Film Feature: The 10 Best Films of 2011

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5. “Warrior”

Warrior
Photo credit: Lionsgate

The most painfully misunderstood drama of the year is also one of its most crowd-pleasing, and I have to believe audiences will catch up with a work of this high quality on Blu-ray and DVD (it hits the form today, December 20th, 2011) and turn it into an eventual hit. I think most viewers thought they had seen too much of the final product in the too-long previews, but the joy of Gavin O’Connor’s film is the execution of the story, not the twists and turns. This is a character-driven sports movie, a rarity in itself, which challenges viewers to see the genre in a new way. Sports movies don’t need to be black and white. We’ve lived through decades of “Rocky”-esque sports movies in which one downtrodden hero works his way to the final bout/game/match in which he takes down the cut-and-dry villain. “Warrior” dares to tell a story in which both men in the ring are heroes. It features three fully-developed characters, brought to life in three of the best performances of the year by Tom Hardy, Joel Edgerton, and Nick Nolte. Rewarding on every level, this is a film that future viewers will be stunned to learn bombed at the box office. They’ll all assume that it was the smash hit it deserved to be.

4. “The Descendants”

The Descendants
Photo credit: Fox Searchlight

Buzz out of Toronto and Telluride was that Alexander Payne’s long-awaited follow-up to “Sideways” didn’t live up to the Oscar winner’s best work. You need no further proof that festival audiences can be a bit off the pulse than to see how the film has done with those of us who saw it under traditional circumstances. Audiences, critics groups, and awards voters have been falling in love with “The Descendants” for good reason. Payne’s heartfelt, delicate work perfectly captures a man on the verge of the most impactful time in his adult life. There are moments in our timelines when we are very aware that things are not going to be the same as they used to be, and Clooney’s Matt King has been a man used to stasis for some time. After a series of events shake him out of his inertia, he’s forced to decide, captured in an allegory about property sale, how to deal with the changing landscape of his life. With one of the best performances of George Clooney’s continually impressive career leading one of the year’s best ensembles, “The Descendants” is an amazingly rewarding experience. The only complaint one could possibly levy is that Alexander Payne doesn’t make films more often.

3. “Melancholia”

Melancholia
Photo credit: Magnolia

Speaking of festival audiences, the Cannes buzz on Lars Von Trier’s latest had me excited, but very, very cautiously. As his bad public persona dominated the headlines, the actual quality of his newest film fell below the radar. Consequently, when I saw it, the result was almost like a religious experience (in a way not unlike a similar film even further up this list). Von Trier’s best work since “Breaking the Waves” and a return to form after some disappointments is an amazing piece of work on so many levels. It works on one tier as just pure cinema with stunning cinematography, wonderful use of music, and a career-best performance by Kirsten Dunst. But it’s also fascinating in light of its filmmaker’s well-publicized battles with depression. It is a man working through his own mental issues with his boundless, risk-taking creativity. No one else could have made “Melancholia” and that sense of authorship is too rare in modern cinema.

2. “Drive”

Drive
Photo credit: Film District

What is “Drive”? The film defies categorization so completely that the previews that made it look like “The Transporter 4” angered some ticket buyers enough that they tried to sue production company Film District. It’s not fast-paced enough to be called an action film. It’s a bit too stylized to be considered a character piece. It’s not really suspenseful enough to be dubbed a thriller. And yet it has elements of all of these things filtered through a distinctly European style, chased with a Grimm’s Fairy Tale structure, and poured over a rocks of Michael Mann and ’80s action movies. It’s a movie lover’s dream come true and the kind of film that will have legions of fans over the next decade or so. Remember all those college kids who had posters of the guys in “Reservoir Dogs” or Uma in “Pulp Fiction”? Their kids are going to have posters of the Driver on their dorm room walls. But this is much more than purely an exercise in style. Every decision made during the production from the casting of Albert Brooks to the brilliantly reserved performance by Ryan Gosling was the right one. Even the music seems like it comes from an un-categorizable film. But it’s a film that absolutely rules.

1. “The Tree of Life”

The Tree of Life
Photo credit: Fox Searchlight

I’ve tried to convey the experience of my second viewing of “The Tree of Life,” the one in which I let go of the high levels of anticipation and just let Terrence Malick’s vision fall over me like a poem, and the one word that I keep coming back to is one I don’t use often in any walk of my life, much less in cinema. That word is “religious.” I feel inspirational awe when I think about Malick’s masterpiece of a film, a deeply personal work that doesn’t just emerge from an unusual outline but essentially attempts to capture the breadth of human experience from the formation of the universe to the afterlife in one transcendent experience. It challenges the viewer and is certain to frustrate as many as it enraptures, but the latter group has found Malick’s commitment to craft immensely inspirational. The film’s themes are timeless: What forms our identity? How do we deal with tragedy? How do we reconcile our upbringing with our current life? “The Tree of Life” asks life-altering questions and it does so with some of the most striking imagery in the history of film. There are moments and montages in Malick’s film that will be studied and appreciated as long as the world keeps spinning. Malick attempted to make a drama about the neverending balance of grace and nature in human life and, in doing so, he added something of deep value to the human experience.

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com