Now that we have one foot squarely in 2012, it seems absurd to look back only now on the films of 2011. However, as distributors and theater exhibitors make it increasingly hard to see quality film in WV, we often must wait weeks months or even years after release to catch some of the best films of the year. That being said, 2011 was a very good, if inconsistent year for film. It was a year of looking back into where we have come from as individuals, peoples, nations, and film buffs.

10. The Muppets.
Family/Comedy
Directed by: James Bobin
Perhaps the most inconsistent film on my list, Jason Segel’s relaunching of the classic franchise represents one of my favorite cinematic experiences of the year. The film oscillates between unashamed nostalgic sentimentality and wry witty self-referenciality. It’s a film that is only about 60% successful, but those 60% are so winning, it makes up for the film’s weaker moments. In a weird way, the film I would compare it to the most is Airplane! if only because of the barrage of jokes that is packed into a surprisingly short running time, and it isn’t afraid to be silly. It is what it is, and that’s good enough for me.

9. The Skin I Live In
Foreign/Thriller/Horror
Directed by: Pedro Almodovar
Easily the strangest film of 2011, Pedro Almodovar’s unnerving thriller takes the Spanish Auteur’s favorite themes of love, violence and gender identity to the most maddening of extremes. Antonio Banderes stars as a mad scientist who appears to be keeping a young woman prisoner as he experiments on grafting onto her an unbreakable skin. However, the underlying story becomes more complicating, windind, and surprising, leading up to one of the most horrifying revelations in recent cinematic history. One of Almodovar’s best films in almost a decade.

8. Certified Copy
Foreign/Drama
Directed by: Abbas Kiarostami
A strange, labrynthian formal exercise from Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami stars simple enough. An author of a book on artistic forgeries meets a woman in a small italian villa and the two share a day as he waits for his train. However, as the film morphs their relationship with an abrupt and inexplicable shift in their relationship. There’s no calling ‘bullshit’ on this film either, as you can feel the steady and consistant hand of Kiarostami guiding each shot. This film plays squarely into my sweet spot with its combination of formal experimentation and narrative ambiguity. I adore how enigmatic this film is. No matter how many times you watch it, its puzzle can never be completely explained. In this way, it ultimately gives the audience a unique ownership over the narrative.

7. Rubber
Thriller/Experimental
Directed by: Quintin Dupieux
2011 has often been dubbed as the year of films about films. Rubber has done the world one better. Rubber is a film about film language. Rubber is a film about psychoanalytic film theory. Its a film about violence in the media. Yet ultimately, its a film about a disembodied tire who goes around killing people through psychochenisis. Its a film that can be equally enjoyed y scholars and underground grindhouse audiences alike for completely different reasons. Its a film that actually turns deep complex theses on the role of voyurism in cinema into wildly funny, ballsout batty entertainment. I cannot wait to watch this film again.

6. Hugo
Children’s/Fantasy
Directed by: Martin Scorsese
When WV film buff Jeff Bradley reccomended this film to me as the beginning of a new phase of 3D filmmaking. While the aesthetics problems of of 3D aren’t completely solved in this film, I cannot argue with the fact that Hugo is groundbreaking film that realizes the potential of 3D as an artistic medium. Martin Scorsesce’s most groundbreaking film. Once again, the greatest master of the medium of our time has pushed himself in directions to potentially redefine cinema’s future in what is ultimately a film about the history of cinema. Fans of the early days of cinema around the world have been overjoyed to see Scorsesce give pioneer filmmaker George Milies posthumous immortality. Like all Scorsese films, I feel deeply lucky to have been alive to see it in theaters. Yet unlike many more of his recent efforts, its easy to see this being heralded as a landmark film for decades to come.

5. Cold Weather
Drama/Thriller/Mystery
Directed by: Aaron Katz
This lesser seen mumblecore/film noir has stuck with me much more than I could have possibly imagined. A truly unique take on the detective genre that delves into the reality of what it would be like if someone just decided to solve a mystery. The films verisimilitude consistanty subverts expectations of what happens in a detective film leading up to its enigmatic ending. The characters are often frustratingly innert, but the film uses their lack of charisma to its advantage. The film boasts some of the most unique relationships among characters I’ve seen this year, particularly the central brother/sister relationship. Unlike most of the other mumblecore films, the film has a true visual beauty. The camerawork brings out the majesty of the Pacific Northwest with consistent tones of blue and green. This beauty often dwarfs the films character in a way that brings out a certain existential distance between the audience and the action and reinforces the smallness of characters coming to terms with their lack of specialness.

4. Moneyball
Drama
Directed by: Bennet Miller
Moneyball is the best film adaptation I’ve seen of a book since Cold Mountain. There is no reason that the story of the application of Sabremetrics to a mid-market baseball team should be so compelling. Yet director Bennet Miller and scribes Aaron Sorkin and Steve Zallian take this story and turn it into a film about tenacity. The narrative of the cantankerous individual fighting to apply revolutionary approaches against a system averse to change resonates with me deeply. Brad Pitt is the perfect vessel for Oakland A’s GM Billy Bean, and it is his relationship with Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) that makes the film. In only two films Bennet Miller has positioned himself to be one of the most capable prestige directors working in mainstream hollywood. The best mainstream wide release of 2011.

3. Win/Win.
Comedy/Drama
Directed by: Tom McCarthy
Tom McCarthy has been the most consistantly wonderful writer/director of the last 10 years. Both 2003′s “The Station Agent” and 2008′s “The Visitor” both made my top 10 lists of their respected year. His characters have a sweet honesty and melancholy that would put even Alexander Payne to shame. With Win/Win he may have made his most accomplished film to date. Its a film about the fluid nature of families, the bond of friendship, and the difficulty of doing the right thing. Its also wildly funny and deeply moving. McCarthy populates his world with characters that you think you know yet constantly surprise you. I’m consistently astonishsed with how much love and grace he expresses for every single one of his characters. Paul Giamatti has never been better.

2. Tree of Life
Drama
Directed by: Terrence Malick
I believe increasingly the greatest films capture and create a collective consciousness and shares it with the viewer. Perhaps no film achieves this goal with more grace than Terrence Malick’s masterpiece “The Tree Of Life.” The Tree Of Life A film which uses the creation of the universe as a metaphor for man’s relationship with god, it is a film capable of eliciting in audience members emotions and responses that we often forgot we were capable of. The film deals primarily with the existential crisis of childhood, that period of time where we are still young enough to not be separated in years from our own moment of creation. In a way, this is a film which attempts to reunite us with that moment of birth. The result is overpowering, gorgeous, occasionally troubling. Any film which aspires to give us God on celluloid deserves to be lauded. The disciplined deliberate pace gives us conciousness never making it easy on us, the film just lets us exist in its pre-fall eden of Waco, Texas then expanding this story to the creation of the universe.

1. Senna
Documentary
Directed By: Asif Kapadia
In a year that has seen filmmakers increasingly looking backward in time for their stories, there has been a surprising lack of self awareness to the year in film. Perhaps this is what drew me into the sublime transcendence of this touching British documentary. Senna tells the story of Brazillian Formula 1 racing sensation Ayerton Senna from his rise to prominence, to his tragic in-race death. Consisting entirely of archive footage, the films exhilarating pace shows Senna’s arc from a cocky and often reckless maverick to self-actualized individual coming to terms with his own flaws willing to embrace the folk hero status his homeland of Brazil bestowed on him. Auto racing remains the only sport where the possibility of watching someone die live on television still exists, and the film never makes light of this. In the film’s final act, Ayerton becomes a vehicle for all of man’s struggle with mortality, as we watch him wrestle with issues of safety, leading up to his in-race death. The film effectively ties this struggle with Senna’s identity as a Catholic. In the end, Senna, like all of us, is forced to come to terms with the fact that no matter how fast he races his car, he can’t outrun death. In a strange way, I see this film as a psychic cousin to films like “Black Swan” and “Brian’s Song” where we see individuals who in pursuit of their craft, sacrifice the only thing of value they have – their life.
Of course, this makes the film sound unbearably solemn. Its not. The film’s razor sharp editing and melodramatic music score create the most exciting cinematic experience of 2011. It is a very special film that is able to draw out suspense in a 20 year old sports drama using old ESPN footage, but that’s exactly what “Senna” does.

Honorable Mentions: Girl With A Dragon Tattoo, The Fat Boy Chronicles, Midnight In Paris, Bullmouth, The Descendants, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

Top 5 Documentaries of 2011
1. Senna
2. Cave of Forgotten Dreams
3. Tabloid
4. Being Elmo
5. Bill Cunningham: New York

Best Film Not Coming To a Theater Near You: The Fat Boy Chronicles

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