NilbogSavant]

All of the Lights

I hope you're referring to this Kanye West music video.

[rohmerin]

VERY GOOD:
1-Midnight in Paris
2-Drive

GOOD
10- -The skin where I live in

BAD, very bad
- The Help
- Potiche
- Little white lies
- Habemus Papam (Nanni Moretti's awful Vatican tale)
- Incendies
- Hors la loi

DECEPTIONS: Polanski's Carnage, The artist, Tree of life, A dangerous mind & Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy

[The Narrator Returns]

1. The Tree of Life
2. Drive
3. Take Shelter
4. Contagion
5. Rango
6. Moneyball
7. Hugo
8. Young Adult
9. Midnight in Paris
10. 50/50

[yukiyuki]

1. A Separation (Asghar Farhadi)
2. The Kid with a Bike (Dardenne Brothers)
3. Nostalgia for the Light (Patricio Guzman)
4. Sang Penari / The Dancer (Ifa Isfansyah/Indonesia)
5. Archipelago (Joanna Hogg)
6. Melancholia (LVT)
7. The Turin Horse (Tarr)
8. The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (Andrei Ujica/Romania)
9. Meek's Cutoff (Reichardt)
10. The Mouth of the Wolf (Pietro Marcello)

The rest I enjoy too:
- The Tree of Life
- Mysteries of Lisbon
- Rango
- Unter Dir Die Stadt
- Le Quattro Volte
- Sweet Little Lies (Hitoshi Yazaki)
- My Joy (Sergei Loznitsa)
- Kosmos (Reha Erdem)
- Nenette (Nicholas Philibert)
- Ketoprak (the second segment of the omnibus Working Girls, by Yosep Angginoen/Indonesia)
- Attenberg
- Another Year
- Boxing Gym (Frederick Wiseman)

[J Adams]

1. The Immortals (Tarsem)
2. Melancholia (LvT)
3. The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) (Six)
4. Outrage (Kitano)
5. Faust (Sokurov)
6. The Deep Blue Sea (Davies)
7. Hobo With A Shotgun (Eisener)
8. Tilt (Chouchkov)
9. The Turin Horse (Tarr)
10. The Eye of the Storm (Schepisi)

Worst film: The Skin I Live In (Almodovar)