[WARNING: Massive SPOILERS ahead. Reading this review before you have seen The Dark Knight Rises is not advised, unless you happen to be the arch-nemesis of fun.]
Wrapping up a beloved film trilogy in a satisfactory way is already a daunting challenge, but with The Dark Knight Rises, his third and final Batman epic, director and co-writer Christopher Nolan faced an even tougher and rather unique professional conundrum: how to follow up a sequel that became the kind of bona fide, genre-reinventing pop culture phenomenon that is impossible to duplicate by its very lightning-in-a-bottle nature. The Dark Knight took the unusual maturity and narrative density of Nolan's introductory origin story Batman Begins even further, while simultaneously offering a visceral, intense cinematic experience that can't really be compared to anything else out there, let alone other comic-book-based superhero flicks. A nerve-jangling hybrid of police procedural, post-9/11 political allegory, and apocalyptic horror that situates the Caped Crusader within an ensemble framework that refuses to make him its chief priority, The Dark Knight is a work that fiendishly created its own genre rules. The idea of a follow-up bending over backwards to create a new set of expectation-subverting rules seems in theory to be as ill-advised and potentially self-destructive as having whoever steps into the new film's villain role try to compete with Heath Ledger's unforgettable Joker performance in The Dark Knight.
So that The Dark Knight Rises doesn't rival its immediate predecessor in bracing freshness is far from a weakness. Nolan and co-writer brother Jonathan Nolan are shrewd enough to take elements from the series' previous films--the character-study-of-Bruce-Wayne focus and narrative-weight-carrying band of villains the League of Shadows from Batman Begins, the intense and downright Haneke-esque sadism and age-of-terrorism pontificating of The Dark Knight--and shape the new film around those elements so that the trilogy as a whole has a unifying drive and ambition.
But to acknowledge The Dark Knight Rises as a film intended more to provide satisfying closure to a giant-canvas trilogy than to reinvent the genre wheel isn't to say that Nolan has abandoned his sense of surprise entirely. On the contrary, Rises thrives on the unexpected, from Nolan's perhaps foolhardy attempts to top himself when it comes to narrative scale and action spectacle to his layering of class and even gender concerns into his study of those occupying Gotham City's margins. Also, what gives The Dark Knight Rises its own identity apart from its predecessors and makes it a work of grand cinematic excitement is how magically and fluidly it morphs from a sinister, hard-PG-13 downer to the most genuinely rousing studio crowd-pleaser in ages. If The Dark Knight's narrative drive was patterned after the Joker's chaotic, anarchic whims, Rises is governed just as recognizably by the mindset of its own villain, Bane (Tom Hardy), a buff, masked League of Shadows reject who believes that true hope cannot exist without crushing despair.
Nolan commits to the initial downbeat tone so thoroughly that he withholds the inspiring presence of Batman for the first hour or so--perhaps the movie's biggest TDK-level subversion, and an ingenious one. That hour is instead devoted to a portrait of the institutional complacency and corruption that has seeped into post-Dent Gotham City. The way Nolan has depicted Bruce Wayne's home turf throughout the trilogy feels informed by the very adult and subtextually loaded chronicles of urban rot offered up by masters like Sidney Lumet (Serpico and Prince of the City, the latter of which Nolan has admitted was an inspiration for Rises) and David Simon (TV's The Wire), and it's a huge if muddled pleasure to see Nolan test how far he can take that particular ambition in the first hour of Rises. After striving for and arguably achieving objective "perfection" in his last two films (TDK and Inception), Nolan was bound to get a tad messier at some point, and the web-like narrative intricacy of Rises' Gotham-centered introductory hour gets undeniably tangled. But the sheer density of it is irresistible, as are the political implications (i.e. Bane's terrorizing of Gothamites being narratively and thematically aligned with the more insinuating corporate dominance of Ben Mendelsohn's Daggett.)
On that last point: it's puzzling that a film as contemptuous of unchecked corporate power as Rises would be labeled by short-sighted pundits as politically conservative, an accusation further hobbled by Nolan's purposeful placement of two protagonists far removed from the world of upper-class privilege Wayne occupies into the narrative. There's Officer (later Detective) Blake (Joseph Gordon Levitt), born an orphan and emboldened to investigate why the boys who have been phased out of the now-underfunded boys' home he used to inhabit have turned to subterranean crime while his superiors lazily coast on the Dent Act's reassuring statistics. And there's Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway), a master thief who, in spite of her extraordinary skills, remains subservient to the male thugs who run Gotham's underworld. Both characters challenge Wayne to use his wealth liberally--Blake criticizes Wayne for neglecting social-responsibility "details" like the boys' home, and much of Selina's repartee with Bruce while the two dance at Miranda Tate's (Marion Cotillard) soiree (some of Nolan's sharpest ever dialogue, in my opinion) consists of Selina chastising Bruce for living in an overprivileged bubble. As actors, Gordon Levitt and especially the scene-stealing Hathaway effortlessly project the wounded souls and well-honed survival instincts of those who live outside the bubble, and also possess the cool, innate intelligence that Nolan favors in his actors.
While sheltered in a financial sense, Bruce, of course, has always been wounded in his own way, and at this point, Bale knows the exact level at which to pitch the character's masochistic grief. Yet entirely befitting an ensemble-driven trilogy, it's through Michael Caine's absolutely heartbreaking performance as Wayne's servant and advisor, Alfred, that Bruce's self-torturing plight hits us with a powerful emotional force. In Bruce, Alfred sees a man whose interest in ensuring the happiness and safety of others is fed by an equally strong rejection of those comforts for himself.
Bruce's discomfort is increased a thousandfold when Bane snaps his back apart in one swift move, a dismantling-an-icon, end-of-first-act shocker that's infinitely more nightmarish to see enacted by flesh-and-blood actors than it is in the pen-and-ink form of the comics' Knightfall story thread. Bruce struggles to get back in fighting shape while trapped in Bane's dank prison, and in an odd coincidence, this passage of the film is highly reminiscent of Herzog's Rescue Dawn, another Bale vehicle that revolves around his planned escape from a hellish prison camp. Spurring Bruce on is the sight from his cell TV of Bane turning Gotham into an isolated wasteland, using tons of explosives and rhetoric that fires up the city's disenfranchised citizens. (That Bane's speeches have a striking resemblance to Occupy Wall Street calls to action has also been used in accusations of the film being conservative, which misses the point entirely. As a recent thinkprogress piece pointed out, all three films in Nolan's trilogy provocatively show the villains making entirely rational critiques of Gotham's infrastructure; it's how the villains go about "fixing" Gotham's problems that Nolan disagrees with.)
When Bruce masters the riddle-like nature of the pit that serves as the prison's sole means of escape (like the Penrose Steps in Inception, it's a piece of architecture that carries with it a lot of narrative and psychological meaning) and climbs to safety, it's a moment of exhilaration so palpable you may actually feel your heart thumping in your chest excitedly. (The soaring crescendos of the invaluable Hans Zimmer's score and the awestruck reaction shots of Tom Conti as Bruce's prison confidante deserve some of the credit too.) The scene perfectly sets the tone for a third act full of rousing payoffs. The mammoth action scenes, triumphant tonal upswing, and indelible character moments (like Batman's moving way of telling Gary Oldman's Commissioner Gordon he's Bruce Wayne) act as giddy rewards for those of us who have embraced Nolan's trilogy with an admittedly fanboy-ish passion.
Even the reveal of Miranda's betrayal of Bruce, though obviously a dark surprise, is counterbalanced by Selina finding within herself the bravery and moral commitment to fight alongside Batman. Nolan is very savvy about creating character dualities and mirror images, and just as there are parallels between Bruce, Blake (an orphan who finds a constructive social outlet for his anger) and Bane (a former pupil of Ra's al Ghul and onetime inhabitant of the prison Bruce is trapped in for the second act), Selina is pointedly established as Talia's heroic doppelganger. Whereas Talia found the strength to escape a realm of male violence (Nolan and Zimmer incorporating the Star Spangled Banner into the score during Talia's escape from the prison is almost Spike Lee-esque in its awesome, ballsy symbolic bluntness), Selina summons the strength to stay--to not escape--and fight it head-on.
The hopefulness extends to the film's epilogue. While Nolan fans are accustomed to his tactic of furiously cross-cutting between horrific and intense simultaneous narrative occurences, it's a beautiful change of pace to see that signature stylistic move applied to simultaneous happy endings: Blake picking up the Bat-mantel; Gordon returning to the bat signal; and, most important of all, Bruce Wayne finally putting the past behind him and beginning the life that Alfred has always wanted for him. These final moments attest to why The Dark Knight Rises will endure as a great film beyond the unfortunate tragedy it has been associated with: it's a work of genuine joyousness and genre enthusiasm, clearly intended by Nolan to send you out of the theatre coasting on only positive vibes. Grade: A
Monday, August 13, 2012
Monday, January 23, 2012
The Best Films of 2011: The Top Ten
Considering that I could always write a separate blog entry on the major film trends of 2011 and other categorized highlights of the year (best performances and whatnot) at some near-future point, I'm inclined to skip a proper introduction altogether and just dive right into my top ten. With no further ado:
1. The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick). The sheer scope, ambition, and artistry of Malick's mammoth achievement is downright humbling. Any critic attempting to do justice to this simultaneously intimate and grandiose epic can only tremble when faced with the task. And yet here I stand, making a noble effort! (Who says this profession isn't heroic, right?) Singular poetic visionary Malick has made his best film yet in a remarkable (if hardly prolific) career by swinging for the fences in a manner rarely seen since Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey threw down the cosmic-auteur-statement gauntlet nearly 45 years ago. The Tree of Life addresses death, life, love, family, God, the universe, and just about every other pertinent issue we all ponder during the most emotionally fraught times in our adult lives. As a stern patriarch who is thankfully never one-dimensionally villified, Brad Pitt demonstrates that his facility for suggesting roiling emotions underneath a cultivated facade has improved with middle age, and there may be more about him further down the list. (I know, I know--spoiler alert!) Playing protagonist Jack (Sean Penn) as a child, Hunter McCracken is one of those refreshingly natural kid actors who don't seem to be acting at all. But for me, the dominant performance here is from 2011 breakout Jessica Chastain, who creates a distinctive maternal presence through her unique and touching combination of innocence, tenderness, and fragility. The emotional force of her work befits a movie that goes beyond being a beautiful cinematic art object--though, boy howdy, it sure is that--to connect the medium to our shared human experience in a truly vital way.
2. Hugo (Martin Scorsese). Though he's indisputably one of America's greatest filmmakers, Scorsese seemed to be taking a major creative risk by making a big-budget family film (in ever-divisive 3D!). That concern was only amplified by the unfortunate trailer for Hugo, which features a lot of context-free slapstick backed by the grating sound of 30 Seconds to Mars on the soundtrack. To say that the finished film makes those pre-release doubts look idiotic in hindsight is an understatement. Rich, dazzling, and incredibly moving, Hugo is another masterpiece from a filmmaker who makes little else. Scorsese's auteur stamp is evident everywhere: his anthropological interest in dissecting insular communities can be seen in his treatment of the train station that little Hugo (Asa Butterfield) resides in as a self-contained neighborhood, full of indelible supporting characters; the see-sawing moods and grief-fueled anger that make Hugo as fascinatingly mercurial a protagonist as Travis Bickle or Billy Costigan; and, of course, the secret of sad, old Papa Georges (Ben Kingsley, in his best performance since Sexy Beast), which I'll refrain from revealing, since I can think of a few friends who have yet to experience Hugo (I can't be disappointed in them, because again, that trailer!). Writer John Logan's adaptation of Brian Selznick's book is the most thematically dense and narratively surprising piece of family film writing since Brad Bird's similarly Paris-set Ratatouille. One of the key themes is the way in which the world of machines can overlap with the world of the human heart. Scorsese, whose sublime and utterly jaw-dropping use of 3D composition manages to augment the nearly overwhelming emotions of Hugo's story rather than get in the way of them, has made a film that is itself proof that a piece of technology can be very much alive.
3. Moneyball (Bennett Miller). Here's a bit of list-nerd statistical trivia, which is entirely apropos, considering Moneyball burrows so obsessively into the world of baseball data it's like the thinking person's sports-movie equivalent of All the President's Men or Zodiac: Miller's film was originally in the number-five slot on this list, but a second viewing last weekend revealed it to be even more intelligent and emotionally textured than I had remembered. What made Miller's non-documentary debut, Capote, so auspicious was how he balanced an icy, spare style with an extreme focus on Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance in the title role, while at the same time subtly respecting some of the mysteries of that central, real-world-based character. Moneyball is a staggering follow-up that manages to marry those artful character-study virtues--this time out, Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) is the ambiguously regarded biographical subject instead of Truman Capote--with a healthy abundance of crowd-pleasing tough talk (supplied by co-writer Aaron Sorkin, whose precision is dizzying), badass underdog triumphs, and movie-star swagger. Pitt, of course, supplies the latter, in a career-peak performance that organically combines all the qualities that have made him so beloved over the years--his Zen calmness, his Young Redford authority, his clownish eccentricity (yep, he indulges that hilariously mannered eating tic of his), and, crucially, that flicker of instability that David Fincher really nurtured in him. Miller and Pitt make Billy fascinatingly quixotic and near-mad; underneath the character's bravado is an insecurity and fear of failure that occasionally rise to the surface in shocking ways, never more so than in the movie's pulverizing final shot (and music cue), which packs a wallop that only cements Moneyball as a magical merging of art and entertainment.
4. Melancholia (Lars von Trier). I raved about Danish provocateur von Trier's ravishingly imagined yowl of apocalyptic despair right here on this blog over the summer, and have little to add to my review, which I'll re-post here: http://brettbuck.blogspot.com/2011/08/728-viewing-journal-early-review.html. But it's worth reemphasizing that von Trier's magnificent audacity--that brilliant two-part structure! that cinema-orgasm prologue!--is matched by the ferocity and commitment of Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg, who ensure that their sibling characters are as palpably human as they are allegorically fertile. It's von Trier's attention to that kind of character nuance that makes this his most satisfyingly well-rounded achievement since 1996's Breaking the Waves.
5. Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen). This bewitching and stealthily wise late-career triumph for the Woodman begins with a beautiful, classical-music-scored montage of the titular metropolis, which immediately calls to mind the opening of Allen's Manhattan. However, as Midnight in Paris goes on, it reveals itself to actually be a companion piece to a different career landmark for the director, The Purple Rose of Cairo. Like that '85 love letter to the movies, Midnight explores the painfully adult crisis of having to choose between retreating blissfully but unhealthily into a world of pure fantasy and responsibly taking on the present-day real world, with all its nagging imperfections. Owen Wilson has such a distinctive and effortlessly funny vocal rhythm that there's no mistaking him for an overly imitative "Woody stand-in" figure, but more than that, his performance has the proper undertow of melancholy to suggest how difficult that tug-of-war between fantasy and reality is for the character. It's gratifying that Allen has received his first Directors' Guild nomination since Crimes and Misdemeanors 22 years ago for this, since it reasserts his behind-the-camera mastery (as opposed to his more frequently celebrated scripting) in small but forceful ways. The period recreation of Wilson's fantasy scenes is opulent and immersive without calling undue attention to itself, the framing of every shot is exquisite, and I just love bathing in the gold-and-black glow of Allen and d.p. Darius Khondji's artful coloring, which ensures that Wilson isn't the most butterscotch visual element on display. It speaks to Woody's range that Midnight is a lighter achievement than his other great movie of the new millenium, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, but is no less profound.
6. The Skin I Live In (Pedro Almodovar). It would be easy to imagine a gifted but precociously shock-cinema-enamored young director like, say, Chan-wook Park, or, more to the point, the more gleefully button-pushing Almodovar of the late '80s taking the wildly lurid basic premise of The Skin I Live In and making something vivid but too alienating-for-its-own-sake out of it. Instead, the now-62-year-old Almodovar, who has reached a peak of supreme confidence and precision as an artist over the past decade or so while (thankfully) having lost none of his taste for ripe melodrama, brings a maturity to The Skin I Live In that renders it an unusually refined, elegant, and even humane horror freak-out. Ever the playful storyteller, Almodovar performs a commanding, time-shuffling narrative strip tease that makes this the most flat-out spellbinding movie of his since Talk to Her, and he riffs on dominant inspirations Frankenstein and Vertigo in a manner that goes deeper than mere homage. The central character of Vera (Elena Anaya) is where the influence of those classics can most clearly be seen, but she also acts as a provocative extension of Almodovar's very personal, career-long interest in gender and sexual identity. So, in spite of the burning obsession of Antonio Banderas' great performance as a misguided mad scientist, this lush and enveloping work of genre art belongs to Anaya, whose fierce strength sucks us into Almodovar's labyrinth.
7. Project Nim (James Marsh). Like Melancholia, this is a film I covered thoroughly for the blog before: http://brettbuck.blogspot.com/2011/07/726-viewing-journal-reviews-of-project.html. What's key to mention again is that I sincerely believe this to be a documentary that even mainstream viewers normally averse to non-fiction filmmaking are likely to find deeply involving and emotionally affecting. Man on Wire Oscar winner Marsh deserves a second Academy Award for bringing a Morris-esque inventive, free-form style and a well-judged, never shrill sense of outrage to this infurating yet ultimately inspiring story of a chimp who became collateral damage in a scientific endeavor run by allegedly more evolved and intelligent primates.
8. The Adventures of Tintin (Steven Spielberg). For years, I've put forth the theory that the experience of making Schindler's List changed Spielberg so much as an artist that he's now no longer capable of delivering the kind of pure escapist blockbuster that he used to be such a master of in the '70s and '80s. This isn't to deny that certain action set pieces in post-Schindler films have that unmistakable Spielberg flair (Minority Report has a couple humdingers), but those set pieces are couched in movies defined by dark, despairing, and sinister subtextual undercurrents. Now here comes The Adventures of Tintin, an old-school adventure yarn that's proudly devoid of heavy thematic ruminations, and all I can say is: whoops! Tintin is an uncommonly exhilarating popcorn-movie ride, and what's also uncommon is how Spielberg brings a real artistry, not just genre craftsmanship, to an admittedly weightless bit of fun. His peerless gift for visual composition allows him to sneak in many mischievously witty gags within the frame, and he takes advantage of the freedom afforded him through performance-capture animation (thank goodness those faces look more expressive now!) to shoot the movie's most awe-inspiring set pieces in vertiginous long takes. Detractors who gripe about the youthful protagonist (voiced by Jamie Bell) being defined only by his thirst for adventure are missing the point entirely. Whenever Spielberg focuses on a child or young-adult character, it's always as an interesting point of identification, thus making Tintin a surprising and joyous reaffirmation of the incongruously boyish adrenaline rush that fuels its aging auteur's passion for filmmaking.
9. We Need to Talk About Kevin (Lynne Ramsay). In her second feature, 2002's Movern Callar, Scottish director Ramsay mastered the art of subjetive-point-of-view cinematic storytelling--using images, edits, and an intricate sound design to plunk the viewer directly into the central character's noggin. For her audacious, long-awaited (like Malick, Ramsay is a genius who really should work more often) follow-up, We Need to Talk About Kevin, Ramsay applies that intuitive talent to an unlikely subgenre--the demon-seed horror movie--and, as a result, ends up granting that subgenre a much-needed artistic legitimacy. That makes Kevin coincidentally similar to The Skin I Live In; both films redeem potentially disreputable exploitation elements via an understanding of how even the most lowbrow genre material can be infused with rich character and thematic undercurrents. Ramsay's gorgeously abstract non-chronological shifts between past and present mirror the flow of memories that clutch Eva (Tilda Swinton), who can't help but blame herself for raising a very disturbed son who ends up...well, let's just say he commits a heinous atrocity that merits discussion, as per the title. The formidable Swinton is a marvel at embodying the two sides of Eva we see--the frustrated mother who regards parenthood as a riddle she can't figure out, and the town pariah who has been transformed by guilt and shame into a meek, withering shell of her former self. Ramsay coats the movie in an air of dread so consuming that I walked out of the movie feeling shaken and positively poisoned by it, and underneath that dread is an assessment of parenthood that bracingly goes against the suger-coated norm.
10. 13 Assassins (Takashi Miike). Sometimes the shrewdest and most effective action movies are those that consciously mimic a roller-coaster trajectory--an unapologetically long build-up followed by a giddy plunge downward. (Think of The Matrix, for example--the necessary world-building exposition leading to a glorious cascade of awesomeness.) Miike, who, unlike other directors on this list, tends to be too prolific, has made his most fully realized film since the genuinely progressive torture-porn-slash-gender-relations-study whatsit Audition by adhering to this structure and making it his own. The stakes-establishing first half of 13 Assassins has proven too deliberately paced for some--and, indeed, there's a chance the film would be higher on my list if the right five or so minutes were trimmed--but there's something refreshingly neo-classical in the calm, patient manner in which Miike depicts the rounding-up of the titular team. Once the baker's dozen of warriors is assembled, Miike then cuts loose with a dazzling, brilliantly choreographed climax that effectively takes up the entire latter half of the film. The mega-sized set piece is as gloriously kinetic and impressively sustained as the hospital-set finale of John Woo's action milestone Hard-Boiled. As with that film, and with the other remarkable movies that made this list of the best of '11, 13 Assassins leaves you in an enraptured state where you truly can't believe what you're seeing.
1. The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick). The sheer scope, ambition, and artistry of Malick's mammoth achievement is downright humbling. Any critic attempting to do justice to this simultaneously intimate and grandiose epic can only tremble when faced with the task. And yet here I stand, making a noble effort! (Who says this profession isn't heroic, right?) Singular poetic visionary Malick has made his best film yet in a remarkable (if hardly prolific) career by swinging for the fences in a manner rarely seen since Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey threw down the cosmic-auteur-statement gauntlet nearly 45 years ago. The Tree of Life addresses death, life, love, family, God, the universe, and just about every other pertinent issue we all ponder during the most emotionally fraught times in our adult lives. As a stern patriarch who is thankfully never one-dimensionally villified, Brad Pitt demonstrates that his facility for suggesting roiling emotions underneath a cultivated facade has improved with middle age, and there may be more about him further down the list. (I know, I know--spoiler alert!) Playing protagonist Jack (Sean Penn) as a child, Hunter McCracken is one of those refreshingly natural kid actors who don't seem to be acting at all. But for me, the dominant performance here is from 2011 breakout Jessica Chastain, who creates a distinctive maternal presence through her unique and touching combination of innocence, tenderness, and fragility. The emotional force of her work befits a movie that goes beyond being a beautiful cinematic art object--though, boy howdy, it sure is that--to connect the medium to our shared human experience in a truly vital way.
2. Hugo (Martin Scorsese). Though he's indisputably one of America's greatest filmmakers, Scorsese seemed to be taking a major creative risk by making a big-budget family film (in ever-divisive 3D!). That concern was only amplified by the unfortunate trailer for Hugo, which features a lot of context-free slapstick backed by the grating sound of 30 Seconds to Mars on the soundtrack. To say that the finished film makes those pre-release doubts look idiotic in hindsight is an understatement. Rich, dazzling, and incredibly moving, Hugo is another masterpiece from a filmmaker who makes little else. Scorsese's auteur stamp is evident everywhere: his anthropological interest in dissecting insular communities can be seen in his treatment of the train station that little Hugo (Asa Butterfield) resides in as a self-contained neighborhood, full of indelible supporting characters; the see-sawing moods and grief-fueled anger that make Hugo as fascinatingly mercurial a protagonist as Travis Bickle or Billy Costigan; and, of course, the secret of sad, old Papa Georges (Ben Kingsley, in his best performance since Sexy Beast), which I'll refrain from revealing, since I can think of a few friends who have yet to experience Hugo (I can't be disappointed in them, because again, that trailer!). Writer John Logan's adaptation of Brian Selznick's book is the most thematically dense and narratively surprising piece of family film writing since Brad Bird's similarly Paris-set Ratatouille. One of the key themes is the way in which the world of machines can overlap with the world of the human heart. Scorsese, whose sublime and utterly jaw-dropping use of 3D composition manages to augment the nearly overwhelming emotions of Hugo's story rather than get in the way of them, has made a film that is itself proof that a piece of technology can be very much alive.
3. Moneyball (Bennett Miller). Here's a bit of list-nerd statistical trivia, which is entirely apropos, considering Moneyball burrows so obsessively into the world of baseball data it's like the thinking person's sports-movie equivalent of All the President's Men or Zodiac: Miller's film was originally in the number-five slot on this list, but a second viewing last weekend revealed it to be even more intelligent and emotionally textured than I had remembered. What made Miller's non-documentary debut, Capote, so auspicious was how he balanced an icy, spare style with an extreme focus on Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance in the title role, while at the same time subtly respecting some of the mysteries of that central, real-world-based character. Moneyball is a staggering follow-up that manages to marry those artful character-study virtues--this time out, Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) is the ambiguously regarded biographical subject instead of Truman Capote--with a healthy abundance of crowd-pleasing tough talk (supplied by co-writer Aaron Sorkin, whose precision is dizzying), badass underdog triumphs, and movie-star swagger. Pitt, of course, supplies the latter, in a career-peak performance that organically combines all the qualities that have made him so beloved over the years--his Zen calmness, his Young Redford authority, his clownish eccentricity (yep, he indulges that hilariously mannered eating tic of his), and, crucially, that flicker of instability that David Fincher really nurtured in him. Miller and Pitt make Billy fascinatingly quixotic and near-mad; underneath the character's bravado is an insecurity and fear of failure that occasionally rise to the surface in shocking ways, never more so than in the movie's pulverizing final shot (and music cue), which packs a wallop that only cements Moneyball as a magical merging of art and entertainment.
4. Melancholia (Lars von Trier). I raved about Danish provocateur von Trier's ravishingly imagined yowl of apocalyptic despair right here on this blog over the summer, and have little to add to my review, which I'll re-post here: http://brettbuck.blogspot.com/2011/08/728-viewing-journal-early-review.html. But it's worth reemphasizing that von Trier's magnificent audacity--that brilliant two-part structure! that cinema-orgasm prologue!--is matched by the ferocity and commitment of Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg, who ensure that their sibling characters are as palpably human as they are allegorically fertile. It's von Trier's attention to that kind of character nuance that makes this his most satisfyingly well-rounded achievement since 1996's Breaking the Waves.
5. Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen). This bewitching and stealthily wise late-career triumph for the Woodman begins with a beautiful, classical-music-scored montage of the titular metropolis, which immediately calls to mind the opening of Allen's Manhattan. However, as Midnight in Paris goes on, it reveals itself to actually be a companion piece to a different career landmark for the director, The Purple Rose of Cairo. Like that '85 love letter to the movies, Midnight explores the painfully adult crisis of having to choose between retreating blissfully but unhealthily into a world of pure fantasy and responsibly taking on the present-day real world, with all its nagging imperfections. Owen Wilson has such a distinctive and effortlessly funny vocal rhythm that there's no mistaking him for an overly imitative "Woody stand-in" figure, but more than that, his performance has the proper undertow of melancholy to suggest how difficult that tug-of-war between fantasy and reality is for the character. It's gratifying that Allen has received his first Directors' Guild nomination since Crimes and Misdemeanors 22 years ago for this, since it reasserts his behind-the-camera mastery (as opposed to his more frequently celebrated scripting) in small but forceful ways. The period recreation of Wilson's fantasy scenes is opulent and immersive without calling undue attention to itself, the framing of every shot is exquisite, and I just love bathing in the gold-and-black glow of Allen and d.p. Darius Khondji's artful coloring, which ensures that Wilson isn't the most butterscotch visual element on display. It speaks to Woody's range that Midnight is a lighter achievement than his other great movie of the new millenium, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, but is no less profound.
6. The Skin I Live In (Pedro Almodovar). It would be easy to imagine a gifted but precociously shock-cinema-enamored young director like, say, Chan-wook Park, or, more to the point, the more gleefully button-pushing Almodovar of the late '80s taking the wildly lurid basic premise of The Skin I Live In and making something vivid but too alienating-for-its-own-sake out of it. Instead, the now-62-year-old Almodovar, who has reached a peak of supreme confidence and precision as an artist over the past decade or so while (thankfully) having lost none of his taste for ripe melodrama, brings a maturity to The Skin I Live In that renders it an unusually refined, elegant, and even humane horror freak-out. Ever the playful storyteller, Almodovar performs a commanding, time-shuffling narrative strip tease that makes this the most flat-out spellbinding movie of his since Talk to Her, and he riffs on dominant inspirations Frankenstein and Vertigo in a manner that goes deeper than mere homage. The central character of Vera (Elena Anaya) is where the influence of those classics can most clearly be seen, but she also acts as a provocative extension of Almodovar's very personal, career-long interest in gender and sexual identity. So, in spite of the burning obsession of Antonio Banderas' great performance as a misguided mad scientist, this lush and enveloping work of genre art belongs to Anaya, whose fierce strength sucks us into Almodovar's labyrinth.
7. Project Nim (James Marsh). Like Melancholia, this is a film I covered thoroughly for the blog before: http://brettbuck.blogspot.com/2011/07/726-viewing-journal-reviews-of-project.html. What's key to mention again is that I sincerely believe this to be a documentary that even mainstream viewers normally averse to non-fiction filmmaking are likely to find deeply involving and emotionally affecting. Man on Wire Oscar winner Marsh deserves a second Academy Award for bringing a Morris-esque inventive, free-form style and a well-judged, never shrill sense of outrage to this infurating yet ultimately inspiring story of a chimp who became collateral damage in a scientific endeavor run by allegedly more evolved and intelligent primates.
8. The Adventures of Tintin (Steven Spielberg). For years, I've put forth the theory that the experience of making Schindler's List changed Spielberg so much as an artist that he's now no longer capable of delivering the kind of pure escapist blockbuster that he used to be such a master of in the '70s and '80s. This isn't to deny that certain action set pieces in post-Schindler films have that unmistakable Spielberg flair (Minority Report has a couple humdingers), but those set pieces are couched in movies defined by dark, despairing, and sinister subtextual undercurrents. Now here comes The Adventures of Tintin, an old-school adventure yarn that's proudly devoid of heavy thematic ruminations, and all I can say is: whoops! Tintin is an uncommonly exhilarating popcorn-movie ride, and what's also uncommon is how Spielberg brings a real artistry, not just genre craftsmanship, to an admittedly weightless bit of fun. His peerless gift for visual composition allows him to sneak in many mischievously witty gags within the frame, and he takes advantage of the freedom afforded him through performance-capture animation (thank goodness those faces look more expressive now!) to shoot the movie's most awe-inspiring set pieces in vertiginous long takes. Detractors who gripe about the youthful protagonist (voiced by Jamie Bell) being defined only by his thirst for adventure are missing the point entirely. Whenever Spielberg focuses on a child or young-adult character, it's always as an interesting point of identification, thus making Tintin a surprising and joyous reaffirmation of the incongruously boyish adrenaline rush that fuels its aging auteur's passion for filmmaking.
9. We Need to Talk About Kevin (Lynne Ramsay). In her second feature, 2002's Movern Callar, Scottish director Ramsay mastered the art of subjetive-point-of-view cinematic storytelling--using images, edits, and an intricate sound design to plunk the viewer directly into the central character's noggin. For her audacious, long-awaited (like Malick, Ramsay is a genius who really should work more often) follow-up, We Need to Talk About Kevin, Ramsay applies that intuitive talent to an unlikely subgenre--the demon-seed horror movie--and, as a result, ends up granting that subgenre a much-needed artistic legitimacy. That makes Kevin coincidentally similar to The Skin I Live In; both films redeem potentially disreputable exploitation elements via an understanding of how even the most lowbrow genre material can be infused with rich character and thematic undercurrents. Ramsay's gorgeously abstract non-chronological shifts between past and present mirror the flow of memories that clutch Eva (Tilda Swinton), who can't help but blame herself for raising a very disturbed son who ends up...well, let's just say he commits a heinous atrocity that merits discussion, as per the title. The formidable Swinton is a marvel at embodying the two sides of Eva we see--the frustrated mother who regards parenthood as a riddle she can't figure out, and the town pariah who has been transformed by guilt and shame into a meek, withering shell of her former self. Ramsay coats the movie in an air of dread so consuming that I walked out of the movie feeling shaken and positively poisoned by it, and underneath that dread is an assessment of parenthood that bracingly goes against the suger-coated norm.
10. 13 Assassins (Takashi Miike). Sometimes the shrewdest and most effective action movies are those that consciously mimic a roller-coaster trajectory--an unapologetically long build-up followed by a giddy plunge downward. (Think of The Matrix, for example--the necessary world-building exposition leading to a glorious cascade of awesomeness.) Miike, who, unlike other directors on this list, tends to be too prolific, has made his most fully realized film since the genuinely progressive torture-porn-slash-gender-relations-study whatsit Audition by adhering to this structure and making it his own. The stakes-establishing first half of 13 Assassins has proven too deliberately paced for some--and, indeed, there's a chance the film would be higher on my list if the right five or so minutes were trimmed--but there's something refreshingly neo-classical in the calm, patient manner in which Miike depicts the rounding-up of the titular team. Once the baker's dozen of warriors is assembled, Miike then cuts loose with a dazzling, brilliantly choreographed climax that effectively takes up the entire latter half of the film. The mega-sized set piece is as gloriously kinetic and impressively sustained as the hospital-set finale of John Woo's action milestone Hard-Boiled. As with that film, and with the other remarkable movies that made this list of the best of '11, 13 Assassins leaves you in an enraptured state where you truly can't believe what you're seeing.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
The Best Films of 2011: The Runners-Up
Well, it would be highly illogical to pretend I've taken only a short hiatus from this blog, to put it mildly. In my defense, though, the discipline required to write good-sized reviews of every single movie I see--both theatrically and in a home-viewing context--without any discernible financial benefit was more than I could muster. (I really didn't see much of a spike in freelance opportunities once I began promoting the blog, aside from the editors I frequently write for making sure some gigs came my way. Love you, editors!) At the same time, though, I'm way too much of a nerd and way too invested in exercising my writing muscles to retire this blog entirely. So, to my readers, thank you for your support and please be aware Loves of a Blonde is not dead.
I figured the best way to breathe some life into the blog would be to do a two-part series on the best films of 2011. I actually haven't published a best-of-the-year list since 2007, which is awfully negligent of me, considering I sincerely love the annual list-making process. I'm open-minded enough to see why some critics have grown jaded towards the act of compiling their own lists, but it's simply not an attitude I share. For me, a best-of-year list is a valuable, time-capsule-esque record of the truly special films to emerge in a given year--the ones that have a genuine shot at enduring over time as memorably great films. It's also a way of directing readers towards movies that they'll likely feel just as passionate about once seen, and additionally, I see my own list as interacting with other critics' lists in an essential dialogue. I know that, for example, before I watch an older film on cable, I'll scan through the assembled ten-best lists of other members of my Yahoo! movie-nerd group to see if it's worth a look.
And while returning to best-list making in an unpaid capacity has an obvious downside, there is a significant upside: total, editors-be-damned freedom. This is already evident in my rampant use of first-person, which is often a no-no, but I aim to use it elegantly, and besides, I think it's suitable for subjective list making. And in my first move beyond introductory throat-clearing, I'd like to indulge in rattling off some of the well-liked 2011 releases I didn't get around to seeing, which I haven't had the chance to do professionally before in a list-making piece. So my apologies to Senna, The Arbor, The Future, Pariah, Pina, Le Quattro Volte, Tuesday After Christmas, Mysteries of Lisbon, House of Pleasures, The Interrupters, and Like Crazy. If I had tried to cram in viewings of all of those, I never would've gotten around to this piece in a timely fashion. I'll certainly try to catch up with them down the line, and if any of them inspire me to adjust the 2011 list, I now have a forum to do just that.
The totally liberated nature of this blog also allows me to address every 2011 release that I found particularly "list-worthy," so here are 11 movies that didn't make my top 20 but are still pretty great, listed in preferential order:
21. Coriolanus (Ralph Fiennes)
22. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (David Fincher)
23. Rubber (Quentin Dupieux)
24. Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami)
25. Weekend (Andrew Haigh)
26. The Myth of the American Sleepover (David Robert Mitchell)
27. Rebirth (Jim Whitaker)
28. Tabloid (Errol Morris)
29. Pearl Jam Twenty (Cameron Crowe)
30. Being Elmo: A Pupeteer's Journey (Constance Marks)
31. Insidious (James Wan)
And now, for my closest ten runners-up, which I feel each deserve the distinction of a brief write-up:
11. Bridesmaids (Paul Feig). What makes Bridesmaids the most satisfying and infectiously entertaining comedy off of the Judd Apatow Assembly Line since The 40-Year-Old Virgin is that, like that 2005 mainstream-comedy landmark, it anchors its pleasurably ample belly laughs with a genuine humanity. Annie, played with revelatory nuance by SNL's fearless Kristen Wiig (who also co-wrote the screenplay with Annie Mumolo), is like an unfortunate number of over-30 singletons who have hit an economic wall and can't help but drown their sorrows to near-excess. While I politically sympathize with the consensus that the film represents a progressive step forward for women in mainstream comedy, I believe that viewpoint obscures the achievement that anyone, of any gender and background, can relate to a humanly flawed protagonist like Annie. And, like all the best comedies that Apatow has either produced or directed, Bridesmaids still manages in spite of its admirable dark shadings to send you out of the theatre in a giddy high.
12. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul). I'll admit that after my first exposure to beloved Thai auteur Weerasethakul, affectionately called the more Western-friendly "Joe" by his non-local fans, I was concerned he wasn't my cup of tea. It was his Syndromes and a Century, a film inspired by the time his parents first met that I believe only he could make complete sense of, that scared me off. But Uncle Boonmee rewarded me for giving him another chance and then some. His pacing still has a tropical langour to it, but this time, by marrying that unique rhythm to a relatively accessible story that profoundly reflects on the connection between the living and the spirit world, he's made one of the year's trippiest and most hypnotic art-film experiences. His particular surrealism veers from the eerie to the wryly deadpan in an uncanny way, and he fully immerses the viewer in the spirit world of the Thai jungle. I find it wonderful that mainstream fantasist Tim Burton was the Cannes Film Festival jury head who rewarded esoteric fantasist Weerasethakul with the Palme d'Or, and now I'll look forward to what both auteurs have to offer next.
13. The Muppets (James Bobin). As with Pearl Jam Twenty, I can't deny I'm in the tank for this reboot; I'm a child of the '80s, after all. But The Muppets actually manages to soar above the expectations of even the most loyal fans of Kermit and company, and a lot of the credit goes to writers Jason Segel (who also stars, and famously used his newly acquired clout to get this project off the ground) and Nicholas Stoller, whose meta-level satire questions whether Jim Henson's sincere-to-the-core creations can thrive in an increasingly cynical marketplace. By the time the movie reaches its genuinely touching let's-put-on-a-show climax, the answer has become an emphatic "yes," with Segel and Stoller arguing for the importance of the virtues of family, friendship, and community in the bottom-line-fixated realm of show business. The songs are witty, Flight of the Conchords veteran Bobin lends a nice mock-Technicolor zest to the big numbers, and, well, I even got teary-eyed. Who would've guessed?
14. Shame (Steve McQueen). It's unusual to adopt a defensive posture on a film so critically acclaimed, but it's troubling that the vocal detractors of Shame insist that it relies on the same finger-wagging moralism that fuels the weakest addiction tales in film history. (And sorry, but I'm thinking of something like Billy Wilder's career-worst The Lost Weekend here.) Instead, I think what McQueen and star Michael Fassbender pull off (and this really is a movie where the lead actor is a key collaborator) is an honest, non-judgmental, and piercing glimpse into what lies behind addiction: a sad and aching need to not be left alone with one's personal demons. Fassbender embodies that need with a masterfully interiorized performance, and McQueen, coming off of his equally great debut Hunger, has such a beautiful visual aesthetic that I have no idea how anyone can walk out claiming this is the kind of addiction tale you need to shower after. As writers, McQueen and co-scripter Abi Morgan (the mastermind behind BBC's verbally dazzling The Hour) withhold artificial exposition in a really fresh way, a strategy that pays off in a key third-act brother-and-sister showdown that contains the most movingly urgent acting of Carey Mulligan's career. This is a tough film, but don't mistake it for a lecturing one.
15. Beginners (Mike Mills). The reason why Christopher Plummer should win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his magnificent performance in Beginners has nothing to do with the impeccable Academy Award track record of heterosexual actors playing gay characters (Tom Hanks in Philadelphia, Philip Seymour Hoffman in Capote, etc.), nor is it related to the perception that this veteran is "due," although try not being sentimental about an actor so downright awesome. It's because Plummer, as Hal Fields, a patriarch who comes out of the closet to his now-adult son (Ewan McGregor), gives the rare supporting performance that suggests a full life outside the boundaries of the movie. There's such a specificity to the twinkly-eyed vigor Plummer graces Hal with; this is a vividly drawn individual embracing the life that he has always wanted for himself even when on the verge of death. (Not a spoiler. Trust me.) McGregor and Melanie Laurent also deserve a mention for the delicate dance of fear and hope they suggest as their characters fall hopelessly in love. Writer-director Mills leaps forward nicely from his solid but more undistinguished debut Thumbsucker, and he redeems the trope of the "autobiographical film" via his fluid and confident leaps forward and backward in time. More than anything, he's made a film with such a big heart it'll make you cry for all sorts of reasons.
16. Margin Call (J.C. Chandor). Charles Ferguson's Inside Job, a documentary on the '08 financial crisis, was meticulous and reasonably absorbing, and I respect what Curtis Hanson brought to the generically scripted HBO film Too Big to Fail, but I began to fear that no one would make a movie about the Wall Street collapse that I'd have any desire to watch more than once. So it's bracing to report that young upstart Chandor has done just that with his very first film, a slick, briskly paced satire on the collapse of the 1% that is elevated by Chandor's staggering gift at capturing the macho verbal bravado of men who became too rich at too young an age. As a writer, he's clearly influenced by the verbal snap and laid-bare masculine floundering of David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross, but this is no mere imitation. Chandor keys into the times we live in with unshowy verve, and he's wise enough to balance his satiric bite with a compassion for everyone onscreen, even the most shark-like suits. One of the year's best ensemble casts includes standout turns from Jeremy Irons, Paul Bettany, Zachary Quinto, Stanley Tucci, Simon Baker (!), and, in his best performance in years, Kevin Spacey as a higher-up who brings a surprisingly Willy Loman-esque decency in his approach to work and family.
17. Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn). I think it's obnoxiously cynical to focus on nitpicks in best-of pieces, so let's get this out of the way: Albert Brooks should be nowhere near the Supporting Actor race for his Drive work. Don't get me wrong--he's an indisputable genius, and often underrated for his acting skills. But he's just playing a standard-issue villain here, and the tiresome imitation-Tarantino nature of many of his third-act scenes is what prevents this movie from being higher on my list. Now, for the very, very good news: Drive is a mash-up of '80s-style action movie and formally audacious, defiantly leisurely love story that plays, at its frequent best, like Michael Mann's Punch-Drunk Love. It's just as addictive and irresistible as that description suggests, and Refn, the brash stylist of the criminally underseen Bronson, uses Los Angeles as a limitless genre-movie playground. He and his magical director of photography Newton Thomas Sigel are so opulent in their use of the widescreen frame you'd swear the movie was shot in Cinerama or some similar maximizing format. Ryan Gosling has had a hell of a year, and I wish he was more of a presence in the Best Actor Oscar race for his freakishly controlled work as the Driver; it's not only an iconic performance, but a breathtakingly precise one. And naturally, he dominates in the movie's centerpiece sequence--an elevator trip that is horrific, sexy, and as sterling a piece of cinema-for-its-own-sake as you're likely to see all year.
18. Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Werner Herzog) When I finally caught up with Herzog's other '11 release, Into the Abyss, I was a tad disappointed; it's hardly a bad film, but when seeing Herzog use his signature "evocative handheld tracking shots accompanied by strings-heavy music" documentary approach in capturing mundane Texas crime scenes, it's hard not to feel that he's just aesthetically making lemonade with some poorly picked lemons. In contrast, Cave of Forgotten Dreams finds him leaping into the unknown, which is where he does his best work. His camera lingers on the surprisingly detailed early-humankind drawings in France's Chauvet Cave, and in this context, the effect is mesmerizing and dream-like. Thematically, he's pondering the need for artistic expression that has united us all throughout time, and he's so shrewd a combination of rigorous artist and affable stoner-philosopher that he gets the audience pondering right along with him. Perhaps more impressively, he uses the divisive format of 3D with such tactile assurance that even the sight of jutting calcite ridges provokes an awestruck response. Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a work of such primitive wonder that it's hardly a knock to say that I'm not sure I'd want to rewatch it in 2D on a small screen. It's built to envelop you.
19. Contagion (Steven Soderbergh). There are plenty of people irked by how much of a pseudo-Godardian, intellectual-art-film court jester Soderbergh has become, and he's hardly infallible (The Good German is just painful). But for me, the majority of his recent films, no matter how quickly turned out, are so alive with cinematically vivid style and ticklish subtext as to render concerns about him becoming too much of an alienating weirdo entirely moot. Contagion is no exception. Its procedural density in portraying how the world would deal with the spread of a lethal virus is intoxicating for those of us who enjoy turning our brains on for a genre movie every now and then. The provocative subtext here, conveyed with frightening plausibility, is that unavoidable modern-world realities like money and politics would prevent us from immediately finding and spreading a cure if this scenario were to play out outside the multiplex. Yes, it's a cold film, but it's also quite audacious for a big-studio release, and Soderbergh could do far worse for a counterbalancing warmth vaccine than Matt Damon. I don't know quite when Damon became the new heir to the Jimmy Stewart and Tom Hanks tradition of unsentimental goodness, but he's now one of the most reliable screen presences we have.
20. A Separation (Asghar Farhadi). Conventional dramatic wisdom dictates that tension is derived from pitting a hero worth rooting for against an unambiguously hissable villain, but A Separation is interested only in the gray area between good and bad and yet manages to be so in-the-moment engrossing that it's the rare film that would leave me stumped as to its runtime if I didn't obsessively know it beforehand (123 minutes, for the record). It would take more than a best-list capsule to explore the movie's thought-provoking reflections on class, religion, and gender in Iranian society, but there's a level on which the movie genuinely transcends politics to dig into universal themes of ethical responsibility, what any person wants for his or her family, and the way immense stress can chip away at anyone's better nature. A Separation is a domestic drama, but its DNA is taken from the morally complex courtroom thrillers of the great Sidney Lumet. It may seem odd to praise a distributor in a piece like this, but I love that Sony Pictures Classics is flying so under-the-radar with this that every audience member can discover Farhadi's achievement for him- or herself, blessedly hype-free. The word-of-mouth on this film may lead to it being a surprise stateside hit among adults hungry for something fresh and meaty. Not to get too Travers-y, but you do not want to miss this.
With my tendency to ramble, I feel it'll be best to wait a few days on my Top Ten piece, for my sake and my readers' sake. In the meantime, please add the films among my runners-up you haven't seen to your rental queues, and feel free to comment on what you agree or disagree with. Then, on or before Monday, I'll unleash my list of the ten best films of 2011.
I figured the best way to breathe some life into the blog would be to do a two-part series on the best films of 2011. I actually haven't published a best-of-the-year list since 2007, which is awfully negligent of me, considering I sincerely love the annual list-making process. I'm open-minded enough to see why some critics have grown jaded towards the act of compiling their own lists, but it's simply not an attitude I share. For me, a best-of-year list is a valuable, time-capsule-esque record of the truly special films to emerge in a given year--the ones that have a genuine shot at enduring over time as memorably great films. It's also a way of directing readers towards movies that they'll likely feel just as passionate about once seen, and additionally, I see my own list as interacting with other critics' lists in an essential dialogue. I know that, for example, before I watch an older film on cable, I'll scan through the assembled ten-best lists of other members of my Yahoo! movie-nerd group to see if it's worth a look.
And while returning to best-list making in an unpaid capacity has an obvious downside, there is a significant upside: total, editors-be-damned freedom. This is already evident in my rampant use of first-person, which is often a no-no, but I aim to use it elegantly, and besides, I think it's suitable for subjective list making. And in my first move beyond introductory throat-clearing, I'd like to indulge in rattling off some of the well-liked 2011 releases I didn't get around to seeing, which I haven't had the chance to do professionally before in a list-making piece. So my apologies to Senna, The Arbor, The Future, Pariah, Pina, Le Quattro Volte, Tuesday After Christmas, Mysteries of Lisbon, House of Pleasures, The Interrupters, and Like Crazy. If I had tried to cram in viewings of all of those, I never would've gotten around to this piece in a timely fashion. I'll certainly try to catch up with them down the line, and if any of them inspire me to adjust the 2011 list, I now have a forum to do just that.
The totally liberated nature of this blog also allows me to address every 2011 release that I found particularly "list-worthy," so here are 11 movies that didn't make my top 20 but are still pretty great, listed in preferential order:
21. Coriolanus (Ralph Fiennes)
22. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (David Fincher)
23. Rubber (Quentin Dupieux)
24. Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami)
25. Weekend (Andrew Haigh)
26. The Myth of the American Sleepover (David Robert Mitchell)
27. Rebirth (Jim Whitaker)
28. Tabloid (Errol Morris)
29. Pearl Jam Twenty (Cameron Crowe)
30. Being Elmo: A Pupeteer's Journey (Constance Marks)
31. Insidious (James Wan)
And now, for my closest ten runners-up, which I feel each deserve the distinction of a brief write-up:
11. Bridesmaids (Paul Feig). What makes Bridesmaids the most satisfying and infectiously entertaining comedy off of the Judd Apatow Assembly Line since The 40-Year-Old Virgin is that, like that 2005 mainstream-comedy landmark, it anchors its pleasurably ample belly laughs with a genuine humanity. Annie, played with revelatory nuance by SNL's fearless Kristen Wiig (who also co-wrote the screenplay with Annie Mumolo), is like an unfortunate number of over-30 singletons who have hit an economic wall and can't help but drown their sorrows to near-excess. While I politically sympathize with the consensus that the film represents a progressive step forward for women in mainstream comedy, I believe that viewpoint obscures the achievement that anyone, of any gender and background, can relate to a humanly flawed protagonist like Annie. And, like all the best comedies that Apatow has either produced or directed, Bridesmaids still manages in spite of its admirable dark shadings to send you out of the theatre in a giddy high.
12. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul). I'll admit that after my first exposure to beloved Thai auteur Weerasethakul, affectionately called the more Western-friendly "Joe" by his non-local fans, I was concerned he wasn't my cup of tea. It was his Syndromes and a Century, a film inspired by the time his parents first met that I believe only he could make complete sense of, that scared me off. But Uncle Boonmee rewarded me for giving him another chance and then some. His pacing still has a tropical langour to it, but this time, by marrying that unique rhythm to a relatively accessible story that profoundly reflects on the connection between the living and the spirit world, he's made one of the year's trippiest and most hypnotic art-film experiences. His particular surrealism veers from the eerie to the wryly deadpan in an uncanny way, and he fully immerses the viewer in the spirit world of the Thai jungle. I find it wonderful that mainstream fantasist Tim Burton was the Cannes Film Festival jury head who rewarded esoteric fantasist Weerasethakul with the Palme d'Or, and now I'll look forward to what both auteurs have to offer next.
13. The Muppets (James Bobin). As with Pearl Jam Twenty, I can't deny I'm in the tank for this reboot; I'm a child of the '80s, after all. But The Muppets actually manages to soar above the expectations of even the most loyal fans of Kermit and company, and a lot of the credit goes to writers Jason Segel (who also stars, and famously used his newly acquired clout to get this project off the ground) and Nicholas Stoller, whose meta-level satire questions whether Jim Henson's sincere-to-the-core creations can thrive in an increasingly cynical marketplace. By the time the movie reaches its genuinely touching let's-put-on-a-show climax, the answer has become an emphatic "yes," with Segel and Stoller arguing for the importance of the virtues of family, friendship, and community in the bottom-line-fixated realm of show business. The songs are witty, Flight of the Conchords veteran Bobin lends a nice mock-Technicolor zest to the big numbers, and, well, I even got teary-eyed. Who would've guessed?
14. Shame (Steve McQueen). It's unusual to adopt a defensive posture on a film so critically acclaimed, but it's troubling that the vocal detractors of Shame insist that it relies on the same finger-wagging moralism that fuels the weakest addiction tales in film history. (And sorry, but I'm thinking of something like Billy Wilder's career-worst The Lost Weekend here.) Instead, I think what McQueen and star Michael Fassbender pull off (and this really is a movie where the lead actor is a key collaborator) is an honest, non-judgmental, and piercing glimpse into what lies behind addiction: a sad and aching need to not be left alone with one's personal demons. Fassbender embodies that need with a masterfully interiorized performance, and McQueen, coming off of his equally great debut Hunger, has such a beautiful visual aesthetic that I have no idea how anyone can walk out claiming this is the kind of addiction tale you need to shower after. As writers, McQueen and co-scripter Abi Morgan (the mastermind behind BBC's verbally dazzling The Hour) withhold artificial exposition in a really fresh way, a strategy that pays off in a key third-act brother-and-sister showdown that contains the most movingly urgent acting of Carey Mulligan's career. This is a tough film, but don't mistake it for a lecturing one.
15. Beginners (Mike Mills). The reason why Christopher Plummer should win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his magnificent performance in Beginners has nothing to do with the impeccable Academy Award track record of heterosexual actors playing gay characters (Tom Hanks in Philadelphia, Philip Seymour Hoffman in Capote, etc.), nor is it related to the perception that this veteran is "due," although try not being sentimental about an actor so downright awesome. It's because Plummer, as Hal Fields, a patriarch who comes out of the closet to his now-adult son (Ewan McGregor), gives the rare supporting performance that suggests a full life outside the boundaries of the movie. There's such a specificity to the twinkly-eyed vigor Plummer graces Hal with; this is a vividly drawn individual embracing the life that he has always wanted for himself even when on the verge of death. (Not a spoiler. Trust me.) McGregor and Melanie Laurent also deserve a mention for the delicate dance of fear and hope they suggest as their characters fall hopelessly in love. Writer-director Mills leaps forward nicely from his solid but more undistinguished debut Thumbsucker, and he redeems the trope of the "autobiographical film" via his fluid and confident leaps forward and backward in time. More than anything, he's made a film with such a big heart it'll make you cry for all sorts of reasons.
16. Margin Call (J.C. Chandor). Charles Ferguson's Inside Job, a documentary on the '08 financial crisis, was meticulous and reasonably absorbing, and I respect what Curtis Hanson brought to the generically scripted HBO film Too Big to Fail, but I began to fear that no one would make a movie about the Wall Street collapse that I'd have any desire to watch more than once. So it's bracing to report that young upstart Chandor has done just that with his very first film, a slick, briskly paced satire on the collapse of the 1% that is elevated by Chandor's staggering gift at capturing the macho verbal bravado of men who became too rich at too young an age. As a writer, he's clearly influenced by the verbal snap and laid-bare masculine floundering of David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross, but this is no mere imitation. Chandor keys into the times we live in with unshowy verve, and he's wise enough to balance his satiric bite with a compassion for everyone onscreen, even the most shark-like suits. One of the year's best ensemble casts includes standout turns from Jeremy Irons, Paul Bettany, Zachary Quinto, Stanley Tucci, Simon Baker (!), and, in his best performance in years, Kevin Spacey as a higher-up who brings a surprisingly Willy Loman-esque decency in his approach to work and family.
17. Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn). I think it's obnoxiously cynical to focus on nitpicks in best-of pieces, so let's get this out of the way: Albert Brooks should be nowhere near the Supporting Actor race for his Drive work. Don't get me wrong--he's an indisputable genius, and often underrated for his acting skills. But he's just playing a standard-issue villain here, and the tiresome imitation-Tarantino nature of many of his third-act scenes is what prevents this movie from being higher on my list. Now, for the very, very good news: Drive is a mash-up of '80s-style action movie and formally audacious, defiantly leisurely love story that plays, at its frequent best, like Michael Mann's Punch-Drunk Love. It's just as addictive and irresistible as that description suggests, and Refn, the brash stylist of the criminally underseen Bronson, uses Los Angeles as a limitless genre-movie playground. He and his magical director of photography Newton Thomas Sigel are so opulent in their use of the widescreen frame you'd swear the movie was shot in Cinerama or some similar maximizing format. Ryan Gosling has had a hell of a year, and I wish he was more of a presence in the Best Actor Oscar race for his freakishly controlled work as the Driver; it's not only an iconic performance, but a breathtakingly precise one. And naturally, he dominates in the movie's centerpiece sequence--an elevator trip that is horrific, sexy, and as sterling a piece of cinema-for-its-own-sake as you're likely to see all year.
18. Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Werner Herzog) When I finally caught up with Herzog's other '11 release, Into the Abyss, I was a tad disappointed; it's hardly a bad film, but when seeing Herzog use his signature "evocative handheld tracking shots accompanied by strings-heavy music" documentary approach in capturing mundane Texas crime scenes, it's hard not to feel that he's just aesthetically making lemonade with some poorly picked lemons. In contrast, Cave of Forgotten Dreams finds him leaping into the unknown, which is where he does his best work. His camera lingers on the surprisingly detailed early-humankind drawings in France's Chauvet Cave, and in this context, the effect is mesmerizing and dream-like. Thematically, he's pondering the need for artistic expression that has united us all throughout time, and he's so shrewd a combination of rigorous artist and affable stoner-philosopher that he gets the audience pondering right along with him. Perhaps more impressively, he uses the divisive format of 3D with such tactile assurance that even the sight of jutting calcite ridges provokes an awestruck response. Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a work of such primitive wonder that it's hardly a knock to say that I'm not sure I'd want to rewatch it in 2D on a small screen. It's built to envelop you.
19. Contagion (Steven Soderbergh). There are plenty of people irked by how much of a pseudo-Godardian, intellectual-art-film court jester Soderbergh has become, and he's hardly infallible (The Good German is just painful). But for me, the majority of his recent films, no matter how quickly turned out, are so alive with cinematically vivid style and ticklish subtext as to render concerns about him becoming too much of an alienating weirdo entirely moot. Contagion is no exception. Its procedural density in portraying how the world would deal with the spread of a lethal virus is intoxicating for those of us who enjoy turning our brains on for a genre movie every now and then. The provocative subtext here, conveyed with frightening plausibility, is that unavoidable modern-world realities like money and politics would prevent us from immediately finding and spreading a cure if this scenario were to play out outside the multiplex. Yes, it's a cold film, but it's also quite audacious for a big-studio release, and Soderbergh could do far worse for a counterbalancing warmth vaccine than Matt Damon. I don't know quite when Damon became the new heir to the Jimmy Stewart and Tom Hanks tradition of unsentimental goodness, but he's now one of the most reliable screen presences we have.
20. A Separation (Asghar Farhadi). Conventional dramatic wisdom dictates that tension is derived from pitting a hero worth rooting for against an unambiguously hissable villain, but A Separation is interested only in the gray area between good and bad and yet manages to be so in-the-moment engrossing that it's the rare film that would leave me stumped as to its runtime if I didn't obsessively know it beforehand (123 minutes, for the record). It would take more than a best-list capsule to explore the movie's thought-provoking reflections on class, religion, and gender in Iranian society, but there's a level on which the movie genuinely transcends politics to dig into universal themes of ethical responsibility, what any person wants for his or her family, and the way immense stress can chip away at anyone's better nature. A Separation is a domestic drama, but its DNA is taken from the morally complex courtroom thrillers of the great Sidney Lumet. It may seem odd to praise a distributor in a piece like this, but I love that Sony Pictures Classics is flying so under-the-radar with this that every audience member can discover Farhadi's achievement for him- or herself, blessedly hype-free. The word-of-mouth on this film may lead to it being a surprise stateside hit among adults hungry for something fresh and meaty. Not to get too Travers-y, but you do not want to miss this.
With my tendency to ramble, I feel it'll be best to wait a few days on my Top Ten piece, for my sake and my readers' sake. In the meantime, please add the films among my runners-up you haven't seen to your rental queues, and feel free to comment on what you agree or disagree with. Then, on or before Monday, I'll unleash my list of the ten best films of 2011.
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