There will be no sandbox Detrius 2011 thread.

guy is daft about '09

and 2007...

Otherwise Harris' essays have been as much a pleasure as Oscarbuzz crap can be.

Thought that would get a few scoffs. I will say all the movies in my top 4 right now would've been easy #1's for the last two or three years running.

tis true for me, but I don't think any of mine except Of Gods and Men, maybe, are eligible for the Best Picture Oscar.

Then they don't exist.

Also, Certified Copy is eligible, et al.

not always sure what runs in LA

funniest top-10 critic pitch for Tree of Life, by Stephen Holden: "You couldn't accuse Terrence Malick of having a sense of humor...."

I mean, I've only been to Texas once, but Texas is funny.

Not sure anyone besides Eric H. will care, but here's the good old FCF's* top 10:

1. The Tree of Life
2. Drive
3. Melancholia
4. The Descendants
5. Warrior
6. The Interrupters
7. Moneyball
8. The Artist
9. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
10. Super 8

*I haven't even seen this guy in a while; he's probably more like an acquaintance than a friend at this point.

he really likes subtitles

FCA

Of what I've seen on the list, half really good, half mediocre. Is The Interrupters' presence a little residual Roger Ebert syndrome?

just watched Drive, about as expected, cept for the hilariously bad music.

The music roolz

yah sure

I thought I was back in fucking 1986

exactly

(speaking of the needledrops more than the Cliff Martinez score, which still wasnt as good as his Contagion stuff)

I assumed so. The Martinez score doesn't really draw attention to itself whereas the songs are incredibly self-conscious. They're a huge part of the movie though, it's pretty close to turning into a musical at times

the dumbest musical since Lost Horizon.

I thought I was back in fucking 1986

..but back then you would have just called it "European".

oh hey i saw 'shame' last night and it sucked

in all kinda of ways!

btw Albert Brooks was entertaining, but I didn't believe a thing he did or said even on a dumbass thriller level bcz, u know, Albert fucking Brooks.

Scotty boy likes Albert Nobbs.

can anyone recommend any good essays on margaret? none of the reviews i've read really satisfied me. and also, your own thoughts? i saw it y'day and was kind of blown away

Is The Interrupters' presence a little residual Roger Ebert syndrome?

Could be. Also a fair amount of Chicago pride.

Try Glenn Kenny's review, lex.

thanks! yes, that is good.

http://www.villagevoice.com/filmpoll/

Comments
Critics elaborate on their votes, favorite movie moments of the year and OK OK WE GET IT YOU LIKE MARGARET

Morbs, your taste in music couldn't be less relevant to me.

I thought this was an interesting comparison of Margaret and Bridesmaids, editing-wise:
http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2011/12/12/not-in-theaters-kenneth-lonergans-margaret

(The writer is the second-stringer at the Chicago Reader, a fairly sharp critic who apparently had a big crush on my wife years ago. She said he resembled Woody Allen.)

i'd also like to read any particularly good eviscerations of tree of life if you know any. god just remembering that film exists makes me angry.

Start with the Film Comment Cannes report by Amy Taubin.

And then get your mind right and start loving the film.

I'm off today. Should I watch Tintin or catch up on The Muppets?

I slept in the morning I was supposed to see Tintin. I'd still recommend it over the new Muppets.

Morbs, your taste in music couldn't be less relevant to me.

I know; we're past the point where you have to comfort me by saying so.

David Edelstein's half-and-half review of Tree probably approximates my own feelings.

Tintin has many more 'filmic' qualities, but tho it's uneven I think Muppets has a couple bigger laughs. I guess it depends what you want.

and I'm almost swayed by some of the praise for Young Adult...almost enough to forget the credits.

I will probably see that at some point for P Oswalt.

and I'm almost swayed by some of the praise for Young Adult...

I was too. Buuuut.... consider me a leeward wind blowing against the praise.

Hoberman's top ten.

interested, hoberman is my reliable personal opposite, ordinarily

though p reasonable in this case

VV's poll:

Best Actor: Michael Shannon
Best Actress: Anna Paquin
Supporting Actor: Albert Brooks
Supporting Actress: Jeannie Berlin

do i even bother watching melencholia at this point?

everyone seemed to love it?, like it seems as weirdly constant as anything, #3 in most polls or w/e. i thought it was p uninteresting

I think the final scene of Melancholia might be cued up on my TV for the New Years Eve countdown.

This is one of the reliably interesting elements of the VV poll:

The Passiondex™, is derived by multiplying a movie's average score by a percentage of those voters who marked it first or second or, because passion cuts two ways, declared it the year's worst movie. If the Passiondex™ is applied to the top 10 movies, Tree of Life drops to a temperate sixth place and A Separation to a reasonable 10th, with Melancholia (which garnered far more first- and second-place votes, as well as a nod for worst) the easy winner, followed by Mysteries of Lisbon, Certified Copy, Margaret, and Uncle Boonmee; if we open up the top 10 to the 20 highest vote-getters, Melancholia is displaced by The Artist (which boasts three worst votes), and Tree of Life falls to 10th as Hugo, Steve McQueen's sex-addiction drama Shame (#18), and Jean-Luc Godard's impenetrable Film Socialisme (#20) elbow their way into the top 10.

What happens when we open things up to the entire poll? The two Cannes laureates, Uncle Boonmee and Tree of Life, vanish — the latter actually outpointed by the Portuguese fado-drag opera To Die Like a Man (#27). Applying the Pash across the board yields a surprising result: Moving into first with every single one of its seven voters ranking it first or second to achieve an unprecedented perfect Passiondex™ ratio, the late Edward Yang's 1991 epic youth drama A Brighter Summer Day (#23), which had its first local theatrical run at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center in November, wins!

In 2011's echo chamber of movies celebrating movies (The Artist, Hugo, My Week with Marilyn), only one of them fully functioned as a well-tooled thrill machine on its own terms, and that was Drive. You could pick out the '80s homage stuck between your teeth, or simply savor the perfect action."—Joshua Rothkopf

Patton Oswalt kicks no ass, in particular, in Young Adult. Instead, he plays a man that's absorbed a lot of abuse.

I'm surprised Viola Davis wasn't included in that Graph of Shame starring Fassbender and Chastain.