Top Ten Films of 2011by Wilson Morales
Of the many films I have seen this year (over 250), these are the films I thought were the best of 2011. Some will be recognized come Oscar time and some may not, but if you get a chance, check out these films and see why I considered them the best of this year.
1. The Artist
Director: Michel Hazanavicius
Screenwriter: Michel Hazanavicius
Cast: Jean Dujardin, Berenice Bejo, Malcolm McDowell, John Goodman, Missi Pyle, James Cromwell, Penelope Ann
Hollywood 1927. George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is a silent movie superstar. The advent of the talkies will sound the death knell for his career and see him fall into oblivion. For young extra Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo), it seems the sky’s the limit – major movie stardom awaits. “The Artist” tells the story of their interlinked destinies.
Director: Alexander Payne
Screenwriter: Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon, Jim Rash
Cast: George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, Beau Bridges, Robert Forster, Judy Greer, Matthew Lillard, Nick Krause, Amara Miller, Mary Birdsong, Rob Huebel, Patricia Hastie
From Alexander Payne, the creator of the Oscar-winning SIDEWAYS, set in Hawaii, “The Descendants” is a sometimes humorous, sometimes tragic journey for Matt King (George Clooney) an indifferent husband and father of two girls, who is forced to re-examine his past and embrace his future when his wife suffers a boating accident off of Waikiki. The event leads to a rapprochement with his young daughters while Matt wrestles with a decision to sell the family’s land handed down from Hawaiian royalty and missionaries.
3. Drive
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Screenwriter: Hossein Amini, Nicolas Winding Refn
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, Ron Perlman, Christina Hendricks, Oscar Isaac, Albert Brooks
“Drive” is the story of a Hollywood stunt driver by day (Ryan Gosling), a loner by nature, who moonlights as a top-notch getaway driver-for-hire in the criminal underworld. He finds himself a target for some of LA’s most dangerous men after agreeing to aid the husband of his beautiful neighbor, Irene (Carey Mulligan). When the job goes dangerously awry, the only way he can keep Irene and her son alive is to do what he does best—Drive!
4. A Separation
Director: Asghar Farhadi
Screenwriter: Asghar Farhadi
Cast: Leila Hatami, Peyman Moaadi, Shahab Hosseini, Sareh Bayat
Set in contemporary Iran, “A Separation” is a compelling drama about the dissolution of a marriage. Simin wants to leave Iran with her husband Nader and daughter Termeh. Simin sues for divorce when Nader refuses to leave behind his Alzheimer-suffering father. Her request having failed, Simin returns to her parents’ home, but Termeh decides to stay with Nader.
When Nader hires a young woman to assist with his father in his wife’s absence, he hopes that his life will return to a normal state. However, when he discovers that the new maid has been lying to him, he realizes that there is more on the line than just his marriage.
But when Brendan’s unlikely rise as an underdog sets him on a collision course with Tommy, the two brothers must finally confront the forces that tore them apart, all the while waging the most intense, winner-takes-all battle of their lives.
5. Warrior
Director: Gavin O’Connor
Screenwriter: Gavin O’Connor, Anthony Tambakis, Cliff Dorfman
Cast: Joel Edgerton, Tom Hardy, Jennifer Morrison, Nick Nolte, Maximiliano Hernandez, Frank Grillo, Erik “Bad” Apple
Two brothers face the fight of a lifetime – and the wreckage of their broken family – within the brutal, high-stakes world of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighting in Lionsgate’s action/drama, “Warrior.”
An ex-Marine haunted by a tragic past, Tommy Riordan returns to his hometown of Pittsburgh and enlists his father, a recovered alcoholic and his former coach, to train him for an MMA tournament awarding the biggest purse in the history of the sport. As Tommy blazes a violent path towards the title prize, his brother, Brendan, a former MMA fighter unable to make ends meet as a public school teacher, returns to the amateur ring to provide for his family. Even though years have passed, recriminations and past betrayals keep Brendan bitterly estranged from both Tommy and his father.
6. War Horse
Director: Steven Spielberg
Producers: Steven Spielberg, Kathleen Kennedy
Screenplay by: Lee Hall and Richard Curtis
Based on the book by: Michael Morpurgo and the recent stage play by Nick Stafford, produced by the National Theatre of Great Britain and directed by Tom Morris and Marianne Elliot
DreamWorks Pictures’ “War Horse,” director Steven Spielberg’s epic adventure, is a tale of loyalty, hope and tenacity set against a sweeping canvas of rural England and Europe during the First World War. “War Horse” begins with the remarkable friendship between a horse named Joey and a young man called Albert, who tames and trains him. When they are forcefully parted, the film follows the extraordinary journey of the horse as he moves through the war, changing and inspiring the lives of all those he meets—British cavalry, German soldiers, and a French farmer and his granddaughter—before the story reaches its emotional climax in the heart of No Man’s Land.
The First World War is experienced through the journey of this horse—an odyssey of joy and sorrow, passionate friendship and high adventure. “War Horse” is one of the great stories of friendship and war— a successful book, it was turned into a hugely successful international theatrical hit that is arriving on Broadway next year. It now comes to screen in an epic adaptation by one of the great directors in film history.
7. Pariah
Director: Dee Rees
Screenwriter: Dee Rees
Starring: Adepero Oduye, Kim Wayans, Pernell Walker, Charles Parnell, Aasha Davis, Sahra Mallesse
Adepero Oduye, who had earlier starred in the short film, portrays Alike (pronounced ah-lee-kay), a 17-year-old African-American woman who lives with her parents Audrey and Arthur (Kim Wayans and Charles Parnell) and younger sister Sharonda (Sahra Mellesse) in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene neighborhood. She has a flair for poetry, and is a good student at her local high school. Alike is quietly but firmly embracing her identity as a lesbian. With the sometimes boisterous support of her best friend, out lesbian Laura (Pernell Walker), Alike is especially eager to find a girlfriend. At home, her parents’ marriage is strained and there is further tension in the household whenever Alike’s development becomes a topic of discussion. Pressed by her mother into making the acquaintance of a colleague’s daughter, Bina (Aasha Davis), Alike finds Bina to be unexpectedly refreshing to socialize with. Wondering how much she can confide in her family, Alike strives to get through adolescence with grace, humor, and tenacity – sometimes succeeding, sometimes not, but always moving forward.
8. Margin Call
Director: JC Chandor
Screenwriter: JC Chandor
Cast: Zachary Quinto, Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany, Jeremy Irons, Stanley Tucci, Demi Moore, Penn Badgley, Simon Baker, Mary McDonnell and Aasif Mandvi
Inspired by the world financial collapse in the fall of 2008, Margin Call takes place in the Wall Street offices of a powerful investment bank during the worst 24 hours in their financial history. After realizing they are looking at a financial meltdown, the executives scramble to minimize their losses at their investors’ expense before the morning trading bell rings.
Director: Simon Curtis
Screenwriter: Adrian Hodges
Based on Colin Clark’s diaries, ‘The Prince, The Showgirl and Me’ and ‘My Week with Marilyn
Cast: Michelle Williams, Eddie Redmayne, Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench, Dominic Cooper, Emma Watson, Julia Ormond, Dougray Scott, Zoe Wanamaker, Toby Jones, Philip Jackson, Geraldine Somerville, Derek Jacobi, Simon Russell Beale
In the early summer of 1956, 23 year-old Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne), just down from Oxford and determined to make his way in the film business, worked as a lowly assistant on the set of “The Prince and the Showgirl.” The film that famously united Sir Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) and Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams), who was also on honeymoon with her new husband, the playwright Aurthur Miller (Dougray Scott).
Nearly 40 years on, his diary account “The Prince, the Showgirl and Me” was published, but one week was missing and this was published some years later as “My Week with Marilyn” – this is the story of that week. When Arthur Miller leaves England, the coast is clear for Colin to introduce Marilyn to some of the pleasures of British life; an idyllic week in which he escorted a Monroe desperate to get away from her retinue of Hollywood hangers-on and the pressures of work.
10. Attack The Block
Director: Joe Cornish
Screenwriter: Joe Cornish
Cast: Nick Frost, Jodie Whittaker, Luke Treadaway, Flaminia Cinque, Joey Ansah, Lee Nicholas Harris, Chris Wilson, Terry Notary, Maggie McCarthy, Jacey Sallés, Adam Leese, Sammy Williams, Karl Collins, Jumayn Hunter, Danielle Vitalis
From the producers of “Shaun of the Dead” and “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” comes “Attack the Block,” a fast funny, frightening action adventure movie that pits a teen gang against an invasion of savage alien monsters. It turns a London tower block into a fortress under siege, and a weapon wielding teenage thugs into heroes. It’s inner city versus outer space.
