My Favorites Movies of 2011

2011 may not have been that great of a year for quality Hollywood movies, but when you step out of Hollywood it was an amazing year. Only one of the films on my top 15 of 2011 can be considered a major studio film. The rest were all either independently made or foreign made. The reason why the list is a top 15 instead of a top 10 is because there were just too many great movies. Each of the top three films on this list would have individually been my favorite movie of last year, that's how much quality is on this list. 


The amount of movies I saw in 2011 was the most I have ever seen in my life in any given year, so for that reason I believe my list is quite well made and one that I am proud of. But like every year, there were movies I was not able to see that may have made it on this list had I been given the opportunity to see them. Those movies include The Artist, Margaret, Martha Marcy May Marlene, House of Pleasures, and Mysteries of Lisbon. 


When it comes to the movies that were barely left off the list, there are many, but a handful of them would be: Midnight in Paris, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, The Descendants, Weekend, and Shame. 


Now, continue onwards to finally view my long-delayed best of 2011.

15. Take Shelter 

(Jeff Nichols, USA)

The plot is fairly high-concept: a guy has dreams about an upcoming apocalyptic storm and thinks they might be real. But Jeff Nichols takes this thriller-y plot and uses it to examine how crazy people can get just from being in a state of anticipation. Not only do we see the effects of the apocalyptic anticipation on the individuals well-being, but we also see the effects it has on the family. Michael Shannon gives an amazing performance in which he perfectly captures how not just a regular person, but specifically a father, would react if he were having visceral visions of such dangerous magnitude. 

14. Nostalgia for the Light 

(Patricio Guzman, Chile)

In a year filled with films about nostalgia, this Chilean documentary set in the driest desert in the world is the one that best shows how important digging up the past is to people. In a way the movie is not even about nostalgia, because the astronomers looking for information about the origins of the universe and the women looking for the remains of their relatives who were murdered by the Pinochet regime are all looking for the past because of deep intellectual and emotional needs that transcend the nostalgia that Owen Wilson's character feels in Midnight in Paris. This film is a poetic meditation on the search for knowledge about the past and how important that search can be for the people involved. 

13. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy 

(Tomas Alfredson, UK)

A meticulously crafted film on every level, from the images to the dialogue to the acting, all of it completely economical that leaves no wasted moments. Alfredson creates a world that is cold and impersonal with characters that try but frequently fail to adapt to the detached bureaucratic world they work and live in. It's a world that leaves no room for passion and desires but as we see it is exactly those desires that get out and come close to unraveling our whole world. The movie takes on how our government and culture celebrate men who lack emotion, and reveals that ultimately any man who lacks emotion is only putting on a show.

12. We Need to Talk About Kevin 

(Lynne Ramsay, UK)

Tilda Swinton plays a mother who is going through what is probably the worst thing a mother can ever go through. Not the death of her child, but something even worse, the corruption of her child and the thought that she was possibly the reason for that corruption. It's a parents nightmare, and Lynne Ramsay does a masterful job, as always, at creating a mood of subtle dread and despair. It's a very subjective film that puts us in the shoes of a mother going through the horrible memories of the raising of a child that went on a murderous rampage. It is a film that forces you to enter the unsettling world of a mother in deep despair. 

11. Poetry 

(Lee Chang-Dong, South Korea)

Any movie named Poetry has a lot to live up to, but this South Korean film does so and makes it look easy. It's a bleak and sometimes depressing film because even though the main character is an old woman, it is as if this is a film about the loss of the innocence she has tried her whole life to keep. She enrolls in a poetry class because she wants to learn how to better witness the beauty of the world, but the world constantly disappoints and makes it that much harder for her to stay happy. This film is poignant and also very powerful in the way it captures our world in all its flaws and defects. But it's not all depressing, because in the end we find out that those flaws are what enable us to grasp what our world truly is and find that rare beauty. 

10. Meek's Cutoff 

(Kelly Reichardt, USA)

If you come to this modern western looking for something in the vein of a John Ford western or Howard Hawks western, you will be incredibly disappointed. This film is less of a movie with a story, and more of an experience that you live through. Kelly Reichardt's expertly creates a complete lifestyle in this film about a group of lost travelers in pre-Civil War Oregon. Despite the beautiful, endless, and dry landscape that is captured with a beauty unrivaled in most westerns, the film still gets across the claustrophobic, fearful, and haunting tone of the film. The film features some of the most accomplished cinematography you will find this year, plus Michelle Williams character as a woman who takes power is one that will go down as one of the great strong females in the western genre.

9. Hugo 

(Martin Scorsese, USA)

It may be odd to compare Hugo to Mean Streets but both are two of Scorsese's most personal movies. Mean Streets was about Scorsese's young life growing up on the mean streets of New York City, and Hugo is about the early beginnings of Scorsese's love for cinema. It's still a family movie by genre, but the movie is deeply emotional and joyful in the way it celebrates the magic of cinema and by extension the magic of technology. This is a film that loves the dream-like magic of movies, but the most impressive part is that Scorsese succeeds in making Hugo itself a great example of how magical movies can be, especially in his dreamy and exquisite use of 3D that outdoes any 3D movie I've seen yet. 

8. The Interrupters

(Steve James, USA)

Steve James, the director of the one of the greatest documentaries ever made in Hoop Dreams, once again sets a movie in the lower class urban Chicago neighborhoods and extensively reveals an extremely serious contemporary social problem in gang violence. But what really makes this documentary great is its focus on not just the problem, but on the potential solutions and then going one step further by giving information on how the solutions can be even more effective. The documentary offers hope in the some success of the violence interrupters but it offers disappointment because it makes it very clear that these violence interrupters cannot take on the root of the problem, because the responsibility of that lies on the government and the rest of us. 

7. The Future 

(Miranda July, USA)

Yes there are a few scenes of a talking cat in this movie, but don't let that distract you from the very serious and mature themes of this film. This is a movie about that time in your life when you figure out that you have now spent a major part of your life not doing what you set out to do. A couple decide that they are now going to take advantage of the one month they have until they adopt a cat to live spontaneously and accomplish something, but as we see, this pursuit of something new leads to a fracture in their relationship. Despite the surreal aspects of the second half of the film that could have taken out any emotion the film had, the movie surprisingly becomes very affecting and knowledgeable regarding long-term human relationships. 

6. The Skin I Live In 

(Pedro Almodovar, Spain)

This horror-thriller takes the themes of Pedro Almodovar and examines them through a plot worthy of David Cronenberg's early body horror films. Almodovar is known for his Spanish melodramas and romantic comedies about identity that mostly feature women, homosexuality, and sometimes even transvestites. In this film he takes all of that and puts it through a completely compelling thriller plot that subtly but surely asks questions about how people identify themselves and how that self-identification can change over time. Almodovar's musing on perception and identity is masterfully done, but so is the twisted but totally compelling plot. 

5. Drive 

(Nicolas Winding Refn, USA)

There was one woman who sued the producers of this film because it was not enough like Fast & Furious. While that lawsuit is ridiculous, the basis of that lawsuit is why I love the movie. Drive is most definitely a genre film that has car chases, bad guys, and a hero. But Winding Refn takes this story that could have easily been a Vin Diesel action movie and turns into a moody existential artful action film that even has some substance. That substance pertains to the main character played by Ryan Gosling, who is a mysterious man who usually keeps himself composed, but finds himself in a situation that makes him take off his mask of composure and do some violent things. He does this all in the pursuit of "the girl" and "good," because this is what Hollywood taught him, and the audience to expect.

4. Melancholia 

(Lars von Trier, Denmark)

The movie starts off with some of the most arresting and majestic images you'll see this year in a prologue that visualizes the destruction of the world. We then go back and share the experiences of a depressed young woman during what is ironically supposed to be the happiest day of her life. Lars von Trier went through depression so it's no surprise his depiction of the condition is incredibly sophisticated and respectful. Von Trier and his actress, Kirsten Dunst, do not create a character who is constantly wallowing in misery, but through the plot device of the end of the world, they create a depressed character who actually gets to be considered sane. 

3. A Separation 

(Asghar Farhadi, Iran)

To explain the plot would devoid this film of one of its many pleasures. This is a movie that unfolds as its goes on to reveal a situation filled with moral ambiguity, complex social scenarios, and questions on what the right thing to do is. This is a film that features no bells or whistles, just a handful of characters who all have moral dilemmas. None of the characters in this film is clear-cut as wrong or right, every character is a real person trying to do what is best for their family. The movie touches on many issues, like race, class, justice, and religion, but as a whole it centers on the conflict between compromising beliefs for security versus standing up for your principles. Many might watch this movie and try to find some commentary on modern politics in Iran, but that would take away the incredible universality of this great film. 

2. Certified Copy 
(Abbas Kiarostami, France/Italy)

A tear. That's all it takes for this film that seemed pretty straightforward at first, to turn into a complete and utterly fascinating enigma. Is the couple in this film putting on a game to spice up their marriage? Or have they really just met and are now putting on a game to prove a point? If you want answers with your movies you will hate this film, because there is no right answer. This is a film about how it doesn't matter if something is fake if it feels completely authentic. Rarely do you see films that make intellectual arguments with such real emotion. Kiarostami shoots the film in a way that is not only efficient with its use of mirrors and reflective surfaces, but one that reflects the fractured reality we are seeing in the story. Are we seeing something that is real? Are we seeing something that is fake? But more importantly, does it really matter if its real if it feels completely real?

1. The Tree of Life 
(Terrence Malick, USA)

This has already been one of the most discussed films of the year, and I find that a bit ironic considering this is a movie that needs to be experienced above all else. It's a film that is poetic, lyrical, soulful, intellectual, and the epitome of thought-provoking, the whole movie is practically the deep thoughts of a man. You just do not find movies with this much ambition. The Tree of Life is not just unlike any movie being made right now, but it is unlike any movie ever made. Terrence Malick takes on the grandest questions of life and examines them through an intimate story about a boy growing up in suburbian 1950's Waco, Texas. Humans think about life, they think about where it all came from, and they think what it all means, and Malick acknowledges this using his own experiences, but the personal nature of the film makes it all the more universal. Terrence Malick is one of the most high-minded and ambitious filmmakers to ever live, and this just might be his magnum opus.