The Only 2011 Movie Calendar You Need. Another Year. Not quite every year brings a new Mike Leigh film, but the years that do are blessed with his sympathy, penetrating observation, and instinct for human comedy. By that I don't mean “comedy” as in easy laughter. I mean that comedy that wells up from movies and allows us to recognize ourselves in characters both lovable and wretched. Leigh's “Another Year” is like a long, purifying soak in empathy.
He begins with Tom and Gerri, a North London couple who have been happily married for years. Immediately you can see the risks Leigh is prepared to take. That's also how Mary (Lesley Manville) feels. Mary needs healing. Leigh has a gift for scenes involving embarrassment in social situations. The movie doesn't require this scene. All the actors are pitch-perfect. Now we come to the matter of the chins, and here we touch on something central to the appeal of Mike Leigh. “Another Year” gave me characters I could love, feel uneasy about, identify with or be appalled by. The best feature films of 2010. David Fincher's "The Social Network"is emerging as the consensus choice as best film of 2010.
Most of the critics' groups have sanctified it, and after its initial impact it has only grown it stature. I think it is an early observer of a trend in our society, where we have learned new ways of thinking of ourselves: As members of a demographic group, as part of a database, as figures in...a social network. My best films list also appears on my main site, but I am posting it here on the blog so that you can comment on it. In response to the reader protests of recent years, I've returned to the time-honored tradition of ten films arranged in order from one to ten. After that, it's all alphabetical. The notion of objectively ordering works of art seems bizarre to me. Here are the year's best feature films: 1. 2. All of the personalities and values in "The King's Speech" are traditional (and the royal values are too traditional, the therapist believes). 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
"127 Hours. " Waiting for Superman. Toward the end of "Waiting for Superman," there is a sequence that cuts between lottery drawings for five charter schools. Admission to the best of these schools dramatically improves chances of school graduation and college acceptance. The applicants are not chosen for being gifted. They come from poor, disadvantaged neighborhoods. But the schools have astonishing track records. We have met five of these students, heard from them and their parents, and hope they'll win.
The cameras hold on their faces as numbers are drawn or names are called. "Waiting for Superman," the new documentary by Davis Guggenheim, contends the American educational system is failing, which we have been told before. Guggenheim focuses on an African-American educator named Geoffrey Canada, who deliberately chose the poorest area of Harlem to open his Harlem Success Academy. One problem with most schools, Guggenheim says, is that after teachers gain tenure in two years, it is almost impossible to fire them. Waiting for Superman Movie Reviews, Pictures. All Critics (115) | Top Critics (30) | Fresh (102) | Rotten (12) | DVD (4) Davis easily ties a sick education system to a sick society. But when it comes down to it, in the end he has no clear cure for what ails us. At the very least, though, he has exposed the disease for all to see.
Your heart goes out to all these kids, but Guggenheim's take on education stacks the deck against them even further by implying that only charters offer a ray of hope. An admirable exercise in straight talk, especially in its tough assessment of the mediocrity-enforcing teachers' unions. By focusing on these five kids and their hopeful families, Waiting for Superman puts a human face on a crisis worthy of a superhero. We need another movie, one that shows us why some charter schools work and others dont. You leave the film convinced that radical change is necessary but uncomfortable with the closing voice-over that assures you how simple it will be to implement it.
Waiting for "Superman" is essential viewing.