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.
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