Honourable Mentions, Worst of the Year, and Notes on Eligibility

My rule on eligibility:

A film is classed as belonging to the year in which it was first theatrically released, in any country. 

This rule exists to aid consistency from year to year, and also to avoid discounting films which don't get a release in either the UK or the USA. And there are many festival films to which that applies, including honourable mention "Adrift" ("Choi Voi") below, which I wouldn't have been able to include had it not been picked up by a French distributor.

My Top Ten Films of 2011

1.       “The Tree of Life”/Terrence Malick

2.      “Margaret”/Kenneth Lonergan

3.      “Beginners”/ Mike Mills

4.      “Once Upon a Time In Anatolia”/Nuri Bilge Ceylan

5.      “Sleeping Sickness”/Ulrich Köhler

6.      “Weekend”/Andrew Haigh

7.      “Meek’s Cutoff”/Kelly Reichardt

8.      “The Interrupters”/Steve James

9.      “Melancholia”/Lars Von Trier

10.  “Rampart”/Oren Moverman

Special Mention: “Hanna,” which flirts with genius in so many ways, but is prevented from really getting there through an iffy approach to backstory. On another day of compiling these lists, I might have included it in my ten.

Honourable Mentions: The superbly composed “Moneyball” offers a stellar average, but doesn’t quite hit for the cycle, while “Snowtown” hits for all it has and is largely the better for it. Brit horror flick “Kill List” chews you up, spits you out, and neglects to wipe its mouth afterwards, as the dense, upper-crust charms of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” drool for two-plus hours. Super clever “The Artist” revitalises ailing memories with gravitas;  “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol” proves that Tom Cruise can still be fun, and that action cinema can still be coherent, while the combined efforts of miniature gems “Tomboy,” “Pariah,” “Sleeping Beauty,” and the finally-released Korean film “Adrift” all offer worthwhile reflections on female sexuality.

And then I suppose you can make a case for the films people loved but I didn’t quite get, like “Drive,” “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” “Attack the Block,” and maybe even “A Separation” (despite its unyielding obsession with portioning off blame.) Then there are films like “The Adventures of Tintin,” which folks seemed to outright hate but I quite liked (you can add “The Future” and “Young Adult” to that list, too) and the films that sat nicely with me but never troubled the top tier of this list: I’m looking at you, “Jane Eyre,” “The Kid with a Bike,” “The Myth of the American Sleepover,” “We Have a Pope,” and “Rango,” which is comfortably the best animated film of a disappointing 2011 slate.

The worst films I saw this year* are: “Horrible Bosses,” which doesn’t even attempt to hide its racism and homophobia and still manages to get good reviews. What gives?! “The Resident” wins awards for ‘film most stuck in the early nineties’ and ‘film with the most pointless flashback sequence,’ while “Albert Nobbs” (Oscars be damned!) has to rank among the worst films of the year for that bizarre tragicomic finale alone. “The Green Lantern” could have done without the presence of Ryan Reynolds, whereas I’d have welcome him raising the floppy blancmange that was “Chalet Girl” with those monster abs of his. Alas, both of them died a death.

*Disclaimer: these are most likely not the worst five films of the year, since I don’t subject myself to such dreck as “Jack and Jill,” “Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon” and “The Change-Up.”

Top Ten Films of 2011: #1

1

THE TREE OF LIFE 

Directed by Terrence Malick 

Starring: Hunter McCracken, Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, Sean Penn 

This year’s Palme D’Or winner, “The Tree of Life,” is simply what we live for, barely encased in one-hundred-and-forty minutes of ornate celluloid majesty, a religious, romantically sculpted feast of stanzas on faith, loss, and acceptance; a swirling vortex of memories churning up bursts of profound frailty and unspoken feeling. Its familial setup referenced sparingly, Malick’s film articulates the different stages of maturity we go through (infancy, adolescence, parenthood, the point at which one’s own mortality becomes a tangible, horrifying reality) with bracing symbolism, and an extent of visionary flair which only really he can bring to the screen. Reflecting upon 2011 as a strong year for cinema, I just couldn’t see past the scale, ambition, and resounding success of this modern masterpiece.

Top Ten Films of 2011: #2

2

MARGARET

Directed by Kenneth Lonergan

Starring: Anna Paquin, Jeannie Berlin, J. Smith Cameron, Matt Damon, Kieran Culkin, Alison Janney

To my knowledge, there hasn’t been a film in quite some time which expresses the strain of transition with the same liberating surge of tonal volatility as “Margaret” does, blackly comic to rich effect but also a bitterly melancholic lament for 20th Century New York. Lonergan’s audacious filmmaking chronicles one girl’s grief, and how that girl represents a generation searching for answers, self-purpose, and a sense of righteousness, and expresses how we as people revolve on our own axes as the earth rotates. Despite being firmly committed to one character, the film infringes upon the realm of meta-narrative works such as Robert Altman’s “Short Cuts” and Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Magnolia” in its embrace of sprawling emotional mess as a commentary on grander philosophies and concerns. To think this nearly never saw the light of day is frightening: The road to release may have been an arduous and rocky one for “Margaret,” but boy was it worth the wait.

Top Ten Films of 2011: #3

3

BEGINNERS 

Directed by Mike Mills

Starring: Ewan McGregor, Christopher Plummer, Melanie Laurent, Goran Visjnic 

One of the most aptly-titled films of the year, Mike Mills' "Beginners" is all about learning how to start afresh, and how to confront old mistakes through exploring new opportunities. A personal, part-biographical tale centred upon a man with a gay, terminally-ill father, the film evokes a feeling of loss in its characters without becoming cloying or overly-sentimental, intricately founding relationships which let us into the contrasting characters’ outlooks on love and commitment. “Beginners” recognises that time has its own wicked brand of humour, but that each pocket of it is an archive of our life – a precious reminder that we are what we make of ourselves. The film’s inherent lack of judgment offers a gorgeous plane of thought upon which to view the world, for which we should be very grateful.

Top Ten Films of 2011: #4

4 

ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA 

Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan 

Starring: Yilmaz Erdogan, Muhammet Uzuner, Firat Tanis 

From “Taste of Cherry” grain, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s lengthy meditative tale of murder and discovery unfolds upon sparse terrain, and with an even sparser sense of the motivations and aims behind the crime committed. Officers combing countryside through routine and duty find themselves altered during this 160-minute story of one night’s events, with “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” becoming less of a procedural crime drama than an evaluation of the human psyche. While Ceylan’s “Climates” kept us at a frustrating distance from its characters, this film draws us in, alluding to nature’s enveloping power over the human conscious without making these concerned men into objects or ciphers. An impending sense of dread befalls them, and their urge to reach a conclusion becomes tempered, fraught, and grievous. Ceylan fills this bronze landscape with pathos, and makes its weary visitors feel so imposed upon by the bigger picture – subservient to emotion, temptation, and the moment.

Top Ten Films of 2011: #5

5

SLEEPING SICKNESS

Directed by Ulrich Köhler 

Starring: Pierre Bokma, Jean-Christophe Folly, Jenny Schily 

 The life of the third-world missionary has been well-documented on film, usually through focusing on one particular man and his struggle with local authorities. This year's "Sleeping Sickness," whose director Ulrich Köhler won Berlin Film Festival’s Silver Bear last February, chooses to focus on two men entering this world at different points in time, up to the moment where their paths eventually cross. The film isn't as structured as definitely as it sounds, picking up where it leaves off with Pierre Bokma and resuming with Jean Christophe Folly’s Alex, a doctor seeking to improve the treatment of Sleeping Sickness in deepest Africa. With Alex’s story of wholesome promise comes uncertainty, rumination, and disconnection. When does isolation cease to be selfless? Does dedication become a sickness of its own? Like lichen, the film creeps up and lays these questions in your lap just as it’s drawing to a close, allowing bewilderment to crystallise into psychological wealth, and eventually into a cyclical sense of serenity.

Top Ten Films of 2011: #6

6 

WEEKEND 

Directed by Andrew Haigh 

Starring: Tom Cullen, Chris New 

It’s rare that a film like “Weekend,” as excitable as it is about the prospect of love, manages to call so many minuscule creative decisions on-the-nose. Only shown up in breaths where it needs to comment on the idealism (or lack thereof) of its two male characters, its floridness is a precious attribute, and Haigh’s subdued ease towards letting nature take its course helps the interaction between Cullen and New to exude pangs of promise and authenticity. I’d be lying if I insisted that the sexuality of the characters wasn't a part of my reason for being so fond of “Weekend,” but the joys of romantic cinema (and those rare films which escape cliché) are about belief, and connecting with emotional beats. The ones in Haigh’s film are painstakingly real, which makes it one of the most beautiful of the year.

Top Ten Films of 2011: #7

7 

MEEK’S CUTOFF 

Directed by Kelly Reichardt 

Starring: Michelle Williams, Bruce Greenwood, Paul Dano, Shirley Henderson, Zoe Kazan

Facing the harsh practicalities of having to transport their life’s worth across unfamiliar, unforgiving terrain, the simmering band of travellers in Kelly Reichardt’s “Meek’s Cutoff” are afraid to speak the truth. An organic account of why discovery may not represent an endeavour worth pursuing, it’s safe to say that John Wayne would not have relished Reichardt’s evocative portrait of the old West, a subversion of the genre’s common use of the natural mystique as alluring or adventurous, her lingering hand providing a permanence of setting; a patient, yet all the more frightening realm of unknown. She coaxes an assimilating sense of dread from a canny ensemble, finely detailing how disorientation colours trust, fragments alliances, distorts rationale, and curtails progress, and documents a journey concerning themes of transition, faith, and inherent resistance with worldly prowess.

Top Ten Films of 2011: #8

8

THE INTERRUPTERS 

Directed by Steve James 

Starring: Ameena Matthews, Jeff Fort, Cobe Williams 

The winds of change blow steady yet penetrate little in Steve James’ “The Interrupters,” no matter how hard the interventionist group at the centre of this documentary about Chicago gang warfare endeavour to achieve a ceasefire. A seasonal structure sees attempts to promote peace and understanding within the city’s most poverty-stricken areas occur over the course of a single year, in which members of this community struggle with containing their aggression. As with “Hoop Dreams” James displays a valuable ability to be concessive to the characters, while also working from the inside out to facilitate the film’s real, gritty themes to best articulate their relevance in today’s national (if not global) context. “The Interrupters” is neither obvious nor preachy, and remains tremendously impacting as a cross-cultural text and seminal source for compassion.

Top Ten Films of 2011: #9

9

MELANCHOLIA 

Directed by Lars Von Trier 

Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland, John Hurt, Charlotte Rampling 

It takes a chilly, derisive soul like Lars Von Trier’s to make a film like “Melancholia,” which embodies such a bleak sense of finality through the displacement of its central character Justine, and through her restless perplexion with civilisation. Married in metaphor, the two-part narrative elects to focus on the utmost fears of two sisters, and their contrasting outlook towards the prospect of the earth dying before their very eyes. Von Trier’s dramatic bravura offers an operatic, meditative exploration of existence, shamelessly grandiose and resoundingly bitter in juxtaposing mortality as both a precious commodity and a product of necessary evolution. His ideology dominates this cinematic supernova of provocation, the film’s wrenching, devastating climax otherwise euphoric in its resignation, and committed to rendering its troubled heroine thoroughly victorious.

Top Ten Films of 2011: #10

10

RAMPART

Directed by Oren Moverman

Starring: Woody Harrelson, Robin Wright, Ben Foster, Sigourney Weaver, Brie Larson, Anne Heche, Cynthia Nixon, Ice Cube

As a force of nature Woody Harrelson determines so much of “Rampart’s” success – his tone altering wildly with the unravelling rhythms of the script, his enticing bravado lashing at you and then suddenly wearing thin. He can be both funny and tragic in the same breath, imbalanced as an enforcer and completely ineffective as a patriarch. He’s a dangerous racist cop whose threat remains primarily self-destructive, and he’s the perfect antihero for this movie. Moverman is shier to confront the sweaty politics of Texan authority than he was the military deadening of “The Messenger,” endeavouring to explore how crime can derive from and fuel control and self-preservation. Featuring a terrific performance from Robin Wright as Harrelson’s female-in-crises equivalent, “Rampart” asserts how people can become so easily blind to the scope beyond their own behaviour; how impulsivity, promiscuity, and sociopathic failure can engulf somebody whole. It’s a film which showcases Moverman’s early tendencies as a filmmaker to reach to the other side of prestige and its ingestible poisoned chalice. Why swallow the pressure to be perfect?