The justAtad Essentials: Top 20 of 2011

I think I need to preface this list by saying that I hate lists. I’ve discussed this before. I had ranking films. It’s the worst thing ever, and it’s almost always arbitrary. I could labour over my rankings for hours and then be switching things back around the next day. But hey, it’s the end of the year and if I’m going to talk about my favourite films, might as well put them in a list, rank them, and earn some praise and scorn.

(As a side-note, I tried to leave off films from TIFF that haven’t gotten a theatrical release yet, but there are a few exceptions in cases where I really wanted to highlight them.)

Also, I think it’s appropriate now to comment on what kind of year 2011 for film. Well, I think it was a pretty phenomenal year, but also an odd one. There weren’t really any films that stood out as obvious #1s, but I think a lot of that is because there were so many amazing films that were all great for very different reasons.

To give you an idea of just how good I thought this year was, while my top film is pretty well solid, any of the films in my 2-15 would likely have been Top 5 level any other year. In fact, there are a couple of films that just missed my Top 20 from earlier this year that I swore would make my Top 10. It’s been THAT good a year. Anyway…

On to the list!

#coreyiswrong: My Year of Going Against the Grain

This year I met Ryan McNeil. from The Matinee, and within about a month of knowing him I coined a Twitter hashtag which has since taken on a bit of a life of its own. #ryaniswrong. I first used it in reference to Ryan’s negative opinion of Moneyball. And yeah, he’s totally wrong about that movie, but that’s neither here nor there. This is my blog so I’m going to be justifiably narcissistic and focus on me.

#coreyiswrong

That’s a variation on the original hashtag that got used quite often. Looking back on the year in film I think I’ve been more “wrong” than usual. Not actually wrong, of course. It’s all opinion. But I have been weirdly out of the loop when it comes to critical opinion on quite a number of films this year. And it’s not any one particular kind of film either. I’ve hated on lots of films most people have liked or loved. And in some cases I’ve liked a film but not nearly as much as everyone else. Let’s take a look at some of the many films I’ve been wrong about this year:

Attack the Blog: The Week of 12/29/2011

This week I’m introducing a new feature on the blog. Embarrassingly, I’m not as involved in the blogging community. I aim to rectify this. And so I am starting a weekly post with links to  some of the best blog posts I read each week.

However, for this first post I’ll make things a bit more introductory by instead sharing links to some of the blogs I’ve gotten to know, rather than simply individual posts. There are a ton of bloggers on the web. Too many. But these are some of the ones I visit most frequently and who offer some of the best writing and more insightful comments. So continue on to check out the list.

War Horse and the Return of Old School Melodrama

(This piece will have some SPOILERS for War Horse. I will indicate when the spoilers begin and end if you’d like to skip them.)

“They sure don’t make ‘em like they used to.”

That’s that thought that was running through my head after I saw War Horse for the first time. It took a few minutes before I realized the irony of that notion. War Horse is a brand new film, yet it feels so old fashioned that my immediate reaction was to think of it alongside old John Ford and Frank Borzage movies. I’m not the only one to have picked up on this. It’s been mentioned in almost every review of the film out there. What I found more curious was the reaction of people to the sentimental and melodramatic aspects of the film.

The most common complaints about War Horse relate to its sap and sentimentality. What’s weird to me is that many of these complaints seem to take for granted the idea that sentimentality is a bad quality in a film. How did this become the case? Why is it a bad thing to be sentimental, or sweeping, or even sappy? The way many critics and film lovers talk, you’d think that for sentimentality to be acceptable it has to be couched in raw reality or ambiguity or even an ironic wit and cynicism. It doesn’t make sense to me that films like Casablanca and It’s a Wonderful Life can be called masterpieces, but War Horse can be taken to task for its sweep and romance.

What to Watch This Christmas

Christmas is a wonderful time. The most wonderful time of the year, some would say. You get together with family and exchange gifts and get mildly drunk. All of these are good things. But what happens after everyone’s eaten, when the drunkenness is beginning to turn into lethargy and the roast ham is taking a severe gastronomical toll? Well, the only thing to do is sit on the couch and watch a Christmas movie. There are the classics, of course. It’s a Wonderful Life has become the gold standard of Christmas classics. Then you’ve got the counter-programming classic, Die Hard. So what to put on? Well, let me recommend some titles:

David Fincher, What Now?

A lot of films are coming out this week. Too many. One of the most highly anticipated of these upcoming releases is David Fincher’s remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. It’s a film which, to be honest, most people wouldn’t be all that excited about if it wasn’t for the name attached. Fincher is one of the very best directors working today, and seeing him return to serial killer drama, even if it’s a remake, is certainly something worth getting excited about. I very much liked the film, though I do think it suffers from certain problems derived from the source material. (You can read my review of the film over at Sound on Sight .) Now that The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is finally coming out, I think it’s time to see what we can look forward to from Fincher in the near future, as well as take stock of his success as a director.

Intellectual Bullshit or: Does the Audience Make the Film?

How do we value films? When it comes to film review-style criticism this really is the central question. Some would say that the value a film comes down to one thing and one thing only: what can the audience get out of the film. I’d agree with this in part, but I think it’s necessary to note that the audience is not the most important part of the equation. You can’t simply determine the value of a film by examining how many thematic or intellectual or emotional ideas an audience has been able to extract from it. Sparking ideas and conversation is a wonderful thing, but watching a film is not required in order to do that, nor must any film actively attempt such resonance. In the relationship between film and audience it must always be the film that takes precedence. We must evaluate not the conversation the film sparks, but how effectively it speaks to the audience.

On Having Nothing to Say

Maybe you noticed, maybe you didn’t, but I haven’t posted anything substantial on this blog in over three weeks. I don’t really like the term “writer’s block” because it implies that I can’t write, like something is physically stopping me. But nothing is stopping me, as evidenced by this highly navel-gazing bit of writing you’re reading at this very moment. Or maybe you’re only skimming it, in which case maybe I’ll include some subliminal, coded messages throughout this piece. Of course, because they’re subliminal you’ll only see them if you aren’t looking for them. So don’t look for those messages, you won’t find them. Got it? Good. Now that I’ve completely gotten off track, let’s talk about why I haven’t been writing.