Roger Ebert’s Top 20 Film of 2011

(Thanks Craig Z!)

1. “A Separation”
It is specifically Iranian, but I believe the more specific a film is about human experience, the more universal it is. On the other hand, movies “for everybody” seem to be for nobody in particular… “A Separation” will become one of those enduring masterpieces watched decades from now.

2. “Shame”
3. “The Tree of Life”
A film of vast ambition and deep humility, attempting no less than to encompass all of existence and view it through the prism of a few infinitesimal lives. Terrence Malick’s film begins with the Big Bang that created our universe, and ends after the characters have left the realm of time. In between, it zooms in on a moment, surrounded by infinity.

4. “Hugo”
In the guise of a delightful 3D family film, Martin Scorsese makes a love letter to the cinema… Without our quite realizing it, Hugo’s changing relationship with the old man becomes the story of the invention of the movies, and the preservation of our film heritage. Could anyone but Scorsese have made this subject to magical and enchanting?

5. “Take Shelter”
6. “Kinyarwanda”
7. “Drive”
The director, Nicolas Winding Refn, peoples his story with characters who bring lifetimes onto the screen–in contrast to the Driver, who brings as little as possible. “Drive” looks like one kind of thriller in the ads, and it is that kind of thriller, but also another and a rebuke to most of the movies it looks like.

8. “Midnight in Paris”
9. “Le Havre”
10. “The Artist”

11. Melancholia
12. “Terri”
13. “The Descendants”
14. “Margaret”
15. “Martha Marcy May Marlene”
16. “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2”
17. Trust
18. “Life, Above All”
19. “The Mill and the Cross”
20. “Another Earth”

Those are my top 20, leaving out documentaries, which I will list later. To include them on the same list would be ranking oranges and apples. There were many other excellent films in 2011, some fully the equal of some of these. Alphabetically:

“13 Assassins,”
“Another Earth,”
“Beginners,”
“Boy Wonder,”
“Certified Copy,”
“The Future,” ”
The Guard,”
“Higher Ground,”
“I Will Follow,”
“J Edgar,”
“The Last Rites of Joe May,”
“:Le Quattro Volte,”
“Margin Call”
“Meek’s Cutoff,”
“Moneyball,”
“Mysteries of Lisbon,”
“My Week with Marilyn,”
“The Princess of Montpensier,”
“Rango,”
“A Screaming Man,”
“Silent Souls,”
“Tyrannosaur,”
“Queen to Play,”
“Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows,”
“The Whistleblower.”