2011: Best and Worst

This is my Best (and Worst) of 2011 List so far. Most of the Oscar bait have not come my way yet, and for those that have, I have not had the time to watch. Such is life. This list will be updated, changed and purged multiple times when I see films worthy (or, for the bottom, not).

First update: 26 February 2012
Second update: 14 March 2012
Third update: 19 March 2012
Fourth update: 29 April 2012
Fifth update: 9 May 2012
Sixth update: 25 August 2012

The Best
1. Tree of Life. The year’s head-scratching-ist film is king: A drama about the creation of the universe, God, and one family’s birth and shattering. A near religious experience from Terrence Malick.
2. Melancholia. A twisted sister to No. 1, this equally head-scratching film is about the death of all life, by Lars von Trier. Darkly beautiful.
3. A Separation. Writer/director Asghar Farhadi’s tale of two families at odds in modern Iran is universal, painful, and a slam of theocracies.
4. (Tie) The Artist and Hugo. Directors Michel Hazanavicius and Martin Scorsese create two wildly different films celebrating cinema and life.
5. Tinker Tailor Solider Spy. Gary Oldman gives the performance of his career as an aging spy in a game that takes your life, now or later.
6. Take Shelter. Michael Shannon plays a man stricken by either schizophrenia or divine knowledge. The question: Are they the same?
7. Shame Michael Fassbender stars in a cold, brilliant tale of man tortured by sex, the liquid inside him. More NC-17s, please, Hollywood.
8. Midnight in Paris. Woody Allen uses literary and artistic greats and a time travel trick to remind us that, no, life was not better back then.
9. 13 Assassins. Takashi Miike’s kick-ass, bloody violent samurai film is a throwback to Kurosawa's greatest sword romps. Nasty fun.
10. (Tie) Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Pina. Directors Werner Herzog and Wim Wenders takes us on two inspiring journeys, inside a cave and inside a dancer’s mind, to see art at its grandest and purest.

The Worst
5. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. A feel-good 9/11 movie about a mentally ill boy reconnecting quirky-like with his dead dad. Fuck no.
4. J. Edgar. Because of the scene where FBI director/dictator Hoover – played by Leonardo DiCaprio -- wears his mother’s dress and pearls.
3. (Tie) Just Go With it, Jack and Jill, and Zookeeper. Adam Sandler spreads his toxic film-making sensibilities to Nicole Kidman, Al Pacino, and Nick Nolte, the latter getting it easy as the voice of a gorilla.
2. Green Hornet. Star Seth Rogen and director Michel Gondry toss a snickering “F.U.” to comic-book movie fans. Right back at you guys.
1. Sucker Punch. Zack Snyder calls this a feminist shot against misogyny. Right, and “Birth of a Nation” is a call for Civil Rights.

Melancholia (2011)

Ditching the 200-word limit count here, this film deserves the attention…

“Melancholia” is about nothing less than the shocking, smothering power of depression on the human psyche and the end of all life on Earth as know it, and writer/director Lars von Trier welcomes that end with open arms.

“The Earth is evil. … Nobody will miss it,” he says, through the mouth of his “heroine,” Justine, played marvelously and bravely by Kirsten Dunst.

This film – shocking, maddening, infuriating, heartbreaking and brilliant even when it derails off the tracks in spectacular fashion – is the twisted sister of “Tree of Life,” 2011’s other film about the universe, God, and a shattered family.

Important note: von Trier does not believe in God. Sub-note: This is not a date film.

Von Trier opens with the end of the Earth, as a massive planet -- previously hidden behind the sun -- coined by the press as Melancholia makes its way toward Earth, drifting, and then smashing our planet into bits.

Between scenes of cosmic death, he shows us Justine and her family in their final moments, both in reality, and inside their scarred souls and minds, as they face annihilation. The chunk of film – on first viewing -- is inexplicable and scored loud to Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde.”

(A second viewing is a must, and a revelation. On the big screen. With big sound.)

We then flashback months to an equally massive disaster, Justine’s wedding, as she and her new husband (Alexander Skarsgard) arrive at a reception at her sister’s rural mansion. She looks to the night sky and sees a red star, and also – in her mind – death and hopelessness. Justine truly believes herself to be, and her world crumbles.

The reception spirals out of control as the bride drifts into a deep depressed state, one her broken family knows too well, and commits heinous acts as a way to bring on the end, her end, full tilt. Sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) can only attempt to help. Weeks later Justine moves in with Claire and her husband (Kiefer Sutherland, never better as a self-righteous prick).

Similar to Melancholia smashing Earth, Justine’s arrival lays ruin to the family of wife, husband and young son.

Unsettling and uncomfortable from first to last frame, this plays as von Trier’s most personal film, his ode to his own depression. His Justine is unaffected by the pending doom of Melancholia, for her world already has ended. Justine grows strong as her sister falls to despair.

Von Trier – having previously made the grim as hell but wildly imaginative “Breaking the Waves” and “Dancer in the Dark” -- is a madman for sure, a complete jerk by all accounts, and a cretin. But he’s a master filmmaker. Who says Vincent van Gogh was cordial?

The scope of this small epic comes into orbit of the giant Terrence Malick epic “Tree of Life,” touches it. The films would make a perfect double of much majesty, and not a small bit of artistic madness. Von Trier was off his meds when he made this, and was at Cannes.

Von Trier’s miracle move is to make a nightmarish wedding reception seem like the end of the world, only to show us the end of the world, and he makes every moment – even the ugliest ones – a work of artistic beauty.

As for Dunst, she of the recent “Spider-Man” films, she shines bright as a woman so smothered in darkness, so weakened she can barely rise from bed.

In the end, you will want to cheer von Trier, or punch him in the face, but you will react. Strongly. That, folks, is what art is supposed to do.

And “Melancholia” is art. A