3.
Midnight in Paris
Woody Allen‘s Vicky Cristina Barcelona was gave it a B+ after seeing it in Cannes, but I went to the Seattle screening when I returned home and have since watched it two more times. It’s a film that never gets old as the magic washes over you and the story lifts your spirits. Perhaps that’s because I identify with the characters and I’ve often identified with Allen, but no matter what the case may be I have a hard time believing anyone could not fall in love with this film.
Read my full review of Midnight in Paris from the Cannes Film Festival right here.
2.
Hanna
You can go ahead and poke holes in the plot of Hanna all day (no, I have no idea how she would be so familiar with the Internet), but as far as I’m concerned the opening of my review from April still holds true and there is no convincing me otherwise:
Hanna is electric. It’s exciting. It’s a mood piece filled with a pulse and the energy of life.
Hanna is far from a perfect film, but it’s a film I can watch over, and over, and over again and get that same jolt of excitement each time.
I know a lot of people that also like this film talk about the container park sequence as their favorite scene, but in my opinion the clip I’ve included here is the best scene in the film in terms of the marriage of music, movement and editing. Director Joe Wright chose wisely when he cast Saoirse Ronan in the lead role and when he brought the Chemical Brothers on to score the film.
I will concede, it’s not a perfect film, but I love the hell out of it.
Read my full review of Hanna right here.
1.
Drive
If you look around the Internet and the several top tens people have posted you are likely to find Drive on almost all of them. It doesn’t matter if you’re reading the top ten list of some hoity-toity critic or a fanboy blogger and most of the time you’re going to find it in their top five. Just what is it about this film that has captured the attention of so many people and was able to live up to the high praise it received following its first screening at Cannes?
Personally, I was happy to be among the first to see it in France, without the buildup. Then again, I am the target audience. I love director Nicolas Winding Refn‘s no holds barred approach to filmmaking. He doesn’t care about what you’re supposed to do, he does what he wants to do and it’s a style that fits my needs.
Drive features a central character (Ryan Gosling) who goes throughout most of the film uttering only a few words and yet you understand him completely. He’s the exact opposite of the lead character in Refn’s Bronson, a film that made my top ten in 2009. Drive is the ying to Bronson‘s yang (that sounds dirty), and both show the scope of Refn’s talent. And if you truly want to see what Refn can do with a lack of dialogue just watch Valhalla Rising, though that one didn’t impress me too much.
Refn is the filmmaker so many of us wish today’s Hollywood “yes” men directors were. I recently interviewed him and he essentially told me he’d rather stay out of Hollywood and make movies his way rather than conform. I could only urge him to do so because so far he’s given us The Pusher trilogy, Bronson and now Drive as five films I would recommend any movie lover make sure and see. They are, however, not films for the masses as a lawsuit brought on the film’s distributor, FilmDistrict, because it wasn’t like Fast Five proves. I’m happy, though, to say it’s definitely a film for me.
Read my full review of Drive from the Cannes Film Festival right here.
And that does it for my top ten of 2011, here they are again in order:
- Drive
- Hanna
- Midnight in Paris
- We Need to Talk about Kevin
- Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
- Tyrannosaur
- Moneyball
- Martha Marcy May Marlene
- The Adjustment Bureau
- Bellflower
Now it’s your turn. Share your favorite films from the year directly below and later on in 2012, once you’ve had a better chance to see everything the year had to offer, I will post a poll giving you a chance to vote on the best films of the year.
I’m not sure what your impression of the year is, but mine is to say it’s a year with plenty of “good” films, but only a few “great” ones. I guess that isn’t much different than most years, but the good ones all seemed to lump together. I’m happy, at the very least, to be able to say I would watch any of the films in my top ten over again along with several of the titles I mentioned on the first page and I guess that’s all we can ask for from any year at the movies.
