Our favourite films of 2011

Blogger: Tom Vincent, Film Programme Manager

The results of our poll of Museum staff's favourite films of 2011 are in! Each contributor was asked to name five favourite new films that played in UK cinema in 2011. Beginning with an interesting tie for first place, our list of most-loved films is, as usual, broad and varied. Eleven people cast their 55 votes for 41 films, with 32 of those either shown at the Museum, or coming here early this year.

Please use the comments section below to let us know your favourites, or tell us what you think of ours.

Blue Valentine

• The whole thing is such a genuine look at married life. It's not harrowing and relentless, nor is it Hollywood convenient; it's just very honest. (Mike McKenny, Museum Volunteer and Director of Minicine)
• Great natural chemistry between Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams. (Tom Woolley, Curator of New Media)
• Heartbreaking. Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams are simply brilliant. You will not find two more accomplished performances this year. (Ben Haller, Customer and Colleague Service Champion)

Le quattro volte

• Went into this not knowing what to expect and was seduced by its beautiful, slow-paced nature. Lingered on my mind for months. (TW)
• The finest canine sequence in years, and the goats were good as well. (Keith Withall, Film Extra tutor)
• True craftsmanship. Moving, heart warming and real. (Toni Booth, Collections Manager)

Animal Kingdom

• "Do you come from a land Down Under? / Where women glow and men plunder / Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder? / You better run, you better take cover." (Neil Young, Co-Director, Bradford International Film Festival)
• This was my special mention for 2011 on last year's list and it's still up there, what a mother... (Jen Skinner, Film Education Officer)

Essential Killing

• A total surprise. Very powerful with a great central performance by Vincent Gallo. (TB)
• Terrorism reduced to sheer effort; a film with very little story information that somehow achieves total clarity. (TV)

Meek's Cutoff

• Perfect example of anti-genre. Completely aware of its mythic Western context, but strips away the spectacle to criticise and deconstruct. (MM)
• A women's viewpoint on the West, and one exquisite lap dissolve. (KW)

Melancholia

• Sardonic, sarcastic and complex but still generating great emotion. (KW)
• Armageddon takes very much a back seat in this enigmatic examination of depression and reactions to a crisis. (Sven Shaw - Assistant Gallery Developer)

A Separation

• Beautifully produced and the cast deservedly swept the acting awards at the Berlin Film Festival. (KW)
• Incredibly mature filmmaking that looks understated but held all those different characters' complex and contradictory feelings in play throughout the whole film. (Rona Murray, Film Extra tutor)

Shame (Leeds International Film Festival; London Film Festival)

• A stylish and compelling observation of personal detachment. (TW)
• No-one clapped, too uncomfortable. I'm still thinking about it – I think that's part of what Steve McQueen does best. (RM)

Shame is showing in our cinemas from Friday 20 January. There will be a special preview featuring a Live Satellite Q&A with Steve McQueen and Abi Morgan on Tuesday 10 January.

The Skin I Live In

• Deliberate 'trash' and high art megamix from the master. They slagged it at the BBC4 World Cinema Awards – which makes you love it more, somehow. (RM)
• Very original and surprising tale of revenge and personal identity. (SS)

Source Code

• Much like Rodrigo Cortes' fine Buried last year, Source Code built upon breaking the confines of one-shot film-making. Refreshingly inventive and story-driven, I was gripped throughout. (BH)
• Superb Hollywood sci-fi. (TW)

We Need to Talk About Kevin

• Disturbingly beautiful and it's by Lynne Ramsay who is just brilliant, so deserves a place on my list. (JS)
• Wonderful combination of beauty and horror. (TB)

Wuthering Heights

• No it's not a straight adaptation, so what? Its quality of silence and visuality were just intensely felt and amazingly consistent across a whole feature. (RM)
• It captured the passion and violence that I felt when I first read Emily Brontë's novel, and it was filmed in Yorkshire. (KW)

13 Assassins

• Takashi 'four-a-year' Miike is a compulsive lunatic genius. Like fellow great subversive John Waters, he has glorious fun on the banks of the mainstream. (TV)

Archipelago

• If Joanna Hogg spends the rest of her career making films about posh families on awkward holidays overseas, why should anyone complain? (NY)

Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975

• Fine, free edit work on Swedish film crews' recordings of the unravelling strands of U.S. Black Power movements. This film proved the maxim: 'show, don't tell'. (TV)

Captain America: The First Avenger

• Intelligent and thoroughly enjoyable, terrific performances and original action sequences make this the best of the Avenger series by far. Hayley Atwell is mesmerising as Agent Carter. (BH)

Cave of Forgotten Dreams

• The ever reliable and idiosyncratic Herzog. (TB)

The Descendants (London Film Festival)

• 35 years ago America produced mature, emotionally complex films like this every week. Alexander Payne is my favourite American director working today. (TV)

The Descendants is showing in our cinemas from Friday 27 January.

The Divide (Leeds International Film Festival)

• Frontière director Xavier Gens bounces back from the studio peril that was Hitman with an intelligent, visually rich and outstandingly acted horror film which suggests hell really is other people. (Sarah Crowther – Life Online Content Curator and Director, Fantastic Films Weekend)

Drive

• The most exhilarating couple of hours I've spent in a cinema all year, terrific! (BH)

The Future

• Prrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr... (NY)

Hobo With A Shotgun

• Absolutely true to its Grindhouse origins, Hobo... is outrageous, visually rich and the most fun to be had in a cinema this year. (SC)

How I Ended This Summer

• Desolation and isolation pushed to the very extreme. There have been some fantastic patient films this year, but few - if any - as patient as this one. (MM)

Hugo

• Martin Scorsese's ode to the magical Georges Méliès and a celebration of cinematic dreams. What's not to like? (JS)

Kaboom

• The most fun we had in a cinema this year with our clothes on. (Optional) (NY)

Kill List

• British horror as it should be. (SC)

The King's Speech

• A moving tale of friendship across the class divide with great lead performances. (SS)

The King's Speech is back by popular demand until Thursday 5 January.

LiTTLEROCK (Bradford International Film Festival)

• Beautiful depiction of adolescent communication. Invokes a sense of unease throughout. A touching love letter to small town America, so often either simplified or demonised by mainstream American cinema. (MM)

Masks (Leeds International Film Festival)

• German director Andreas Marschall's love letter to Giallo. An atmospheric study in Argento and Lamberto Bava, Masks features the best opening sequence of the year. (SC)

Never Let Me Go

• A love story and sci-fi rolled into one. I found the film detached, cold but totally compelling. (SS)

Pina

• Feel-good film of the year! The fluidity, grace and passion of the dancers were completely inspiring. (RM)

Rango

• Some irony in the fact that Johnny Depp's finest hour (and a half) involves no glimpse of his fabled visage. (NY)

The River Used to be a Man (Leeds International Film Festival)

• This film utilises masterful cinematography in order for you to soak in the natural beauty - and natural peril - of the African wilderness. (MM)

Senna

• I had no interest in Formula One but was totally gripped to this film. Asif Kapadia played this epic story out in a fascinating way. (JS)

Submarine

• I'm a sucker for a misfit film. Great cast, visually very pleasing, a fantastic soundtrack and Paddy Considine with a mullet - what more could you want? (JS)

Submarine is back by popular demand until Wednesday 4 January.

Super 8

• Was this a satirical take on 80s action movies or an overblown mishmash of genres? It doesn't really matter when a film's this much fun. (SS)

Symbol (Leeds International Film Festival)

• Just about indescribable, and more profound than The Tree of Life (and with a great sense of humour) (TB)

Traces of a Diary (Bradford International Film Festival)

• Watching this fluid, expressive documentary on five highly individual Japanese photographers is the kind of experience that makes organising film festivals worthwhile. (TV)

True Grit

• A rollicking Coen brothers remake. Loved every minute of it. (TW)

Wake Wood

• British horror as it should be. (SC)

Win Win

• Quirky, funny, true and passionate! A life-affirming insight into nowhere-America and a glimpse of hope for middle-age men everywhere. Tom McCarthy has now written The Station Agent, The Visitor, Up and Win Win! (BW)

Son of Babylon: Review and Q&A with Mohamed Al Daradji

Guest blogger: Mike McKenny

During Leeds International Film Festival 2010, which I was covering for Film & Festivals magazine, I attended the screening of Son of Babylon. The film was preceded by an introduction from the director, Mohamed Al Daradji, who described it as a homecoming event, for although it was shot and set in Iraq, it was produced in Leeds. Mohamed, an Iraqi born filmmaker, lives in and completed his education in the city.

Review of Son of Babylon

The fact that it was produced in Leeds and that the filmmakers learned their trade in the West makes a telling contribution, as the film adopts formulaic road movie genre functions - a tried and tested method of portraying physical, existential and socio-cultural journeys. Yet this road movie's beauty comes from having such an honest, genuine and fresh perspective.

Set three weeks after the fall of Saddam Hussain's regime, the film follows the young Ahmed and his Kurdish grandmother through Iraq as they search for his father who has been missing for twelve years, having been forced to become a soldier and torn from his passion for music. In showing this child’s journey, the film also illustrates the journey that Iraq is currently undertaking; the past that brought it to this present, and a glimpse of possible futures.

The bilingual Ahmed, who can speak both Kurdish and Arabic, is juxtaposed against his elderly grandmother who is hampered by her inability to speak Arabic; he represents the youth of the country and hope for the future, which belongs to the young.

Although the American and allied forces feature as an occupying presence, the film never veers away from its main focus: on Iraq, Iraqi people and their concerns for the future. I thought this was a wonderfully subtle and adept way of acknowledging the occupation of Iraq, while asserting that the only way forward is for Iraqis to find and make their own future.

It would be some stretch to describe this as an uplifting story but there really is a well crafted optimism at its heart. Speaking of of well crafted, the landscape was used within the cinematography with such striking effect that the country really does adopt its own character.

After the screening, Mohamed took to the stage and humbly and admirably insisted that he is by no means the only force behind the film. The Director proceeded to call up many from the crew along with a representative from Screen Yorkshire, who were credited as being an essential factor in producing this film.

Isabel Stead (Producer) spoke about the Iraq’s Missing Campaign (IMC), which the film is supporting. IMC was established to campaign about and provide support to the relatives of missing and disappeared person in Iraq. Isabel explained that nobody in the United Nations, nor any department that they spoke to would take responsibility for, or supply them with the statistics regarding missing people in Iraq that they wanted to show before the end credits. The campaign intends to pressure the UN into doing something to address this problem.

You can show your support for the Iraq's Missing Campaign by signing their petition and joining their Facebook group.

Short Q&A with the Director

Any spoiler questions have been left out, but one did lead Mohammed to explain that whenever he got stuck creating the character of Ahmed, he based it on his own experiences and feelings at a similar phase in his own life.

When did you shoot the film?


October 2008 - March 2009. Mohammed explained that a great deal of the shooting was a little problematic, but Nasiriya was a nightmare. The Mayor gave him permission to shut down the square, but during shooting, called and asked who gave them permission to do this! He said that he may lose his job and therefore they needed to wrap up in two hours despite having at least eight hours of planned shooting left that day.

How - as an individual – did it feel returning to Iraq?


Mohammed explained that alone, he is very afraid, but surrounded by family and friends it feels really good. He said that it's amazing to see how the country is coming along; that it's getting safer and more secure all the time. The Iraqi army and police - which they would much rather use than private security companies - were very protective and very helpful.

What was it like, shooting the scenes with the mass graves?


All the mass graves were produced, rather than shot on location, which was out of respect for all individuals and families involved. However, all the women at the mass graves in the film had lost loved ones and agreed to feature in the film in support of its cause.

Finally there was a difficult question from a man who had recently been to the northern regions of Iraq, and claimed that the characters being able to travel through borders so easily was implausible. Mohammed dealt with this tricky question in a very sensitive, but thorough manner and justified this feature of the story as the film was set three weeks after the fall of Saddam, and the chaos which ensued caused these checkpoints to break down. He further ratified his point by stating that the actress who played the grandmother had actually made that very journey.

A full interview with Mohammed Al Daradji can be found in issue 26 of Film & Festivals magazine. The issue was dedicated to the Middle East and Middle Eastern cinema.

Mike McKenny is a Bradford based academic and film writer. He writes for Film & Festivals magazine, contributes to Hope Lies at 24 Frames Per Second and is the editor of Destroy Apathy. He can also be found on Twitter (@destroyapathy).