2011 Year in Review: Worst Movies

Despite the fact that I saw fewer films this year than in the past, I still managed to see quite a few stinkers. Other than the films on my worst 10 list, you couldn’t pay me to sit through the following films a second time: Anonymous (Roland Emmerich), The Bang Bang Club (Steven Silver), Battle: Los Angeles (Jonathan Liebsman), The Beaver (Jodie Foster), The Change-Up (David Dobkin), Conan the Barbarian (Marcus Nispel), Cowboys and Aliens (Jon Favreau), The Dilemma (Ron Howard), Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (Troy Nixey), The Eagle (Kevin Macdonald), Final Destination 5 (Stephen Quale), Green Lantern (Martin Campbell), Hall Pass (Peter & Bobby Farrelly), The Hangover Part II (Todd Philips), Henry’s Crime (Malcolm Venville), Hesher (Spencer Susser), I Am Number Four (DJ Caruso), The Iron Lady (Phyllida Lloyd), Kill the Irishman (Jonathan Hensleigh), Miral (Julien Schnabel), One Day (Lone Scherfig), Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (Rob Marshall), Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (Morgan Spurlock), Sanctum (Alister Grierson), The Smurfs (Raja Gosnell), Something Borrowed (Luke Greenfield), Sucker Punch (Zack Snyder), Super (James Gunn), Texas Killing Fields (Ami Canaan Mann), Transformers: Dark of the Moon (Michael Bay), Unknown (Jaume Collet-Serra), Vanishing on 7^th Street (Brad Anderson), Wrecked (Michael Greenspan), The Woman (Lucky McKee).

The Bottom Ten

Despite all sorts of awful above, these were the 10 films that were the worst of the worst.

10. Sleeping Beauty (Julia Leigh)

This film is an empty shell. There is nothing beyond its admittedly beautiful surface. The story of a college student (Emily Browning) who works multiple part time jobs – and sometimes as a prostitute – who agrees to work as a topless waitress at fancy dinner parties, and then to be drugged so that men can do whatever they want with her unconscious body (not including penetration). Browning is a blank slate – there seems to be nothing going on behind her eyes, so the movie becomes an exercise in style, with nothing else going for. Painfully slow and dull, despite all the nudity.

9. Trespass (Joel Schumacher)

Joel Schumacher has taken a lot of lumps over the years for his films, but for the most part, they were at least competent. No such luck with Trespass, a film that went from having its premiere at TIFF to DVD in less than two months. I know why Nicolas Cage is in this – he needs the money. But what the hell possessed Nicole Kidman to be in this awful home invasion “thriller”. Incompetently directed, written and acted, Trespass is a movie best left forgotten.

8. The Future (Miranda July)

Some people love Miranda July’s follow up film to her indie hit Me and You and Everyone We Know. I am clearly not one of those people. I did like her first film, but The Future is about the two most annoyingly self involved people I can recall seeing in a movie. I mean, they let their poor cat get put down for Christ’s sake! The cat narrates the movie, and is counting down the days until they come and get him, and then they just let him die. The film tries so hard to be hip and cool, but I found it insufferable.

7. The Rite (Mikael Hafstrom)

This early in the year film tried to be a more serious version of The Exorcist, and failed miserably. A young seminary student starts to lose his faith, and isn’t sure he wants to go through with becoming a priest. His mentor decides to send him to Rome for a while to give a chance to think about it. And that’s when he meets Anthony Hopkins’ crazy, exorcist priest, who of course, will end up possessed himself. Thankfully, I have forgotten much of this film in the months since I have seen it. Hopefully, the rest will leave my mind soon.

6. Season of the Witch (Dominic Sena)

Dominic Sena had such a promising start to his career with Kalifornia – and since then, it’s been one crappy action film after another. This Medieval “epic” starring Nicolas Cage is perhaps his worst film. It isn’t scary, it isn’t exciting, and Nicolas Cage is perhaps even worse in this film than he was in Trespass. Borderline unwatchable.

5. Sarah’s Key (Gilles Paquet-Brenner)

The film tells an important story about a little remembered, shameful moment in French history, when in July 1942, French police rounded up over 13,000 Jews, including women and children, left them in a stadium for days and then shipped them to Auschwitz. Unfortunately, the movie undermines the story’s inherent power by focusing on an American woman in 2011 trying to piece together what happened to the family who used to live in her apartment. The movie is far more interested in her than in the roundup itself. Even the scenes from 1942 seem forced and phony. This was a tough sit – but not in the way the filmmakers expected.

4. Your Highness (David Gordon Green)

David Gordon Green’s debut film, George Washington, is a small scale masterpiece. His follow-up films – All the Real Girls and Undertow – are both excellent. Even when he moved onto the mainstream films, he made the wonderful comedy Pineapple Express. Then he made this film – which is quite simply God awful (he also made The Sitter, which came out late in the year and got terrible reviews – I’ll catch with it on DVD). I suppose this movie is trying to be something like Monty Python – with its ridiculous Knights of the Round Table epic crossed with stoner comedy, but none of it is funny. Why James Franco and Natalie Portman got involved, I don’t know – and Zooey Deschanel didn’t do herself any favors either. Once and for all, this film should prove that Danny McBride is a supporting player – not a leading man.

3. The Sleeping Beauty (Catherine Briellent)

I have long since tired of French filmmaker Catherine Briellent’s films which mostly are provocations for provocation’s sake. Once in a while however she makes a wonderful film like The Last Mistress, which keeps me coming back to her films. Her version of the fairy tale The Sleeping Beauty is a sexually explicit, incoherent mess. Good God, I am sick of her scenes where a horrid boy talks an innocent girl out of her virginity. This could be her worst film.

2. Passion Play (Mitch Glazer)

I had the misfortune of seeing this at the 2010 TIFF, and I have never quite recovered. How could a movie starring Mickey Rourke and Bill Murray be this bad? Somehow it is. Rourke is a fading jazz musician, who discovers an “angel” – Megan Fox – who is really just a stripper with wings. Bill Murray is a gangster who wants to buy her from him. The movie is perplexingly stupid and has the most ludircious climax of any film in recent memory. The worst part is everyone takes it so damn seriously. The film was barely released in theaters, and then when straight to DVD – where is really where it belonged.

1. Hobo with a Shotgun (Jason Eisener)

I know that some love Jason Eisener’s throwback to 1970s Grindhouse films starring Rutger Hauer, but for the life of me I cannot figure out why. The film is, as you expect, exceedingly violent, but it’s never disturbing because the violence is so over the top and cartoonish that it is ridiculous. The villains are laughably awful. I must give some credit to Hauer however – he delivers precisely the performance that the movie asks him too. Eisener won a competition run by Tarantino and Rodriguez as a marketing gimmick for their epic Grindhouse. Both of those filmmakers had fun with this exceedingly dumb genre of films. But Eisener takes this way too seriously. This is nowhere near the longest film of the year – but it felt like it to me. Simply horrible.

2011 Year in Review: Worst Performances

Worst Actor: Danny McBride in Your Highness – I think McBride can be funny in small doses, but when he is asked to carry an entire movie, his shtick wears thin quickly. In this film, he is not hip or funny, which he tries so hard to be, but simply annoying and unfunny.

Runners-up: Nicolas Cage in Trespass starts out trying to use the same clipped, nasal voice he used in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans, but abandons that half way through, but no matter how he talks, he is still awful in the film. Nicolas Cage in Season of the Witch is perhaps an even worse performance, as he is completely unbelievable as a Medieval Knight in this groaner of a film. Mickey Rourke in Passion Play makes the mistake of thinking a movie that has Megan Fox with wings should be played completely seriously – this is the type of film I would expect him to make BEFORE his comeback. Anthony Hopkins in The Rite tries to go over the top, as he has so often before, but his crazy act grew stale a decade ago. Jason Momoa in Conan the Barbarian has little more than muscles to offer this updated Conan. Alex Pettyfer in I Am Number Four is a completely and totally blank action hero in this forgettable, would be franchise. Shia LaBeouf in Transformers: Dark of the Moon says his character arch through the three films is now complete – and the fact that he could say that with a straight is better proof that he can be a good actor than anything on display in this film. Keanu Reeves in Henry’s Crime is far too passive for a character that has to drive the entire plot of this awful bank robbery/comedy.

Worst Actress: Nicole Kidman in Trespass. I have often defended Kidman from those who say that her face is an expressionless mask, as normally I find her work to be wonderful and risk taking. But in Trespass, she simply gives more fodder to all of her detractors, and sadly, I have to be one for this film – her worst performance ever – by far.

Runners-up: Frieda Pinto in Muriel is completely miscast and perhaps proves that she is little more than a gorgeous face, as she can’t carry this role at all. Emily Browning in Sleeping Beauty and Sucker Punch is as empty and hollow as the movies she is in. Miranda July in The Future tries so very hard to hip and clever, and instead she is just really annoying. Megan Fox in Passion Play got dealt a horrible role, but still, she didn’t bring anything at all interesting to it. Kristen Scott Thomas in Sarah’s Key is so self serious and self involved and dour that it hard to watch.

Worst Supporting Actor: Cam Gigandet in Trespass again has me wondering how he continues to get work. I have yet to see him in a good movie – and he seemingly shows up in a ton of movies each year. In Trespass, I wondered the entire movie if his character was supposed to be mildly retarded or whether he was just plain dumb. I still have no idea.

Runners-up: Brian Downey and Gregory Smith in Hobo with a Shotgun made a truly awful father-son villain team – there is a difference between fun over the top acting and awful over the top acting, and these two don’t seem to know it. Ron Perlman in Season of the Witch and Conan the Barbarian was awful in two movies – he was great in Drive however, so perhaps we can forgive him. Colin Egglesfield in Something Burrowed was a romantic leading man completely and totally lacking in charm or a sense of humor. Harrison Ford in Cowboys and Aliens again makes me wonder why he continues to act, since he quite clearly doesn’t give a shit.

Worst Supporting Actress: Rosie Huntington-Whiteley in Transformers: Dark of the Moon replaced Megan Fox, and in doing so makes Fox look like Meryl Streep in comparison. She’s beautiful, sure, but there’s nothing else there.

Runners-Up: Olivia Wilde in Cowboys and Aliens once again has to play the “perfect” human, or at least some outside force’s idea of perfect, which must be getting tired for her. Kate Hudson in Something Burrowed was annoying and shrill, making me wonder how anyone in the movie put up with her for so damn long. Angela Bettis in The Woman continues to show that other than weird ticks, she can’t really do anything else. Vanessa Redgrave in Anonymous makes Queen Elizabeth I into a dottering old fool – and worst still, not a very entertaining one. Jordana Brewster in Fast Five proves why unless it’s a Fast and Furious movie, she doesn’t getting many acting jobs.

2011 Year in Review: Biggest Disappointments

There is some crossover here between this and my worst of list, but these films are necessarily terrible, or even bad. But none of them are as good as we should expect from filmmakers who have proven they have talent, or interesting ideas that are blown. I also could have included: Battle: Los Angeles (Jonathan Liebsman), The Hangover Part II (Todd Philips), Kung Fu Panda 2 (Jennifer Yuh), The Mechanic (Simon West), Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (Morgan Spurlock), Red State (Kevin Smith), Sucker Punch (Zack Snyder), The Woman (Lucky McKee), but already at 15 films, I decided not to.

15. The Skin I Live In (Pedro Almodovar)

I love Pedro Almodovar, and I actually liked The Skin I Live In. But coming on the heels of Talk to her, Bad Education, Volver and Broken Embraces, The Skin I Live In proved to be underwhelming. This revenge story, as twisted as any seen in recent Korean films (and they are truly fucked up) is well made, but seems hollow, and Antonio Banderas is bland as the “evil scientist”. I liked The Skin I Live In, but I expect to love an Almodovar film.

14. The Help (Tate Taylor)

I felt I had to address one of the biggest audience hits of the year – which is an Oscar player this year as well – somewhere in my year end wrap up, and since I didn’t much like it, this seemed like the place. I must say, the performances by Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Jessica Chastain, Bryce Dallas Howard and to a lesser extent Emma Stone are actually excellent. But The Help has such a retrograde view of race relations that it was off-putting to me, as was the fact that even in 2011, when Hollywood makes a movie about the Civil Rights Movement, it has to center on a kind hearted white person. This film doesn’t feel like it’s about the 1960s, it feels like it was made in the 1960s, when Sidney Poitier could still shock audiences by slapping a white man, or marrying a white woman. Also, how many times did the filmmakers need to completely and totally humiliate Howard’s racist house wife, as if she is the worst human being on the planet? Certainly not an awful film – and I do understand why some love it so – but to me it just wasn’t good enough.

13. Restless (Gus Van Sant)

Gus Van Sant has spent the last decade making films where death hangs over every frame – whether it’s Gerry with its friends lost in the desert, Elephant, with its high school shooters, Last Days with his Kurt Cobain stand in, Paranoid Park with his aimless skater kids or even the more mainstream Milk about a politician, his films lead to death. And Restless is no different, as it centers on a young woman with cancer and her first romance. But unlike those other films, Restless is a fantasy film, trying to make us believe that cancer really is like this, and while we may want to believe it, we don’t. Good performances, and great cinematography by Harris Savides, is wasted in this film that is far too lightweight – and tries too hard to be hip.

12. The Ward (John Carpenter)

I may the only person in the world who likes Carpenter’s previous theatrical film, Ghosts of Mars, but like it I did. After spending a decade languishing in TV work, he returns to the big screen with a film that seems right up his alley – a horror film set in a mental hospital inhabited by only beautiful young women. And yet The Ward seems so by the numbers and lacks Carpenter’s horror signatures. It’s like he’s trying to be Eli Roth, when Eli Roth can never even dream of being as good as Carpenter. If he’s not going to be John Carpenter behind the camera, than what the hell is the point?

11. Outrage (Takeshi Kitano)

In the 1990s, Takeshi Kitano seemed like the lone savior of Yakuza films, with great ones like Violent Cop, Sonatine and Fireworks. He kept the genre going when no one else seemed willing to. After a foray into comedy and samurai films, Kitano returned to the Yakuza genre after more than a decade. And while Outrage is appropriately violent, and is fairly well directed, I have to wonder why he bothered. Outrage is not any better than the myriad of copies of Kitano’s work that has sprouted up in the last 10 years. If he wanted to return to the genre, shouldn’t he have brought something better to the table?

10. Bad Teacher (Jake Kasdan)
Jake Kasdan has made some good comedies before – most notably the underrated Zero Effect – and the idea behind Bad Teacher is a good one. I, for one, am tired of seeing movies about saintly teachers who better their children, so I was looking forward to seeing a movie about a truly awful teacher. And, to be fair, Cameron Diaz really does seem to throw herself into the role. Unfortunately, there really is not a whole lot else here. The writing lets her down a great deal, nothing is quite as funny as it should be. It isn’t awful, but it isn’t very good either.

9. In a Better World (Susanne Bier)

I don’t share Lars von Trier’s feeling about Susanne Bier (if you recall, it was a joke gone awry about Bier that lead to Trier’s infamous Nazi comments at Cannes), but I have to say that I wasn’t all that impressed with her Oscar winning film In a Better World. The whole movie seemed so simple minded and clichéd – Crash in Denmark if you will – and the stuff in Africa felt completely out of place. Normally, Bier is a great filmmaker – see Brothers or After the Wedding or her underrated American effort Things We Lost in the Fire. But this film is her worst one, which makes it sadly ironic that she won Best Foreign Language film at last year’s Oscars.

8. The Beaver (Jodie Foster)

The idea of casting Mel Gibson as a bat shit crazy person was genius. The problem with The Beaver is that it never lets Gibson go far enough. It shoves his character – who starts talking through a beaver puppet of all things – into a clichéd dysfunctional family drama, thus blunting the films power. A truly off the wall, pitch black comedy about a suicidal Mel Gibson and a talking beaver puppet? Genius. This movie, nowhere close.

7. Cowboys and Aliens (Jon Favreau)

The idea of combing cowboys and aliens in one movie sounds like it should make for one of the most entertaining films of the year – especially with Jon Favreau at the helm, having made two damn good Iron Man movies. But this movie is surprisingly dull and lifeless. Why combine two of the most well known movie genres into one package unless you’re going to do something with it? Play with the genres a little? Or at least, make a decent guilty pleasure movie. Instead, we’re stuck with this one, which was just lame. Can someone tell Harrison Ford if he isn’t going to try anymore than he should give up acting?

6. One Day (Lone Scherfig)

Lone Scherfig made an excellent debut movie with An Education. David Schultz’s book One Day is a touching examination of friendship changing over time. Bring the two of them together and you get this thudding bore of a film, in which Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess have to age 20 years in less than 2 hours, have their complex characters stripped to the bone, and be forced into one cutesy routine after another. This one had so much potential that was simply squandered.

5. The Iron Lady (Phyllida Lloyd)

Perhaps it’s my own fault for thinking that the director of Mamma Mia could make a competent movie, but I was highly looking forward to The Iron Lady, the Margaret Thatcher biopic starring Meryl Streep. Streep is, as always, brilliant in the lead role. But the movie itself provides no insights into who Thatcher was as a politician or as a person. It seems much more interested in showing her as an old lady losing her marbles than anything else she did in her life. This is not the biopic one of the most powerful and controversial women of the 20^th Century deserved.

4. Your Highness (David Gordon Green)

David Gordon Green was at one point one of the best young filmmakers in the world. George Washington, All the Real Girls, Undertow and Snow Angels were all great indie films. I assumed when he crossed over to Hollywood to make Pineapple Express (also wonderful) that it was to get himself more freedom to make the types of movies he wanted to. But he followed that movie up with this stinking turd (and apparently, the late year comedy The Sitter isn’t any better). Does he really not give a shit about anything other than money? Please, come back from the dark side soon.

3. The Future (Miranda July)

This one was truly disappointing because I thought that July’s first film, Me and You and Everyone We Know, was so quirky and offbeat and charming. But this film is nothing other than navel gazing by self involved hipsters. Good god was this movie a pain to sit through – and I’m still pissed off about the damn cat!

2. Miral (Julien Schnabel)

Julien Schnabel is an immensely talented filmmaker as his first three films – Basquaint, Before Night Falls and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly – can attest. Unfortunately, he tries to use the same technique that made The Diving Bell and the Butterfly so successful in a completely different story – and the style doesn’t fit. The Diving Bell was a subjective story, told almost entirely from the point of view of one man trapped in his own mind. Miral is a decades spanning, multi-narrator story about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The effect is off putting confusing. For all the controversy the films politics spawned, they are never really clear – as the film is little more than a jumbled mess. I have faith that Schnabel will make a great film again, but Miral was far from it.

1. Cars 2 (John Lasseter)

Cars 2 is precisely the kind of animated film that Pixar doesn’t make. It is loud, fast moving, action packed and pays little attention to character or story. Sure, it fits and starts, they film can be entertaining – and I am sure that little boys loved it to pieces – but when I go into a Pixar movie, I expect something more – something not just for kids, but something adults can enjoy as well. Although the original Cars was one of Pixar’s weaker efforts, there are still many things to recommend it – especially it’s nice sense of nostalgia. Cars 2 moves so damn quickly, and has such an inane plot, that it has no time for anything else. Far and away the worst film Pixar has ever made.

2011 Year in Review: My Personal Oscar Ballot

If I was the only Academy member, this would be who would have been nominated.

Best Picture

1.       The Tree of Life
2.       Drive
3.       Hugo
4.       Shame
5.       Moneyball
6.       The Descendants
7.       We Need to Talk About Kevin
8.       Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
9.       Martha Marcy May Marlene

Tell me you don’t prefer this line-up to the actual Oscar one? Yes, it has 4 of the same films (and a fifth was at number 10), but it also contains some darker films as well. The Academy nominated 9 feel good movies this year, but I think you need a little darkness to even things out.

Director

1.       Terence Malick, The Tree of Life
2.       Nicholas Winding Refn, Drive
3.       Martin Scorsese, Hugo
4.       Steve McQueen, Shame
5.       Lynne Ramsay, We Need to Talk About Kevin

This is the first time in I’m not sure how many years where my top 5 directors aren’t all from the top five films of the year – I usually don’t like to do it. But this year, I just felt that Lynne Ramsay’s directorial achievement with We Need to Talk About Kevin was greater than Alexander Payne’s or Bennett Miller’s, whose films placed ahead of Ramsay’s. Criticize me if you want, but I’m comfortable with my choice.

Best Actor

1.       Michael Fassbender, Shame
2.       Gary Oldman in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
3.       Brad Pitt, Moneyball
4.       George Clooney, The Descendants
5.       Ryan Gosling in Drive

A sex addict, a Cold War spy, a baseball GM, a father struggling to connect with his daughters, and a stunt driver turned killer/hero. A pretty eclectic mix I’d say. Too bad the Academy overlooked the best performance of the year.

Best Actress

1.       Tilda Swinton, We Need to Talk About Kevin
2.       Elizabeth Olson, Martha March May Marlene
3.       Kirsten Dunst, Melancholia
4.       Rooney Mara, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
5.       Michelle Williams, My Week with Marilyn

Narrowing this down to five was very hard, but these were the best of the best in a very strong year. Too bad the Academy didn’t recognize the three best performances in this category this year.

Best Supporting Actor

1.       Albert Brooks, Drive
2.       Brad Pitt, The Tree of Life
3.       Andy Serkis, Rise of the Planet of the Apes
4.       John Hawkes, Martha Marcy May Marlene
5.       Patton Oswalt, Young Adult

For me, no one came close to Albert Brooks for this award, not matter how good the rest of them were. Too bad the Academy saw fit to nominate none of these five.

Supporting Actor

1.       Carey Mulligan, Shame
2.       Vanessa Redgrave, Coriolanus
3.       Carey Mulligan, Drive
4.       Jessica Chastain, The Tree of Life
5.       Jessica Chastain, Take Shelter

Two relative newcomers contribute 4 performances to this list, and one great veteran proves she still has the goods. Too bad the Academy didn’t recognize Mulligan or Redgrave’s brilliance, and gave it to Chastain for at best, her third best performance of the year.

Best Original Screenplay

1.       The Tree of Life – Terence Malick
2.       Midnight in Paris – Woody Allen
3.       Shame – Steve McQueen & Abi Morgan
4.       Martha Marcy May Marlene – Sean Durkin
5.       Take Shelter – Jeff Nichols

I know that for many, The Tree of Life was an achievement of directing and editing, but that screenplay was the most complex of the year. Midnight in Paris the most charmingly original, Shame the darkest, Martha Marcy May Marlene a complex character study, and Take Shelter a haunting portrait of paranoia. A strong year to be sure in this category, but these were the strongest.

Best Adapted Screenplay

1.       Moneyball – Steven Zallian & Aaron Sorkin
2.       The Descendants – Alexander Payne & Nat Faxon & Jim Rash
3.       Drive – Hossein Amini
4.       Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - Bridget O'Connor & Peter Straughan
5.       We Need to Talk About Kevin – Lynne Ramsay & Rory Kinnear

What Zallian and Sorkin did to a book about baseball stats is impressive – making a book about baseball stats into a fascinating, supremely entertaining film. Alexander Payne and company wrote a wonderfully comic, and touching, movie in The Descendants. Hossein Amini’s Drive screenplay turns a not very interesting novel into a great movie. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy captured LeCarre’s novel perfectly – and even added a brilliant flashback that ran through the movie. Finally, the We Need to Talk About Kevin screenplay was brilliant, as it turns a very literary novel into a very cinematic movie.

Best Documentary

1.       Into the Abyss
2.       The Interrupters
3.       Tabloid
4.       Project Nim
5.       Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory

Too bad the top three didn’t even get shortlisted, and the fourth, which did, didn’t get nominated. They have a new system in place to begin next year to try and fix the doc system at the Oscars – but I doubt it will do much.

Best Animated Film

1.       Rango
2.       The Adventures of Tintin
3.       Chico and Rita
4.       Winnie the Pooh
5.       Arthur Christmas

Not really a strong year at all for animation – but Rango deserves the top spot, and would in some other years as well. The Adventures of Tintin was shamefully overlooked by the Academy – whose animation branch, it seems, will never embrace its style of animation. Chico and Rita, a surprise nominee at the Academy, is a charming, adult themed animated film, with some great Cuban music. Winnie the Pooh is the simplest animated film of the year – but that just adds to its charm. And finally, Arthur Christmas may not be in the same league as other Aardman films, but it’s highly enjoyable just the same.

Best Foreign Language Film

1.       Aurora - Romania
2.       Poetry – South Korea
3.       A Separation - Iran
4.       13 Assassins - Japan
5.       Café de Flore – Canada

Many probably think me insane for picking the three hour, slow moving Romanian film Aurora as the best Foreign Language film of the year, but I don’t care – it was. The Korean Poetry was heartbreaking. A Separation – the best of the actual nominees – a complex moral puzzle. 13 Assassins pure action filmmaking. And Café de Flore a mind bender I’m still trying to my head around.

Best Cinematography

1.       The Tree of Life – Emmanuel Lubezki
2.       Drive – Newton Thomas Siegel
3.       Hugo – Robert Richardson
4.       Melancholia – Manuel Alberto Claro
5.       Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – Hoyte Van Hoytema

I quite easily could have added five more nominees here – Martha Marcy May Marlene, Shame, We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Artist – and still have overlooked some great work, in what was an amazingly strong year for this category. Still, no matter how many memorable shorts there were in Drive, or how great Robert Richardson’s work on Hugo was, or the brilliantly stylized work in Melancholia or the subtle complexity of Tinker Tailor Solider Spy was, Emmanuel Lubezki’s work on The Tree of Life is quite clearly the best work this category has seen in years.

Editing

1.       The Tree of Life
2.       Drive
3.       Hugo
4.       We Need to Talk About Kevin
5.       The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Malick’s editors deserve this award simply for spending years of their lives doing it - just kidding of course – the work itself is amazing and complex. Drive’s work set the tone in the action sequences, but also allows things to slow right down when needed. Thelma Schoonmaker once again proves with Hugo why she’s the best in the business. The work on We Need to Talk About Kevin is precise and brilliant. And The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo shows how to edit a thriller to maximum effect.

Score

1.       The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross
2.       The Artist - Ludovic Bource
3.       Drive – Cliff Martinez
4.       Hugo – Howard Shore
5.       Moneyball – Mychael Danna

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are reinventing what a movie score can do, and following their win for The Social Network, deserve another one for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – the fact that they didn’t even get nominated strikes me as criminal as any other snub on Oscar morning. Yes, Ludovic Bource’s work includes part of the Vertigo score, but most of it is all his, and all brilliant homage to the scores of yesteryear. Cliff Martinez’s great work may have been deemed “ineglible” by the idiots in the Academy, but it’s still vital to Drive. Howard Shore did more than one great score this year (A Dangerous Method could have easily made this list as well), but his Hugo score ranks among his best. And finally, Mychael Danna’s work in Moneyball is subtle, but brilliant and memorable.

Song

1.       The Muppets – Pictures in My Head
2.       The Muppets – Man or Muppet

The Academy only saw fit to nominate two songs this year, and I take this as a good sign for those of us who feel this category really doesn’t need to be around any longer. Both of my nominees come from The Muppets – and I prefer the more emotional one done my Kermit.

Art Direction

1.       Hugo
2.       The Tree of Life
3.       Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
4.       The Artist
5.       Midnight in Paris

To this day, I cannot believe that the fact that Scorsese and company built New York for Gangs of New York didn’t win them this Oscar, no matter what one thought of the film itself. Their Paris should win it this time. The work on The Tree of Life is stunning. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy stays just this side of the over the top in its depiction of the 1970s – especially its wallpaper. The Artist has a fine, phony art direction, that brings to mind silent films – just like it should. And finally, all the work done Midnight in Paris is quietly wonderful.

Costume Design

1.       Hugo
2.       Midnight in Paris
3.       The Artist
4.       The Tree of Life
5.       Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Hugo’s costumes are meticulous and wonderful – straddling the line between period and fantasy. The Midnight in Paris costumes, both contemporary and period, are fine. The work in The Artist effortlessly brings to life silent film. The Tree of Life is quieter period work, but no less fine. And you can tell the personalities of every one of the spies in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by the difference in their suits.

Make-Up

1.       J. Edgar
2.       Hugo
3.       Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II

I’ll admit the work done on Armie Hamer wasn’t the best in J. Edgar, but the work done on DiCaprio puts most old age makeup to shame, so it gets my vote. A lot of work done in Hugo, and all of it quite good. Finally, I don’t think I’ve given enough love to the Harry Potter films over the years, and the work in them was always stellar, so let’s give it third spot.

Sound Mixing

1.       We Need to Talk About Kevin
2.       The Tree of Life
3.       Drive
4.       Hugo
5.       Take Shelter

The sound design of We Need to Talk About Kevin is absolutely stunning – and the type of work that never gets recognized. Normally, The Tree of Life would win this hands down, because its work is brilliant as well. Drive complex mix of sounds is not noticeable – as it should be. Hugo’s work is the grand stuff that wins awards – and should. And finally, sound plays a key role in getting us in the head of the paranoid lead character in Take Shelter.

Sound Effects Editing

1.       Hugo
2.       The Tree of Life
3.       Drive
4.       Rise of the Planet of the Apes
5.       Super 8

The sounds of the train station makes this Hugo’s. Not quite as much sound effects editing in The Tree of Life, but what there is, is wonderful. Drive’s action sequences make this one a no-brainer. And two summer blockbusters with terrific work deserve attention – Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Super 8.

Visual Effects

1.       The Tree of Life
2.       Rise of the Planet of the Apes
3.       Hugo
4.       Harry Potter and the Deahtly Hallows Part II
5.       Super 8

Legendary visual effects supervisor Douglas Turnball (2001, Blade Runner) proves with The Tree of Life that old school effects can still be the best one. Rise of the Planet of the Apes represents another huge leap forward in motion capture, and integration of digital characters with live action. Hugo’s work is subtle sometimes, but always spot on. Harry Potter’s effects are still impressive after all these year. And yes, Super 8 did have great effects – too bad the Academy missed them.