I swear, I am not trying to just be “different” with my list this year, although it does look a bit different from most of the year-end lists I’ve seen so far. It just felt like a year of great movies being overlooked (or, in my opinion, completely mis-read by the critics). It was a great year for movies, with both a plethora of hidden gems and a healthy dose of well-publicized quality films. And don’t get me wrong: a lot of the much-talked-about Awards-bait movies really are great, and they made the list, too. Also make sure to see the “honorable mentions” section after the list for movies that just barely missed the cut.
This year I’ve been able to see just about every movie with major awards buzz (or major indie cred) so I feel as though this is the best year-end movie list I’ve done. The only movies I wish I could have seen before making the list are: “Blue Valentine”, “Rabbit Hole”, “Another Year”, “I Love You Philip Morris” and I haven’t seen “Toy Story 3”, but I have never cared about the Toy Story movies.
So, here’s the list:
10. Ondine
Neil Jordan’s mermaid-out-of-water film is absolutely the saddest, most serious mermaid film ever made. It’s a fantastic show of cinematography meets soundtrack, and is a career best performance for Colin Farrell. It’s also a pretty good movie about alcoholism!
(“Ondine” is currently available to watch instantly on Netflix)
9. Exit Through the Gift Shop
This was definitely the year of the “meta-doc”; documentaries wherin you could not tell exactly what was real, how much was fictional, who exactly was making the documentary, and what they were “trying to say”. “Exit Through the Gift Shop” seperates itself from the pack by being a movie claiming to be made by Banksy (the world’s most famous graffiti artist and also probably the world’s most elusive human being, to the point that one could have a lengthy discussion about whether he actually exists. But–he does, ok?) But aside from the intriguing Banksy element, the entire film (without for a moment actually seeming like it) is a long meditation on the nature of art unlike anything on film since Orson Welles’ “F for Fake”. In the end, the film manages to ask if itself, as a film, is even worth your time; in essence, is the question even worth asking? (and what does it mean if a painting is worth more than a house?)
8. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
This was a cult classic the moment it was released. In turns hilarious, action-packed, and heartfelt, it’s also chock-a-block full of insider cultural references and populist brain candy. Plus, the best Brandon Routh cameo since “Zack and Miri Make a Porno”
7. Let Me In
I had been a huge fan of the original version of this film, 2008’s “Let the Right One In”. That film, a slow-moving, quiet Swedish meditation on childhood, eternal love and–oh yeah, vampires–is certainly an acquired taste and a nearly singular event in the world of movies. When I heard there was going to be an American remake, I feared the worst. (American re-makes of recent horror movies tend to make them all look like teenage slasher flicks). I didn’t even go to see the this year’s remake until it was in the dollar theater (and Mary had harangued me about it enough, insisting it was really good.) So I wnet, and it was really good. In fact, some days I think I like it better than the Swedish original. It maintains the contemplative, dirge-like heart of the original while satisfying what I did not realize was my desire to see just a little bit more vampire ass-kicking. (and the one-shot interior of a car rolling down a cliff is joltingly energizing.) And much kudos to the remake for maintaining the subtle yet gut-wrenching end of the first film and not feeling the need to show us more than we needed to see.
6. 127 Hours
Danny Boyle’s movie about the real-life hiker who had to cut his own arm off is as mesmerizing as the reviews would have you believe: visually arresting, sometimes shocking, with the performance of a lifetime by James Franco (who I crown this year’s all-around Most Talented Man); Boyle, Franco and crew explore the very pit of human nature in what could have been a treacly, overcoming the odds story but what is instead a “Trainspotting” for the 2000s.
5. Black Swan
It’s not very often that a gothic horror dance drama opens wide in American theaters, and rarer still that one of today’s most exciting filmmakers (Darren Aronofsky) teams up with some of the most under-utilized actresses in the business to make a movie that gradually makes them very unattractive. (that is praise) It’s not quite as creepy as the commericials make it look, but it was more “unsettling” than I’d expected. Points scored for guts alone. Also, like “Ondine”, a gorgeous pairing of visuals and music, often in hideous juxtaposition.
4. Jack Goes Boating
Philip Seymour Hoffman’s directorial debut (from a screenplay by Bob Glaudini based on his celebrated play) is certainly the most ignored film of the year. It’s theme of life never quite being the way we envision it—that relationship that is not perfect, the dinner that didn’t taste right, the car that you allowed to get dirty—is a difficult nut to crack, but Hoffman pulls it off with brio via a series of scenes in which his character, Jack, mimes his visualizations for his ideal life in the hopes that they’ll come to fruituion (including, naturally, boating). More than any film this year, “Jack Goes Boating” has stuck with me and influenced my worldview (it doesn’t score higher on the list due to a few minor characterization flubs). Also, thanks go to this movie for breathing renewed life into hipster-favorite band Fleet Foxes’ masterpiece self-titled album.
3. Inception
I’ve probably blogged more than enough about this movie this year already. You know how I feel about it. A nutty head-trip on the level of huge blockbusters like “Star Wars” that is actually about the sanctity of the human mind and the mysteries of memory, filmed like a technicolor Escher painting and sporting the most adventurous film score in decades. If Hans Zimmer doesn’t win an Oscar for this score, I’m moving to Canada.
2. Winter’s Bone
To simply read the plot synopsis of “Winter’s Bone” makes the film sound trite and cliche: a young girl living in the country, taking care of her nearly comatose mother and two young siblings, must find her absentee bail-jumping father or the bank will take the family home. But the plot itself is nearly forgotten in a maze of bizarre complications, both byzantine and grotesque. We follow our lead character (a breaking-through Jennifer Lawrence) through a series of back-country set pieces so authentic and abyssmal that you can almost smell the cat piss inside, and the cow shit outside. Although it is neither set in nor was it filmed in Pennsylvania, it is a world I recognize: backyards alitter with empty chicken coops, car engines and sun-bleached plastic swingsets, and in the houses men and women with rusty shotguns and unwashed flannel shirts and lice infestations. This is a world filled with angry people who do vicious things, and they do not want to help Jennifer Lawrence’s character on her mission to save her family. There is very little redemption in “Winter’s Bone” (though there is some) but it is a vivid, disheartening snapshot of a world almost never portrayed.
1. I’m Still Here
That’s right. My #1 movie is the Joaquin Phoenix “documentary” that just about everybody seems to hate. Well, first, it is not in any way a documentary, and second, it’s totally amazing.
I admit, on first viewing, I was also unsure how much was real and how much was fake. Either way, I knew immediately that I loved it. The “character” of Joaquin is a horrible man undergoing an almost comically difficult transformation. His friends (including Casey Affleck) seem to care very little, and facilitate his destruction to the very end. The final shot of the film is a cinematic kick to the balls that, quite literally, haunts my dreams.
A viewing of the filmmaker’s commentary on the DVD (which includes tracks by both Affleck and Phoenix) reveals in no uncertain terms that not one moment of the film is “documentary”. This is a fictional movie, which had a screenplay and everything. The one major difference between “I’m Still Here” and other fictional films is that, built into the story is a need for the film to be played out in public, with the world at large believing the events to be real. Rather than a “hoax”, this is just a natural necessity of the plot of the film. When viewed 20 years from now, after Phoneix’s “public meltdown” is long since forgotten, “I’s Still Here” will be able to be seen context-free and the nature of the masterpiece might then finally become clear.
(on a sidenote, mere weeks ago Entertainment Weekly quizzically wondered why “I’m Still Here” had not submitted itself for consideration in the Documentary category of the Oscars. Needless to say, this enflamed me. Had nobody at the world’s foremost entertainment magazine watched the film and then the commentary track? I promise you, world, there is no doubt that this movie is fictional and is intended to be seen as fictional. For instance, just a few minutes into the film—when watching the commentary track—Joaquin Phoneix’s “assistant” is seen on screen, at which point he says her “real name” and tells us “she’s the actress that played my assistant in ths movie.” This kind of reveal is repeated over and over again thoughout the commentary. You know. Like in a real movie.)
Never have I seen such bold, ballsy, artful filmmaking. There is, in the end, little “point” to the exercise. It is not a meditation on the nature of fame, or on the heriditary nature of drug-addled falls-from-grace. It is a character study, but an intensive one, and like all character studies, in the end analysis it makes us come face to face with our own characters, who we are, and what is right with us and what is wrong with us.
(“I’m Still Here” is currently available to watch instantly on Netflix)
Honorable mentions:
“True Grit”, “The Social Network”, “The Town”, “The Kids Are All Right”, “The Fighter”, “Ghost Writer”, “Greenberg”, “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work”, “Babies”, “Tron Legacy”, “Fair Game”, “Paranormal Activity 2”, “The Tempest”, “Jackass 3D”, “Secretariat”, “Please Give”, “A Solitary Man”
Notes From the Fire 
