The Best Movies of 2011

The movies of 2011 aimed high, that’s for sure. One of my favorite films chronicled the creation of the universe, while another showed us the end of the world.

Themes explored in films that made my top 10 list and selection of runners up included the nature of good and evil, human psychology, death, religion, addiction, forgiveness, immigration and the birth of cinema.

Needless to say, it was a pretty heavy year.

But 2011 also had its share of stinkers as you’ll see below in my brief roundup of the year’s worst films.

This year’s summer blockbuster season was particularly bland, in my opinion, but the fall provided an abundance of riches.

So, let’s get the bad news out of the way first.

This year’s worst included agonizing supernatural tween romances (“” and “Red Riding Hood”), mind numbing action movies (“” and “”), wannabe provocations (“A Serbian Film” and “Super”), potty-mouthed, but laughless, comedies (“,” “Your Highness” and “No Strings Attached”) and one star vehicle that crashed and burned (“”).

It was a slow year to start, but the fall movie season had an especially impressive lineup.

My ten runners up include actress Vera Farmiga’s debut, “,” Steven Soderbergh’s thriller “,” Pedro Almodovar’s macabre “,” David Fincher’s re-imagining of “,” Steve McQueen’s controversial sex addict drama “,” Clint Eastwood’s biopic “,” Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cannes winner “,” sports drama “,” Woody Allen’s “” and Evan Glodell’s debut, “.”

And here’s my top 10:

10. – Martin Scorsese’s first foray into the world of 3D is an enchanting homage to the birth of the movies. And it’s one of the rare examples to justify the rebirth of the now-overused technology.

9. – Michel Hazanavicius’s Cannes sensation is another throwback to the early days of cinema. The film, which includes a breakout performance by Jean Dujardin, is a silent film shot in black and white.

8. – Also in black in white, Chuan Lu’s harrowing epic chronicles the Rape of Nanking. This powerful war film follows several characters, including soldiers and civilians, into the center of the infamous siege.

7. – Alexander Payne’s latest is a funny and emotionally involving film about a family struggling after its matriarch is left in a coma. George Clooney is reliably excellent in the film’s lead, while Shailene Woodley, who plays his daughter, gives one of the year’s star-making performances.

6. – Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismaki delivers one of his finest movies to date with this deadpan dramedy about a shoe shiner who discovers a new sense of purpose while sheltering a young African immigrant who is on the run from the police in the titular French port city.

5. – David Cronenberg’s cerebral drama about the early days of psychoanalysis finds Michael Fassbender and Viggo Mortensen at the top of their game as Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, respectively. But it’s Keira Knightley who dominates every minute she is onscreen as Sabina Spielrein, Jung’s lover and protégé. The film’s ending lays the groundwork for the horrors of the 20th Century.

4. – Jeff Nichols’s sophomore effort is an unsettling film for our age of uncertainty. Michael Shannon plays a construction foreman who begins to have apocalyptic visions of an approaching storm. These nightmares not only threaten his sanity, but also his job and health care for his family, which includes a deaf daughter in need of an operation.

3. – Speaking of apocalyptic. Lars von Trier’s finest film to date is an end of the world saga set entirely on an estate. The picture’s first half chronicles the doomed wedding of Kirsten Dunst’s depressed art director, while its second half is told from the point of view of her nervous sister (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Its opening montage of doomsday is a stunner.

2. – Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn’s adaptation of James Sallis’s novel is a slow burn crime thriller in which a nameless driver (Ryan Gosling) gets mixed up with a single mother and a couple of ruthless Los Angeles criminals. The picture, which is gorgeously shot and scored, appears deceptively straightforward, but is, under the surface, an examination of penance and the definitions of good and evil.

1. – Terrence Malick’s cosmic epic is the most debated movie of the year and, in my opinion, the best. This visually stunning and haunting picture chronicles the story of a young boy’s fall from innocence and the lives of his family through the prism of the universe’s formation. Much like Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” it questions our place in the galaxy and covers thematic ground upon which most films are too timid to tread.