TOP 30 FAVORITE FILMS OF 2011 (1-15)

15. Hugo (dir-Martin Scorsese)

A wonderful fable that evokes a child-like awe of the machinery of clocks and robots, and in turn the machinations of cinema. The Melies on-set segments and film clips were pretty magical for me (being a movie geek and all), aided by the perfect choice of using Saint-Saens’ “Danse Macabre”. The teal-based 3 strip Technicolor looks beautiful, and was perhaps influenced by Scorsese favorite Leave Her to Heaven (just a guess), which uses a similar color palette. 

14. A Serbian Film (dir-Srdjan Spasojevic) 

In an era of completely jaded horror fans (and the internet, where every perversion becomes a possibility), here is a genuinely transgressive horror film. The movie works because the taboo smashing acts of perversion within are anchored by the destruction of an innocent family. The movie-within-a-movie construction combined with the flashback structure is effective in breaking down the audience’s comfort level in being able to safely establish the reality of the film, amping up the horror without collapsing into confusion. 

13. Certified Copy (dir-Abbas Kiarostami) 

Juliette Binoche is captivating and reason enough to watch this mostly two-person conversation about love, life and art through the streets of Tuscany. Certified Copy is a bit like Before Sunset, but digs deeper (not that there’s anything wrong with Before Sunset), both in terms of getting closer to the actor’s faces and becoming a closer examination of identities in relationships and truth in art, complete with a Bunuelian twist that calls into question all that came before. 

12. Red White & Blue (dir-Simon Rumley) 

 I heard good things about this one but forgot any of the details, so I went in completely cold and got a much welcomed kick in the nuts (a “kick in the nuts” is a good thing when it comes to horror films but usually bad otherwise). As with many great horror films, this is set up as if it wasn’t a horror film, as the world and characters are completely realized, and we wait for things to break bad. And lordy do they, as one AIDS infection causes this small fabric of characters to completely unravel in a series of horrors both tragic and realistic. 

11. Blackthorn (dir-Mateo Gil) 

Butch Cassidy (a fittingly gangbusters Sam Shepard) doesn’t die in the shootout in Bolivia, but survives to live a quiet life until he is forced to go on one last score. This “old man” western completely avoids the obvious cheeseball moments and instead goes for something more realistic, detailed, and elegiac. It’s a throwback, not to hackneyed western plots, but more so to some of the 70’s revisionist westerns (think Bad Company or McCabe and Mrs. Miller). It’s also maybe the best showcase thus far for a western shot digitally. 

10. Contagion (dir-Steven Soderbergh) 

Maybe the most impressively edited film of 2011 (courtesy of Stephen Mirrione), a rapid fire assemblage of events and media from around the world that realistically accounts what might happen if a deadly virus did indeed spread. A sprawling apocalyptic chiller that presents a plausible world disaster, instead of the typical Hollywood-ized disaster flick you normally get. 

9. Sleeping Beauty (dir-Catherine Breillat) 

Not the movie where what’s-her-face gets naked, this is instead another take on a classic fairy tale by Catherine Breillat after 2010’s Bluebeard (which made my top 5). Instead of cutting back and forth between a young girl reading the story in modern day and the actual story played out in the past, here a young girl wanders through a magical fairy tale land that is odd, beautiful, and frightening. Unlike most fairy tale movies, this one is appropriately dark (and not in a Tim Burton kinda way), and the world itself feels tangible and authentic.

8. Road to Nowhere (dir-Monte Hellman) 

A movie-within-a-movie about a director obsessed with making his masterpiece, another determined Hellman existential hero, and how his reality and the reality of the film co-mingle. Reality is slyly edited together with scenes from the film without it becoming a simple gimmick where art imitates life directly. The film is also a great document of how films are made nowadays using computers and digital technology. 

Dominique Swain as the "movie blogger"

7. The Skin I Live In (dir-Pedro Almodovar) 

A variation on Eyes without a Face that is nevertheless very Almodovar, with humanity cutting through a melodramatic story, including some Almodovar-esque out-of-left-field “trashy” plot developments (like the rapist wearing a skintight tiger suit). Antonio Banderas and the ever-beautiful Elena Anaya go emotionally toe-to-toe, completely rooting what could have been a simple mad scientist movie in lesser hands. 

6. Love Exposure (dir-Shion Sono) 

An epic love triangle with three oddball heroes scarred by various sexual perversions, fleshed out as if each were the star of the movie, completely justifying the four hour runtime (and making it feel more like 2 ½ hours). Review coming soon! 

5. The Last Circus (dir-Alex de la Iglesia) 

Maybe my favorite circus-sploitation movie ever, besting the likes of Nightmare Alley and even Big Top Pee Wee. Review here. 

4. Jane Eyre (dir-Cary Fukunaga)

 My favorite adaptation (although not the most faithful), with both my favorite performance of the year (Mia Wasikowska in the lead) and my favorite cinematography (Adriano Goldman), with a breathtaking use of natural light. The movie gives us a darker Jane, where the horror of repression leads to true tragedy, instead of the more token costume dramas with their bland notions of love and passion. 

3. Drive (dir-Nicolas Winding Refn) 

Nobody does postmodern hodgepodge better than Refn, and here he does his combination of Michael Mann’s Thief and Walter Hill’s The Driver, juggling tense genre character drama and cinematic pop art, while giving it a modern European sensibility. The surprisingly killer synth pop soundtrack adds emotional layers instead of conveying simple 80’s nostalgia. 

2. Amer (dir-Helene Cattet & Bruno Forzani) 

I know this has a release date of 2009 on IMDB, but I’m counting the U.S. DVD/Blu-ray release in 2011 as the release date since it was difficult to see before that. Anyway, as a big Argento fan, this “Argento homage” was one of the few times in recent years where I highly anticipated seeing a movie well before its release date, and this one didn’t disappoint. And I use “Argento homage” very loosely; Amer is the very rare film that uses another director’s style as a jumping off point to create something totally unique, taking the psychosexual subtext of the giallo and running with it. 

1. Tree of Life (dir-Terrence Malick) 

As a huge Malick fan, I could’ve called this ahead of time. Even so, the movie surprises with flights into the cosmic (literally and figuratively), as almost some kind of inversion of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It also literally presents a world fragmented by memory and the human pull between nature and modernization, rather than simply being a theme like in his previous films. Jessica Chastain feels like the movie’s true centerpiece, like a beacon of humanity and motherhood that holds the movie together.

SNOW WHITE: A DEADLY SUMMER (2012) - mirror mirror on the wall...who's the least Snow White-ish Snow White cash-in of them all?

Fairy tales are a fun, fantastic, and sometimes scary (well, invariably scary) way to impart lessons, relay the rules of society, and even manifest the subconscious. As societies change, these tales evolve to fit each new generation. With that in mind, let’s look at David DeCoteau’s variation on a classic fairy tale, Snow White: A Deadly Summer. 

As Mr. DeCoteau is best known as an exploitation filmmaker that inserts beefcakey dudes wearing nothing but their underwear into his films (side to side with the usual breasts, beasts, and blood), we might expect his variation on Snow White to feature seven dwarves who are all beefcakes standing between 5’3” and 5’6” (for a beefcake, that is pretty much dwarf proportions) who only wear matching speedos and pointy hats, with each "dwarf" being a different color. Snow White forces them to work up a sweat performing important menial tasks, like repeatedly bending over to pick up widgets. Now, I know exactly what you’re asking yourself; surely they would whistle while they work? Yes, surely. The evil witch seeks revenge because Snow White’s calves look better in high heels than her own, or some other such fashion crime. Now, you’re probably wondering what kind of lesson a story like this might impart to children. I think the answer is obvious; even women (or gay men) want to watch dumbass movies where attractive members of the opposite sex (or the same sex) get nekkid for no reason whatsoever. 

Well, it seems I’ve jumped the gun folks. Snow White: A Deadly Summer is nothing like I imagined. Maybe because it has fuck all to do with Snow White. In fairness, the lead girl is named Snow, and she has an evil stepmother that talks into a mirror. However, both of those plot points seem completely forced in and have nothing to do with the rest of the movie. It’s as if you took Slumber Party Massacre and renamed the final girl Ahab, inserted a scene of her fishing, renamed the killer “Mr. Whale”, and then retitled the movie “Moby Dick: A Slumber Party Massacre”. I guess they don’t call ‘em exploitation films for nothing. 

Anyway, Snow (the engaging Shanley Caswell) is one of those bad girls who distrusts authority, and when she rides shotgun while her boyfriend gets pulled over for speeding in a stolen car (always go the speed limit after you steal a car dumbass), this gives her parents (Eric Roberts and evil stepmother Maureen McCormick) an excuse to send her to off to a military camp for asshole kids (“Camp Allegiance”). The camp is run by an ex-Navy Seal named Hunter (Tim Abell), and this guy is truly not fucking around. His approach to youth reform is to simply yell as the kids to do situps, pushups, or run laps. He even tells Snow that he will “beat the white off of (her) snow white ass” if she ever speaks without first being spoken to. If that doesn’t qualify as irony, it’s close enough for me to say “kudos, my good man”. 

Check out the tree stump wearing the red boots.  When you've hit the big time like Eric Roberts, you can afford to throw bagfuls of money away on cutting edge art.

Of course, with the subtitle of the movie being "Deadly Summer", people start to get killed off. So, who’s the murderer? Is it the camper who cuts his hand with a stone for no reason? How about Hunter’s beefcake assistant (Jason Shane-Scott, strangely clothed from head to toe) who likes to play with a hunting knife for no reason? What about the crazy old lady who lives in a shack? How about the druggie redhead (Kelsey Weber) who looks uber-metal with her lip ring, black tank top, tight jeans, and Converse hi-tops? I hope it’s her. She’s vomiting from heroin withdrawals in a camp for naughty high schoolers and suddenly decides to start killing people for no reason. That’s so metal. 

 "Kiss my converse!"  YES MA'AM!

However, we don’t get a typical stalk and slash camper flick, except for one scene where a couple runs off to make out in the woods before getting killed. The plot is largely driven by exposition, like when the drill sergeant informs everyone that one of the “campers” died after stealing his car and crashing it, even though we don’t see any evidence of this no doubt too expensive bit of potential action excitement. The plot does move quickly, but neither is there a basic mystery that plays fair, which is what the movie initially seems to promise. It’s constantly cutting to various dreams and visions Snow is having, but they just mostly seem to jumble up the narrative, rather than provide real clues or add some psychological weight. It feels like a typical forced slasher script, where plot points are just shoved in there in order to justify scenes of stalking and slashing and maybe a shocking twist, but minus the stalking and the slashing and the shocking twist (there’s a twist, but horrific it is not). I’ve said it before and I’ll say I again; if you’re gonna make a stupid movie, make sure it isn’t boring. Taking a stupid movie and making it boring does not make it less stupid. It just makes it more obvious how stupid it is. This is rule #1 of the screenwriting workshop that I teach. If you want more advice, you’ll have to sign up and pay a low low fee of $129.95. Incisive brilliance isn’t free folks.

 that there is a shot

Snow White: A Deadly Summer is so low budget is feels like most of it was filmed during a single weekend in a 100 square foot campsite in Griffith Park. A lot of the movie takes place at night, so they simply tint the movie blue using Final Cut Express and throw in some cricket sounds. Now, I’m all for shitty day for night in small doses. It can add disorientating atmosphere to a movie if done right (or done wrong), but here it just looks like they are camping out on a strange planet where the sun casts a piercing blue light at night that messes with the camera exposure. This is amusing for maybe 3 minutes, but after that, it just completely undermines any potential atmosphere or menace. 

 filmed in "blown out tinted blue-o-vision"

The 1982 campground slasher Madman used a similar “blue tinted woods as day-for-night” approach, but that actually worked pretty well, so it’s not inherently impossible to accomplish. Maybe it’s the cheap digitalness that undermines the attempt. So, if they ever come out with a state-of-the-art day-for-night expansion pack for Final Cut Express, DeCoteau can go back and fix Snow White: A Deadly Summer for a theatrical release, and maybe throw in some CGI nudity and gore, like a naked hentai-style animated camper chick who gets impaled by a trident. I’m just trying to help.