DANIEL’S TOP TEN OF 2011

I’ve missed a lot of movies this year.  I feel like there are so many I still need to see and yet there are so many good ones I already did see.  Every year feels like a letdown from the previous year but better at the same time.  I think it speaks to the quality of different films coming out every year, one year will be better for dramas and intelligent films, another year will be better for experimental and anti-mainstream movies.  The year-end lists are all relative to the 365 days that pass, but films come out on such a tidy release schedule it’s useful to reflect on the year past and see what was accomplished in the many different ways in such a short amount of time in the visual medium.

What I’m getting at is that this list is not finished.  There are still so many to see, but as it stands I’m very happy with what is below.  There will always be more movies to see, but I have to stop myself at some point and take a look at what films really made me feel by the end of the year, which films made me think, which films made me laugh, cry, whatever emotion you want to insert.  These are the memorable films I’ll take away from this last year, the ones I’ll think about into the future and carry some weight as time continues to march on.

#10 – Mission Impossible:  Ghost Protocol

I went into this movie with low expectations and little to look forward to.  The  trailer made this movie look like it would be more of the same and I had skipped the 3rd film entirely.  Plus Tom Cruise was in it and his track record as of late hasn’t been the brightest.  But under the wonderful direction of Brad Bird something really came together with this one.  In a year that was full of plenty of mediocre to bad action films, Ghost Protocol gets everything right about what makes a good action movie.  The back-to-basics setup fits perfectly, making the team work with minimal tools with their entire careers and lives on the line.  It’s got plenty of suspenseful action scenes, elaborate and well-choreographed fights and hits the ground running and never stops.  Everybody is in top form here and it brings hope for any future installments to have as much fun as this one did.

#9 – Moneyball

On paper Moneyball may be the most boring movie ever. Two guys basically making a lot of phone calls and trying to add mathematics and statistics to the not-always exciting game of baseball could have failed on so many levels.  Instead the film is elevated by a wonderful script by Aaron Sorkin and a lot of great performances.  Moneyball isn’t so much about baseball but about how we look at our own conventions.  We are told that this is the way the game is played and so we play it that way, we live by the rules with little question for why that is, any answers seem suitable.  Instead Brad Pitt’s Billy Beane and Jonah Hill’s Peter Brand take a drastic look at the traditional way the game of baseball is played and change everything entirely, finding the talent where it was never thought to exist.

#8 – Tabloid

Errol Morris has crafted one of the most demented love stories of our time.  What makes this documentary so fascinating is how factually little is known about what actually happened between former Miss Wyoming Joyce McKinney and Mormon Missionary Kirk Anderson and yet so much is said about it.  Morris uses his traditional style of confessional interviews and vintage newspaper clipping to make a complicated “love” story even more complicated, in the end pointing a mirror back to ourselves for even being so intrigued by such a scandalous story.  Tabloid is the original tabloid love story, yet here we are to this day still waiting to find out about the latest love affairs and sex scandals for any public and private figure that we can.  It’s gossip at a mainstream level.

#7 – The Artist

The Artist is not a perfect film but its charm more than makes up for any of the few follies it makes.  The prospect of a modern-made silent film is exciting yet cautious at the same time, a wonderful throwback to a bygone era but dangerous to know if there really is an audience for such a film.  Given the accolades it’s racking up at the end of the year it seems many were waiting for it.  Michel Hazanavicius’ look at the transition from silent to sound in film makes for a perfect stage for The Artist to take place, but the real charm of this movie is the stylistic approach itself.  Jean Dujardin is perfect in the lead, dripping with talent and charm throughout every frame.  The Artist is a love letter to the silent era and a call-to-arms to bring them back.

#6 – Bridesmaids

Bridesmaids continues to gain so much admiration for how hilarious it is, and it deserves every one of those compliments.  It’s a funny film, cleverly written and plenty memorable, but what makes Bridesmaids stand out from so many comedies that come out year after year is how much heart it carries.  While the vomiting scene and the airplane scene are belly-aching enducing to say the least, it’s the relationships between these characters and the changes they make that engage is in the end, proving that comedies can make a point just as well as the finest drama can draw a tear from you any year.

#5 – The Descendents

Alexander Payne continues to grow as a director with each film.  His films are usually portraits of broken men in sad situations, and The Descendents is a natural progression for him.  Payne has grown a little older and wiser with this film, focusing less on his quirky aspects of his earlier films and becoming more reflective.  The Descendents showcases one of Clooney’s best performances and is filled with a number of other memorable performances.  The film is about generations, the generation that proceeds and precedes are own.  The lives of each of these characters is intertwined and coalesces with a plan to sell a large plot of land on a Hawaiian island, by this point making us so invested in each character’s life.  It’s a wonderful emotional ride in every sense of the word, reflective and stimulating all at once.

#4 – Source Code

After his strong directoral debut with Moon, Duncan Jones had a lot to live up to in his follow-up film.  While it received plenty of accolades earlier in the year, Source Code seems to have fallen off most lists, which is sad because it’s one of the best thrillers to come along in some time.  Jake Gyllenhaal plays Colter Stevens who must inhabit the last 15 minutes of another man’s life to figure out how to stop a bomb from going off.  The plot device could get old fast but it never does.  Just like Moon, Jones creates a sci-fi world that questions our reality and the direction we are looking to take our control of the world.  Each character has a secret that harbors more than we can expect, leading to a conclusion that bends even the rules Jones has created.

#3 – Beginners

Beginners is the most charming film in a long time.  As the year has gone on I keep coming back to Beginners.  The cast is in top form here, especially Christoper Plummer’s Hal as the recently out-of-the-closet father of Ewan MacGregor’s Oliver.  Hal tries to enjoy his homosexuality as he fights cancer near the end of his life.  Beginners is about how we are almost always still getting the hang of things, trying to figure out our relationships and get ourselves together despite how messed up and fragmented we all get.  Mike Mills’ style is one of the strongest of the year, a very confident and even experimental feel.  Not a moment is wasted in the film, an authentic view of humanity and our recollections of what makes us who we are.

#2 – Hugo

Martin Scorsese’s love letter to cinema is one of his crowning achievements in his entire filmography.  What starts off as a simple mystery for Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) to find the missing pieces to a robot his dad (Jude Law) was trying to finish before he died in an untimely fire accident turns into a search for so much more.  At the end it looks into the history of cinema itself and couldn’t be more wonderful in its portrayal.  Every frame of this film shows how much Scorsese is in love with the art of cinema, every part works towards what ends up to be the only logical ending the film could have yet is impossible to see from the start.  Most of all Hugo is fun, a mystery and comedy and drama all in one.  Before we know it we’ve been caught up in the adventure just to find out what will happen to each character, all the while Scorsese using the film to make commentary on the very medium he uses to tell this story.

#1 – The Tree Of Life

I should hate everything about The Tree of LIfe.  The hushed, non-directed format in which all characters talk, the major lack of any storyline, the experimental dinosaur sequences, scenes of characters roaming an empty landscape… it’s experimental film that when indulged too much is hard to succeed.  But under Malick’s direction it all holds up in some fantastical, unexpected way.  The film is beautiful in every frame, telling what could be a very personal story to Malick and yet a universal one of basic growth, how we are raised by those older than us, receive some tough love, but in the end we are better for it and we repeat the cycle again.  The film is about these cycles and how they exist in everything in our world, from the cells within our own bodies to the animals around us, everything grows and grows, making up the tree of life.  At its core is Brad Pitt in the boldest performance of his career,the father of a family living a typical 1950s suburban life.  Malick creates what feels like another world altogether and yet could be from our own childhood of another era at the same time.  The Tree of Life is a crowning achievenemt for 2011 and will be one of the most important films of this era as film continues to expand on what stories are capable.  We grow up in the blink of an eye, surrounded by the empty space that Sean Penn aimlessly wanders in passages of the film, all to do it all over again.  Breathtaking in every sense of the word, The Tree of Life will only become more timely as we all press forward.