Films of 2011

I don’t get paid to review films. I get free DVDs, free festival passes and other occasional bonuses, but generally if i want to go to the cinema i have to pay. For this reason i don’t get chance to see everything and occasionally just can’t afford to get to the flicks. For this reason, my top ten films of the year can be selected only from those i’ve seen – meaning the likes of Hugo and Drive miss out. I’ll catch up on them asap and i’m sure i’ll review them in full then. As it is, here’s my favourite films to have received a UK release in 2011 (click the film’s title for my full review)...

Tyrannosaur
A stunning directorial debut from Paddy Considine. Tyrannosaur tackles difficult subject matter (alcoholism, domestic violence, religion) sensitively and powerfully and features astounding acting performances from stalwarts of British cinema Peter Mullan and Eddie Marsan. The real star, however, is Olivia Colman. She’s absolutely heartbreaking in the lead and deserves to win award after award. My film of the year without doubt.

Benda Bilili
A wonderful feel-good documentary about paraplegic Congolese musicians making records and touring Europe. Their journey is both touching and hilarious - and the star of the show is a Jimi Hendrix wannabe who entrances everyone he meets with he virtuouso displays on a self-made one-stringed guitar/biscuit tin!

Meek's Cutoff
I’m a sucker for a Western, but Kelly Reinhardt’s movie is quiet, calm and poetic – not traditional Wild West fare. The pictures really tell the story - the cinematography is amazing and many scenes are allowed to play out quietly and contemplatively. The ending is controversial - but i couldn't think of a better way to leave things.

The King’s Speech
Is there anything left to say? At its heart The King’s Speech is a bromance between two disparate characters which really ought not to work. It does thanks to the generous performance of Geoffrey Rush and Colin Firth’s steadfast refusal to go OTT in his portrayal of the stammering monarch-in-waiting.

127 Hours
Essentailly a one-man show where the audience already knows how it will end. Thankfully, Danny Boyle’s adrenaline pumped direction and James Franco’s mesmerising intensity ensure that 127 Hours flies by in what feels like 12.7 minutes.

La Quatro Volte
It’s virtually a silent movie about goat farming and making charcoal. I couldn’t care less. It’s amazing. One of the most beautiful films i’ve ever seen and a powerful reminder that the medium of cinema is not reliant on big budgets, clever scripts are star names. Stunning.

Kill List
A thoroughly uncomfortable film with echoes of The Wicker Man. It’s not without its flaws but it’s brave, uncompromising and brilliantly acted from all involved. A great character study studded with moments of graphic violence – and some moral dilemmas for the audience to puzzle over.

True Grit
It’s been a good year for the Western genre. Jeff Bridges is magnificent in the role initially played by John Wayne, the cinematography is wonderful and the supporting cast are uniformly excellent. The Coen brothers really are good at this kind of thing and anyone who enjoyed O Brother Where Art Thou? ought to enjoy this too.

The Guard
Like an 80s buddy/cop movie with the cheese removed and replaced with Brendan Gleeson’s politically incorrect, soft-hearted bastard of a policeman. No film made me laugh as loud or as often in 2011 and i refused to to write a full review as i’d rather just bask in its glory rather than try to analyse it. Brilliant, hilarious and strangely moving.

The Skin I Live In
Predictable and silly, but beautifully made and visually stunning. Antonio Banderas attempts to create the perfect woman to atone for his past failings – but things are not as they seem. Director Pedro Almodivar is in his element here and that sense of fun transmits itself easily to the audience.

The Skin I Live In

There’s only one thing worse than a film review which reveals the plot: a poster which advises you that the movie contains a ‘must-keep-secret twist’. The Skin I Live In contains exactly that.

A critic’s job ought to be to offer a brief synopsis of the plot without giving away the key plot developments and to offer a critique of the action they described. When writing about a film like The Skin I Live In that can prove somewhat difficult given the way the narrative develops – it’s a fine line between giving too much away and saying too little. Thus far, the only review I’ve heard of the picture (Boyd and Floyd standing in for Mark Kermode on Five Live) did a pretty good job of this. But their careful avoidance of revealing even the existence of ‘the twist’ was totally undermined when I saw the publicity poster for the film whilst walking into the cinema.

From that point on, my enjoyment was spoiled slightly by my determination to guess what the twist would be. And I did. Very easily and very early indeed. I was actually convinced that there would be a double twist later on – surely it shouldn’t be so easy to see through Almodovar’s clever plot? It was.

That said, The Skin I Live in is still a very watchable and interesting movie. Antonio Banderas plays Robert Ledgard, a skilled and groundbreaking surgeon who’s working on creating a synthetic skin which is impervious to burns and malarial mosquito bites. The subject for his research is Vera (Elena Anaya), a stunningly beautiful woman seemingly held captive within the rooms of his enormous home-cum-laboratory. His unswervingly loyal housekeeper Mariella (Marisa Paredes) is the only other person aware of Vera’s existence.

Robert’s obsession with producing fire-resistant skin is borne out of the loss of his wife. Disfigured in a horrific accident, his surgical skills ultimately proved too little to save her life. His determination to make amends comes at a professional cost as colleagues and superiors urge him to abandon his risky and illegal research.

Little more can be said about the plot (I’m not going to fall into my own trap) without spoiling the action, but parallels can easily be drawn between Frankenstein and The Human Centipede’s Heiter: doctors who have fallen in love with the results of their obsessive experiments.

It’s a film which can be divided very neatly into three parts. Initially Robert’s experiments are stylishly and meticulously portrayed in neatly surgical close-ups of clinical implements and blood samples. There is little explanation: the audience is forced to make sense of the strangely mesmeric scenes before them. Vera is presented as a lycra-clad doll, barely registering emotion. Robert is merely a meticulous and committed scientist.

As the mystery deepens things become rather more prosaic. An extremely conventional middle section deals with the whys and wherefores in a straightforward series of flashbacks: it’s far and away the least interesting part of the film and at times is even slightly clumsy: metaphorical imagery such as Robert bending bonsai trees to his whim and a shop’s scarecrow themed window display is so obvious as to verge on parody. A tiger-suited interloper at least brings some dark-humour to proceedings – at least until the initial levity of his appearance turns sour.

Thankfully the interest of the early segment is restored as the film moves towards its denouement. There’s certainly a tragic air of inevitability about how things turn out, but it’s the journey which really counts here. Almodovar tackles some huge issues: sexuality, identity, obsession and beauty. All of these, of course, have been examined in detail time after time. Rarely, though, have they been explored so flamboyantly and with such visual flair. It’s a beautiful film filled with beautiful characters and exquisitely framed scenes: at its heart, however, it’s much darker.