the skinny's top ten films of 2011

after banging our heads together, here's what the skinny's film writers jointly decided were the finest ten films released since january...

1. the tree of life (terence malick)
2. drive (nicolas winding refn)
3. meek's cutoff (kelly reichardt)
4. senna (asif kapadia)
5. we need to talk about kevin (lynne ramsey)
6. blue valentine (derek cianfrance)
7. tinker tailor soldier spy (tomas alfredson)
8. a seperation (asghar farhadi)
9. le quattro volte (michelangelo frammartino)
10. the fighter (david o. russell)

there's a fair bit of overlap with my own votes, but i'm gonna keep tweaking my personal list up till the end of the month. however, two that will appear are numbers 3 and 9, which i contributed little write-ups for:

Meek's Cuttoff (Kelly Reichardt)
As with most of Kelly Reichardt’s filmography, the triumphs of Meek’s Cutoff are as much in what it doesn’t do as what it does. A female-focussed western that doesn’t involve saloon girls, anachronistic behaviour or a rootin’ tootin’ Doris Day is a rarity in itself, while the director’s typically measured pace has a hypnotic allure, drawing the audience deeper and deeper into screenwriter Jonathan Raymond’s tale of a diminished wagon-train’s fateful progress through the Oregon plains. But perhaps fateful isn’t the correct word; as desperation mounts, a careful ambiguity anti’s the climax just as tensions reach a head, ensuring it lingers long in the mind.

Le Quattro Volte (Michelangelo Frammartino)
Taking inspiration from the Pythagorean concept that we each cycle through four lives – human, animal, vegetable and mineral – Michelangelo Frammartino’s second film studies the unhurried pastoralism of a remote Italian town to haunting effect. As goat-herd cedes to goat, goat to tree, La Quattro Volte pares away causal relations until we’re left absorbed in simple scenes of branches in the breeze. Though the temporality of existence may seem a potentially uneventful theme, its treatment is never less than fascinating; Frammartino leavens his metaphysical meditation with beauty, grace and – in a single-take scene of collie-caused destruction – humour, and the result is unforgettable.

you can read the full article here.