Back in business

SOMETHING I WROTE FOR WORK: More of the Best of 2011

LINKS: Recapping the year in movies with the Daily Herald

I've been away. Some of you may have noticed. Or not. At any rate, it turns out that I didn't quite go down to my final resting place in the Secret Movie Writer Burial Ground. Still kicking, still here, ready to fire it up after several months' hibernation. When last I appeared on this beat, the typical post-summer harvest of Oscar-baiting "blogbusters" (heh — the movies destined to be endlessly dissected on movie blogs like this one) wasn't even a hot topic yet. Now I've seen it all, or seen a lot it, or seen at least enough of it to get my Ten Best of 2011 hammered out for the Daily Herald. The link is above.

Most people probably don't ever feel 100 percent satisfied with those lists, however, and I always struggle to keep myself in check. I don't like being "limited as to number," as Gwyneth Paltrow once put it. So for my (ahem) first blog post of 2012 (ahem), I'm rolling back the curtain of my mind just a bit to reveal my Second Ten of '11 list of films, the ones that almost made the grade.

11) Rango — Here we go: Proof that repeated exposure to Captain Jack Sparrow hasn't killed Johnny Depp's ability to create new and interesting characters. The animation is also exceptional here, a richly textured look that makes you feel like you're almost touching the characters and environments in the film just by looking at them. The goofy, offbeat humor may not connect with every viewer, but it tickled me quite a bit

12) Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy — One of the perils of adapting novel-length fiction is that you run the risk of confusing viewers with a wealth of information. Lots of commentators felt like this film ran in the opposite direction, but I like that Tomas Alfredson doesn't insist on laying out the whys and wherefores of every development. There's enough here to keep up if you're paying attention. And it's also nice to see a spy story that's driven more by human weakness and imperfection than by improbable gadgets, chases and explosions.

13) My Week with Marilyn — I don't really get the whole Marilyn Monroe mystique, probably at least a little bit because I didn't live through any of it. (Although I do remember when Madonna went through her Breathless Mahoney phase.) Michelle Williams may not be a physical doppleganger for Monroe, but her extraordinary performance certainly suggests the whatever-it-was that Marilyn had going for her that made men weak in the knees.

14) Margin Call — Some movies live and die by the crackling monologues that flare up at certain points, and this one has several such moments. There's something about talking dollars and cents that gets a lot of actors in a fire-in-the-belly fettle, although Stanley Tucci also has an nice extended bit here about civil engineering. High finance makes for low drama when you read about it in the newspaper (or on Google News), but money and movies often go together like syrup and hotcakes.

15) Captain America — Chris Evans has been wasted on a lot of middling Hollywood product, including previous superhero films — he was Johnny Storm in the recent Fantastic Four duology — but Captain America is a role he was, yes, born to play. Having Cap's origin story unfold against the backdrop of World War II is also a pleasant touch, and there's a great supporting cast here that includes Tommy Lee Jones, Stanley Tucci and especially Hayley Atwell and Dominic Cooper.

16) Source Code — The release date for this brain-bending sci-fi drama was April 1, which may or may not have been a sly wink from the production team. Not that Source Code is a shallow prank akin to the ol' Saran Wrap under the toilet seat gag. It's definitely subversive, though, in addition to being a ton of fun. Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan are very solid as two strangers on a train, who may or may not be trapped in something akin to the Matrix.

17) The Tree of Life — People often try to read grand portents into the work of Terrence Malick, but it's not what he's actually saying that will drown you in its depths, so much as the way that he goes about saying it. Like other Malick films, this is one is exquisitely crafted and gradually, patiently realized. Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain give deeply moving performances as people of profoundly different natures who end up being parents together.

18) Contagion — This is as close as I ever want to be to a lethal global pandemic. Steven Soderbergh has an Ocean's-style all-star cast, but it's a resurgent Jennifer Ehle (the long-forgotten Elizabeth Bennett to Colin Firth's career-making Mr. Darcy) who makes the strongest impression. (Poor Gwyneth Paltrow almost surpasses the ickiness of her famously untimely demise in Seven.)

19) Rise of the Planet of the Apes — Reboots rarely come together this crisply. There's an excellent blend of human drama and low-level sci-fi in this table-setter that may or may not launch an all-new Planet franchise. Director Rupert Wyatt and writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver set a high bar, especially in terms of the film's uncanny ape visual effects. The worldwide take was close to half-a-billion, so we're likely to get more of ... something. Hopefully it will be more of the same.

20) Do I really have to choose between Jane Eyre and Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol — See? It never ends.