Inadvertent Double Feature: A Little Italy

Back-to-back in the same evening, we experienced the delights of Italy. The first was a documentary about Gore Vidal (the American exile in Ravello), and the second was Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon's follow-up to "The Trip," immersed in the Italian countryside where, improbably, Brydon does something I'd never seen before: an impression of Gore Vidal.

THE TRIP TO ITALY (B) - If you like Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon and their shtick, then this sequel to "The Trip" will go down easy. If not, you might squirm a bit. Here, the cheeky Brits gambol about the Italian countryside, endlessly tossing out clever impressions, while dining at five-star restaurants.

Coogan is eminently watchable, and Brydon is a capable foil. They settle in quickly, puttering around God's green acres in a Mini Cooper (probably for "The Italian Job" joke) while listening (and singing along) to vintage Alanis Morissette.

The scenery is breathtaking and the food is to die for, and those distractions certainly help take your mind off the fact that we've been here before or that director Michael Winterbottom isn't as jazzed about the narrative the second time around. As in the first film, Winterbottom broadly sketches a back story for each man. This time Brydon is the unfaithful one (with little apparent consequence), while Coogan conducts a dull and inscrutable long-distance squabble with his pissy 16-year-old son, an utterly confounding exercise. Meantime, the men brood about their own mortality, sniffing along the trail of the great poets Byron and Shelley and visiting tourist sites like the ruins of Pompeii (probably for the "little guy in a box" joke).

But we're here for the banter. And it's often a hoot. (Middle-aged men will be boys, after all.) The Michael Caine impression makes a cameo. Just about all the James Bonds get a quick gloss. Brydon's fall-back impression here is Al Pacino, and frankly, it's not a very good one, no matter how often he tries. His improbable Gore Vidal impression is much stronger. Winterbottom sits back and lets the improvisational comedy find a target, and then he moves on.

This truly is like a delectable meal -- you savor it while it lasts, and eventually it just passes through you.

GORE VIDAL: UNITED STATES OF AMNESIA (B) -  And if you can stand Gore Vidal for 90 minutes, this is a workmanlike overview of his career and political philosophy.

The first half drags too often and is focused too much on Vidal's personal life. The second half finally delves into his role as the conscience of America.

This world-class insufferable elitist intellectual duels with William Buckley in classic 1960s TV clips. (Where Buckley infamously smeared Vidal as a "queer" and threatened to punch him in the nose.) He anoints Christopher Hitchens (seen here hairless not long before his death) as his ideological heir before dispatching Hitchens unceremoniously over the latter's support for the Iraq War. (We see them at their final public gathering together, an awkward parting.)

Vidal is refreshingly blunt in his measured assessment of American history (and its exceptionalism and imperialism). He expertly busts the myth of Camelot, referring to his old pal Jack Kennedy as the worst president we've ever had, a leader who accomplished little and who sent the first batch of ground troops to Vietnam.

This all zips along in tick-tock fashion. Like in "Life Itself," we're exposed to too much footage of an old man in a wheelchair staring death in the face. (The opening and closing scenes take place at a cemetery.) But the old footage is oddly comforting, and Vidal makes compelling company throughout.

BONUS TRACK
Speaking of Alanis Morissette:

'The Look of Love'

Michael Winterbottom has rarely let me down.

His films range from the joyful noises he makes with Steve Coogan ("24-Hour Party People," "Tristram Shandy," "The Trip") to his amazing Terrorism Trilogy -- "Road to Guantanamo," "In This World" and "A Mighty Heart." But the three most recent of his movies that I've seen -- 2010's "The Killer Inside Me," 2011's "Trishna" and his current effort "THE LOOK OF LOVE" -- have ended his run of guaranteed raves.

"The Look of Love" reunites him with Coogan in a biopic of Paul Raymond, the British "men's club" impresario who reigned in Soho in the 1960s, '70s and '80s. While it's a satisfying portrayal of a man and an era, the proceedings come off as surprisingly subdued. There's no giddiness of, say, "Boogie Nights," and that's not necessarily a criticism; just an observation. Winterbottom frames the proceedings from the wistful perspective of Raymond near the end of his life, looking back at his successes (making money) and his failures (he was a lousy husband and father). No matter how much wealth and acclaim he attracted, nothing seemed to give him more true pleasure, in the end, than taking his daughter or granddaughter to the bakery and letting the little girl pick out her favorite dessert.

The other drawback here is the supporting cast, which (again, in stark contrast to "Boogie Nights") is rather drab and uninspiring. It's as if Coogan goes looking for energy to play off of and comes up empty, no matter whom he turns to. The stunning Tamsin Egerton, as Raymond's trophy wife and business partner, adds the most zip in a role inordinately devoted to coked-up threesomes. Raymond's other business partners are mostly ciphers with pornstaches. Amanda Poots' rendition of the title song is both lovely and touching. However, her efforts in the key role of Raymond's troubled daughter, Debbie -- doing lines with her irresponsible dad and struggling to launch a career with modest talents -- are rather scattershot.

Finally, there's no ignoring the wall-to-wall nudity throughout the film. Just about every actress but Poots disrobes at some point. I was reminded of Steve Martin's bit about watching a Las Vegas revue: "Wow, look at the tits. There must be ... 57 tits up there." Here, on the one hand, it's a bit of a distraction; on the other hand, Winterbottom is not shying away from the sexism and misogyny that drove Raymond's business juggernaut. The director is making a point.

When we're asked to see that the emptiness of Raymond's empire becomes crushingly obvious to him, Coogan is a gifted enough actor to pull that off. I was moved by the film's final scenes. Coogan (expertly aged throughout the film) displays an impressive range. He shuns flash in favor of a more somber trudge through a privileged life built on exploitation.

In that sense, he and Winterbottom have made a powerful, if flawed, film.

GRADE: B

BONUS TRACKS

   Winterbottom films earning an A or A-minus:

• Wonderland
• Welcome to Sarajevo
• 24-Hour Party People
• In This World
• Road to Guantanamo
• 9 Songs
• Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
• The Trip
• A Mighty Heart

   In the B range:

• Trishna
• The Killer Inside Me
• The Look of Love

Guided by Voices

Two that don't need much analysis:

THE TRIP TO SPAIN (B+) - What can we say about those waggish middle-aged cads now on their third go-round of cuisine and banter, wrapped by Michael Winterbottom in a shroud of ennui? It still works somehow.

Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon first did this shtick in "The Trip" in 2010 and returned for an encore for "The Trip to Italy" in 2014. Here they reunite for a scamper around Spain, indulging in fine dining and quip-offs featuring their patented impressions -- Michael Caine, Roger Moore, etal. There are some inspired moments and some belly laughs.

Coogan, the alpha celeb (he merits the better hotel suites), is often in a cranky mood, gruffly coasting on his recent acclaim for "Philomena," not above putting Brydon in his C-list place. Brydon gets in his digs in between the mimicry that often goes on just a bit too long. (Though his devotion to an extended Roger Moore bit -- riffing off a story about the Moors -- is admirable.) This is civilized male one-upmanship, gentlemanly frat behavior.

In a telling scene, Coogan chats up a street busker and invites him to have a beer with them at an outdoor bistro. After some friendly chit-chat, Coogan takes offense at the young man's superior knowledge of Spain's tourist haunts and goes off sulking. It's left to Brydon to sum up Coogan to the street musician: "He doesn't like to be told things he thinks he already knows."

Winterbottom has gradually tempered his interest in photographing the food being prepared, and he seems intrigued by these faux back stories that he sketches for each man. Coogan, 51, comes off as introspective and perpetually self-analyzing, if not borderline self-loathing. Brydon, 52, just seems content to have escaped family life. Both men are seen jogging through picturesque streets, staving off physical decline.

I was reminded of Michael Apted's "7-Up" series, which checks in every seven years with a core group of British baby boomers. Winterbottom, cheating with fiction, explores similar territory with Gen X elders. If you're in that cohort, you might not mind the same old apings and the broodings of privileged men -- rather, you might enjoy tagging along with these guys every few years to see how things turn out.

MARJORIE PRIME (B) - An elderly woman is kept company by the holographic image of her deceased husband, a version of him in his prime, his early 40s and as handsome as Jon Hamm.

Marjorie (character actor Lois Smith) is losing her grip on her memory, and her beloved Walter is dreamed up to keep her company and bathe her in golden memories. The twist is that hologram Walter (Hamm) comes programmed with only the most basic of information (such as you would have found in his obit), and the rest of his knowledge is inputted by either Marjorie or her daughter and son-in-law -- Tess (Geena Davis) and Jon (Tim Robbins) -- which leads to experiments in revisionist history.

It's difficult to discuss the plot without revealing too much. Jon wallows in his cocktails, and he also takes perverse joy in hanging out with Walter one-on-one. He slyly implants some tidbits into Walter's brain, perhaps Jon's way of making life with his mother-in-law a little more palatable.

Tess is a miserable depressive, still weirded out by having to deal with her dad again, especially now that he's younger than she is. Some dark family history -- her older brother committed suicide as a teen -- still pains her.

This is an intriguing sci-fi experiment from Michael Almereyda, who helped Jordan Harrison (a writer for Netflix's "Orange Is the New Black") adapt Harrison's play. The big ideas here are apparent: Is it cruel or merciful to play God? How reliable are our memories, and how do they define us? Can computers lull us to the grave? Can they eventually allow us to live forever? Would we even want that?

The simple staging -- with long conversations, almost all of them in the house -- comes off like a glorified play but fits the subject matter. The ensemble is mostly solid. You normally wouldn't turn to Davis and Robbins for dramatic heavy lifting, but their understated performances win out in the end. Davis conveys the layers of resentment that have calloused over and deadened her inside. Robbins is a convincing rascal. Hamm is just robotic enough to be both creepy and believable.

The ending is thoughtful, hinting at the future ramifications of the technological tricks, and perhaps even suggesting that this whole human experiment is and always has been one big simulation.

BONUS TRACKS
The trailers:

 

 

"The Trip's" theme song, "The Windmills of Your Mind," this version from Noel Harrison:

Best of 2007: At the movies, having the time of your life

Originally posted December 28, 2007:

Top 10

1. "No Country for Old Men"
2. "I'm Not There"
3. "A Mighty Heart"
4. "Killer of Sheep"
5. "This Is England"
6. "51 Birch Street"
7. "Once"
8. "Away From Her"
9. "The Astronaut Farmer"
10. "Talk to Me"

It would be so easy for me to blame the "Idiocracy."

Mike Judge's frustrating look at our bleak future was sneaked into a few theaters in fall 2006 (where it earned less than $500,000) and then dumped off to DVD release this past January. While Albuquerque's homegrown idiot savant didn't match the manic brilliance of 1999's "Office Space," the futuristic slapstick of "Idiocracy" had just enough nuggets of truth about a world bled of dignity and culture that the easy laughs belie an unsettling message.

That's how I started my movie year, and as you might have heard, this annus horribilis is ending with an execution - a shot from an air-powered cattle gun straight to the cerebral cortex of a newspaper, an industry, a career. They did warn us "There Will Be Blood."

If the future, rendered in cartoon form in "Idiocracy," is a depressing world to visit, then maybe I can be forgiven if most of the movies on my top-10 list tossed me back into the past. I like to think of it not as a retreat (that would be defeatist) but rather a re-examination (more therapeutic, like on an HBO series).

On back-to-back days I saw the equally brilliant "I'm Not There" and "No Country for Old Men," which bookended my childhood experience, respectively, from the mid-1960s to the dawn of Reagan.

"I'm Not There" is less about Bob Dylan than it is about the rest of us and how we (journalists, especially) like to pigeonhole; how we build people up just to knock them down; how we insist they fit our formula. The movie begins and ends with that steady, rambling freight train leading us both forward in time and back. It takes a Midwest boy on a journey, to the big city out east as well as to the Old West, into the future and through the past.

"I'm Not There" is Todd Haynes' most fully realized film, reminding me of the equally offbeat "Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou," in which Wes Anderson perfected his vision and was a maestro in the zone. (Anderson's offering this year, "The Darjeeling Limited," deserves another viewing, and I might wish a few months hence that I'd put it in my top 10.)

"No Country for Old Men," the best film Joel and Ethan Coen have made, took us back to 1980 and to the brink of a new era. Tommy Lee Jones' sheriff ached with the realization that the world he came of age in no longer needed him around and that our ultimate fate is obsolescence. Those meandering final 20 minutes magically capture the onset of such aimlessness.

For me, adrift in my analog world, I watched a neighborhood video store succumb to the times, and I gave in to Netflix. But I refuse to shrink with the times.

Odds are movie theaters, if not newspapers, will last as long as I do. And it was often in sparsely attended matinee screenings that I did my time travel this year:

I was moved to tears by Don Cheadle as a DJ at the unraveling in the 1960s ("Talk to Me") and by -- it's excruciating to admit it -- Adam Sandler having a meltdown after losing his family in the 9/11 attacks ("Reign Over Me").

The other 9/11 film, "A Mighty Heart," made me glad I had skipped the Daniel Pearl headlines five years ago and instead waited for Michael Winterbottom to devastate me with the story.

"This Is England" also slugged me in the chest with its stark depiction of brutal boys bonding in Maggie Thatcher's England. (It's often no country for young men, either.)

"The Hoax" was a hoot as it celebrated the '70s, and "Charlie Wilson's War" had a similar dark revelry, sharpened by Aaron Sorkin's ebullient script.

"51 Birch Street," a near-perfect documentary about a postwar couple yearning to be themselves, captured the evolution of a culture and a mind-set.

The sweet films "Once" and "The Astronaut Farmer," while set in the present day, were clearly throwbacks to another era, with the talented Polish brothers paying homage to Frank Capra in the latter.

"Fido," the most unexpected joy of the year, was a sly spoof of Eisenhower-era boy-and-his-dog sappiness that made me glad I didn't come along until after the '50s.

And then there was a film literally made 30 years ago: "Killer of Sheep." Charles Burnett's minimalist masterpiece defies description (Cassavetes meets "Good Times"?) and could fill a semester's film class. To watch a man and his wife slow-dance to Dinah Washington singing "This Bitter Earth" is to witness time standing still, with molecules fizzing into the ether like soda-pop bubbles.

My descent into the past extended to the small screen, as I got lost in the world of "Mad Men," the series about Madison Avenue brutes at the dawn of the 1960s. In fact, this year I found some of the most powerful drama on cable TV, of all places.

It felt like my year didn't truly begin until the final season of "The Sopranos" did in the spring, and 2007 didn't feel complete until last week when I finally watched the last episode of another HBO show, "Tell Me You Love Me."

When asked to name my favorite movie of all time I say "The Decalogue" by Krzysztof Kieslowski. That 10-part gem was made for Polish TV in 1989 and 1990 before making it to U.S. theaters.

"Tell Me You Love Me," which was dismissed early on because of its explicit sex, offered 10 chapters that often did for romantic relationships what "The Decalogue" did for human interaction and spirituality. The examination of four couples was a tour de force from Cynthia Mort, whose previous claim to fame was being a writer and producer on "Roseanne," one of my occasional guilty pleasures from the 1990s.

"Tell Me You Love Me" was short for a TV series, but, of course, like "The Decalogue," you can savor it like an epic film. With its slow, European pacing and long takes, it offered something too often missing from the movies this year: real life in real time.

I can't tell you how many times I nodded my head uneasily and felt like Mort had tapped my phone lines to come up with dialogue or simply was reading my mind. Once everything clicked on Episode 4, I felt like I was ensconced in expert French cinema.

It was a mixed-up year like that, in which foreign films barely registered. I loved "12:08 East of Bucharest" and caught up with last year's indie favorite, "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu" - both from Romania. And I wish I'd made it up to Santa Fe in time to see Cristian Mungiu's "4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days," which is likely to cap its yearlong awards run with a foreign-language Oscar, probably around the time it opens in Albuquerque.

The most foreign of films to nearly crack my top 10 was as American as the French could be: "2 Days in Paris," Julie Delpy's sharp examination of (what else?) a relationship being torn apart by mistrust and denial.

Then again, I found Julian Schnabel's elegiac "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" to be too French - beautiful women will continue to dote on a jerk and fight over him even when he's immobilized.

On the other end of the spectrum, Sean Penn's "Into the Wild" struck me as insufferably American. It's a panoramic travelogue (mawkishly so) that somehow hammers most of the humanity out of a fundamentally human story. (Of course, it's a period piece, too, taking place in the early '90s.)

"Into the Wild" is about a college grad who shuns the modern world, abandons his family and returns to the earth - literally, as he outsmarts himself and starves to death in the Alaska wilderness, alone and yearning for the embrace of his parents.

As romantic and gloriously organic such a road trip might seem to a newsman losing his job, my itinerary this year was destined to be confined to time travel. Life itself is a journey (or maybe, in the end, just a Journey song, as "The Sopranos" suggested), and it's that fourth dimension that opens up exponential avenues and possibilities.

Time goes both ways, forward and back, like a pendulum.

"Age will flatten a man," Tommy Lee Jones laments in "No Country for Old Men."

Like a dutiful journalist, I wrote that line down in my notebook.

Age, though, also gives a man perspective. It reminds him where he's been. It gives him insight into what will come after him.

It puts him in his place.

***

Honorable mention: "The Darjeeling Limited," "You Kill Me," "Inland Empire," "The Italian," "The Hoax," "Reign Over Me," "Czech Dream," "The Black Book," "Year of the Dog," "Waitress," "2 Days in Paris," "Red Road," "Fido," "Police Beat," "Charlie Wilson's War"

Wish I'd seen: "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," "Into Great Silence," "Lars and the Real Girl," "Sunshine"

Best director: Michael Winterbottom, "A Mighty Heart"

Best actress: Cate Blanchett, "I'm Not There"

Best actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman, "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead," "Charlie Wilson's War" (and probably "The Savages," too)

The * of 2020

 

Let's just put an asterisk after every entry of 2020. We don't need to belabor the point.

Herein we celebrate the best films of the past year. As usual, it takes us a few extra weeks out in flyover country to catch up to the straggling titles. These past months it was actually easier to keep up with the scattershot slate of releases, because we could stream them on demand, with a few exceptions (more asterisks). 

The experiment that was the start of the third decade of the millennium (asterisk for the sticklers, you know who you are) mixed the good with the bad. On the one hand, a bunch of high-profile titles got pushed back to 2021. On the other hand, the ones that did get released were often immediately available, for a price, online. On the third hand (asterisk), we couldn't view them on the big screen in the company of others in a shared experience. It was what it was.

But as usual, there are only two or three films that could be considered truly great and which will stand the test of time (asterisk: I can't predict the future), followed on our list by some very good ones. We're going to be generous this time and make the list a fat 15, weighing it down with titles but lightening the load by including some sweet (if at times bittersweet) and uplifting minor-key movies that normally would have had a tougher time piercing our defenses. A little positivity couldn't hurt. (Asterisk.)

This year, it'll be a simpler list, with fewer categories and titles. Even before the asterisks started flying, we've made a conscious effort to downsize this forum and streamline what is now an eight-year relationship online. But you all out there still need images to stream, and below you'll find a couple of weeks worth of entertainment.

While it was easy to get cynical and jaded as a veteran moviegoer who feels like we've seen it all, we instead tried to get a little more discerning. And we were rewarded by seeing a lot of new talent and first-time filmmakers who made the list. We denote four of them below -- with an asterisk.

THE TOP 15

  1. We Are Little Zombies* - Easily the year's best director, Makoto Nagahisa, who splashes with this dark but heartwarming tale of four orphans banding together through post-millennial uber-angst. Never has nihilism been so colorful and groovy.

  2. Someone Somewhere - From France, the ache of loneliness, even when that certain someone is within reach, if only you knew.

  3. Never Rarely Sometimes Always - As raw as cinema gets, Eliza Hittman ("It Felt Like Love") gets back on her game in this jarring documentary-like traipse through the abortion system.

  4. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom - Viola Davis (best actor) is like a cat with a bird in its mouth, big-footing around this August Wilson play like she owned the damn recording studio in 1927.

  5. The Forty-Year-Old Version* - Another fresh voice, Radha Blank, a complex exploration of both race relations and the imminent approach of middle age, and how both of those factors help or hinder the making of art. (Best screenplay.)

  6. Beanpole - Visually striking and heart-wrenching -- how we somehow manage to get by psychologically in the wake of war.

  7. Corpus Christi - A gripping tale of a doomed young man vainly seeking redemption.

  8. Epicentro - One of two documentaries on the elite list, this one a gorgeous, meandering dive into one aspect of Cuban culture.

  9. The Climb - A novel take on the classic buddy film involving love triangles and the shifting power dynamics between two grown men. Both funny and unpredictable, with a smart visual sense.

10. Driveways - A mom, a son and the codger next door. The subsidiary culture clash takes a backseat to old-fashioned sweetness and light, giving hope to outsiders.

11. I Am Greta* - Remarkably intimate, this one succeeds not on its politics but rather on its sociological and psychological insights of one teenager trying to make a difference. From Nathan Grossman.

12. The Wolf of Snow Hollow - Jim Cummings' sophomore effort gets a little silly at times, but there's no one like him tearing up the screen with wild ranges of emotions mixed with acrid comedy.

13. First Cow - Another buddy film, this Kelly Reichardt period piece takes its sweet time to charm you.

14. The Life Ahead - Similar to "Driveways," this Italian mood piece presents an odd couple -- Sophia Loren's Holocaust survivor and a rebellious street kid -- and tugs at the heart in just the right ways.

15. Shithouse* - Another debut film, this one about a young man (writer-director-star Cooper Raiff) putting his vulnerabilities out there as he struggles through his first year of college. 

JUST MISSED THE LIST

• I'm Thinking of Ending Things - Wonderfully bizarre, until Charlie Kaufman goes completely off the rails in the final 20 minutes.
• Banana Split - Two girls bro it up as they bond over a shared boy toy.
• The Trip to Greece - We just can't quit these two clever Brits fictionalizing themselves in the hands of Michael Winterbottom.
• The devastating documentary about Romania's health care system, "Collective." 
• From Iceland, the full simmer of "A White, White Day."
• The beautiful black-and-white Soviet period piece "Dear Comrades."

TOP DOCS

• Crip Camp
• Heaven's Gate: The Cult of Cults - HBO's four-part series is the epitome of historical storytelling, spanning the decades-long death march of the most captivating of all cults.
• The Social Dilemma
• Feels Good Man
• Harry Chapin: When in Doubt, Do Something
• Class Action Park
• The Raft
• Earth
• The Edge of Democracy
• Other Music
• One Child Nation
• The Go-Go's
• Red Penguins

THE LEFTOVERS

  The 2019 films we caught up with:

• The elegant, fascinating love story "Portrait of a Lady on Fire" would have made our top five last year.
• The invigorating documentary about a family of rogue EMTs in Mexico City, "Midnight Family"
• From Serbia, the somber '90s war story "The Load."

COMING ATTRACTIONS

As noted above, releases were a little scrambled in 2020. You'll see "Nomadland," from Chloe Zhao ("The Rider") on some lists, and it did appear briefly online late in the year, but it won't get an official release until 2021. Same for "Gunda," the wordless documentary about farm life, which comes out next month. 

We're curious about Steve McQueen's "Small Axe" anthology (especially "Lovers Rock" and "Red, White and Blue"), but it's an Amazon exclusive. And Sofia Coppola's "On the Rocks" belongs to Apple TV. Finally, we doubt "Martin Eden" would crack our Top 15, but it's coming out on disc next week, so we'll find out soon.

Stay tuned for reviews of those titles and more as we re-emerge in 2021, hopefully in a dark, confined space at some point.

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”

Besties

 

BANANA SPLIT (B+) - Hannah Marks is a gem. She co-wrote the slyly effective relationship film "After Everything," and she follows it up with a star vehicle for herself, a smart comedy about two teenagers falling into friendship despite the fact that they have dated the same guy in succession. 

Marks (as April) and Liana Liberato (as Clara) meet at a party after April is curious about her ex-boyfriend Nick's new girlfriend who just moved to town. Call me naive, but despite the apparent contrivance of a movie script, the pair give a moving and convincing effort at showing the depth of the female bonding process, despite the circumstances of keeping things from Nick (Dylan Sprouse). During their summer before starting college, they still are steeped in adolescent angst and attraction.

In the middle of all this is Nick's nerdy best friend, Ben, a comedic breath of fresh air from Luke Spencer Roberts, who plays exasperation well. The four main actors dig deep to lift this above classic teen drivel.

Marks collaborates again with co-writer Joey Power, though this time they hand off the directing duties to veteran cinematographer Benjamin Kasulke, who keeps things moving at a peppy clip. Marks makes good use of her time inventing a truly moving character, creating a real person behind her puppy-dog eyes and beyond her glib disaffection. She and her movie are clever, charming and funny.

THE TRIP TO GREECE (B) - The boys -- Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon -- are back with Michael Winterbottom for a fourth installment in their series of gastronomic adventures across Europe, starting with the original in England in 2010 and moving on to Italy and Spain. For the first time, all parties involved show a little weariness that can't simply be assigned to middle age.

Maybe having gotten the message from critics, the men cut way back on their competitive celebrity impressions and settle for some good ol' banter. That's a mixed blessing. The Michael Caine-offs of the past films grew overly familiar, but they were funny. An incidental Werner Herzog riff doesn't quite have the same zing. 

Once again, Brydon plays the character of the chaste family man, while Coogan gets his obligatory fling with a beautiful woman. (His open flirting with a cute young waitress (actress Soraya Mahalia Hatner) introduces a creep factor in the Me-Too era that arrived after the last installment.) Coogan also gets the gloomy dramatic role (he does, after all, boast seven BAFTAs, which we're reminded of constantly), this time dealing long-distance with an ailing father, which requires Coogan to interact a lot by phone with his "son," Joe (Tim Leach). 

If the witticisms have worn a bit, Winterbottom is like a kid with his camera. He laps up the scenery of a truly beautiful country, offering up quite a few stunning visuals. That helps quite a bit. Coogan and Brydon are still engaging company, but those of us new to middle age can get awfully grumpy. A picturesque setting can really lift a guy's mood.

Out of Sorts

A SUMMER IN GENOA (2008) (B) - Michael Winterbottom simmers in his mid-career malaise of a decade ago with this serviceable but inessential study of a father and daughters mourning abroad after the tragic death of the girls' mother. Fine performances rescue this from being merely average.

Colin Firth carries the ball here as the stunned widower looking for solace and escape during a summer in Italy with the girls, one of whom is a curious teen flirting with adulthood. Catherine Keener offers an additional layer of sorrow as his hang-dog platonic pal. The younger daughter (Perla Haney-Jardine) is traumatized not only by sudden loss but also by guilt, and Winterbottom captures that trauma well.

Winterbottom was coming off a spectacular run -- "Wonderland," "24-Hour Party People," "In This World," "9 Songs," "Tristram Shandy" and "A Mighty Heart" -- and you wonder if he needed a break. His output since has featured minor-key dramas and some disjointed narratives (with the "Trip" movies as outliers). Here he is writing with occasional collaborator Laurence Coriat, and they manage to capture the horror of the ordinariness of loss. This slow burn is the cinematic equivalent of watching a wound slowly heal, though not completely.

GAS, FOOD, LODGING (1992) (C) - This mother-daughter companion story has not aged well, if it was even good 25 years ago. Allison Anders, a wunderkind who never caught on as a film director, stomped onto the scene with this story of a single mom and her two daughters eking an existence in a fictional New Mexico town.

Little of the story and the scenery ring true. Brooke Adams is a weak lead, and Ione Skye struggles to find her voice as the slutty, bratty older daughter. A young Fairuza Balk is a revelation as the younger, brighter daughter, but she has little to work with in Anders' adaptation of a Richard Peck novel. The outfits look fussed over, reminding us that we're not really hanging out with a trailer-park mom working in a roadside diner. Even the music by J Mascis (Dinosaur Jr.) is rather uninspired.

Anders would further explore artificiality a few years later in "Grace of My Heart" before settling in with blander TV work the past two decades, her own dreams of being an auteur put in their place.

A Century of Progress: Vol. 2 (2010-14)

In our run-up to listing our favorite films released in 2019 (and, separately, the best of the past decade), we are looking back on our previous best-of lists. Today, we pick out some highlights from the best-of lists 2010-14. Click the year headers for links to full lists and analysis.

2010
You don't get much more dark and compelling than the Euro-trio of "A Prophet," "Fish Tank" and "I Am Love." And then there were moody adult males like "Greenberg" and the detached father in Sofia Coppola's "Somewhere." Other women had a strong year: "Winter's Bone," "Tiny Furniture," "White Material," "Please Give." The Duplass brothers came of age with "Cyrus"; Philip Seymour Hoffman directed a film, "Jack Goes Boating"; and the "Catfish" craze began.

2011
"A Separation" is still the gold standard for Asghar Farhadi films. And we still could watch Paul Giamatti and Amy Ryan in the wrestling movie "Win Win" over and over. More strong female stories emerged: "Martha Mary May Marlene," "Pariah," "Meek's Cutoff," "We Need to Talk About Kevin," "Higher Ground." Michael Winterbottom started his "The Trip" series.

2012
Three foreign films topped the list, followed by Denzel Washington's tour de force in "Flight," and even the trashy "Magic Mike," a total hoot, made the Top 15. Films that still resonate, years later, include "Oslo, August 31st" and "Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present." I probably should have given more credit to Bela Tarr's "The Turin Horse" and Alex Ross Perry's "The Color Wheel." And, in retrospect, "The House I Live In" could have found a spot on the big list. (We re-viewed it a year later.)

2013
Noah Baumbach again reached the top spot, this time with "Frances Ha" starring Greta Gerwig. "Nebraska" and "Enough Said" offered funny slices of Americana. The movie that haunts me the most to this day is "The Broken Circle Breakdown," and the one I can watch over and over is "Short Term 12." Documentaries were uplifting and heartbreaking: "20 Feet From Stardom" and "AKA Doc Pomus."

2014
I was on team "Birdman" (despite the detractors) and team "Foxcatcher." You can keep "Boyhood." Quirky comedies made the list: "Grand Budapest Hotel," "Listen Up Philip," "Skeleton Twins," "Top Five." The movie I can go back and watch again and again is "Inherent Vice," and the one that haunts me most is "I Am Ali." Check out the original foreign versions of "Gloria" (later "Gloria Bell") and "Force Majeure" (the upcoming "Downhill"). And, OMG, "Wetlands."
  

New to the Queue

Dare I disturb the universe that includes Michael Winterbottom and Steve Coogan? "The Look of Love" is debuting to tepid reviews, but I don't think I can resist the team that brought us "24-Hour Party People," "Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story" and "The Trip."

Martha and Rufus Wainwright pay tribute to their mother, Kate McGarrigle, in the documentary "Sing Me the Songs That Say I Love You."

The documentary about an early Detroit proto-punk trio, "A Band Called Death."

Another fun music doc, "The Secret Disco Revolution."

And in the style of "Jesus Camp" and "Girls Rock," the documentary "Magic Camp."

A drama set among some of the old masters, Jem Cohen's "Museum Hours."

And I know I might regret this one, even on video, but it might be time to check in on Neil LaBute and the adaptation of his stage play "Some Girl(s)."

A drama about piracy on the seas, "A Hijacking."


Three people deal with a fatal hit-and-run accident in "Three Worlds."

The story of Napster, "Downloaded," which I missed during its late-evening run last week at the Guild Cinema.

New to the Queue

Post-apocalyptic ...

We just are a sucker for Michael Winterbottom's "Trip" series, and here come Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon with the fourth installment, "The Trip to Greece."

A documentary about shlockmeister Paul Verhoeven's '90s abomination "Showgirls," "You Don't Nomi."

A pair of films from Hong Sang-soo see the light of day: "Hill of Freedom" and "Yourself and Yours."

A documentary about the plight of the honeybees, "The Pollinators."
 

New to the Queue

These are the dog days ...

The quirky tale of the leader of a band (Michael Fassbender) who wears a large papier-mache head, "Frank."

As you know, we automatically add Michael Winterbottom/Steve Coogan films to the queue; this one is a follow-up to the comic food escapade with Rob Brydon, "The Trip to Italy."

Catherine Breillat uses Isabelle Huppert as her stand-in in the autobiographical "Abuse of Weakness."

Reluctantly, we give Phillipe Garrel (and his actor son) another chance (after "A Burning Hot Summer"), in the relationship film "Jealousy."

A tale of love and separate apartments, John Lithgow and Alfred Molina in "Love Is Strange."

A couple of foul-mouthed sisters behaving badly in "See You Next Tuesday."

A gimmicky story, but starring Elizabeth Moss and Mark Duplass, "The One I Love."

A British father-son prison film, perhaps recalling "A Prophet," David Mackenzie's "Starred Up."

New to the Queue

Turn, turn, turn ...

A renowned architect falls ill and gets trapped in a small Indiana town where he befriends a young woman, an architecture enthusiast who works at the local library, in "Columbus."

Destin Daniel Cretton and Brie Larson follow up "Short Term 12" with an adaptation of the memoir about a dysfunctional family, "The Glass Castle."

Aubrey Plaza ("The To-Do List," "Safety Not Guaranteed") looks like she's having fun as an internet stalker in "Ingrid Goes West."

The boys are back -- director Michael Winterbottom and stars Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon -- for another round of fooding, brooding, and Michael Caine-offs, "The Trip to Spain."

Steven Soderbergh is back, and he's got Riley Keough and Katherine Waterston with him in the pulpy "Logan Lucky."

A chubby white girl aspires to be a big-time rap star in "Patti Cakes."