Top Ten Movies of 2011

Time for the top 10 of 2011! I found this year to be a more enjoyable year at the old movie theater than the previous one. This time last year I was depressed, feeling like no matter how much I watched I still wouldn't see anything that really blew my mind. It was a bad feeling. This year, I feel the other way around. I usually gravitate towards very personal stories, but this year I found many of the best films were bigger than life stories that address the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything (as Douglas Adams would say). The other trend this year, that seemed to stand out over other years, was the way Hollywood and movie-making in general seemed to celebrate itself.

Anyway, as usual, this list is in no particular order, except of course I have saved the best for last, and I'm sure there are plenty of movies I didn't see this year that deserve to be on this list, as well.

THE ARTIST

This was one of two movies this year that really paid homage to the art of filmmaking itself. Although it was a black and white, mostly silent film, it was a feel good crowd pleaser. It's just too bad most of the crowds it would please will probably stay away from it. Still, if you're a lover of classic cinema, I guarantee you will love this film. It is a melodrama with its share of intense low points, but overall it leaves the viewer feeling joyous, as if sitting through the movie is the cinematic equivalent of how a great church service must feel to a believer. Jean Dujardin is great in the title role as a silent film star who is slow to adapt to the changing times as sound films infiltrate Hollywood. Berenice Bejo is radiant, though she has a slightly less thankful role, as a rising starlet who embraces the world of sound cinema and feels moved to help Dujardin's character, who helped her rise to stardom in the first place. This is not just an homage to silent film, but a love letter to classic Hollywood cinema, and a cutting edge commentary on the medium by using the trappings of the medium itself, including a dream sequence in which mundane sound effects are used in a way that makes the real world seem other worldly and the silent world seem normal. This is a Beautiful Film.

THE GUARD

This movie is proof that you can take something that seems formulaic and tired -- a buddy cop, fish out of water story -- and make it worth while. Don Cheadle stars as an FBI agent sent to Ireland to investigate local crimes related to international drug trafficking, and Brendan Gleason plays the local Irish cop he's teamed up with. Gleason would steal the show as the racist small town cop if Cheadle's reactions to him weren't so priceless. Together the two actors use their chops to create an arthouse comedy funnier than any of the mainstream crap that hit multiplexes all year. Aside from their performances, this success is also due to the close observation of these unique characters. These aren't guys you can plug into any plot -- they're unique characters who seem real and three dimensional, and the plot is at their service. They are not at the service of the plot. So next time someone tells you it's okay a buddy comedy or fish out of water story sucks because that's all they are, go watch THE GUARD and see a movie can be more than its premise, as long as it promises to exploit that premise fully and not take the lazy road. A story is only cliched if the story tellers agree to make it cliched.

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS

I saw this movie early in 2011, so far a while I thought it might be my favorite. I guess it still might be. . . after all, lists like this are fairly arbitrary. Again, here we have a movie that, on the surface, seems mired in genre conventions -- it's a romantic comedy, that very genre that meets so much derision from so many. But guess what? It's an awesome romantic comedy, so there. Owen Wilson stars as a nice enough writer who is being shoe horned into a marriage with his bitchy enough fiancee (Rachel McAdams, great to see her as a bitch again after all these years of bullshit). The couple travels to Paris for family business opportunities, and Wilson's character experiences a phenomenon that I find very familiar but that is very seldom expressed in film -- he feels more romantic and optimistic than his cynical companions, but his cynical companions think he is the cynical one. Go figure -- persecuted for wanting the world to be a nice place. Hardly seems fair, does it? Well, luckily, writer/director Woody Allen is on hand to magically throw Wilson into Paris' romantic past, where he has a chance to meet literary and artistic heroes like the Fitzgeralds, Hemingway, Dali, Picasso, Eliot and Bunuel, among others, all played by an excellent supporting cast. The best line is Wilson's when he says, "I'm jealous and I'm trusting. It's cognitive dissonance." Right there, you've got the words of a realist who also just happens to be a romantic.

50/50

This movie exploits one of the easiest outs in writing while also avoiding all the pitfalls. As a creative writing major, I learned that many students thought writing about terminal illness earned them a reprieve from criticism. After all, who but a total dickhead could shit talk a story about death from cancer or AIDS? Me, apparently. They thought "importance" could outweigh "quality" and that cancer and other illnesses of its kind were so important that they didn't have to actually craft any skill. They were wrong, but 50/50 nicely sidesteps that problem by making the story personal and funny. Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as a guy "too young" to be on the verge of death from cancer, and Seth Rogen stars as his buddy who tries to help him get through the struggle with some semblance of normality and humor, crucial elements lacking in most "survival" stories. This story never feels like it uses cancer as a device, because the details are so specific that you feel the filmmakers know what they're talking about (and they do). Instead, it makes cancer a three dimensional character, and the tears start flowing when Gordon-Levitt discovers a crucial book with crucial notes in it from Rogen. Roger Ebert always says he cries more when someone does something fundamentally good in a movie than when a movie is straight up sad. And this is one of those fundamentally good moments.

WAR HORSE

Spielberg's latest is so schmaltzy all you have to do is watch the trailer to decide whether or not you're going to love or hate it. Most of my friends took one look and decided it was a contrived attempt to extract tears from a cynical audience. They'd be right if Spielberg wasn't so good, and he still is, even to this day. That's one way of looking at it. The other way of looking at it is that I'm a total sucker. I guess that might be true. I don't think I am, but I loved WAR HORSE, so if that makes me a sucker, I guess I am. Apparently the main problem with this story is also its strength -- the fact that it follows a horse through the horrors of the first World War. The great thing about animals is you can project any emotion onto them that you want -- they're a blank slate. No matter what Joey the horse thought or felt or was even capable of thinking or feeling during his journey through the World War, I was able to project my own thoughs and feelings onto him and they were mostly of the "Jesus Christ, war looks terrible," variety. This may seem like a foregone conclusion, but I assume most people rarely think about the nuts and bolts of mechanized war from a ground floor view, mostly because I rarely do, and what better way to put that in perspective than to not only look at it from the point of view of a time when technology was moving out of (basically) the dark ages and into the 20th century, but also to look at it from an organic casualty of this technological change. Aside from all of this, WAR HORSE also stands as a throwback to classic Hollywood story telling with beautiful scenery and cinematography, and the movie is so beautiful shot in so many awesome English country sides, I don't know how a viewer could not fall in love with it, especially with that spectacular sunset at the end. This is a movie's movie.

MELANCHOLIA

Here's another movie that exploits a seemingly hackneyed premise while also not falling prey to it. MELANCHOLIA tells an end of the world story, set against the backdrop of a mysterious planet coming out of nowhere to crash into the Earth. There are some spectacular special effects, to be sure, especially in the first and last ten minutes, but the majority of the film is made up of what might happen during normal peoples' lives during this event that is normally reserved for epic science fiction movies starring presidents and war heroes. I've talked to some people who are mystified with this movie -- what could it possibly be about, they ask? The thing is, if this was packaged up like your latest Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich retard-fest, they'd never question it once. They'd go, "Oh. Planets crashing into each other. Makes sense." But, since writer/director Lars Von Trier dares to make an apocalyptic movie about normal people, everyone goes, "Huh? I don't get it." Seems like it should be the other way around. In any case, MELANCHOLIA is beautiful and awesome, both about the universe in its totality and the very personal interactions of a couple individuals, one played quite masterfully by Kirsten Dunst.

HUGO

This fantasy family film from Martin Scorsese at first seems like an anomaly until you realize it's Scorsese's love letter to cinema itself. It seems to have the magic of films like HARRY POTTER, but could just as easily take place in the real world. The tone is that of a fairy tale, but the content could be in history books. Scorsese makes impressive use of 3d as he explores the world of the title character (Asa Butterfield), an orphan who lives in the walls, catwalks and hidden stairways of a Paris train station at the turn of the century. Without giving too much away, it turns out a cranky toy merchant (Ben Kingsley) is more than he seems, and Hugo unlocks a the mystery of the very birth of cinema. This is another flick that I think probably suffered at the box office due to its smarts -- not that it takes a genius to understand this movie, but more that it just happens to be about 1% more challenging and unique and well made than your average family film full of farts and insults. Sadly many audiences turn their brains off when faced with something that tries anything really human or insightful. Ironically these are the same audiences that feel they're the human ones and its filmmakers like Scorsese who are jaded and cynical. They're totally wrong.

CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS

Filmmaker Werner Herzog has a knack for making films that seem to be about the entirety of the universe while only really being about a very small part of the whole. This one's a documentary about a cave in France, discovered to house some of the oldest drawings and paintings known to man, and so well preserved that there are still foot prints in the sand from people who ran through there 20,000 years ago. Examining the cave walls, talking to the experts who explore it, and ruminating on the meaning of it all, a viewer can't help but feel both personally connected to these ancient wall scratches and in awe of their seemingly universal, timeless qualities. This feeling is counter intuitive but constantly comes up when I see great movies, read great books, see great paintings -- whatever the case may be -- the more specific it is, the more universal it becomes, and little I have seen has reached further into the dark recesses of the eternal, sprawling questions, "Why are we here?" and "Where did we come from?" than these paintings in this one cave.

DRIVE

This neo-noir about a Hollywood stunt driver turned wheel-man for hire (Ryan Gosling) is a nearly perfect example of both style and substance working together at the same time. Even without some of the filmmakers' more stylistic flair of editing, music choice, and particular way of visual story telling, I think this movie would still work as a good genre piece -- a solid suspense/action picture. With all this style, though, it goes to the next level and becomes wholly unique -- something we've never seen before and will likely never see again. Gosling's stoic title character gets personally involved in what initially begins as a normal business venture and ends up in over his head with the local mob. Well, I guess "in over his head" is not the way to put it -- I guess it's the mob who's in over their heads. Too bad for them. This flick is just cool. That's all there is to it. It doesn't wish it was cool -- it's not uncool while others insist it is. It is actually the real thing.

THE TREE OF LIFE

This was my favorite film of the year. Terrence Malick's meditation on the meaning of the entire universe, as compared and contrasted with the very specific experiences of one boy's ougchildhood in 1950s Texas, is the kind of story that cinema was invented for. You simply could not tell this story in the same transcendental way on the page of a novel or the canvas of a painting or the sounds of a symphony as you can when you marry all of these forms together with the magic of cinematic editing. As it comes together on the screen before an audience, THE TREE OF LIFE unfolds almost as a real time peek into Malick's own thought process -- a visual representation of what it feels like for the mind to go through memories, connect sensations to sounds and images, lead one thing to another, seamlessly to the thinker and possibly not so seamlessly to the observer. It's the kind of visual representation Parker tried to make with PINK FLOYD - THE WALL or Kubrick wanted with 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. They both succeeded to one degree or another, but TREE OF LIFE does not have the added crutch of 2001's sci-fi suspense story or THE WALL's rock music. Instead, it has the one thing they both missed out on -- Malick's contribution is the totally personal aspect of the whole thing. This isn't just the story of the entirety of space and time. It is also the story of a specific family. That's called perspective. Some say the movie is too devout to the idea of a God making sense of everything. Other say the movie leaves this up to interpretation. Brad Pitt stars as a father figure who is both as definitive and powerful as God and as weak and undecided as any human. That tells me something about Malick's artistic intentions, but the beauty of the movie is that it is alive and moving and can't be pinned down to one thing or another. I've seen this movie a couple times, and when I watch it again one day, it will be just as rewarding as if it was the first time I ever saw it.

As usual, I had many runners up. Here are some of them, again, in no particular order:

YOUNG ADULT

Further proof that Diablo Cody is a good writer and Charlize Theron is a good actress. Also a heart breaking and awesome supporting performance by comedian Patton Oswalt.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE -- GHOST PROTOCOL

Director Brad Bird continues his flawless film track record with his awesome action flick.

THE DESCENDANTS

Great performance from Clooney.

THE MUPPETS

The most Muppet-like movie since the early 80s.

J. EDGAR

Great performance from DiCaprio.

MARGIN CALL

I'm a dummy, and even I understand the financial crisis as it unfolded in this almost-true suspense story.

MONEYBALL

Great message in this film -- the facts outweigh tradition, ritual, expertise -- as long as you look at objective reality, you will win over hunches.

COLD WEATHER

I loved this film for the same reason I first avoided it -- it's a local Portland production. At first I was worried locals only liked it because it was local -- once I saw it, I realized it was good on its own terms. Check it out for a nice indie surprise.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER

One of two great Marvel flicks this year, this one a throwback to the more innocent adventure films of a bygone era.

THOR

The other great Marvel flick of the year, I loved it for the atypically bittersweet ending.

THE FUTURE

Not exactly the movie I was expecting from writer/director Miranda July, but it has haunted my and stuck by me all year.

BRIDESMAIDS

Stop saying women aren't funny, it's a stupid thing to say.

SOURCE CODE

Would have been a good TWILIGHT ZONE episode.

HORRIBLE BOSSES

This one has a character named Motherfucker Jones. Beat that.

MEEK'S CUTOFF

Watching this flick will make you understand more what the pioneers went through than twenty years of 4th grade history combined.

RED STATE

Something new from Kevin Smith -- not widely seen, but should have been.

PEARL JAM TWENTY

Sometimes you need someone else to tell you about your own history and in this case I needed Cameron Crowe. You don't realize how much PEARL JAM was a part of your life until you've seen TWENTY.

BELLFLOWER

These guys will be famous any second. You heard it here, first.

THE IDES OF MARCH

Every performance in this flick is great, and they're all tied together by Ryan Gosling -- he gets at least one powerhouse scene with each master and holds his own -- Clooney, Hoffman, Giamatti. . . this is like Gosling's acting graduate thesis.

LIFE, ABOVE ALL

Great to see a drama anyone can identify it with a completely unique perspective -- this time, we see the story through the eyes of an adolescent African girl.

MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE

This movie exists somewhere in the cross section of reality, memory and fantasy of the lead character, the victim of a cult played fearlessly by newcomer Elizabeth Olsen.

And of course, the worst film of the year, this time a tie between:

A LITTLE HELP

Successfully makes super likable Jenna Fischer into an unlikable character, complete with an inexplicable shot of an empty couch that holds for several seconds as if no one involved had ever seen a movie before.

HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN

I realize this is "supposed" to harken back to shitty exploitation movies of years past, but did it have to be so ugly and insulting? No. Take a page from Tarantino and Rodriguez and make a good movie, guys.