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December 31, 2011

Best of 2011

This year I celebrated ambition, regardless of whether it was directed inward or out, and so the films whose experiences, messy though they may be, remain affixed most firmly in my head should but one come as no surprise. In the order that I saw them:

1. The Tree Of Life (Terrence Malick)

2. Margaret (Kenneth Lonnergan)

3. Open Five 2 (Kentucker Audley)

Three movies in my top ten - that's one more than last year. Things are looking up! In truth I could easily list ten more, which could beget an additional ten or twelve, but I'll quit while I'm ahead.

That last one has yet to officially screen anywhere, but the night I sat up in bed watching it until the wee hours remains one of the very most affirmative cinematic experiences I've had this year. Hopefully you'll have a chance to see it in 2012, and until then use it as a proxy for all the low-to-no-budget films that were released in 2011, of which I loved a great many. But during Open Five 2, I actually pumped my fist, which says a lot.

P.S. Honorable mentions to the skyscraper sequence in Mission: Impossible 4 and to my wife for making sure I got to the first screening of Melancholia on time the day that it opened.

Posted by David Lowery at December 31, 2011 2:11 AM