Best Films of 2011

IT'S TIME...

I gave up on writing extensive entries for each film I've seen over the past year. No real explanation... I think I had adequately exercised my writing chops and just wanted to make sure I kept a record of all the movies I watched. But as much as I resist end of year sentimentality, I think I have to hold on to some summary ritual that attempts to wrap up my experiences in a nice little bow.

I will say that the films I liked this past year really didn't provide an absolute level of escapism that one might say represents the pure movie-going experience. In fact, after my top movie of 2011, the films drop down both in their ability to transport me to another place and in their overall package of complete quality that would make them really timeless. What we have instead are very unique character experiences and derivative ideas that, despite their limitations, are executed nearly perfectly. Even if you couldn't tune out the rest of the world very easily with these movies, the engagement that these films both big and small had with real moments and consequential topics kept me grounded in reality in a good way.

So, just to remind you... my rules for the top 10, with very few exceptions, are films that I saw in theaters in 2011. That means that the many times I did a whole cost-benefit analysis with my time and money and determined to use my astronomically expensive cable connection to see an older movie at home (streaming, on-demand, etc.) instead of the blockbuster as the local theater, then those older movies will NOT appear on this countdown and instead live on as long as the Internet is up and running with their single film log entry in past blog posts. Or maybe they could appear later in a special topical countdown. Who knows?

I'll start next time with a quick recap of honorable mentions and the disappointments with a few short comments. Covering those will actually fully cover all of 2011's eligible films, believe it or not. Stay tuned...