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Favourite Films of 2011

While it seemed like a slow year for films (part way through the year I was wondering when the really great films were going to show up), as summer gave way to fall there were a lot of really great films that showed up. Usually there are a cluster of amazing films at the Atlantic Film Festival and that happened and then there were some very cinematic and beautiful films that had some limited theatrical releases. For some reason many of the films that I loved in 2011 were a bit more challenging and poetic than in previous years and I also had the chance to see a few of my favourites more than once in the theatre.

Here are the films roughly in the order that I enjoyed them:

Café de Flore

One of the most intriguing films of the year was the ambitious Café de Flore which combines stunning cinematography with a great soundtrack that weaves together stories of characters separated in time and space. Music provides the impressionistic connection between them all and it really is about love. The director Jean-Marc Vallée previously made the wonderful C.R.A.Z.Y. which was a coming-of-age story set in early 1970s Québec. Café de Flore is set in Montreal in the 1980s and the present day with another parallel story set in Paris in the 1960s. Magically, Vallée manages to make it all fit together beautifully with dense visual and sonic textures that surround the interesting characters.

Melancholia

I’ve written about Melancholia before and it remains one of my favourite films of the past few years. It’s an odd combinations of disasters and strange perspectives when you try to balance personal conflict with the end of the world, but somehow it works wonderfully. Part spectacle and part intimate drama, it works on a metaphorical and personal level and is best seen on a large screen as an experience.

Hugo

Martin Scorsese makes films that are always interesting to watch and with Hugo he experiments with 3D and managed to create a story that combines diverse elements together with a nice dollop of cinema history. While I’m not a fan of 3D, in the hands of Scorsese it becomes quite a wonderful part of the film and it actually makes a lot of sense to use it. With great performances from the whole cast, it was a wonderful time at the movies and I went to see it a couple of times because of that.

The Tree of Life

While it can be uneven and frustrating at times, it’s undeniable that there are transcendent moments throughout The Tree of Life. Going from the history of the universe and the earth to the personal history of a family, it blends it all together into a poetic, impressionistic film that is beautiful to see. Malick strips away exposition and focusses on moments that provide tiny bits of insight into the lives of the characters in an exquisite portrait of growing up in the 1950s in Texas.

Drive

Drive feels like it was made in the 1980s with the synthesizer soundtrack and hot pink font for the titles and the shallow characters who reveal their feelings (or don’t) through slightly cheesy dialogue. But it’s very much aware that it isn’t from the 80s and Nicholas Winding Refn builds the film around Ryan Gosling’s quiet performance as a driver with a shady past. Deliberately-paced with a few explosions of rather brutal violence, it’s a minimalist meditation on the choices that a character makes. Gosling is surrounded with a solid supporting cast who commit to the film and the tone without ever winking at the audience.

The Future

One theme that runs through many of my favourite films from the past year is that when describing them it could be easy to think that they may not be the best ideas for a film. But often it’s what the filmmaker brings to the idea that makes it much more interesting and Miranda July walks a fine line in The Future. The film is about an artist who is worried about her life and how time seems to be slipping away from her. July combines the odd and quirky elements of her writing and art together into a film that becomes much more profound than the sum of the parts and explores similar territory to her first feature, Me and You and Everyone We Know.

Source Code

I loved Duncan Jones’ first feature Moon and was eagerly anticipating his followup, Source Code. The concept is simple, a soldier wakes up inside the body of someone else and his mission (to be completed within 8 minutes) is to find out who planted a bomb on a train. Taking elements of Groundhog Day and Run Lola Run within a science fiction / thriller context may not seem compelling at first, but Jones manages to construct a film that is filled with clues and wonderful moments with a relentless pace that makes the time zip by. I loved it and saw it twice in the theatre and enjoyed it even more the second time.

Midnight in Paris

It seems like getting out of New York is pretty good for Woody Allen and seeing Midnight in Paris was a lot of fun. With Owen Wilson taking on the Woody Allen role perfectly, it’s great to see a simple and slight story about nostagia and how we imagine how the past is always much better than our present. Peppered with great lines and quirky performances (which I don’t want to spoil), it’s classic Woody Allen that sprang from his early standup mixed with some gorgeous Paris locations.

The Skin I Live In

I’m willing to jump in and go on any ride that Pedro Almodovar wants to take me on, so when I saw that The Skin I Live In was playing at the 2011 Atlantic Film Festival I knew that I had to go. I’d seen his previous two films there as well, so this is a bit of a tradition for me. As with pretty much all of Almodovar’s films a description of the plot is somewhat beside the point as he usually circles around the same themes about identity, gender and obsession and this time he throws in a bit of science in a shaggy dog story that goes to extraordinary lengths to makes points. It’s beautiful to look at, funny and a bit disturbing at times, but I really enjoyed it a lot.

The Artist

The Artist was the film that went in to the Academy Awards with a lot of buzz which paid off with a number of awards was also an enjoyable film. Cleverly constructed as a silent film in black and white, it followed the conceit all the way through and in a similar way to a great 3D film like Hugo, you forget that it’s silent and get drawn in to the story. Overall the film had a darker theme than I thought it was going to have and that made it work a lot better for me. Another love letter to a bygone era, it’s definitely worth seeing as an example of what can be done with a solid cast and a good story regardless of the technologies or techniques used.

March 17, 2012 2011, film, lists

Favourite Films of 2010 and More

The past year was a pretty good one in film and it wasn’t really that difficult to come up with a list of the ten films I enjoyed the most. It was an interesting and uneven year with solid films from great filmmakers and some neat new discoveries. I’ve written about the films in separate reviews on the blog, so this is a chance to make some observations about the films.

Most of the films feature strong and compelling characters with riveting performances. Some new discoveries for me with actors young and old with Katie Jarvis in Fish Tank, Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone, Tahar Rahim in A Prophet, and Kim Hye-ja in Mother. Some great central performances by some of my favourite actors with George Clooney in The American and Tilda Swinton in I Am Love. At the other end of the spectrum are great established ensemble casts with Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham-Carter in The King’s Speech, Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield, and Keira Knightly in Never Let Me Go. Finally two films with sprawling, complex stories and great ensemble acting with In a Better World and Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.

Two films play with shooting conventions with bold, open framing by Martin Ruhe in The American and off-centre, wide-angle compositions by Danny Cohen in The King’s Speech. The more intimate stories have naturalistic and intimate shooting styles by Stéphane Fontaine in A Prophet, and Robbie Ryan with Fish Tank. Moving into a sensuous and impressionistic style is Yorick Le Saux with I Am Love.

The films are diverse with half of them in languages other than English and most of them have a level of ambiguity to them, which I really like. The stories are constructed and we have to fill in many of the blanks. The most ambiguous and diverse of the films is easily Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives which crammed so many different styles and tones into one film and ultimate had an amazing ending that gave me chills. I Am Love, Winter’s Bone, In A Better World, Mother, The American, and Fish Tank all work slowly at first, but build to resolutions that raise the stakes are are surprising.

One of the nice things with the availability of films more quickly after their theatrical release is that you can see these films as well as other ones by the directors and actors. Some of the directors from my list this year have me looking forward to everything they do such as Andrea Arnold of Fish Tank who previously did Red Road which works in the same working-class British environment, or Anton Corbijn who followed up Control with The American. I love Jacques Audiard‘s compelling character studies with Read My Lips and The Beat That My Heart Skipped leading logically into A Prophet. Susanne Bier works more melodramatically with her large casts with Brothers and After the Wedding exploring similar ground as her In A Better World.

While the list has ten films here are some other films that I really enjoyed that can be honourable mentions for 2010. Ingrid Veninger wrote and directed the coming-of-age drama Modra in a documentary-style with a great cast enhancing the story. Xavier Dolan‘s Heartbeats was one of the most gorgeous films with lovely cinematography by Stéphanie Anne Weber Biron. Banksy’s documentary (mockumentary?) Exit Through the Gift Shop was fun and provocative and made me think a lot about art and how it can be defined. One of the geekiest and funnest film from the past year was Edgar Wright‘s underrated Scott Pilgrim vs. the World which fused film, video game and comic book aesthetics into something that was fun and light.

The films from established directors such as Scorese‘s Shutter Island, Polanski‘s The Ghost Writer, Christopher Nolan‘s Inception, and the Coen’s True Grit were solid genre exercises that were good to watch, but not really extraordinary compared to their other films. David Fincher and Darren Aronofsky both told stylistically interesting, but oddly misogynistic stories with The Social Network and Black Swan. While making splashes with their releases, the Fincher and Aronofsky films were a bit more interesting later to discuss than they were to watch thanks to some heavy-handed writing with both films. An action-filled pleasant surprise was seeing Angelina Jolie in Philip Noyce‘s Salt which was a enjoyable well-constructed thriller with a strong central female character.

So it was a good year for films with lots of solid work, but nothing really standing out too much for me with the exception of Uncle Boonmee which was a pleasure to see in the theatre.

January 3, 2011 2010, film, lists