Chris Sullivan takes a look at the past 12 months of cinema and, after careful deliberation, picks his top ten flicks of the year...
Initially, I thought 2011 wasn’t the best cinematic year ever but now, given that I have watched all of the following over the festive period, I might disagree.
Oddly (and I might add accidentally), I seem to have chosen right across the board - a modern noir, a fight film, a western, a romantic comedy, an animated feature, a sci-fi and so on, that together stand up as a really great collection of films. Indeed, looking back at all the years I have compiled such lists for various publications and, judging by this lot, 2011 was as good a year as any for films. I hope you watch them and enjoy as much as I have the second time around.
10. Never Let Me Go
Directed by Mark Romanek and based on the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, this is something of a sleeping giant that looks at existence, fate and acquiescence. The protagonist is Kathy (Carey Mulligan), a ‘carer’ who looks after ‘donors.’ She looks back at her time with her two best friends Tommy (Andrew Garfield, the new Spider-Man) and Ruth (Keira Knightley) in Hailsham, a typically English Home Counties boarding school which we slowly discover is not at all what it seems. The pupils are clones who’ve been bred with the sole purpose of donating their vital organs for transplant. Subsequently, a love triangle develops between the three friends and events take their toll. The film conveys a slow and stifling stillness that, imbued with resignation, rolls to a rather downbeat end pushing the viewer to consider love, life and death long after they’ve exited the auditorium. I’ve now seen it three times and each time have liked it more.
9. Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes
I really didn’t think I'd like this at all but, as a prequel to the Planet of The Apes movies, I thought it was actually better than all of them put together. Directed by Rupert Wyatt (who helmed the rather unexceptional Brit prison break flick The Escapist), it's the story of Caesar the chimpanzee (Apes nuts will recognize this as the moniker of the insurgent chimp in Conquest Of The Planet of The Apes) who is taken home by scientist Will Rodman (James Franco) and fed the drugs he’s been developing to save his dad from crippling Alzheimer’s. Of course, the primate soon displays intelligence above and beyond most football players but misfortune falls and soon the animal is taken away to an animal laboratory. It's an enormously captivating film that features a remarkable turn from Andy Serkis as Caesar and points a critical finger at animal testing while also giving the franchise a certain gravitas.
8. True Grit
There have been too many remakes of late, but this (although truer to the book it was based on than its 1969 predecessor starring John Wayne) didn’t step on the original’s toes. If truth be told, it was even more enjoyable. Directed by the Coen Brothers, it stars newcomer Hailee Steinfeld as Mattie Ross, a spunky 14 year old gal who goes in search of a Marshall with ‘true grit ‘ to hunt down and kill rapscallion Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin). Her co-star is the excellent Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn, a whisky-swilling, cursing-and-cussing curmudgeon with a heart of gold. With a Coens' script that’s true to the original English spoke in them thar days and a stack of first-rate performances, utterly wonderful cinematography from Roger Deakins and an outstanding score from Carter Burwell, this is one magnificent picture.
7. The Artist
This is the feel-good movie to beat all feel-good movies. It's basically a ‘rom com’ that has garnered unanimous praise right across the board. Nothing especailly odd about that you might consider until you realize that this film is not only black and white but also silent! It's the tale of George Valentin (Jean Dujardin), the biggest star in Hollywood of the late 1920s who refuses to accept the advent of the talkies and is swept away like so much flotsam and jetsam. As a fresh experience, it works fantastically well, but as a story of love, ability, art and failure, it works better than its more predictable cinematic opposition. As such, it cannot be missed.
6. Rango
This marvellous animated feature tells of a pet chameleon who accidentally winds up in the town of Dirt, which, as in Clint Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter, needs a sheriff. It's a superlative effort from director Gore 'Pirates of The Caribbean' Verbinski. Johnny Deep, who voices Rango the chameleon has never been better and the animation is tremendous. I've bought a copy and thus far have watched it at least 5 times.
5. 13 Assassins
Maverick Japanese director Takeshi Miike has honed a film that, based on a true story and set in 1844, pays homage to the great Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai and, is one of the greatest Samurai flicks ever made. It tells of the gallant Shinzaemon Shimada (Koji Yakusho) the leader of a gang of angered Samurai who decide that the psychopathic Lord Naritsugu Matsudaira (Inagaki Gorô), the Shogun’s younger brother, has contradicted their strict feudal values and has to go. He assembles 12 other men and embarks on a suicide mission against the Lord and his 200 bodyguards and attacks them in a village. What follows is beyond description.
4. The Skin I live In
I’ve always rated director Pedro Almodovar but, for this modern Hitchcockian thriller, he excels himself by creating a deeply disquieting nightmare that will stick with you for months. Antonio Banderas is an antiseptically cold plastic surgeon who busies himself with a mysterious undertaking, obsesses over his enigmatic muse Vera (Elena Anaya) and seeks revenge for the supposed rape of his daughter. A film that draws not only on Hitchcock’s Vertigo but also on George Franju's 1960 cult movie Eyes Without A Face, I cannot express just how fine a film it is and will say no more about it for fear I will spoil your enjoyment.
3. The Fighter
Not just a film about real life underdog boxer "Irish" Micky Ward who against every expectation won the World Welterweight title, it's also a movie about family. Born to a most rambunctious mum, Micky has the odds stacked from the start. He has seven sisters and his mater forever sides with his crack-addict, former-boxer half-brother. Mark Wahlberg trained for 4 years to prepare for the role of Mickey, while Bale as his older sibling Dickie lost 30 pounds and, along with Melissa Leo, won an Oscar for his troubles. I love fight films and this, directed by David O‘Russell, is one of the finest ever made.
2. Drive
No one can doubt the brilliance of this film. Danish helmer, Nicholas Winding Refn (who triumphed in years past with the Pusher Trilogy) takes a gaggle of great seventies hard-nosed, LA-noir crime films, adds a soupcon of Coen Brothers and Elmore Leonard-style idiosyncrasy, flavours heavily with 21st-Century menace and throws in a touch of dark gallows humour. To the pot, he adds a hero who is a tad Eastwood’s Man With No Name, a smidgen McQueen’s taciturn Bullitt and a little Ryan O’Neil’s monotone The Driver and comes up with a film that only lovers of ballet might dislike. To add, Ryan Gosling as this nameless protagonist Driver is utterly superb. Albert Brooks as his loathsome mob boss is beyond the pale, while Carey Mulligan as the love interest has never been better. Three Oscars I think.
1. Animal Kingdom
The Godfather notwithstanding, this is one of the finest films ever made about a family of criminals. Written and directed by first-timer David Michôd, we follow the fortunes of the paranoid, bank-robbing, drug-dealing Cody clan who, based on a real-life Melbourne mob, are a mad-arsed bunch of bros led by the chilling psycho Pope (Ben Mendelsohn) and overseen by their 60-something peroxide-blonde mum Smurf (Jacki Weaver). A film that probes deep beneath the skin of the criminal and the families they emanate from, Animal Kingdom gives an insight into the psychology of a murderer and debunks the glamorous gangster myth. This is a near-perfect film that doesn’t employ violence or car chases or special effects to prove its point. Indeed, everyone I know who has seen this and been stunned by its sheer unadulterated excellence. Wish I‘d made it.
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