THERE'S nary a petticoat nor a pretty face to be found on this guy-centric list of the top 10 films of 2011, whose only females include an emotionally damaged cult escapee and an underage assassin.
There's a lot of darkness, what with alien invasions, psychological manipulation, cancer, and assassins, both literal and figurative. (And my top 11 would've included 13 Assassins, really upping the body count.) Blame the economy for all the darkness, and until things improve, we'll always have Paris-
1. Drive
Ryan Gosling was everywhere this year, from the suave superplayer with the Dirty Dancing moves in Crazy Stupid Love to the disillusioned campaign aide in Ides of March. But nowhere was Gosling's lethal acting prowess on better display than in Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive, in which Gosling says more with a pregnant look than 10 pages of dialogue could've communicated. He doesn't have a backstory, he doesn't even have a name: he's just "driver", stuntman/mechanic by day, who resists his criminal leanings until a beautiful neighbor (an equally flawless Carey Mulligan) and her son are put in harm's way. Albert Brooks is especially fun to watch as a ruthless Mafioso. It's a bloodbath. But it's beautiful.
2. Martha Marcy May Marlene
There's tension from the first frame of first-time writerdirector Sean Durkin's film, whose idyllic rural setting belies the masochistic goings-on at the hands of cult leader Patrick (John Hawkes, Winter's Bone). Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) escapes the farm and lands at her sister Lucy's (Sarah Paulson) lake house after a two-year absence. As Martha struggles to reintegrate into conventional society and Lucy tries to decipher the mystery of the past two years (shown to the audience in fitful flashbacks), the sense of menace multiplies. A subtle and devastating performance by Olsen (no longer known as younger sister to the twins) gives the film its devastating power.
3. 50/50
Funny movies about cancer are rare. But screenwriter Will Reiser, diagnosed with a spinal tumour at age 25, knows this stuff firsthand. He wrote the screenplay and recruited his buddy Seth Rogen to make sure the movie didn't suck. Rogen was Reiser's roommate at the time of his diagnosis, and may or may not have been as obnoxious as Kyle, who reacts to his friend Will's (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) diagnosis by using it to pick up girls. Gordon-Levitt takes on a risky role, making every stage of the process - from denial to acceptance - come to life. It's the best buddy movie of the year.
4. The Tree of Life
Yes, there is a dinosaur and some esoteric musings about the cosmos. But all the better to frame director Terrence Malick's story of how one little family fits into the universe. Brad Pitt, in one of two Oscar-worthy performances of 2011, is the taciturn father to Jack (shown grown as Sean Penn) who looks back on his childhood in 1950s Waco, Texas, on the anniversary of a family tragedy. There is scant dialogue, just luminous performances by Jessica Chastain and young Hunter McCracken, and once you're lulled into Malick's hypnotic rhythm, you won't want their story to end.
5. Midnight In Paris
The only dash of whimsy on this list comes courtesy of veteran director Woody Allen, long overdue for a hit. Midnight in Paris stars Owen Wilson (perfectly suited to Allen's brand of hapless hero) as a man longing for an earlier era who wanders the streets of Paris after midnight and runs into his heroes of literature, Hemingway and the Fitzgeralds among them. The greatest cinematic paean to Paris in years, the film dispels "the golden age" myth, and is a thinking-person's celebration of creativity in every age.
6. Super 8
There are few films these days for and about that precious stage of life that used to be known as middle childhood, age nine to 12, that gradual transition into teenagedom that has been swallowed up by age-inappropriate kids' fashions and Monster High dolls. Then came Super 8, producer Steven Spielberg and protégé J.J. Abrams' kid-centric yet emotionally complex story of a small Ohio town overrun by an alien being. The visual effects and scares are some of the best this year, but are backed up by a story that packs a complementary emotional wallop.
7. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2
All in all, the eight Harry Potter films took in over $7 billion. So, how to end the franchiseof-all-franchises? With outstanding effects and a finale that satisfied almost every muggle out there, that's how. David Yates, director of the last four HP films, packs as much farewell emotion and character cameos as humanly possible into a film stuffed with dragon rides, horcruxes, and epic battles. If you don't know who wins - the boy wizard or Voldemort - then you've been living under a rock, and this brand of lovely magic is not for you.
8. The Trip
British actor Steve Coogan laments his lack of fame in America. He dreams about it (in a sequence featuring Ben Stiller), and he moans to his agent about it. The whole structure of The Trip, originally a British TV series, is built around this autobiographical whine. But what a trip: Michael Winterbottom turns the camera on Coogan and fellow Brit impressionist Rob Brydon as they journey the English countryside and sample uppercrust restaurants for a magazine spread. The men talk a lot of nonsense. They battle for who-can-do-the-best-impressions supremacy, guaranteeing that you'll never hear Michael Caine the same way again. It's best to skip the DVD extras, which break the spell of the film as one, long improvised rant between two road-trip buddies. Very funny stuff, indeed.
9. Moneyball
For many of us, baseball can be pretty boring, and baseball stats are downright snoreinducing. But here is Brad Pitt, giving us his second Oscar-worthy turn of the year, as Billy Beane, GM of the struggling Oakland A's, who turns a geeky math theory into the driving recruiting mantra for the team. It's not all about batting average, it's about getting on base, insists Yale grad Peter Brand (Jonah Hill). Dull on paper, the numbers game becomes sexy, witty and thrilling onscreen, thanks to screenwriters Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network). A home run, whether you're a baseball fan or not.
10. Hanna
Joe Wright, working from first-time screenwriter Seth Lochhead's script, creates a stylish-without-story-scrimping, coming-ofage tale that centres on a teenaged assassin- a teenaged GIRL assassin. Saoirse Ronan stars as the girl raised in Arctic isolation and trained by her father (Eric Bana) to be a ruthless killer. When the time finally comes and Hanna presses that long-buried red button, both she and we embark on a breathless, globe-trotting chase aided and abetted by a pulsing Chemical Brothers soundtrack. Who says boys have all the fun?
