Looking at this today, the use of theatre limitations is pure genius, it allows to leave out the courtroom drama, make it a jury room drama instead. This could fall flat, but it does not: all the pieces of information are conveyed through argument, nothing feels convoluted. This could be easy work for the jury, as all the evidence has been presented, but matter-of-fact it is harder, because not only is there no way of going back to questioning witnesses, but the jurors also have to live with the deficiencies and neglects of attorney and court. There is no white knight superhero who comes in with superior intelligence and conjures up the arguments to rescue somebody whose innocence will be proven at some point, but there is only a regular guy at the outset (albeit played by an immensely intense Henry Fonda) who is not satisfied with the quick way a kid is sent to the electric chair. He does not have specific reasons, he does not provide clever insights, he just wants to force everybody to talk and argue about it. “I don’t have anything brilliant” is how Henry Fonda starts it.

The opposition, or rather the blood thirst / indifference to a person’s life crumbles over 90 minutes, and towards the end there are the two scenes that may still be among the most memorable in movie history: Juror 10’s hate speech against anybody and everybody is rewarded with his peers (literally) turning their backs on  him, one by one. And Juror 3, the last man standing, played by an outstandingly energetic and powerful Lee. J. Cobb, finally explodes with rage about the others, himself, his failures in life, like a supernova burning away all his covers and defenses.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1000013-12_angry_men/

So from now on, my effort to maintain such a list, including mostly new films that have been released not too long ago. Next January I can then just pick the best picture winner from this list, and save the Academy the boring nomination and award procedures. “Winter’s Bone” should win next year, as well. And the year after that:

UPDATE: removed some of the 2009 movies (2012-01-04)

1. Winter’s Bone (2010)
2. Le Quattro Volte (2011)
3. Fish Tank (2010)
4. Certified Copy (2010)
5. The Social Network (2010)
6. Inception (2010)
7. Meek’s Cutoff (2011)
8. Beginners (2011)
9. The Tree of Life (2011)
10. True Grit (2010)
11. Melancholia (2011)
12. La Piel Que Habito (2011)
13. The Ides of March (2011)
14. Contagion (2011)
15. Hanna (2011)
16. Route Irish (2010)
17. Trollhunter (2011)
18. Real Steel (2011)
19. Dogtooth (2010)
20. Jane Eyre (2011)
21. Let Me In (2010)
22. Moneyball (2011)
23. Exit through the gift shop (2010)
24. Black Swan (2010)
25. Margin Call (2011)
26. The King’s Speech (2010)
27. Kill List (2011)
28. Tabloid (2011)
29. Source Code (2011)
30. 127 Hours (2010)
31. Bridesmaids (2011)
32. The Descendants (2011)
33. Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)
34. The Fighter (2010)
35. Monsters (2010)
36. Freakonomics (2010)
37. Piranha 3D (2011)
38. Los Ojos de Julia (2010)
39. Inside Job (2010)
40. Monga (2010)
41. I Saw The Devil (2010)
42. Senna (2011)
43. Kick-Ass (2010)
44. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2010-11)
45. Red State (2011)
46. Morning Glory (2010)
47. Tron Legacy (2010)
48. Centurion (2010)
49. A Serbian Film (2010)
50. Toy Story 3 (2010)
51. POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (2011)
52. Water for Elephants (2011)
53. Tinker Tailor Solider Spy (2011)
54. La Casa Muda  (2011)
55. Aftershock (2010)
56. Attack The Block (2011)
57. The Adjustment Bureau (2011)
58. Pina (2011)
59. Rio (2011)
60. War Horse (2011)
61. Super 8 (2011)
62. Stake Land (2011)
63. The Ghost (Writer) (2010)
64. Made In Dagenham (2010)
65. The Losers
66. Conan O’Brian Can’t stop
67. Prince of Persia – Sand of Times
68. Restrepo
69. Despicable Me
70. Devil
71. Tangled
72. Four Lions
73. The Killer Inside Me
74. The Princess and the Frog
75. The Secret of the Kells
76. Galaxy Quest
77. Green Zone
78. Unstoppable
79. Defendor
80. Predators
81. 13 Assassins (2011)
82. Megamind (2010)
83. Buried (2010)
84. Never Let Me Go (2010)
85. Unknown (2011)
86. The Book of Eli (2010)
87. Cars 2 (2011)
88. The Last Exorcism (2010)
89. Cowboys and Aliens (2011)
90. The Mechanic (2011)
91. Midnight in Paris (2011)
92. Robin Hood (Ridley Scott)
93. Knight and Day
94. Machete
95. The Next Three Days
96. Iron Man 2
97. Frozen
98. Scott Pilgrim vs the world
99. Legion
100. Alice in Wonderland (Burton)
101. Best Worst Movie
102. Whatever Works
103. A Christmas Carol (Zemeckis)
104. Catfish
105. Takers
106. The Ward (2011)
107. Priest (2011)
108. Killer Elite (2011)
109. The Thing (2011)
110. Battle: Los Angeles (2011)
111. Salt (2010)
112. Konferenz der Tiere / Animals United (2010)
113. Saw VII (2010)
114. Sucker Punch (2011)

Honourable Mention for excessive provision of entertainment:

Boardwalk Empire [TV]

The Trip (2011 – TV version)

It always takes a bit longer when I am trying to express that I have no idea whether the film was good or bad, but I can say that the film is very calm, very unexcited about its subject matter, and that is a very distinct Tomas Alfredson style. I was reminded of “Let The Right One In” in that it never looses its cool, the people never get very excited,  most actually never make it out of a melancholic  paralysis (maybe the Tom Hardy character excluded). Production design and costumes are fabulous – only that the result is a film that perfectly reflects the ghastly look and the dullness of the Cold War era. And of the spy profession, by the way, so I was right to always stay away from these movies…

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/tinker_tailor_soldier_spy/

Thorough analysis of the … plot… here:  http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2012/01/23/tinker-tailor-a-guide-for-the-perplexed/

My worries were not justified, it is a good film, and the best thing about it is … no, not George Clooney or his handsomely grey hairline. It is the conflict Clooney is confronted with. As this happens in the first 20 minutes, I guess it is not really a spoiler to say that Matt King’s (Clooney’s) wife has a near-fatal accident, is in hospital in a coma, and this is when he finds out that his wife has had an affair with another guy for a while. Many interesting decisions need to be made by Matt building on this fact: how to deal with his wife, her imminent death, but it also plays into business dealings in a major way. Dealing with this initially invisible, then briefly visible character, or rather with the fact of his marriage being in shambles much longer than he realized (if he realized at all), having his hands full with the prime plague of a single parent, two adolescent daughters, he walks through his life in a slightly melancholic (very George Clooney’ish) way, very controlled, even balancing private and work life, but realizing that there are things he cannot do on his own. He draws in others (his daughter, his in-laws, even at some point the lover of his wife) intentionally to allow life to be in order again. Family is mentioned a lot here, the whole film is set before a background of a large family heritage being processed, and it seems that if there is a key message of the film, Alexander Payne wants to tell the audience that dealing with catastrophes in a collaborative way usually helps. That is not big news, but it makes for a well-developed, unspectacularly warm-hearted film.

In the final scene, we see a family sitting together in their house near the Hulalahula beach watching a film about Antarctica and penguins… I was wondering whether this is the Hawaiian version of adult extreme tv…

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_descendants_2011/

The best film I have seen over the last two years is still the same that topped that ranking last year (and that would have kicked “White Ribbon” off that list two years ago, had the list existed then). Nothing has nearly been as impressive as  “Winter’s Bone”, and how could anything top this masterpiece? But there is Le Quattro Volte (2011), the silent goat-herding experiment, I have only this year seen Fish Tank (2010) (another Dameselle in Distress movie – it was pointed out to me that “Winter’s Bone” and “Fish Tank” topping my list tells a lot about me… I suppose the lost goat baby was also technically a goat girl teenager) and I stumbled across Certified Copy (2010) as the most unlikely of my favourite films. I would never see that film intentionally, the same way I only saw “Before Sunset” by accident because I happened to have a ticket for the Berlin Festival premiere – and not only are both films my most surprising favourites, but of course also strongly related in how they take you on a strange ride, a talkative one.

The year was a disaster for disaster movies and busted all the blockbusters. I checked what the best-ranked action / adventure movie was I saw, and I find a bit of Hanna (2011), and my most fun movie of the year Real Steel (2011) (not as good on second viewing, especially if the second viewing is not in a movie theatre – but man, when Twin Cities gets it, it is still time to throw the doughnuts at the screen and cheer!). A bit behind these is Duncan Jones’ surprising follow-up to “Moon”, Source Code (2011), which had its flaws and suffered from the “Run Lola Run” syndrome (knowing that you have to have all these repetitions, but not really having the perfect solution for keeping the tension up). There was one film that I saw in 2D and wished it had been 3D (Piranha 3D), and at least one case where I wished I had found a 2D screening Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2010-11).

Animated movies were not very good this year:  “Cars 2” was even more boring than “Cars”, “Rio” was nicely coloured and that was that, and “Rango” was a bit more edgy, but also not fully satisfactory. I will need to catch up on the smaller productions, I look forward to “Chico and Rita”, and have only seen a little bit of “When Sita got the Blues”, plus “The Illusionist” and “My Dog Tulip” waiting in the wings. It can only get better.

Hors Category, as they say in the Tour de France, are some films I particularly enjoyed, for various reasons:  Trollhunter (2011), Red State (2011) or Beginners (2011) all contributed one way or the other to an interesting movie experience.

This time I paid more attention than usual to the opening credits, a little masterpiece of its own, and realized for the first time that he is already working with texts that have to do with pregnancy. What? When? More puzzles to be solved… and I look forward to watching it again soon!  I don’t think Fincher ever made such a coherent and dense film again.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/seven/

Does this make a great movie? Not at all, it is in its best moments (such as the Café Europa scenes) as good as sitting in the theatre and watching a live performance. A bit better, because you do not hear as much breathing and cracking of bones as you do in modern dance performances on stage. The more cinematic elements (i.e. the outdoor shootings) are actually rather distracting.

The dancing is just the way it is – spectacular and innovative. The film allows you to see it. It is as simple as that.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/pina_3d/

 http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/war_horse/ 

But what the hell: longswords, kilts, evil kings and too many of them, treason, friendship, eternal love, decapitation of the hero, full frontal warrior nudity, arrows in the provocative butt cheeks, Robert the Spineless Bruce, Brendan Gleeson, Prince’s Lovers Taking A Fall from Grace and Great Height, freeeeeedoooom – what else do you want between “Game of Thrones” seasons?  I kept looking for Ser Gregor Clegane in the midst of battle, but seems he was busy on other grounds shedding enemy blood. The pretty good BlueRay transfer makes me long to go back to the land of glens and bens again.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1065684-braveheart/

In this spirit, I see with quite a bit of satisfaction the demise of the traditional form of neoclassical economics, using rather simplistic models of human behavior, and I enjoy the success of rogue economists’ publications in the “Freakonomics” spirit. These heirs to Gary Becker do not only explain a lot of things traditional economists cannot explain or understand, they are usually also much more fun to read.

A recent example from my reading list: “Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that shape our Decisions by Dan Ariely”. Easy to read, easy to grab, often profound in the way it shows essential determinants of human behavior. Ariely describes experiments he and his colleagues conducted, and these experiments are mostly highly interesting ways of showing the side conditions of human decision-making. I believe when you put some work into applying these findings and transfer them to any given policy, market or private life situation, there is a good chance that you have a profoundly higher probability of getting what you want. Findings on what makes people cheat in exams, or steal, etc. He shows how simple the wiring often is that creates decisions in the midst of complex information. (Sometimes the wiring is embarrassingly direct: as a man, it is not very nice to read the findings of the experiment assessing the ability of sexually aroused males to anticipate their mating behavior).

There are interesting chapters about the interplay between social rules and market rules (try telling your date how much the meal you just paid her cost and see how your expected revenue declines). How much easier is it to cheat when no cash is involved! Includes funny yet clever suggestions about credit card improvement schemes: e.g. credit card calls your husband each timer you buy shoes, or your wife each time you buy chocolate beyond your monthly chocolate limit.

An enlightening and entertaining overview of experiments conducted in the area of behavioural economics, exactly my piece of cake!