The Best Films of 2011 (and a reflection upon those of 2010)

My form for this quasi-journal site has changed recently. Partly because I don't get to see every film that comes out in a year (I was prompted to revise my "Best of 2010" list, 6 months into 2011). I think I'll do that again this year: revise the Best Films of 2011 list. But still, after a year is over it seems appropriate to reminisce about it in this form. But, since I started this mostly in 2010, I might just look back over that year. Since my "Revised" list, I have seen even more films from 2010. Another consideration is that a year doesn't really go into full filmic swing until late, there are a couple of treasures in the beginning, some cool shit in the summer, and then the really anticipated, oscar-bait stuff reaches us at the end of a year. But it just hasn't been possible to keep up. I've had to intentionally skip a few films I really wanted to see, but those films aren't all out on DVD until at least late February. But, perhaps in order for the me who's writing the revised Best of 2011 list to have something to look back on, my list for the Best Films of 2011:

1. Certified Copy

Of course, at the top of my list is Abbas Kiarostami's CERTIFIED COPY. My introduction to the director's work, CERTIFIED COPY blew me away. Just look at the image I chose for it, the normal act of two people driving rendered into three different planes of view. The location reflected on the windshield, the words the two are speaking, what each is doing in their own world. It's a great film, and incorporates so many different aspects of art giving a critique of it, but also an example of it.

2. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Two years in a row David Fincher has made two great films. I think he's on an ascension, one that he's been climbing ever since his first feature, ALIEN3. With DRAGON TATTOO, he's formed a specific expression of his Fincherian world: cruel, quick, gross and fueled by Coca-Cola, fast food, and cigarettes. Also to thank here is Rooney Mara, who turns in a performance that doesn't play Lisbeth Salander in conventional, actorly way, but plays her as if she exists in the world Fincher has created.

3. 13 Assassins

Counting as the second great introduction to the work of a master this year, Takashi Miike's 13 ASSASSINS is one of the greatest action films I've ever seen. Slowly building in an hour long first half, setting up a doubtlessly evil villain, and then exploding into an hour long, insane battle scene. Stunningly choreographed and handled, 13 ASSASSINS works like a piece of music, rising and falling and trying to make you recollect an earlier piece of its own brilliance.

4. Meek's Cutoff

MEEK'S CUTOFF changed the way I think about the western. A genre that has been more or less dying ever since the 1980's, Kelly Reichardt's film is slow and ruminative, expressing the same slow and tedious nature of the American West, within characters. People wait to respond to an earlier statement for hours, knowing that the time exists for it.

5. The Strange Case of Angelica

I didn't even like this film after first seeing it, but it has infected me like a ghostly virus ever since I did. Odd, sad, and creepy, the 102 year-old Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira continues the same languorous, glossy colors which he allowed to come to fruition in ECCENTRICITIES OF A BLONDE-HAIRED GIRL. What STRANGE CASE OF ANGELICA does though, is represent the idea that our desires might not all be allowed to come to light within the duration of our lives.

6. Hugo

Another film I was reluctant to like at first, but which grew on me. I couldn't get past that the film was only charming. But, actually, that's its strength. For a children's film, I think people (including myself) expected Scorsese to implant some sort of cynical lesson and impose it upon its unsuspecting child viewers. But what immaturity that would be for Scorsese! Instead, he forms a film that is only and purely charming. Even the portions purporting silent film come out of the pure idea that he thinks kids will like them.

7. Drive

I remember thinking about this film that it was so distinctly American, and then discovering that the director wasn't one. But that doesn't matter, all that does is reinforce that notion: for Nicolas Winding Refn, as a filmmaker has seen the way America has been purported on film, and then he's taken that notion to a wild, dreamlike, awing view in DRIVE.

8. I Saw the Devil

This was a year for shameless films, a notion that has become only more and more pervasive, especially since Darren Aronofsky's BLACK SWAN, which embraced clichés and exposed their underside. But I SAW THE DEVIL took this to an extreme, practically defining a needlessly grizzly film, and lighting it all with car interiors, greenhouse lights, and other manufactured lighting, as if we've all created the dreamy world we're living in.

9. Higher Ground

Another example of shamelessness, HIGHER GROUND takes religion to a head, which, despite appearing as a positive filmic device, is actually creepy when put to use. But Vera Farmiga as the older version of a girl who fucked too early commands the screen with a southern vision of duty and servitude, as if its all been conjured up by religion.

10. Contagion

CONTAGION took the issue of mortality, and long-overdue disaster and twisted it with the use of A-list actors and a blockbuster release. But this film about infection actually infected the audience with its attitude towards death, its inevitability, and its ugly nature. Kate Winslet doesn't die like a hero, but on the ground of a football stadium without a blanket.



Especially after having formulated this list, I can see that the films are each pretty obviously No. 1 or No. 9, in contrast to what I can imagine the Best of 2011 Revised will look like, where any film could be in the top 3. Of the films from 2011 that I haven't yet seen, there are a lot of them for which I have high, high expectations, and which fit my specific taste, a taste which I know pretty well by this time in my life and which encompasses young, endangered actresses, fantasy, and a sense that the world the film exists in could only be parallel to our own. Only CERTIFIED COPY, which happens to be my favorite film of 2011 seems to exist trenchantly within reality.

Here are films I have high hopes for:

Another Earth

The Artist

Bellflower

Cold Weather

The Color Wheel

A Dangerous Method

Essential Killing

Goodbye First Love

Le Havre

House of Pleasures

Into the Abyss

J. Edgar

Martha Marcy May Marlene

Melancholia

Mysteries of Lisbon

A Separation

The Sky Turns

Take Shelter

Target

Uncle Boonme Who Can Recall His Past Lives