Yeah, we know.  We’re late with the list again. But 2011 had a remarkable run in cinema, and this year’s list truly runs through nearly the entire spectrum.

Something to keep in mind:  none of the individual lists are the same. Films listed as number one by some people weren’t even seen by others. But, indeed, this is part of the film going experience and part of why the list is formulated as it has been. This is a snapshot, a look inside what different people are interested in, and what they thought of what they have viewed.

Below you’ll find the official Company list, followed by all the individual lists, and the scoring and explanation of how the list was created.

1.  Beginners

2.  Melancholia 

3.  Tree of Life 

4.  Midnight in Paris 

5.  Hugo

6.  Meek’s Cutoff

7.  Weekend

8.  Moneyball

9.  Bill Cunningham New York

10.  Drive

*          *          *

Giampaolo
Mysteries of Lisbon
Sleepless Nights Stories
The Turin Horse
Melancholia
The Future
Meek’s Cutoff
Contagion
Hugo
Le Havre
Bridesmaids

Jake
Tree of Life
Melancholia
Moneyball
Poetry
Le Quattro Volte
Hugo
Weekend
The Descendants
The Arbor
Take Shelter

M. Pitkoff
Hugo
Midnight in Paris
Too Big to Fail
The Trip
George Harrison: Living in the Material World
The Love We Make
Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest
The Black Power Mixtape (1967-1975)
Moneyball
Zookeeper

Liz
Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest
Sleeping Beauty
Tree of Life
Beginners
Weekend
Heartbeats
Page One
Bill Cunningham New York
Bridesmaids
Conan O’Brien: Don’t Stop

Brian
Le Quattro Volte
Beginners
Tree of Life
Shame
Midnight in Paris
The Trip
I Saw the Devil
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
Moneyball

M. Paley
Beginners
Melancholia
Drive
Meek’s Cutoff
Into the Abyss
Tree of Life
Poetry
Weekend
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
The Artist

Adam
Beginners
Drive
Tree of Life
Melancholia
Shame
Midnight in Paris
Bill Cunningham New York
The Artist
Meek’s Cutoff
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Peter
The Ides of March
Win/Win
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
Midnight in Paris
Crazy, Stupid, Love
Bill Cunningham New York
Melancholia
Super 8
Bad Teacher
X-Men: First Class

The list was created through a compilation of frequency and then weighted through adding their rankings and dividing the sum by the frequency. The films in four lists or more have their averages equally weighted with one another.

Beginners – 4  ( 1, 1, 2, 4 ) // 2

Melancholia – 4  ( 2, 2, 4, 4 ) // 3

Tree of Life – 5  ( 1, 3, 3, 3, 6 ) // 3.2

Midnight in Paris – 4  ( 2, 4, 5, 6)  // 4.25

Hugo – 3  ( 1, 6, 8 ) // 5

Meek’s Cutoff – 3  ( 4, 6, 9 ) // 6.3

Weekend – 3  ( 5, 7, 8 ) // 6.6

Bill Cunningham New York – 3  ( 6, 7, 8 ) // 7

Moneyball – 3  ( 3, 9, 10 ) // 7.3

Drive – 2  ( 2, 3 ) // 2.5

Le Quattro Volte – 2  ( 1, 5 ) // 3

Beats Rhymes & Life : The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest – 2  ( 1, 7 ) // 4

Shame – 2  ( 4, 5 ) // 4.5

The Trip – 2  ( 4, 6 ) // 5

Poetry – 2  ( 4, 7 ) // 5.5

The Artist – 2  ( 8, 10 ) // 9

Bridesmaids – 2  ( 9, 10 ) // 9.5

Now, on this snowy New Year’s Eve, it’s a better time than ever to reflect back on the year and select our choices for the best cinematic efforts in 2009.

Myself, Peter Warren, Brian Barth, Giampaolo Bianconi, Jake Teresi and Matt Paley all wrote down our Top-10 lists (although Matt, in an uncharacteristically cynical move, declined to offer a full 10).  There were ten films overlapping our choices, and, ranked by frequency, comprise the final top-10 list.

Best Films.

Up (Dir. Pete Doctor) — 5 Votes
The Hurt Locker (Dir. Kathryn Bigelow) — 5 Votes
A Serious Man (Dirs. Joel and Ethan Coen) — 4 Votes
Fantastic Mr. Fox (Dir. Wes Anderson) — 3 Votes
Up In The Air (Dir. Jason Reitman) — 3 Votes
Inglorious Basterds (Dir. Quentin Tarantino) — 2 Votes
Lorna’s Silence (Dir. Jean-Pierre Dardenne) — 2 Votes
Where The Wild Things Are (Dir. Spike Jonze) — 2 Votes
The Road (Dir. John Hillcoat) — 2 Votes
Sugar (Dir. Anna Boden) — 2 Votes

———————

Peter Warren’s Picks

Up
Adventureland
Bronson
Coraline
The Hurt Locker
Inglorious Basterds
A Serious Man
Sugar
Tyson
Up In The Air

———————

Giampaolo Bianconi’s Picks

The Road
Police, Adjective
Up
The Limits of Control
Summer Hours
Beaches of Agnes
24 City
Lorna’s Silence
Two Lovers
2012

———————

Brian Barth’s Picks

A Serious Man
The Road
Up in the Air
Crank 2: High Voltage
Sugar
The Princess and the Frog
The Hurt Locker
Fantastic Mr. Fox
The Girlfriend Experience
An Education

———————

Matt Paley’s Picks

Up
A Serious Man
A Single Man
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Bright Star
Anvil! The Story of Anvil
Lorna’s Silence
Where The Wild Things Are
The Hurt Locker

———————

Jake Teresi’s Picks

Up
The Hurt Locker
A Serious Man
Adventureland
Funny People
Avatar
The Cove
Food, Inc.
An Education
Precious

———————

Adam Hirsch’s Picks

The Hurt Locker
Up
Where The Wild Things Are
Fantastic Mr. Fox
White Ribbon
Tetro
In The Loop
Star Trek
Up In The Air
Inglorious Basterds

———————

]]> http://sainteliotandco.com/round-up/the-best-of-2009/feed/ 1 http://sainteliotandco.com/round-up/the-company-round-up-best-of-the-2000s/ http://sainteliotandco.com/round-up/the-company-round-up-best-of-the-2000s/#comments Fri, 04 Dec 2009 00:21:23 +0000 Adam Hirsch http://sainteliotandco.com/?p=1209

The ride’s over.

There went the decade, crawling to a slow halt in the station, and now we disembark.  This decade had its ups (college, technology) and downs (war, hurricanes)–and the world of film was no exception.  Filmmaking went in two directions:  Hollywood films ballooned year by year with increasing budgets and frames, culminating with this month’s Avatar, James Cameron’s all-digital $700 million 3D action romp; Independent Cinema moved into inventive territory with uploads to YouTube and low-fi meditations in Neo-neorealism after many Studio Independent Branches that funded indies (for a period, c. 2003-2007) realized that there was no real market where they believed one to be and abandoned the cause.  Still, large theater chains carried more independent films than ever before, and distribution for independent films was bigger than ever with the internet and VOD cable television bringing cinema to places it never could have travelled in the past.

We forget that in 1999, DVDs were seen as the luxury alternative to VHS tapes (as Blu-Ray is to DVD now) and the local video rental store was the general access point to the cinematic world.  But with this decade came the domination of the disc, and Netflix rose with it along the way.  No matter where you live, so long as you have access to the internet and a DVD player, you can watch nearly any film.  Think about that.

This decade was the era of the superhero.  Television rooted itself in its conception of reality, though gradually began to lose itself to the power of the immediacy of the internet.  Just as the remote control killed the traditional nightly television schedule, so did TiVO and iTunes murder watching television on any predetermined schedule at all.

Here’s the Company List for the top films of the Noughties. These films are listed in chronological order, since the task of attempting to quantify a rank for such a wide variety of films is next to impossible.

2000.  In The Mood For Love  –  (Dir. Wong Kar-Wai)

Perhaps the best love story of the decade (another arguable candidate would be 2008′s Wall-E).  Wong Kar-Wai’s meditation on unfulfilled love sizzles with Christopher Doyle’s unreal colors and cinematography.

2001.   Mulholland Dr.  –  (Dir. David Lynch)

To settle the debate once and for all:  no one, no one, actually knows the “plot” of the film.  David Lynch created a multilayered maze that helped launch Naomi Watts’ career.  Nothing else came close to matching the beautiful terror of a man standing behind a dumpster waiting for us.

2001.   The Royal Tenenbaums  –  (Dir. Wes Anderson)

“…I always wanted to be a Tenenbaum.” From the opening Prologue, set to an instrumental version of “Hey Jude” and a voiceover by Alec Baldwin, to the last slow-motion shot at the cemetery, perfectly synchronized to the serendipitous “Everyone” by Van Morrison, Wes Anderson crafted a great film and a good story made even better from an outstanding ensemble cast.  No one has thought of anamorphic lenses quite the same way ever since.

2002.   Y Tu Mamá También  –  (Dir. Alfonso Cuarón)

Cuarón’s free-form journey to a mythical, idyllic beach with long, flowing shots sits as a permanent cinematic hymn to the confusion of love, the pain of youth, and the hidden beauty of the world.  But–were it none of those things–it still would have made the list for Luisa’s slow dance towards the camera near the end.

2004.  Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind  –  (Dir. Michel Gondry)

Because breakups are hard and no one had known quite how to articulate a very old question:  if the end of the relationship is painful enough, would you prefer it never to have happened?  And because only Michel Gondry could irrigate the humanism buried deep within the complex script by Charlie Kaufman.

2005.  Caché  –  (Dir. Michael Haneke)

No other film perfectly encapsulated the Decade’s most prominent themes: a deep sense of uncertainty and the burgeoning digital universe of technology.  Haneke caught a lot of slack for the ending, but the mystery itself — who filmed us? — was the ideal metaphor for this period of time.

2007.  I’m Not There  –  (Dir. Todd Haynes)

I’m Not There represents an unmatched attempt at crafting a truly cinematic biography of a person:  fragmented, refractory, and incomplete.  Todd Haynes travelled down a clear salad bar of auteurs to choose from for inspiration — Fellini, Godard, and Sirk to name a few — in order to give every “glance” at Bob Dylan a new feeling.

2007.   There Will Be Blood  –  (Dir. P.T. Anderson)

The most poetic film of the decade was also the most potent indictment of the Bush-Era political mindset.  It’s not just one of the best because of Daniel-Day Lewis’ performance, which was easily one of the best of the decade, but because P.T. Anderson drew from a dark palette to give us an intense story using a deft economy of dialogue and exposition.

2008.  Wall-E  –  (Dir. Andrew Stanton)

In the opening ten minutes, Andrew Stanton was able to reduce storytelling to its oldest, and best, elements.  Though the entire film is nearly silent, it is easily one of the most emotional and engaging stories of the Decade.  It’s the perfect paradox:  the most artificially created film of the year was also the most human.

2009.  Ballast  –  (Dir. Lance Hammer)

Most people do the same double-take when they find out that the director of the film — a film propelled forward by an entirely African-American cast of non-actors giving intense, unsentimental performances — was white. Lance Hammer was able to reduce filmmaking to its guttural core by spending the better part of three years in the Mississippi delta casting the actors and workshopping the script with them.  Watching Ballast we’re given the clear harbinger of the next wave of filmmaking.