Best Films of 2011

Here we are again, a new year - a couple days old now, and time, I suppose, to sum of last year. 2011 - making this list, I was surprised to see how many films I rather liked last year. At the halfway point, I thought it was a very thin year - even later, in the fall, it didn't seem that a lot of really interesting films were coming out - but I guess they did. Certainly, the last couple months have been very satisfying. And it helps that a good number of truly outstanding foreign films were released this year, especially early. So - here you go - best 25 films I saw this year. As always, my criteria are: films that received a commercial release in metro Boston in the year 2011. (That I managed to see - there are a couple out in release now I haven't seen, but should - but they will have to wait, because I don't want to.)

1. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall his Past Lives - Apichatpong Weerasethakul
2. Mysteries of Lisbon - Raoul Ruiz
3. Certified Copy - Abbas Kiarostami
4. Melancholia - Lars von Trier
5. Quattro Volte - Michaelangelo Frammartino
6. Poetry - Lee Chang Dong
7. Le Havre - Aki Kaurismaki
8. Meek's Cutoff - Kelly Reichardt
9. Strange Case of Angelica - Manoel de Oliveira
10. Take Shelter - Jeff Nichols
11. 13 Assassins - Takashi Miike
12. Dogtooth - Yorgos Lanthimos
13. Martha Marcy May Marlene - Sean Durkin
14. The Skin I Live In - Pedro Almodovar
15. Tales from the Golden Age - Hofer, Marculescu, Mungiu, Popescu & Uricaru
16. Jane Eyre - Cory Fukunaga
17. Nostalgia for the Light - Patricio Guzman
18. Rapt - Lucas Belvaux
19. The Descendents - Alexander Payne
20. Outrage - Takeshi Kitano
21. Rango - Gore Verbinski
22. Page One:Inside the New York Times - Andrew Rossi
23. A Dangerous Method - David Cronenberg
24. The Guard - John McDonogh
25. Sleeping Beauty - Catherine Breillat

And also - the best new films from 2011 - whether released or not. This is necessarily a very tentative list:

1. Melancholia - Lars von Trier
2. Le Havre
3. Meek's Cutoff
4. Take Shelter
5. Martha Marcy May Marlene
6. The Skin I Live in
7. Jane Eyre
8. The Descendants
9. Rango
10. Page One

And finally, using this chance to revisit Last year's list of new (in 2010) films:

1. Carlos
2. Exit Through the Gift Shop
3. The Social Network
4. True Grit
5. A Film Unfinished
6. Greenberg
7. The Tillman Story
8. The Ghost Writer
9. The Kids Are All Right
10. Kick-Ass

Given a year to think about it, see a few of them again, and see a broader sampling of 2010's films - here is a retroactive list. The films from last year's top 10 are italicized:

1. Carlos
2. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall his Past Lives
3. Mysteries of Lisbon
4. Certified Copy
5. Quattro Volte
6. Poetry
7. True Grit
8. Exit Through the Gift Shop
9. 13 Assassins
10. Oki's Movie
11. The Social Network
12. The Strange Case of Angelica
13. Another Year
14. A Film Unfinished
15. Nostalgia for the Light
16. Outrage
17. Greenberg
18. Road To Nowhere
19. Somewhere
20. The Tillman Story
21. Sleeping Beauty
22. The Housemaid
23. Gainsbourg
24. The Ghost Writer
25. The Kids Are All Right