Saturday, December 31, 2011

Ten Best Films of 2011

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
The Turin Horse (Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky)
A Separation (Asghar Farhadi)
The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)
This Is Not a Film (Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb)
Le Havre (Aki Kaurismäki)
Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn)
The Kid with a Bike (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
Hugo (Martin Scorsese)
J. Edgar (Clint Eastwood)

This list is also available in an annotated and illustrated format on sister site Ten Best Films. Original Tativille reviews for each of the ten selections can be viewed by clicking on the films' titles. As always, enjoy, and I look forward to your own recommendations for a cinematically rich 2012.

4 comments:

Lasse Winther said...

I mostly aggree with your list apart from Tree of Life which I found horribly new agey and preachy. Had it been able to limit itself to just the Brad Pitt-segment with the story of the family it would have been a masterpiece. The Sean Penn and the creation of the world mediaplayer-style ruined so much for me. Also I severely disliked my countryman Refn's Drive which for me is nothing but a soul-less assemblage of styles over substance that amount to something like an hour-and-a-half version of a GTA-trailer.

Have you seen Bruno Dumont's Hors Satan? It would be on my top 10 and it is maybe his best film yet. I also found great qualities in Joachim Trier's Oslo August 31.
And then I have high hopes for Terrence Davies' The Deep Blue Sea once it travels outside Britain.

Michael J. Anderson said...

Hi, Lasse, I'll be responding to your comment in part on the other site, where the conversation has been more lively (and the page hits from more plentiful): http://tenbestfilms.blogspot.com/2011/12/ten-best-films-of-2011.html.

Lasse Winther Jensen said...

The reason why I'm commenting here is because I (for some reason) cannot comment on the other site without a Wordpress account. That site doesn't have the option of just entering your name like this one has.

Michael J. Anderson said...

That's very strange since it is not Wordpress; it's Blogger!