Tederick Tumbles

My pick for the best film of the year is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2. A sentimental choice, to be sure, but an unavoidable one. For as much as this list is about which films I think are (to whatever degree this is possible) the objective high-water marks for the craft in the year – in which regard DH2 would rank in the top few, regardless – it is also a list of which films meant the most to me and to my year. In this regard, Harry Potter 8 has no competition.

The Potterdammerung takes one last magnificent gamble, playing out its emotional peak on the accrued momentum of not one, not two, but all eight of the movies. It thereby lays plain the grand machinery, and lasting value, of the Harry Potter Film Project: it was a beautiful thing watching these kids grow up and save the world.

Years, for movies, come in two varieties: groundbreaking, and stationkeeping. 2011 was of the latter. Whereas in 2010 everything on my list was there because it went over and above what I expected of it, in 2011, (almost) everything on my list is there because it does what I expect, if brilliantly. 2011 was a year of safe choices, established wheelhouses, and competent delivery. That was the year: in 2011, cinema held its ground.

A year or two ago I did away with the year-end Top Ten list once and for all, for a few reasons. At least one of them would be relatively self-evident: who, exactly, decided that there would be ten, exactly ten, movies every year that would “glow” in a way that the others would not? I’ve had years with sixteen. I’ve had years with two. The latter example isn’t an exaggeration: there has been a year in the past ten where, for all intents and purposes, there were only two movies in the whole year that I was content to call great cinematic work.

Then there are the secondary concerns – the fact that I see movies only piecemeal, and my pieces of meal may not fall precisely between Jan 1 and Dec 31, though I do, particularly at the end of the year, do my damndest to shove ‘em all in. And further, a chemical reaction to the preponderance of the lists of late: there are too many, and they come out too early, and the allure weakens.

I know what movies were the best for me, from the list of films that I saw in some format or another in the calendar year 2011. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2, was the best one. The rest of the best, In alphabetical order, were:

Amy George – A tweenblecore triumph out of TIFF, this small, small, microscopically small movie about a 12-year-old boy just… being a 12-year-old boy, is a kind of tiny gem. Beautifully observed. Micro-budget cinema at its best. Unless it’s…

Bellflower – As close as a first-timer gets to a masterpiece. Evan Glodell’s roaring ode to wet-blanket masculinity – to all the lies men tell themselves about their own maleness – is also a technical marvel, shot on homemade cameras and featuring a homemade Road Warrior car and flamethrowers n’ shit. As a concept piece, it is a better sequel to the Mad Max films than Fury Road will be.

Hugo – Martin Scorsese spins a watchwork lesson in classic cinema by way of the bleeding edge of modern cinema, in a digital, CGI, 3-D, emotional wonderland. No idea how the man got the money to put this gizmo together, but look at it whirl!

A Lonely Place to Die – As a genre piece, this is nearly perfect. Perfectly constructed and executed, a two-hour tumble down a mountainside, about which no plot details should be learned prior to viewing. Director Julian Gilbey gets extraordinary mileage out of his RED camera, pulling textures off the Scottish mountains (and his mountainclimbing lead characters) that might make this the best example of digital cinema yet made.

Position Among the Stars – A two-hour documentary chronicle of a small, poor family living in modern Indonesia is, amazingly, the most absorbing film of the year. Punched through with eye-grabbing visual touch-points: a boy running with stolen clothes; a train trolley powered by a motorcycle in reverse; a mosque dawning over a church. The family drama within is tiny and gigantic, at the same time.

The Story of Film – The only time I’ve put a film in my best of the year list without having seen all of it! How could I have? It’s fifteen hours long! But I drifted in and out of this beautiful dream throughout the last two days of the Toronto International Film Festival, and took some of Mark Cousins’ sepulchral meditation on the totality of cinema away with me. Now there are moments when I look upon a film, or look upon the world, and in the back of my head, I can hear Cousins telling me, quietly, why it is the way it is, and why that matters.

Take Shelter – The best film of TIFF 2011 and likely the best-made film of the year. Michael Shannon has yet to falter, performance-wise, but he takes his art to a new level here, unleashing a hellstorm of building paranoia (and eventually, unleashed fury) which would seem insane if it didn’t, also, seem so profoundly, terrifyingly sane. Apocalyptic visions don’t get much more visionary than this.

Teamwork – I don’t think I’ve ever put a short film on my best of the year list, either, but here’s one. Teamwork’s story could tend towards the clichéd – as an elderly woman lies dying in her hospital bed, attended by her wailing family, her adult granddauter remembers a relay race they ran together when she was a child – but in its execution, Teamwork marks the work of a great director. Filmmaker Seo Yun Hong captures the sensations of love and memory deftly, and stages her sequences with a laser-sharp eye for composition. Bravo!

Tyrannosaur – Paddy Considine’s first film as writer/director has profound insight into its characters, but more importantly, profound sympathy for them – even lead character Joseph, who, having kicked his dog to death in the first scene, nonetheless becomes nearly cuddly when compared against Tyrannosaur’s landscape of stunningly evil, destroyed, and/or myopic people.

War Horse - A timeless piece of pure cinema, and an enchanting return to form from Steven Spielberg, who hasn’t made a film this good since Schindler’s List. War Horse feels assured, complete, risky, effortless, and masterful. And it’s about a horse!

Honourable mention: Thor – Oh sure, Thor is not what you would conventionally call a great movie, but god-damn, I enjoyed the living shit out of it – with all curse-words in that sentence intentionally placed. Thor was this year’s knee-slappin’ good time at the summer movieplexes. Perhaps because it was so improbably daffy and disco-awesome? Perhaps because Ken Branagh tapped a nimble-footed tap-dance across the surface of more generic switcheroos (and dutch angles) than has been seen on the big screen lo these many years? Perhaps because I like big dudes with big hammers who swagger big enough to make even frosty Natalie Portman sit up and take notice? Well whatever. Thor was sexxxxxty.

The worst film of the year: It was clearly Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon, the nadir of not just a franchise, or a filmmaker, but possibly all of America. Yet I am compelled for reasons no more significant than my own whimsy to say that the movie that truly deserves the crown is Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides, not because anyone (even me) expected or needed anything better of this film than what we got, but because it is such a cataclysmic failure on the level of direction – proof-positive that Rob Marshall needs his DGA card incinerated – that one could safely imagine teaching an entire film class off just how spectacularly this one got Britta’d. Do you want to know exactly how not to make a film, let alone a mega-budget mega-tentpole mega-blockbuster? Look no further than Rob Marshall, and his Stranger Tides.

The best film from a previous year that I saw for the first time this year: Peeping Tom is technically a cheat, as I saw it late in 2010, but it has held thrall over me ever since, and is mentally ascending the ladder to a dangerously specific spot in my all-time favourite films list. A start-to-finish cinematic masterpiece.

Special notices: Three of my friends made feature films that were released this year: Daniel Cockburn’s You Are Here, Michael Greenspan’s Wrecked, and Matt Pollack and Jamie Popowich’s Run, Run, It’s Him. I’m too biased to sort out where their films would fit on a top ten list, but I’m proud of all of them.