The Kid With a Bike

This film, by the Dardenne brothers, is about a young boy, Cyril, who has been rejected by his father and who takes the duration of this film to accept that fact. We see him first search for his father, then make contact with him. He is initially living in an institution and is then taken in hand by a hairdresser, Samantha, who wants to care for him. She is played by Cécile de France who, like the film, is Belgian. She is the first star that the Dardenne brothers have used. I admired her in The Singer and in Un Secret and in this film she is excellent.

The film is very moving as Samantha tries to help Cyril to cope with his rejection and when she in turn has to cope with Cyril's bad behaviour, particularly when Cyril falls under the influence of a local hoodlum who wants to use Cyril as a junior partner in crime.

Corpo Celeste

This film has strong similarities to last year's Love Like Poison - both are coming of age films of a young female set in a strongly religious context. Corpo Celeste was made and is set in Italy and, like Love Like Poison, it is a first feature film by a female director, Alice Rohrwacher, who also wrote the screenplay.

The story is of a mother and daughter who move back to a poor town in southern Italy after a period living in Switzerland, and it focuses on the efforts of the daughter, Marta, played by Yio Vianello, to resettle in the community as she takes instruction in the Catholic church for her catechism. We are led through several telling and moving scenes as, in her growing awareness, she starts to question the authority figures around her and the path that she has embarked on.  Her sister is spiteful to her and her mother remained a rather shadowy figure. The film is very subtle as it shows her experiencing her first period and then cutting her hair as a mark of her growing autonomy.

A Dangerous Method

This is the story of Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud and Sabina Spielrein. A book was written about these people by John Kerr, and Christopher Hampton wrote in 1997 a screenplay based on the book and intended as a vehicle for Julia Roberts. This never came to fruition, and Christopher Hampton adapted his screenplay to a play, The Talking Cure, which had great success at the National Theatre in London, starring Ralph Fiennes and Johdi May. In 2002 David Cronenberg made, with Ralph Fiennes, the film Spider and, through his acquaintance with Fiennes, Cronenberg became interested in The Talking Cure. Christopher Hampton adapted his play back into a screenplay which became this film, A Dangerous Method. So - Is it a book? Is it a play? Is it a film? You decide.

Spielrein, played by Kiera Knightley, acting for all she's worth, was initially Jung's patient. The film recounts how she became his lover and subsequently became a psychiatrist. Jung was married with an increasing number of children, and whether there was ever a physical relationship between him and Spielrein is pure speculation, but it makes a good story. Jung is here played by the ubiquitous Michael Fassbender, and Freud is played by Vigo Mortensen. Freud in this film is really a spectator on Jung's antics, and these do lead to split between them because of Jung's deceptiveness.

This is a period film with some tendencies towards the worst of period films - idealisation of imagined past manners, immaculate interiors, beautifully-maintained old cars, scenes set in front of beautiful old buildings with immaculate grounds. etc. For Cronenberg this represents a considerable step towards the middle of the road. This film is dialogue-bound and not very cinematic. Worst of all, despite having been written by a respected playwright, it has some terrible lines. Cronenberg has said that he was drawn to this project. My only question is: what was he thinking?

I am not a fan of Keira Knightley but here she acquits herself well, with much effort and commitment. I couldn't understand why she was given a bath with her clothes still on, but I'm not worrying too much about that, although it was a bit disappointing. Mortensen has the best part as Freud while Fassbender's Jung seems young, one-dimensional and uninteresting. The story is really a romance dressed up in the paraphernalia of psychiatry and, although the film is not long, I found myself looking at my watch several times. There are some BDSM scenes which, I suppose, were useful when the trailer was made.

Rampart

This film embodies one of the raw essences that make me love cinema - it is hard-boiled and cynical in a tradition that goes back to Chandler and beyond, and to the best films noirs of the 1940s. It has wonderful cinematography that is simultaneously noirish yet very colourful and bright, contrasty, with burnt-out whites. It has an amazing cast, including Robin Wright, whose fan club I joined straight after seeing State of Grace, Ned Beatty, Sigourney Weaver and Steve Buscemi.

Co-written by its director Oren Moverman and James Ellroy, it is the story of a tough and cynical cop, Dave Brown, played by Woody Harrelson, in possibly the best part of his career. Womanising and filled with hate, he is torn between his two ex-wives, his daughters, and a crisis in his career brought on by an excess of violence. He is improbably self-aware and articulate as he copes with his superiors, seeming more savvy than them, and expressing the existential essence of the film. We are challenged to wonder whether he is in any way sympathetic and whether he is capable of redemption; whether he is producing the culture which he inhabits, or whether he is a product of it.

Moverman and his cinematographer, Bobby Bukowski, had a great time with a very mobile camera, achieving a noir style and conjuring many abstract images. There is one scene, towards the end, where Brown descends into a 'lower depth' of drugs and depravation where the film risks parody, but otherwise this is a treat for the movie-lover.

The Descendants

This is Alexander Payne's first film since he made sideways in 2004. It is an adaptation of the first novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings who collaborated closely with Payne on the film, even to the extent of being, along with members of his family, in the film.

This is, of course, a George Clooney film and he is excellent, playing an unhappy man coping with two daughters and wearing bad shirts, while his wife lay dying.

Some people have spoken of this film as a comedy but it is moving and tragic, yet laced with irony and humour in the way life can be for those who are sensitive to see it; and this is what Payne does so well.

Seeing this film made me think of Robert Redford, who was the previous generation's star of American cinema. Both Clooney and Redford are good-looking and serious, being politically engaged and directing films of their own. I like Redford but I'm now starting to think that I prefer by a small margin Clooney because of his modesty in taking unglamorous parts, and because he has made more angry and politically engaged films.

I think The Descendants stands up well as a George Clooney and as an Alexander Payne film.

Martha Marcy May Marlene

I enjoyed this film. It is well-made and thoughtful. The film starts with a young woman, Martha, played by Elizabeth Olsen, fleeing through the woods. She is escaping a backwoods commune that she has been living in. She is very distressed and is collected by her sister, Lucy, played by Sarah Paulson, and goes to live with her. Her sister is living a middle class life with her new British husband. The film cuts between Martha's life with her sister and flashbacks to the life she had on the commune.

The commune has its own belief system and new members are indoctrinated by the strong consensus of the members already there. The commune cultivates crops and dabbles in crime. There are many more women than men and the principal man, Patrick, played by John Hawkes, helps himself to the women as he sees fit. They feel honoured when they are chosen.

Martha, who is clearly a dropout, tries to adapt to her sister's life.

This is an honest, good and very well made film. I nevertheless thought that it has some shortcomings. Patrick's character is charming and devious. He is played by John Hawks who was previously in Winters Bone. Hawkes seems to be making a career of playing backwards types. If I had made the film I would've cast someone who is less in the ready-made mould of this type of character. The commune has all the characteristics - bizarre beliefs, amorality, sexual freedom - that someone like me, who knows nothing about it, has been led to assume that they have from various television programs. So nothing fresh there. While living with Lucy Martha behaves in ways that Lucy and her husband can't understand and are sometimes offended by. There are rows and Lucy tries hard to be kind and to accommodate her sister. I did feel that more could have been made of the contrast between Martha's alternative view of the world and Lucy and her husband's conventional middle-class view.

The film stopped abruptly and unexpectedly, leaving me unsatisfied.

The film is very well made with excellent acting and outstandingly good cinematography. I did wonder whether the things that happened after the film ended may not have been more interesting than the things that happened during it.

My Best Films Of 2011

All these films have had a UK release, so there is no excuse for you Brits for having missed any of them!

1) A Separation

2011 was a very good year in cinema and, out of a good bunch, for me, A Separation is unassailably the best. It is an excellent example of the art that conceals art. The story didn't seem like a screenplay, and the people in it didn't seem like actors. It was as though one was in that flat and all these events broke out around one - suddenly people are shouting at each other in the stairwell, or rushing into the street and having huddled conversations at open car windows. The story reverberates with many important departments of life, such as sexual politics and parental responsibility, and the way the plot just thickened from simple beginnings was very satisfying.

2) Poetry

I'm cheating here because I included this film in my list of best films for 2010. This year I've changed my rules and I've tried to limit my best films to those that have been released in the UK in 2011. I first saw Poetry in the 2010 London Film Festival, and it simply blew me away. It is the fifth film by its director, Lee Chang-dong, and as none of his films have been released in the UK I didn't expect Poetry to be released here either. Very fortunately, I was wrong, and it has opened in the UK, so I have an excuse for including it in my 2011 list. It has won many awards, so I know that I am not alone in thinking highly of it. It stars Jeong-hie Yun, who was one of South Korea's most famous and celebrated film stars, with a huge list of films to her credit, and who came out of 16 years' retirement to make this film.  The film's director, Lee Chang-dong, is also a novelist, playwright, theatre director, and has been South Korea's minister of culture. He has the Legion d'Honneur in France!  Needless to say he is unknown in the UK and Poetry is his first film to be released here. He has made five films all of which were interesting and diverse.

3) Oslo, August 31st

This is the second film adaptation of the French novel Le Feu Follet. I am quite a fan of the first adaptation, made in 1963 by Louis Malle, starring Maurice Ronet. This is a story of a man who, after a period in the drug rehabilitation clinic, is allowed out for his first day of liberty in preparation for his return to the community.  He tries to pick up the thread his old life by making contact with his friends and an old lover. He is taken to a party and he has a job interview.  As the day passes he sees how his friends have moved on and now have settled relationships, children and burgeoning careers, and he feels that the current of his life has slipped away and become intolerable. This film is pitch perfect all the way through, being very intelligently scripted, well directed and very well acted. It has a sublime ending that bears comparison with the best Antonioni endings.

As Derek Malcolm put it: "Lie's performance is pitch perfect, and Trier's direction almost flawless. We look at life as it is for this one person within an eloquent framework that never seems either self-regarding or indulgent. The director knows exactly what he is doing and does it impeccably."

4) We Need To Talk About Kevin

This film is being highly praised for Tilda Swinton's performance, but I'm including it so high on my list because I think it is a tour de force of adaptation and direction, for which Lynne Ramsay bears no small amount of responsibility. Tilda Swinton is very good as well.

5) Tyrannosaur

I'm not always very partial to British cinema, particularly when it involves working-class realism, yet here I've included two British films in my top five, one of which has plenty of WCR. Tyrannosaur is a triumphant first film by Paddy Considine, and it stars Peter Mullan playing the part he does so well - a self-loathing and violent man.

Tyrannosaur's strengths, apart from Mullan's performance, are the part played by Olivia Coleman as the woman he becomes interested in, and the sure way in which the film slowly reveals the sources of Mullan's unhappiness. Dog lovers are advised to see The Artist instead of this film.

6) Love Like Poison

This is the first film by Katell Quillévéré. It is a beautiful, intense and thoughtful account of the coming-of-age of Anna, played by Clara Augarde, as she reaches a more adult understanding of her separated parents, of a young boy who courts her and of the local priest. She is seriously thinking of going into the church and the role of the priest (seen in the image), both as a religious figure and as a man, is pivotal.

Her parents are separated, the mother being rather unstable and flamboyant while the father is irresponsible, charming and absent. The formative man in her life is her grandfather. She allows herself to be courted by Pierre who is a link between her rather intense and serious take on life and the more common current of life in the village.

This film is serious, sincere and well judged throughout. The only slight unease I have is with the casting. I felt the grandfather was little too larger-than-life, as though a comedian had been cast in the part. Also the mother, in her flamboyance, with her scarlet lipstick and black died hair, stood out startlingly among the other people of the village.

There are beautiful interludes when the camera is allowed simply to stare at a scene while lovely music plays on the soundtrack, allowing us to fully absorb the atmosphere of this provincial French village. The cast, particularly Clara Augarde and the priest, played by Stefano Cassetti, are excellent, as also is her father, played by Thierry Neuvic.

I saw the British film Submarine shortly after I saw this film and I simply could not take Submarine seriously.  They are both coming-of-age films, one treating it seriously and the other treating is as a vehicle for laughs and entertainment.

7) Margaret

This film, directed by Kenneth Lonergan, has a lot of ideas and concerns loosely structured around the story of a teenage girl, Lisa, played by Anna Paquin, who becomes involved in a road accident. In her immaturity she is not very appealing, at least to me, but as she is drawn through a sequence of events connected with the accident, we see her start to take a more mature view of things.

There is a rich cast including Matt Damon, Mark Ruffalo and Jean Reno. The film reaches a very moving conclusion when Lisa, who has some responsibility for the accident, but who has been in denial about it throughout the film, finally accept it.

8) Las Acacias

This film, mainly shot in the driving cab of a lorry, is a triumph of film-making. It is about lorry driver, driving a load of tree trunks from Paraguay to Buenos Aires, who has foisted on him a woman with a baby. It did occur to me to wonder why these tree trunks had to be transported so far because they seem to have plenty of them in Argentina, anyway.  The lorry driver, Rubén, played by Germán de Silva, is initially surly and uncommunicative. Very slowly his attitude softens and by the end of the film we see the possibility of a romance between him and Jacinta, played by Hebe Duarte. The star of the film, without a doubt, is the baby who is utterly and irresistibly charming.

9) Animal Kingdom


I was slow to see this film because I had heard that it is violent. I did not find it more violent than plenty of other films that I have seen recently. 

It is a gangster film about a band of brothers led by their mother. She is a pleasant and appealing person who nevertheless lacks a moral dimension. The brothers lounge around in the family bungalow in Melbourne, flaunting their tattoos. They are in engaged in a sort of war with the Melbourne police, and it is the brother, Pope, (left in the image) who initially seems quiet and self-effacing but who becomes the nastiest as they come under pressure. The film is extremely well made with a slowly tracking camera that pries on the goings-on of the family. 


10) Archipelago


This is the second film by Joanna Hogg, her first feature film being Unrelated. Like Unrelated it is about a family on holiday, this time in the Isles of Scilly. It is pleasant to see the British film which is not about working class people. We see tensions grown as the family members, each spoilt in different ways, struggled to get on with each other while the father, who was due to arrive later, fails to arrive at all.

There is a family friend, Christopher, played by Christopher Baker, who is a painter and he lives on the island. He is in fact not an actor but is a friend of the film's director, Joanna Hogg, who did coach her in painting. The film is well-made and thoughtful rather in the style of Antonioni.