Having shaken the New Year's haze from my head I sat down this morning with the intention of creating a typical 2011 Best Of list. My pattern has been the same for the past several years: My ten favorite films, five major disappointments and five significant debuts. But as I began to draft a list with that in mind one thing became immediately apparent: 2011 was different.
More than any other year in recent memory 2011 has been defined by its strength of new talent. Never mind creating a separate category for debuts, it quickly became clear that the large majority of my favorite 2011 titles overall were debut pictures and in recognition of that I've jettisoned the other categories entirely. In my book 2011 is the year of the debut and here are what I consider to be the ten best, a diverse collection of titles spanning both genres and continents from talents that you would do well to watch for in the future.
Click the film titles for links to full reviews.
Attack The Block
Dir: Joe Cornish
A frequent writing collaborator of Edgar Wright - who serves as producer on this film - Joe Cornish steps behind the camera himself with Attack The Block. The action-horror-comedy-scifi hybrid plays an awful lot like Gremlins pitched for a slightly older crowd and while it failed to break through to the widespread mainstream audience many thought it might - the deliberately thick accents likely played a part in that - it immediately spawned a fiercely loyal cult. Cornish shows an unusual ability to shift gears and genres on the fly, a gift that leaves him with a huge range of options for his next project.
Beyond The Black Rainbow
Dir: Panos Cosmatos
The son of Cobra, Tombstone and Rambo: First Blood Part II director George P Cosmatos, Vancouver based Panos Cosmatos makes his feature debut with Beyond The Black Rainbow. A mind-bending excursion into sensory overload, Cosmatos says he based the film on his childhood ideas of what the early Cronenberg and other cult titles he wasn't allowed to rent must have been like based on their covers. Whatever he based it on, the force of vision behind this thing is absolutely astounding. It demands to be experienced big and loud. Chemical enhancement is up to you.
Bullhead
Dir: Michael Roskam
Belgium's submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, Michael Roskam's Bullhead wrests an absolutely astounding performance out of lead actor Matthias Schoenaerts while taking viewers into a world they have never seen before. Set against the backdrop of illegal hormone trading in large scale cattle farming, Roskam's picture balances more typical crime movie tropes against an uncommon insight into his characters to create a picture of uncommon emotional heft. This one hits you just as hard as Schoenaerts' Jacky looks like he could.
Carre Blanc
Dir: Jean-Baptiste Leonetti
Picture George Orwell as filtered through Andrei Tarkovsky and you will find yourself in the general neighborhood of Jean-Baptiste Leonetti's Carre Blanc. A bleakly dystopic film shot through with absurd, darker than dark humor, Carre Blanc is one of the most challenging and self confident debuts not just of this year but of any. It's also the sort of film that distributors have almost entirely abandoned so it will require work to track it down. That work is absolutely worth it.
Clown (Klovn)
Dir: Mikkel Norgaard
Anyone who claims they said in 2010 that 2011's most transgressive - and hysterical - comedy would come from Denmark is a liar. But it did. The big screen incarnation of long running television series Klovn, Mikkel Norgaard's Clown: The Movie plays like The Hangover with both heart and brains. Incredibly vulgar and borderline illegal in some states it is also one of the sharpest, most pointed deconstructions of the male psyche ever put on film. Clown swooped in seemingly out of nowhere to land the biggest prize at Montreal's Fantasia Festival before Fantastic Fest created a comedy competition at their 2011 festival largely in response to this film's mere existence: A competition which it then won.
The Guard
Dir: John Michael McDonagh
The brother of In Bruges director Martin McDonagh, Ireland's John Michael McDonagh stepped behind the camera himself with The Guard. A sharply written and brilliantly performed odd-couple cop comedy with Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle as the central duo and Mark Strong chewing the scenery as a key villain, The Guard proves John Michael is a force to be reckoned with in his own right. Bitingly funny with just the right amount of pathos, The Guard is superb entertainment.
Hobo With A Shotgun
Dir: Jason Eisener
There was a time when Canada's film output was dominated by low budget exploitation fare, movies produced in these cold northern climes on the cheap to take advantage of a tax loophole. The world's first slasher film (Black Christmas) was made here back in those days but the government clearly didn't - and still doesn't - like the local industry being thought of in those terms and so the loophole was closed and funding directed to more serious, more proper films. Well, Jason Eisener is bringing those days back. A gleefully blood drenched affair, Hobo With A Shotgun is far and away the best of the recent spate of deliberate grindhouse-era throwbacks. This is a film so dedicated to its violence that they had to stop production early at one point because they had run out of blood.
Milocrorze: A Love Story
Dir: Yoshimasa Ishibashi
Though Yoshimasa Ishibashi's Milocrorze is an uneven affair it is also a welcome addition to this list for a pair of reasons. First, the veteran television director brings a dazzling visual style to the big screen, a much needed infusion of cinematic scope to an industry far too prone in recent years to make movies that look and feel like extended episodes of mediocre television. And, second, when this thing is on - when the anthology installments find their mark - it is ON. While I find half of the film narratively bland and overly cutesy the other half is jammed chock full of astounding imagery and more ideas than many directors could crank out in a career. Ishibashi clearly still needs to work some on structure and pace - no surprise from a director who comes from a sketch comedy background - but on a purely visual level he is clearly among the elite in Japan.
The Sword Identity
Dir: Xu Haofeng
Best known outside of China - if known at all - as the screenwriter for Wong Kar Wai's The Grandmasters, novelist and martial arts scholar Xu Haofeng makes an impressive debut with The Sword Identity. A fusion of classic western elements with classic kung fu philosophy, all wrapped up in a beautiful arthouse wrapper, The Sword Identity is what you might call a contemplative action film. It's a martial arts movie as concerned with the philosophy and spirit of the arts as it is with the actual combat. The storyline is simple and classic, the camera carefully composed and controlled. A world away from Jackie Chan this is the sort of martial arts film that hasn't been made for decades.
Tyrannosaur
Dir: Paddy Considine
Veteran UK character actor Paddy Considine - a frequent collaborator of Shane Meadows - crafts an emotionally devastating debut with Tyrannosaur. A portrait of broken people simply trying to make it through the world, the picture is so closely observed, so raw and emotionally vulnerable, that it is no surprise that Considine has since made noise about stepping away from acting entirely to focus on directing. The man clearly has a gift.
More than any other year in recent memory 2011 has been defined by its strength of new talent. Never mind creating a separate category for debuts, it quickly became clear that the large majority of my favorite 2011 titles overall were debut pictures and in recognition of that I've jettisoned the other categories entirely. In my book 2011 is the year of the debut and here are what I consider to be the ten best, a diverse collection of titles spanning both genres and continents from talents that you would do well to watch for in the future.
Click the film titles for links to full reviews.
Attack The Block
Dir: Joe Cornish
A frequent writing collaborator of Edgar Wright - who serves as producer on this film - Joe Cornish steps behind the camera himself with Attack The Block. The action-horror-comedy-scifi hybrid plays an awful lot like Gremlins pitched for a slightly older crowd and while it failed to break through to the widespread mainstream audience many thought it might - the deliberately thick accents likely played a part in that - it immediately spawned a fiercely loyal cult. Cornish shows an unusual ability to shift gears and genres on the fly, a gift that leaves him with a huge range of options for his next project.
Beyond The Black Rainbow
Dir: Panos Cosmatos
The son of Cobra, Tombstone and Rambo: First Blood Part II director George P Cosmatos, Vancouver based Panos Cosmatos makes his feature debut with Beyond The Black Rainbow. A mind-bending excursion into sensory overload, Cosmatos says he based the film on his childhood ideas of what the early Cronenberg and other cult titles he wasn't allowed to rent must have been like based on their covers. Whatever he based it on, the force of vision behind this thing is absolutely astounding. It demands to be experienced big and loud. Chemical enhancement is up to you.
Bullhead
Dir: Michael Roskam
Belgium's submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, Michael Roskam's Bullhead wrests an absolutely astounding performance out of lead actor Matthias Schoenaerts while taking viewers into a world they have never seen before. Set against the backdrop of illegal hormone trading in large scale cattle farming, Roskam's picture balances more typical crime movie tropes against an uncommon insight into his characters to create a picture of uncommon emotional heft. This one hits you just as hard as Schoenaerts' Jacky looks like he could.
Carre Blanc
Dir: Jean-Baptiste Leonetti
Picture George Orwell as filtered through Andrei Tarkovsky and you will find yourself in the general neighborhood of Jean-Baptiste Leonetti's Carre Blanc. A bleakly dystopic film shot through with absurd, darker than dark humor, Carre Blanc is one of the most challenging and self confident debuts not just of this year but of any. It's also the sort of film that distributors have almost entirely abandoned so it will require work to track it down. That work is absolutely worth it.
Clown (Klovn)
Dir: Mikkel Norgaard
Anyone who claims they said in 2010 that 2011's most transgressive - and hysterical - comedy would come from Denmark is a liar. But it did. The big screen incarnation of long running television series Klovn, Mikkel Norgaard's Clown: The Movie plays like The Hangover with both heart and brains. Incredibly vulgar and borderline illegal in some states it is also one of the sharpest, most pointed deconstructions of the male psyche ever put on film. Clown swooped in seemingly out of nowhere to land the biggest prize at Montreal's Fantasia Festival before Fantastic Fest created a comedy competition at their 2011 festival largely in response to this film's mere existence: A competition which it then won.
The Guard
Dir: John Michael McDonagh
The brother of In Bruges director Martin McDonagh, Ireland's John Michael McDonagh stepped behind the camera himself with The Guard. A sharply written and brilliantly performed odd-couple cop comedy with Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle as the central duo and Mark Strong chewing the scenery as a key villain, The Guard proves John Michael is a force to be reckoned with in his own right. Bitingly funny with just the right amount of pathos, The Guard is superb entertainment.
Hobo With A Shotgun
Dir: Jason Eisener
There was a time when Canada's film output was dominated by low budget exploitation fare, movies produced in these cold northern climes on the cheap to take advantage of a tax loophole. The world's first slasher film (Black Christmas) was made here back in those days but the government clearly didn't - and still doesn't - like the local industry being thought of in those terms and so the loophole was closed and funding directed to more serious, more proper films. Well, Jason Eisener is bringing those days back. A gleefully blood drenched affair, Hobo With A Shotgun is far and away the best of the recent spate of deliberate grindhouse-era throwbacks. This is a film so dedicated to its violence that they had to stop production early at one point because they had run out of blood.
Milocrorze: A Love Story
Dir: Yoshimasa Ishibashi
Though Yoshimasa Ishibashi's Milocrorze is an uneven affair it is also a welcome addition to this list for a pair of reasons. First, the veteran television director brings a dazzling visual style to the big screen, a much needed infusion of cinematic scope to an industry far too prone in recent years to make movies that look and feel like extended episodes of mediocre television. And, second, when this thing is on - when the anthology installments find their mark - it is ON. While I find half of the film narratively bland and overly cutesy the other half is jammed chock full of astounding imagery and more ideas than many directors could crank out in a career. Ishibashi clearly still needs to work some on structure and pace - no surprise from a director who comes from a sketch comedy background - but on a purely visual level he is clearly among the elite in Japan.
The Sword Identity
Dir: Xu Haofeng
Best known outside of China - if known at all - as the screenwriter for Wong Kar Wai's The Grandmasters, novelist and martial arts scholar Xu Haofeng makes an impressive debut with The Sword Identity. A fusion of classic western elements with classic kung fu philosophy, all wrapped up in a beautiful arthouse wrapper, The Sword Identity is what you might call a contemplative action film. It's a martial arts movie as concerned with the philosophy and spirit of the arts as it is with the actual combat. The storyline is simple and classic, the camera carefully composed and controlled. A world away from Jackie Chan this is the sort of martial arts film that hasn't been made for decades.
Tyrannosaur
Dir: Paddy Considine
Veteran UK character actor Paddy Considine - a frequent collaborator of Shane Meadows - crafts an emotionally devastating debut with Tyrannosaur. A portrait of broken people simply trying to make it through the world, the picture is so closely observed, so raw and emotionally vulnerable, that it is no surprise that Considine has since made noise about stepping away from acting entirely to focus on directing. The man clearly has a gift.