Must-sees and must-flees

Our critics pick the year’s most and least awesome flicks

NOT KIDDING AROUND: Mother

Mark Slutsky’s Top 10

1. The Ghost Writer Forget the controversy for a second; Roman Polanski, one of the greatest living filmmakers regardless of his crimes, is still at the top of his powers, and this lurid but brilliantly made political thriller is proof of that. Special mention to Alexandre Desplat’s hypnotic score.

2. Mother A dark, gorgeous neo-noir from Korean director Bong Joon-ho, who’s clearly emerged as a world cinema presence to be reckoned with, anchored by an amazingly intense performance by Kim Hye-ja. Totally under-seen, catch this on video now.

3. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives Thai surrealist Apichatpong Weerasethakul took the Palme D’Or and rightfully so for this beautiful, funny and, yes, often confounding conflation of myths, monkeys and monks.

4. The Social Network David Fincher did the near-impossible here, making a movie about Facebook and complicated civil suits utterly compelling, showing how a talented filmmaker can make any subject cinematic. Jesse Eisenberg’s performance is almost sociopathic; dead-eyed and cutting.

5. The Black Swan Bloody, passionate, crazy, flamboyant, pretentious—sure, it’s a Darren Aronofsky movie. But this one has a lightness and humour below the surface (maybe because it’s about ballet, not addiction or eternal love or whatever) and a compelling performance by Natalie Portman that makes it a really pleasurable experience.

6. Inception I’m sorry, but we need movies like this in the age of Transformers: intelligent blockbusters constructed like intricate puzzle boxes. Look, it ain’t Buñuel, but it’s not trying to be. It’s just the best heist movie in years.

7. Exit Through the Gift Shop A magnificent prank by street artist Banksy, who’s created a film that’s purportedly about his work, but more about the business of art and fame in general. In the end, the joke’s on him.

8. Greenberg Noah Baumbach’s story of an aging musican adrift in L.A. balances neatly on the razor’s edge of funny and sad. Terrifically un-vain performances from both Ben Stiller and Greta Gerwig anchor this ’70s-flavoured, introspective film.

9. Un prophète Jacques Audiard’s intricate prison saga, if a little long, was a beautifully constructed and fascinating, almost mythical story of a jailbird’s rise to power.

10. MacGruber Yeah, MacGruber. A cheap-ass comedy based on an old Saturday Night Live sketch that itself was a parody of a decades-old TV show. And yet the movie’s total anti-appeal seems to have given the creators the freedom to do whatever the hell they wanted, resulting in the funniest movie of the year. No joke.

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island was kind of ludicrous and foaming-at-the-mouth, but man was it a lot of fun. Winter’s Bone was a gritty Ozarkian noir featuring a star-making performance from Jennifer Lawrence. Olivier Assayas’s Carlos was a magnificently constructed meditation on a terroristic enigma. Danny Boyle made a pop symphony out of James Franco’s self-amputation in 127 Hours. Tragic box office failure Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, for its flaws, deserved a lot better than it got. And the opening credits of Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void are a couple minutes of the best cinema of the year.

BOTTOM FIVE

Sex and the City 2 At a staggering, preposterous two-and-a-half hours, this embarrassment gets to fill up two “Bottom Five” slots. Knight and Day Verging on the psychopathic, this desperate thriller featuring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz was a moral and narrative catastrophe. The Last Airbender A new movie from M. Night Shyamalan. ‘Nuff said. The Book of Eli A preachy post-apocalyptic thriller with a “twist” you could see coming a mile away.

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Matthew Hays’ Top 10

1. Budrus An incredibly uplifting film about a small Palestinian village facing economic catastrophe as the Israeli military attempts to remove their olive trees. The Palestinians protest peacefully and are then joined by a committed group of Israeli activists, who link arms in solidarity. This superb film will actually renew your faith in the Mideast peace process.

2. The Kids Are All Right Julianne Moore and Annette Bening are in top form here as a lesbian couple faced with the introduction of their sperm donor into their family’s lives. A surprisingly honest and heartfelt film.

3. Incendies Denis Villeneuve’s artful adaptation of the hit play. Emotionally wrenching and timely. Our hope at next year’s Oscar race.

4. Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work Who knew? This feature doc—which could easily have been nothing more than a vanity project—actually shows us the ludicrous highs and lows of a life in show biz. Rivers has fun, but also has her tortured moments.

5. You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger Critics wrote this one off after it debuted at TIFF, but here, Woody shows us his dark side again with several character studies of people frustrated by romantic longing. Loved that he left his conclusion so tantalizingly ambiguous—and what a brilliant cast.

6. FUBAR 2 No small feat: a sequel that actually works, and in many respects surpasses the original. No suck to turn down here.

7. High Life A hilarious and bitterly poignant film about a hapless group of addicts doing their best to execute a heist. Boldly adapted from the celebrated play of the same name.

8. Rabbit Hole A major shift for director John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Shortbus). The director shows incredible restraint and lets the awesome performances of Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart speak for themselves. The two play a couple grappling to overcome their grief after losing a young son. Kidman is at her best.

9. Inside Job and Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer These two in-depth documentaries give us crucial insight into the Wall Street collapse that has cost the world economy trillions.

10. The Social Network I hate clichés, and this one is going to be on every Top 10 list, but while I think it’s been somewhat overrated, it is a very well done film and is worth seeing.

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

Loved The Trotsky, Les Amours Imaginaires, Leslie, My Name Is Evil, Another Year and Splice. BEST BIT OF FILM-RELATED MEDIA IDIOCY: James Cameron visiting the oil sands and being treated like an environmental expert because he made Avatar.

BOTTOM FIVE

Burlesque The studio reportedly saw gay men as a target demographic for this film. And they say we’re not oppressed anymore. The Expendables Expendable. Conviction Achingly generic and predictable. Score: A Hockey Musical You could see this train wreck coming. Being TIFF’s opening night movie is shaping up as the kiss of death. Edge of Darkness Mel Gibson is entirely unbelievable as a decent man avenging the death of his daughter.

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Malcolm Fraser’s Top 10

1. Un prophète With all kinds of layers—narrative, thematic and cultural—Jacques Audiard’s prison film, with a brilliantly nuanced Tahar Rahim as a petty crook swept up in mob politics, is raw and visceral, but also complex and deep; timely, but with the power of a classical drama.

2. Winter’s Bone Atmospheric and intense, with amazing performances from Jennifer Lawrence and TV veteran John Hawkes, this slice of back-country noir from director Debra Granik manages to be suitably twisted and nasty while capturing the humanity of its hillbilly characters.

3. Fish Tank Andrea Arnold’s portrait of dreams and despair in a British housing project is gripping throughout, beautifully shot and edited, and topped with a standout performance by young Katie Jarvis.

4. Greenberg Master of the feel-bad movie, Noah Baumbach brings us his feel-worst yet, a profoundly sad portrait of a man who never grew out of the ’90s slacker mentality. Ben Stiller reminded us of his all-too-seldom-tapped talent and Greta Gerwig gave one of the performances of the year—she’s as much the star if not more.

5. Please Give Another soldier of the ’90s indie cinema movement, Nicole Holofcener re-emerges with this gently touching New York City social drama, recalling the brief period when Woody Allen films were actually good.

6. Soul Kitchen Arthouse favourite Fatih Akin spent a bunch of his critic’s-darling capital with this light-hearted but expertly executed comedy about a Hamburg restaurant. Some film snobs let the slapstick blind them to Akin’s cinematic gifts—they need to lighten up.

7. I Am Love Depending on your tastes, Luca Guadagnino’s cinematic style is either gorgeously baroque or just over-the-top, but his tale of bourgeois malaise is grounded by the always great Tilda Swinton.

8. Animal Kingdom This dark but subtle portrait of an Australian family of small-time crooks was sadly underrated—I might even say criminally (bam!).

9. The Social Network Some saps are still going around saying they don’t want to see “a movie about Facebook.” Forget about all that and just go see this—it’s nothing more or less than an old-fashioned Hollywood fable told very well.

10. The Misfortunates This Belgian coming-of-age story, its mood swinging wildly between hilarious low-brow comedy and dark dysfunctional drama, was probably the most slept-on movie of the year.

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

Inception was at least one chase scene too long and one subplot too complicated, but you gotta give props to Christopher Nolan’s conceptual ambition. I wasn’t quite on board with the wild adulation of Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, but there’s no denying that it’s a truly unique film that stays with you in strange ways. Bong Joon-ho’s bizarre whodunit Mother had some of the year’s most memorable cinematic moments. Machete was the film The Expendables wished it was—unabashedly campy and absurd, but fun in an over-the-top way. And if you still hate on Canada’s foremost prog-rock trio after seeing Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage, you have a heart of stone and you should probably be deported for treason.

BOTTOM FIVE

Cop Out If Kevin Smith has any artistic merit, which is highly debatable, it’s surely as a writer, not a director—so this miserable buddy-cop comedy that he directed, but didn’t write, makes his usual inane juvenilia look like cinematic genius. Then he threw a public shitfit about bad reviews. Guy, if you want good reviews, make good movies—real talk! The Tooth Fairy A case study in a premise that was idiotic to begin with (the Rock as a tooth fairy?) turning into a sour, joyless experience. Truly awful. Hot Tub Time Machine Come on Hollywood, it’s not brain surgery to make a dumb, fun comedy. Aside from the half-assed effort, there’s just something so deeply unpleasant about the characters. Like a half-remembered drunken bender, the film leaves you feeling regretful and unclean. The Expendables I wasn’t expecting genius from this macho clusterfuck, but I didn’t think minimal competence was too much to ask for. Sadly, the absurd amount of action stars here is inversely proportional to the effort put into dialogue, characterization and style. Score: A Hockey Musical If this represents Canadian culture, please sign me up for the FLQ.

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Christopher Sykes’ Top 10

1. Armadillo Where is it written that a war doc has to look like it was shot from inside a rusty can of beans? An astonishing debut by Janus Metz Pedersen, whose team embedded themselves for six months with a Danish regiment of “Difference Makers” in Afghanistan. It’s a modern day political strategy not to show the ugly side of war (all that icky stuff like bodies and brain matter puts people off back home) and this film is a damning illustration of how armed struggles are anything but sterile.

2. Un prophète Few prison dramas hit harder than Jacques Audiard’s amazing tale of desperation, self-loathing and testosterone. Newcomer Tahar Rahim first has no allies, then too many as he slaloms his way through six years of his life in a Corsican prison. Rahim is incredibly sympathetic throughout, and he cer­tainly sees (and causes) his fair share of spilled blood. Feels spine-chillingly real.

3. The Social Network I always thought Fincher didn’t get the credit he deserved for 2007’s Zodiac, which was another book-to-screen adaptation. He’s up to his ears in accolades this time around, and for good reason. As many critics have been want to mention, Generation Tech has been handed its very own Citizen Kane, misogyny and all.

4. The Kids Are All Right Lisa Cholodenko’s look at the pomo homo family is sly, witty and hugely entertaining. Annette Bening and Julianne Moore are sublime as a middle-aged lesbian couple whose two donor-conceived kids track down biological dad Mark Ruffalo. Ripe with some of the most endearing performances of the year.

5. Exit Through the Gift Shop Call Banksy’s debut documentary whatever you want: Punkumentary. Hoax. Provocation. I’ll call it a magnifying glass. It shows the art “establishment” for what it really is: a collective of soul suckers hell bent on profiteering and increasing their cachet by latching on to the next big thing. And those 10 quid “Bansky of England” notes were pretty fucking sweet too.

6. Winter’s Bone The synopsis may sound underwhelming, but Jennifer Lawrence is absolutely spellbinding as a destitute 17-year-old who must track down her crank-cooking father in order to save the deed to the family farm. Chilling doesn’t begin to describe the film’s aesthetic. Nor its soundtrack. Come to think of it, the whole damned thing is freaky as hell. And yet oddly hopeful too.

7. Inception was the exception this summer—one of the rare Hollywood blockbusters to successfully combine a bloated budget with ingenuity and complexity. It’s quirky and hypnotic and manipulative, just like the very best dreams.

8. Incendies This poetic look at the genesis of war and hate was the best Canadian drama I’ve seen in a long time. Adaptations from stage to screen are so often cumbersome and bookish—props to Denis Villeneuve. Suspenseful to the bitter end, and a truly unforgettable performance by Lubna Azabal.

9. Toy Story 3 True story: A friend I hadn’t spoken to in a while calls me on an idle Sunday. He’s sobbing uncontrollably, and proceeds to spend the next half hour talking about home and regret and the demise of childhood dreams. He’d just walked out of TS3 and hadn’t cried in nearly a decade. That’s the power of cine­ma.

10. The Town I’m admittedly a sucker for heist flicks. But a balanced, intelligent and well-acted thriller starring, written and directed by Ben Affleck? He sure has come a long way since Gigli.

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

Tilda Swinton is starting (and I do mean starting) to get the mainstream praise she deserves, and her incredible performance in I Am Love will only help out her own cause. The sound design on Shutter Island was first-rate, but I was underwhelmed as a whole. But that DiCaprio fella wasn’t too bad in it either. Aaron Johnson was fantastic as a teenage John Lennon in Sam Taylor-Wood’s debut Nowhere Boy. A must-see if you consider yourself a Beatles fan. Speaking of Mr. Johnson, Kick Ass kicked ass. Gainsbourg was another great glimpse into the life of a 1960’s rock star.

BOTTOM FIVE

In five angry words: The Last Airbender Give up, M. Night Shyamalan The Book of Eli Dreary dystopia for Bible thumpers Clash of the Titans Shoot 3D on 3D cameras Score: A Hockey Musical Oh Canadon’t think about it The Sorcerer’s Apprentice Cage, sure. But REALLY, Baruchel?

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Roxane Hudon’s Top 10

DISCLAIMER: I spent most of the year watching 3D movies for kids. This being said, on to my “Top 10.”

1. Black Swan A trippy ballet psychodrama that makes Tchaikovsky sound creepy. Natalie Portman is perfect, especially in the gorgeous final scene. Aronofsky somehow makes unhappy delusional people so entertaining to watch. “Go home and touch yourself. Live a little.”

2. 10 1/2 Thankfully for Canadian cinema, there is Quebec, spewing out little gems like this one, a psychologically violent film about a troubled boy. Young Robert Naylor steals the show.

3. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 Duh, I’m a total dweeb. As someone who read all the books, I was excited for this and was not disappointed. Entertaining and even funny at times, it’s the best of the series. Call me, Ron Weasley.

4. The Social Network Mainly because before this, I thought Jesse Eisenberg was just a poor man’s Michael Cera. But clearly, he’s way better at playing an asshole.

5. 12th and Delaware Directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady must be the nicest people; they seem to have a true gift for making people open up to them, even nutty pro-lifers who protest an abortion clinic in this surprisingly objective documentary about the abortion issue. No overly dramatic narration, no colourful charts: a no-frills doc that lets the characters on both sides tell the story.

6. Exit Through the Gift Shop At first I thought Banksy sounded like an asshole for making one of these documentaries that may or may not be real. But it’s actually a funny and interesting commentary on street art and modern art in general.

7. Machete Like most girls, I love cheesy action films, which is why I was really disappointed when The Expendables turned out to be pretty boring. Thankfully, Machete came along with its perfect one-liners, big guns and ridiculous plot. “Machete don’t text.”

8. Legends of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole I saw a lot of stupid 3D this year: wolves, cats, dogs, piranhas, but most of these films just gave you a headache. This was gorgeous and, you know, featured fucking gladiator owls! Enough said.

9. Toy Story 3 It seems to be easy for Hollywood to dish out cutesy computer-animated films for kids. But this one stands out, with strong characters and a heart-warming story that may or may not have made me cry.

10. Step Up 3D Fuck it! It’s going in! I started with a dance film, might as well end with one. A 3D dance party that made me want to dance on my chair, while many films this year made me want to nap.

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

Copacabana was a charming French film starring the delightful Isabelle Huppert as a free-spirited mother trying to do good. Going the Distance amused me, maybe because Drew Barrymore is a journalism graduate trying to find a job. Ahem. I should probably mention the dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream crit­ically acclaimed Inception, or something dramatic like Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies, but, clearly, I haven’t seen these films. So, instead, I’m going to have to say that Get Him to the Greek was surprisingly hilarious, mainly because of P.Diddy’s “mindfuck.”

BOTTOM FIVE

Hereafter Honestly the most painful experience I’ve had at the cinema all year, and I’ve endured a lot of pain. A reflection on the after-life that will make you wish you were dead. Valentine’s Day A star-studded romcom led by the King Midas of crap, Ashton Kutcher, clearly targeted at girls who talk to each other like they’re puppies. Eat Pray Love Boring film perfect for whiny, privileged white women who want to feel OKAY about getting fat on pizza, while doing something pseudo-spiritual like lighting incense and sticking a photo of Shiva over their empty beds. Eat Pray Masturbate. Devil M. Night Shyamalan puts a bunch of people in an elevator with the devil. So stupid. “If the devil exists, then so must God,” is an actual line from the film. Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married Too? A cheesy relationship drama in which Janet Jackson once again tries to prove that she’s human by crying a lot. Confirms that marriage is really boring. No offence. ■

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