• About Us
  • Sasha Stone
  • Editor Ryan Adams
  • Clarence Moye
  • Contact Us
No Result
View All Result
Awardsdaily - The Oscars, the Films and everything in between.
  • Home
  • Oscar Predictions
    • Best Picture
    • Best Actor
    • Best Actress
  • Good As Gold
  • AD TV
  • Podcasts
  • FYC Gallery
  • Interviews
  • All News
  • Home
  • Oscar Predictions
    • Best Picture
    • Best Actor
    • Best Actress
  • Good As Gold
  • AD TV
  • Podcasts
  • FYC Gallery
  • Interviews
  • All News
No Result
View All Result
Awardsdaily - The Oscars, the Films and everything in between.
No Result
View All Result

Richard Brody names “The 26 Best Films of 2011”

by Ryan Adams
December 7, 2011
in Top Ten Lists
20

Nothing about Richard Brody’s list of 26 films in The New Yorker touches me more than his introductory premise.

2011 in cinema could be called, with apologies to Joan Didion, the year of magical thinking. Many of the year’s best movies exalt the metaphysical, the fantastical, the transformative, the fourth-wall-breaking, or simply the impossible, and—remarkably—do so (following Didion’s theme) in response to loss, grief, mourning. These films depart from “reality” (or what is often offered up as such with a stern reproach to the ostensibly frivolous alternatives) not in order to forget the irrefutable but in order to face it, to think about it, to act on it more freely. And much (though not all) of the new realm of cinematic fantasy results from the increased availability and quality—the very inescapability—of sophisticated digital cinema. Every technological advance starts as a miracle, becomes a necessity, and ends up as a vice. Despite ambient complaints about the alienation of the real by means of the virtual, the powers of the virtual are now being wielded by artists, who reverse the course —- they restore to daily life its share of the miraculous.

Writing like that is a reminder that obsessing over the specific of each critic’s year-end round-up can sometimes tend to diminish what we value most about their work. Reading sharp analysis of films in their cultural context is one of the great pleasures associated with loving movies and thinking about what makes the best of them so special.

1. The Future

Miranda July is the Marguerite Duras of 2011: she infuses her movie with literature in order to make it more truly cinematic, reveals a choreographic precision that evokes physical intimacy and remoteness better than any other film this year, bares her metaphysical strivings in order to explore her most practical and venal fears and desires, fulfills the promise of her film’s exquisite title.

2. The Tree of Life

The very nature of inchoate thought, discovered and actualized by way of cinema. Terrence Malick overcomes the nearly insurmountable risks of the long-dreamed-of project to fuse autobiography and philosophy of mind, scientific fascination and religious reminiscences, desires and realities, a receding past and an uncertain future—and to do it with a fusion of dramatic intensity with visionary exaltation. The film’s very existence is a marvel.

(You’ll find a few more gems of crystallized distillation at The New Yorker, but I don’t want to re-publish the whole article)

3. Film Socialisme
4. Hugo
5. Certified Copy
6. Margaret
7. Petition
8. Putty Hill
9. Silver Bullets
10. A Screaming Man
11. The Interrupters
12. You All Are Captains
13. Bellflower
14. J. Edgar
15. Midnight in Paris
16. Terri
17. Impolex
18. Moneyball
19. Road to Nowhere
20. Bridesmaids
21. The Descendants
22. Uncle Kent
23. The Time That Remains
24. Le Havre
25. The Skin I Live In
26. Restless

Tags: Top 10 Lists
Ryan Adams

Ryan Adams

Next Post

Thom Ernst names Top 6 Canadian Films of 2011

Sign up for Awards Daily's Breaking News

* indicates required

Woody Allen Doc Makes a Strong Case for the Prosecution but It’s Missing the Defense

Woody Allen Doc Makes a Strong Case for the Prosecution but It’s Missing the Defense
by Ryan Adams
February 24, 2021
24

Predict the Golden Globes!

Predict the Golden Globes!
by Sasha Stone
February 24, 2021
10

Preferential Ballot Experiment Results in – Nomadland Dominates, but Promising, Chicago 7 Hillbilly In It

Makeup Department Head Eryn Krueger Mekash on Transforming Amy Adams and Glenn Close for ‘Hillbilly Elegy’

Photo Courtesy of Netflix

by Sasha Stone
February 24, 2021
32

Composer Henry Jackman on His Ambitious Score for Apple’s ‘Cherry’

Composer Henry Jackman on His Ambitious Score for Apple’s ‘Cherry’

(Photo: Apple TV+)

by Joey Moser
February 23, 2021
0

Shorts: A Father Fights for Normalcy in ‘The Present’

Shorts: A Father Fights for Normalcy in ‘The Present’
by Joey Moser
February 23, 2021
0

Shorts: ‘White Eye’ Asks Who Is the Real Bicycle Thief

Shorts: ‘White Eye’ Asks Who Is the Real Bicycle Thief
by Joey Moser
February 23, 2021
0

Shorts: Two Kids Get Taken To the Edge of Something Sinister in ‘Da Yie’

Shorts: Two Kids Get Taken To the Edge of Something Sinister in ‘Da Yie’
by Joey Moser
February 23, 2021
0

Shorts: A Wily Young Girl Witnesses an Accident in ‘Bittu

Shorts: A Wily Young Girl Witnesses an Accident in ‘Bittu
by Joey Moser
February 23, 2021
0

Golden Globes Preview – How the Narratives are Put in Place for Oscar

ASC Announces Nominees
by Sasha Stone
February 22, 2021
62

Film Threat Releases its Unconventional Nominees

Film Threat Releases its Unconventional Nominees
by Sasha Stone
February 22, 2021
0

Writer-Director Kaouther Ben Hania Explores Freedom in Oscar-Shortlisted ‘The Man Who Sold His Skin’

Writer-Director Kaouther Ben Hania Explores Freedom in Oscar-Shortlisted ‘The Man Who Sold His Skin’
by Frank J. Avella
February 22, 2021
3

Dropping Our Final(ish) Predictions on the 2021 Golden Globe Awards

2021 Golden Globes

(Photo: Netflix)

by Clarence Moye
February 22, 2021
0

Consider Uggie Episode 5: Uggie’s Graphic Sex Scenes in ‘Mr. Fix It’

Consider Uggie Episode 5: Uggie’s Graphic Sex Scenes in ‘Mr. Fix It’

CR: First Look Studios

by Megan McLachlan
February 21, 2021
3

Join us Facebook

AwardsDaily Crew

  • About Us
  • Sasha Stone
  • Editor Ryan Adams
  • Clarence Moye
  • Contact Us

ADTV Crew

  • ADTV Home
  • Megan McLachlan, Co-Editor
  • Clarence Moye, Co-Editor
  • Jalal Haddad, Senior Contributor
  • Joey Moser, Senior Contributor
  • Kevin Dillon
  • Shadan Larki
  • Ben Morris
  • David Phillips

Follow on Twitter

ADTV Twitter

  • Contact
  • About Us
  • Advertising on Awards Daily

© 1999-2021 AwardsDaily.com

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Oscar Predictions
    • Best Picture
    • Best Actor
    • Best Actress
  • Good As Gold
  • AD TV
  • Podcasts
  • FYC Gallery
  • Interviews
  • All News

© 1999-2021 AwardsDaily.com