Some have argued that 2011 was a terrible year for films. Perhaps they should clarify that it was the Hollywood system with its upside down economics that massively under-delivered, leaving room for little films, documentaries and comedies to shine through. I was able to see most of these films at festivals or stream them on Netflix or Amazon not long after they had quickly come and gone in theaters. Which invites the question, when will theaters follow the book and record store path, and become unnecessary? I’d like to think that films are always better on a big screen that forces you to put away your phones, tablets and remote controls and tune off the internet and tune into the movies themselves. That said, it seems incredible that even now certain films find themselves without an easy way of being seen. There still exists a kind of limbo where films leave a theatrical run and exist, but are inaccessible on pay-per-view, streaming, iTunes or even DVD. Perhaps this is the real problem. Why shouldn’t people be able to choose what they want and where and when they want it if they are willing to pay. Perhaps a year from now there will be a solution; until then it is somewhat reassuring that films’ loss has been usurped by an increasingly more sophisticated television marketplace where the best talent has come to work.

1) Tree of Life – Dir. Terrance Malick (Brad Pitt, Sean Penn)

This is not a movie for the masses, but it is one for the ages. Beautiful, sweeping, serene, explosive, pretentious, chaotic, non-linear, heart-wrenching, uplifting, metaphoric, and nostalgic- all of these words help describe the most challenging and provocative film of the year. “Tree of Life” is a masterpiece that is equal parts “2001”, “Koyaanisqatsi” and “Stand By Me,” mixing images, emotions and glimpses of a time gone by.

To enjoy this film it is helpful to prepare yourself for it emotionally. Far from your typical Pitt-Penn Hollywood fare, auteur Terrance Malick, who has only made 5 films in four decades, has created a visual, sensual film that relies on mood and images far more than on dialogue or plot. Ultimately it is the story of a family in Waco, Texas who experiences a tragedy that is described only vaguely, but expressed metaphorically as merely a part of the cycle of life, the randomness of nature, and the unpredictability of the human experience.

The cinematography is brilliant, with lush bucolic domestic small town USA serenity and other-worldly natural and scientific images that convey the interconnectedness of life. Brad Pitt’s strict, dominating father is as compelling as anything he has ever done, but exposes the tension between a parent’s desire to impose morality and the constraints of being human. In the end this film is the ultimate exploration of what it is to live a life in a world filled with natural and omnipotent forces well beyond our comprehension.

2) Drive – Dir. Nicolas Winding (Ryan Gosling, Albert Brooks)

Over the past decade Ryan Gosling has emerged as the undisputed king of cool, a real life chameleon of an actor who most likely picks the best movies and the broadest range of characters.  In “Drive” he blends the icy cool of Steve McQueen with the understated sparseness of Brando. This is a film, however, with everything: violence, stylized cinematography, incredible chase scenes and a rich cast of colorful supporters.

At its core “Drive” is an action film, but it is also a drama. Gosling’s mechanic/stunt man has wheels that never stop turning, and a plot that never slows down. There was not another film this year that moved so quickly, but lingered just long enough to capture every detail.

3) The Trip – Dir. Michael Winterbottom (Steve Cooghan, Rob Brydon)

Like a bromance for Ivy leaguers, “The Trip” is a relentless romp through the English countryside where two friends trade impersonations, eat wonderful meals, and reassess the current state of their respective lives. The always wonderful Steve Cooghan plays a version of himself, a still single playboy on hiatus from his much younger American girlfriend. Buddy Rob Brydon fills in for her on this magazine-sponsored foodie tour.

For Byrdon, with two kids and a loving wife at home, the trip is a much needed break, and although he has no real complaints, there is the nagging envy of his single friend and his life of freedom. Of course the fundamental irony is that Cooghan longs for the boring familial existence of his friend. Shot across the beautiful English countryside, and filled with a relentlessly clever script, “The Trip” is a trip through the adolescent preoccupations that fill the male mind.

4) Martha Marcy May Marlene – Dir. T. Sean Durkin (Elizabeth Olson, John Hawkes, Hugh Dancy)

There was not a more beautifully creepy film in 2011 than this one. There was also no more surprising and seductive a performance than that of Elizabeth Olson, the younger sister of her more famous twin sisters. The story begins as a disoriented Marcy (Olson) flees a rural farm, and stumbles into town where she frantically calls her older sister from a pay phone.

Alternating between an initially peaceful seeming commune in Upstate New York, to an opulent and tranquil lake house in rural Connecticut, the film is a puzzle that leaves you unsettled and mesmerized at the same time. But the core beauty of the film is in its infinite ambiguity. Something tragic happed to the siblings while growing up, but it is never clear. What happened to their parents? What else happened on the commune? How did she get there? This film is a dreamy mediation on how life just tosses us around leaving us no choice but to keep moving.

5) Win Win – Dir. Thomas McCarthy (Paul Giamatti, Bobby Cannavale)

No matter how many times I see Paul Giamatti play the same sad-sack depressive, I still can’t help but like him even more. Like Nicholson or DeNiro, he has a very specific presence that draws you in immediately. For most actors such a distinct persona relegates them to recurring character acting bits. But Giamatti is a star, the anti- Tom Cruise in every way. The film is directed by the criminally underrated auteur Tom McCarthy whose “Station Agent” and “The Visitor” are among the finest independent films of the decade, and whose delicate touch and understanding of human nature exude a kind of beautiful realism throughout “Win Win.”

In the film, he plays a floundering small town lawyer who moonlights as a wrestling coach for a hapless bunch of losers. Then in walks a small miracle in the form of a damaged teenage boy who has shown up in town to stay with his grandfather, whose estate Giamatti is “managing.” Despite appearances, this film is very much a comedy but does so with a subtlety that creates a different kind of texture. It is a film about the infinite gray areas that defines modern life and how right and wrong they are and rarely so simple. Many lives are saved in this film, but mostly it is about the title that reminds us to do the right thing.

6) Cedar Rapids – Dir. Miguel Arteta (Ed Helms, John C. Reilly, Anne Heche)

It is hard to imagine a better John C. Reilly performance than what he did in “Cyrus” last year, but in “Cedar Rapids” he officially one-ups himself by playing  an even more amped-up caricature of his everyman personna. Here he plays an oafish insurance agent letting it all hang out at a conference held at a cheesy Cedars Rapids business hotel.  Tthe film really belongs to Ed Helm’s beautifully naïve and somewhat tragic hero. His character has literally never been out of his small town, and to him Cedar Rapids represents not only the big city, but the moment when the picket fences give way to the real world.

Although there is a serious thread that lurks just below the hysterical surface of “Cedar Rapids,” there is as much humanity in this film as in  any of the more serious films that were released this year. In between endless comedic innuendo, ace director and true master of the indie dramedy, Miguel Arteta, explores loneliness, escapism and the massive walls people create to keep others from knowing who they really are. You will just as easily laugh as cry as pump your fist rooting for the underdog to wake up and grab life by the horns.

7) Margin Call – Dir. J.C. Chandor (Jeremy Irons, Stanley Tucci, Kevin Spacey)

You’d be hard pressed to find a better cast and a more topical film than the shockingly under-seen Wall Street fiction “Margin Call.” Set over a twenty-four hour period, it chronicles the discovery of and reaction to the impending Armageddon of the sub-prime mortgage meltdown at one venerable Wall Street firm (insert whichever: Goldman, Lehman, Morgan …).

But unlike the glitz of “Wall Street,” this film is shot in dark saturated tones, and despite its blue chip cast, it is performed with thoughtful restraint. What “Margin Call” manages to capture is the pervasive schizophrenia that drives Wall Street. On the one hand greed, while not good, is more the evil that drives the capitalist system than it is an inherent quality of the people who work there. In the end you realize that modern capitalism has become an untamable monster that has evolved uncontrollably over hundreds of years. To unwind the problem seems impossible, but something has to change.

8) Midnight in Paris – Dir. Woody Allen (Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams)

Prolific, profane, provocative, and occasionally prophetic, Woody Allen seems nowhere close to having said everything that he has to say. In his finest film since “Deconstructing Harry,” Allen cast Owen Wilson as himself, to explore the timeless question of whether or not every past generation lived in an era more romantic than the ones that followed. Nostalgia here is a drug that is both blinding and euphoric, yet necessary and unavoidable.

Set in and elegantly filmed in Paris, Wilson plays a writer engaged to a woman he doesn’t really love, in a city that he loves for what he imagines it to be. Most Allen films rely on a gimmick, but in “Midnight in Paris” it is a time warp that allows you to look back to a time with both a longing and logic that suggests the importance of living in the now. Wilson has never been better and more authentic than he is here, McAdams plays her prissy idealist perfectly, and Allen is  at peace as both a realist and a cynic for the ages.

9) Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – Dir. Tomas Alfredson (Gary Oldman, Colin Firth)

Most Le Carre novels and films rely on keeping very close track of the details and paranoia of the complicated spy business of the Cold War. Although I’ll admit to being lost for large chunks of the film, the gray-toned cinematography and ambiguous calm and texture of this film is mesmerizing. Gary Oldman’s M16 agent George Smiley is the perfect manifestation of  clever bureaucratic competence that drives the workings of multi-national geo-politics.

The plot, if you can follow it, is oddly straightforward. There is a Russian mole in the British secret service. With a broad cast of potential infiltrators, Smiley is tasked with flushing out the rat. The film captures the colors and nuance of the era effortlessly, creating a familiar yet disorienting feeling that makes the film compelling despite its complexity. If there is  a film that deserved to be seen more than once this year, it was this one. Sometimes history plays like fiction and modern society seems much more complicated than yesterday’s.

10) The Arbor – Dir. Clio Bernard (Andrea Dunbar)

You have never seen a documentary as creative and unusual as “The Arbor.” Based on and incorporating the stage play of the same name, written by a 15 year old girl from the projects outside of Manchester, the film takes archival footage of the young Andrea Dunbar and mashes it up with reenactments of the play itself and lip-synced performances by actors of  real interviews with the late Dunbar’s family and friends. The play feels like Bukowski or R. Crumb as told by a young girl.

As hard as it is to imagine, the film flows fluidly, creating a lovely distance from the heartbreaking reality of the actual story. Dunbar’s working class roots, and self-destructive short life, create a gritty tragic backdrop against which to explore the lives of the children she left behind. History and self abuse repeat themselves here, but even on the dingy streets and neglected buildings of Manchester there is hope, redemption and forgiveness. (more…)

Until seeing this film, I might have felt comfortable admitting that I have no particular interest in dance as an art form. Perhaps this is because I have never experienced a form of dance that genuinely resonated with my emotional orientation. But Pina Baucsch, the German modern dance innovator, created a theatrical, emotive sensual style unlike anything I have ever seen. In the same way that the Velvet Underground defined both a sound and a haunting interpretation the human condition, Bausch created an atmosphere of beautiful, fluid, jarring expression.

As if her choreography alone didn’t create a unique texture, German auteur Wim Wenders embraced 3D technology to add further dimensionality to translate the nuance and emotion of modern dance. Like Herzog’s “Cave of Forgotten Dreams,” “Pina” is proof that 3D filmmaking, appropriately used, can enhance the theatrical experience well beyond what it does for animation and action films. Ultimately the film blends her original pieces, with interviews, archival footage, and interviews into something something unlike anything that has come before it. “Pina” is milestone film and miraculous tribute to one of the great artists of the modern age.

I write this while sitting on a plane back from Sundance, where I managed to see eight films in 48 hours. To be at Sundance and dedicate yourself to films intensely, even for a few days,  is one of the most liberating experiences I can imagine for a few reasons. Beyond the abundant quality and gritty humanness that tends to be woven into the fabric of most Sundance films, the stories behind the making of these films serve to inspire you to do more, try harder, and to never surrender. The fact that the festival runs at the beginning of each year, provides eleven months for you to follow through with the energy and the possibility that Sundance affords those who care to hold a mirror up to themselves. Of the eight films I saw this year, six were devastating yet beautiful sketches of modern life and familial dysfunction, most will never find a large audience, but to affect a few people passionately is to have accomplished more than most people will ever say. The good news is that now you can watch a seemingly infinite number of films, many of which in the past would never have had any kind of distribution before, instantly on a whim thanks to Netflix, xbox, Roku, and AppleTV and others.  The release window is now incredibly fast for challenging films like the ones that come out of Sundance, as evidenced by the fact that ten of the films on this list are already available on demand.

Every year is a great year for films if you are willing to look hard enough. It would appear that the broad unifying theme among my favorites for 2010 would be bleak, gritty, and hyper-real films that depict a realistic human condition, versus those that provide a superficial escape.  In fact, almost no film featured here is merely light hearted and fun. Even “The Kids Are All Right,” and “Cyrus,” two movies that come the closest,  deeply explore characters who are fighting the good fight for happiness.  So, if you are looking for cheery fare, this Bestest will seem more like the Worstest.  So enjoy, or at least endure, these films that put modern life into perspective.

1. Animal Kingdom – Dir. David Michôd (Guy Pearce, James Frecheville, Joel Edgerton)

There is an odd calm that hangs in the air during the first few moments of the ultra-cool Aussie film “Animal Kingdom.” In it, a teenager, Jay, sits on the couch staring blankly at a game show. Next to him sits his mother. Time passes and then the paramedics show up, try to revive her and then wheel her away. The boy picks up the phone, calls his grandmother and informs her that his mother has just OD’d and he doesn’t know what to do. You can tell he is a good kid, but he is neither scared nor sad. It is this same voice that so matter-of-factly narrates the hugely compelling, rapid unraveling of Melbourne’s scariest family.

Jay’s estranged mother’s family consists of four brothers, each scarier and more unpredictable than the next. Two rob banks, another deals drugs, and the fourth and youngest just seems to reluctantly do what he is told by the chiseled, tattooed others. But despite their indisputable thuggishness, these guys are strangely, and handsomely charming, and each of them also has a genuine goodness about them. On top of the heap sits their mother, a relentlessly upbeat lady, so genuinely in love with her boys that it is almost as if she is genuinely proud of what they actually do. But as Jay says in the beginning, “like all crooks, they are scared, they need to block out the thing they must know, which it that crooks always come undone, one way or another.” “Animal Kingdom” is a great film, and watching it is like placing a big ball of twine at the top of a steep hill and watching it race down, getter faster and smaller with each rotation, but impossible to take your eyes off of.

2. Winter’s Bone – Dir. Debra Granik (Jennifer Lawrence, John Hawkes)

Every year there seems to be a film cast entirely with unfamiliar faces, shot on a small budget that captures an incredibly specific slice of overlooked America. Films like “Frozen River,” “Sling Blade,” and “Lars and the Real Girl” hold a microscope up to the small communities, seemingly isolated from the rest of the country, that still have a character grounded in something other than the mass ubiquity reflected on television. “Winter’s Bone” is a film every bit as powerful, unexpected and real as anything you will see this year. It tells the story of a small Ozark town where the local economy has become increasingly dependent on meth production, populated with bleakly colorful characters all connected by hostile blood ties, and haunted by paranoia and revenge.

But the story is really the journey of a 17 year-old girl named Ree Dolly, played remarkably by Jennifer Lawrence, and her search for her missing father. The estranged Jessup Dolly, a notorious meth cooker, has gone missing and has left the family home as collateral for his bail, leaving two small children and his disabled wife hanging by a thread. The film is honest and authentic, yet moves along at just the right pace to make you feel their race against time. It never feels contrived or over dramatized. As Ree sets out, combing through her disparate family members, there is a stunning intensity and control, amidst a kind of raging chaos. There is always something thrilling about directorial breakthroughs and star-making performances that could only exist far away from the pressure associated with box office receipts and Oscar nominations. “Winter’s Bone” is not only the most natural feeling film of the year, it is the year’s most compelling.

3. A Prophet – Dir. Jacques Audiard (Tahar Rahim, Neils Arestrup)

The ambiguity of guilt, especially when the “guilty” is an orphaned, illiterate teenager born into a hostile racially divided world, serves as the jumping off point for one of the most powerful  crime films in a long time. “A Prophet” is one of those films that resists the urge to answer questions, but is satisfied to pose them through the hollow eyes of an actor who most convincingly grows into a man in front of the camera. There has neither been a prison nor gangster film as good as this since the Coppola and Scorsese classics, and certainly nothing this profound, in the past decade.

Much of the film is shot on the drab and decaying grounds of a French prison, but really this is the story of two people. The first is played by Tahar Rahim, who at 19 is thrown into prison with $50 to his name, and no friends or relatives waiting in the outside world. There he meets one of the unofficial Corsican prison leader played by the explosive Niels Arestrup who gives the new inmate a chance, after forcing him to murder a fellow Muslim inmate within days of arrival. But the story of these two men, one learning how to survive, and the other losing his long held control has such a perfect symmetry that it keeps the film from ever seeming too heavy or relentless to bear. This is a classic in a genre with incredibly high and thick bars. (more…)