The Best Media of 2011 (Version .80)

Another month, another revision...  This time with the beginnings of a ranking and links to my reviews!  

The Black Keys-El Camino (2011)

I was more than a little skeptical when I heard that The Black Keys's Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney had been able to record another album in just over a year after their phenomenal Brothers (2010).  Sure, The Beatles were able to harness that kind of energy in the 1960s and both The Roots and Kanye West have been able to produce quality work in a short period of time.  However, for every group that is able to pull off that manic work pace, there is a Mars Volta that seems to miss the target more and more with each hastily prepared album.  Thankfully, and this has been a damn strong year for music, Auerbach and Carney fall into the former category and their seventh record, El Camino (2011), is a hell of a ride.  

A Dangerous Method (2011)

A brief disclaimer is in order before I follow through here.  I haven't picked up much psychology reading in quite a while.  I read Sigmund Freud as an undergraduate in literary theory courses but we never read Carl Jung.  I took a couple classes in psychology as a sophomore in college.  The bulk of the psychoanalysis I've encountered in the past six years has been in the form of film theory and, never being much of a devotee to such approaches to spectatorship, my understanding is crudely general.  Essentially, if you're looking for a scholarly analysis of David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method (2011) from such a context, I am unable to provide it.  

The Artist (2011)

The midst of the annual awards season has given cinephiles two tremendous treats in Martin Scorsese's Hugo (2011) and Michel Hazanavicius's The Artist (2011).  While Hugo attempts to redeem the overlooked - outside of introduction to film courses at least - career of film pioneer Georges Méliès, The Artist takes willing viewers back to late 1920s Hollywood as the industry was transitioning from silent film production to early talkies.  Hugo is one of the best films of the year thanks to Scorsese's potent mixture of heartfelt redemption, film history lecture, adventurous dissection of three dimensional space, and support of film preservation.  The Artist, a heartwarming and nostalgic dollop of cinematic whipping cream, never goes beyond the superficial.  

The Tree of Life (2011)

I feel incredibly conflicted over Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life (2011). It is, without question, one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen. The theatrical release poster, showcasing a barrage of images from the film, is a fitting marketing tool, as the film's raison d'être is not the story nor the performances by Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Jessica Chastain, and the children.  The film's being stems from Malick's work with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (who also shot Children of Men) and production designer Jack Fisk (and, in a few sequences, with special effects guru Douglas Trumbull, who designed some of the effects for Tree of Life's formal ancestor, 2001:  A Space Odyssey).  Each shot in the film aims for the sublime (and the film has a lot of shots...I'd love to see a shot by shot analysis, but someone would need to have a lot of time on their hands to put that together) and the formal achievements of the film should not be underestimated.  On the other hand, the vague impressions of plot that Malick attempts to tie the images together with simply does not provide enough narrative momentum to justify the 140 minute running time.  

The Best Media of 2011 (Version .75)

Another month, another revision...  

The Descendants (2011)

Alexander Payne's first film in seven years (yes, it has been that long since the wine infused, lovable snobbery of Sideways), The Descendants (2011), would be a great film if it wasn't for its familiarity.  That is not to say that the plot or the casting is necessarily stereotypical, just that it feels like Payne, despite his absence, is still drawn into the same comfort zone:  middle aged men dealing with an existential crisis.  In Election (1999), Payne gave us a portrait of a school teacher (Matthew Broderick) fraying at the edges thanks to troubles at home and his obnoxious star pupil (Reese Witherspoon).  His follow up, About Schmidt (2002), focused on a recently widowed man (Jack Nicholson) who, after discovering that his wife had cheated on him, goes on a road trip to try to protect his daughter (Hope Davis) from following in his footsteps.  Sideways (2004) continued the trend by giving us another school teacher (Paul Giamatti), this one a lovesick and struggling novelist, who quotes Bukowski.