Films of the Year

Wankiness will ensue. Consider yourself warned.

5

I'll say one thing for Lars von Trier: he's never dull. His musing on the world's end is typically atypical, dotty and daft, but it's also genuinely heartfelt. A film of two halves, Melancholia is both a grim comedy of errors and a surreal exploration of misery and muliebrity. Inevitably it all occurs against the backdrop of, uh, Melancholia, a sinister sister planet-cum-aching great metaphor for human suffering. What's surprising is how real it all feels: after the grand-guignol theatricality of Antichrist, the honesty here is startling. The second hour is defined entirely by a sense of quiet resignation: the realisation that when it all ends, we won't be braving explosions, battling flames or shouting down suits at the bloody Pentagon; we'll be dealing with the relatives. It won't be heroic. It'll be pathetic. And in that, as von Trier illustrates here, really rather beautiful too.

4

This Korean revenge thriller seemed to slip under the radar a little, which is unfortunate because it's kind of brilliant. Byung-hun Lee plays the agent out to avenge his fiancee's murder; Min-sik Choi is the deliciously sadistic killer. It all sounds rather generic (for Korea) but what plays out is a thing of poetry - grim, but prettily and therefore palatably so. As much as I love the unabashedly badass way America does revenge in movies (see #1 and #2), there's something dignified, even honourable about it in Asian cinema and I Saw the Devil is no exception. The film glides by with near-Shakespearean elegance*, then it ends, and in the 2.5 hours between you witness something that is - if you'll excuse the pun - devilishly good.

* admittedly we're talking Titus Andronicus-Shakespearean "elegance", ie: pseudo-intellectual torture porn. But, y'know, amazing.

3

That this only comes in at third place says a lot for my Top 2. Just as its central couple cling to their relationship, Blue Valentine clung to my top spot for much of 2011. Franky I've never seen anything like it. Director Derek Cianfrance spent twelve years on the film and it shows. Honesty - real, documentary-like honesty - is like golddust in the movies, but Cianfrance, Michelle Williams and the perennially brilliant Ryan Gosling absolutely nail it. With the sole exception of Annie Hall (and perhaps Eternal Sunshine), I can't think of another film that captures the minutiae of relationships so well and so candidly. Blue Valentine is the kind of film that actually tells you things about yourself; some of them good, some of them insufferable, but what's great about it is that for all the years of hard graft and re-drafts, it doesn't even feel like it.

2

It's rare that a film will live up to the promise of a good trailer. It's just as rare that a guy as smart as David Fincher is given free rein to make a multi-million dollar blockbuster without compromising on something. But every now and again it happens, and as the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo proves, when it does it's absolutely jaw-dropping.
For all the talk of violence - and there's quite a bit - it's actually the humanity of the story that penetrates. The relationship between Rooney Mara's (literal) cyber punk and Daniel Craig's grizzled journo is unexpectedly tender, and gives the film some much-needed heart. One thing I'm a sucker for is a bittersweet ending, and GWTDT delivers one where the punch is compounded by the incongruous sweetness of what went before.

As the eponymous Girl, Mara is excellent, but the world and its dog knows that. Craig though, seems to have been overlooked by almost everybody. Blomkvist isn't a particularly showy role, but Craig imbues him with such warmth and turns a potentially underwritten character into one you really root for. It's great. It's all great, and accordingly the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is pretty much the film of the year.
Well. Sort of.

1

Surprise! I actually think this film has popped up on every End of-Year list in existence. If they're harsh it resides somewhere in the bottom five; if they're kind (and therefore right) it's number 1, because it is, y'know, the best. I wrote about it here but it's worth all reiterating because it's so good. There's nothing else like it but everything is like it. It wears its influences on its silver satin sleeve, and yet it's influential. It's a derivative true original. It's John Hughes and Chan-wook Park. It's synthpop, smashed thighs, elevator kisses, elevator assasinations, silent longing and amateur dental surgery all wrapped up in a hot pink bundle. It's a mood flick with a car chase. It's absolutely ridiculous and absolutely sublime. It's Drive, it's ace and it's my film of the year.