Best Movies of 2011

I was pretty awful about going to the theater this year before autumn rolled around, but I did okay after that and Netflix helped me catch up on a bunch of movies from earlier in the year. This is probably the first year that I've seen at least ten movies I'd consider very good before the year actually ended since... ever. I think it was a solid year, considering I enjoyed all of the Marvel movies and none made the cut.

Best of 2011

10. Source Code

Duncan Jones' second science fiction film is more accessible than his first, and that's not a bad thing when the core idea behind it is still totally solid. The advertising made me really skeptical, but the material ended up working a lot better than expected, and supported a moving human story without overshadowing it. This might be the first time I've seen Jake Gyllenhaal in a heroic leading man type-role, and he does a good job playing a guy who's not perfect but has a good heart and a good head on his shoulders. He carries a movie that's a bit brief but totally memorable.

9. Bridesmaids


Maybe one of the most successfully gender-neutral comedies ever made, Bridesmaids is laugh-out-loud funny without ever forgetting to tell an honest and occasionally really harsh story about a woman gliding through life who starts to see how many things are broken when her best friend gets engaged. The performances are great, and there are very few moments in the film that seem ill advised or that don't at least serve the story. Not the easiest comedy to watch, but a very worthwhile one.

8. Attack the Block


The second best movie about kids trying to survive aliens appearing in their neighborhood this year, Attack the Block combines elements of horror, sci-fi, and comedy expertly to create an experience that is more original and distinctly of a time and place than maybe anything on this list. Some bits are maybe a bit heavy-handed, but the thuggish teenagers are likable, the aliens are scary, and the film succeeds at pretty much everything it attempts.

7. The Tree of Life

The Tree of Life is less about really understanding what's going and more about just soaking in an experience that Terrence Malick puts on the screen. I can't claim to understand everything that happens in this movie or how certain parts related to each other, but it's always beautiful to look at and I found myself at times profoundly affected by how well certain elements of life, particularly growing up, were captured, understanding things that I wasn't aware anyone besides me could remember. If you let it grab you, it's hard to get it to let go.

6. The Adventures of Tintin

An adventure film so relentlessly fun and exciting that I almost breathed a sigh of relief once the credits started rolling. There's not a lot of meat on these bones, but what is there is always driving forward with a sense of innocent wonder, asking "why not?" and latching onto possibilities that live action productions just wouldn't have the budget to try out. Steven Spielberg maybe isn't as deep as some of the other famous directors, but when he can still make movies as sharp and enjoyable as this one (along with the help of hundreds of animators, I'm sure), I still can't help but consider him one of the best alive at his job.

5. Hugo


A movie that made me believe in the possibilities of 3D again. Although it's mostly about kids, Hugo is one of Martin Scorsese's most personal movies, reveling in his love of cinema, both overtly and more discretely with the way it celebrates and pays homage to what has come before. The cast is solid, the story is intriguing with a sweet sentimental core at its center, and it's hard to overstate just how nice the movie is to look at, whether you paid for the 3D tickets or not. In case you forgot, Scorsese can do a lot more than gangster movies.

4. Super 8


This was my most anticipated movie of the last summer, and it delivered on pretty much every expectation. It combines the more charming elements of older family science fiction movies with the more visceral thrills of something closer to horror, and does so without either side really getting short shrift or feeling underdeveloped. There's not much here that hasn't been done before, but usually it just isn't done this well, and I had a hard time worrying about small problems when the whole thing was just sitting right with me otherwise. And it's hard to get over just how good the kids in it were.

3. Warrior


The biggest surprise of the year was just how much I ended up loving this movie, despite it resting on material that sounds like a mix of movies made for Lifetime and TNT. The simple fact though is that Gavin O'Connor knows what he's doing behind the camera, and he had three actors working for him who fit their characters perfectly, and were simply great in their roles. It's not the most realistic sports story, and it doesn't have the benefit of being based on anything true. But the human element that drives it makes it work, and it's so spot-on emotionally that the end result is much more powerful than I was expecting.

2. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo


Another case of the people behind a film elevating relatively mundane (if notably popular and gritty) material, although in this case it was pretty much entirely expected. David Fincher is able to apply a specific feel and general standard of quality to his work without ever getting too flashy or obvious with it, and that continues with Dragon Tattoo, the first film in a planned trilogy that he actually hasn't signed on to finish yet. I can only hope he does, but I can't imagine having to get through parts two and three done by someone else, wondering what he could have done with it. The two leads give totally magnetic performances, and it's just so well shot and scored that numerous flaws inherent in the story just don't add up to much in the end.

1. Drive


I'm giving you a night call to tell you how I feel
I want to drive you through the night, down the hills
I'm gonna tell you something you don't want to hear
I'm gonna show you where it's dark, but have no fear

There's something inside you
It's hard to explain
They're talking about you boy
But you're still the same

Movie Update 29

Well, here we are again.

The Castle of Cagliostro


Hayao Miyazaki's first film as a director, before Studio Ghibli was a thing, is based on the Lupin III television series he worked on, which was based on a manga created by Monkey Punch, which was inspired by the Arsène Lupin character created by Maurice LeBlanc. The film's plot is also based on one of the original Lupin stories. So yeah, there's a lot of adapting going on here. Cagliostro is a lighthearted action adventure about Lupin and his buddies stumbling on the world's biggest counterfeit currency operation in one of its smallest countries, and trying to both thwart their plans and rescue a princess at the same time. I've only seen a bit of the show, but it doesn't take much of that to get familiar with the principal characters, and they all show up here and have fun little parts to play. It's a simple movie, but there's a nice energy to it, a reasonable amount of excitement in the twists and turns, and like all works by Miyazaki there's a nice feeling to the animation, which isn't the most fluid ever but does what's required to set the right tone. It's kind of a standard adventure movie, but it's a well executed one.

Killer's Kiss


Not Stanley Kubrick's first feature film, but the first that's readily available for public consumption. It's also his weakest that I've seen. There's nothing very bad about the movie, but there's just not much to it. A boxer meets up with a dancing girl, and they try to leave the city and start a life somewhere, but her crook of a boss isn't a fan of the idea. It's a pretty bare-bones noir story, with the only thing that really makes it work being Kubrick's great photography. There's lots of great little shots that stick out as distinct for the era, including use of reflections, some stuff with shadows that I haven't really seen before, and a memorable conclusion in an unusual setting. There's not much to the characters though, and the tacked-on ending doesn't really work. Its only real use is to show the potential Kubrick had for his work later on.

The Killing


The very next year Kubrick made this, his first really good movie. It actually feels a bit less distinctly his than Kiss, but it's certainly a lot more fun to watch, and might actually be the most purely enjoyable movie he ever made. In one of the few instances I can think of of him using an actor more than once, he has Sterling Hayden as the main character, a criminal trying to pull off one last job, robbing the take at a horse track, with a complicated scheme that involves multiple people both inside and outside the place. It's a pretty good plan, though there's also a lot of moving parts, and of course things get screwed up and the situation eventually gets pretty hairy. There's a lot of build up, and the pay off when it all starts falling into place is pretty great. Stylistically, there's not much in the movie that wouldn't be in another noir movie from the period. But it's also just a really good example of the genre, and sometimes that's all you need to be successful.

The Tree of Life

This is a film about life, and growing up, and pretty much everything that entails. I said before that I imagine a film by Terrence Malick entirely in his reflective/observing-nature's-beauty mode might get tedious, and that's somewhat true here, but the film is so beautiful and poignant that it's hard to be really bothered by the slow bits. The film isn't exactly in chronological order, but what it's basically about is Sean Penn remembering his youth growing up with his parents and two brothers, and also experiencing some sort of vision of the birth of the universe and what possibly lies beyond it. It's a staggeringly gorgeous movie at times, especially in the scenes showing the early moments of existence, with visuals that avoid computer animation in favor of more natural means. The more normal stuff looks great too, though it's mostly just people walking through houses or the woods. Brad Pitt plays his father, and does a really great job making him into a terrible dad that should really be feared and despised without being over the top about it. Just the way he touches his sons on the neck is enough to establish that loving parenting doesn't come naturally to him. I don't think the movie needed a name like Penn to play the adult version of the main character though - he doesn't really do much acting besides walking around and looking at things. The Tree of Life is a bit ponderous and in love with itself at times, but what it does right is memorable and unique enough to make the film worth watching, especially if you're a fan of film as a visually artistic medium.

The Thin Red Line

The only thing crazier than how many recognizable actors there are in this movie is how many had their scenes cut completely during the editing process, including Martin Sheen, Gary Oldman, and Mickey Rourke. War movies have a funny away of apparently attracting attention from everyone in the business, as The Thin Red Line was released the same year as Saving Private Ryan, which itself has an extensive and extremely famous cast. I thought it was less distracting here though, except for the scene near the end where George Clooney shows up to give a speech than Sean Penn narrates over.

The Thin Red Line is overall a more painterly and less action-oriented war film than Ryan, focusing more on the internal lives of the soldiers than the combat they take part in. I think they're actually pretty good companion films. Ryan is in the European theater and wears its heart on its sleeve, Line is in the Pacific and a bit more introspective and detached. Ryan begins with one of the most famous war scenes ever made, a gigantic, loud, violent slaughter. Line begins with a soldier played by Jim Caviezel resting on an island with some natives, and there's a full 45 minutes before anyone is in real danger. They're both gorgeous movies, Ryan with its color correction and perfectly chaotic action, Line with its more natural cinematography and focus on wildlife, and intricately pieced together battle scenes.

This is the first movie by Terrence Malick that I've seen (hey, he's only made five), and I was very impressed by his work, though I'm not sure how much I'd like his other stuff. The way intense fighting punctuates and breaks up the long periods of slow moving or still scenery with minimal dialogue creates an intriguing contrast, but a film of nothing but the latter might be tough to handle. Of course, I have no idea if any of his other movies are like that, other than to say I get the impression that that's what The Tree of Life might resemble.

In any case, The Thin Red Line is not a perfect war movie, but I do think it is a great one. There are many brilliant and captivating scenes, and even when things slow down, it's still very nice to look at. If there's one viable criticism, it does seem a bit scattered at times, as it sort of lacks a central figure, and instead bounces from soldier to soldier, letting them narrate their thoughts in turn. The performances are generally very good, even if none of them are terribly substantial. John C. Reilly gets what I think is a single scene of dialogue, and certain characters will pop in at a certain point and then just disappear completely, like the parts played by John Cusack and John Travolta. Nick Nolte might have the most dialogue as an impassioned Lieutenant Colonel, though Penn and Caviezel probably have the biggest parts from a screen time perspective.

It's hard to say whether the somewhat disjointed nature of the film is entirely intentional, or a result of Malick having to trim about 40% of his original cut, or if the full thing was even worse with the additional characters. I didn't really mind the movie being this way, because it was an engrossing experience while watching it. It does result in a slight feeling of dissatisfaction though, especially in retrospect, not having a real central plot to grasp onto. I guess war though can be a pretty existential experience, and this is about as existential as war movies can get. In that way, it's sort of a masterpiece.