If Jane Weinstock’s 2003 romantic comedy Easy had been made for a Hollywood studio, with attendant bigger budget and presumably bigger stars, I probably would have praised it as a noble failure.  Sure, it is not a good film, but in those circumstances, it would certainly be trying to do something interesting in that blandest and most uninspired of genres.  Unfortunately, Easy is a low-budget indie that should understand the trade-off between having no budget is having no market expectations, freeing the filmmaker to break the mold of the everyday genre fare and explore the possibilities it offers in elucidating the travails of romance in modern society.  The fact that it was written and directed by a woman, something that still happens all-to-rarely, only makes it worse. 

The story should be simple and all-too familiar.  Jamie (Marguerite Moreau) is unlucky in love.  Coming off a long history of sleeping with jerks who make excuses or don’t call her back, she hooks up with a British poet named John (Naveen Andrews).  They spent an indeterminate amount of time together in a blundering montage before his ex-girlfriend and former soulmate comes back into his life.  He says he needs to think about things and Jamie flies off the handle.  Meanwhile, she’s befriended an older Irish comedian, Mick (Brian F. O’Byrne), through her neighbour and best friend, who is an acupuncturist.  This sort-of-kind-of love triangle is the set-up, and its predictability shouldn’t matter a bit.  It’s always in the details where films like these shine, even if you hoped for something a little more interesting from an indie.  Unfortunately, this film is overstuffed at 97 minutes without about five plots too many, as everyone has some strange issue and goings-on on the side, including Jamie’s sister Laura (Emily Deschanel) and the various friends and former lovers that make up this increasingly incestuous group.  I might have made it sound much more interesting that it really is, but I didn’t mean to.  These little subplots happen on the side, and they rarely directly or indirectly comment on Jamie’s situation other than to have the problems of love and eventual motherhood surrounding our cute but idiotic protagonist.

An example of the wayward ambition comes reasonably early, when apropos to nothing, Jamie comes across a crying, shocked woman in a bathroom stall.  The woman runs to the roof and threatens to commit suicide.  This absurd, hamfisted situation is perhaps the least elegant way in the history of film to divulge back story, and yet, there is Jamie on the roof revealing that her mother committed suicide when she was young.  More damning than this preposterous screenwriting excess is the fact that the suicide issue hangs there but is never comfortably melded with Jamie’s love life, which is the focus of the film.  The suicide aspect feels like clumsy grab at depth, and by introducing this ghostly pall over the proceedings it might give emotional weight to a character that is little more than a stock rom-com female (all the way down to her quirky marketing job).

Visually, due to budget, this is nothing like your typical Hollywood affair.  However, due to its use of DV – and this was 2003 so we shouldn’t be too harsh – it has a sickly, de-coloured look instead of the grotesque gloss the genre usually throws up.  This isn’t all down to technology, of course.  Pieces of April is not a pretty film, but its director and cinematographer used what they had to give it a sense of an autumnal home movie.  It wouldn’t be fair in the slightest to bring up Richard Linklater’s claustrophobic Tape, but it’s hard not to think of it when you see that particular early 00s DV image on screen.  The lighting is awkward to atrocious and the director has little-to-no understanding about just how she wants to film the characters interacting in these relatively small spaces.  The freedom of movement is not always a blessing.  It’s also no excuse for the audio recording, but I’m willing to concede that maybe that was just my TV.  In any case, the visual style only detracts from the material.  It is so uninteresting to look at that when Weinstock throws in something like the shot of the reflection of a man between two sisters in a painting it smacks of trying-too-hard (not to mention its underlining a theme that is barely there anyway).  There’s a big scene in a blue room that could have worked, but it never rises above “student video” levels.  The sex scenes do have a more graphic, intimate realism than you’d expect, but I’m going to assume that the effect is pure luck based on the aesthetic sensibilities on display through the rest of the film.

The central issue through all of this is Jamie herself.  Marguerite Moreau does very well to make the character bearable without relying on just being cute.  The character is repulsive in a number of ways, from her harsh overreactions to her predictable indecision with regards to her two would-be partners.  This isn’t to say that her reactions to something like John’s ex-girlfriend or to a misunderstanding later on aren’t believable, but this film is too filled with artificial plot devices to create the coherent world necessary to enact a true character study.  I imagine this film wants to be an honest look at love in the modern era for 20-something females, but it pays little attention to the sorts of minute details that could have properly cast a light on the experience.  The hovering question is that of sex, of course, and the eventual decision by Jamie to go celibate for three months.  Considering the brash, ridiculous way this same conceit was handled with the genders reversed in the peculiar 40 Days and 40 Nights, it obviously could have gone a lot worse.  Still, that’s a mainstream film played for laughs and trading on gendered stereotypes about just the types of jerks that Jamie complains about in Easy.  The strange thing is we get very little sense of what Jamie’s sex life is really all about.  It’s established at the beginning that she seems to have a lot of sex, but aside from the kiss-off voicemail messages over the opening credits, we have no understanding of just how this works.  When she relapses in the middle of the film after heartbreak, we get a quick montage of various men signing her cast (don’t ask), which is twisted and odd and could have been interesting, but we don’t know why Jamie does or if she gets any pleasure out of recreational, meaningless sex.  Does she do it because she’s convinced these guys might be the one?  Does she do it out of self-loathing?  Does she do it because she thinks guys will like her more?  Does she do it for, god forbid, fun?  None of this is properly addressed or even given adequate screen time so all we’re really left with is the love triangle and a staunchly conservative attitude towards sex.  It’s no surprise that in her celibacy she ‘gets to know someone’ and they might fall in love because that’s what the typical Hollywood film would have us believe.  Women can’t have sex for fun, or ‘use’ men for their bodies.  It’s all about finding ‘true love’ and eventually – and this gets laid on pretty thick out of nowhere – procreate.

That conservatism is the real tragedy of the picture.  Okay, you have a small budget, but you’ve got a good cast and you can create something that’s an antidote to all the common, patriarchal conceptions of women and their love lives in the modern world.  If we want to see conformist art about this topic, we can see it with much nicer production design and perhaps one or two reasonably executed gags.  There is little that separates Easy from the mainstream other than a few crude words and nudity.  It smacks of someone auditioning for the studios and trying to show that they can play ball with the standard audience expectation, and that’s a real shame.  There’s a good movie to be had based around a single woman with an active sex life, but this film tries to play it safe while throwing in about eight too many sub-plots to distract from the central issue.  It might not look conventional, but by the end even the most minor of characters has found their own happy ending and you realize Easy is just the same old same old, only uglier.

-M

I really can’t figure out who likes Conan the Barbarian.  Not just the latest reboot/reimagining/remake, but also the character in general.  What is the appeal? Fantasy fiction, whether it’s Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones, takes us into new worlds that are somewhat recognizable and also completely alien.  The baseline interest in the genre is, really, world building (and a certain fetishization of medieval garb, I suppose).  Set up a fantastical, intriguing place and then create characters to play around in it.  I’ll bet this is a reason for the success of World of Warcraft or the Elder Scrolls series of games.  Still, there are characters in the fiction in which to invest, and a whole set of rules that are ever changing to inhibit their desires.  Conan the Barbarian’s sole source of interest is his muscular physique and the way in which that allows him to swing a sword quite well.  There are notions of heroics and honor, but this isn’t a well-established universe – at least as far as the film adaptations are concerned – and there doesn’t seem to be a central struggle.  In the new film, he wants revenge on a guy who also happens to want to take over the world.  Conan, then, must be devoid of personality or conflict or even flaws.  He is a Hero in the most banal sense – the always-good guy who can’t be beat.  Why is this interesting for anyone?

The film begins with Morgan Freeman (who I imagine was filling out a deposit slip as he recorded his narration) helpfully giving us the exposition we need to understand absolutely nothing at all about this strange and fantastical world.  It takes sometime while Atlantis was around, maybe?  Or it is Atlantis?  I have no idea.  Either way, Young Conan is born dodging a sword through his mother’s womb as his small tribe is attacked by someone for some reason.  He grows up a bit and impresses his father (Ron Perlman, the best thing here by a country mile) with his ability to decapitate three bad guys while holding a quail egg in his mouth.  His father is the chieftain of a barbarian tribe – though from what I can tell there is no central Greek or Roman civilization so I have no idea why they are considered ‘barbarian’ – who happens to have the last shard of a broken super mask that allows the wearer to control the world in some way or another except when he’s beaten and they smash up the mask.  Conan’s father is killed and he grows up to be Jason Momoa of Game of Thrones fame.  He spends his days doing general barbarian-like activities, such as freeing slaves, drinking mead, bedding wenches, and having muscles.  He’s still on the hunt for the mysterious man who could somehow control an entire army, gain the most powerful mask in the world, and then disappear because he needs the blood of a certain person.  That ‘certain person’ is a fair-skinned, blue-eyed monk played by Rachel Nichols.  Then people fight and nothing much of interest happens until the credits roll.

Not, of course, that the plot matters a jot in a film like this.  The real question is what do director Marcus Nispel and his team do to compensate for the void of a central character, and the answer is: nothing at all.  The John Millius version at least had a degree of campy silliness that, when viewing the film as a sort of Flash Gordon, overblown serial, gave it a certain amusing charm that least sustained audience interest through its running time.  Nispel’s version feels punishingly dull for every single second of its near-two hour running time.  The idea seemed to be to take it all very seriously, throw in some breasts here and there, and ramp up the gore-factor.  To say that this is pandering to a certain type is unfair on the audience.  This feels like pandering to a perceived audience of action-gore hounds and lonely fantasy nerds.  It’s the kind of thing that Game of Thrones has been accused of, but there’s purpose to those beheadings and throat-rippings and (occasionally) to the nudity, where here it’s used in the vain hope of giving the film a bit of ‘grit’ and pleasing Harry Knowles and his cadre of moron followers.  No longer can an anonymous bad guy get tossed off the roof a speeding carriage to be forgotten.  Now, he must land head first into a flat rock where his head caves in, leaving a splatter of blood.  It says a lot about my own desensitization that none of this was shocking or interesting or even laughably silly.  It was just dull.  Always, always dull.

The action scenes are inept and confusing.  The whole film looks brown and drab.  There isn’t a hint of humour or charisma from anyone in the cast.  Momoa does fine with a character that only requires muscles and growling.  Rose McGowan, as an evil sorceress, gives one of the worst performances I’ve seen in a long time.  Not to say its her fault, really, as I can’t imagine there was much direction or even understanding of the tone of the piece.  Nichols gets the token “feisty” line but she’s quickly demoted to plot contrivance and pretty looks.  There isn’t an ounce of fun or joy in the picture.  It’s bland, ugly, and boring for pretty much every minute of its bloated running time.  The one exception is a hilariously tacky sex scene that’s lit and shot like 80s softcore.  It was the kind of earnest throwback that the rest of the picture could have used.  Instead we get a slashing snooze.

-M

For what could have been a Tom Cruise vanity project, the Mission: Impossible series has been remarkably solid.  The idea to have a different director for each entry has been reasonably fruitful, though the extremely distinct styles of its first two entries – reflecting the status of their directors, perhaps – has given way to a less conspicuous visual mode.  Brian DePalma’s first entry was kind of brilliant in its use of wide angles and clear lines, playing up the director’s fascination with paranoia and subterfuge.  John Woo’s insipid M:I-2 was about as horrendous a film as I can remember, but it wasn’t lacking in those trademark slow-motion gun balletics or, indeed, doves.  The third in the series, directed by then-first-timer J.J. Abrams, came some years after the previous and in a way was a rejuvenation in terms of style, even as it reigned in the auteurist flourishes.  It was slick, to be sure, but it’s fun came from the zippy writing and plot movement instead of any sort of extravagant visual distinctness.  Now we have Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, which sees Abrams return as a producer and Brad Bird, of The Incredibles and The Iron Giant fame, make his live-action directorial debut.

Bird does very well with the string of set pieces that make up the film.  The plot is, as usual, irrelevant, though they don’t cast it off completely with a knowing nod as they did in the last one.  There’s a crazy Russian and nuclear codes etc etc, but it’s just an excuse for the team to infiltrate the Kremlin, pull-off a double-con in Dubai, and eventually race through the streets of Mumbai.  Each major scene is differentiated from the others through tone and action (this one is about intense infiltration, this one about a chase, and so on) so it never becomes a string of loud, monotonous bangs.  The action is both absurdly over-the-top (it relies on a string of outlandish gadgets) while also maintaining the kind of harsh physicality that the Bourne series has made standard in the genre.  The combination works, as there’s a deliriously fun and occasionally gutteral fight in an automated parking garage that is slapstick silly while managing to retain a degree of physical bruising.  Bird’s success can be seen in the contrast of several of the films infiltration scenes – all perfectly understanding where everyone is and what he or she has to do – and the justifiable ‘chaos’ sequence in the sandstorm, which uses its frantic camerawork to emphasize the central thrill of unknowing.  It is confident, clear-eyed filmmaking.

The biggest and perhaps most crucial difference between Ghost Protocol and its predecessors is the emphasis on Tom Cruise’s super-spy hero Ethan Hunt being a part of a team, an intrinsic part of the original television series that has largely been ignored in the films in favour of lone wolf heroics.  The team element is played up in every set piece, allowing Bird to open up the action sequences to allow for multiple elements of tension cross-cutting and depending on each other to progress.  It’s a simple thing, to be sure, and its underuse in the earlier films has always boggled my mind, but it works a charm here, especially during the much-vaunted Dubai sequence.  It helps that the three supporting players have enough charisma and personality to pull off the kind of dynamic necessary to make even the sloppier exposition scenes work.  Jeremy Renner brings a straight man comedic charm to his role as analyst Brandt, Paula Patton is able enough for the mostly physical role of fighting/looking beautiful (though she does do well with some of the minor, meatier character moments), and Simon Pegg manages to pull off a solid and often-funny comedic supporting character for what must be the first time in a Hollywood action blockbuster in ages.

So with the emphasis on the team aspect opening new excitements to exploit, this is perhaps paradoxically the most obvious “star vehicle” for Cruise in the series.  From his first scene in a Russian prison, where he strolls out of his cell and then acrobatically swings over the bar to the lower level, this film is all about Cruise’s body in motion.  So not a “star vehicle” in the sense of a showcase for acting talent or depth, but in the classical mode of The Star – a trend that I believe is close to dead – strutting around and thrilling audiences with his exploits.  Erroll Flynn swinging from a chandelier with a smile and a wink is replaced with Cruise swinging down a power line onto the back of truck with a charming shrug.  The Dubai sequence is beautifully shot and expertly staged, but its real power derives from the knowledge that Cruise is really up there, swinging from a rope 180 stories up on the side of the tallest building in the world.  It’s what separates it from the Bourne films, which proudly proclaimed that “Matt Damon IS Jason Bourne” whereas here it would be more fitting to emblazon a poster with “Ethan Hunt IS Tom Cruise”.

That notion of watching the actor and not a character is important.  This is a film about stunts and action, not story or overwhelming effects.  Bird’s (and Cruise’s) real accomplishment is the sense of being in real places and watching people do real things.  Sure there’s a big CGI sandstorm and an explosion, but for the most part it’s about people in physical spaces, globetrotting in physical cities, doing physical stunts.  It’s telling that the crux of much of the action is the malfunctioning and failing of technology; all those gadgets are cool but they can only get you so far.  It comes down to physical presence, and Ghost Protocol delivers the old-fashioned joy of being there.

-M

10.  Poetry

Mija is an elderly woman looking after her grandson.  She’s a part-time in-home caretaker to make ends meet.  She goes to the doctor to see about a pain in her arm and learns that she’s in the early stages of Alzheimer’s.  Soon after, a local girl’s suicide is tied to her selfish, carless teenage grandson and everything begins to fall apart.  In the midst of all this, she decides to take a poetry class at a local college.  Jeong-hie Yun plays Mija with thoughtfulness, confusion, and a reservoir of able understanding.  It’s one of the best performances of the year, and it’s the centre of Chang-dong Lee’s extraordinary character study Poetry.  As she comes to grips with the fact that her normal life is all but ending, she attempts to come to terms and fix the predicaments she finds herself in while also awakening to the possibilities of her creative self.  Her struggle to understand poetry and what it takes to write a poem gives her an aura of wonderment that those she comes in contact with assume is a goofy thoughtlessness.  Her slow understanding of the transcendent power of creativity and art, and her final attempts to truly know herself, make for a stunning, thoughtful film.

9.  Nostalgia for the Light

Patricio Guzmán begins his documentary, Nostalgia for the Light, looking at the astronomer’s stationed in Chile’s vast and barren Atacama Desert (apparently the part of the Earth most like the surface of Mars) and their search for the origins of the universe.  There are interviews about the notion of looking into the stars as looking into the past – for everything they see actually happened a long time ago.  Dotted with looks to the cosmos and close-ups of the gears moving the giant telescopes, it’s an intriguing philosophical exploration about what it means to explore and discover.  Guzmán eventually begins to incorporate the story of a group of women who spend countless days combing the vast Atacama Desert for the remains of their loved ones.  This place was also where Pinochet had internment camps and massacred dozens of people before having them dumped in mass graves.  In order to cover it up, they had the bodies exhumed and moved elsewhere, and the women spend their time looking for fragments of skull and bones in the hopes of finding the final resting place of their brothers, husbands, sons, and fathers.  The parallels between the two groups of searchers are obvious but handled wonderfully by Guzmán as he slowly insists on the importance of confronting not only the Universe’s past, but Chile’s past as well.

8.  Weekend

It’s not uncommon to find films about two people falling in love in the cinema.  They require some good writing, great chemistry, and perhaps some good direction.  Still, romance in films tends to be of the more fantastical, wish-fulfillment variety.  They’re enjoyable, sure, but enjoyable in as much as we might appreciate or desire to have those experiences, as unreal as that expectation might be.  It is far more difficult and, thus, far more uncommon to see a film about two people falling in love that feels real and truthful in a way that we can relate to those experiences, or at least understand them to the extent that we can recognize they might take place in our reality.  Andrew Haigh’s Weekend, about two English men in Nottingham finding each other drunk in a club and spending three days together, is one such film.  The key, naturally, is in the leads, who have to handle pretty much the entire film together.  Tom Cullen’s Russell is quieter and reserved in contrast to Chris New’s Glen, an artist who records sexual discussions about his encounters for a project and can be incredibly vocal about his views.  They spend much of the film talking about themselves and their beliefs about culture and homosexuality and their place in modern Britain, but the particulars about what they believe are less important than what they say about themselves as people, and consequently the way they react to each other.  It’s a pretty film, and Haigh prefers a low-key, observational style.  There are a couple of repetitions that are small but incredibly effective, one involving the three times Russell watches Glen leave his building and the other involving their increasingly intimate sexual encounters.  The film develops the relationship so naturally that these moments underline what the characters understand but don’t want to admit.  It’s a sweet, moving film about reluctant love portrayed in the most honest, believable fashion possible.

7.  Senna

I am a fan of Formula 1, but I’m assured my love for the film Senna isn’t based solely on my interest in the sport.  Asif Kapadia has directed a superb, involving, thrilling, moving, and reflective documentary about the much-loved Brazilian driver Ayrton Senna, and its style is so assured and perfect that I imagine even those who hate the sport will find something to enjoy.  Composed entirely of contemporary footage of races, interviews, television appearnces, and home videos, Kapadia leaves all recent interviews in the audio mix, preferring to create a portrait out of original footage and letting Senna’s beautiful, expressive face convey the emotions necessary.  This isn’t about people reflecting a much-loved celebrity, it’s an exploration of the mythology and the legend and the man.  It’s hagiographic to be sure – the film knows who its hero is – but it works because the presentation only desires to focus in on this one crucial perspective.  Senna himself turns out to be a thoughtful, passionate man more than capable of carrying a documentary on his own.  It’s also a great story: an outsider with a genuine talent fights the established power of the sport to do what he loves to do the most.  It’s not, however, the narrative that matters so much as it is the exhilarating and exhausting thrill of the Brazilian Grand Prix and the look on Senna’s weary, battered body as he attempts to lift the trophy or the dreaded build-up to that race in San Marino, which is thick with portent and almost inevitable tragedy.  Kapadia’s method gives the film its power, pushing what’s most important and intriguing to the forefront of the viewing experience.  It’s quite an achievement for a documentary about a racecar driver.

6.  Melancholia

Is there really a Lars von Trier film in my top ten?  I’m as surprised as anybody, for the notoriously controversial iconoclast rarely makes anything that doesn’t elicit groans of boredom and irritation from me.  Too often his films have felt like a mere exercise in shameless, cynical manipulation to ring as anything but dull to me.  Anti-Christ, however, was an improvement in that he was at least using his not-insignificant gifts as a filmmaker to tell a story and even have a bit of fun.  Melancholia is on another level entirely.  For the first time, it feels as though he was really laying it all out there in a gush of honest creativity.  Kirsten Dunst’s superb performance as the extremely depressed Justine and Charlotte Gainsbourg as her compassionate, motherly sister Claire create a vivid portrait of mental illness and the people who care for those suffering from it.  As the rogue planet Melancholia moves around and the inevitable draws closer (using some fantastically simple devices like a homemade stick with a wire ring), the onset of fear from Claire is counterbalanced with the expectant calm of Justine.  It’s no surprise that Lars von Trier has since said it was ‘too easy’ a film and has expressed dissatisfaction; he seems like the kind of guy who might just feel a bit embarrassed about such personal honesty.  It’s through that honesty that he manages to find a different gear both emotionally and visually – the film is almost excruciatingly gorgeous, from its opening tableaux to the night shots of the Marienbad-esque geometric garden to the looming planet itself.  That final, destructive end can be beautiful, and he gives Justine and Celine an uncharacteristic grace note ending that comes off as that most alien of emotions in the director’s work:  optimistic.

5.  Drive

You can say Drive is all style and no substance, and you’d be half-right.  You can complain that Carey Mulligan’s Irene is incredibly underdeveloped at best, and I wouldn’t argue with you.  You can lambast the film as pure a violent, male fantasy, and I could see where you’re coming from.  The fact is, Drive is about as cool and, that most hated of things, awesome a film as has been made all year.  It’s tight and controlled but also gives itself over to more languid, romantic moments.  It’s combination of music and visuals are exquisite, and in the elevator scene, I believe it rivals Wong Kar-Wai for unadulterated passion.  Nicolas Winding Refn is a very talented director, and we can argue for days about the merit of the source material and the story he is telling, but his style is fantastic.  Yes, it owes a lot to Walter Hill’s The Driver and Michael Mann’s Thief, and the story of the lonely, quiet man becoming a hero has been regurgitated thousands of time.  Gosling’s cool handsomeness and reserved (bordering on dysfunctional, and he plays that up) manner goes a long way, while Albert Brooks breathes joyous life into a gangster who always feels put-upon.  It boasts several stunning sequences, including some of the most pleasurable scenes of driving seen in a very long time.  Its structure is simple but engrossing.  Its characters are intriguing and enjoyable.  And the scene where Desire’s “Under Your Spell” engulfs the soundtrack is about as wondrous a moment as anything John Hughes – the man they hoped to emulate – ever accomplished.  I love Drive and I am not ashamed to say it.

4.  Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Tomas Alfredson’s version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy would be impressive enough for telling the complex plot of John Le Carre’s much beloved thriller effectively and in a reasonable running time.  Doubly impressive is his ability to create an undercurrent of malaise, regret, and disappointment that elevates the material beyond a pulpy, albeit sophisticated, whodunit.  From a basic storytelling level, the film is masterful.  It’s editing rhythms slowly evolve as the story come more into focus, from its early scenes that are seemingly just snatches of exposition (but really insightful character moments) to the later reveals, he understands how to build a mystery and convey the slow understanding of his protagonist.  It’s also incredibly economical, for instance the final scene of violence that is given genuine emotional heft based almost solely on the use of a Polaroid earlier in the film.  From a technical standpoint, it’s the absolute height of what a thriller should be.  On top of that – or more precisely underneath it – is the atmosphere of despondent sadness that comes with realizing just how far things have slipped away.  The characters look back fondly on their work in World War II, back when things were simple and the Right Thing was obvious.  At the height of the Cold War, they are simply pawns in a larger game they barely understand.  Gary Oldman’s George Smiley has a scene where recounts a conversation with the KGB antagonist that conveys all of the distrust and grief he feels over what he’s had to become to stay in the game, even after being forced out of it.  It’s that aura of melancholy that stays with you long after you leave the theatre, but it shouldn’t overshadow the sheer technical genius that makes it so effective on a story level.  It’s damn near a miracle.

3.  A Separation

Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation is about as tense a viewing experience as you’re likely to see all year.  The simple premise – a man and a woman have a disagreement about the future of their family and decide to separate – turns into an incredibly complex series of events that could easily be a comedic farce if it weren’t for the seriousness of the consequences.  The final hour is about as gut-wrenching as any I’ve seen in the way that motivations and perspectives bump against each other to dig each of the main characters into a deeper hole.  The visual motif of glass doors and walls underlines the person, religious, and class barriers between every character.  It works fantastically well as an indictment of the Iranian’s legal system and the complications religious and personal beliefs cause everyone involved, but at its most basic level it’s an extraordinary work about stubbornness, honour, and misunderstanding.  We understand everyone’s motivation at all times, and there are no good or bad guys.  They are people caught in circumstances they can’t reconcile.  It’s an incredible viewing experience and all I can really say is that you should seek it out immediately.

2.  Certified Copy

It begins with an academic premise:  for the person experiencing the art, a copy can be just as good as an original.  Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy then spends the rest of its running time picking apart and exploring this idea through its two leads, Juliette Binoche as an unnamed woman and William Shimell as the author and academic, James Miller.  She tells him she is a fan and they being walking and then driving around the small Italian town to discuss his theories and their lives.  Someone in a café assumes they are married, and they decide to act as if they are.  Before long, they are operating under the premise that they are married, and they very well might be.  That central question is never explained, and whether you think they’re a married couple playing a game to reinvigorate their relationship or they’re genuinely strangers who fall into this discussion is certainly valid.  Of course, it’s the journey that matters, and Kiarostami is intent on exploring the reality and unreality of love in every conversation, action and glance.  It’s beautiful setting gives it a heightened sense of romanticism, sure, but it could also be seen as a taunting image of what things could be if they weren’t breaking down.  It burrows deep into the intimacy of two people, and as a result it is at times stunningly gorgeous and at others bitterly sad.  I could write for ages about the numerous situations they’re put in, and the way their conversations develop and their characters come to the fore, but I could never do it justice.  Shimell, in his first cinematic role, is brilliant and this might be Binoche’s best performance of her absurdly impressive career.  It turns the academic into the real as it explores notions of identity, authenticity, and the relationship between the two and how they intersect and interact with others.

 1.  The Tree of Life

As a massive Malick fan, the choice for number one was so obvious I was hoping that something else would come along that would justify a lower position, if only for credibility’s sake.  It has been an absolutely extraordinary year for films, as evidenced by the punishing length of this list and the fact that I could easily have extended it to 40 entries and felt no shame.  Still, as I was rewatching Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life a month ago, and the creation sequence began, I knew there wouldn’t be any other.  It is, in many ways, the most cinematic of films this year, relying on sound and light in a way films rarely do to express something deeply personal and profound.  Brad Pitt gives the best performance of his career as the conflicted, occasionally aggressive but well-meaning father during the central sequence of the boys growing up in Texas in the 1950s, and Jessica Chastain is luminous as the ethereal mother figure that eventually becomes subsumed by her son’s Oedipal development.  Still, Malick is the star here, juxtaposing the story of his childhood with nothing less than the creation and, presumably, end of the universe.  You can argue endlessly about its meaning, of course.  Anytime Malick releases anything people start reaching for their Heidegger.  Then there is the particularly theological bent of this film, and you can look into the Book of Job and interpret its relation to the story and try to ascertain just what Malick is trying to say about humanity and the universe’s relation to God (it is, in the end, a very Christian film by my reading).  What is truly impressive is the way that it suggests these deep, philosophical, theological, and (some might condescendingly say) academic themes without ever overwhelming the experience of the viewer.  It is an incredibly visceral film, and its melding of music and sound and performance and visuals is unmatched by anything else this year.  It’s incredibly audacious, especially for an American film, and it actually succeeds – even for me and my cold, cynical heart – at expressing a wondrously humanist and spiritual essence of the world and our place in it.  It is a rare kind of cinematic experience and I am incredibly grateful that I was lucky enough to witness.

-M

20.  Rise of the Planet of the Apes

As July turned to August it felt like the summer movie season was going to be the worst in recent memory, with Super 8 standing as the lone bright spot amongst the sea of pitiful sequels and sub-par superhero fare.  Shockingly, in the Hollywood Dump Zone that is August, a surprise hit rose out of the mist (yep).  It shouldn’t have happened, of course.  When the early teasers came out proudly exclaiming “from the visual effects studio that brought you Avatar”, you could feel the desperation as the marketing department scrambled.  In the end there is no substitute for having a good, quality product that people like, and they liked Rise of the Planet of the Apes in droves.  A huge box office success – a rare occurrence in a year that saw consistent under-performing from tentpoles – and well liked critically to boot, Rise seemed to have tapped a nerve with audiences.  Personally, I think that was down to the simple reason that it is a good story well told.  Its simple three-act structure is executed almost perfectly and with a minimum of fuss.  A good deal of the credit must go to British director Rupert Wyatt (unknown to me, and my original cry of “studio hack!” saw me eating crow after the screening), who understands the basics of storytelling in an age where visual excess is the raison d’être of so many filmmakers working in The Industry today.  The humans hardly matter, but the focal point of the story was always going to be Caesar, brought to vivid life by the visual effects team and the performance-capture heroics of Andy Serkis.  There were subtleties in his performance and the effects of the completely CGI Caesar that telegraphed a world of meaning and understanding.  Wyatt also understood the value of pacing one’s self.  It moves along at a brisk pace – it is a lean 100 minutes after all – but there’s no rush to throw out huge set-piece spectaculars every twenty minutes lest the audience get bored.  It’s a proper build consisting of establishing the hero and his life, throwing him into a situation where he finds his consciousness raised, and then evolving into a leader.  The inevitable ‘rising’ has all the build-up it deserves, allowing for a cathartic sequence of apes run amok, while still maintaining through almost purely visual terms their location, their goals, where they have to go reach them and what they have to do to achieve them.  Throw in a brilliant ending credits sequence – complete with a pounding John Powell score – and you have the best summer movie of the year.  I wonder as well if part of the reason for its success is the way it seemed to capture the zeitgeist of grassroots civil unrest.  Critics complained about the lack of allegorical substance in the film as compared to the original series, but in the year of the Arab Spring and, eventually, the Occupy Wall Street movement, it feels like too much of a coincidence that one of the biggest films of the year would be about the rebellion of beings abused and mistreated at the hands of sadistic, power-hungry jailers and uncaring corporations.  Caesar’s rebellion against the forces holding him back gave a sense of catharsis to those who feel impotent to act in these troubling times.  Serkis’ performance humanized the downtrodden.  It just so happened to be an ape.

19.  Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

If ever a film could be slapped with the label “not for everyone”, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is it.  Much to my world cinema shame, this was my first encounter with venerated Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and despite hearing chatter about his glacial pacing and his affinity for the surreal, I still wasn’t fully prepared for the experience.  The plot, such as it is, involves Uncle Boonmee dying and being visited by ghosts and memories, presumably from past lives.  That synopsis is about as useless as they come, however, as the film really consists of a string of sequences, some of which seem to have no connection to any other.  What hovers over all of it is the thick atmosphere and the elegiac fade into death.  The imagery throughout is perplexing but beautiful, and I found that many of the visuals resonated and stayed with me, vividly, for weeks after I watched it.  Whether it be the spectre of a dead relative, now transformed into a black-haired beast with glowing red eyes, the beautiful caves where Boonmee ends what I can only presume is his funeral march, or even just a yak standing in the late-night darkness.  My assumption is that a great understanding of Thai culture and history will help to illuminate the obscure meanings of these seemingly disconnected series of images, but really it hardly matters.  Film is a visual medium first and foremost, and on that level this is a thoroughly unique, fascinating, and even moving picture.  Of course, if someone wants to explain why the princess has sex with a catfish, I’m all ears.

18.  Terri

The outcast high-schooler indie drama is about as tired a genre as the exorcism film, but Azazel Jacobs and screenwriter Patrick DeWitt manage to breathe fresh life into their subtle character piece Terri.  I would like to say that this is the breakout performance for star Jacob Wysocki – who deserves awards recognition for his role as the titular Terri – but knowing Hollywood I can’t imagine someone of his size and look will ever get much more than a solid supporting career.  It’s a shame, because his Terri is fantastic to watch.  You can see the conflicting emotions in everything he does.  Terri, who has obviously suffered a number of traumas through his life, lives with his caretaker uncle (Creed Bratton) who is suffering from dementia.  He’s overweight and been bullied to the point where he wears his pajamas to school, supposedly for comfort reasons.  John C. Reilly’s Mr. Fitzgerald is the seemingly concerned assistant principal who takes Terri under his wing in an attempt to get him socialized properly.  It all seems quite stale and obvious, but it’s in the little things that the film truly feels unique.  Mr. Fitzgerald has many problems of his own, and is clearly unsuitable for a number of reasons to be the surrogate father figure Terri wants him to be.  Likewise, Terri isn’t just a sweet, unassuming kid with the heart of gold that most films like to cast the misunderstood, bullied teenager as.  He has psychological scars (consider the mice) that come from years of bullying.  His crush on his classmate occasionally veers into perverted voyeurism.  There’s a genuine misfit edge to Terri, and Wysocki suggests it without overselling it throughout.  He also has the bewilderment, courage, honesty, mistrust, and shifting defense mechanisms of any teenager.  It is a superb character drama, filled with a good heart and a smart, honest brain.

17.  A Dangerous Method

Many have dismissed A Dangerous Method as ‘minor Cronenberg’ and as a consequence it has been criminally overlooked.  I imagine many have written it off as being too ‘stagey’, for it is an actor’s film and is based on a play.  It also doesn’t fully delve into many of Cronenberg’s pet themes the way many of his other films have.  At a glance, I’m sure to many it looks like a staid period drama with brief flashes of kinky sex thrown in to make it interesting.  It is, thankfully, not that kind of film.  It is a confident director working with intriguing material to tell a story about the violent and destructive emotional and intellectual forces that are involved in the creation of a new idea.  Keira Knightley’s Sabine is the lynchpin of the trio, and though her performance may seem overdone at the beginning, all body rocking, eyes bulging, and jaw jutting, it soon enough becomes clear that this kind of jarring, violent movement is perfectly balanced against Fassbender’s Jung, with his quiet uncertainties, and Mortenson’s Freud, all condescendingly pleasant paternalism.  It is at times gripping and always involving, as well being an extremely visual film (note Freud’s insistence on commanding posh areas and Jung’s preference for water) without ever being showy.  It might not feature Cronenberg’s signature body horror, or even the explosive physical brutality of A History of Violence or Eastern Promises, but in its own mannered style, A Dangerous Method is as violent as they come.

16.  The Myth of the American Sleepover

If you write out all of the basic plots of the individual stories in David Robert Mitchell’s debut, The Myth of the American Sleepover, it’s easy to write it off as conventional high school self-discovery nonsense.  As ever, the execution is where the beauty lies.  It follows a group of teenagers of various ages, most about to enter high school, through the last night of summer and the various sleepovers they are attending or ditching.  In no small part thanks to a fantastic cast of mostly amateurs, Mitchell finds a nostalgic realism as these youths move from adolescence to something else (or not, as the case may be).  It’s sweet without ever being saccharine or forced.  There’s also a palpable sense of place as we move from supermarkets to lower-income houses to college gymnasiums and long-abandoned Detroit factories.  It all feels utterly familiar, and if it doesn’t quite jibe with the ‘present’ (there are no mobile phones…anywhere), it always has the aura of ‘some present’.  Mitchell gets across the bittersweet quality of kids eagerly desiring to grow up when they might be better off trying to enjoy the simplicity of their youth.  There is drinking, there is fun, there are fights, and there are lessons learned, sure, but all in the caring, subtle romanticism of the final, innocent Long Night of their lives.  It’s beautiful, dreamy look and subdued rhythm – as well as its use of acts like the Magnetic Fields on the soundtrack – makes me think it’s really intended for people my age as opposed to actual teenagers, but I hope it finds an audience with that age group.  Its well acted, smartly handled, and has just the right mix of honesty and sentiment.

15.  Tuesday, After Christmas

The Romanian New Wave continues to impress with Radu Muntean’s Tuesday, After Christmas, a film about infidelity and its consequence.  Hardly lurid or melodramatic, the tone of the film is set in a 9 minute opening scene with Paul (Mimi Branescu) and his lover Raluca (Maria Popistasu) casually naked in bed, full of post-coital joy and lovingly flirting with each other.  Paul seems like a nice guy, but the undercurrent of the film is that, in actuality, he’s a complete asshole.  Not that he understands or knows that, and that might be key to the film.  He’s bored with his wife, Adriana (Mirela Oprisor) but he doesn’t hate her.  He’s just fallen in love with someone else, in this case a local dentist, to whom he takes his six-year-old daughter to get her teeth fixed.  Much has been made, and deservedly so, of the scene where all four principles are awkwardly together at the dentist’s office as Adriana makes a surprise visit before a fitting for a retainer.  The acting on show, as well as the restrained, distant camera, is extraordinary, painful, and tense despite the fact that Adriana and the child have no idea about the affair.  The little scenes, however, all work to build a full and interesting world where we can at least understand –if never quite sympathizing, though apparently males and females disagree on that point- with Paul.  It creates an intriguing gender split about who might be at fault when things go stale, but for me, there is never any doubt that Paul is just being an asshole.  Still, that understanding of motivation is important and gives the film a richness rarely seen in this type of drama.  There’s also an unspoken but almost undeniably present critique of modern, middle class Romania and the malaise its capitalist culture has created.  The genial but subtly soul-destroying scenes in a mall where the married couple are shopping for Christmas gifts is contrasted with the joyous presentation by Paul of a family heirloom to Raluca.  Paul inevitably does what he considers to be ‘the right thing’, but in an excruciating scene learns that honesty about a wrongdoing doesn’t make the wrongdoing any less painful to the victim.  It’s a brilliant and devastating work about a simple situation dealt with honestly and unflinchingly.

14.  The Arbor

No nation does underclass misery quite like Great Britain.  They have a long tradition of it, from the kitchen sink dramas of the 1960s through to Alan Clarke and Ken Loach and the newer generation of Andrea Arnold and Peter Mullan.  Clio Bernard’s documentary about playwright Andrea Dunbar is another in a long line, but its fresh take and unique style fit the tragic story of the author and her daughter perfectly.  Dunbar, famous for writing The Arbor and Rita, Sue and Bob Too (made into a film by Alan Clarke) lived on a Bradford estate known as The Arbor, and despite the acclaim her writing brought her, her too-short life was filled with the tragedy she wrote about in her plays.  Bernard mixes audio interviews with her family members and other key participants performed by actors with the staging of scenes from Dunbar’s plays (performed on the actual estate) to tell the story.  Not all a gimmick or a Brechtian device, the lip-synching echoes Dunbar’s reality-told-through-actors method of writing.   Through the stories of the people interviewed, and through the plays Dunbar wrote, we get a vivid picture of impoverished lives torn apart by society, alcohol, racism, abuse, and drug addiction.  The sad reality that, despite Dunbar highlighting these issues in the 1980s, nothing ever really changed.  The harrowing manner in which all of the problems were passed on to Dunbar’s children – and then compounded by the influx of narcotics – is devastating.  It is a social realist documentary about the near impossibility of escaping a culture that society acknowledges through art and then simply ignores.

13.  Cold Weather

The mumblecore movement (though most involved would repudiate the term) has been notable not just for its cheap production values, but also for its limited scope of characters.  There’s value in depicting the realities of 20-something artists meandering through life and love, to be sure, but there’s a tedious, self-indulgent tinge to most of the mumblecore oeuvre.  Aaron Katz has been one of the leading lights of said ultra-low budget film scene, as he has a slightly more intriguing visual sense as well as a better understanding of his characters and what makes them tick.  Cold Weather, in many ways, is a possible next step for the movement as well as being something of a commentary on it.  Doug (Cris Lankenau) has left his criminal science college course to return to his hometown of Portland, where moves in with his sister and gets a job at an ice factory.  He befriends co-worker Carlos (Raul Castillo) and introduces him to his love of Sherlock Holmes mysteries.  When an ex-girlfriend comes to town and then seemingly disappears, Doug and Carlos decide to put their investigative skills to the test and find her.  Katz displays a visual desire beyond the lo-fi handheld that has defined the movement, and even if he can’t quite transcend certain limitations, there are a few moments that are quite striking.  Still, there is a requisite amount of mumblecore dithering as friends play board games or muck about in a club.  Katz’s gift for characters gives everyone a likeability that transcends the mundanity of the situations they find themselves in.  Of course, that mundanity leads to the mystery plot, which is occasionally interesting, but only so far as the characters are interested in it.  There’s a prevailing sense that they’re making mountains out of molehills out of sheer boredom; their aimlessness causes them to invent fantasies and theories just to feel the excitement and adventure of being in a detective novel.  The mystery is never properly resolved, and perhaps that’s the point.  Katz seems to suggest what might the mantra for the mumblecore movement:  it isn’t about what you’re doing; it’s about the people around you and how you relate.

12.  Tyrannosaur

A man walks out of a bookies shouting angrily before kicking his dog to death.  So begins Tyrannosaur, another entry in the long list of the aforementioned British Misery Films.  Not long after that brutal opening, a woman lies on the couch.  Her inebriated husband comes home and urinates on her as she pretends to be asleep.  If these events seem extreme to the point of parody, they don’t feel that way when watching them.  Tyrannosaur is the writing/directing debut of Paddy Considine, one of my favourite actors working today, but it never plays as an amateur trying his hand at filmmaking.  The spine of the film is the acting from Peter Mullan, Eddie Marsan, and most importantly, Olivia Colman, who steals the show as a devout Christian working in a charity shop and attempting to mask a hellish home life and the alcohol dependency it causes.  It is a film about two broken people helping each other, yes, but when it threatens to turn mawkish (specifically at a drunken wake) it manages to make a believable but surprising turn.  Considine and the actors fill every scene with a brutal tension that rarely lets up, and a combination of smart writing and exceptional acting not only saves it from descending into parody, but elevates it into the best example of British Misery Filmmaking of the year.

11.  Take Shelter 

Yes, Take Shelter is a fantastic showpiece for Michael Shannon as possibly psychologically damaged Curtis LaForche, but what really sticks with you and what moves it beyond the realm of an actor showcase is the way in which the central theme becomes that of family.  Curtis is beset by strikingly realistic dreams and eventually daytime visions of a violent, impeding apocalyptic storm.  Due to a history of family mental illness, he begins to see a local counselor without telling his wife Samantha (Jessica Chastian, surely the breakout star of the year).  Director Jeff Nichols demonstrated his understanding of rural lower-middle class American and its close-knit community in his previous feature, Shotgun Stories, but there he emphasized an almost Malick-like natural beauty in the environment surrounding the story.  Here, nature is a threatening presence, always threatening to destroy the lives of its characters.  Curtis eventually gives into his visions and begins obsessing over expanding the tornado shelter in the backyard.  These scenes echo Richard Dreyfus’ role in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but there he had to leave his family for a higher, and eventually more gentle, purpose.  Family is all that matters in Nichols’ film, and the truly emotional, involving drama comes not from a character’s insanity, but from the way his wife reaches out to him to help him through it.  The ending has been controversial, but it worked fine for me.  The potential storm could easily double as an allegory for economic woes for average Americans in the midst of a crushing recession, after all.  What really shines through is, of all things, the film’s hopefulness.

-M

If you want to read the general rules of this list, please refer to the introduction to last year’s.  The differences this year is that I’ve made a conscious decision to cut myself off on December 31^st, so every film considered was seen by me for the first time in 2011.  I’ve still retained the rule that it had to be theatrically released (festivals do not count) during the calendar year.  As I don’t live in Los Angeles or New York, nor am I rich beyond my wildest dreams and can afford to see everything, this leaves me with a number of notable omissions due to not having seen them.  The heavy hitters include Mysteries of Lisbon, We Need to Talk about Kevin, Le Havre, and Shame.  I was also ill for quite a bit of the year, and though I’ve tried my hardest to see as much as I can, there was always going to be a limit.  Anyways, here they are, my top 30 films of 2011.

30.  13 Assassins

Takashi Miike’s 13 Assassins is, to some extent, a sub-Kurosawa samurai actioner that never comes close to creating characters as vivid or developing themes as intricate and human as the Master.  However, It would be entirely unfair to criticize a film for not being The Seven Samurai.  What 13 Assassins happens to be is an entirely enjoyable and engaging samurai romp with some distinct characters, and utterly dastardly villain, and some of the best action sequences of the year.  The final hour is more or less taken up with The Big Showdown in a village of immaculate production design.  The fighting is fierce and spectacularly gory, but it’s also elegantly structured and full of breathtaking clarity.  In an age of, to borrow Matthias Stork’s term, “Chaos Cinema”, it’s refreshing to watch an action film with an understanding of spatial relations and how important that really is to the enjoyment of a certain type of sequence.  It’s spectacular genre fare.

29.  Midnight in Paris/The Artist

It’s usually knives out for middlebrow light entertainment for me – I’ve never liked how overly praised such films can be just because they appeal to an older, more moneyed demographic – but in the cases of Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris and Michel Hazanavicius’ The Artist, there are genuine, genial pleasures to be found in classical forms of filmmaking.  Both are also fittingly steeped in a sense of nostalgia, one explicitly and the other in style.  For me, Midnight is the best ‘return to form’ for Allen since Sweet and Lowdown.  He finds his best avatar in Owen Wilson, who has a handle on the neurotic, Allen character dialogue but can make it his own by infusing it with his likeable, easygoing charm.   For the first time in Allen’s non-New York work, his tourists-eye view of foreign cities is fitting instead of distracting as the whole film rests upon the titular city being as romantically fantastical as possible.  As the film moves on into Gil’s adventures in his fantasy world, it increasingly becomes a critique of itself and its wild, romantic notions about the ‘hey-day’ periods and the inability to deal with the present.  It’s also one of the genuinely funniest films of the year, with a particular shout-out to the Hemingway caricature of masculinity and Adrien Brody’s Salvador Dali.  Another film about a man out of step with the present, The Artist uses the classical methods of silent film to tell its story of an actor (Jean Dujardin) unable to transition into the sound era.  Dujardin carries the film and is in almost every scene, exuding old-fashioned hoofing charm and the kind of vaudevillian talents that were the name of the game in that time.  Hazanavicius manages to bypass the gimmickiness of the silent format and marry it organically into the film’s themes.  It’s a trifle, to be sure, but when they are as well executed as this they deserve to be singled out for accomplishing what they set out to do with grace and intelligence.

28.  Putty Hill

Matthew Porterfield’s Putty Hill concerns a group of friends and relatives returning to their low-income neighbourhoods and homes around Baltimore for the funeral of a young man who has died of an overdose.  Mixing a documentary-style (the characters are asked questions and address the camera directly) with more traditional narrative filmmaking, Porterfield explores a community and its youths in all of their aimless, wandering rhythms.  The approach is fittingly detached and observant as we see minor flare-ups between a daughter and her estranged father, or a group of friends swimming in a river, or the goings-on at a skate park near a railroad track.  Though it culminates in a wake scene, and then ends with a relative investigating the young man’s former residence, there’s little narrative build.  It’s strictly about observing, and Porterfield has an uncanny sense of the community and the spaces within which they live.  The wake itself, which takes place in a tragic local restaurant, features and absurd DJ and a motley group of people who are clearly accustomed to this kind of tragedy in their lives.  Putty Hill manages to be quietly powerful and resonant; it is a portrait of youth who have no innocence to lose.

27.  Contagion

Steven Soderbergh’s made one of the finest (and perhaps one of the only) adult disaster films with Contagion, a clinical thriller about world-threatening global pandemic.  Not interested in moralizing about the human condition or following a ragtag group of survivors just trying to make it through one set piece after another, Soderbergh and his writers opted to treat the scenario as seriously as possible by focusing on a number of characters who serve as a microcosm of the larger experience, including beleaguered government agents, field workers, a dad trying to protect his daughter, and a paranoid internet vulture.  Driven forward by Cliff Martinez’s brilliant electronic score, Contagion is concerned with the practical hardships of something so devastating the personal experience is subsumed by the need to treat everyone as a statistic.  I was a little colder on its tone in my original write-up than I should have been, because thinking back I realize the power of that final scene with Damon’s character, his daughter, the camera, the dance, and the (yes, I know) U2 song.  When the crisis is over, you can finally be a human again.  When you’re no longer a statistic, and you can start behaving like a person.

26.   Hanna

In the first week of April, Hollywood awoke from its early-year slumber to finally throw out a decent bit of popcorn action fantasy with Joe Wright’s Hanna.  I didn’t realize at the time how dire the action film output of the industry would be over the remaining eight months, but even at the time it felt like a stylish bit of flotsam to cling onto in the bleak, dark sea of big budget bilge.  Director Joe Wright gave up on award grubbing for a little while to make a widescreen Technicolor extravaganza about a little girl learning to love and kill Cate Blanchett (as hammy as can be).  Saoirse Ronan gave a solid central performance around which everyone else could let go.  Tom Hollander was especially absurd in his turn as a violent, shellsuit-wearing psychopath.  Helped along by its pulsing Chemical Brothers score, Wright digs deep into his colourful bag of trips to create delirious sequences like the prison-escape rave and the dilapidated demented circus ending.  There wasn’t much substance, but it was one of the most pop-art filmic pieces of the year, at times recalling the French New Wave and Seijun Suzuki’s Tokyo Drifter.  It was an exceptional and surprising bit of entertainment.

25. Bridesmaids

Bridesmaids shouldn’t be notable for being a successful film by women about women in this day and age, but unfortunately the situation we’re in leads to a dearth of smart, engaging, and genuinely funny films for the female audience.  It is not, I should add, successful because it is an Apatow production that skews towards the cruder, more awkward side of humour that is generally believed to appeal more to the male audience.  Rather, it deals with women in a very authentic manner as far as my perspective can tell.  The film isn’t about envy over your friend getting married, it’s about a feeling of disappointment in a life unfulfilled.  Kirsten Wiig’s Annie is not just an awkward, jealous fool; she’s a kind-hearted friend whose failures to live up to societal (and economic) expectations have finally taken their toll.  Indeed, it’s one of the rare American comedies that manages to successfully understand the differences in the middle class strata, and the subtle ways those feelings of inadequacy at being on the wrong end of it can cause so much self-loathing.  The film thrives because of its outstanding cast, not only Wiig but the deservedly-praised Melissa McCarthy, Rose Byrne (who manages to give her character more depth than just the ‘rich bitch rival’), and Maya Rudolph, who’s run-walk-crouch across the street in the bridal gown might be the best bit of physical comedy all year.  There’s some flab that should be excised, but it’s smart, engaging, and it has a genuine understanding of comedic set pieces.  The famous bridal shop scene isn’t funny so much for its scatological bathroom antics as it is for Wiig’s face during the standoff with her bridesmaid rival over an almond.  It’s a terrific Hollywood comedy in its own right, but it’s ability to show everyone that whatever Heigl or Jessica Parker treacle the industry wants to force feed to the women of America is just not good enough gives it an extra special quality that should be celebrated.

24.  The Princess of Montpensier

French veteran Bertrand Tavernier’s The Princess of Montpensier delivers the kind of grounded, entertaining melodrama that feels so rare these days it should be treasured.  A relatively simple story about a love triangle during the French Wars of Religion, it basks in the sumptuous costumes and sets without ever turning into an exercise of art direction pageantry.  The story is given complexities and heft by an excellent cast, including Melanie Thierry as the young, beautiful princess and especially Lambert Wilson as the duty-bound, love-struck Count de Chabannes.  The brief scenes of swordplay are exhilaratingly crisp but never showy as Tavernier clearly favours a more classical approach to the material.  It is, as I said, a melodrama, but it’s one that’s soapy elements are offset by the way family, duty, religion, and patriotism become intertwined in events and decisions.  There are no caricatures here; simply heightened human beings caught in extraordinary circumstances that transcend their genre familiarity.  It never veers into gory, gritty modernism, nor does it descend into a campy bodice-ripper.  It’s measured and intelligent, and even on occasion evokes Bresson’s Arthurian masterwork Lancelot du Lac.  Rarely is high medieval court romance this engaging and entertaining.

23.  Crazy, Stupid, Love.

My love for Hollywood rom-coms means that I’ve overlooked Crazy, Stupid, Love’s many problems because it is generally (and specifically) so effective.  This might seem unfair, but as a beleaguered fan of a genre that continues to punish me with cruelly insipid and often-offensive vehicles for simple-minded consumerist wish fulfillment, I’ll take what I can get and raise it up as an example.  Not as problematic as last year’s hopeful contender for best rom-com of the year, James Brooks’ deeply flawed How Do You Know?, Crazy, Stupid, Love manages to hold itself together quite wonderfully despite itself.  The script is severely lacking in a number of cases, but the core cast of actors (Steve Carell, Julianne Moore, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Annaleigh Tipton, Jonah Bobo) manages to pull mediocrity out of the muck and breathe genuine warmth and life into it.  Carell and Moore’s chemistry is so easy-going and lived-in that it’s always believable they’ve been together for over twenty years and still have a spark.  Stone is magnificent as always in what could have been a thankless role, and Gosling proves himself adept to the challenges of comedy, especially in the (what should have been dreary) shopping sequence.  Even the lovestruck teenager and the even more lovestruck son lend a believability to their plights, especially when in their position simply not being annoying would have sufficed.  It’s sweet and charming, though not without its problems.  Still, it works remarkably well on the whole.  It also, and this is quite crucial, features an absolutely magnificent moment of farce that Hollywood rarely pulls off anymore.  It’s a brilliant and surprising sequence that requires a number of pieces to move together in just the right way, and it pulls it off without having ever drawn attention to the fact that it was coming.  It seems like such a little thing, but the value of that scene cannot be understated.  It was surprising the first time, but just as delightful on subsequent viewings.  If more films can emulate it’s humor, easygoing charm, and general sweetness, we rom-com fans wouldn’t feel quite so despondent.

22.  Of Gods and Men

Based on a real incident, Xavier Beauvois’ Of Gods and Men tells the story of a group of Trappist monks in Algeria in 1996 being confronted with a civil war and the onset of a new breed of Islamic extremism.  It isn’t, thankfully, a simplistic depiction of honourable white Christians standing up to the malevolent forces of The Other, but rather a moving and intimate drama about devoted men questioning the lengths of which they are required to go for their faith.  Their position in the community is more about charity and medical relief than it is about preaching and indoctrination.  The film explores the governmental failures of protection that leads them to their predicament, as well as the changing tides of social and religious feelings amongst the population.  The heart of the piece, however, is in the monks and their discussions about fleeing or staying, and where the real honour lies.  Is it more fanatic than religious to face certain death?  The question is never truly answered, as the film doesn’t seem to pick sides.  It does treat the men with dignity, as they themselves can’t quite come to grips with what they’re supposed to do.  Trappist monks feel anachronistic in the modern world already, and though they have exceptional worth to the impoverished community, there’s a genuine evenness to the treatment of the monks who want to flee and those who believe their duty is to stay.  It’s balance is its real treasure, as everyone is treated with due respect and understanding.  Lambert Wilson (having a very good year, it seems) as the leader Christian gives a remarkable performance as he presides over the uncertainties of the situation.  It’s a timely film that is nonetheless subtle and fair to all.

21.  Hugo

I am going to be incredibly biased to Martin Scorsese’s first foray into family films, Hugo, because I am obviously a fan of film and passionate believer in the importance of film preservation.  It is, to a considerable degree, a message picture that on any other subject I might found to be a pinch cloying.  As it is a film about its own medium’s history, I am happy to grant it a fair amount of leeway, especially as it is delightful in its own right from start to finish.  It is the story of young Hugo Cabret, who is effectively orphaned when his father (Jude Law) is killed in a fire and now runs the clocks of a Paris train station, and his search to understand a clockwork automaton his father brought home from a museum.  The film is beautiful and sweet in just the right amount, incorporating a proper degree of wonder into the mix.  It reminded me of the fantastic children’s film of my youth, A Little Princess, in its more considered approach to the genre.  There is very little pandering to the audience in terms of tone, and the scenes of slapstick feel right given the subject matter.  Ben Kingsley gives his best performance in years as the toyshop owner in the station that becomes the subject of the central mystery.  In the end, however, the film becomes a love letter to the cinema itself, and it in that respect it is incredibly successful and, for an amateur cinephile like myself, particularly moving.  Hugo is imaginative and entertaining, and though its larger message might appeal to a select few, it shouldn’t put anyone else off.  It is also worth noting that this film has, by quite some distance, the best use of 3-D yet seen.  To make such an awful gimmick actually worthwhile and enjoyable is an achievement in and of itself.

-M

11.  The Story of Film: An Odyssey

Based solely on this fifteen-hour series, I imagine Mark Cousins to be unbelievably insufferable company.  Still, this epic documentary story about the history of film, from its beginnings up until the present, is about as comprehensive as you can hope to get about the subject on television.  You can quibble with something in each episode, whether it be his taste or his interpretation or what he leaves out, but there’s little doubt about his passion for the medium, and it comes through in every minute of screentime.  It’s not long before his rather…affected…delivery becomes endearing and even kind of poetic, even as he prattles on about ‘the bauble’.  He does a fantastic job of concentrating on foreign films as he makes intriguing (though often debatable) connections to taste, technology, economics, and politics.  At the very least, you get an amazing series of clips from a huge swathe of films that absolutely must be seen.  I’ll even forgive his tendency to spoil the endings.  For Cousins, it isn’t just a highlight reel of film; it’s his emotional interpretation of images.

10.  Treme

It might be a cliché to describe Treme’s narrative as like jazz in the way it ambles along at its own pace and alternating rhythms, but it works.  Many people –one imagines mostly expectant Wire fans- criticized the first season of David Simon’s depiction of post-Katrina New Orleans for that almost structureless narrative.  Characters would occasionally intersect, but there wasn’t much of a backbone to support the series and there wasn’t a major arc outside of, perhaps, the search for the missing person.  I imagine Simon heard the criticism, and in his typical fashion, said “fuck them” and doubled down on the aimlessness.  The threads in season two were even looser, the pacing even more lax.  Once again I’m not convinced it entirely works, but it’s gutsy and fascinating and I have enough investment in the characters that I appreciate the style.  Picking up the ruins of one’s life is never easy and never ends with a tidy ending.  It’s a hard slog, but Treme does about as good as job as possible portraying the humanity of the situation.  We should be grateful for its quiet radicalism.

9.  Happy Endings

The 2010-11 season saw a number of very poor and eventually ill-fated hangout comedies.  Happy Endings didn’t start off well, but for a show the network was essentially burning off, it slowly developed into something far better than anyone could have expected from the first few episodes.  Beginning with a pointless premise of a broken engagement and the friends of the bride and groom, it eventually coalesced into a quippy, occasionally slapstick show about amusing people hanging out together.  They still haven’t nailed the two straight-person leads in Knighton and Cuthbert, though they’re getting some mileage out of turning them into Joey-like loveable fools, but Eliza Coupe and Damon Wayans Jr. have become the funniest couple of television by quite some distance.  They have the kind of natural chemistry and closed-off rhythms that one expects from a married couple who have been together a while, which is a rare feat for broadcast comedies.  The show also features the best puns on the air, and that’s something to be treasured.

8.  Homeland

Plot-heavy shows have a difficulty sustaining themselves fairly regularly, but Showtime’s (I know, I know) Homeland knows well enough that if you create deep, interesting characters, the plot becomes secondary.  It is especially impressive considering it’s centered on a POW possibly being a sleeper cell and the spy obsessed with proving it.  There was a middling episode smack in the heart of the season, exactly where it didn’t need to be, but aside from that it was a remarkably smooth ride.  You can quibble about the ending – and you certainly could this year considering what other shows have done – but the nuanced, difficult performances by leads Damien Lewis and Claire Danes breathed so much life into their characters that minor plot crimes must be forgiven.  Lewis’ conflicted, PTSD-suffering marine is both sympathetic and completely understandable in a way he shouldn’t be.  Sometimes I swear you can see his brain whirring just by looking at his eyes.  Danes has the extremely difficult job of turning a schizophrenic, cold workaholic into something that doesn’t fly off into pantomime and she achieves it as well as much more.  It’s enjoyably intense in the way that 24 could be in its better seasons, but it leaves out the queasy morals and aims straight for the grey area any surveillance-based series should.  The ending of the first season leaves a huge amount of room for worry as to where it will go from here, but its quality has afforded its creators the benefit of the doubt.

7.  Boardwalk Empire  *Plot Spoilers*

Over-hyped and subsequently under-praised as a result, HBO’s would-be flagship Boardwalk Empire has not quite become the show many would have hoped.  If The Sopranos had two sides – the violent crime drama and the smart character study – then Boardwalk clearly wants to emulate the more macho, accessible aspects to generate the hit they think it deserves to be.  This doesn’t mean there haven’t been fantastic characters, of course, but the plot tends to lean towards the violent, sensationalist side.  Season two didn’t totally move beyond the series’ initial problems – in the case of Margaret, for instance, I think it got worse – but in the last 5 or so episodes it found a pretty fantastic and moving groove.  The elevation of Jimmy Darmody, thanks in no small part to Michael Pitt’s masterfully subtle performance (see the smoking out the window scene in the finale), and the development of the people around him, namely his wife.  When the final, shocking moments of the season happen they feel totally earned and also gamechanging, not just in the practical sense of narratives of the future, but in the way it recasts the two seasons we had already watched as less of a thrilling crime saga and more of the tragedy of a lost generation.  The final two episodes of the season stand amongst the best I have ever seen, and even if I have trepidations about where it will go from here, I’m glad the series managed to overcome its excessive cast and focus on something small and really moving.

6.  Justified

As one of the few who really enjoyed many of the first season of Justified’s standalone episodes – I thought they were fun and zippy with some great faux-Leonard dialogue – I didn’t see the inevitable move to a more heavily serialized second season to be an instant improvement.  Still, when the serialized elements were as good as they were, I’m not going to complain.  Anchored by a great supporting cast of villains, specifically the incomparable Margo Martindale, it’s tempting to say that the show worked best when it didn’t concentrate on laid-back, violence-prone Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant), but shockingly enough it wouldn’t be true.  Olyphant gives some of the best performances of the year with his deeply conflicted (and occasionally enraged) Marshal.  Still, the scene-stealers were the villains.  Martindale turns a Ma Kettle matriarch stereotype into a fully developed character.  Terrifying and menacing, eerily calm, and utterly unable to reconcile her modern-day capitalist ambitions with the maternal devotion she has to her idiot sons.  Her scene with Olyphant in the final episode was one of the best of the year as her dignified resignation masked the deep pain of loss.  There are still kinks to be worked out – I’m not sure about Ava and Wade while Winona still doesn’t quite fit – but it was a fantastic season of television overall.

5.  Parks and Recreation

This would be higher if I could include the whole second season, but the arbitrary rules of these sorts of things won’t permit it.  No, the third season has, so far, not been nearly as good as the previous two, but it’s still very funny and often sweet.  When the writing falls away a bit, the characters are still there, inhabited by the finest extended comedy ensemble on TV right now.  The Office (US) accomplished this to varying degrees in its seasons 2-and-3 heyday, but I’m not sure it reached levels quite as high as Parks and Recreation when it is at its peak.  Earlier this year we had the wedding episode, which was brilliant in its total lack of build up and moving in its downplayed demeanour.  No huge emotional build-up or sickeningly saccharine – just nice people enjoying each other’s company and realizing how much they really care for each other.  The series has also wisely expanded upon its increasingly bizarre town, not just with its violent history and its ridiculous citizens who turn up at open meetings (they would be the most ridiculous, of course), but in smaller ways, such as the continued use of Alta Vista.  It’s remarkably consistent, and the latter half of the second season was particularly great.  It is probably the most well-rounded comedy on television when it comes to rhythms and execution.  The minor dip in form in the third season doesn’t mean it’s bad.  After all, when they can throw off a sequence like Jean-Ralphio’s job interview during the credits, it would be churlish to complain.

4.  Breaking Bad

Breaking Bad is so beloved and critically adored by this point that I should really be writing about why it’s only at number four as opposed to praising it for being great.  Well, I have a few bugbears with the fourth season, the largest of which is the way they handled a particularly crucial plot-point in the final episodes.  It paid off well, but the handling up to then utilized the type of close-to-your-chest card holding that the show had never used before.  It felt too much like the creative team had written themselves into a corner and it was their best way to maintain tension through the finale they wanted to give.  Still, it was a hell of a finale.  The season as a whole was in keeping with the standards set by the previous two.  Aaron Paul’s turn as Jess can’t be praised enough as his character continues to become the beating heart of the show.  He has real reactions to the traumas inflicted upon him and the cruelties he must enact.  Walter White’s descent is as horrific and thrilling as ever.  The pre-credits sequences, while not on par with the third season’s, were still the best on television.  And then there’s Gus, the intriguing antagonist who is surely destined to be inaugurated into the unwritten annals of Great TV Villains.  Dark, charming, and likeable, even the brilliant flashback episode centered on him didn’t explain everything, which is a good thing.  All of that is thanks to the work of Giancarlo Esposito, who could brilliantly suggest everything while giving away nothing.  The ending might have been slightly cartoonish – though admittedly awesome – but it almost felt like the only way it could have really happened.  I might be a little harsh on the show, but that only comes from the dizzying expectations it has consistently created and exceeded.  I can’t wait for the final 16.

3.  Community

You can charge the low-rated but much-loved Community with being obsessed with meta-comedy and pop-culture references, but I think that’s a simplistic, surface view of a show that manages to turn its caricatures into characters.  There’s a real bond in the study group the series is based around, and despite how insane someone might act it is always grounded a basic reality of their personality.  Like Parks and Rec, I don’t feel the show’s third season is going as well as it’s first two so far, but it still brings laughs in every episode and when it hits, it hits.  The back half of season two was absolutely immaculate.  The flashback episode was a particular kind of genius, and the knowing paintball retread was full of great moments.  There’s always the cast to rely on if the show doesn’t work completely, and they’re extraordinarily talented.  Yvette Brown’s mood shifts are quick and hilarious, and Donald Glover can make virtually anything fall-on-the-floor hilarious.  If the third season hasn’t quite lived up to the standards set by the second so far, it has produced a number of fantastic moments and intriguing ideas, as well as what can only really be described as a perfect episode of television in its alternate realities exploration.  That episode was funny as all hell and wildly experimental as far as narrative devices in 21-minute sitcoms go.  It also earned the sweet-natured ending but cut against it with the intriguing notion that Jeff has become the problem member of the group.  In the end, Community deserves plaudits not for its cleverness and audacious risk-taking, but for how often it manages to pull them off to create something funny, sweet, and genuinely emotional.

2.  Game of Thrones *Plot Spoilers*

I am not, it should be said, a true fantasy fan.  I like the idea of fantasy far more than the reality, if that make sense.  After all, I couldn’t make it past page 30 of The Lord of the Rings, despite spending a pretty penny on a really lovely edition.  As I watched Game of Thrones and got drawn into the world of the Seven Kingdoms, I was happily surprised and quick to conclude it to be ‘nothing great, but the most fun currently on television’.  On second viewing, however, I found my appreciations grow.  It turns out the really spectacular achievement of the series wasn’t its violent, shocking twists or incredible production value, but rather its subtle character work and extraordinary world-building.  It can feel very expository at times, but far less than any show with this rich of a world (not to mention this many characters) ever should.  There are deep, familial connections all over the place, and the way history plays a vital role – and told in such a simple but intriguing fashion – is intoxicating.  I realized at some point that half the fun is piecing together the past and the way it hangs over the present like a thick fog.  Naysayers, occasionally correctly, criticize the show for giving into that fantasy HBO temptation of throwing nudity around, especially in its ‘sexposition’ scenes.  I hate the notion, however true, that geeks just want to see bare-breasted women cavorting about and the fact that the show caters to it, but Game of Thrones has also created two of the most empowering (both for their actions and their depth) female characters on TV right now in Arya and Daenerys.  Then there’s the great gut-punch of the year, in the execution of Ned, who was cleverly positioned as the star of the show.  Anytime a series can properly pull off a “holy shit” moment it is something special, but on rewatch it wasn’t the shock that moved me but the sadness.  Author George R. R. Martin has created a fantastically interesting world, and the creators of the series have brought it to life and interpreted it in an impressive way.  The reality is that Ned was never the true hero because he wasn’t that clever.  He was stubborn and so devoted to his simplistic notions of honour that he couldn’t see the forest for the trees.  When the eunuch lambasts him for this, it seems cruel, but it turns out the eunuch is the only one who truly cares about the realm.  The show never seems to forget that we’re watching a small elite change the fortune of thousands.  It’s an incredible feat of world building, and it something that very few TV shows could ever hope to achieve.  Plus, when a show makes me hate someone as much as I hate Joffrey, it must be doing something right.

1.  Louie

It’s been a banner year for Louis C.K., with his rise to fame, his recently successful self-marketed comedy special, and the way his TV show has dominated virtually every end-of-year list around.  Because of that, there isn’t much I can say that is entirely original about the second season of Louie, but a drive for originality hasn’t stopped me yet, so I’ll press on.  If the first season was a little uneven but often great and occasionally incredibly moving, the second season went for the jugular.  It was almost more of a drama than a comedy, oftentimes relying on the stand-up routines interspersed throughout the episode for its entire ‘funny quotient’.  The truest ‘auteurist’ show perhaps in the history of the medium, Louis himself stars in, writes, directs, and edits each episode.  The incredible amount of freedom FX gives him, especially due to the miniscule budget (the story of how he got the rights to a Who song that would normally have taken up most of the episode’s budget is worth seeking out), affords him the opportunity to experiment in whatever way he wants.  There’s little to no overarching narrative – the only real consistent is that he has kids and that he’s fallen for a fellow parent named Pamela (Pamela Adlon) – and an episode could be one storyline or two completely separate tangents.  I hasten to add that it isn’t a sketch show by any means; it’s essentially a series of short films ruminating on a particular aspect of life.  I could write about any number of episodes (Afghanistan, Dane Cook, the alcoholic friend dropping in, or the confession to Pamela), but I’d like to single out his segment “Moving”.  Realizing that he still lives in the same apartment he did when he was married, Louis decides to find a new place as part of the “moving on” process.  After a number of disastrous and surreal viewings, he settles upon a hugely expensive, opulent house that he feels will win the affection of his daughters and, in some way, ‘win’ over his ex-wife.  The episode contains the sight gag of the year (the apartment with the wall) and probably the best line reading as well (“…but…Obama…”), and yet it moves beyond mere comedy in such an aching fashion that it also ranks up there with the most purely emotional episodes of anything, including drama, of the year.  There’s a genuine, heartfelt desire to improve his life and the life of his children, but it’s out of reach.  The sadness and longing in his face as he sits on the steps of his never-to-be home speaks volumes about what it means to be a father who can’t provide what he wants for his children, and as a person who can’t achieve the things he desires.  It’s so incredibly humanist, and that’s the real key to the show as a whole.  It also happens to be unpredictable, experimental, sometimes traditional, sometimes very funny, and sometimes very emotional.  Most of all it’s honest, and that’s a trait you can never undervalue.  Louie was the show I looked forward to watching more than any other week after week in 2011, and because there’s no serialization or overarching narrative, that’s a very special achievement indeed.

-M

Lars von Trier’s Melancholia begins with a series of tableaux that, like the opening of his previous film Antichrist, could be a demented perfume ad.  This time around, however, he’s putting his cards on the table at the very start.  The images reflect both the mental state of its two main characters and a portent for things to come. A bride is being ensnared by limbs and roots, a woman runs frantically across the 19^th green of a golf course clutching a child, the bride is peacefully sinking into water like Millais’ Ophelia, and so on and so on.  Never one to hold back theatrical bombast, this is all set to a piece from Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde.  It ends with nothing less than the destruction of earth as a significantly larger heavenly sphere smashes through it.  This prologue is both beautiful and almost laughably overblown, but it is also turns out to be an incredibly useful mood-setter for events to come. 

After the opening, the film is split into two parts.  The first part, “Justine”, follows around the titular woman (Kirsten Dunst) on the night of her wedding at a stunning estate-cum-resort owned by her brother-in-law John (Kiefer Sutherland) and sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg).  The reception is spectacularly opulent (the organizer is played with amusing annoyance by Udo Kier) and it comes as no surprise that it turns into an absolute nightmare.  Justine suffers from depression, and as the night wears – and expectations for her build – her behaviour becomes increasingly erratic.  Filmed largely on handheld and edited together almost like a documentary, the pieces of the puzzle of Justine become clearer and clearer.  With its collection of nightmarish, sniping relatives and hangers-on, it strongly recalls Festen, the best of the Dogme movement spearheaded by von Trier.  Justine’s mother, played by Charlotte Rampling, is bitter and rude, and she gives an extremely cutting speech directed at her drunken, womanizing ex-husband, played by John Hurt.  Justine’s boss, played by Stellan Skarsgard as a not-so-subtly badgering ass, is constantly harassing her for an ad campaign catch phrase.  Claire attempts to help Justine, who disappears for long stretches, much to the annoyance of John, but in the end it is no use and the marriage to Michael (Alexander Skarsgard) falls apart before it even began.

The editing by Molly Melene Stensgaard pushes this sequence beyond merely a roll call of awful people doing awful things.  It creates a palpable sense of frustration and anxiety, and also manages to pull off a real empathy for Justine, thanks in no small part to Dunst.  You can see her straining to put on a smile and act her part in a ritual that would ostensibly be about her but is in fact about everyone else.  Her quick changes of mood are believable and never annoying, and that’s perhaps the most difficult trick to pull.  What she and von Trier both seem to understand is depression, and to an outsider it can seem like petulant self-centeredness, but there’s an internal logic to the seemingly illogical.  The film never excuses her behaviour because it knows that it doesn’t need justifying.

The second half of the film, entitled “Claire” after Justine’s sister, takes place some unspecified time after the wedding, on the same, now deserted estate.  Justine arrives, nearly catatonic from depression, and meanwhile the star that she noticed on her wedding night has turned out to be a rogue planet named not-so-subtly Melancholia.  John believes the scientists who state it will pass right by the earth, and he and his son Leo (Cameron Spurr) make a device out of a stick and some wire that operates suspiciously like a noose to determine the size and, thus, closeness of the planet.  Claire is far more fearful of the possibility of a collision, and she continues to read sites on the Internet predicting earth’s doom.   As the apocalypse gets nearer, Justine becomes calmer while Claire grows increasingly frantic for her life and especially for the life of her son.

This section is shot much less frantically than the first, and instead of the ever-building tensions of the reception we get a more looming sense of doom and despair.  One can interpret Melancholia in a number of ways, but two in particular stood out for me.  The first comes with Justine’s insistence that it will definitely hit earth, and that she knows there is nobody else in the universe.  There’s a sort of elemental understanding that comes with depression for von Trier, as though the universe is so empty and meaningless that insanity is the only rational response.  Indeed, Justine welcomes Melancholia, going so far as to bathe in its reflective light in the nude on the banks of a river, ready to give herself over to it completely.  The other reading I took from it was the way in which severe depression metaphorically – or in this case, if the planet is responding to Justine, literally – envelops everyone around it.  She’s incapable of putting on the façade of happiness when all she sees is cruelty and unhappiness at the wedding, where everyone else just puts on a smile and gets on with it.  When faced with the end of all things, she can function normally as it is her comfort zone, where Claire cannot, and this gives the film its surprisingly graceful finale between the two sisters and Leo.

The meaning of the planet and the reactions and motivations of the characters are open to thematic interpretations, but the film doesn’t work because of its concept or even because of its rich visuals.  The spine that holds the whole thing together is the relationship between Justine and Claire, and the performances of Dunst and Gainsbourg.  They give difficult, nuanced performances that can be emotionally erratic while still holding onto the love and understanding they have for each other.  It raises Melancholia beyond the mere chin-stroking abstractions and talking points his films so often become.  It isn’t shocking in the least to find out that von Trier is unhappy with the ‘softeness’ of the ending, because his work as an artist up until now has felt in turns extremely cynical, pedantic, and reductive.  He’s a fascinating artist, to be sure, but Melancholia feels like the work of someone being incredibly honest about his own feelings and traumas.  Antichrist might have been about this personal grief, but it descended into an elaborate, though enjoyable, joke, as though he just couldn’t quite let himself feel too exposed.  Here he manages to pull off the absurd concept by making it, of all things, incredibly human.  I hope he does so again.

Strangely enough, there was a second film this year about a rogue celestial body making its way towards our own.  Another Earth is a low-budget indie directed by Mike Cahill, who also co-wrote the screenplay with the star, Brit Marling.  The story begins on the night high school student Rhoda (Marling) is celebrating her acceptance to MIT.  After having a few drinks, she starts driving and hears on the radio that another planet has entered the solar system.  As she’s looking up at the sky, she crashes into a truck, killing a wife and young son and leaving the father in a coma.  Four years later, she’s released from prison and moves back home with her parents, while the planet has moved much closer and is revealed to be an exact copy of our own, down to the people living on it.  She takes a job as a janitor at her old high school and soon finds out that the man she put into a coma, John (William Mapother), is awake.  She finds his address and poses as a cleaning service to get to help him with his troubled life.  I know it seems finicky to give Melancholia’s on-the-nose aspects a pass while criticizing Another Earth’s stream of obvious metaphors, but the key is in the execution, and the latter film just doesn’t have it.

The development of the relationship between Rhoda and John feels far too simple and generic, and instead of being invested and full of expectation for the inevitable reveal, we just want it to be over with to see what happens.  And what happens, of course, is exactly what is to be expected.  For it’s tiny budget of about $200,000, the film does look great.  The other earth is ever-present, convincing, and beautiful, and the style builds a decently introspective, occasionally ethereal atmosphere.  It’s unfortunate that the substance just isn’t there, and the concept of another earth with another ‘you’ on it living a similar life with the same memories is never interestingly explored.  Instead it is used as almost a too-convenient resolution that we never actually get to see resolved.

There’s a final scene after a “four months later” card that feels cheap and undercooked.  Its implications are never explored and were never meant to be; it just sits there to make us gasp and ponder its meaning, when really there is none to ponder.  It reminded me of a similar moment in Mike Figgis’ The Loss of Sexual Innocence, only that tiny moment has huge emotional and, especially, existential connotations that are dealt with through the rest of the film.  Another Earth would rather leave the audience to wonder, and it feels like a cheat.  In the end, it feels like the kind of film I might make had I any talent and a meager budget, and as such, it’s a thorough disappointment.

-M

Bertrand Tavernier’s The Princess of Montpensier is as impressive for the things it doesn’t do as it is for things it does.  A high medieval romance set against the backdrop of the French Wars of Religion, the desire to heighten the drama with bodice-ripping passion or play up the epic scope with huge battles is wisely suppressed for something more intimate in scope.  On the other hand, the painterly, unsentimental distance of Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon or the sparse, directorial opinions of Bresson’s Lancelot du Lac are also missing – though the latter feels evoked from time to time in its matter-of-fact approach.

The story and themes are familiar enough.  An older soldier and scholar, the Count de Chabannes (Lambert Wilson), tires of the brutality of the war between the Catholics and the Huguenots and deserts the war.  Having fallen out of favour with both sides, he is taken in by his former pupil Philippe, the young Prince de Montpensier (Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet).  Marie de Mezieres has been promised to a member of the power Guise family, though she is in love with the older brother, Henri (Gaspard Ulliel) of her betrothed.  The Duke of Montpensier (Michel Vuillermoz) convinces her father to break the engagement and have her marry Philippe.  The arrangement is carried out and, when Philippe is called back to war for the Duke of Anjou (Raphael Personnaz), Chabannes is charged with tutoring Marie, now the titular Princess.  Over time, he falls in love with Marie, and though it is never acted upon, it causes him to become more involved with her precarious position than he should.  She’s still in love with the passionate and exciting Henri, whose daring, thoughtless courage has earned him much praise in battle.  Philippe is aware of the tension and he lets his jealousy be known.  Things become more complicated when everyone arrives at the Queen’s court in Paris, where the drama plays out amongst masked balls and secret trysts.

The substance of the material is the stuff of a boisterous period melodrama, and it’s to Tavernier’s credit that he never really gets swept away by it.  The costumes and settings are beautiful but never overwhelming, lending the film a feel of practical reality.  The brief scenes of battle are muddy but never showy, eliding the quick-cutting depictions of brutality and intensity for long shots of horses galloping through a muddy hillside of corpses and stragglers.  It’s very functional storytelling, evoking a reality without insisting upon it.  The castles are large but the rooms are small and close together.  There is little about the entire production that seems to comment upon the period or the story.  In other words, Tavernier is not interested in emphasizing and making judgments on the larger context.  Instead he favours the characters.

The early scenes are dotted with characterizations in broad strokes, as perhaps they must given the necessity of setting the story and putting the characters in play.  If there’s a major issue with the film, it’s that there is a long stretch where we don’t really understand the appeal of Marie beyond her beauty.  Thierry struggles to convince us why she’s so desirable, but her character is attempting to figure herself out, and once she’s faced with the difficult decisions, her character becomes infinitely more interesting.  The themes of fate and duty versus choice and passion are well worn but given dramatic heft by her performance in the latter half of the film.  In fact, none of the major characters are two-dimensional in the way you might expect.  Henri is passionate and glamorous and, yes, a bit of an asshole, but you never believe him to be malicious or manipulative.  He’s sincere in emotional folly, and we can understand Marie’s attraction to him.  Philippe is not a cold, brutal man but a generally nice boy with a growing inferiority complex that is both understandable and detestable.  If Chabannes’ love for Marie seems a little out of character considering his world-weary wisdom at first, we grow to accept it and the decisions he takes because of it.  Perhaps most surprising of all is the relatively minor role of the Duke of Anjou, which might so easily been the conceited, spoiled rich kid with little regard for anyone but himself, but he understands the limits of his rather aggressive style, and he becomes the surprising voice of reason in several crucial moments.

When I say that Tavernier eschews the opulence such a melodrama might invite, I don’t mean to make it sound dull.  There are a number of thrilling little details that breathe life into the nooks and crannies of the film.  There are, for instance, two duels that contrast each other in meaning that are probably the best examples of swordfighting on film I’ve seen in many a year.  Beautifully choreographed but never showy, they are filmed at a distance that is more about observing than fast-cutting excitement.  Likewise, there is a minor running gag in the film about food, and the way in which everyone at dinners or balls discuss the quality of their meal, or boast proudly about the specific ways in which they fatten an eel.  There is a good sense of a living world surrounding the characters, and their lives consist of more than just extreme passions and honor-bound duties.

The drawback to this matter-of-fact approach with character-motivated action is that when the Huguenot uprising plays a major part in the plot of the film later on, it feels forced.  I have no problems with telling a story about the problems of the nobility if the peasantry is left to the background, but their intrusion feels more for convenience than a natural outgrowth of the world depicted.  It’s unfortunate that it becomes such a crucial point at such a late moment, but it doesn’t ruin the film, nor does it undercut the beautiful final scenes where Marie fully understands the similarities between herself and her kindred spirit.  The Princess of Montpensier doesn’t break any new ground, but it is refreshing enough to never feel old fashioned, and at 140 minutes it is never for a moment a dull watch.  Its scope is large but its feel is intimate, and Tavernier’s smart, unimposing directing and attention to characters makes it something of a minor gem.

-M

Azazel Jacobs’ Terri has all of the elements you’d expect from a reasonably low-budget American high school outsider indie.  Many of these films are content to trade out the mainstream tropes for slightly more alternative ones, using non-commercial elements and treating them with an honest sensitivity to give us a slightly more “realistic”, but hopeful, ending.  In fact, recounting the basic elements of Terri, one can have a pretty good sense of where it’s going to go.  The main character is an overweight high school student that lives with his clueless and goofy uncle.  There’s an awkward but well-meaning assistant principal, a strange and annoying skinny friend, and a pretty blonde with problems.  Even incident wise, there’s nothing particularly radical about it.  Difficulties with bullies, an unexpected connection with a crush, and a night of alcohol and drug induced self-discovery are all present.  As ever, it’s in the execution that this type of film will succeed or fail, and Terri succeeds to such a surprising degree that it might just be one of the best films of the year. 

Thanks to Patrick DeWitt’s excellent writing and newcomer Jacob Wysocki, Terri is possibly the most fascinating, fleshed-out American teenager depicted on screen in a long time.  We enter his story long after life started doling out tragedies.  He doesn’t know anything about his parents and he lives with his Uncle James (Creed Bratton), whose absent-mindedness stems, we learn, from the onset of senility.  Terri is so accustomed to bullying that he just wants the taunting to hurry up and finish so everyone can get on with the day.  He’s begun to wear pajamas to school, not as an act of defiance or as a self-conscious quirk, but because he’s simply comfortable in them.  The defense mechanisms he’s developed have finally cemented themselves into his personality, and though he’s not entirely comfortable with himself, he understands himself better than most kids his age.  He’s not happy by any means, but he’s not particularly sad either.  His life has exhausted him into apathy, and one imagines he doesn’t feel one way or another about it.  The pajamas, as well some tardiness, brings him to the attention of the assistant principal, Mr. Fitzgerald (John C. Reilly), who gives him a speech about good-hearted kids and bad-hearted kids before suggesting weekly Monday morning appointments with him to see how he’s doing.  The developing relationship between the two creates the spine of the story, but it doesn’t play out in a typical mentor-student fashion.  Mr. Fitzgerald makes the awkward attempts at seeming cool and wise, but he’s motivated by much more than a desire to connect with the kids or even the pure altruism of trying to help those in need.

It’s the ambiguities in the motivations that make the film as fascinating as it is.  Terri inadvertently brings to the attention of the entire class that his crush, Heather (Olivia Crocicchia), is being fingered by her sleazy boyfriend.  Terri is less heartbroken than fascinated, even shyly asking the boyfriend for details in the bathroom afterwards.  When Heather is about to be expelled, Terri steps in and convinces Mr. Fitzgerald that she was forced to do it so she’s not sent away.  Far from an act of pure good-heartedness, it seems obvious that Terri did it because he didn’t want her to go rather than for her own benefit.  Even the darker actions of Terri, including leaving mousetraps in the wild so he can feed a hawk, are not played as straightforward misanthropy.  The supporting characters are similarly well handled, despite less screen time.  Chad (Bridger Zadina) is aggressively off-putting in such a way that when he reaches out as a friend it’s not surprising – nor is his behaviour in the climax over-the-top.  Bratton gives Uncle James enough hints of the man he was to save the character from being reduced to invalid status – the scene where he has a clear mind and ‘wants to take advantage of it’ by reading a book is devastating.  Crocicchia does well to suggest Heather’s acknowledgment, but lack of understanding, of her sexual power.

The real heart of the film still comes down to Terri and Mr. Fitzgerald’s relationship.  When Terri feels betrayed by his mentor, it results in honest.  Jacobs is careful to side step the pitfalls of a huge rift that’s going to be mended in a big, climactic gesture.  Terri comes back, he understands, and they work each other out.  They develop into equals in a mutually beneficial situation.  It’s their respect, and the respect Jacobs has for all five of the main characters, that carry the film.  The ending of the film, especially the last shot, could be from any good-hearted indie production, but Terri earns it more than most.  It’s never quite as sweet as you’d expect it to be, but neither is it as dark.  It’s a fine line, but it pulls off the balancing act with a good deal of honesty.

-M