2011 has been over for a little while now, but I think we’re still in time to take a look back at what was, in my opinion, one of the better years for film in quite a while.
There were a LOT of great films.
Enough, I think, for the Academy to actually have 10 movies in the Best Picture category.
They, apparently, disagree. They feel that 9 films is enough.
As I’m bound to brevity, I’m going to talk about my five favorites from 2011.
I could choose a lot more and, in fact, if you ask me next week, the list could be different.
THAT, my friends, is a sign of a great year of film.
Hugo
One of the greatest directors who ever lived is finally making a film that is, ostensibly, about his favorite subject: film history.
The best thing about it?
It’s among his best films.
The strangest thing about it?
It’s a film made for and about kids.
I do my very best to not ever be a jaded filmgoer. Sometimes, though, it’s incredibly difficult. People like Michael Bay exist, after all. But Scorsese’s latest film made me forget everything that I could possibly be jaded about. I was a kid again, and it was amazing. And THAT is why it was my favorite film this year.
By the way, if you get a chance, see this one in 3D. It’s the second film I saw in 2011 that made me love that gimmick. Stay tuned for the first one.
The Descendants
This is an Alexander Payne movie, through and through.
There’s a nearly unlikable protagonist (George Clooney) who learns how to “feel.” There’s a sidekick who forces him into this change. (This time, this character is split between Clooney’s two daughters.) And, of course, there’s a life-changing event. (His wife is in a coma and he finds out that she was cheating on him.)
And, as schmaltzy as this sounds, Payne manages to always make this formula work.
All of his films are based on novels by different authors, but they could each almost be one part of the same story.
It certainly helps that Clooney puts in what could be the best performance of his already pretty impressive career.
The Artist
This was certainly the year of the silent film.
With The Artist, we find out that there are filmmakers out there who can still tell a story without words.
Luckily, it was a story everyone can, if not identify with, at least care very deeply about. Yes, it’s the story of films suddenly learning to talk. But what it’s really about is two people falling in love while one of them finds out who his friends truly are. (If James Cromwell was my driver, I would want to be best friends with him, too.)
Perfect in just about every way, The Artist even manages to make the rather cloying use of a dog for laughs work so well that you forget that you’ve seen it in 574 movies since Frasier went off the air.
Cave Of Forgotten Dreams
Werner Herzog is one of the most idiosyncratic filmmakers of all time. That’s what makes watching his films so frustrating sometimes. Always fascinating, they’re not always entertaining.
Luckily, this is a time when everything comes together and forms a film that made still images made thousands of years ago more moving than just about any moving image made in the last ten.
Herzog’s camera captures the oldest cave paintings ever discovered and makes us see them in a way that maybe we wouldn’t have seen them otherwise.
Then again, we probably wouldn’t have seen them at all if it weren’t for this film. And that, my friends, is the best reason for this film to be on this list.
In case you’re keeping track, this was the first film I saw that truly wowed me in 3D.
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Typically, when I make a movie list I list films that I could watch over and over again. Movies that make me happy in some way or other.
Dragon Tattoo didn’t make me happy.
Not really. It’s a little too bleak for that, but it doesn’t matter. It’s an amazing film that kind of makes you want to take a shower after a viewing.
While much of the credit goes to David Fincher (as always), a LOT of it goes to Rooney Mara for her portrayal of a “little girl lost” who goes so far beyond that description that it actually comes back around and applies again.
Don’t see this movie because it’s a feel-good flick.
See it because, while it’s a feel-bad flick, it will make you fall in love with someone that you would completely ignore in real life.
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