4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films is all about letting the visuals do the talking.
Love love love
4 Shots From 4 Films
The Thin Man (1934, dir by W.S. Van Dyke)
Bonnie and Clyde (1967, dir by Arthur Penn)
The Notebook (2004, dir by Nick Cassavetes)
Like Crazy (2011, dir by Drake Doremus)
Here’s the final post in my “Best of 2011” series, my picks for the best 26 films of 2011. I’m just going to let this list stand for itself but I do want to make clear that these are MY picks and they do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the writers and editors on this site. You can read Leon’s picks right here and I’m sure that my fellow writers will be posting their own picks over the upcoming weeks. I’d also like to point out that I have limited my picks to films that I’ve actually seen this year — as opposed to just blindly jumping on the bandwagon of assumption as so many other film bloggers have done this year.* I have yet to see War Horse, Albert Nobbs, The Iron Lady, or We Need To Talk About Kevin, for instance. However, I have seen both The Descendants and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and no, neither one of them is on my list because, regardless of what the jack-booted thugs of professional criticism may insist, I didn’t feel either one of them deserved to be listed as one of the best films of the year. Ultimately, watching a movie is an individual experience and every individual opinion is legitimate.
(By the way, I’m doing a Top 26 list because Lisa doesn’t do odd numbers.)
Without further ado, here are my top 26 films of 2011:
1) Hanna
3) Shame
4) Hugo
5) The Artist
6) The Guard
7) Bridesmaids
8) Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
9) Young Adult
10) Sucker Punch
11) Incendies
12) Melancholia
13) Super
14) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2
15) Win Win
16) The Cave of Forgotten Dreams
18) Jane Eyre
19) Terri
20) 50/50
21) Take Shelter
22) Drive
23) Soul Surfer
24) Bunraku
25) One Day
26) Like Crazy
Hopefully, I should be posting reviews of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Incendies sometime next week.
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* You’d have to be made of Stone to claim to be a film critic and yet not realize how unethical that type of behavior is.
Like Crazy tells the story of Anna (Felicity Jones) and Jacob (Anton Yelchin), two college students who start dating as graduation nears and eventually come to discover that they love each other “like crazy.” Unfortunately, U.S. immigration officials don’t care how much they love each other and when the British Anna overstays on her visa, she is promptly sent back home and told that she cannot reenter the U.S. While Anna continues to pursue her literary career in England, Jacob runs a succesful design business in America. Anna and Jacob struggle to maintain their long distance relationship, even while both of them are tempted by others (played quite well by Jennifer Lawrence and Charlie Brewley, both of whom give nuanced performances that make their characters into more than just romantic complications).
While the plot might sound like the formula for your standard romcom, Like Crazy is actually a surprisingly mature and realistic film that also manages to be gloriously romantic and just a little sad (yes, Lisa cried a lot). You really come to care about not only about Jacob and Anna but you also come to feel less like your watching a movie and instead like you’re literally eavesdropping on real life. This is director Drake Doremus’s third film and his work here is almost like a blue print of how to make a film like this work. When the film starts, his hand-held cameras is jittery and nervous, reflecting the rush of hope and fear that we all feel at the beginning of a new relationship. As the film progresses, Doremus’s camera also calms down and it makes it impossible for us to look away, even when it almost feels as if we’ve intruded too far on the lives and feelings of our two lovers.
Doremus is helped by the fact that his two lovers are perfectly cast and totally believable and likable delivering dialogue that was reportedly improvised during filming. I’ve seen Anton Yelchin in a few films but this is the first time that he ever truly impressed me as an actor. One need only compare his vulnerable performance here to his more showy (and less effective) performance in The Beaver to see just how much Yelchin benefits from the improvised nature of Doremus’s film. As Anna, Felicity Jones proves that a previously unknown actress doesn’t need a gimmick (like a dragon tattoo) to give a breakthrough performance. Yelchin and Jones have a very real chemistry and you sincerely care about them.
The end result is a wonderful film that deserves to be seen. Like Crazy was one of the best films of 2011 and it’s a shame that it’s being overshadowed a bit by the bigger, more traditional films that have been released at the end of the year.
It took them a while but, earlier today, the folks who made up the National Board of Review (nobody’s quite sure who they are) finally announced their picks for the best of 2011. And the winner is — Martin Scorsese’s Hugo! As anyone who was on twitter earlier today knows, this was something of a surprising result and most of the self-appointed film experts out there seemed to be convinced that the NBR would honor either War Horse or The Artist. Seeing as it took the NBR longer than usual to announce the winners, I’m assuming that the voting was fairly close. The NBR is usually considered to be a precursor to the Academy Awards so, if nothing else, this result would seem to bode well for Hugo‘s chances to pick up a best picture nomination. Here are the winners with the occasional editorial comment from me:
Best Film:
Hugo
(I loved Hugo, though my favorite film of the year remains, at this point, Hanna)
Best Director:
Martin Scorsese, Hugo
Best Actor:
George Clooney, The Descendants
(I may be the only person in America who thinks that The Descendants is overrated. Certainly, the members of the NBR disagree with me on that point.)
Best Actress:
Tilda Swinton, We Need to Talk About Kevin
(This was kind of surprising since I think the conventional wisdom was that Meryl Streep would win everything for The Irony Lady.)
Best Supporting Actor:
Christopher Plummer, Beginners
(I have a feeling that Plummer’s going to be the sentimental favorite at the Oscars.)
Best Supporting Actress:
Shailene Woodley, The Descendants
Best Original Screenplay:
Will Reiser, 50/50
(Yay! This film has been strangely underrated as an awards contender but it deserves a lot more attention.)
Best Adapted Screenplay:
Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon & Jim Rash, The Descendants
Best Animated Feature:
Rango
(Another yay!)
Breakthrough Performance:
Felicity Jones, Like Crazy
Breakthrough Performance:
Rooney Mara, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
(Bleh. On twitter, I already went into a rant about how too many of my fellow film bloggers have allowed themselves to be co-opted into a conspiracy to both force The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo remake down our throats and to try to make us forget about the original trilogy and the fact that Noomi Rapace gave a brilliant performance as Lisbeth. I’ll hold off on going into that again until it’s time to review the remake but seriously, people — the Hollywood establishment is not going to give you a promise ring, I don’t care how much you kiss their ass.)
Debut Director:
J.C. Chandor, Margin Call
Best Ensemble:
The Help
(Believe it or not, I still need to see this one.)
Spotlight Award:
Michael Fassbender (A Dangerous Method, Jane Eyre, Shame, X-Men: First Class)
(Oh. My. God. So. Hot.)
NBR Freedom of Expression:
Crime After Crime
NBR Freedom of Expression:
Pariah
Best Foreign Language Film:
A Separation
Best Documentary:
Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory
Special Achievement in Filmmaking:
The Harry Potter Franchise – A Distinguished Translation from Book
to Film
(This is probably my favorite award to be given out by NBR. Seriously, the Harry Potter franchise provided me — and so many others — such a blessed escape whenever life seemed overwhelming.)
Top Films (in alphabetical order)
The Artist (Can’t Wait To See It)
The Descendants (Overrated)
Drive (Yay!)
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Bleh)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (Yay!)
The Ides of March (One of the worst films of the year)
J. Edgar (Bland and forgettable but well-made)
Tree of Life (Yay!)
War Horse (Going to see it but I feel obligated to do so and I resent it, to be honest)
Top 5 Foreign Language Films (in alphabetical order)
13 Assassins
Elite Squad: The Enemy Within
Footnote
Le Havre
Point Blank
Top 5 Documentaries (in alphabetical order)
Born to be Wild
Buck
George Harrison: Living in the Material World
Project Nim
Senna
Top 10 Independent Films (in alphabetical order)
50/50 (Yay!)
Another Earth (Whatever, this was a terrible movie)
Beginners (A good film that deserves to be seen)
A Better Life (Overrated)
Cedar Rapids (Likable but nothing spectacular)
Margin Call (Need to see it)
Shame (Fassbender!)
Take Shelter (Yay!)
We Need To Talk About Kevin (Looking forward to it)
Win Win (Yay!)
In my previous post, I announced the start of “Oscar season” by offering up a recap of the films and performers honored by the New York Film Critics Circle earlier today. However, the Oscar season was actually kicked off on Monday night with the Gotham Awards. Much like the Independent Spirit awards, the Gothams are meant to honor the best in the year’s independent films. Below is a recap of which films were honored at this year’s ceremony.
Best Feature
Beginners(tie)
The Tree of Life(tie)
The big news here has been that Beginners and Tree of Life tied for best picture. (Actually, I’m not surprised as both films pretty much explored the same themes of memory, aging, and love.) It’ll be interesting to see if either one of these films manage to maintain the momentum of their victory through the rest of the Oscar season.
As for me, I have a new mission and that is to see Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same.
Through the Shattered Lens 