2011 – Best films

That heading is not a typo. As we work on a best-of for 2012, here’s my list of the previous year’s best movies.

THE TOP TEN

1. “A Separation” * - A profound procedural; gripping from beginning to end.

2. “Martha Mary May Marlene” – Mesmerizing story and a powerful combination of John Hawkes and Elizabeth Olsen

3. “Win Win” – The one movie of the year I could watch over and over

4. “Pariah” * - A moving portrait and the rare tolerable coming-of-age tale

5. “Weekend” – A gorgeous, visceral love story

6. “Take Shelter” – Unsettling and raw

7. “Margin Call” – Tension and drama, with the smartest script of the year

8. “Meek’s Cutoff” – A brutal slog, but that was the point. Great ending. Kelly Reichardt strikes yet again.

9. “Higher Ground” – Memorable tale of a woman struggling with her faith

10. (tie) “Shut Up, Little Man” – A fascinating look at a pre-Internet meme and the human condition

and “Bill Cunningham New York” – A moving portrait of a unique man

* - Note: Both “A Separation” and “Pariah” were released in the final days of 2011 and thus will end up in the 2012 category in some circles. In either year, each would have made my top ten.

JUST MISSED THE LIST

-  “Beginners” – Heartfelt, sweet, clever and engaging

-  “Cedar Rapids” – Pure fun and great comedic performances all around

-  “We Need to Talk About Kevin” – Yet another jolt from Lynne Ramsay

-  “Oranges and Sunshine” – The most emotional film of the year for me

-  “Silver Tongues” – The most fascinating story, another late-year release that most folks (but not many) saw in 2012

-  “The Descendants” – George Clooney wins me over again

-  “Melancholia” – The wedding was perhaps the best scene of the year

-  “Moneyball” – Solid all around; Pitt comes through in the clutch; Sorkin back on his game

SOMEONE TO WATCH

Brit Marling in the touching “Another Earth” (and 2012’s “The Sound of My Voice” and “Arbitrage”)

VARIOUS LEVELS OF FUNNY

-  “The Future” – I can handle Miranda July at her twee-est

-  “Bridesmaids” – A lot of laughs, but the awkward love story dragged it out

-  “The Trip” – Winterbottom and Coogan are still a dynamic duo

KIDS OF ALL AGES

-  The touching “Terri”

-  The high-octane “Hanna”

-  The gorgeous “The Myth of the American Sleepover”

-  “Young Adult”

DRAMAS AND THRILLERS

-  “Shame” (Riveting and visually arresting, but dragged down by a thankless role for Carey Mulligan)

-  “Contagion” (Brilliantly unnerving)

-  “Incendies”

-  “Queen to Play” (Sandrine Bonnaire!)

-  “The Double Hour”

-  “Small-Town Murder Songs” (Noir at its best)

-  “Tuesday, After Christmas”

THE BEST DOCUMENTARIES

-  “Paul Goodman Changed My Life”

-  “Exporting Raymond”

-  “Eames: The Architect and the Painter”

-  “My Perestroika”

-  “Into the Abyss”

-  “The Interrupters”

SHOULD'VE PASSED ON THESE

-  The dull “Certified Copy”

-  The needlessly obtuse “Tree of Life”

-  Trashy date movie “Friends With Benefits”

-  The silly “Drive”

-  The overwrought, scattered “Hugo”

WORST OF THE YEAR

-  The insulting, repulsive “Rampart”

A List of Lists

It will take me a while to cobble together my best-of for 2012, mainly because I'm rusty and because there are some titles I'd still like to catch before settling on a list. Until then, I'll entertain you in the coming days with random lists from the past.

For starters, today, here is my list of the best films of the last decade, 2000 to 2009:

1. The Lives of Others

2. Mulholland Drive

3. The World / Still Life

4. Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou

5. Saddest Music in the World / My Winnipeg

6. What Time Is It There? / I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone

7. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

8. Best in Show

9. No Country for Old Men / The Man Who Wasn’t There

10. The Squid and the Whale

11. I’m Not There

12. In this World / Road to Guantanamo

13. Y Tu Mama Tambien

14. In the Mood for Love

15. Lost in Translation

16. Royal Tenenbaums

17. Climates

18. Morvern Callar

19. Thirteen

20. When the Levees Broke

HONORABLE MENTION: Lovely & Amazing, 24-Hour Party People / Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, Memento, Talk to Her, Darwin’s Nightmare, Old Joy / Wendy and Lucy, 
The Class, The Girlfriend Experience, Look Both Ways, Sex and Lucia, Werckmeister Harmonies, A Mighty Heart, Humpday, The Hangover, Hukkle, Innocence, Man on Wire, Sunshine State / Casa de los Babys, The Band’s Visit, A Driver for Vera, Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man, Secretary, Under the Sand, The Astronaut Farmer, Intimate Strangers, Once, Osama, Protagonist, The Savages, Babel, The Barbarian Invasions, 51 Birch Street, In Memory of My Father, Capturing the Friedmans, Roger Dodger, Adventureland, Millions, The Kid Stays in the Picture, Cowboy del Amor, The Piano Teacher, You Kill Me, Kings and Queen, Kontroll, The Wedding Crashers, Shortbus, Snatch, Shaun of the Dead, The Aristocrats, Jellyfish, Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic, Let the Right One In

Three foreign favorites

I caught up with these three titles via Netflix recently:

Burning Man (B) - Rarely has a movie left me so alternatively and repeatedly riveted and exasperated as this Australian drama. Studly Matthew Goode is beyond intense as a restaurant chef constantly on the brink of a freak-out as he deals with a serious loss by being alternatively sullen and brutish. Two things stand out for me. The direction (by newcomer Jonathan Teplitzky) reminded me a lot of classic Adrian Lyne (mainly "Nine and a Half Weeks" and "Lolita"), for better and for worse, especially the arty (over)use of out-of-focus shots and Cinemax-like sex scenes. The second observation: the cast is full of incredibly appealing women, most of them Australian, but also including Serbian actress Bojana Novakovic in a key role. The beauty on display -- even in the form of the straight-laced cop and the Nurse Ratched character -- can be breathtaking. Co-starring Rachel Griffiths of "Six Feet Under."

Nobody Else But You (B+) - Speaking of beauty, this French crime procedural riffs on the legend of Marilyn Monroe. A crime novelist (Jean-Paul Rouve) becomes obsessed with the apparent suicide of a local TV commercial actress, the Monrovian Candice Lecoeur (Sophie Quinton).  This all plays out like a poor man's "Twin Peaks," carried by the strong performance of Rouve as our rugged hero who is suffering from writer's block. This is a finely crafted whodunit wrapped up in dark comedy.

Alps (A) - Half the time I wasn't quite sure what I was watching or what was going on exactly, but I was mesmerized by this Giorgos Lanthimos' follow-up to the equally outre "Dogtooth."  Here, a ragtag group of individuals run an underground business in which they impersonate the recently deceased to help the survivors cope with the grieving process.  Lanthimos stubbornly refuses to explain much of the absurd story, and that will be frustrating for many viewers. But this works simply as a moody set piece. Put it on for 20 minutes. If it hooks you, let it do its thing. If you can't stand it, turn it off and move on with your life. I found it mesmerizing.

Bonus Track: "Nobody Else But You" makes perfect use of raw American music, including Jose Feliciano's stark version of "California Dreaming." And it's not the first movie to feature the Sonics' "Shot Down." At one point, our hero is driving while jamming to a song on the radio, loses reception, and backs up and parks so that he can listen to the rest of the song. I can't remember if it's "Shot Down" in that scene, but here's your '60s garage punk fix of the day:

Little America

I ran across two fine indies, short and sweet, that entertained me as much as anything I've seen this year. Both made me laugh out loud but also made me squirm and got me a bit wistful.

Union Square (B+) - Mira Sorvino is a joy as a messed up woman from a fucked-up family who pops in on her uptight sister after a three-year estrangement. I'm sure there are some who would find her character to be a cliched Bronx bimbo, but there's much more her -- and the movie -- than that. And Tammy Blanchard is beyond intense as the tortured sister trying to make peace not only with her past but the life she has created in its place. Blanchard seems to reveal all merely in the two scenes in which she brushes her teeth, alone in front of the mirror. To top it all off, we get a cameo from Broadway star Patti LuPone. But it's Sorvino who drags this story with her wherever she goes. I couldn't take my eyes off of her, and her face captures a rainbow of moods, sometimes in a matter of moments. And rarely have I ever appreciated such a rambling, left-field ending as this one. A tidy 80 minutes of storytelling, despite its loose ends and dead ends.

Natural Selection (A-minus) - TV comedian Rachael Harris (the harpy dentist's wife in "The Hangover") gives an equally breakout performance in this quirky film from newcomer Robbie Pickering. Harris is a frustrated good-Christian wife in a sexless marriage (because she's barren, thus making procreation impossible) who discovers that her husband's stroke occurred while he was at a sperm-donation clinic. She vows to track down his grown son and bring the trailer-trash offspring back to his biological father's death bed. The rest of the proceedings play out like a classic '70s road movie. The lines are snappy. Harris provides incredible depth to her character, and Jon Gries (a Polish Brothers favorite) complements her well as the yearning brother-in-law. Everything falls apart somewhat at the end, but the journey there is well worth it.

Bonus Track: Here's a sample of the great music from "Natural Selection." The second song in this medley, "Pretty Little Dreamer" plays during a key scene near the movie's climax.

Annual Christmas Day Mainstream Movie Outing

Consistently since 2006, we have made the Christmas Day pilgrimage to the local cineplex for our Annual Mainstream Movie Outing. Below is the list of previous outings, ranked in order of quality.

The schedule for Tuesday is out, and here are the candidates, in order of preference:

• "This Is 40" - From Judd Apatow, starring Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann. I think this will have the broadest appeal to our group. I wasn't a fan of "Knocked Up," but I really liked "Funny People," and my hunch is that this will be more like the latter, with the bonus of replacing Adam Sandler with a much more palatable leading man. It's also got Albert Brooks in it (being funny, instead of trying to "act" like in the torturous "Drive"). It opens today, so the big crowds might dissipate a bit by Tuesday. (12:45 p.m.)
• "Les Miserables" - Can we really sit for this for 2 hours 38 minutes? One rule is to keep this relatively short. ("40" runs longer than two hours, but is nearly a half hour shorter.) Also, this will be the film's opening day, so it might be crowded or even sold out. (noon)
• "Silver Linings Playbook" - I really have no strong desire to see this movie. But I could be talked into it. (12:50 p.m.)

FINALLY: I also plan to attend the 7 p.m. screening on Christmas Night of "Saturday Night Fever" at the Guild. This would be our first holiday double-header.

And here's the list of past screenings (with rankings):

•  2004 - The Life Aquatic With Steve Zisou (2)
• 2005 - (None)
• 2006 - Dreamgirls (3) 
• 2007 - Charlie Wilson's War (4)
• 2008 - The Wrestler (6)
• 2009 - Up in the Air (1)
• 2010 - The Fighter (5)
• 2011 - Young Adult (7)

AV Club 3.0

Welcome to the new iteration of the AV Club. I see a lot of movies and I want to catalog them in some small way. Look for mostly capsule reviews and occasional essays about films I've seen. I also envision this version as a way of communicating to friends in Albuquerque (and beyond) the movies I plan to see, my opinion of the ones I've seen, and a forum for others to chime in with their picks. Look for these regular features:

• Watch List: Releases that I'm keeping an eye on. I scour the New York Times' Friday Arts section, which is probably the most comprehensive compendium of new releases. Promising titles get added to my Netflix queue or my simple Word document of hopefuls.
• Now Playing: Titles I'm hoping to catch, either at the local art house, The Guild, or at the gigaplexes in first-run form.
• Tales From the Queue: Second-run titles that I've caught up with via Netflix or otherwise.

Below you'll find my report from the Santa Fe Film Festival, which ran Dec. 6 to 9. Above, the future of film. I plan to offer up a sketchy Best of 2012 in early January.

Best of the Fest

The Santa Fe Film Festival made a welcome return to early December, if not to its glorious form of the past.  Let's not put too much pressure on it. The festival had a good run for about seven years in the '00s, and maybe it's working its way back to that level. We caught eight films this year. We start with the most commercially viable one and then rank the rest in order of preference.

"Rust and Bone" (B+) - I had high hopes for Jacques Audiard's follow-up to his epic "A Prophet," which is my favorite movie of the past few years. This new one is making early Top Ten lists, and Marion Cotillard's performance is powerful. But it doesn't add up or cohere as a story. I'm growing increasingly grumpy with any use of CGI lately, and I was distracted throughout by the technique of removing Cotillard's legs; the director lingers on her stumps as if unable to resist the urge every ten minutes or so of saying, "Looks real, don't it??" Technicalities aside, the actual connection between her sad character and the brute she falls for is rather weak. And the climactic scene of a frightening accident is superbly crafted but ends up standing out from the rest of the film and giving the whole production an oddly Hollywood ending. Wonderfully shot, though, throughout, and always engaging.

"Shun Li and the Poet" (A-minus) - A quiet, touching film about two immigrants forming a simple bond across cultural lines. It is set in a seaside town near Venice, Italy. Shun Li is from China, and she's working off some sort of debt as an indentured servant, hoping one day to earn enough to win back her freedom and her son, who is being kept from her. Bepi is Yugoslavian, known among his fellow fishermen as "the poet" for the simple rhymes he comes up with. When Bepi and Shun Li start to hang out, the small town talks, and her overlords are not happy. The rest unfolds believably and beautifully. (Trailer)

"Violeta Went to Heaven" (B+) - A powerful biopic of Violeta Parra, the Chilean folk singer and national hero. This smartly blends amazing music (all of Parra's songs are performed by actress Francisca Gavilan) with the story of a deeply troubled woman struggling to control her relationships with her children and her lovers. It could have been 15 minutes shorter, but I was mesmerized throughout. (Trailer)

"A.K.A. Doc Pomus" (B+) - An uplifiting and often giddy documentary about the prolific songwriter Doc Pomus ("Save the Last Dance for Me," "Teenager in Love," Ray Charles' "Lonely Avenue," "Little Sister," "This Magic Moment," "Viva Las Vegas," "Can't Get Used to Losing You," etal.), this is thoroughly entertaining and emotionally moving. Pomus contracted polio at age 6, requiring the use of crutches and eventually a wheelchair the rest of his life, making the story behind "Save the Last Dance" especially poignant (even as recounted by his ex-wife). This is a hagiography in many ways, so we don't get the full picture (his split from songwriting partner (and cousin-in-law) Mort Shulman is glossed over, as is Pomus' fall from the radar in the 1970s). But this is sheer fun, and you won't believe how little you know about the output of one of the greatest pop songwriters ever.

"Barbara" (B+) - A tight, efficient, low-vibe thriller about a woman sent to an East German town in 1980 to work as a doctor at a hospital while double-dipping as a spy for the West. This is a pale companion to the brilliant "Lives of Others," but it's lifted by solid lead performances by Nina Hoss (looking like an older Farrah Fawcett) and Ronald Zehrfeld. You can see the ending coming, but that doesn't detract from its effectiveness. This is old-fashioned human storytelling.

"Amour" (B) - I've been thinking about this for a week, and I still can't decide whether this is more frightening or tedious. An elderly couple are hit with the inevitable: one of them starts to decline physically. At its best, the couple and their grand apartment create a dread that reminded me of "Rosemary's Baby." And the subtle humor lends it gravitas. But at its worst, the story wears you down by making the same point repeatedly as it creaks toward a predictable ending. The leads, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva, are compelling, but Isabelle Huppert, as their distracted daughter, is lost; she is symbolic of the thinness of the story overall. If you've ever cared for a loved one at the ugly end of existence or as they try to recover from a stroke, you'll be jolted by unsettling scenes of caregiving; but after a while, you might wonder what the point of such an exercise is.

"Hitler's Children" (B) - A strong doc about the descendants of the Nazi regime leaders.  Half their stories are rather dull (including Bettina Goering, who ended up in Santa Fe and, along with her brother, decided to become sterilized). A few are quite moving, including Niklas Frank, who writes and lectures on why we needn't respect or admire our parents, and Rainer Hoess, who returns to Auschwitz to witness the exact spot where not only Jews were killed but where his family had lived in comfort among the horrors. At the screening, some in the audience openly wept.

"In Another Country" (B-minus) - Another missed opportunity with Isabelle Huppert. This Korean film places her in three vignettes, held together by the wonderful human frailty of miscommunication. While some of those scenes, especially between Huppert's character and the young life guard, are funny and touching, the repetition dilutes the whole endeavor. Not funny enough to be a comedy, nor touching enough to be an effective drama.