No matter what film historians, movie magazine editors, ordinary Joe's and Jolene's may say about 2011 and its movies, there is a tacitly accepted truism that, every year, about five films are released - usually quietly, often unassumingly - that will stand the test of celluloid time.
2011 is no different.
This year's LA Confidential award goes to Nicholas Winding Refn for his less than subtle re-working (and all the better for it) of 80's Noirishness in 'Drive.' Ryan Gosling, despite some slightly deluded critical comparisons to Steve McQueen, holds the film together nicely.
For those of us more solipsistically inclined, Michel Hazanivicius's 'The Artist,' may well be the film of 2011 - despite it's release date being, um, yesterday... Disney matter. Fans of cinema have been waiting for a film like this for years and, in its unsentimental melodramatic depiction of 1920's Hollywood, the unchecked hubris of its stars and the system they were so in thrall to, the movie compellingly convinces - with an authenticity seldom seen in film-making today.
In terms of sheer spectacle, little came close to startling the senses more than Werner Herzog's 'Cave of forgotten dreams.' It's a film which, quite literally, stops you in your tracks, quietly, yet insistently, caressing your heart with its inspiring message of wonder...
Similarly, from South Korea...
And, from one of the great American movie makers...
Penultimately, another film about the transmigration of the soul...with goats...
In 2011, film fans were also treated to that rarest of things - a television programme about films that was as good as the films that it celebrated. 'The Story of Film,' written and directed by Mark Cousins, was an unbridled joy from start to finish - taking us across time and vividly transacted space, across genres and continents, into the hearts, the minds and the mouths of directors, cinematographers, actors, visionaries.
It is worth spending some of your life watching it.
Here's to 2012...
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