Everything is coming to an end: The semester, the school year, the spring, and my tenure as the Daily Cardinal's film columnist. With finals right around the corner and, for some of us, graduation just down the hall, now seems as good a time as any to reflect upon the cinematic year that was. What better way to wrap things up than with a list of the top ten films of the past school year?
I should clarify what did and didn't qualify for the list that follows. First, I've only included films that screened in Madison more than once during the last two semesters. Second, I've only included films that made their Madison debut at some point during the fall or the spring. (This then excludes all the wonderful films that were shown by the Cinematheque.)
10. ""Summer Hours""
For my money, ""Summer Hours"" director Olivier Assayas is one of the brightest and most talented filmmakers working in today's French mainstream. This film is a far-cry from his more aggressively attitudinal offerings (like 2007's ""Boarding Gate""). ""Summer Hours"" explores family ties and the phenomenon of mourning without relying upon clichéd forms of sentimentality; it flows as steadily and smoothly as any film I saw all year.
9. ""A Serious Man""
With this film, Joel and Ethan Coen managed to marry their self-consciously postmodern tendencies with a story and subject originating from the heart. Whether you're a cinephilic schmendrick (like yours truly) or an uncommonly curious goy, the slick narration and precise compositional touch of ""A Serious Man"" makes it utterly irresistible.
8. ""A Prophet""
This film legitimately surprised me in that I typically have little interest in gritty crime movies, no matter how well-made or cleverly written they might be. Jacques Audiard's fifth feature is relentlessly sticky, bloody without being too repulsive, sporadically self-aware and magnetic in its ability to convey a genuinely engrossing narrative. It was perhaps the most absorbing of the lengthier films that I saw in Madison during the past nine months.
7. ""The Beaches of Agnès""
81-year-old Agnès Varda is such an institution of international art cinema that this film—an autobiographical documentary conducted in both the past and present tenses—is not only a memoir of its maker but a memoir of cinema itself. ""The Beaches of Agnès"" abounds with Varda's singular visual sensibility, her dame-like sense of humor and her tendency to tap into cinema's essence as if by accident.
6. ""The White Ribbon""
Michael Haneke's 11th feature is anything but subtle; it's as elliptical as any self-respecting ""art"" film we've seen since ""Rashomon"" and as unsmilingly self-serious as any ""philosophical"" film we've seen since the Holocaust. Despite this humorless handicap, ""The White Ribbon"" is too acute in its insights and too visually bold to deny.
5. ""The Hurt Locker""
I haven't seen this year's big Oscar winner since last summer but I trust that its portrayal of unstable men thrown headfirst into exceedingly dangerous situations is as complete and honest an image of war as any that we've been presented with in recent memory.
4. ""Daddy Longlegs""
My favorite narrative feature from this year's Wisconsin Film Festival, Josh and Benny Safdie's film is at once adorable and mortifying, a tale of fatherly love punctuated with flourishes of urban violence and parental neglect. The graininess of the film's images mirrors the philosophical graininess of its statements about the painfulness of growing up, for both children and adults.
3. ""Police, Adjective""
I was extremely pleased that Corneliu Porumboiu's second feature screened so many times in Madison this spring. The ideas that it explicitly articulates are as palpably potent as those that it expresses through its nearly static, often undramatic long takes. ""Police, Adjective"" is undeniable proof that the tried-and-true arthouse formula of ""long and slow"" still has some serious mileage left in it.
2. ""Fantastic Mr. Fox""
Wes Anderson's sixth feature is adorable, hilarious and aesthetically challenging. Like all of Anderson's post-""Rushmore"" output, ""Fantastic Mr. Fox"" is star-powered and quirky to a fault; even so, it never relinquishes its combination of poignancy and wryness. Of course, it's also endlessly rewatchable.
1. ""Greenberg""
Noah Baumbach's masterpiece captures the charms and neuroses of Ben Stiller's 40-something former mental patient with a wealth of sardonic wit and a penchant for staging scenes in the most uncomfortable fashion imaginable. ""Greenberg"" will likely be remembered as the film that affirmed Stiller's place as one of our era's most dynamic performers (career missteps notwithstanding) and Greta Gerwig's position as one of its most alluringly enigmatic onscreen presences.
Hopefully the opinions and ideas I've expressed in this space each week have left enough of an impression on you that you'll feel inspired to watch some movies this summer that you otherwise wouldn't have. If not, my feelings won't be hurt. I promise. You've been a great audience. Never change.
