The Best Films of 2011

Let’s talk about the films of 2011.

Below is my top ten list of the best films of the past year. What qualifies as a 2011 film? Any film that was released in South Africa in 2011, either cinematically or on DVD, or any film that rolled over from late 2010 into 2011 either cinematically or via a January DVD release. Also, any film that came out in cinemas internationally in 2010 and had DVD releases in 2011 but never got any sort of release in South Africa. It’s unsettling how many great movies never reach SA screens or stores, but I sort of understand the thinking: who’s going to watch a Thai spiritual meandering on the big screen? I have never understood why non-American reviewers use an American release table for their lists.   

Honourable mentions

Javier Bardem was quiet and sensitive in the downbeat Biutiful, a trying but rewarding Spanish film about death that could only be made by Inarritu. Juliette Binoche was luminous and vital in Kiarostami’s Certified Copy, a film that cleverly plays with itself and audiences as it complicates the relationship between its two central characters – or does it? I’m still not sure. 

David O. Russell’s The Fighter was far more than just another sports movie, with Christian Bale winning an Oscar and Amy Adams doing supporting work. I still think that the film was too condescending towards some of the female characters though. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II was the perfect finale to a great franchise, and Alan Rickman deserves special mention for what he does with the character of Snape. If Part I was all tension and build-up, Part II is a Helms Deep showdown featuring characters we’ve invested in for over ten years. The year’s best animated film is Sylvain Chomet’s heartfelt, almost dialogue free The Illusionist. It tells the story of a stage magician who is left behind by the world and its many new innovations and technologies, and his new friendship with a young woman who finds herself traveling along with him. It’s sad and beautifully animated – hand drawn.

The funniest film of the year was Brit Armando Iannucci’s In the Loop, a rollercoaster political satire of great sophistication. The British had a considerable Oscar presence in February, with Tom Hooper’s  delightful The King’s Speech taking Best Picture and Director, as well as Best Actor for Colin Firth. It’s the kind of film that the Brits make best: a character-focused period drama with a sure positive payoff.

I have fallen in love with South Korean cinema, and Boon Jong-ho’s Mother is one of the best, a gripping thriller about a mother (never named in the film) driven to prove her mentally challenged son’s innocence as he is arrested for the brutal murder of a young girl. The animated titular lizard of Rango starred in the year’s second-best animated feature; any film that so closely studies the conventions of the western and has time to reference Apocalypse Now and Hunter S. Thompson is worth the effort. Another type of animation featured in the rousing Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a better-than-it-should-have-been prequel to one of the most famous science fiction films. It features Andy Serkis as lead primate Caesar, and the great John Lithgow as a father struggling with Alzheimer's while his scientist son (James Franco) looks for a cure.

Finally, The Social Network is a near great film – a pity that the final third runs out of steam as it fails to maintain the energy that the first two thirds of the film showed. Fincher’s framing is, as always, worth seeing in itself. 

I do not have a “worst of” list, but surely the most disappointing film of 2011 considering the talent involved is Joe Wright’s Hanna, aka The Bourne Bore, aka I Was a Teenage Killer And Also I Can’t Blink.

And now, the best films of 2011 – that is, the best films I saw in 2011 that coexist on a list where their positions might change in a day or a year from now (with the exception of the top three, which will in all probability stay the top three in that specific order). The list below proves again, and it should come as no surprise, that the most fascinating films happen when the psychology and philosophy of characters and viewers are engaged.  Keep in mind that it is impossible to see every single film, and I have missed many, including such potential greats as Incendies and In a Better World. So be it.

          

10. CARLOS 

Edgar Ramirez is the star of Olivier Assayas’ film about the infamous international terrorist. The five-hour plus film does not glamourise its subject, nor does it pander to action or thriller conventions. 

9. SKOONHEID 

The best South African film in years, Oliver Hermanus’ drama about desire and repression is unsettling and thought provoking. I know of many people who do not like the film at all; I have a suspicion it’s more about these peoples’ feelings towards the film’s content than the film itself. Seek it out, but not for sensitive viewers.

8. THE CITY OF LIFE AND DEATH

Harrowing Chinese anti-war film about the Rape of Nanking; the black-and-white imagery is uncompromising, and the film not easily shaken. Again, not for sensitive viewers, but as with Skoonheid, nothing is sensationalised.   

7. DRIVE

A smooth, meticulous action thriller featuring the return of the mythological hero (Ryan Gosling). As usual, the hero’s trouble begins when he pursues a relationship with (literally) the girl next door (Carey Mulligan). One of the most beautifully shot films of the year, and with a fitting soundtrack. This bodes well for director Nicholas Windig Refn. The film's most memorable asset is Albert Brooks as the cold blooded Rose. May the Oscar come his way.

6. BLACK SWAN

Natalie Portman received a well-deserved Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of the steadily-losing-her-mind ballerina. This nightmarish and claustrophobic thriller demonstrates that Darren Aronofsky remains one of the most exciting contemporary American filmmakers.

5. OF GODS AND MEN

Xavier Beauvois’ Cannes favourite is a moving, human tale of ethics, religion and politics set in an increasingly unstable Algeria in the 1990s. Some have criticised the film for what the characters do towards the end, but to do that denies the quiet force of one of the most visually impressive films of 2011. It is a film to revisit and cherish.

4. DOGTOOTH

Greek filmmaker Giorgios Lanthimos has made, I think, the definitive dysfunctional family drama. The less you know about the film beforehand the better, and with its themes of incest and the gross manipulation of others, it makes for selective viewing. Of all the films on my list, this one is the least likely to work for anyone. Watch at own risk. Whether you adore or detest it, you won't be able to forget it.

3. UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES

I gave Uncle Boonmee a negative review earlier this year, and the joke is on me, the egg on my face: it is, in fact, a masterpiece. It was my own lack of understanding and, I suppose, my mood at the time of the original viewing that lead to my initial negative write-up. I’m not going to re-review the film, or edit my original review, so I’ll say it here: I was wrong, and now I can see. Uncle Boonmee is deeply spiritual (mortality, reincarnation, the presence of the dead among the living) and as deeply concerned with an increasingly materialistic Thai society in general. From now on, I’m rooting for Team Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

2. TRUE GRIT

Can the Coen brothers do no wrong? No Country for Old Men, Burn After Reading (which gets even better the more you watch it), the existential hilarity of A Serious Man, and now this gripping remake of a John Wayne original. One the one hand True Grit is a well-crafted western with The Dude himself, Jeff Bridges, proving an unconventional and flawed heroic figure for young Hailee Steinnfeld’s spunky protagonist. On the other, True Grit is a typically Coen film in terms of quirkiness, characterisation and framing, which results in a genre film littered with moments of death and hilarity. It happens to have my favourite opening and closing scenes of all films on this list.

1. TREE OF LIFE 

Malick’s autobiographical-cosmological family drama is the most divisive film since Antichrist. Either people loved it, and loved it deeply, or they hated it, and hated it with much passion. I’m not going into the debate here except for saying that I understand where and how the film loses so many people, and that they all have my sympathy. An ambitious, life-affirming masterpiece by a master filmmaker. 

             

Getting the shot

Here’s a story worth telling told in an uninspired, shallow way. The Bang Bang Club was a group of photographers active in South Africa when the country was on the apparent verge of civil war as it neared its first democratic elections in 1994. The film establishes the major political opponents as supporters of the African National Congress (ANC, currently the dominant political power in South Africa) or the Inkhata Freedom Party (IFP, a mere shadow of its former self), which had some dealings with the then dominant white minority government.

The photographers are there to capture the action, by which I mean murders and slayings. They are Greg Marinovich (Ryan Phillipe), who is established early on as the film’s main protagonist; Ken Oosterbroek (Frank Rautenbach); Joao Silva (Neels van Jaarsveld); and Kevin Carter (Taylor Kitsch), who is high on drugs nearly all the time. An unofficial member is Robin Comley (Malin Ackermann), who does the layout for “The Star” newspaper where the Club members mostly publish their pictures – unless it’s too graphic, in which case they’re sent to AP or Reuters.

Between the incessant “howzits!” and forced exclamations of “bru!”, The Bang Bang Club fails to characterise its characters. They have names and identifiable traits – Carter is the junkie, Silva the one with the accent, etc – but never register as characters. Poor Ackermann gets the worst deal: Comley is so underwritten that the character’s only function in the film is engage in a flimsy romance with Marinovich. Whether this happened in actuality or not is irrelevant; a film must succeed in making its events convincing, and this one fails in many respects. In the end, Comley is simply the Woman.

It doesn’t help that the dialogue is often trite. After everything he’s seen – the film has many images of violence, mayhem and brutality – Marinovich is reduced to saying “I hate them fucking all!” The film often reduces potentially powerful moments to inane exclamations. Emotionally, the film falls flat, even in its most challenging scenes, such as Carter getting the infamous shot of the dying Sudanese girl, a vulture just a few feet away. If we had any sort of connection with Carter, the eventual fallout of the picture would matter but Kitsch’s performance is so one-note any impact gets lost.

Director Steven Silver and his team deserve praise for reconstructing the period convincingly, and making the scenes of political confrontation quite kinetic. The film exhibits a high level of technical proficiency. But the film follows a tiring pattern: shooting township violence, then celebrations in a club/pub/bar, then some insufficient soul searching; repeat. Overall, in terms of characterisation, plotting and writing, The Bang Bang Club is a shamefully superficial film, and a wasted opportunity indeed.

Of course they accept.

 

The fourth Mission: Impossible film opens with franchise hero Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) imprisoned in Russia. Aided in his escape by IMF members Jane (Paula Patton), tech wiz Benji (Simon Pegg) and newly added analyst Brandt (Jeremy Renner), the team soon finds itself disavowed by the American government under the so-called 'ghost protocol'. Framed for a bombing they had no part in, they are hunted by authorities while trying to keep the world a safer, terrorism-free place.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol is lightning paced and action driven entertainment. Ethan Hunt’s travails feature a different director for each entry; the franchise opened with De Palma, before moving on to the sheer spectacle of John Woo and the more restrained, personalised story in JJ Abrams’ third entry. Now Pixar stalwart Brad Bird makes Ghost Protocol into a clever, often humourous affair featuring some of the best action sequences of the series. Much has already been said about the Burj Khalifa scenes, where Cruise scales incredible heights to prevent a considerable crisis (the Burj tower is the world’s tallest building). I must admit, these scenes are jaw dropping, though I prefer the spy-based trickery that follows in the scenes immediately after. In the end, Bird also manages some sensible continuity linking the previous film with the fourth.

Clearly, Ghost Protocol is a tense, exciting affair. It is all the more unfortunate, then, that the film lacks a central, crucial element that any action movie worth its sweat cannot do without: a strong villain. Even the weakest Brosnan Bond (The World is Not Enough) had one. Agreed, there is a character in the film, Hendricks (Michael Nyqvist), who is out to start a nuclear war. He is supposed to be the bad guy, but Hendricks is so thinly drawn, so Cold War cliché that the film might as well have been about the IMF battling pre-programmed war drones intent on starting a nuclear war. Hendricks becomes a weightless afterthought, which unfortunately reinforces the idea that the film exists to showcase a series of impressive stunts and effects. Consider Philip Seymour Hoffman’s villainous Owen Davian in the third Mission: Impossible: convincingly threatening, malevolent and cruel, at least when compared to the presence-less Hendricks.

All in all, Ghost Protocol is another steadfast franchise entry, but it’s not quite the hyperbole framed action event some have claimed it to be. And in no way is it a threat to Craig-era Bond. When’s the last time you watched Casino Royale?

Don't call him Jackal

One of my favourite late 1990s action movie surprises was the unassuming Aidan Quinn starring The Assignment, about what happens to the man recruited to act as infamous terrorist Carlos the Jackal’s double. It was a well-made, suspenseful feature that shrouded the terrorist in an air of mystery. Now, Carlos is Olivier Assayas’s multilingual, globe-spanning fictionalised history of Ilich “Carlos” Sanchez, the man who would in the 1970s and 1980s become one the world’s most wanted terrorists. There’s a lot of story to tell, and Assayas retains the integrity of Carlos’s story be telling it over a five hour experience – it was shown on French television as a mini-series before the footage was re-edited into a reportedly gripping two and a half hour movie. I cannot imagine watching Carlos in any other form than its mini-series; I have no idea what one would leave out during editing.

When the story begins, Carlos (Edgar Ramirez) is already a champion for his cause, the liberation of Palestine, and has no problem resorting to bombings and attacks to secure the inviolability of the Palestine state. We see Carlos the family man as well as Carlos the terrorist mastermind, and the film has many characters – all introduced by their name and title for the viewer’s convenience – moving in and out of the story to create a dense narrative; some characters never return while certain others become more prominent. Here, Carlos is also painted as a heedless womaniser, and it becomes clear that he surrounded himself with a string of submissive women who would tolerate much to be in some kind of relationship (mostly sexual) with their Marxist leader.

In a way the second part of Carlos tells of his fall and eventual re-establishing in the world of idealised violence and revolution, while the third part brings the story to an end. Part II spends nearly an hour on the film’s centrepiece: the OPEC raid, a tense, well filmed hostage situation that never becomes “action” and is spellbinding. Part III shows the inevitable: how in terrorism, loyalty is always contingent on political climate, and that Carlos’s vanity as celebrity freedom fighter was as much a driving force for his actions as “Das Kapital”.

Assayas is a sometimes uneven filmmaker – I was barely able to get through Boarding Gate – but here he is a master of his subject. Much of what we see are meetings and discussions, yet Carlos is never boring, always moving forward. Assayas shows restraint in the action oriented parts by often only showing the lead-up and aftermath of an attack, with news broadcasts to fill in details. But the anchor of the film is Edgar Ramirez, who as Carlos creates a believable fictionalised persona of the man, aging twenty years through the course of the film and remains distinctly Carlos. It is one of the best performances in recent memory, with Ramirez never resorting to De Niro-like mumbling or Pacino-esque wild haired shouting.

Carlos is very long but very rewarding. Those who liked Munich would do well to seek it out.

Rabbit from a hat

With The Triplets of Belleville, Sylvain Chomet confirmed his position as a master storyteller in the medium of animation. His animation is distinct and incredibly charming regardless of the appearance of his subjects, who are far from traditional family film heroes. In Chomet’s The Illusionist, that would be Tatischeff, a trickster of advanced age who finds that 1950s Europe has lost its taste for people who pull rabbits out of hats. The film shows us the empty glare of television screens in a new Television Store, and it becomes clear that the film is mourning change as a process that often does away newly classified redundancies cold bloodedly.

Tatischeff fails to pull in audiences, even when he performs after the boy band Billy Boy and the Britoons who had just played to a packed audience of screaming young girls. Eventually the old master, accompanied by his finger biting white rabbit, ends up on the coast of Scotland. Performing in a pub, his path crosses that of a young girl who sees in him… what? A guardian, a provider; a way to a better life. She does not know that his celebrity does not extend beyond the walls of the pub. There’s a sense of measured whimsy in the proceedings thus far, but when the illusionist and his new companion settle for a bit in Edinburgh, The Illusionist becomes an elegiac affair in a way that is in some way unsurprising and yet deeply moving. I dare not discuss what happens in Edinburgh for risk of spoiling it, but I can say everything happens in perfectly constructed moments, and not as banal events.

Indeed, The Illusionist is perfectly constructed animation. Chomet is a great director, and his mise-en-scene invokes a desire to watch the film over and over. He plays with the lines of window frames and uses space to help define the characters that inhabit it. There is an astonishing, brief shot towards the end of the film of an open window allowing the wind to blow open a book on a table, and the book’s shadow magnifies the action on the kitchen wall. In another moment, the young girl is in their hotel room; we are looking in from the outside, through the window, and we notice the reflection of two birds flying off in the distance. The shot works thematically and as a stunning indication that the world of The Illusionist is alive beyond simply what we see of its characters.

The Illusionist is an animated film for those who don’t like animation, an affecting story of age, expiry and commodity relations. Chomet adapted an original screenplay by the famous French comedian Jacques Tati for the film, who himself may have struggled with the possibility of being redundant in a changing world, like
Tatischeff, even to those to whom he matters most.

The American Way

Joe Johnston’s superhero movie is another Avengers prequel, much like Iron Man, Incredible Hulk and Thor. Each of these movies promises a minor story in preparation for a major payoff in 2012 when Joss Whedon’s fantasy hits the screens. My excitement for The Avengers is close to zero, but Captain America is rather entertaining, so much so I’d prefer to rewatch its wartime heroics over some Asgardian adventures.

Don’t let the title put you off. Yes, it has the clear ring of propaganda, but contextually it makes sense; the character of Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) comes from a time where it was easy to differentiate between good and evil (at least cinematically) and where the name “America” brought cheers instead of jeers. Rogers is a scrawny little young man for whom there is no greater goal in life than to enlist in the army to face the Germans as World War II continues. Rogers is told repeatedly that he doesn’t make the cut to enlist, but when a scientist, Dr Erskine (Stanley Tucci) observes his patriotic fervour, he convinces Colonel Philips (Tommy Lee Jones) to introduce Rogers to a top secret military program that aims to produce nothing less than American supersoldiers.

In short, Rogers becomes a supersoldier but things go wrong quickly after, which leaves only Rogers to battle his arch nemesis the Red Skull (Hugo Weaving) while courting the British Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) - but not before selling some war bonds first.

Thematically and visually, Captain America is an old school affair. Johnston cut his teeth on the lovely Rocketeer in the 1990s, and retains much of that bygone era charm that characterised the latter film. Evans makes for a convincing superhero, much more so than in the Fantastic Four movies, while Tommy Lee Jones gets the movies best lines. Incidentally, that is also the film’s Achilles heel: the dialogue is often contrived. For example, if one character mentions how much he dislikes potatoes, you can bet your bottom dollar that later in the film, another character will remark on the other character’s dislike of potatoes. Repeat seven, eight times, and it gets annoying.

The film does have a strong villain, as Weaving presents a Red Skull that is deluded and completely convinced of his 'vision'. He’s a comic book villain, for certain, but one of the better ones. And haven’t the Nazi’s always provided the best bad guy fodder for American filmmaking?

Stand by me: Abrams, childhood and creatures

There was a time that M. Night Shyamalan was compared to Hitchcock, suggesting that the former has the latter’s flair for suspense. While talk has come to an end – The Happening happily deflated that comparison once and for all – Lost and Alias creator JJ Abrams is now being compared to Spielberg, all on the basis of his latest directorial effort Super 8. The film is a clear homage to one of the greatest American filmmakers of the past 35 years. Homage is one thing; a straight comparison between two filmmakers is another. While Abrams knows the content and some of the style that 1980s Spielberg exhibited, he does not achieve the balancing act that Spielberg made to look so effortless.

Spielberg regularly deals with family issues against a fantastical backdrop – the father who is made to look batty in Close Encounters, the sanctity of family in E.T., even the attempts at familial integration in War of the Worlds. This is the balancing act: the family issues and the fantastical (usually aliens) exist, in Spielberg’s universe, in perfect tandem. Abrams doesn’t quite get the balance right.

Set in 1980s middle class America, Super 8 introduces a group of young friends who spend some of their time making a zombie movie for a low-budget film festival. They’re an interesting group, as clearly differentiated as individuals as the guys from The Goonies. One night during the shoot, they witness – and are almost killed in – a train accident at their local railway station. One of the kids, the movie’s central protagonist Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney), also sees something else: there was something in one of the carts, and it has escaped. Soon after, the US military shows up, and not long after that, the dogs seem to disappear from the town. What is the mystery of whatever was in the train, and what business is of the military?

Much like E.T., Super 8 shows us a coming of age story where adults, particularly those in positions of authority, cannot be trusted, and where it’s up to the youth to save the day. It is the children who are inquisitive and interested; the adults have their own problems, and who believes kids’ stories anyway? The film has a superb first act, which sets up the characters, their relationships and their personal challenges in an involving and affecting manner. In this and in the second act, where the mystery continues to deepen, young love burgeons between the debris. There are two scenes connected by their ‘zombie’ content that are emotionally unexpectedly strong, both featuring Joel Courtney and Elle Fanning (as Alice).

But in the third act, Abrams doesn’t keep things together as all sorts of tensions and conflicts come to a head. There is much bombast and resolution and definitely too much of an E.T. echo to be emotionally and narratively authentic in its own right. It’s a pity that while so much of Super 8 works, it goes for the familiar easy way out when it should be pushing the envelope.

Soaring Roman adventure

Kevin Macdonald is a talented, versatile filmmaker. Debuting with the awe-inspiring tale of survival in Touching the Void and following that up with the political thriller The Last King of Scotland, he goes for something completely unexpected: a conventional, action driven quest story. I must admit even I was surprised that The Eagle worked out so well.

During the Roman conquests, there was one area that Emperor Hadrian didn’t manage to tame and subdue: the north of the area now known in the UK as Scotland. To keep the northeners out of his area and to protect his people from the northerners, Hadrian commanded the construction of a massive wall between the north and the rest of his world. It is in the north, though, that the legendary tribute of the Roman Empire, the golden Eagle, was surrendered by a cold, hungry and scared Ninth Legion – hence the references to the Eagle of the Ninth – to history.

Flash forward a few years, and strapping lad Marcus (Channing Tatum) has so successfully climbed the ranks of the Roman army that he soon commands his own fort. Not long after his arrival, his bravery puts him in a precarious situation and he ends up living with his uncle (Donald Sutherland) and with a slave, Esca (Jamie Bell) to his name. Soon adventure by way of road movie conventions unfolds as the search for the Eagle starts.

With stunning Scottish scenery and a surprisingly dapper performance by Tatum, The Eagle recreates a fascinating period from Roman history mixed in with historical legend. It uses the class tension between Marcus and Esca to strong, if expected, dramatic effect and doesn’t flinch from on-screen brutality. It’s a perfect companion piece to Neil Marshall’s more kinetic Centurion with Michael Fassbender. Spectacle is important for both films, but The Eagle is the more measured, character driven film.

After a year of battling robots, superheroes, indulgent slow motion and accelerated fast motion across the action and adventure genres, The Eagle demonstrates how, sometimes, a simple story well told can be unexpectedly gratifying. It’s a genre film through and through, evoking themes of honour, integrity, duty and responsibility, and without the excesses of Rome.

Swords, vampires, tedium

“Blood” is not the name of the last vampire. I guess the title suggests that blood is central to being the last vampire, since you’d have quite a harvest all to yourself. Or, that there is much blood in the film, even if it is the worst CGI blood I’ve ever seen.

The badly rendered blood is not the film’s worst effect, though. That would be the transformed vampire-as-plush-toy-demon, an ugly computer image that jerkily leaps through the air and sprouts wings like a misguided Pokemon from the mid 1990s.

Blood: The Last Vampire is a live-action adaptation of the popular same-named anime from just over a decade ago. This version suffers from being too faithful to its source material. Instead of developing its characters into something resembling humans, they remain as utterly one-dimensional as they were in animated form in 2000. It’s as if the director, Chris Nahon, knows how anime works but cannot adapt its strengths into a (barely) feature length live-action narrative. Why, pray tell, is the story (again) set in the 1970s? And why tell exactly the same story, without anything fresh or provocative to sweeten the deal?

Saya (Gianna) is a vampire with a conscience who hunts down other vampires. She collaborates with the Council, most prominently represented by Harrison (Liam Cunningham, who also has bills to pay). Council agents wear hats and coats and look secretive. They are a covert organisation aimed at eradicating vampires from the planet, and when the movie begins, the main vampire – the female Onigen (Koyuki) – is in 1970s Tokyo. Some of her minions have infiltrated a local American army base looking for food and fun, and this is where Saya enters as the new girl in class who quickly reveals herself to be the new girl with a sword and martial arts moves. She befriends a near victim, Alice (Alison Miller) whose father runs the army base, but anything that requires a pause in the bloodshed is quickly rushed through so as to get to the next beheading/impaling/plush toy bat transformation.

Blood: The Last Vampire is a bad martial arts movie, a terrible adaptation and an awful horror.

Invasion

 

One of the first major events in the second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1941) was Japan’s conquering of the Chinese capital city of Nanjing. For the Chinese and their associates, the event started a new period of suffering, abuse and death. So brutal was the Japanese treatment of the Chinese soldiers and civilians that history speaks of the “Rape of Nanking”. Hundreds of thousands lost their lives; tens of thousands were raped.

Lu Chuan’s City of Life and Death, in stark black-and-white, shows the atrocities of this particular part of the Sino-Japanese war while looking for the human stories contained within. This is how the film moves from episode to episode without settling on a single main protagonist, unless you count the Japanese soldier Kadokawa (Hideo Nakaizumi). The film details Kadokawa’s start as a young soldier on whom the war takes a definite toll as it continues and he remains in Nanking.

We also meet Mr and Mrs Tang (Wei Fan and Lan Qin), who work in the Chinese refugee camp with the famous German Johan Rabe (John Paisley), as well as the beautiful Miss Jiang (Yiyan Jian). Some characters remain nameless, but feature repeatedly in the film. One such face belongs to a young boy, who reminds one of the child witness in Elim Klimov’s superlative anti-war movie Come and See and the red-clad young girl in Schindler’s List.

Chuan walks a fine line between showing and exploiting. He shows restraint when other filmmakers would be sentimental and heavy handed; the film is far removed from the sentimentalised, often melodramatic Taeguki (Je-gyu Kang, Korea) and Assembly (Xiaogang Feng, China), though it too owes something to Saving Private Ryan in its opening scenes of all out warfare. Many of its images seem to come from another world and seared into the eye: a couple of naked dead women carted away on a wheelbarrow; hundreds of Chinese soldiers executed en masse; an open window leads to an unexpected death. But Chuan never lingers and never romanticises.

Nor is Chuan a director with documentarian delusions. He is not there to tell any “true” story, much as it is based on actual documented events. He has an eye for angle and spatial arrangement, and a sure command of the close-up, a shot that is too often exploited for cheap thrills by other filmmakers. Here, a prolonged close-up demonstrates shock and grief; another, complete devotion to the Japanese cause.

City of Life and Death is harrowing viewing, expertly made. Sensitive viewers should steer clear. It is a powerful anti-war statement, graphically demonstrating how war dehumanises its participants, and is especially worth seeking out as Zhang Yimou’s award-seeking The Flowers of War (featuring Christian Bale, no less) prepares for global release in 2012.

Concrete Jungle

Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive is a brilliant film. It is self-aware, highly cinematic and strangely involving for a film that downplays emotion in favour of aesthetics. The Driver (Ryan Gosling), we are told, just walked into a Los Angeles auto repair shop one day and started working there. He has no history, and the character is more mythological and iconic than he is recognisably human – except when it comes down to basic drives such as survival and vengeance. The Driver roams the street of Los Angeles like he’s charting a known labyrinth that only he knows in a world defined by concrete, lights and cheap diners.

He is a part-time stuntman, auto repair worker and part-time criminal cohort. People contact him to pick them up at certain places and drop them off at others; he is the central force in the thinking person’s The Transporter. His boss at the repair shop is Shannon (Bryan Cranston), who acts as a liaison of sorts between his favourite (only?) employee and Rose (Albert Brooks), a seriously shady figure whose partner, Nino (Ron Perlman), is more overt about his underground activities.

There’s also Irene (Carey Mulligan), who lives with her son Benicio (Kaden Leos) in the same apartment complex as the Driver. The three of them warm up towards one another, but when Irene’s husband is released from prison, events and characters take a dark turn – but not necessarily as one might expect.

As can be seen above, Drive boasts a strong cast, Brooks in particular. There’s brief but striking appearance by Christina Hendricks. Gosling’s hero figure is soft spoken and restrained, at least at first, a modern day Man With No Name who listens in on police radio transmissions when doing his job.

The film is violent, and the brutality and gore catches you off guard. In that sense, it’s violent in the same way as A History of Violence, which also used explicit violence to root its content in some sort of reality or authenticity. The film has a stunning sound track, one that is functional and not simply audio window dressing. The music frames Drive as ominous from the start, and certain songs are cleverly used to comment on and emphasise certain events. Refn’s choice of music is as premeditated as his images. Because most of all, Drive is a richly visual film that reminded me a bit of De Palma’s work. The film has a 1980s feel about it, though it’s clearly set in contemporary times. The look, the appearance of the characters – the Driver almost always wears the same white jacket with a yellow scorpion on its back, even when it gets dirty or bloody – the music, limited dialogue and editing speak to a visual sensibility one does not see often.

Drive is stylish, economic and unconventional filmmaking. It’s a violent thriller that knows itself (young Benicio at one stage talks about how easily one can identify a story’s villain) and plays with audience reactions as much as character reactions (see the elevator scene in particular, as well as when the Driver stumbles upon another character in dire straits in a parking garage).

Drive cements Refn’s reputation as another Danish filmmaker willing to pull a rabbit out of a hat now and again by refusing to strictly adhere to genre conventions. Yes, story wise the film paints in broad strokes, but the images are what sets the film apart, not the story. Refn’s previous film, the Viking neo-epic Valhalla Rising, achieved something similar, and here he’s told another story of a character who goes to hell.

Falling out of love

I'm trying to catch up with some of the more acclaimed movies I missed throughout the year, leading me to the Oscar nominated Blue Valentine, a moving drama about marital disintegration directed by Derek Cianfrance. Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams) meet almost by accident; he's a mover helping an old man settle into his new room at an old age home, while she's there visiting her grandmother. We learn enough about the characters to know that Cindy comes with considerable baggage and may attempting to consciously not allow the past to repeat itself. Dean's needs are, at least on the surface, simple; he likes this blonde, lively girl, and she exhibits some cute dance moves. All of this we learn in flashback as Cianfrance creates a stark contrast between the initial romance of the couple's past and the couple in their current state, where their daughter Frankie is all that seems to keep them together. 

Blue Valentine has at its center a towering performance by Williams (so memorable in "Brokeback Mountain") and a lesser, yet compelling one from Gosling. While the latter seems to inhabit his sunglasses and jowls too much at times to convince as an inwardly broken man, Williams' Cindy is a character defined from within, not without. This film could not have succeeded with lesser actors attempting to breathe life into the dialogue. 

The greatest compliment I can pay the film is to call it a near great movie. There are some structural issues and some content issues; the bit with Cindy's previous boyfriend seems rather redundant, in spite of its clear payoff. There are good scenes, like the opening scenes setting the tone for what is to follow, and lesser scenes, such as Dean bursting in on Cindy at work and letting things get out of hand. With some trimming, Blue Valentine would've been an improved film. As it is, it's a vivid illustration of love found and lost altogether pointing out a larger problem in defining what people might mean when referring to 'love'. As a film, it's a somber antidote to continuous Hollywood romantic mythmaking.

Note: There was some controversy upon the film's initial release in the United States about it's so-called "explicit content". What the film shows is how sex is about power as much as pleasure, and it's nowhere near as graphic as, for example, Lust, Caution. It is unfortunate that some viewers may be put off by the film's sexualised aura; at the same time, those looking for soft core fun should steer clear.        

You missed the heart

Joe Wright made a prestigious debut with Pride and Prejudice a few years ago, and followed that success with the McEwan-adaptation Atonement. Then came The Soloist, which no-one seemed to care for (I still haven't seen it). Breaking free from (melo)drama, Wright recently reached into genre filmmaking, delivering the wannabe art house actioner Hanna. It may be the most ridiculous, frustrating action film you'll see all year, and marks a low point for Wright. 

The pitch is simple and effective: German spy Erik (Eric Bana) raised his daughter Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) away from civilisation and technology in a cabin in the woods near Finland. She knows little of emotion but much about killing, geography and programmed deception. Ronan plays her like the souped-up version of the robotic Vicky in the 1980s sitcom "Small Wonder". Hanna is a one-adolescent killing machine, trained to murder one person in specific: Marissa (Cate Blanchett, putting in a performance reminiscent of Javier Bardem's hair in "No Country for Old Men" and the caricature she played in "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull"). Years earlier, Marissa knew Erik and then Things Went Wrong. Hanna must fix it while her father tends to business from his own side.

Hannah is a tonally confused bore, with some of the worst action scenes I've seen in a while. Wright can't seem to control his camera and overdoes it with the expressive use of the apparatus: where Hanna is panicking and in danger, the camera twirls around her body and then twirls around her face a well. The non-stop movement exhibits the lack of actual drama that characterises the entire film. Soldiers storm after her; she evades them, and we hear them grumble, "Where is she?" and "Where did she go?" What is this, a Roger Moore Bond movie? Through a serious of mind boggling coincidences Hanna makes it to where she needs to get, and I wondered how many times sheer coincidence can save a life or propel a movie forward. 

And then there are the badly written secondary characters, a family Hanna meets and utilises in her favour headed by Olivia Williams and Jason Flemyng. I guess these characters are supposed to show some measure of the family life Hanna never experienced, at least for a moment, but they are so removed from the universe the film inhabits that it's as if they walked in from a vacation movie starring Chevy Chase.  

Earlier this year the Sylvester Stallone spectacle The Expendables at least knew what it was: a cheesy 1980s style action movie. Hanna seems to be under the impression that it's Action as Art and collapses under its own pretense, devoid of emotion or, to be honest, good dialogue. Considering the talent involved in front of the camera and behind the scenes, the film is a great disappointment. Here's hoping that Wright returns to form with his return to literature as he adapts Anna Karenina for possible release in late 2012.