Tag: Melancholia

The Anti-Oscars

In “The Anti-Oscars,” I make a list of the Best Movies and Performances of the Year that don’t stand a chance at getting nominated.

This article will not help you win your Oscar pool.

On this Oscar Nomination ballot, you will not find any Streeps, Clooneys, Plummers or Spielbergs.

No, this is the Anti-Oscars! This is the opposite of what will happen when nominations are announced on Tuesday, January 24.

I’ve made picks in five of the six major categories, but while these certainly don’t reflect what will happen, they aren’t even necessarily what I think should happen. The Academy gets some things right some of the time.

Rather this list is my personal ballot dedicated to the not-even-out-of-the-gate contenders that were marvelous in 2011 but for whatever reason will not receive the attention they deserve at the biggest award ceremony of the year.

I’ll also use this space to discuss why they are not in the race and what that means for the actual contenders. So if any of these names are in your predictions, rethink your decisions now, and watch me eat my words when I predict the real ballot next week.

 

Best Picture

  • Drive
  • Beginners
  • Super 8
  • Incendies
  • The Skin I Live In
  • Certified Copy
  • Weekend
  • Melancholia

If there’s one thing the Best Picture hopeful lineup is missing, it’s a good dose of darkness. Is “Moneyball” really the darkest movie this year’s Oscars have to offer? My list, which conveniently resembles all eight films in my Top 10 list not solid contenders for nomination (the other two being “Midnight in Paris” and “Hugo”), shows a much more even split of heavy and lighter entertainment. Continue reading “The Anti-Oscars”

The Best Movies of 2011

“Drive” tops the list of my best movies of 2011.

I had to be convinced in just the last few weeks 2011 was a decent year for movies.

Catching up on some high profile winter titles made list making extra difficult this year.

Perhaps because of style over substance in some cases, no one movie jumped out as the year defining movie that no other could touch.

And although critics uniformly rallied behind “The Tree of Life” as the consensus favorite of the year, this year found critics getting behind just about anything as their number one choice, and they could often find at least someone to back them up.

It’s even made for an interesting Oscar race with no clear frontrunners.

But 2011 was a year for looking back. Veteran directors trumped newbies with nostalgia projects (“Hugo,” “Midnight in Paris,” “War Horse”) and grandiose epics (“Melancholia,” “The Tree of Life”). A few indies and up-and-comers stepped forward, but they made timeless statements (“Weekend,” “Beginners,” “Super 8,” “The Descendants”) rather than 21st Century relics, with a few exceptions (“Margin Call,” “Moneyball,” “50/50”).

Last year I assigned titles to each movie for what they stood for in the year, and there was one clear winner. This year no such labels exist, and just about any could be my favorite.

I’ve done my best to mention films that need mentioning and forgotten the rest. (Most titles are linked to subsequent reviews on my website.)

1. Drive

The Driver is in a plain silver sedan parked underneath a bridge as a helicopter passes overhead. He sits silently and does not make a bold getaway, and yet this is one of the more exciting scenes in the most invigorating and intense motion picture of the year. Continue reading “The Best Movies of 2011”

Melancholia

I’ve compared nearly half of the great movies this year to “The Tree of Life,” and this review will be no different, but the comparisons should really go the other way to Lars von Trier’s “Melancholia.” Arguably a better film than Terrence Malick’s and the polar opposite in tone, von Trier’s elegantly bleak way of defining life is to end it.

Rather than witnessing the birth of the Earth, “Melancholia” reveals to us in all its destructive glory the end of the world as another planet collides with Earth. Perhaps only the dour Dane von Trier could truly show the absolute majesty of oblivion. His opening sequence of operatic surrealism recalls Fellini and Kubrick. Time literally slows watching it. Nature, death and sci-fi as a genre are re-imagined in this picturesque procession of painterly beauty and celestial wonder. Continue reading “Melancholia”

‘Tree of Life’ wins Palme D’Or: Cannes 2011 Recap

I’ve been following the events at this year’s Cannes film festival diligently for the last 12-ish days, and the news of how many great films, controversy and surprise has come out of France this year has been staggering.

But the biggest news of all was announced today when Terrence Malick’s highly anticipated family drama/sci-fi “The Tree of Life” was awarded the festival’s top prize, the Palme D’Or, by a jury led by Robert De Niro.

Malick, who previously won the Best Director award for “Days of Heaven,” is a notorious recluse and did not attend the festival, allowing his producers and star Brad Pitt to speak in his place. This marks the first time an American film has won the Palme since 2004 with Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” and the first time an English language film has won since 2006 with Ken Loach’s “The Wind that Shakes the Barley.”

As for other American winners, Kirsten Dunst won Best Actress for her film “Melancholia.” In the film, she plays a woman about to get married as another planet is set on a collision course with the Earth. This is a real surprise following the outrage over the comments of the film’s director, Danish filmmaker Lars Von Trier. Von Trier made some distasteful jokes in which he declared himself a Nazi and claimed he sympathized with Hitler. He also made derogatory comments about Jewish and fellow Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier (“In A Better World”) and said, “Israel is a pain in the ass.” Following everything he said (and Dunst’s real performance was not losing it during the press conference as she sat next to him), Cannes declared Von Trier a “persona non grata” and banned him from the festival.  Continue reading “‘Tree of Life’ wins Palme D’Or: Cannes 2011 Recap”