It’s that time of year. the holidays are over, the new year is upon us, and the blogosphere is noxious with top ten lists. I don’t see half as many films as I should in theaters, so, like last year, here are my top five favorite films instead. (And some bonus material.)
1. The Tree of Life
The Tree of Life deals with life and death, childhood and parenthood, the beginning and end of time; and not just in dramatic themes––It actually shows all these things, which is an incredible cinematic feat. The film is centered on a small family living somewhere in the south sometime in the 60’s, but this is just the framework director Terrence Malick uses to deal with pretty much everything in the universe. This film is visually and texturally gorgeous and so close to reproducing actual human experience that it brought me to tears. Malick is what some like to call a “montage-ist” and most of his film is told through his gloriously edited montages set to classical music and narrated by various characters’ thoughts. The actors are all very well cast and deliver powerfully naturalistic performances. Brad Pitt especially shines as a misunderstanding and misunderstood father, and Jessica Chastain’s mother is the beatific image of motherly sympathy. The Tree of Life brings to mind 2001: A Space Odyssey. But though It’s images and and aspirations closely mirror 2001, Malick’s vision of the cosmos is much more coherent and theistic than Kubrik’s. God is very much alive and very much in control of Malick’s world, and the constantly reoccurring image of the tree of life can be seen as both an image of the life-giving cross of Christ and of a man’s life, which, as stated in the Psalms, flourishes under God and His word. Malick’s script is not openly Christian, but there are many references to the faith. Chastain’s character draws a line early in the film: you can choose two ways through life, the selfish way of nature or the unselfish way of grace. Though Malick never elaborates on the exact nature of these two “ways,” it’s pretty obvious that the way of grace is heavily influences by the grace of Christ. Regardless of its theology, this film is beautiful and one of the best of 2011.
Note: The Tree of Life was nominated but didn’t win the oscar for best film, which makes me sad. I’m still glad it was nominated.
2. Midnight in Paris
People are heralding this as a comeback for Woody Allen. I don’t really see why people think he ever left, but I get it, this is a much better film than his latest offerings, though I liked last year’s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. Midnight in Paris, like most of Allen’s films is an incredibly simple plot with an incredibly simple message, but the dialog is great, and that’s why we watch Allen anyway, so hush. A writer, played fairly sedately by funny man Owen Wilson, stuck with a bad case of nostalgia finds a way back to the Paris of the past that he thinks he loves. Various historic figures make impossible but well-written cameos, a love interest develops, and in the end an epiphany is had. Cue charming accordion music. The acting is fun, the design is great and the writing is, as always, top notch. This is why we keep coming back and why Allen keep’s churning ‘em out. I hope he keeps it up till he’s a hundred.
Note: Allen won the Oscar for best original screenplay for this one. Well earned indeed. I jumped up and down and hollered.
3. Hesher
Though philosophically flawed and full of objectionable elements, I couldn’t help loving Hesher, which is essentially a rough and tumble re-imagining of the Marry Poppins story. Instead of distant parents and disrespectful children we have a mother who has tragically died in a car accident and a father and son who are in the depths of despair. Enter an insane, violent, drug-addled anarchist named Hesher. He’s not kind and he’s not safe, but he may have good intentions and there may be a method to his madness, which reaches ever heightening levels of ridiculous destruction until the viewer is left wondering: is this some kind of horror film? Though raw and at times incredibly hard to watch, Hesher actually has a very redemptive message about the sorrow of death and the importance of facing it with grace and strength. Joseph Gordon-Levitt delivers a really fun, unpredictable performance as the title character, and Natlaie Portman, who produced the film, gets to wear dorky glasses and play a depressed loser who works a dead end job as a grocery store clerk, which is always a plus.
4. The Future
I reviewed this already in one of my mini reviews, and there’s not much more to say. The Future is an incredibly perceptive and funny look at 30-something culture and modern relationships, told through bizarre and brilliant magical realism. The most fun I had having my thoughts provoked in 2011.
5. Thor
I had Super 8 and War Horse on this list, but then I thought, what the heck, let Spielberg and his disciples go jump in a puddle. I enjoyed Thor, big and dumb as it was, more than both those films combined. Big, dumb and loud, Thor still has a heart and an innocence that I haven’t seen in films since the 1950s. It’s not too difficult to imagine the scene where the Thor and Natalie Portman’s silly attractive scientist character sit on a roof under the stars and discuss magic, ending with a chaste kiss, filmed on a soundstage in black and white and backed by a blaring melodramatic score. The whole film is like this, one big unintentional homage to cheesy 1950’s children’s adventure films and serials, and I loved every minute of it. Captain America, a companion film released later in the summer, had a similar feel, but was just a bit too action oriented for my liking. Marvel has a good thing going and I hope their films continue in this simple, childish vein. Comics were, after all, originally made for children.
Honorary Mention: Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows: Part 2
I don’t really count this as a 2011 film, due to it’s “part two” nature. The film suffers from its fragmentation because it’s really just act three of the last film. As much as I wanted to like it, it was one of my least favorite Potter outings. Too much was cut from the novel, and the entire thing seemed incredibly rushed. The big series reveal sequence is incredibly powerful, though, and one of the best bits of editing I’ve seen in theaters this year. This, coupled with the incredible feat of cinema that was a consistently good series of eight films earns Hallows: Part 2 an honorary mention.
Not So Top 5
Pirates of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
It’s just like the others! Only with half the budget, and missing most of the original characters. A real snooze-fest indeed. Depp was okay, but he had little to work with this time.
Hoodwinked Too! Hood Vs. Evil
The original Hoodwinked was a fun, smart little animated gem. This film felt forced in every way. Even the three little pigs re-envisioned as bazooka toting psychopaths couldn’t save the boring plot or the bland writing. A terrible sequel to a solid original film.
Immortals
There’s a big difference in film making between quality visuals and quality storytelling. Just because the director has one doesn’t mean he’s automatically going to have the other. Tarsem, whose previous film, The Fall, was both a wonderfully visual and delightfully told story, seems to have come up wanting in the story department this time. Though visually striking, with design and composition based reportedly on the work of Italian renaissance painters, Immortals is a laughably bad film, full of goofy re-imagined mythology and history, cliche dialog, and dumb over-the-top violence that culminates in a ten minutes sequence of people in skintight gold armor cutting up monsters in slow motion who seem to be made of flimsy seal skins filled with strawberry jam. Definitely not my best spent money at the cinema in 2011.
Green Lantern
A man who has acquired a magic ring from space uses it to rescue a crowd from an out-of-control helicopter by turning aforementioned helicopter into a giant hot wheels car and speeding it out of harms way on a huge glowing green hot wheels track. We remember an earlier scene where he just stared at a hot wheels track in his nephew’s bedroom for no reason. Oh, now we get it. Did I mention his dad died tragically when he was a kid, that he has a bland love interest, that he doubts his abilities, that the 3D effects make you want to gouge out your eyes? Later aforementioned magic ring-bearing man does battle with a giant orange cloud in space for a few seconds. This is the climax. This is a terrible excuse for a superhero film.
So those are my favorites and not-so-favorites of 2011. Here’s hoping 2012 has some good cinema to offer. We’ll see.