The best films of 2011

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Take Shelter

Michael Shannon continues to perfect the art of bringing frightening depth to the mentally unhinged in “Take Shelter,” an impeccably crafted, pseudo-apocalyptic psychodrama from writer/director Jeff Nichols, who casts Shannon as a blue-collar worker plagued by visions of impending doom. In its effortless allegorical brilliance, the film leaves wide open the possible connections between the visions and our own world’s ills, letting the resonant paranoia of Shannon’s on-the-fringes, self-dismantling outcast speak for itself.

The Descendants

Working from one of the year’s best scripts (which he co-wrote with Nat Faxton and Jim Rash), “Sideways” director Alexander Payne makes a triumphant return after a seven-year hiatus with “The Descendants,” a beautifully humanistic portrait of family and the real ways, both private and public, that people grieve. With a fantastic cast led by George Clooney, the Hawaii-set film makes the grand most of its rare milieu, links its themes with unassuming cleverness, and offers humor and stirring pathos without an ounce of gooey sentiment.

Meek’s Cutoff

Kelly Reichardt’s elliptical western “Meek’s Cutoff,” which whittles the tale of a parade of Oregon Trail deviators down to three families and one ignorant guide, is a film whose experience truly begins after the credits roll. A slow and sparse blank canvas of a thing, the film, whose stars include Michelle Williams and Bruce Greenwood, is as much defined by what you project onto it as what you take away from it. Its largely wordless narrative plants juicy seeds pertaining to gender, race, politics, colonialism, and perhaps the whole of American history, then leaves you to harvest them in your mind. A stunner.

Poetry

Celebrated South Korean actress Yun Jeong-hie gives one of the year’s best female performances in “Poetry,” writer-director Lee Chang-dong’s deeply moving, bittersweet film about an Alzheimer’s-afflicted woman (Jeong-hie) who allows art to help her take control of her own destiny amid devastating family turmoil. The rare, soulful depiction of a well-defined woman of late age, “Poetry” lets its developments unfold with the smooth grace of the verse that first eludes Jeong-hie’s heroine, then finally sets her free.

Drive

A small masterpiece of style and craft, Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Drive” is alarmingly well-constructed, with the director in staggering control of every last detail of the tacky-classy-cool production, from bone-rattling sound design to retro hotel wallpaper. As a part-time getaway driver whose vehicle becomes an extension of his slick figure as he steers it through the neon streets of Hollywood, Ryan Gosling is a perfect contemporary protagonist, an unlikely hero buried beneath an acquired shroud of apathy.

The Future

Miranda July, the reigning queen of quirk, delivers a brazenly original and puzzlingly heartfelt meditation on the march to middle age with “The Future,” her smart, layered, and highly personal follow-up to “Me and You and Everyone We Know.” A sort of “Big Chill” for the museum-frequenting culturati, her latest wows in its specificity of relationships and fears of turning the page, and it is, incredibly, a modern movie jammed with idiosyncrasies yet devoid of pretense.

The Artist

The year’s most purely delightful movie, Michel Hazanavicius’ “The Artist” is also one of its most artistically relevant, its tale of a silent film star distraught over an industry in transition speaking directly to today’s ceaseless propulsion of technology, which too often compromises quality for flash. Though seemingly limited by its black and white photography, French origins, and silent presentation, “The Artist” is in fact the most universally accessible film of 2011, a dream considering it’s a must-see testament to the need for a diverse — and, occasionally, slowed-down — movie landscape.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

A masterfully rendered and sometimes maddeningly cryptic adaptation of John le Carré’s classic spy novel, “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” offers no handrail as it creeps through the handsome caverns of its cloak-and-dagger plot, as sparingly shared as the walled-off emotions of aloof super-sleuth George Smiley (an absolutely stellar Gary Oldman). Focusing on the hunt for a mole within the top ranks of British intelligence, “Tinker Tailor” is a decades-old tale set in the Cold War era, yet it’s the year’s best vehicle for in-vogue themes of corporate drama and home invasion.

A Separation

Though set in Iran and fraught with the region’s distinctive unease, Asghar Farhadi’s drum-tight domestic drama “A Separation” rattles with the universal stressors of family, miscommunication, and often coldly inhumane societal control. Its phenomenal cast offers some of the year’s very best performances, and their characters, a pitiable lot of everypersons drawn with remarkable evenhandedness, watch in horror as their ostensibly trivial, but undeniably poor decisions create drastic ripple effects. Ingeniously stemming out from one couple’s attempt to part ways, “A Separation” is a model of economy and meaningful nuance.

Melancholia

Ever-stricken by his own crippling chemical imbalances, Danish provocateur Lars von Trier finally channels those emotions into an earth-shaking masterpiece, the no-bones-about-it, au-revoir B-side to “Take Shelter’s” end-of-the-world tip-toeing. By leaps and bounds the year’s most beautiful film, this two-part epic, which begins with the wedding-crashing breakdown of von Trier’s depressive avatar, Justine (Kirsten Dunst), and ends with the crashing of an immense planet into Earth (its looming, consuming threat is the macro version of Justine’s micro torment), is a spectacular depiction of the awesome weight of a distressed psyche. And while it may not coax you into sharing von Trier’s dreary worldview, it may just convince of the validity of his thesis: That when things reach such a bleak, discouraging state, it’s sometimes better to wipe the slate clean.

Honorable Mention: “Bridesmaids,” “Certified Copy,” “Hugo,” “In the Land of Blood and Honey,” “Jane Eyre,” “Le Havre,” “Moneyball,” “Page One: Inside the New York Times,” “Rango,” and “The Tree of Life.” SPR

Contact the South Philly Review at editor@southphillyreview.com.

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