The Wallys: Best Writing and Technicals

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
"Margin Call" is a remarkably sober take on the collapsing house of cards that plunged the world into recession. J.C. CHANDOR explores the complex motivations and rationalizations that laid the groundwork for disaster, but he also creates fully-realized characters. The film's climactic scene, a monologue delivered by Jeremy Irons' CEO John Tuld, is emblematic of the mindset that brought us to this point.

SCOTT Z. BURNS spins a frighteningly real scenario in his pandemic disaster flick "Contagion" while never losing sight of the humans at its core. Originally a novelist, LEE CHANG-DONG’s light touch as a director is also apparent in his work as a screenwriter. A lot of the power in “Poetry” derives from what isn’t said. MIKE LEIGH’s script for “Another Year” ― more an outline to guide his actors’ improvisation ― is a masterwork of tone; not a false note in the entire film. The other Mike of 2011, MIKE MILLS, crafted a film that bravely breaks the fourth wall every chance it gets and relies more on his actors, not his words, to carry the "Beginners."


BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
IM SANG-SOO skillfully culls (i.e. steals) the plot of the landmark 1960 film that launched a thousand imitators (most famously "Fatal Attraction"), but shapes it into something entirely different. Whereas the original South Korean film takes the side of the philandering husband, Im's version of "The Housemaid" observes its uppercrust soap opera from a cool distance. With biting dialogue and a surreal book-ending sequences, Im has created a satire that cuts to the bone.

At its heart "The Ides of March" is a crackerjack thriller, but GEORGE CLOONEY, GRANT HESLOV & "Farragut North" playwright BEAU WILLIMON also crafted slick, politically-savvy dialogue that manages to squeeze in a reference to Neville Chamberlain. You can almost tell which scenes STEVE ZAILLIAN and AARON SORKIN contributed to "Moneyball," their individual strengths -- honest sentimentality and polished dialogue -- constructing a film out of a thoroughly uncinematic book. PETER STRAUGHAN and his late wife BRIDGET O'CONNOR distill the best parts of the John Le Carre novel (and the BBC mini-series) "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" into an enthralling 120-minute film. Somehow, some way, JOHN LOGAN whittled down a 533-page novel into a film, "Hugo", with the heart and brains to appeal to kids and their parents.


BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Having already proven his chops with the one-two punch of “The New World” and “Children of Men” a few years ago, there was no question EMMANUEL LUBEZKI would create another landmark for the artform with “The Tree of Life.” While the film is on shaky ground tonally, its visuals are something to behold. Working primarily with natural light sources, Lubezki captured indelible image after indelible image. He also has a skill for allowing traditionally-composed frames to blend seamlessly with post-production CG and macrophotography.

Like Lubezki, RODRIGO PRIETO proved his mettle working with available light for “Biutiful,” a film whose carefully composed images more than live up to its title. The cinematography of “Drive” ― full of reflective surfaces awash in the orange of high pressure sodium streetlights ― is integral to the film’s success; and NEWTON THOMAS SIGEL does not disappoint. The oft-ignored ALWIN KUCHLER (of 2002’s “Morvern Callar,” 2003’s “Code 46” and 2007’s “Sunshine”) turns in stunning compositions full of color and movement for “Hanna.” Old pro ROBERT RICHARDSON displays a deft hand capturing the cornucopia of period detail in his frames while never overwhelming the eye in “Hugo.”

BEST EDITING
First, a note about editing: Even professionals disagree about what constitutes “good” editing. What is clear is that a good editor can salvage the work of an inept director filming an unfocused script and a bad one can sink even the best material. Here, I do my best to judge editing based on the clarity and complexity of the film’s narrative and visual components. For instance, if you can’t tell where the protagonist is running to or from in an action sequence, that to me is bad editing.


With so many characters with so many motivations competing for screen time in “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” DINO JONSÄTER has to do a lot of heavy lifting, or cutting as it were. It’s a testament to his skill that the audience is never confused over which spy is which, something that’s integral to the success of a film like this. Even more impressive, the film never plods along despite its robust 127-minute running time.

"Biutiful" comes across as a carefully assembled jigsaw puzzle sometimes, with characters and plot threads weaving in and out of the narrative, but it works in large part because of STEPHEN MIRRIONE's sense of the Big Picture and all the necessary pixels along the way. JOSÉ SALCEDO apes Hitchcock’s cutters in Almodovar’s off-kilter “The Skin I Live In,” but he also shows he has a few of his own tricks up his sleeve. “Drive” is one of the “showier” examples of editing this year, but even so MAT NEWMAN knows how to build and diffuse suspense. PARKE GREGG shows a confidence in his shots that’s a rare trait among editors today. In “Take Shelter,” he isn’t afraid to hold a shot a few agonizing moments longer.


BEST ART DIRECTION
“Hugo” would not have worked without the aesthetically beautiful and setting-specific production design of DANTE FERRETTI and set decoration of FRANCESCA LO SCHIAVO, both Scorsese regulars. Their recreation of a 1931 Paris train station is full of period detail that immerses the viewer into the story. Bonus points for the intricate clocks and enchanting Georges Méliès film sets.

MARIA DJURKOVIC, TOM BROWN and JACQUELINE DURRAN capture the banalities and bureaucratic menace of “The Circus” in “Tinker Tailor Tailor Soldier Spy.” ANTXÓN GÓMEZ and CARLOS BODELÓN’s sets are an integral part of the mental duress the characters of “The Skin I Live In” feel. Never has bourgeois style felt more oppressive than in the slick, monochrome mansion LEE HA-JUN, HAN AH-REUM and YANG HYEON-MI create for “The Housemaid.” SHARIF WAKED and MAHA ASSAL create some stunning set pieces, including a see-through discothèque, for the surreal comedy of “The Time that Remains.”

BEST MUSIC OR SONG SCORE

Admittedly, combining CLIFF MARTINEZ's original cues with the recycled tunes wrangled by music supervisors ERIC CRAIG and BRIAN McNELIS is a bit of a cheat. Regardless, "Drive" featured hands-down the best score, original or adapted, of any film released in 2011. Every piece contributes to director Nicolas Winding Refn’s vision of modern Los Angeles.

DAVID WINGO's "Take Shelter" score is simple and incessant. His electronic wind chimes and swelling strings lay the groundwork for a man's unraveling. Like the best Bernard Hermann scores, ALBERTO IGLESIAS' compositions for "The Skin I Live In" are classically unhinged. FALL ON YOUR SWORD's hypnotic keyboards create an ethereal undercurrent for the Earth-bound drama of "Another Earth." It's easy to lose HOWARD SHORE's understated score beneath the stunning visuals of "Hugo," but he too adds to the film's distinct sense of time and place.

BEST FEATURED SONG

Discovering YOU AND ME, recorded by the Columbus, Ohio-based Penny & the Quarters in the early 1970s, was a coup for Ryan Gosling and director Derek Cianfrance. Taken out of context, it's a sugary pop confection. But it lends a shopworn sweetness to “Blue Valentine,” a tale of doomed romance.

Covering Led Zeppelin's IMMIGRANT SONG with Karen O was a stroke of brilliance, one of the only one to be found in Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' all-too-familiar score for "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." Quietly released in 2010, College's anthemic electro-pop bauble A REAL HERO made a lasting impression in this year's "Drive." Tacked onto the end credits of "Win Win," The National's THINK YOU CAN WAIT is a solid piece of songwriting even if it doesn't jibe with the film around it. The Chemical Brother's HANNA'S THEME is the ear candy to Alwin Kuchler's eye candy.

BEST SOUND DESIGN
Even more stunning than the dense visuals were the city soundscapes created for Scorsese's HUGO. The train station sounds like a train station; the sound mixers adding a fourth dimension to the experience. THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO boasted an impressive array of sounds, integrating the beeps, bloops and taps of its plugged-in hacker into Reznor and Ross' ambient score. DRIVE made full use of its L.A. stunt driver milieu, using sound to propel the plot. TAKE SHELTER blends ambient and foley sounds with David Wingo's score to create an claustrophobic emptiness. A lot of the work in SUPER 8 is boilerplate, but the train sequence was a genuinely thrilling piece of sound editing.

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

The visual effects in THE TREE OF LIFE allowed Terrence Malick to show his audience something they hadn't seen before: the creation of the universe. HUGO featured some of the best 3-D work I've seen, creating an immersive environment that didn't leave me with an aching head. RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES marked a sizeable, if not gorilla-sized, step forward for motion capture. While I wasn't crazy about the film, the effects, including an emaciated Chris Evans (if only Christian Bale was available…), in CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER were undeniably impressive. REAL STEEL created boxing robots more tactile than anything Michael Bay has conjured.

The Wallys: The Best Directors and Performances of 2011

With all of Hollywood gathered for one of the biggest spectacles of navel gazing known to man – the Golden Globes – tonight seemed like an appropriate time to hand out a few kudos of my own. Each year, I fill out my own hypothetical Oscar ballot, and this year I decided to give these unbestowed honors a name: The Wallys honor the cream of the 2011 crop.

We'll start with the directors who left their stamp on cinema this year and the actors who created people, not just characters, onscreen. Each of the categories is listed in roughly descending order of preference.

In case you missed it, my top twenty films was posted last week. Technical categories, such as screenplay and cinematography, will come later this week.



BEST DIRECTOR
“Biutiful” incorporates all of the ingredients – fatherhood, globalization, addiction, mental illness, death – ALEJANDRO GONZALEZ INARRITU has worked into all of his previous explorations of human frailty. This time, he perfected the recipe. Whether the jettison of frequent collaborator Guillermo Arriaga or a natural evolution is responsible for this film’s success is irrelevant. Here, Inarritu deftly extracts some of the most natural performances of his career, particularly from the non-actors who play Javier Bardem’s children. All of the subplots – about migrant workers struggling in the slums of Madrid – billow organically from a simple, poignant story of a dying father doing what he can to ensure his children have a better life.

LEE CHANG-DONG has always had a light touch with empathy to spare. It’s a rare attribute he demonstrated with the somewhat unfocused “Secret Sunshine” last year, and again this year with “Poetry.” The film, about a woman coping with the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease while raising an ungrateful grandson, bears more than a slight resemblance to Ozu’s morality plays. Like those films, Lee deals with some potentially incendiary plot points with grace and understatement. Where Hollywood would have played to the cheap seats, Lee uses the film’s central tragedy to further explore his protagonist. You feel the weight of the decision she must make, and you wonder if you’d be able to do the same.

Who knew MARTIN SCORSESE had a kid’s movie in him? Of course, “Hugo” is not your standard issue four-quadrant holiday movie. Every frame is suffused with a love of filmmaking and the early pioneers like Méliès, who were equal parts magicians and task masters. The central character is an boy who keeps the clocks of Montparnasse station running while eluding the watchman bent on sending him off to an orphanage. But Scorses isn’t concerned by the mechanics of plot, but rather the soul, as his camera explores the characters who inhabit the boy’s world. “Hugo” is a landmark film, the first to effectively use 3-D to create the kind of immersive experience that thrilled the first moviegoers a century ago.

ELIA SULEIMAN channels the physical humor of Buster Keaten and the warmth of Charlie Chaplin with “The Time That Remains.” That would seem to be an odd way to approach the Palestinian experience in the West Bank, but it works. Surreal sequences involving a pageant at an Israeli-run school and a man taking out the trash illustrate his family’s experience without delving into divisive politics. Suleiman’s sardonic humor bolsters, rather than undercuts, the harsher indignities and human-scale tragedies inherent in the conflict.

The plot and cinematography of “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” are austere, but it’s an intoxicating experience just the same. Using a story written by the head of a Buddhist temple as inspiration, APICHATPONG “JOE” WEERASETHAKUL creates a beautiful film about death, redemption and renewal. The film demands multiple viewings to absorb its odd pleasures, to lose oneself in its dark jungles and luminescent caves. It’s difficult to describe the film in words, but this film about a man whose imminent death attracts visitors from all walks of life and afterlife is pure magic.

Other helmers of note include: Im Sang-soo ("The Housemaid"), Abbas Kiarostami ("Certified Copy"), Terrence Malick ("The Tree of Life"), Jeff Nichols ("Take Shelter") and Nicolas Winding Refn ("Drive").



BEST ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

MICHAEL SHANNON, no stranger to mad men (see: "Bug," "Revolutionary Road"), has created perhaps the most realistic descent into madness yet in "Take Shelter." His family man takes all the logical steps – he sees a shrink and considers medication to stop the vicious dreams and phantom pains – but the fear of an impending apocalypse wells inside him. But in this age of 60-degree Decembers, outsourcing and corporate personhood and outsourcing, who isn't standing at the precipice?

Existential dread bubbles beneath the surface for JAVIER BARDEM in "Biutiful." GARY OLDMAN is appropriately inscrutable and world-weary in "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy." For the first time in decades, ROBERT DE NIRO has fully inhabited a character, this time a resentful parole officer in "Stone." BRAD PITT fills the quiet moments – listening to his daughter's CD on the Expressway – with heart in "Moneyball."

Other lead actors of note include: Antonio Banderas ("The Skin I Live In"), Ryan Gosling ("Blue Valentine" and "Drive"), Ewan McGregor ("Beginners") and William Shimell ("Certified Copy").



BEST ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

It's easy to empathize with YOON JEONG-HEE's Mi-ja in "Poetry." She maintains a sunny disposition while raising an ungrateful grandson, tending a lustful stroke victim for meager pay and facing the onset of something more insidious than simple forgetfulness. Thanks to Yoon's carefully modulated performance, Mi-ja's moments of doubt and hope are equally palpable. Her future is uncertain, but Mi-ja faces it with dignity and grace.

Is JULIETTE BINOCHE a bitter spouse or a playful stranger in "Certified Copy"? It's hard to tell, because she's convincing as both. It would have been easy for her "Blue Valentine" character to come across as shrill, but MICHELLE WILLIAMS is stunning as the put-upon wife of a perpetual adolescent. VIOLA DAVIS instills an underdeveloped character, who happens to be a maid, with an internal dignity and strength in "The Help." ROONEY MARA infuses hacker extraordinaire Lisbeth Salander with a vulnerability that the previous incarnation of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" sorely lacked.

Other lead actresses of note include: Isabelle Huppert ("White Material"), Brit Marling ("Another Earth") and Amy Ryan ("Win Win").



BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

BRAD PITT is an ocean of contradictions as Mr. O’Brien in “The Tree of Life.” He bullies his children in the hopes of toughening them for a world he sees a cruel and unforgiving. Even if his intentions are sound, his methods are not, and Pitt’s O’Brien seems to register this. His jabs and taunts mask insecurity, as O'Brien's business ventures fall short of his own lofty expectations and his boys seem to favor their mother. Pitt communicates all this, the anxiety and the regret and the rage, through rationed words and subtle gestures.

CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER captures the thrill of rekindled passion as a newly out octogenarian in "Beginners." The flesh and hair may just be pixels, but Caesar's soul is all ANDY SERKIS in "Rise of the Planet of the Apes." JEREMY IRONS' Shakespearean diction and biting wit is put to good use as a Wall Street executive in "Margin Call." Bernie Rose isn't too different from the kind of character ALBERT BROOKS has always played, but the blood lust is a refreshing change of pace in "Drive."

Other supporting actors of note include: Kevin Spacey ("Margin Call"), Corey Stoll ("Midnight in Paris") and Mark Strong ("Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy").



BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

LESLEY MANVILLE hits upon some basic – but often elusive – facts about depression in “Another Year.” Nearing 50, Mary is searching for anything – and anyone – to fill the emptiness of her life. She skitters over the edge at her best friends’ home, breaking down into self-pitying tears before passing out, inebriated. At work, she feels put-upon even as she muddles through. She pines for the love of her life, an old philanderer who stayed with his wife, and lusts after the young man she once pushed on a swing set. Meanwhile, she pushes away suitors who are genuine in their affections. Manville brings refreshing levity to the role, but also a genuine understanding of the myriad ways depression warps a person’s perspective on the world.

A quirk of scheduling meant JESSICA CHASTAIN had three incredible – and several more competent but less impressive – performances released in 2011. Interestingly, all of them (in “The Help,” “Take Shelter,” and “The Tree of Life”) are variations on the familiar suffering housewife character, but Chastain managed to make each of these broadly-written characters distinct and memorable. In a few brief scenes, FRANCES CONROY burns the house down (possibly literally?) in “Stone” as an abused and neglected wife on the verge of lashing out. YOON YEO-JEONG brings much-needed comic relief to “The Housemaid,” but also serves as the lone moral compass in an otherwise amoral cast of sociopaths. As written, OCTAVIA SPENCER’s Minny in “The Help” hews dangerously close to a number of unsavory stereotypes about black women. But Spencer never allows the comic relief to supersede the real pain that necessitated it.

Other supporting actresses of note include: Maricel Alvarez ("Biutiful"), Melanie Laurent ("Beginners"), Demi Moore ("Margin Call"), Cicely Tyson ("The Help") and Carice van Houten ("Black Death").

BEST ENSEMBLE PERFORMANCE

That director J.C. Chandor was able to assemble an all-star cast for his $1.5 million debut "MARGIN CALL" isn't so miraculous. His lead actor, Zachary Quinto, doubled as producer and most of the cast are a decade or more past their respective box office heydays. This film is proof their talents have not dimmed along with their star wattage. But the true measure of an ensemble are the little character moments: Demi Moore's sacrificed executive taking in the view from her corner office, Stanley Tucci's laid-off risk manager grimly accepting a payoff, Kevin Spacey's veteran floor manager summoning his game face one last time. "Margin Call" has these moments in spades.

"MIDNIGHT IN PARIS" is stunt casting at its finest, with the likes of Kathy Bates and Adrien Brody embodying Gertrude Stein and Salvador Dali. The performances in "UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES" are so unremarkable as to feel completely natural, like these creatures and characters have coexisted this way forever. "ANOTHER YEAR," too, benefits from actors who inhabit their characters’ world completely. An odd mix of actors – veterans and novices, ingenues and character players – gamely tackles the off-kilter melodrama of "THE HOUSEMAID."

Other ensembles of note include the casts of: "13 Assassins" and "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy."

Top 20 Films of 2011

And so another year has passed at the cinema. Here are, by my imprecise measure, the best films of 2011: