1. The Tree of Life: Terrence Malick’s film isn’t ambitious or anything; it just takes on the Creation of the Universe and the Meaning of Existence. Also, it contains Brad Pitt’s best performance, beautiful music by Alexander Desplat, & a plesiosaurus.
2. The Skin I Live In: Pedro Almodovar’s entry in the venerable European “mad skin doctor” genre is convincing, ingeniously-structured & potent. Antonio Banderas & Elena Anaya are superb as the Doctor & his patient/victim, respectively.
3. Moneyball: Brad Pitt & Jonah Hill play statistical weird science on the Oakland A’s to make them win without marquee players. Sly, restrained direction by Bennett Miller & another gem of a performance by Pitt combine to make this inside-baseball tale fascinating & improbably touching.
4. The Artist: This black-and-white, mostly silent romantic comedy somehow manages to be a movie of substance rather than a stunt. Jean Dujardin is sensational as the title character, an ultra-debonair Hollywood leading man whose career hits the wall when the talkies arrive; the beguiling Berenice Bejo is the spirited up-and-coming star who adores him from afar & would salvage his career if only he wasn’t so proud. The film is studded with charming supporting performances, but the hero’s little dog steals scenes like they were Snausages.
5. Meek’s Cutoff: Kelly Reichardt’s subtextually political Western, loosely based on historical events, is about a bunch of lost covered-wagon settlers looking for a drink of water in the eastern-Oregon desert. It’s an ordeal, but a dramatically valid one, & it maddeningly offers no answers. Michelle Williams is quietly excellent as a clear-headed frontier wife, & Bruce Greenwood gives the performance of his career as the reactionary guide Meek.
6. Martha Marcy May Marlene: Elizabeth Olsen is spectacular in the title role, a young woman who flees a rural New York cult, & John Hawkes is chilling as the cult leader. Sean Durkin’s simple, low-key direction generates moody atmosphere & a subtle, fretful suspense.
7. Attack the Block: Teenage South London street punks jump on their bikes & save the world from aliens on Bonfire Night. Joe Cornish wrote and directed this funny, tense sci-fi tale, with a fine ensemble cast & spooky, amusingly simple invaders.
8. Rise of the Planet of the Apes: More top-notch sci-fi, this is the best iteration of the Apes franchise since the 1968 original, cleverly dramatizing how the Ape-pocalypse begins. Behind the CGI, Andy Serkis provides the superb facial expressions of the chimpanzee revolutionary Caesar.
9. Texas Killing Fields: This police procedural from director Ami Canaan Mann , about the murder of young women in a small, grungy Texas town, is a grim & difficult work, but it has an intense, enveloping atmosphere of tragedy.
10. The Adventures of Tintin: Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of the Belgian comic books is pure fun, & dazzlingly skillful cinema. As with The Artist, however, Spielberg lets the dog steal the show.
Also worth checking out: Contagion, Women on the 6th Floor, My Week With Marilyn, Hop, We Bought a Zoo, Footprints, Rio, The Smurfs, J. Edgar, Arthur Christmas, Happy Feet Two, Thor, Rubber, Super8, Trollhunter, Margin Call, Winnie the Pooh, Rango, Henry’s Crime and The Muppets (& the excellent Toy Story short before The Muppets).
A couple of major stinkeroos: Zookeeper, The Green Hornet, Creature & Atlas Shrugged: Part One.
Nice to see, although since I'm a follower not entirely surprising, to see ATTACK and RISE on the list. Those two, and THE SKIN I LIVE IN were the best times I had in a theater this year. The Almodovar absolutely blew me away. That guy is so good at what he does and he does it so effortlessly (seemingly anyway, from a outside looking in point of view) that it's easy to take it for granted.
ReplyDeleteFor what it's worth, I miss the "book I read last year" part of the post.
ReplyDeleteThanx Phil--I did keep a book list again this year; I posted it in my Jan. 9 entry, "Coming of Age?"
ReplyDeleteThanx as always for following me Phil!