2011: The Year in Film.

I contributed this following list & comment for Matt Riviera's annual Sydney Film Critics poll.

BEST RELEASED:

1. The Tree Of Life
2. Certified Copy
3. Le Quattro Volte
4. Drive
5. Melancholia
6. Another Year
7. We Need To Talk About Kevin
8. The Skin I Live In
9. Snowtown
10. 13 Assassins

BEST UNRELEASED:

1. The Turin Horse
2. Martha Marcy May Marlene
3. The Kid With A Bike
4. Mysteries of Lisbon
5. Hail
6. Terri
7. Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles
8. Policeman
9. Good Bye
10. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

An unusually strong year for Aussie theatrical releases, so I’ll rattle off some runners-up that could’ve easily made the top ten depending on mood: Take Shelter, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Meek’s Cutoff, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, This is Not a Film. Other film-related highlight: Peter Tscherkassky retrospective & masterclass at MIFF, not just for the quality of his films or his animated discussion with audience members – his work’s bracing (and fun!) engagement with the materiality of film itself felt like the most poignant eulogy for 35mm in a year rife with (often dopey) written ruminations on the transition to digital production/projection. Worst of 2011: The Iron Lady, OFLC, Jim Schembri’s Scream 4 review/spoiler gaffe.

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And a bonus: the best older films I saw for the first time in 2011:

1. The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes (Brakhage, 1971)

2. The Heiress (Wyler, 1949)

3. Cold Water (Assayas, 1994)

4. The Last Laugh (Murnau, 1924)

5. The Docks of New York (von Sternberg, 1928)

6. The Prowler (Losey, 1951)

7. Le révélateur (Garrel, 1968)

8. Light is Waiting (Robinson, 2007)

9. Landscape Suicide (Benning, 1986)

10. Sorcerer (Friedkin, 1977)

And some very honorable mentions:

Damnation (Tarr, 1987)

Cœur fidèle (Epstein, 1923)

The Cremator (Huerz, 1968)

World on a Wire (Fassbinder, 1974)

A Time to Live and a Time to Die (Hou, 1985)

A Grin Without a Cat (Marker, 1977)

Sorcerer (Friedkin, 1977)

Head (Rafelson, 1968)

Who Can Kill a Child? (Serrador, 1976)

Day of the Outlaw (De Toth, 1959)

Saló (Pasolini, 1975)

Our Beloved Month of August (Gomes, 2008)

Mes petites amoureuses (Eustache, 1974)

The GoodTimesKid (Jacobs, 2005)

City of Pirates (Ruiz, 1983)

Minnie & Moskowitz (Cassavetes, 1971)

Where is the Friend's Home? (Kiarostami, 1987)

The Mirror (Panahi, 1997)

Dying at Grace (King, 2003)

In Vanda's Room (Costa, 2000)

Remember My Name (Rudolph, 1978)

Class Relations (Straub & Huillet, 1984)

Southern Comfort (Hill, 1981)

Love in the Afternoon (Rohmer, 1972)

The Profound Desires of the Gods (Imamura, 1968)

A Tale of Cinema (Hong, 2005)

Notable shorts:

Cicada (Courtin-Wilson, 2009)

Happy-End (Tscherkassky, 1996)

Dream Work (Tscherkassky, 2002)

Instructions for a Sound & Light Machine (Tscherkassky, 2005)

Dottie Gets Spanked (Haynes, 1993)