Also ran in 2011

The films I cover here rank with best of the year according to some critical reception, but none will make my annual list of strong recommendations.  I include their rankings in 2011 Film Comment survey of critics, in addition to the Metacritic rating.

As far as exceeding my expectations, Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011, MC-68, FC#46, NFX) does rank among the most surprising films of the year.  It was so many things that do not appeal me -- a tired old sci-fi franchise turned action thriller, pure SFX popcorn blockbuster – but darned if I didn’t enjoy it, especially after watching the documentary Project Nim, whose story prefigures this film’s chimpanzee Caesar, unbelievably well-acted (or more to the point, believably so) by Andy Serkis (Gollum of LOTR) in a motion-capture suit, with an array of animatronic devices and CGI effects to show him growing up.  James Franco is an unlikely lead for such a production, but plays it pretty straight as the mild-mannered Dr. Frankenstein who unleashes the intelligence of apes while looking for a cure for Alzheimer’s, from which his father suffers.  But people are not the main point of interest in this film, with Caesar by far the most interesting character, and especially what happens when he gets sent to a primate center and becomes more like Moses.  I was more tolerant of the big showdown between the prison-break primates and the police on the Golden Gate Bridge than I am of most over-scaled action sequences, so I’ve got to give director Rupert Wyatt some credit, but most goes to the SFX wizards who brought these animals to credible life.  If you’re looking for pop culture reads on the psyche of today’s audience, suggesting which fears resonate with the viewing public, it’s interesting to note that this film ends exactly where the next one begins.

Contagion (2011, MC-70, FC#33, NFX) is pretty effective as a modern day horror film ripped from the headlines.  And a little less so as a star-studded disaster pic on the order of Towering Inferno, where each actor has to be a familiar face, because there will be no chance to get to know them as a character.  Steven Soderbergh’s career is more interesting than any individual film he has made, and he certainly keeps this one moving right along.  The spread of a swine-flu pandemic is shown from patient zero onward, and the film is at its best in lingering on everyday details that suddenly loom large with risk -- the handrail, the peanut dish.  In its own particular way, this is an informative scarefest, almost a documentary on epidemiology.  Gwyneth Paltrow as the first to go, Kate Winslet as a doctor on the front lines, Jennifer Ehle as the lab researcher in a race against time, all manage to make an impression in their few minutes on screen.  Others never emerge from stereotype, or fade from view quickly.  But if you want a film to make your skin creep, this one’s for you.  

 

A different sort of real-life horror film on the paranoia of daily existence is found in Take Shelter (2011, MC-85, FC#19, NFX), in which Jeff Nichols grounds apocalyptic fantasy in the mind of a character convincingly situated in a rural Ohio community.  After Agent Van Alden in Boardwalk Empire, I have absolutely no patience for Michael Shannon’s bug-eyed craziness, so much of the appeal of this film was lost on me.  Jessica Chastain, however, is terrific (in a different way from Tree of Life) as the wife of the man apparently slipping into the mental illness that is his genetic inheritance, by succumbing to his imagination of disaster, using money they don’t have to build a storm shelter in their back yard.  The reality of the setting, and the effectively evoked atmosphere of daylight dread, well attuned to the zeitgeist, make this a film worth watching, but frankly one I didn’t particularly connect with, despite nearly universal acclaim.  

Another acclaimed film for which I have to confess my lack of response is Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2011, MC-87, FC#2, NFX).  I showed this to the Cinema Salon film club, since I felt the big screen was the only way to give Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s films a genuine chance to reach me, given their critical acclaim.  Nope, sorry.  As with two earlier films of his, I can see some of the things for which he is praised, but I don’t feel any of them.  I’ve waited too long to write in any detail about this Thai film infused with both Buddhism and pop culture, since it has evaporated from my mind, leaving only a vague taste of enigma and attenuated wonder.

Yet another film I didn’t quite get, but one I may give another chance, is Le Quattro Volte (2011, MC-80, FC#14, NFX), which would likewise benefit from the big screen, allowing the eye to wander deep into the frame, through prolonged shots gazing on events from a distance.  The only dialogue in the film is heard indistinctly from afar.  Set in Calabria, where Pythagoras wrote of devolution through four states of being, from human to animal to plant to mineral, the film follows that transition.  We start by watching an elderly and ailing goatherd taking his flock from his village to pasture in the mountains.  He passes away, and a kid is born.  The young goat is separated from the herd, and perishes at the foot of a large tree.  The tree is pulled down to serve as the centerpiece for a village festival, and then turned into charcoal.  The film is certainly lovely to look at and even funny at times, but requires a good deal of patient attention. 

I wouldn’t rule out my ability to respond to a gay version of fleeting young romance on the order of Before Sunrise, but neither of the characters in Andrew Haigh’s Weekend (2011, MC-81, FC#30, NFX) really appealed to me, so nothing from eyes meeting across a barroom through the fairly explicit sex to the final clench on the train platform actually moved me.  And the nowheresville of Nottingham is hardly Vienna or Paris, either.  So this film lacked anything to draw me in.

Here we go again.  Drive (2011, MC-79, FC#22, NFX) is a genre exercise that I would not have given a chance, except for some highly laudatory notices, and the presence of two performers I really like, Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan.  Make that three – Albert Brooks.  And I liked them all in this movie.  And I even liked the movie, up to a point.  In the end there were just too many bits of style and content that I found offputting, the slo-mo even more than the exploding heads.  Gosling is a stunt driver who moonlights as a getaway man, his skills brilliantly delineated in an early sequence.  The ever-present toothpick in his mouth seems to be a stopper, since he emits very few words.  Doesn’t emote much either, but Gosling is a guy who can let you in without giving anything away.  Mulligan is the next-door neighbor, a waitress raising a son alone while her husband is in prison.  They meet and sparks fly – very, very subdued sparks, but lovely to watch anyway.  Then the husband gets out of prison and people start getting stabbed and shot and stomped to death, and my interest is driven away.

One last film that also ran in 2011, but that I responded to as much as any of these more critically esteemed films was Benjamin Heisenberg’s The Robber (2011, MC-64, NFX), about a marathon champion who uses his running skill to rob banks.  Gosling’s Driver is an open book compared to the protagonist of this German film, but it’s based on a true story and has the same kinetic thrust as Run, Lola, Run, working in a vein of existentialist thriller.