{"id":1961,"date":"2011-12-27T05:48:30","date_gmt":"2011-12-27T13:48:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cinemastance.com\/?p=1961"},"modified":"2011-12-27T05:48:30","modified_gmt":"2011-12-27T13:48:30","slug":"cinemastances-top-nine-films-of-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/?p=1961","title":{"rendered":"‘s Top Nine Films of 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hey kids and cowboys, it\u2019s time for the requisite annual list: Cinemastance\u2019s Top Nine Films of 2011.
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\n\u201cBeginners\u201d- \u201cBeginners\u201d is an actor\u2019s showcase. The film uses a narrative that slips and glides through time to paint us a vivid picture of the life of a sad man named Oliver (Ewan McGregor). It is the 1970s and we are shown Oliver as a boy, alone with his melancholy mother (Mary Page Keller) mixed with footage of Oliver dealing with his father, Hal\u2019s (Christopher Plummer) death in 2003. Then we skip a few months as we see Oliver meet a most perfect woman named Anna (Melanie Laurent) and experience their budding romance inter cut with Hal professing his homosexuality to his stunned son a few years prior. As complex as the device is, \u201cBeginners\u201d is effortless.
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\n\u201cThe Artist\u201d- \u201cThe Artist\u201d achieves the remarkable. It is a story relayed in a format as old as cinema itself: The silent film. Yet the film is a revelation, full of life and as refreshing as any movie you will see this year. Something special happens to the mind as you watch a silent film. You are asked for fill in the blanks, to analyze more than we are used to doing. In fact, the big, dumb summer movies of this generation, (I\u2019m talking you Michael Bay) we are more often asking you to not think at all. A silent film demands more interaction, more focus. A stronger relationship between the story and the viewer can be developed because of this. As a result, \u201cThe Artist\u201d feels like a dream you have lived through as opposed to something lifeless you merely watched.
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\n\u201cThe Descendents\u201d- This is director Alexander Payne\u2019s first film since 2004\u2019s stellar \u201cSideways\u201d. With \u201cThe Descendents\u201d Payne has made an entire movie about reaction: not just Clooney\u2019s pivotal one when he first hears that his wife will be lost or how he deals with the adultery but all of the major character\u2019s reactions to the situation. The kid\u2019s responses are the most gut wrenching while the wife\u2019s father, Grandpa Scott (Robert Forster) lashes out to the revelation. Payne has done this before: \u201cSideways\u201d best scene involves Paul Giamatti listening to Virginia Madsen wax poetic about the life inside a bottle of wine. You can see him fall in love with her. Better yet, you can feel it.
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\n\u201cRango\u201d- With films like Mouse Hunt and the Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy on his resume, Verbinski has effectively been creating live-action cartoons all of his career. Rango is a natural fit and it is pretty obvious that he relishing the visual freedoms that animation can bring. Verbinski employed a new way to pre-visualize his movie, filming the entire thing on a small sound studio with the actors actually acting out the scenes. This gives the animators a real-life, moving storyboard to draw the performances from and the results are apparent. Rango has a unique, organic quality that is filled with nuance and superb comedic timing that couldn\u2019t be achieved any other way.
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\n\u201cCrazy Stupid Love\u201d- Illustrating that love is a complex, twisted, soul-fueling mess; \u201cCrazy, Stupid, Love\u201d hits the subject from many angles. From the innocence of puppy love to the raw lust of a one night stand. A blossoming romance mixed with a deteriorating marriage. \u201cCrazy, Stupid, Love\u201d fixes itself on connections that are heartwarming, gut wrenching and, in the hands of a most magnificent cast, funny as hell.<\/p>\n

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\n\u201cHugo\u201d- Martin Scorsese is a hardcore cinephile whose knowledge regarding cinema\u2019s past is exhaustive. \u201cHugo\u201d is a film that illustrates this passion more than any other project he has made in the past. Early parts of the film are told in pantomime as Hugo watches people live their lives through faces of the grand clocks at the station. Many of the relationships features a romantic innocence that is best described as old fashioned. This is Scorsese drawing heavily from the films he loves and the affection shows.<\/p>\n

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\n\u201cHarry Potter\u201d- By splitting \u201cDeathly Hallows\u201d into two segments, Yates gets the rare opportunity of presenting a film that is nearly all climax- all action. The pace is breakneck and exhilarating. Sometimes this works to a disadvantage, skimming over moments that could have had more resonance had more time been taken. These elements were presented with great care in the novels and some of it is lost in the chaos. The Harry Potter Universe is stunning-instantly classic- and the films have done a commendable job at presenting this universe. The quality that the filmmakers involved in the project have been able to maintain throughout 8 films over a span of 11 years is worth celebrating.
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\n\u201cTucker and Dale\u201d- The film is a sort of Horror Genre spin on \u201cRosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead\u201d which took \u201cHamlet\u201d and turned it into absurdist comedy by telling the familiar tale from the angle of a couple of peripheral characters that usually roam around in the background. While \u201cTDv.E\u201d never touches on the existential elements of that play (in fact it more accurately warps into a romantic comedy), it does offer us something exciting and fresh by flipping perspectives. The result is a parody in the vein of \u201cYoung Frankenstein\u201d that riffs on the trappings of the genre while creating a stand alone film that is more like a better looking (and smarter) cousin to \u201cWrong Turn,\u201d \u201cThe Hills have Eyes\u201d or the weak remake of \u201cThe Texas Chainsaw Massacre\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Muppets\u201d- The best compliment that can be given to \u201cThe Muppets\u201d is that it feels like a Muppet movie. The cheerful songs, the witticism and beloved characters are all here in this whimsical revival. Kermit the Frog and crew are back and Jim would no doubt be proud. First time director James Bobin is to blame for capturing the marvelous madness of the Muppets. With Bobin, Segal and Stoller you see current funnymen who have been heavily influenced by the Muppets (this would explain the Dracula puppet show that closes Segal and Stoller’s “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”). As soon as they had some clout in Hollywood, they ran to this project and have given us a real, true labor of love.
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Hey kids and cowboys, it\u2019s time for the requisite annual list: Cinemastance\u2019s Top Nine Films of 2011. \u201cBeginners\u201d- \u201cBeginners\u201d is an actor\u2019s showcase. The film uses a narrative that slips and glides through time to paint us a vivid picture of the life of a sad man named Oliver (Ewan McGregor). It is the 1970s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2069,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2466,4934,8915,9468,16652,19926,20467,21657,23116,23343],"class_list":["post-1961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature-articles","tag-beginners","tag-critics-top-ten-list","tag-harry-potter","tag-hugo","tag-rango","tag-the-artist","tag-the-descendents-movie","tag-the-muppets","tag-top-ten-films-of-2011","tag-tucker-and-dale-vs-evil-movie-review"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1961\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}