The Top 20 Films of 2011 – Part 2

The Tree of Life

All told, I saw 100 films released in America in 2011. That’s considerably more than years past, so I feel more prepared than ever to unveil my Top 10 films of the year. (You can see numbers 20-11 here, and a ranked list of all 100 here.) Certainly covering the New York Film Festival helped to pad my numbers, but, as always, there are still inevitably films that I miss. This year, my list of regrets you won’t see here include Moneyball, The Descendants, Project Nim, House of Tolerance and We Need to Talk About Kevin.

2011 was a very strong year for films, but it may have taken a trip beyond the multiplex to discover some of its best offerings. I think this list also points to the malleability of so-called “art” cinema, comprising documentaries, sober philosophizing, comedy and even gruesome revenge thrillers. There’s amazing variety in film today, perhaps more than ever, as genres blend and global styles gain influence. So if you’re looking for a New Year’s resolution, why not attempt some cinematic diversity in 2012? Read more…

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January 3, 2012

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The Top 20 Films of 2011 – Part 1

Documentaries, violent swashbucklers and tales of fantasy make appearances in numbers 20-11 of my top films of the year. Stay tuned for the Top 10 later, but, in the meantime, you can pad out your Netflix queue with these 2011 gems.

Midnight in Paris

20) The Future / Miranda July

“Quirk” has become a dirty word for indie comedies recently, but the eccentricities of The Future don’t function merely to manufacture “original” characters; they’re intrinsic to both the story and the voice of writer/director/star Miranda July. A ghostly narration delivered by a feral cat and touches of magic, for instance, serve the film’s sincere and surreal look at quarter-life crises and fears of commitment; they’re not ends themselves, as quirk has been in so many dramedies this year (Beginners, Terri, Submarine). Read more…

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December 28, 2011

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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo / David Fincher / 2011 /

Active Ingredients: Expressive cinematography; Sound; Atmosphere and setting
Side Effects: Story and plotting; Broad villainy

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With The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, David Fincher may be cementing his status as the best director of airplane novels around. It’s a regrettable distinction, of course, one that a filmmaker with his talents doesn’t deserve, but his pattern of elevating mediocre material is worrisome. With last year’s brilliant and meaty The Social Network as an obvious exception, Fincher’s thrillers and crime films showcase his extraordinary energy and visual eye as a director. He confidently carries inferior stories over the finish line. Fincher directs the hell out of his movies because he has to. Give him a script as good as The Social Network’s and great things happen; with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo he delivers a better film than most directors could have, but one that doesn’t reach Fincher’s capabilities. Read more…

2010s, 3 Stars

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December 21, 2011

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Blue Water, White Death (1971)

Blue Water, White Death / Peter Gimbel & James Lipscomb / 1971 /

Active Ingredients: Underwater photography; Ship’s crew story
Side Effects: Folk songs; Somewhat repetitious

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Blue Water, White Death features incredible underwater shark photography, but it knows that a real story is needed to make the film work. The film documents a 5-month expedition taken by codirector Peter Gimbel and his crew off the coast of Southern Africa to capture the first images of the deadly great white shark on film. Four years before Jaws, this documentary builds an incredible mystique around the animals, and the footage the divers shot is just as tense and thrilling. Using a whale carcass as bait, the crew actually swim alongside the feeding frenzy of hundreds of great whites, outside the safety of their diving cages. Read more…

1970s, 4 Stars

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December 2, 2011

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A Brighter Summer Day (1991)

A Brighter Summer Day / Edward Yang / 1991 /

Active Ingredients: Scope; Graceful construction; Thematic connections
Side Effects: Teen gang silliness

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[A Brighter Summer Day plays for the first time in the US on November 25th at the Lincoln Center.]

Thanks to a release by the Criterion Collection, Taiwanese director Edward Yang’s heartwarming Yi Yi, one of the best films of the 2000s, is widely available in the US. Alas, not much of his other work is, so a career-spanning retrospective at the Film Society of Lincoln Center beginning tomorrow should interest curious New York cinephiles. Perhaps most notable in the series is A Brighter Summer Day, Yang’s epic 1991 chronicling of Chinese immigrant life in Taiwan. At four hours long and with over 100 speaking roles, the film is a sprawling work, bursting with intersecting stories. Still, Yang exhibits masterful control, deftly balancing his many threads and thematic concerns. Read more…

1990s, 4 Stars

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November 21, 2011

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The Interrupters (2011)

The Interrupters / Steve James / 2011 /

Active Ingredients: Intimacy; Perceptive exploration of violence
Side Effects: Stories of the Interrupters; Length

Urban violence in Chicago has become an epidemic, Steve James’ The Interrupters argues. Harrowing statistics attest to the lives cut short by gang shootings and rash retaliations, but they can’t relate the lives of those affected and the conditions that contribute to the never-ending cycle of violence as images can. Returning to the poor, inner-city communities familiar from James’ masterful Hoop Dreams, The Interrupters exhibits the same patient compassion of that earlier film, striving for a deeper understanding of social complexities, not just an “issue.” Read more…

2010s, 3 Stars, Festival

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November 15, 2011

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Scenes of a Crime (2011)

Scenes of a Crime / Grover Babcock & Blue Hadaegh / 2011 /

Active Ingredients: Inherently dramatic subject; Good photography
Side Effects: One-sided; Tedious review of evidence

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Legal or crime documentaries, it seems, have a bit of leg up over films with more innocuous subject matter. A tense courtroom battle or a true crime narrative comes with vast stores of built-in drama, but, then again, just like fiction films, high-minded socially-conscious docs can become weighed down by the stifling seriousness of their subjects. It’s a fine line to walk. Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, for example, walks it gracefully, bringing specific and effective human stories into its gripping crime saga. Scenes of a Crime, however, isn’t able to supplement the facts of its admittedly-dramatic story with more subtly effective, personal material. Taking up the cause of false confessions, the film is a crusade against rough police tactics and miscarriages of justice first and a story about one man’s nightmare false imprisonment second. Despite my problems with the film artistically and morally, it’s not surprising that it took home the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s DOC NYC festival; with subject matter this heavy, who would deny being affected? Read more…

2 Stars, 2010s, Festival

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November 10, 2011

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Richard Leacock: Capturing Reality

At their best, documentaries have the unique power to narrow the gap between ourselves as viewers and the lives of others. More than simple empathy, a skilled documentarian can evoke in an audience a deep understanding of another individual, his thoughts and fears, his feelings and personality. Staring into the eyes of the many subjects featured in DOC NYC’s retrospective of vérité legend Richard Leacock, it’s this understanding, an almost subconscious closeness, that affected me the most. Over four heavily influential observational shorts, The Children Were Watching, The Chair, Primary and Crisis, Leacock and his equally-legendary collaborators—Robert Drew, D.A. Pennebaker, Albert Maysles—bring us directly into the courtroom fighting for the life of a death row inmate, throw us into the whirlwind of racism during Southern integration and place us in the tense back rooms of JFK’s presidential campaign. In each instance and without fail, the filmmakers show us not only another person but his entire reality, the times he’s a part of and the spinning world around him. Read more…

1960s, Article, Festival

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November 6, 2011

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Happy People: A Year in the Taiga (2013)

Happy People: A Year in the Taiga / Dmitry Vasyukov & Werner Herzog / 2013 / fourstar

Active Ingredients: Compelling characters and situations; Narrative structure; strong footage
Side Effects: Video quality; Lack of patience in editing

Culled from 4 hours of footage shot by Russian documentarian Dmitry Vasyukov, Werner Herzog’s 90 min mixdown of Happy People documents a year in the life of Siberian trappers and the extraordinary daily tasks they must perform to survive. As he demonstrated with Grizzly Man, Herzog has a knack for teasing his own kind of story out of someone else’s footage, and in this film he is fascinated by the process of work, especially the incredible history behind the trapper’s chores. The men dig out canoes, construct skis and create sophisticated traps with simple tools, in much the same way as did primitive man, Herzog is quick to point out, and this long strand of tradition behind the trappers’ crafts represents a profound connection to the past. In that sense, Happy People makes an interesting companion piece to Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams, exploring the yawning abyss of time separating us from prehistoric man. Read more…

2010s, 4 Stars, Festival

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November 5, 2011

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The State of Documentary Distribution

Before the opening night gala screening of Werner Herzog’s new film Into the Abyss today at the DOC NYC festival, a panel of film distributors took time to speak about the state of documentary distribution, both in the traditional television and theatrical markets as well as some newer untested models. While convincing mainstream audiences to see theatrically-released documentaries continues to be a struggle, the panelists—representing Magnolia Pictures, Zeitgeist Films, Sundance Selects and Cinema Guild—all agreed that theatrical distribution is still very strong and alive today. Bill Cunningham New York, for example, continues its unprecedented, lengthy run at the IFC Center, boosting its box office receipts beyond 1.5 million. Herzog’s previous documentary, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, has grossed beyond 5 million. Thanks to its 3D presentation, larger chain theaters were supportive of the film and willing to give it a spot next to the Justin Bieber documentary released at the same time.

The panelists saw that ticket sales are possible even in smaller markets, but that some may take a push to sell: it’s all about managing expectations. While only peanuts for a Hollywood blockbuster, $500,000 in box office sales is considered a success for a documentary. The trick, they said, is findings films you’re passionate about and knowing the audience you’re looking for. Films like Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work or social issue documentaries like Food, Inc., in many cases, have an advantage because of the built-in audience composed of fans or active and concerned citizens. Without a neatly-defined target audience, a documentary could have difficulty gaining traction during a theatrical release, but the panelists emphasized that success is still possible. Read more…

Article, Festival

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November 2, 2011

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