Best (and worst) of 2011
Time Out New York Project: Issue #841, December 15-28, 2011
Keith Uhlich, Staff Film writer
Certified Copy Iranian auteur Abbas Kiarostami has created his fair share of masterpieces, but this blithe romance about emotional gamesmanship tops them all. Clear space in the canon.
Margaret Kenneth Lonergan’s brilliantly raw feature about a grieving Manhattan teen took nearly six years to get released. His primal-scream character study was more than worth the wait.
The Tree of Life Terrence Malick tackles life, the universe and everything with his semiautobiographical, eras-spanning, dinosaur-featuring opus. It may be the best thing he’s ever done.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy A classic spy novel gets a visually stunning adaptation with a stellar cast — especially Gary Oldman as meticulous MI6 operative George Smiley.
Psychohydrography You’ve never seen images quite like the ones in Peter Bo Rappmund’s exhilarating experimental feature about the Los Angeles aqueduct system. Talk about a natural high!
Take Shelter Michael Shannon astounds as a family man plagued by apocalyptic visions in writer-director Jeff Nichols’s mind-bending follow-up to 2007’s Shotgun Stories.
To Die Like a Man A pre-op transsexual takes a fanciful, often deliciously campy journey to death in this quiet heartbreaker from Portugal’s Joāo Pedro Rodrigues.
Poetry Beloved Korean actor Yun Jeong-hie is sheer perfection as an elderly woman dealing with tragedy through art.
Agrarian Utopia This mesmeric Thai docudrama contrasts one of the country’s most verdant regions with the day-to-day toil of farmers trying to make ends meet.
Sucker Punch This excessive digi-satire spits in the face of fanboys-’n’-their franchises. Its tag line was correct: We were unprepared…for a good Zack Snyder movie.
THE WORST
The Son of No One How do you fuck up a policier filmed in authentically seedy NYC locales and featuring high talents like Al Pacino and Juliette Binoche? Here’s Exhibit A.
