Keith Simanton's Top 10 Films of 2011
Managing Editor Keith Simanton's list of the top ten films of 2011. "For all the claims that Hollywood has run out of ideas and that movies are only about packaging I'd counter with the top ten films of this year," Simanton says. "Just outside of my top ten are The Adventures of Tintin (#11), Margin Call (#12), Midnight in Paris (#13) and Hugo (#14). PS: There are a handful of films I haven't seen yet, like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
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- DirectorJoe CornishStarsJohn BoyegaJodie WhittakerAlex EsmailA teen gang in South London defend their block from an alien invasion.#10 - Attack the Block: This is the best '80s homage of the year: funny, scary, and exciting. Writer/director Joe Cornish takes some surly thugs who have to defend their tenement housing when aliens invade and turns them into heroes. Newcomer John Boyega may be a flash in the pan or he may be the find of the year; he's got charisma to burn.
- DirectorSteve McQueenStarsMichael FassbenderCarey MulliganJames Badge DaleA sex addict's carefully cultivated private life falls apart after his sister arrives for an indefinite stay.#9 - Shame: Director Steve McQueen follows up his first, assured film Hunger with a film even more depressing and enervating than the Bobby Sands hunger-strike. Shame is also as deliberate and as sculpted. Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan are fearless, playing a brother and sister who "aren't bad people" but "come from a bad place." That place included a lot of weird sex which has warped both siblings to the point where normal human relations aren't very tenable. It's a stunning statement about the way that humans can be twisted by anything, food, power, money, into something approaching demons.
- DirectorRupert WyattStarsJames FrancoAndy SerkisFreida PintoA substance designed to help the brain repair itself gives advanced intelligence to a chimpanzee who leads an ape uprising.#8 - Rise of the Planet of the Apes: By far the biggest surprise of the year was director Rupert Wyatt's Apes re-boot. But to call this a re-boot isn't even moderately fair. What Wyatt and screenwriters Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa have done is to combine a Spartacus-like, rise of the hero story with a jailbreak procedural like Le Trou. It ends the film with limitless possibilities ahead. Don't screw this series up Fox!!!
- DirectorDee ReesStarsAdepero OduyeKim WayansAasha DavisA Brooklyn teenager juggles conflicting identities and risks friendship, heartbreak and family in a desperate search for sexual expression.#7 - Pariah: Raw energy, color and life, pours from every frame of Dee Rees's film, which opened Sundance last January. Newcomer Adepero Oduye channels the light half while Kim Wayans channels the dark. Pariah has a vibe that recalls the unrefined, uneven power of great '70s films like Five Easy Pieces and An Unmarried Woman. ”
- DirectorTomas AlfredsonStarsGary OldmanColin FirthTom HardyIn the bleak days of the Cold War, espionage veteran George Smiley is forced from semi-retirement to uncover a Soviet Agent within MI6.#6 - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: Oh dear God if you love and miss cold war movies director Tomas Alfredson has a slow scratch for that itch. With a stunning array of great actors in the cast and a sly and deliberate turn by Gary Oldman as George Smiley this is a dish that seeps up its flavors overnight.
- DirectorMichel HazanaviciusStarsJean DujardinBérénice BejoJohn GoodmanWhen George, a silent movie superstar, meets Peppy Miller, a dancer, sparks fly between the two. However, after the introduction of talking pictures, their fortunes change, affecting their dynamic.#5 - The Artist: Director Michel Hazavanicius's black-and-white, silent (well mostly silent) film about the end of black-and-white silent films is inventive and winning. Stars Berenice Bejo (also married to Hazavanicius) and Jean Dujardin are A Star Is Born -crossed lovers, without all that walking into the ocean stuff. ”
- DirectorNicolas Winding RefnStarsRyan GoslingCarey MulliganBryan CranstonA mysterious Hollywood action film stuntman gets in trouble with gangsters when he tries to help his neighbor's husband rob a pawn shop while serving as his getaway driver.#4 - Drive: Director Nicolas Winding Refn might as well dedicate his film to Michael Mann and William Friedkin, so lovingly has he constructed this violent, vinyl ode to '80s films about L. A. Ryan Gosling has to convey the whole, horrible seedy past of his taciturn Driver character through his acts and his face instead of his words. But when he decides to help the family of the waitress he's fallen for his actions are devastating. The score, by Steven Soderbergh collaborator, Cliff Martinez, is mesmerizing.
- DirectorAlexander PayneStarsGeorge ClooneyShailene WoodleyAmara MillerA land baron tries to reconnect with his two daughters after his wife is seriously injured in a boating accident.#3- The Descendants: My favorite film of the Toronto Film Festival should also be responsible for George Clooney getting his Best Actor Oscar. At first, one wonders where director Alexander Payne (Election) is going as Clooney's ineffectual, put-upon character is treated and talked-to shabbily by all around him. Much like Jack Lemmon's role in Save the Tiger, however, his innate courage and decency shine through resulting in a satisfying, ennobling, adult film.
- DirectorLars von TrierStarsKirsten DunstCharlotte GainsbourgKiefer SutherlandTwo sisters find their already strained relationship challenged as a mysterious new planet threatens to collide with Earth.#2 - Melancholia
The poet William Blake, who loved stark contrast, would likely appreciate the dichotomy of having Tree of Life and Melancholia appear in the same year and be in competition with each other in Cannes. Director Lars von Trier makes a maddening, beautiful, unshakable film about the ineluctable nature of depression and nihilism that questions, denigrates and even lampoons everything that Malick's film espouses and affirms. Of course, it's likely that year-end lists will be the best accolades that the film gets after the ill-advised ramblings of its director at Cannes that resulted in him being banned as a "persona non grata." - DirectorTerrence MalickStarsBrad PittSean PennJessica ChastainThe story of a family in Waco, Texas in 1956. The eldest son witnesses the loss of innocence and struggles with his parents' conflicting teachings.#1 - Tree of Life: Director Terrence Malick's greatest film to date is an audacious, spare, deeply moving, and gorgeous work, that dares to approach the very nature of the universe and how it is present in the lamp in a front yard of patchy grass or in a baby's delicate foot. Brad Pitt gives a memorable performance as a Texas father whose shattered dreams mold and deform his own children while Jessica Chastain makes her Earth-mother role one of quiet grace. The music includes classical works such as Smetana's Moldau and a near-gothic score by Alexandre Desplat, that seems to come from the deep. Emmanuel Lubezki's cinematography allows the light to be as much a character as any individual in the film. It's a divisive movie, however. After its early morning screening at Cannes boos erupted from one quarter while applause came from the other. It was as if we were all wrestling for the soul of the film and was one of the most electric moments I've ever experienced with cinema.