"I see a rhinoceros!"- FAVOURITE PERFORMANCES AND ENSEMBLES OF 2011

       FAVOURITE PERFORMANCES

          This year had a few major breakthroughs, the most notable being Jessica Chastain. La Chastain is beautiful and lovely and on her way to becoming a great actress. Anyways, here's my list-


Honourable Mentions- Ezra Miller in We Need to Talk About Kevin, Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis in The Help, Mia Wasikowska in Jane Eyre, Craig Roberts in Submarine, Hunter McCracken in The Tree of Life, Daniel Radcliffe in Harry Potter 8.

Special Mention- Michael Fassbender

I haven't seen Shame yet. If I had seen it, I am pretty sure Fassy would have been in this list. The trailers make me go crazy.

20.

Jessica Chastain in EVERYTHING

I cannot choose. She was a darling in her Oscar-nominated role in The Help, the face of grace itself in The Tree of Life and the strength behind Michael Shannon's character in Take Shelter. I haven't seen The Debt, but I am sure I would have liked her in that too. I think this is only the beginning for her, and she will give even better performances in the future.

19.

Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids

I have loved her ever since Gilmore Girls. People think she's a comedian and she's just being funny here, but it's such a different kind of funny. She's adorable, but Megan verges on being scary. In a way it is almost as no-holds-barred a performance as Rooney Mara's was in Dragon Tattoo. But comedy is given such less attention. I'm so happy she got her Oscar nomination for this (my pick if they would only listen).

18.

Christopher Plummer in Beginners

He is such a darling in this film. A breath of freshness even though he is an old man. I think everyone would love a dad or a granddad or a friend like Hal, and that's only because Plummer plays him with so much care and affection .

17.

Albert Brooks in Drive

Oh cruel Oscar snubbery. This was such a creepy role, played with so much ease. He was a great villain. Something about the way he talked was so brilliant; I can hear that voice whenever I think about him and it is so sinister. That is how awesome he was.

16.

Joel Courtney in Super 8

I have written about this before. He was natural and sweet and just a real kid. I love his performance because it makes me feel all warm inside.

15.

Shailene Woodley in The Descendants

She was the best friggin' part of this film. Like Joel Courtney, it was such a naturalistic performance. And she is sassy and funny and beautifully emotional (that pool scene) and holds her own against a massive star like George Clooney with the utmost ease. Kudos.

14.

Michael Shannon in Take Shelter

With his imposing height and that weirdly fantastic face, Shannon often plays the half-crazed guy. But the sadness and despair in his performance in this film, along with the impending insanity, is something else. It is quite a heart-breaking performance, and he does it excellently.

13.

Ewan McGregor in Beginners

*Sigh* When will the world just accept the brilliance of Ewan McGregor? He delivers one fantastic performance one after the other, and no one notices. Oliver is exactly like that. Subtle, sad, quirky, sweet- he is so lovely in this film. Even though all three leads + dog are all fantastic, I am most blown away by the simplicity of McGregor's acting.

12.

Brad Pitt in The Tree of Life

Yes the first time I saw this film, I was extremely annoyed with his character. He seemed plain awful. But on the second viewing, I understood him so much better. He is strict, yes, but he is also loving in his own way. He was actually the most multi-faceted character in the film. It was a simple role in which Pitt gave his better performance of the year.

11.

Elizabeth Olsen in Martha Marcy May Marlene

I loved her in this. Most of the film focuses on her face, as we try to understand what is she thinking. Though she seems aloof, she is mostly scared or confused of what is happening to her and seemingly around her. It is a complicated performance, one that could have been boring or overly-dramatic, but she does it absolutely with the expertise of a veteran, even though this is her big screen debut.

10.

Owen Wilson in Midnight in Paris

Even though he is the Woody-doppelganger in this, Wilson makes this role his own in every way. His natural comedic talent makes his performance so genuine. We don't only want to be him because of all the wonderful things that happen to him, we want to be him because he is a really good, smart and fun guy. 

9.

Alan Rickman in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2

Yes I did take all the films into consideration, but mainly this one. He is so heart-breaking in this film. A great character portrayed by one of the best actors working today. No one could have played Snape. Ever. I salute you Alan Rickman.

8.

Michelle Williams in My Week with Marilyn

I thought she was spectacular in this. We all have our ideas about who Marilyn Monroe really was, and I think Williams captured mine almost perfectly. I love the mystery behind Monroe's onscreen glee. Williams was incredible in both her happy parts and her sad parts, and it will be a performance I won't stop thinking about anytime soon.

7.

Kirsten Dunst in Melancholia

I love how soul-sucking she is in this, but what is magnificent is that how her own soul suffers first. It is a brave performance, though an almost uncomfortable one to watch. I love Dunst and how usually bubbly she is, but Justine is very much the opposite. And she plays her superbly.

6.

Tilda Swinton in We Need to Talk About Kevin

This woman constantly amazes me more and more. Her despair and horror and occasional awfulness in this film is so harrowing. Even though we don't want to put ourselves in her position and understand what she is going through, Swinton's performance makes us do that. It is unnerving.

5.

Jean Dujardin in The Artist

In a year in which had all the Hollywood heartthrobs starring in films, an unknown French man in a black and white silent movie ends up being the one that charms us the most. That is artistry.

4.

Rooney Mara in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

It must be difficult to take such a beloved character, that has already been portrayed once and to much acclaim, and make it her own. But Mara manages to do this perfectly. Her quirky and mad Lisbeth is unique and brilliant and it is a bloody ballsy performance that no one will be able to forget in a long time.

3.

Gary Oldman in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

When in The Hollywood Reporter actors' roundtable Christopher Plummer was asked what makes a great actor, he answered that it was the great rage which is something Gary Oldman possesses. His words, not mine. Of course I agree completely, and this is what makes George Smiley exceptional because he is so restrained and collected. He seems to be doing nothing, but you understand that a great mind is at work. It is an astonishing performance, one which has been thankfully rewarded by many.

2.

Charlize Theron in Young Adult

I deemed Mavis Gary as one of my role models as soon as I saw the film. It was because she was awesome and kind of crazy, but as time has passed, I have really grown to appreciate the performance, and Charlize Theron's guts for doing it such great justice. I mean, Mavis is a total bitch, and no one should like her at all. But we still get her, and even feel sorry for her at times, however reluctantly. It is not easy to be someone that realistically unlikable, and Theron is just so spot-on with it. She has made me a real fan after this.

1.

Ryan Gosling in Drive

Uh duh. It was the Year of the Gos people, who else could you expect to be number 1? The Driver is just fantastic. The control, the silence, the loneliness, the smiles, the anger, the violence. It is a film that will be spoken about for ages, and Gosling as the Driver will be remembered forever.

FAVOURITE ENSEMBLES

         Since we are talking about best performances, I thought best ensembles are also in order. It is difficult to have one great performance in a film, and when everyone in the film is amazing, that's quite something else. These are my picks.

Honourable mentions: The men of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the women of Bridesmaids, and the men and women of Carnage.

5.

Super 8

All these kids were fantastic. J.J. Abrams wanted to make one of those old Spileberg films with kids, and he got the perfect cast of child actors. 

4.

A Separation

A most affecting film, mostly because the honest performances by everyone in it. My heart breaks most for the children of course, and they too were incredible in it.

3.

Beginners

The three leads are adorable. That dog makes me reevaluate my overwhelming fear of his species. Also Mary Page Keller, who has minor role as Oliver's mother, is quite brilliant. A great cast altogether.

2.

Midnight in Paris

What is this film without its million superb characters from a different and magical era? Fitzgeralds, Hemingway, surrealists (Adrien Brody is my favourite cameo of the year) and of course Owen Wilson as Gil and  Marion Cotillard as Adrianna. And the awful people from today, and the first lady of France. It is quite a dream of an ensemble.

1.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2

This series employed the majority of the British film industry for the last decade. I mean when in BAFTAs the reporters were talking about TTSS being an outstanding British film which has many of its members, I wanted to throw a Grawp at them. Come on! Everyone in this is awesome. They are a part of my childhood. I will never forget anyone and love them for all eternity.

Nostalgia two times

          Sometime last week, I had an exceptionally brilliant day when I managed to finally watch J.J. Abrams's Super 8 and Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris. Both were very different, and splendid films, except they both had the theme of nostalgia running through them, in different ways ofcourse.

Super 8: The story is set in 1979. It is about a bunch of teenage kids who, while making a film about zombies for a competition, witness a disastrous train accident. Soon after all sorts of weird things start happening around the town, like electronics and dogs and people go missing. With the US Airforce taking over, and an unexpected recording in their super 8 camera, the kids are pulled into a mystery of galactic proportions. And in all of this, romance blooms.


          So this is the vaguest and most non-spilling synopsis I could come with. I know that isn't particularly my style, but seeing how much Abrams generally does for the secrecy of his films, and how much I love them, I feel like he deserves it. Except those who have read any reviews (I read only about a couple for the above-stated reason) have seen the parallels drawn to E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. So you know because of this, the belief that this is Abrams's practical love-letter to Steven Spielberg, and the fact that Spielberg himself is the producer, all points at the fact that this film might (or might not) have something to do with other-worldly things.


          But I was going to talk about the nostalgia aspect. Now anywhere that Super 8 has been mentioned, this word has been used. Quite simply it refers to the feel of the film, or rather it the way it makes the viewer feel while watching it. But that made me kind of sad. Super 8 is supposed to make one nostalgic about those lazy hazy days of summer when kids played in green lawns and first crushes were formed; kids ran around together and got into trouble for the stupidest things and the world was just sunnier and cleaner. And it just killed me that I could never feel that way, because I had never experienced such things in my life. As I have said countless times before, there are films that I just want to live in and Super 8 has definitely joined the list. It's just so lovely in its youth, and the child actors- the adorable Joel Courtney, the breath-taking Elle Fanning, the bossy Riley Smith and the destructive Ryan Lee are all great in their parts. Especially Courtney- he was just so honest and sincere in his role, that my heart went out for him. He gave the film the emotional arc it needed. It was because of him, and his relationship with the other child actors that made this summer blockbuster a blockbuster with lots of heart and warmth. Yes, this film exactly like those Spielberg classics, because even if it's about people from different worlds (or not), it shows that things like family and friendship and courage and curiosity are all universal and common, and never more so than in the innocence of childhood.


         All in all I thought it was a solid film. I didn't like the ending as much as the rest of it, but I do believe it's more of the theatre's fault rather than the film's. For some reason, Arcade Fire's The Suburbs kept popping into my head while, and after watching the film. All the visual effects, and the feel of a 70s town were spot on according to me. As I said before, what really drove this film for me were the kids, especially Courtney. A fantastic effort by Abrams...I hope he's proud of his tribute, I sure would be.


Rating- 9.5/10

Midnight in Paris: Gil is visiting Paris with his fiancée Inez and her parents. He is a Hollywood scriptwriter who is now trying his hand at a novel he has forever dreamt about writing. He is also in love with the City of Love, especially in the 1920s, but his love for the past is ridiculed by Inez, her parents, and her friends- the 'pedantic' Paul and his wife Carol. One night when he's out taking a walk, slightly inebriated, he comes upon some stairs somewhere in Paris, and as the clock strikes twelve, an antique car stops in front of him and people in it, dressed in 1920s attire, ask him to get on. And he does, and is transported to the time and land of his dreams- the 1920s. Here he meets a whole bunch of artists and writers and eccentrics, and is totally mesmerised by the glamour and romance of it. But this land only exists during the nights, and he is transported back to the 21st century in the morning, with Inez and everyone. This creates a few peculiar problems for Gil, and he must decide where, and when, his heart truly lies.


           This film...oh my god...BRILLIANCE! Okay focus. I have not connected to a Woody film like this since The Purple Rose of Cairo. 


          Nostalgia in this film is a feeling that the Gil longs for...for belonging to a place and time where important things that mattered happened, and the world was a better place with art and music running through it. It is an idea, or an an idea of a feeling. In the beginning Michael Sheen's absolutely repulsive character Paul (psuedo-intellectual- eugh!) says this about Gil's played by Owen Wilson, love for things and people and life of the past, or 'Golden Age thinking'- "The erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one you’re actually living in. It’s a flaw in the romantic imagination for people that find it difficult to cope with the present." I am telling you that if I was in Gil's place there, I would have either punched Paul on the face real hard, or ran away from there crying, or probably both. Because that right there is exactly how I am. This is my nostalgia- for a time where I have not really existed in. Like me wanting to live in the Super 8 world. I want to live in the Midnight in Paris world also...even more than that of Super 8, because the way Woody lays out the honey-hued Paris in the 20s...is quite something else. And I haven't even started talking about the people Gil meets yet!


         He meets everyone really- the Fitzgeralds, Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Cole Porter, Salvador Dali, Man Ray, T.S. Elliot etcetera etcetera. Woody Allen films have a way of making me feel really uncultured and stupid, and never moreso than in this film. But that's just a minor issue because these characters are really Woody's idea of them, and they are all extremely entertaining. My mouth was open through half of the film, because just the idea of meeting these masters of art and literature is just so mindnumblingly fantastic, that I could barely believe it. Note the barely, because I have this fascination with what general people call unreal, and that's very much real for me. Just like in Purple Rose. Among the people, I especially loved the Fitzgeralds; Zelda is splendid, Hemingway and obviously Dali. Dali! Dali! Rhinocerous! Yes I am not explaining that- watch it, if not for anything then to figure out my really pointless riddle.


        Ofcourse the most important person that Gil meets is someone who is actually not real at all- an artist muse named Adriana, played by the divine Marion Cotillard. In her he finds someone quite like himself- sopmeone who is unhappy with her present era and dreams of another one, and they have quite a lovely relationship. She becomes instrumental to his character development throughout the film, because it is through her decisions that Gil makes his important life decisions.


          I said in my 15 Questions Meme that my favourite movie setting is Paris, and Midnight in Paris has defintely become one of my most beloved films set there. The charm of the city, that is as present today as it was at any point in history, is shown so beautifully in the film. The beginning was quite a bit like Manhattan and I loved it; maybe not as much, but still. The music is excellent, especially all the Cole Porter. Another thing was the costumes- oh so Jazz Age! The actors were pretty fantastic too. I must say I had reservations about Wilson being the lead in a Woody Allen film, but he has totally proved me wrong. Yes he did do the Woody doppelganger thing, but it was so convincing. His expressions, for things like amazement at meeting someone ancient, being irritated of Paul, or scared of Inez, were spot on and funny- both in a HaHa way, and a sweet smiley way. Cotillard too was incredible, but that's a given. Still she was so romantic and beautiful and sad...no wonder Picasso would paint her. Amongst the supporting cast I loved, lurved, loaved, luffed Adrien Brody the most.


         Woody Woody Woody...no one understands me like you do. I've noticed that those films of his with a bit of magic involved end up being my favourites. Despite the ending, I am absolutely overwhelmed by the concept of travelling to your favourite time period in Paris. Mine is the 60s, but I would love to go there at any point of time really. The screenplay and the film are both simply enchanting. There is the perfect amount of comedy, romance and wonder in it, and lots and lots of Paris's unmatched beauty. This is the first film this year that I am going to start my Oscar campaign for, and yes it indeed has become my favourite thus far.


Rating- 10/10