Film: Starstruck Memories: Best of 2011
May 11. The blank cell phone screen stared back at me. What should I say that conveys how I feel but doesn’t come off as too stalkerish?
The night before I’d caught an advance screening of Bridesmaids, the winning romantic comedy starring Kristen Wiig and Rose Byrne. As much as I liked their performances, though, my attention shifted to Chris O’Dowd, the Irish actor who played the highway patrolman who falls for Wiig’s disillusioned baker. Like many of this year’s breakout talents, his spontaneous screen presence wafted off the screen like a breath of fresh air. And now that I’d found his Twitter account, I couldn’t wait to let him know what an impact he’d had on this (frequently) snarky and (occasionally) ruthless reviewer. Here it goes:
RubenRos @BigBoyler You swept me off my feet in #Bridesmaids. Well done, sir.
That ought to put a smile on his face. At least that’s what I told myself as I went about my day. A few hours later, I noticed the “new message” alert. Nah. He couldn’t possibly have taken the time to…okay, the suspense is killing me. I unlocked my phone, clicked on the “read” icon, and found this:
BigBoyler @RubenRos Your simple heart was the only one I aimed my bow at, my Floridian friend.
I’d been turned into a starstruck fanboy by Officer Rhodes’s virtual pixie dust. In the seven months since I received that tweet, I’ve had to deal with an underwhelming summer season (the Boy Wizard’s climactic showdown with Voldemort excepted, of course), a couple of insufferable comedies from Adam Sandler (why, Al Pacino, why?), and a repugnant remake of a Sam Peckinpah button-pusher from the seventies. (A rape sequence that invites you to drool over Alexander Skarsgård banging Kate Bosworth? What fun!) But through all the turkeys, misfires and duds, I had O’Dowd’s kindness and goodwill to fall back on. That, and a considerable number of exceptional films that hit South Florida screens (as well as some others that didn’t quite make it to these shores).
Without further ado, here are my ten favorite movies of 2011, followed by ten more, equally praiseworthy runner-ups. In coming up with my top selections, I’ve made sure to incorporate releases from the entire year. Studios bombard critics with year-end prestige titles in the hopes of building awards buzz, but this borderline bullying tactic ultimately works against the films in question. Time to fill up those rental queues, people. These were the movies that mattered to me.
10. 50/50: Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a movie that combines pathos and laughs to dramatize a character’s ordeal with a terminal condition. Alexander Payne’s The Descendants is currently courting Academy members in the hopes of getting some Oscar gold next February, but this poignant character study, released a few months earlier, is the one that mixed the disparate ingredients just right. Kudos to director Jonathan Levine and a first-rate cast that includes Jonathan Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick, Anjelica Huston and Bryce Dallas Howard. Top honors go to Will Reiser’s unremittingly honest screenplay for seeing the silver lining on cancer’s dark cloud.
9. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives: Forest creatures and the spirit of a dying man’s wife provide a comforting alternative glimpse at the transition between this world and the next in Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s visionary supernatural tale. This poetic spellbinder nabbed the Palme d’Or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival from a jury headed by Tim Burton. I have no doubt he saw a kindred soul in this one-of-a-kind filmmaker, one whose work deserves a wider audience on this side of the Atlantic. Call it accessible avant garde. Bonus points for a baffling sequence involving a randy princess and a catfish with unique oral skills.
8. Higher Ground: This woefully neglected, deeply felt portrait of a devout woman’s crisis of faith barely made a blip in theaters this fall, and that’s a shame. We’re used to seeing Christian fundamentalists onscreen as a horde of rabid fanatics, but star Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air), who also makes a splendid directorial debut, is having none of it. In adapting Carolyn S. Briggs’s memoir for the screen, she depicts this close-knit community of believers with a bracing mix of nuance and absurdist humor that recalls early Jonathan Demme. An American gem.
7. Jane Eyre: Michael Fassbender is the other Irish actor who made a big splash at the movies this year. Mainstream audiences will recognize him as the young Magneto in X-Men: First Class, and he has been winning a ton of year-end honors – including Best Actor from the Florida Film Critics Circle – from his justly lauded portrayal of a sex addict in Shame, but his smoldering take on literary antihero Edward Fairfax Rochester has been all but forgotten. To which I say: Anglophiles of the moviegoing world unite! Sin Nombre director Cary Joji Fukunaga’s brooding sophomore effort updates Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 Gothic romance as a meeting of equals. Fassbender is matched every step of the way by Mia Wasikowska (Tim Burton’s Alice) as the headstrong title character. Costume drama bliss.
6. Into the Abyss: An exceptional year for nonfiction filmmaking is capped off by Werner Herzog’s unflinching look at capital punishment. The German director, who captivated audiences this spring with Cave of Forgotten Dreams, resists the easy temptation to reduce an October 2001 triple homicide in the town of Conroe, Texas to a series of issue-driven talking heads. Instead, the film’s riveting first half, which echoes In Cold Blood in its meticulous reconstruction of that night’s events, gives way to a humane examination of how the murders affected the families of both the victims and the convicted perpetrators. The film will be screening this weekend at the Miami Beach Cinematheque (mbcinema.com). Don’t miss it.
5. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol: Are you reading this list, Michael Bay? In the unlikely case that you are, I hope you’ve had the chance to take a look at what animator Brad Bird has achieved in his phenomenal live-action debut. See how he takes his time to build suspense right before he unleashes his slam-bang action setpieces. Admire the way cinematographer Robert Elswit makes full use of IMAX cameras to place the viewer right next to Tom Cruise’s disgraced secret agent as he scales Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. And then there’s the slinky green dress fellow agent Paula Patton is wearing late in the film. She’s effortlessly sexy without having the camera literally on her posterior the way you ogled that Victoria’s Secret model at the beginning of the third Transformers. Were you paying attention during this thoroughly satisfying, pull-out-all-the-stops extravaganza, Mr. Bay? Good, because you will never, ever, be this good. So glad I could get this off my chest. Have a nice day!
4. The Artist: I know, I know, this is blatant Oscar bait, a ludicrous example of Harvey Weinstein’s marketing machine at work. I beseech you to set aside the relentless ad blitz to focus on the product, which, in the hands of writer-director Michel Hazanavicius and stars Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo and that scene-stealing canine Uggie, uses our nostalgia with Hollywood’s Golden Age to create a bittersweet valentine to the moving image produced almost entirely in the visual language of silent cinema. What might seem at first glance to be an overly gimmicky premise ultimately won this cynic over big-time. This is a truly wonderful film, and it deserves every golden statuette coming its way…
3. Martha Marcy May Marlene: …but so does this Sundance sensation, which has been deceivingly marketed as psychological thriller, but is actually a bone-chilling horror film, the best of its kind in a very long time. Anchored by a galvanizing, star-making performance by Elizabeth Olsen (the Twins’ younger sibling), this disquieting profile of a runaway from a Manson-like cult finds just as much emotional violence in the sleek confines of the lakeside petit-bourgeois abode where Olsen’s character goes to try to deprogram herself from the abuse she suffered at the hands of cult leader Patrick (an effectively creepy John Hawkes). This is the stuff of nightmares, an assured feature debut for writer-director Sean Durkin. Remember that name.
2. Project Nim: An orphan attempts to adapt to an alien environment, and is then discarded to a succession of increasingly grim living conditions. What sounds like the plot of a Charles Dickens novel is actually a Cliffs Notes description of this magnificent documentary, a clear-eyed chronicle of Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee who becomes the subject of a massive Columbia University project in the 1970s that pondered whether our genetic cousins can communicate the way we can. Oscar winner James Marsh (Man on Wire) refuses to let any of his interviewees off the hook, and his brilliant use of reenactments makes you feel like you’re experiencing Nim’s traumatic journey first-hand. Simply stunning.
1. The Tree of Life: Very few 2011 releases proved to be as divisive as Terrence Malick’s deeply personal, thinly fictionalized memoir of growing up in 1950s Austin. I was under the impression that the canvas of a movie screen is an ideal place to explore grand ideas. The tale of a family headed by a stern authoritarian (Brad Pitt, never better) and an ethereal earth mother (Jessica Chastain in one of several knockout performances she delivered this year) is about nothing less than the meaning of life, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t see a more intimate coming of age story this year. Naysayers complained about the fractured, stream-of-consciousness narrative. They argued that Malick was unable to reconcile the more earthbound aspect of the film with his eye-popping depiction of the creation of the universe. The one thing the detractors have been unable to convey is the film’s layered texture, how its lack of a conventional structure frees it up to tackle matters of faith and spiritual nourishment without coming across as pedantic or overbearing. It may give you a sense of the tiny speck we represent in the universal scheme of things, but no other film made me feel more alive, or more grateful to review movies.
Behold the next ten films, which are just as list-worthy as any of the aforementioned titles. In alphabetical order: Drive, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, Incendies, The Interrupters, Le Havre, Meek’s Cutoff, Moneyball, A Separation, The Time That Remains and last, but far from least, Steven Spielberg’s War Horse.
Thank you all, dear readers, for another fine year of boos and huzzahs. From the bottom of my simple heart.
