what are your 3 favorite movies of 2011 so far?

Let's have at it.

The Tree of Life
Beginners
Source Code

(not too eventful so far.)

I know I've been the theater at least once this year, but I can't remember what it was for. Must've been a great film, right?

Even more than usual, this is going to be an insanely backloaded year, with most of the noteworthy stuff coming in the last three months, even if I'm not sure if anything will unseat Malick for me.

xpost A few people say that every year. Responses are preferred from those who have seen at least 3 movies. thank you.

The Tree Of Life
Bridesmaids
Thor

So that's fully 3/4 of the 2011 releases I've seen, there. And, yeah, TTOL is first by a landslide. I'm sure it'll be the best movie I see from this year.

I need to see more movies..

The Future
Hobo With A Shotgun
Super 8

Bridesmaids is probably fourth. It was very funny but really could have used a few rewrites to tighten up/structure the thing a bit.

re: The Future, really stoked to see that. I find it amusing that Miranda July and her husband seem to have both made movies about grief that feature animal/human communication.

Super 8
X-Men: First Class

and that's all i've seen

Rango
Limitless
Bridesmaids

Rango
Le Quattro Volte
Tree of Life

also Super 8 was pretty good, Hangover 2 made me laugh, missed Beginners

any more??

lol @ how shitty everyone's favs were

- transformers

g2g

The Tree of Life
Super 8
Bridemaids i guess

The Tree of Life
Certified Copy
spot reserved for Final Destination 5

Bridesmaids
Super 8
tbd

I don't see a lot of new releases so here are the three I've enjoyed most that I first saw in 2011

Super
Role Models
Bridesmaids

(I thought Rango was -terrible-, oh god)

(note that is Super with Rainn Wilson, not Super 8, which I haven't yet had a chance to see.)

Tree of Life
Certified Copy
Hanna

when was certified copy released in the uk? i only saw it on dvd this year, seemed to get a stinkyish reception here, but i thought it was p amazing

13 assassins
cave of forgotten dreams
black swan

also enjoyed: tree of life (tho i think it's easily the weakest of malick's 3 'comeback' movies), true grit, potiche, you will meet a tall dark stranger

looking forward to: new films by bela tarr and the dardennes, the dvd release of skolimowski's deep end

the dvd release of skolimowski's deep end

^is this only r2 do u know?

13 assassins
cave of forgotten dreams
tree of life

johnny, its a bfi release, and im guessing they only have region 2 rights, but i dunno

-Tree of Life
-Super 8
-Insidious (laugh all you want, it's the best mainstream horror flick i've seen in years)

13 assassins...is all i have seen.

did not know there was nu bela tarr on the way.

i may have seen 0 new movies this year

Bobby Fischer Against the World
Phil Ochs: There but for Fortune
Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff

The second two are technically 2010, but they didn't play here till this year.

That Jack Cardiff doc is really good. Dude was incredibly well-preserved for his age

some combination of

Film Socialisme
Certified Copy
Petition (a Chinese doc)
Of Gods and Men
Meek's Cutoff
Leap Year (a sort of Mexican Jeanne Dielman w/ watersports)
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Tree of Life
Certified Copy (though actually sort of thought it was agonizing to sit through, but fun to think about)
The Trip (i really enjoyed this, though I might feel that the ending is alarmingly reductive.)

Certified Copy
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

bridesmaids
the woodmans
idk

i may have seen 0 new movies this year

― bros -izing bros (k3vin k.), Tuesday, July 19, 2011 4:44 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

so do donna rouge & I have to point out that The Tree of Life is full of sap?

oooooh actualyl replace The Trip with Cave of Forgotten Dreams. i should really keep some sort of journal of what I've seen. I liked Meek's Cutoff while watching it but it didnt really stick with me at all.

Treating release dates a little arbitrarily:

Aurora
El Sicario Room 164
Uncle Boonmee

Disorder
Hospitalité
The Observers
Curling
Petition

The Tree of Life
Submarine
The Portuguese Nun

Need to see Treacle Jr, Bal and Countdown to Zero.

anyone watched 3 Backyards? Armond loves it.

bal seemed unambitious & maybe mis-designed to me, davek, but i'd be curious to know what you think if you make it. countdown to zero is one of those films i feel like i should-have-seen, which is part of its territory i guess - i hear it was great, though.

3 Backyards played in NY for maybe a week.

think the transatlantic division in what's distro'd is reflected in all of the above, but i think i felt strongly enough about archipelago, le quattro volte & the portuguese nun to rep for them, & maybe slightly less strongly for of gods & men & a separation, the latter which i couldn't fault & which was a triumph but which you know how do you 'enjoy' &c. i forget what else has come out/when toy story iii was etc.

still worst year ever

All quite good to excellent:

Attack the Block
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Certified Copy
City of Life and Death
Essential Killing (VOD only, so far)
Extraordinary Stories
Film Socialisme
The Inheritors
The Interrupters
Jane Eyre
Johnny Mad Dog
Leap Year
Littlerock
Lost Bohemia
Meek's Cutoff
Mysteries of Lisbon
Nostalgia For the Light
Of Gods and Men
The Optimists
Petition
Poetry
The Sky Turns
Source Code
Tabloid
Take Shelter
The Time That Remains
Tuesday, After Christmas
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
You Don't Like the Truth – 4 Days Inside Guantanamo
We Were Here

And you say I don't like comedy.

damn good year for releases

hard to narrow down to three, so i'm picking five. as usual, ignoring documentary:
Certified Copy
Drive
Aurora
The White Meadows
Meek's Cutoff

Morbs, you really like CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS?!

I think there have been a lot of really solid movies this year, and I haven't even had a chance to see most of the ones I've wanted to.

still worst year ever

― billstevejim, Wednesday, September 21, 2011 3:46 AM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark

^^^RIDICULOUS

ugh I STILL have not had a chance to see Meek's Cutoff OR Tabloid!

OTOH I am very fond of just about everything Morbs listed (that I've seen), and I'd add these:

A Dangerous Method
Shame
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Into the Abyss
Pina

TS you really hate Herzog docs, huh?

Certified Copy
Tree of Life
Cold Weather

or

Drive
Midnight in Paris
Meek's Cutoff

or, with qualifications

Hanna
Super 8
Myth of the American Sleepover

huh? xpost

when have i ever said i hated herzog docs?

cave is a special case. it's a 40 minute film stretched to ninety, dude is getting crazy sloppy

INTO ETERNITY is this year's phenomenal cave documentary

the trip

Count me among those not particularly impressed by Herzog's caves. His death penalty comedy sounds promising, tho.

except that these clips are abysmal: http://www.indiewire.com/article/watch_three_powerful_clips_from_werner_herzogs_tiff_death_row_documentary_i/

oh my God how I fucking HATED Into Eternity

I liked both Cave and Abyss a lot.

we are destined to be at cross-purposes, I see.

archipelago
la quattro volte
a separation

can get behind a lot of morbs' list; have been thinking about the time that remains & am gonna go back & check divine intervention. & there's so much i am anticipating.

TS, I agree it's relatively weak Herzog; still better than most

Eric, both Crazy Stupid Love and My Idiot Brother are 'on my list', which probably means I'll see them when they mail them to me.

Morbs - I'll take most of your list as a hitlist of films for me to seek out but Leap Year? Really?

goddamn Certified Copy still not out on DVD.

xpost, i assume he's referring to this: http://www.avclub.com/articles/leap-year,57976/

Alfred, there's a dvd and (region free) blu-ray of Certified Copy available from UK based Artificial Eye. Might be worth a dip if no US release is on the horizon (and you have a multiregion dvd player if not blu-ray enabled)? I've only seen it on blu, but it's a very fine transfer. The dvd is only £4 or so on Amazon UK currently.

iMdB lists Certfied Copy as getting a Criterion DVD, but there's no date announced.

and yes, I am not referring to the Amy Adams Leap Year that's about 3 years old.

Eric, there are a considerable number of laughs in those films I listed, certainly more than in, eg, Hall Pass.

Ha, sorry Morbs. I was thrown because I'd just read an interview with St Vincent where she appears to argue that the Amy Adams Leap Year (only 2010 actually) is "manically dark" and I thought for a moment there was some perverse counter-intuitive reading of this terrible, boring movie. Rereading the interview, it looks like the interviewer fucked up and paraphrased "not the Amy Adams movie" as "the Amy Adams movie".

i'm guessing the Amy Adams one did not have graphic sex and erotic knifeplay.

wish it had tbh

Of Gods and Men at last.

from Glenn Kenny's latest DVD roundup:

Essential Killing (Artificial Eye U.K. import, region free)

Excellent image, from the desert caves of the opening to the blue/white snow of deepest Europe in winter where most of the rest of the film. Jerzy Skolimowski’s latest film is a tough, terse, blunt but not unempathetic thing; a small-scaled masterpiece of such grabbing immediacy that it’s practically a sin that it’s gotten next to nothing with respect to U.S. distribution at the time of this writing. Of course it helps if you can forget that the lead actor is Vincent Gallo. Who’s quite good actually, but still Vincent Gallo. Given this Blu-ray is the best way you can see the film as of this point, I feel like maybe you ought to. See it this way, I mean. (Correction: initially flagged it as region-locked, it will in fact play on any Blu-ray player worldwide.)—A

Mysteries Of The Block
Attack Lisbon
S1ocki's film

And if Qu'ils Reposent en Révolte (Des Figures de Guerre) counts, then that too.

And maybe Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes

Deep end sound really good.

So far:

- A Separation
- 13 Assassins
- Potiche

I need to see more 2011 movies.

I will also add Le Quattro Volte which I really enjoyed at at the time although my memories of it have coalesced into one amazing long shot and a generally whimsical Euro-folksy Stella Artois ad aesthetic.

Your memories are OTM.

Thank goodness for that

oh nonsense. 'stella artois' is an amusing comparison & they're obviously in similar bucolic territory - perhaps the film's pitch could have been centred around appreciating that - but it pretty impeccably chronicled the village's year; the erection of whatever the ceremonial pole was in the town centre, the changes in delivery routes to account for the cancelled coal subscriptions of the newly deceased. 'lol goat on table' took up like five minutes of it &, you know, was whimsical but rad anyway. a really poetic film. the lamb that got lost! jeez.

essential killing was really good; understated & ttly uncompromising. you can "rent" it on amazon instant for $6 or $7 in hd.

amazon actually has a fair of streamable content that either isnt on dvd at all or netflix doesnt carry...i might start a thread abt it

ive wanted to see 'deep end' for a few yrs now

fair *amt* of

I've seen Deep End. It's good, it won't change your life or anything

I want to see Curling

Lee Chang-Dong's Poetry might be my favorite film of the year so far.

it's a good one. would be interested to read if you've written about it, alfred. i think i could only allow one super-depressing real-shit movie in my top three & nader & simin won out; how quietly terrible the content of poetry is makes it v powerful, though.

Poetry is the first movie in ages which made me stop it a couple times because its ruthlessness unnerved me. Its beauty too.

yeah. i think that there was no kind of ... vicarious, softening justice to the unmasking?, maybe; rather you, like her, were in the room. i loved the stories by her classmates, & some of the (less boardy) recitals by the other open mic speakers.

haha this radio intvw w/ egan is p good but man oh man the interviewer's voice is like a simpsons joke or s.thing

Have you seen Secret Sunshine, Afred? I liked Poetry a lot, but think it suffers in comparison.

The Turin Horse, which I saw today, is probably somewhere in my top three for the year.

would be interested to read if you've written about it, alfred.

Thanks! I'm still thinking about the ending -- whether it made sense.

I haven't seen Secret Sunshine yet, one of those movies I accidentally removed from my queue a couple years ago.

This is the only movie about writing I've seen in a long time that didn't condescend to writing or the people who love it, even if they approach it as a trade to learn.

I very much preferred it to Secret Sunshine

(and I'd have to see it again to say exactly why)

I wasn't manic for Nostalgia for the Light, but it's undeniably worthwhile, and perpetrates some visual coups that will be diminished on a home screen, alas.

I liked it a lot, and it looked great on my home screen.

Film Socialisme hit US DVD yesterday

I wasn't manic for Nostalgia for the Light, but it's undeniably worthwhile, and perpetrates some visual coups that will be diminished on a home screen, alas.

^ where is this quote from?

Tree Of Life
Le Quattro Volte
Mysteries Of Lisbon (RIP Raul Ruiz)

A Dangerous Method
Margaret
Tree of Life

(and Uncle Boonmee)

where is this quote from?

Morbs itt

Or at least it was in this thread when I was in Search, hmm.

movies r bad

I don't think there was any I can even call a favorite from last year. Otoh I did not get to see as many movies as I would like.

iirc last year i saw

cave of forgotten dreams
tinker tailor soldier spy
the hangover ii
midnight in paris
martha marcy may marlene
the trip
tree of life
le hague
the sitter