I made my Best of 2010 and Best of 2011 lists right at the end of those years. It was rash, but it also reflected my visceral reactions to those films, and, in fact, the blog used to have "visceral" in its title. I've changed that philosophy/approach though, and I no longer write and post reviews right after seeing a film, but rather, wait weeks until considering them. There are around twelve films I've seen that I haven't written about on here as of now, and I think it's a worthier approach to let films settle in your mind. I'd already posted a revision of my original Best of 2010 list, which was very different not only from perspective and acquired knowledge, but from plainly having seen more films. There's a worthiness in revising these lists, for I think that time gives you a really good sense of what was actually the best. Those films that have stayed in my mind best are thus, best. Without further ado...
2010
1.
Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl
Modernity back in 2010 seemed to me to be THE SOCIAL NETWORK, which eloquently and vividly painted the beginnings of Facebook. But now, Manoel de Oliveira's ECCENTRICITIES seems to be the better portrait. Despite Oliveira's age of over 100, the film exhibits a rustic setting populated by universal obsessions, and there was no bolder or truer or more real a film than this.
2.
The Social Network
I still admire David Fincher's SOCIAL NETWORK for its cinematography and dialogue, which are two of the more showy bits of masterful filmmaking on display, but I now value it more for establishing an extremely specific world centered around specific people, rooting itself in detail and setting up individual scenes that build operatically. It's Fincher's showmanship all on display, and he plays with our minds wonderfully.
3.
The Girl on the Train
I didn't like André Téchiné's film right after I saw it, but I couldn't escape from it, and its ideas, which haunted me for months and months to the point where I realized the film was a masterpiece. Vividly complex and brutal, THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN is one of the most profoundly constructed statements about race I've ever seen.
4.
White Material
I love Claire Denis' WHITE MATERIAL not for its tinkering with narrative or its gorgeous shots (although, that probably helped), but for its bold statement about our perception of ourselves. The boy in the film who cuts his hair and joins the rebels is a fascinating character because he sees no difference between
his homeland and the homeland of the blacks. It's a fascinating study of what assimilation and implantation does to people.
5.
Survival of the Dead
It's probably the most dubiously ranked film on here, but SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD is a great film, delving into a psychological weirdness and obsessions that persevere despite a zombie apocalypse. It's Romero's grandest and best DEAD movie, combining exploding heads with sad reminiscences on the dead, all culminating to a feud that leaves us with a shocking, beautiful final shot.
6.
Winter's Bone
Jennifer Lawrence has gone mainstream since 2010, but WINTER'S BONE shows what a great actress she is, and also reminds us of John Hawkes, who hasn't given any reason for us to forget about him with CONTAGION and MARTHA in the following year. But Debra Granik's film is meandering but tonally decided upon, and it makes for an entertaining, backwoods gothic drama.
7.
Black Swan
Drowning itself in clichés, but using those clichés smartly and sarcastically, the grandiose BLACK SWAN was so great because it was all one big contradiction of inner-pain and the artist's dilemmas against the swoons of the dance floor.
8.
The Ghost Writer
The calmest film of 2010, Roman Polanski's THE GHOST WRITER builds like an old thriller, not with incessant gunfights but with slow, shocking revelations and a powerful ending. It's gorgeously shot and succinctly constructed.
9.
Inception
It's a shame that INCEPTION garnered such a following, but that's what it was asking for in its classically large-scale effects, action, and music. That following has made it sort of over-mentioned, and thus, minimized to pop-culture. In fact, though, the film is just a ton of fun, posing simplistic questions on top of adventurous, quasi-emotional scenes.
10.
Vengeance
VENGEANCE introduced me to Johnnie To, and what an introduction. The boxes acting as shields for mercenaries in the last stand should be essential viewing for any action fan, or anyone who thinks the weekly action movies are any good.
11.
Shutter Island
Despite the critical blahs this Scorsese movie got, it was one of his best received among audiences, and for good reason. The plot and its reveal got out pretty early, and was dubbed obvious, but that was never the point of this thrilling noir movie, but a reveal that was supported by actual substance. It's occasionally moving, and lacquered in darkness.
12.
The American
Another film that took strengths of 70's thrillers, Anton Corbijn's film is oppressively minimalist, but that only makes its payoffs all the better.
13.
The Secret in Their Eyes
It's basically a straightforward story of betrayal, corruption, and buried secrets, but it's done extremely, classically well, spans decades, and is always believable in the stakes, acting, and reveals.
14.
Never Let Me Go
It's melancholy and vast, the master-shot being an old ship laying in the sand, but surrounded by grand ideas surrounding inevitable death. It transposes the elderly's problems of watching their friends die off to a youth problem, and the energy that usually comes with youthful characters is dialed down.
15.
Somewhere
Sofia Coppola's slow approach has garnered a lot of hate, but I see it as patient filmmaking, showing us an idea and then allowing us to think about that idea as obsessively as her enigmatic characters. Thus, we embody the same sort of stagnation and obsessing as the characters we're watching on screen.
16.
Tiny Furniture
Lena Dunham's created the best new show on television, and only second to the brilliant "Breaking Bad" overall. But TINY FURNITURE is more intensely personal than "Girls", casting her own family members in the film but exhibiting the same consciousness as her HBO show.
17.
Catfish
It's seminal, but it's also one of the best mysteries I've ever seen, building tension because everyone's heard so much about the danger of the internet, that when the group of filmmaker friends arrive at Megan Faccio's door, we're truly scared that some terrible shit might go down. The film presents something sad that is exclusively of-our-time.
18.
Welcome to the Rileys
(tied w/)
The Yellow Handkerchief
This duo of Kristen Stewart films exhibits the actress in her two best films. She's been criminally underrated by haters of the TWILIGHT series who feel like that hatred should extend to everyone involved with that trash. But these two films show what a great actress Stewart is: both showing her wearing vividly colored vans, in danger, and damaged. They're not perfect films but they're very good ones, with Stewart at the center.
19.
Leaves of Grass
LEAVES OF GRASS builds toward singular outcomes at the end of scenes, but then turns everything up on its head, tricking you. Examples: Edward Norton gives a speech, a student comes into his office, takes off her shirt, he gets fired. Edward Norton gets shot in the chest with a crossbow twice. But Norton's one of the better young male actors, and this is a good vessel for him.
2011
1.
House of Tolerance
HOUSE OF TOLERANCE trumped my longtime favorite, CERTIFIED COPY, by its sheer boldness, whether that was exhibited in rock music in a turn of the century brothel, a woman crying tears of cum, or the ambition evident in every frame. It's a stunning, beautiful, devastating film.
2.
Certified Copy
A film that, unlike most of the 2011 picks, was all about realism. With perfect performances in multiple languages, the depths and mysteries surrounding Binoche and Schimel are riveting in their authenticity.
3.
Martha Marcy May Marlene
(tied w/)
Tuesday, After Christmas
Two great films, neither of which I could decide was better than the other. The first, MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE draws you in with long takes, eerie, darkly toned colors, and a breathtakingly great performance by Elizabeth Olsen. The other film, TUESDAY, AFTER CHRISTMAS similarly draws you in with long takes, but, contrary to MARTHA, realism, and, once again, great performances. Maria Popistasu is the standout here, but so is Radu Muntean's direction, which is clear and straightforward, which only makes the revelations all the more powerful.
4.
The Skin I Live In
Pedro Almódóvar's best film, THE SKIN I LIVE IN is, at first glance, a complete departure for the director, but in fact, it's an intensification of all of his other ideas in one Hitchcockian yarn.
5.
13 Assassins
Takashi Miike's 13 ASSASSINS is one of the best action films ever made, starting with an hour long build-up establishing a pure-evil villain, and then ending with an hour long battle scene: epic and creative.
6.
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
It's slow and haunting, mesmerizing you as its ideas seep into your consciousness. It considers death, but, grandly, it considers life, class, and memory.
7.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Meticulously detailed, David Fincher's films have become typically great, and this one, propelled by Rooney Mara, is laughably unreal, but takes its fake-world so seriously that it works.
8.
The Princess of Montpensier
I make special mention of Bertrand Tavernier's (an underrated director if ever there was one) film because it convinced me of actual suffering within the aristocratic life. The film is devastating and classically dramatized with actions at the beginning of the film prompting actions at the end.
9.
Drive
Nicholas Winding Refn's DRIVE is another thriller that takes the steady, slow pacing of the thrillers of old and transposes it to a modern world. But Refn never lets us forget that he's repurposing our commercialized world, embodied in a shot of Gosling's Driver in a mask, backlit by the searing blue of a ROSS DRESS FOR LESS sign.
10.
Meek's Cutoff
Reichardt is becoming a very interesting director, and here her composition is slow, but all the more devastating for it. Essentially a "what could go wrong" story, its filled with small moments of exciting revelations.
11.
The Strange Case of Angelica
Working with the same cinematographer of ECCENTRICITIES, Manoel de Oliveira's crafted another brief, simple, melancholy story that feels truly timeless despite being placed in the modern age. Further, though, this film feels like time or fate was interrupted, or set off the rails, only to be eased back into place.
12.
Higher Ground
By making her film about an subject that rarely receives serious consideration past blind belief, Vera Farmiga's directorial debut also found itself a breezy pacing that perfectly meshed with the film's tone throughout.
13.
Shame
Problematic, yes, but the film is about someone who believes his life is as dire as it appears on film, and thus, we're experiencing all of his grandiosity and self-importance, rather than being told that he's important.
14. Essential Killing
Beautifully horrific, wordless, and evoking James Whale's BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, with a central performance by Vincent Gallo that puts to shame all other male performances of the year.
15.
A Dangerous Method
Sad and apocalyptic, David Cronenberg's film not only transposed our current apocalyptic (or economy collapsing) frettings to the early 20th century, and fills it with premonitions, obsessions, and personal histories, all under the guise of psychoanalysis and attempting to find reason in madness (literally).
16.
Melancholia
Beautifully photographed and well-acted, the first half plays like James Joyce's short story, "The Dead", while the second plays like Von Trier's own sequel to that tale.
17.
I Saw The Devil
Brutally violent but arty and incessant in its two and a half hour running time, it's one of the most thrilling movies in years.
18.
Hugo
The point was to make something harmless, and Scorsese does so in spades, bringing life to Melies and SAFETY LAST. That's its flaw: harmlessness, but it's probably the best example of good entertainment for the whole year.
19.
A Better Life
It raises serious questions and has a constant sense of urgency, ending in a poignant scene of perseverance.
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