I thought this was a fantastic year in cinema, filled with some of our best directors (Miike, Spielberg, Scorsese) taking a moment to look back at cinema as a whole while embracing their new cutting edge box of tools.
It was also a year of new and new-ish directors (Jee-Woon Kim, Winding Refn, Cornish, Durkin, Mills, Alfredson) putting up some amazing work and cementing my butt in a seat for every film they ever release.
Overall I found it a very satisfying and inspiring season of film. Also, I was super super high on heroin for most of it so what the fuck do I know.
And now, Instead of starting with my usual Top 10 Worst Films of 2011, I thought I'd try something new. So, here are:
10 FILMS I DIDN'T SEE BUT WHOSE TITLES ALONE ANNOYED ME
10. We Bought a Zoo -- We bought a Metaphor.
9. The 5th Quarter -- Literally doesn't make sense.
8. Water for Elephants -- Hush up now.
7. Mars Needs Moms -- They were super bummed they couldn't find the triple alliteration. How about Mars Mars Moms?
6. I Don't Know How She Does It -- I do. Pills. And plenty of 'em.
5. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan -- Shhhhh, you're literally yelling at me.
4. Mr. Popper's Penguins -- More alliteration for children! Children love alliteration. That's just science, y'all.
3. Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer -- Ironically, this title on every bus in L.A bummed me out for most of the summer.
2. Just Go With It -- So this is where we are? Okay. My next movie is called, "Shut up, it's Fine."
1. Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked -- I see what you did there. What do you mean why am I holding a knife?
And now on to:
MY TOP TEN FILMS OF 2011
10. The Descendants – Probably hit me harder than most considering certain personal issues taking place in my life, but I doubt I would love it any less at another time in my life. Alexander Payne just speaks to me. I love everything he does.
9. War Horse – If you deride this film for being schmaltzy or manipulative then, to put it bluntly, you sound like a fucking moron. You, quite literally, missed the point. Spielberg is like Walter in Breaking Bad. Yes, he makes meth. But he makes the fucking blue meth that no one else can make. And as long as you’re not an addict, there’s no shame in recognizing that it’s one of the most beautiful highs around.
8. Fast Five/Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol – It’s cheating I know, but these films were the EXACT same experience for me. Just pure popcorn escapism made by directors with some serious action chops. Laughing, clapping, cheering, mouth agape – sometimes cinema can do that.
7. Rise of the Planet of the Apes – I have a soft spot for animals in film (as you’ll see later on in this list), so this film had me at Apes. But fuck me – it’s also a simply fantastic film. I’m a big Apes franchise fan and I’m still shocked that I got an origin story that COMPLETELY satisfies me and even exceeded my wildest expectations. I’m probably more excited about where this franchise could go than by any other at the moment.
6. Beginners – Just pure passion and absurdity and creativity. This is the experience I imagine Amelie was for many, but never really was for me. This is one of those leave-the-theater-feeling-alive-and-ready-for-change films. Those are great.
5. Martha Marcy May Marlene – Hands down the most profound film of the year for me, and one that has continued to haunt me for months. The final shot of this film: the face of a young woman after being pulled back and forth between warring ideologies… until she simply submits, exhausted, to whatever ideological prison awaits her next.
4. Attack the Block – Oh, hello Joe Cornish. Yes, I’ll be seeing all of your films forever. Kthxbye.
3. Drive – The most inspiring “fresh blood” film of the year. The film that 2011 will be remembered for. Just about as much fun, beauty and playfulness (on the part of the director) as we can hope for in one film. You knew he knew how good it was.
2. I Saw the Devil – This hit me hard in a similar way to how Enter the Void hit me hard last year. Just a director taking a big fucking swing for the fences, taking the classical theme of the thin line between hero and psychopath and doing something very profound with it. Also, my favorite score of the year.
1. 13 Assassins – Technically this was a 2010 release, but I saw it in the theaters in 2011 and so therefore it’s a 2011 film for me. Just a staggering film. It’s as if Miike got sick of people thinking he was just “that weird” director – the Japanese Lynch, and whatnot – and made a straight up classically shot Samurai/Western film that would hold it’s own against anything by Kurosawa or Hawks. Sort of like Lynch’s The Straight Story, but if The Straight Story was a massive epic. I imagine Miike saying: “There, look. I can do that. And better than anyone else alive probably. Now fuck off, I’m going back to movies about women that birth cows.”
Honorable Mention: Hugo 3D, Tree of Life, Win Win, Take Shelter, Young Adult, Tintin, Contagion, Bill Cunningham New York, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – I have a feeling this will end up being very high on the list after multiple views, but I just haven’t been able to see it again yet.
That's all for 2011. Hopefully I'll write on this blog more than once this coming year. ONLY TIME WILL TELL. AM I RIGHT?!?!
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- Matthew Robinson
- Co-writer and co-director of The Invention of Lying, alongside Ricky Gervais.
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16 comments:
You should really see We Bought a Zoo before dissing. It was beautifully made.
By the way, I couldn't agree more about Drive and Descendants. George Clooney did such a great job, and the actress who played his elder daughter really stole the show. I can't wait for it to come out on DVD to watch again & again.
Drive was the most overrated nonsense of the year. He doesn't understand narrative. All his movies all apart at the end. That movie was all flash and no substance. But glad to see Beginners on your list. Truly great film. Also, for what it is worth the best popcorn movie of the year was Tarsem's Immortals. Just two hours of badass fun at the movies.
Wasn't dissing We Bought a Zoo at all. I haven't seen any of those movies, I was just being playful with how their titles annoyed me. But I'm not closed minded to all of them, and obviously will see any Cameron Crowe movie eventually.
Yes -- I missed Immortals. Want to see it. Heard it's a silly blast.
I can't believe Warrior didn't make the list, but I am glad Apes did...., Drive, and 13 Assassins, Good Call!!!!
Hmm. Alliteration is all you found wrong with the Penguins title? Because when I heard "poppers", my mind went somewhere entirely different. Entirely. And it wasn't a pretty place. But then, I have a lot of friends who lead highly colorful and disreputable lives. And then they confide all the details to me. I guess I'm just that kind of girl.
Also, that Zoo movie sounds painful in a Lifetime Original Movies sort of way. I am a masochist, it must be admitted, but I'm pretty sure that film would cross my pain threshold quickly. Think of all the kids in the theatre. Ye gods. It doesn't bear thinking about.
Bear. I see what you did there.
Beginners was my #1 this year and one of my all-time favorite films ever. The last time I loved a film as much was Eternal Sunshine. Such a perfect little movie. Happy New Year, old friend. xx
Brian Cox is awesome in Zookeeper as the leper, why isn't this on your list?
I Saw The Devil started off promising, descended into complete absurdity, and ended up being a farcical mess.
Had it been an American film, you and Harry Knowles would have ignored it. The fact that it's Korean and stars Min Sik-choi somehow makes an amateurish script and embarrassingly poor execution not only acceptable, but "great."
Not buying it.
Beginners was a hollow, vapid piece of navel gazing shit. The only interesting part of the story (that of the gay father) is so bogged down in cloying hipster artifice that it ends up barely registering. Instead we are forced to watch two hours of an infantile mopey couple with zero chemistry reenact the worst bits of Garden State. Unendurable stuff.
Great list, though I'm surprised that Machine Head's "Unto the Locust" wasn't on it, best album of the year IMO!
Frankly, if you're trying to make the argument that Spielberg is an inherently manipulative filmmaker so we should just suck it up when he tries to play on our heartstrings, then it's you who sounds like the fucking moron. 'Jaws' isn't schmaltzy, neither is 'Close Encounters', 'ET', 'Empire of the Sun', 'Munich'... None of those films felt the need to resort to the kind of cheap tricks employed in 'War Horse'. Talk about missing the point. Those who truly love Spielberg's best work expect more than sweeping strings, weepy teens and gooey CGI.
Thanks for the comment Tom. First off, all film is manipulative, just in varying degrees, with, let's say, Italian Neo-Realism like Rome: Open City or Dogme 95 on one end of the spectrum and films like War Horse on the other. I would never fault a film for being manipulative.
Secondly, I'm far from a Spielberg apologist. I have disliked most films he's done in the past 15 years. I find Schindler's List very troubling in many ways, and most of his other recent films I've just found... forgettable pap.
What I like about War Horse is that it embraces what Spielberg does better than most living directors: his unabashed embrace of painting in broad strokes, using the power of sound, camera movement and basic, uncomplicated human emotions to create an experience only film can provide.
Exactly like he did in Raiders, Jaws and CE3K. (Obviously I prefer those
films to War Horse, but I think they employ his same skill set)
I would never give a pass to a film for being schmaltz because it's what we've come to expect from a director. I'm saying dismissing this film as schmaltz is like calling a Sirk film melodramatic.
It's like... Duh. This particular type of stylized Film is either your cup of tea or it isn't. It works for me.
Thanks for the reply. I have to take issue with your definition of Spielberg as a 'broad strokes' filmmaker, at least in the way you seem to mean it. Sure, all those films I mentioned in the last post have 'big' moments, but they also have a level of subtlety, of careful observation of (actually fairly complex) human behaviour which 'War Horse' simply lacks. Compare the kids in 'ET' with the kids in 'War Horse', it's hard to believe the same director created both.
And of course cinema is an inherently manipulative medium, but that doesn't mean a director has to be so blatant and artless about it. Throughout 'War Horse', it felt as though there should have been a little man in the corner of the screen holding up audience flashcards: 'LAUGH!' 'CRY!' 'GASP!'.
And for the record, I'm very much a Spielberg apologist, just not this time around. (And I guess I just objected to be referred to as a 'fucking moron', however circuitously.)
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