Almayer's Folly (Chantal Akerman, 2011)

8.5/10
Not a big hit judging from the people streaming towards the exits throughout the movie, but I liked it a lot. It's a hard movie to peg - it starts out almost like a murder/mystery thriller, then becomes something like a family drama, all taking place in or around Malaysia (although filming took place in Cambodia and none of the actors speak Malaysian despite claiming to be Malaysian - yeah it's weird). The film is very slow, is bizarrely paced, and wholly unpretentious - but I was hooked from beginning to end.

Vinyl: Tales from the Vienna Underground (Andrew Standen-Raz, 2010)

4/10
Maybe I was disappointed with what this wasn't rather than what it was. There's some stuff in the Viennese arts that interests me from Hermann Nitsch up through Christian Fennesz, but almost none of it was touched on in this documentary, which instead focused on the current Viennese techno "movement", if it can be called such. Unfortunately the movie has a tremendously narrow scope - no attempt is given to explain why this movement is more important than any similar scenes around the world, where it came from, and what it means. A disappointing amount of face time has been given to musicians who can only spew out horrific clichés like "vinyl is like opening a book, CDs are cold and plastic" and "the question all artists have to ask themselves is what's more important - making money or having your music heard". Clichés that, in any event, aren't even Viennese-centric, so who cares? Probably a documentary worth watching on Youtube if you're already a fan of the artists; definitely not one for an outsider to see in a theatre.

Monsieur Lazhar (Philippe Falardeau, 2011)

7.5/10
Canada's entry for this year's Best Foreign Film feels, for all intents and purposes, like an entry for Best Foreign Film. It's cliché, yes, but it does a lot of things right - it's honest, funny, sad, heart-warming, and thought-provoking. It's not anything close to a revelation but it's very enjoyable for the 2 hours it's on the screen.

Take This Waltz (Sarah Polley, 2011)

5.5/10
Sarah Polley's sophomore directing effort shoots for mainstream with Michelle Williams and Seth Rogen as a married couple, with the focus on Williams' budding interest in a next-door neighbor, who offers her a release from her "childish" domestic life. It's not a new story, and it pales in a big way compared to a movie like Blue Valentine. The script (written by Polley) needs work, as some of the dialogue is brutally heavy-handed. But my biggest complaint was with Williams' character - she's not so much quirky as she is a full-blown sociopath, and it's hard to identify with her in any way. The movie is also very geared towards a female audience; as a male I felt pretty alienated at times.

Kotoko (Shinya Tsukamoto, 2011)

6/10
Shinya Tsukamoto's newest, about a mother constantly on the brink of insanity - seeing double (literally seeing 2 people instead of 1), cutting herself (not to die but in "admiration of the body's will to live"), abusing her lover who it turns out may not actually exist, and having nightmares/fantasizing about hurting her young son. I still don't know what any of this built to, aside from maybe an insight into the mind of a woman who could kill her own offspring...it's pretty violent and at times oddly funny, but not entirely insightful.

Land of Oblivion (Michale Boganim, 2011)

6.5/10
Land of Oblivion follows two stories taking place on April 26th, 1986 - a woman and man getting married, and an engineer who works at the Chernobyl power plant. Of course, that's the date the reactor melts down. After the disaster, the movie picks up 10 years later - the wife, now a widow, is a tour guide in Pripyat, and the engineer's son is sneaking into the exclusion zone to try and locate his father. To be honest, the stories aren't interesting, but the filming in and around Pripyat is pretty great, for someone as interested in the Chernobyl disaster as I am.

House of Tolerance (Bertrand Bonello, 2011)

8/10
An ultra-slick French film about the last days of a brothel in Paris, it's almost obscenely over the top in style but I guess that's fitting, considering the time. The ensemble is great, as you really get a sense of each individual woman's personality. There's a fantastic scene with (anachronistically enough) the Moody Blues' "Nights in White Satin" that really won the movie over for me.

Stopped on Track (Andreas Dresen, 2011)

8/10
Winner of the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes this year, Stopped on Track is a movie about a man named Frank with terminal brain cancer and his and his family's reactions and tribulations. Shot on digital (and interspersed with footage shot by Frank on his iPhone) it has a very honest, intimate feel. Milan Peschel is great as Frank, and the movie spares no ugly, brutal aspect of Frank's inevitable mental decline and demise. It's very sad, of course, and the movie does get a little cloying, but mostly it's an emotional, beautiful, tragic portrayal of something no family should ever have to go through.

Snowtown (Justin Kurzel, 2011)

5/10
An Australian movie based on the true story of the country's worst serial killer, Snowtown does a lot of little things right but gets the big picture all wrong. For starters, the acting is generally top shelf, the bleak cinematography (reminiscent of Winter's Bone meeting Gummo) nails the mood perfectly, and the sound design (lots of 90's arcade video sounds) is well done. On the other hand, the pacing falters in a big way - there are long stretches where nothing of consequence happens, or too much attention is given to needless exposition. There are moments of harsh brutality but an over-reliance on scenes involving endangered animals (a pet dog is shot, a killed deer is hacked up, a snake feasts on a mouse) smacks of a director trying to shock instead of telling a story. Again like Gummo, everybody in the story operates in kind of a half-retarded haze, so it's kind of hard for the audience to latch on to anyone, much less sympathize with who we're supposed to. At the end of the day, it's just not very enjoyable or interesting. Not bad for a first feature (I believe) but there's room for improvement.

Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai (Takashi Miike, 2011)

6/10
I don't generally like samurai movies, but I like Takashi Miike movies, so I gave this one a shot. It's definitely way, way more on the samurai side than the Miike side. It's a remake of a movie I've never seen, and it's in 3D (in what might be the most subtle usage of 3D ever, almost to the point of being useless), and it's definitely the most mature movie Miike has ever made. It's remarkably slow, and its eventual climax doesn't even come close to comparing to, say, 13 Assassins or Audition. It's a movie I admired more than I liked though, as it never really sucked me in. Enjoyable enough though.

Play (Ruben Ostlund, 2011)

7/10
Swedish film about a group of 5 young African-American boys who con a group of 3 other boys (2 white, 1 Asian) out of one of their cell phones. Despite an almost total lack of violence or any other form of physical intimidation, the film shows in cinema-verité style how the 3 victims become almost like slaves to their aggressors. They aren't physically being restrained, and all the action takes place in open, public spaces, generally under the indifferent eye of adults. The film acutely portrays the social hierarchies in the groups - either as two units of 5 and 3, or together as a whole, while never dropping the tension between them. It's a very deft take on the way kids interact with each other, whether in situations of power or submissiveness. But the ending is kind of silly and a simultaneous plot thread about a cradle abandoned on a train is distracting more than anything else.

Trash (Benoit Pilon, 2011)

4.5/10
A Quebec film about a man with a troubled past getting entangled with an 18 year old, drug-addicted prostitute...it really doesn't have anything going for it except some solid acting. The plot is completely unadventurous and never rises above "made for TV movie" quality, the direction is boring, and there's no soundtrack to speak of. A giant meh.

3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy (Christopher Sun Lap Key, 2011)

6.5/10
Billed as the first 3D porn movie shown in international theatres, 3D Sex and Zen is surprising in two regards - how genuinely witty it can be, and how little porn it actually contains. There's plenty of sex, but only the softcore variety, and there's a ton of violence. The first half or so is pretty damn good - it's weird, very funny, and constantly entertaining. Unfortunately the last 40 minutes are a downer - the movie starts taking itself too seriously and things get tedious, especially as the ending drags out. Amazingly, given all the crazy stuff that happens in this movie, it's a monstrous success in Hong Kong where it beat out Avatar's first day opening take.

Sleeping Beauty (Julia Leigh, 2011)

7/10
I'm still trying to figure out if this movie (Julia Leigh's directing debut, not to be confused with Catherine Breillat's The Sleeping Beauty from last year, nor the fairy tale) is deeper than I can get my head around, or if it's just banality obfuscating itself as something more. Emily Browning gives a strong, brave performance in the lead role as a student drawn into a strange world of sleepy, sexless prostitution. There are intriguing ideas here but it's pretty hard to penetrate (no pun intended).

Faust (Aleksandr Sokurov, 2011)

4/10
Alexander Sokurov's "non-adaptation" of the Faust legend is told as something of an adult's fairy take, I really don't know what to make of this one, except that I didn't enjoy it. Too ludicrous, too over the top, too uninteresting to ever get me into it, the best part was the actor playing the Devil as some kind of deformed black humorist. Most of the movie is focused on the Devil and Faust's friendship, and helping Faust get the woman he desires, but it's way too ridiculous to register anything. It won the Golden Lion at Venice which I understood more when I found out Darren Aronofsky was head of the jury...this very much reminded me of an Aronofsky film, and all that entails.

Take Shelter (Jeff Nichols, 2011)

10/10
Michael Shannon delivers what has to be the best performance of the year (and don't sell Jessica Chastain short either) in an absolutely perfect meditation on mental illness that gripped me from the start and never let me go until its incredible ending, which is still stuck in my mind. Very beautiful and very tragic, I couldn't find a single thing wrong with it.

White, White World (Oleg Novkovic, 2010)

7/10
Serbia's pretty crazy it seems, or at least bleak as hell, judging from this movie (and the memory of A Serbian Film in the periphery). This is a drama centering around a group of people who are related in some way (friends, lovers and family but also pimps, whores, murderers, addicts and dealers, etc). It's hard for the viewer to find a foothold when every character is brutal and unsympathetic, but the story is interesting and well-told (although it requires some suspension of disbelief for its central twist) and it plays out like a Greek tragedy. Of note is that it's also a musical, with characters spontaneously breaking into song throughout. If it sounds cheesy, it really isn't, but I'm not sure it works or adds anything either. I would have felt the same way about the movie without em, so there you have it.

The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye (Marie Losier, 2011)

8/10
A documentary on Throbbing Gristle/Psychic TV's Genesis P-orridge and her partner, Lady Jaye. Together they set about transforming themselves into a pandrogynous entity, getting surgeries to look like each other (Genesis, born a man, has breast implants, and so does Lady Jaye, a woman, etc), and essnetially to become the other. Marie Losier's documentary does a good job juggling the various facets of Genesis/Jaye's life - early 80's industrial music, performance art, gender confusion, current life, etc. It might be a bit too "arty" at times when it should be informative, but it's a very good representation of Genesis/Jaye and everything they entail. You walk out of the movie feeling very connected in some way to the two (one?).

Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

8/10
Lars von Trier destroyed genders via grief in his last movie, now he's doing away with the world altogether, this time via depression. He has a remarkable knack for portraying those emotions (and for coaxing great performances out of women in particular), as well as cataclysmic endings. As far as Melancholia goes, I enjoyed part 1 a bit more than part 2 (where it dragged a bit) but it was definitely enjoyable, even if I wasn't personally emotionally invested like I wish I was.

The Turin Horse (Bela Tarr & Agnes Hranitzky, 2011)

8.5/10
It's funny that all the descriptions of this movie talk about it being about the horse that Nietzsche spared from further abuse and his subsequent 10 years of muteness, because it's really not. Being a Bela Tarr movie, it's about nothing and, well, everything. There's something about this movie that is so transfixing, from the constant howl of the wind to the brutally uninteresting day-to-day motions of the cart driver and his daughter, living in the middle of nowhere. It has a very dreamlike quality to it that's hard to explain, but if you know what you're in for, it's very rewarding.

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2011)

8.5/10
This must be the most Andrei Tarkovskian movie Andrei Tarkovsky never made...it's actually not very similar to any Tarkovsky movies on the surface but in terms of atmosphere and in conjuring up similar life questions, definitely. A review I read said this movie is the "night and day" of a police investigation and I think that works. I was only a little disappointed that the doctor was made plain the movie's centre in the second half of the film - he was the entire time for me, but I liked it better when he was in the background somewhat. I guess it was a necessity though. There's a heck of a lot to mull over here though.

Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)

5/10
Last weekend I rewatched Steve McQueen's Hunger, primarily because a friend wanted to see it but also to revisit it before seeing his second film, Shame. Hunger blew me away all over again; unfortunately, Shame is a pretty big disappointment in comparison. Thank god for Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan, who do fantastic work even though they're given some awfully hammy dialogue to chew on. Shame is about a sex addict (Fassbender) whose life starts to come unglued when his younger sister (Mulligan) drops in unexpectedly. What's most vexing about Shame is that for all the edginess inherent in the subject matter, and the director and the actors, it's remarkably boring. It plods along with no apparent direction and then seems to throw all kinds of stuff at the viewer, most of which is unexciting or woefully predictable. One of my most anticipated releases of the year, but it was a dud for me.

Elena (Andrei Zvyagintsev, 2011)

7.5/10
Andrei Zvyagintsev's The Return was an atmospheric, chilling family drama. Elena sticks even closer to the family theme, about a woman named Elena, an older woman married to (but mostly playing housekeeper for) an even older, rich man, her parasitic son's family, and how she's going to come up with the money he needs to put his son (Elena's grandson) through college. If the story isn't the freshest thing you've ever heard, the movie succeeds on the strength of Nadezhda Markina's excellent performance in the title role and Zvyagintsev's subtle direction. Philip Glass' score is also a big strength.

Guilty of Romance (Sion Sono, 2011)

6/10
Sion Sono's newest, written and directed for his "muse" Megumi Kagurazaka (who also appeared in Cold Fish and the upcoming Himizu). The story is familiar enough - a bored, ultra-conservative stay-at-home wife, seeks thrills by discovering her own sexuality while her husband is at work. Being a Sono movie, the film goes all over the place, but it actually remains surprisingly predictable. There's definitely some interesting stuff here but on the whole it feels half-baked and slapdash. Despite their similarities, Sono doesn't usually remind me of Takashi Miike, but this movie did feel at times like one of those lesser Miike works that he seems to churn out while he has something bigger in the pipeline.

The Last Christeros (Matias Meyer, 2011)

4/10
A movie about a group of men in 1930's Mexico who refuse amnesty and are on the run from the Mexican government, simply because they wish to continue practicing their faith. Billed as an "existentialist Western" (because all slow movies have to be existential), it doesn't really do anything aside from a handful of nice shots and evocative sound design. It's a slow movie that seems to think, by being slow, it doesn't need to do anything else. As someone who likes anti-Westerns, road movies, and slow cinema, this should have been right up my alley, but it left me cold. It reminded me a lot of Albert Serra's Birdsong, but the world doesn't need more than one Birdsong.

Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy, 2010)

8.5/10
There is a certain point in Exit Through the Gift Shop (though it happens sublimely so it's likely a different point of the film for every viewer) where you figure out what's going on...and then, maybe a little bit later, the full-scale realization of what's going on hits you like a ton of bricks. For me the first came when I was watching Mister Brainwash's gallery opening and it was dawning on me just how awful, derivative, and puerile his art was. So, okay, it's intentionally bad art as social commentary. Fine. Then the second realization comes when you start to think that all these people really did show up at the gallery, bought his art, got his name in the papers, and the ultimate capper, that he's designing album art for a Madonna greatest hits collection...and the magnitude of the everything hits you like a ton of bricks.
This is a movie that goes way, way beyond words like "hoax", "mockumentary"...in fact, without exaggeration, I think it redefines the very word "hoax". It reminds me of the last lines of Pink Floyd's "Jugband Blues" - what exactly is a dream, and what exactly is a joke? Not the kind of movie that you'd want to watch over and and over again, but still one that will keep you up nights turning it over in your mind.

The Ides of March (George Clooney, 2011)

8/10
This is a movie with a well-told, tightly wound story that moves along briskly enough that one never loses interest, and features undoutably some of the finest acting you'll see in a movie all year. Clooney, Gosling, Giamatti and Hoffman are all incredible. The dialogue is really snappy, I was reminded of The Social Network in that regard more than once. The problem is that for a movie that does so many things well, instead of ending with a bang, it just sort of seems to fade out. Even as I was watching it I was wondering what they could do for an ending that wouldn't be either melodramatic or insufficient, and I don't think the writers ever answered that problem themselves. The acting is great but the movie itself doesn't really go out of its way to sear itself into your brain. Subtlety is good, but only to a point.

50/50 (Jonathan Levine, 2011)

8/10
There seems to be one of these every year, a movie that doesn't break any new ground at all but is well-made, well-acted, thoughtful and heartfelt enough to break through to the most cynical reviewer, even if it doesn't offer any revelations. There's really nothing not to like about 50/50...it's a mature movie about a difficult subject and it's easy to get caught up in its honest emotion. I don't know how long it'll stick with me but it did the trick for the two hours it was on the screen.