The Artist

2011 in Movies: the year’s best movies

by
INCENDIES

Here’s my list of the best films of 2011: 1)  Incendies, 2) Take Shelter, 3) The Artist, 4) The Descendants, 5) Poetry, 6) Midnight in Paris, 7) Beginners, 8) Source Code, 9) Young Adult, and 10) (tie) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Drive.

Continuing with my list of 2011’s best films, here are my honorable mentions: The Guard,  Project Nim, Buck, Tabloid, The Adjustment Bureau, Carancho, and Potiche.

(Note:  I’m saving room for some films that I haven’t yet seen, especially Roman Polanski’s Carnage and Ralph Fiennes’ Coriolanus.)

You can watch the trailers and see my comments on all these films at Best Movies of 2011.

According to Metacritic, all of my picks (except The Adjustment Bureau) were highly rated by prominent critics.  I did disdain some art films, most notably The Tree of Life, which made lots of critics’ end-of-year lists.  See 2011 in Movies: biggest disappointments, which I’m posting on Tuesday.

(Further Note:  Incendies was nominated for the 2010 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, but was widely released in the US in 2011.  A Separation, which I and most folks won’t be able to see until after January 27, will contend on my 2012 list.)

Your Holiday Movie Guide

by
THE ARTIST

As usual, some of the year’s very best films have been released for the Holidays.  I especially recommend these three:

The Artist:  A magical romance given us through the highly original choice of an almost silent film.

The Descendants:  Director Alexander Payne’s (Sideways)  family drama is set in Hawaii and contains a brilliant performance by George Clooney.

Young Adult, another of the year’s best.

Michele Williams gives a dazzling performance as Marilyn Monroe in My Week with Marilyn, a lesser but satisfying film.  Here are my comments on some other current films, the sex addiction drama Shame, the Japanese gangster movie Outrage and the Freud-Jung costume drama A Dangerous Method.

Happy viewing!

2011 in Movies: foreign films

by

It was another year in which foreign cinema was essential (although not as great as years past).  Three of the nominees for the 2010 Best Foreign Language Oscar were released in the US this year: Incendies , Dogtooth and the Oscar-winning In a Better World.   Incendies earned a very prominent spot on my Best Movies of 2011.  Joining Incendies on my Best Movies of 2011 are The Artist from France, Poetry from Korea, Carancho from Argentina and Potiche from France.  That’s five films – down from ten on my list for 2010 and the lowest number of foreign films on my list ever.

Still, the French had a fine historical drama in Sarah’s Key, the costume epic The Princess of Montpensier, the sexy comedy The Names of Love and the arty head scratcher Certified Copy.   Stylized violence characterized both the Japanese gangster film Outrage and the Samurai movie 13 Assassins.  There was a sly Mexican dark comedy, Norah’s Will.  Attenberg was a better Greek comedy than Dogtooth.

The Polish documentary War Games and the Man Who Stopped Them was excellent. Hungary delivered a small drama, Question in Details.  The Aussies gave us a very violent contemporary Western, Red Hill.  Germany and Austria produced a contemporary crime drama in The Robber.  Even the Bolivians gave us a pretty solid Western:  Blackthorn.

Here’s the trailer for Poetry.

The Artist: silent yet magical

by

The Artist is a magical romance that writer-director Michel Hazanavicius gives us through the highly original choice of an almost silent film.  Set in Hollywood from 1927 through 1929, it is the story of a silent film star who is left behind by the startlingly immediate transition to talking pictures.

The French actor Jean Dujardin won Cannes’ best actor award as the silent star, a charismatic and ever-playful guy whose career is trapped by the shackles of his own vanity.  While on top, he treats an ambitious movie extra (Berenice Bejo) with kindness; she remembers when she becomes a star of the talkies.

Dujardin’s star, whose films resemble those of Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.,  is a joker with a knack for the grand gesture.  He also has an adorable Jack Russell terrier that serves as his companion and co-star.

Hazanavicius is so skillful that audiences that have never seen a silent film soon become enraptured by the story and invested in the fates of the characters.  It’s a visually and emotionally satisfying film.

John Goodman and James Cromwell are excellent in supporting roles. 

(BTW, in real life, Berenice Bejo has two children with Michel Hazanavicius.)

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvifS2QOun4]

What we learned from Cannes 2011

by

It’s not news that the French love Woody Allen (Midnight in Paris) or that Terrence Malick can make a beautiful, profound and confusing film (The Tree of Life).  And we’ll get to see Midnight in Paris for ourselves this weekend and The Tree of Life in a couple of weeks.  But I’m especially looking forward to four more films screened at the festival:  The Artist, Drive, The Kid with a Bike and Polisse.

The film that captured the most fans at Cannes is The Artist, a mostly silent film about a silent film star at the advent of talking pictures.  By all accounts, it’s a visually and emotionally satisfying film.   The French actor Jean Dujardin won Cannes’ best actor award; John Goodman, James Cromwell and Penelope Ann Miller also appear.  The Artist will be released in the US by The Weinstein Company.

Drive is an action movie starring Ryan Gosling as a stunt driver by day, criminal getaway driver by night.  It’s getting attention for the emotionally vacant character played by Gosling and the stylishness of the car chases and violence. Drive will be released in the US in September by FilmDistrict.

The Kid with a Bike is the latest from the Belgian Bardennes brothers, two of my favorite film makers (The Son, Rosetta).  a 12-year-old boy wants to find the father who dumped him at a children’s home, but meets a woman who becomes his de fact foster mom.  The Kid with the Bike will be released in the US by Sundance Selects.

Polisse is a reputedly riveting French police procedural about the child protective services unit.  It stars an ensemble cast led by Karin Viard (Paris, Potiche, Time Out).  Polisse will be released in the US by IFC Films.

Here’s the trailer for The Artist.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgAvXlG68Y8]