Special thanks to Mr McCarthy for saying what few critics want to admit:
Following is my Top 30 for 2011 as of today, not yesterday or tomorrow. Such lists can fluctuate as easily as moods.
(Speaking for myself, I could whip up a Top 10 right now and be unable to replicate it from memory a week from now. It’s too soon. Too many movies still gelling in my head. Some films will never stop expanding in my esteem. Others never cease shriveling as the weeks and years pass.)
- The Descendants (Alexander Payne)
- A Dangerous Method (David Cronenberg)
- The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick) I also happily would see a shorter version without Sean Penn, as well as the rumored six-hour cut.
- City of Life and Death (Lu Chuan) A startling panorama of the Rape of Nanking and a credible view of how it happened.
- A Separation (Asghar Farhadi) An entirely accessible Iranian film that doesn’t speak in code or parable.
- Hugo (Martin Scorsese) An amazing evocation of the first flowering of the cinematic imagination and 3D at its best.
- Le Quattro Volte (Michelangelo Frammartino) The better of the two “silent” films of the year, simple and often very funny.
- Tuesday, After Christmas (Radu Muntean) Adultery, separation, nary a false beat.
- Poetry (Lee Chang-dong)
- Shame (Steve McQueen) Sears the mind, doesn’t go away.
- Pina (Wim Wenders) For a Pina Bausch fan, a great souvenir, and more great 3D.
- Young Adult (Jason Reitman)
- Margin Call (J.C. Chandor) An exceptional debut, the economic meltdown in gripping miniature.
- Moneyball (Bennett Miller) Makes fine entertainment out of a numbers game.
- My Joy (Sergei Loznitsa) So breathtaking as cinema and so grim as a picture of modern Russia.
- Warrior (Gavin O’Connor)
- Another Earth (Mike Cahill)
- Rango (Gore Verbinski)
- Bellflower (Evan Glodell)
- The Guard (John Michael McDonagh)
- The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius)
- Bridesmaids (Paul Feig)
- Jane Eyre (Cary Joji Fukunaga)
- Like Crazy (Drake Doremus)
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (David Yates)
- Martha Marcy May Marlene (Sean Durkin)
- Win Win (Tom McCarthy)
- J. Edgar (Clint Eastwood)
- Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen)
- Margaret (Kenneth Lonergan) The lost cause of the year, now almost a period piece, which implodes in the second half but still has more meat on its bones than many other films.