Golden Stans 2011

72 films seen in 2011 (one less than my record posted in 1993 and 2010); 65 qualify for judging in the Golden Stans 2011 (I saw seven films twice). It was a strange year with no obvious favourite for the big gong (as there was in 2010, 2009 and 2008).

There were obvious favourites for the least desired gong: the Cone of Shame, my award for the worst movie of the year. The contenders were unfortunately numerous: Zack Snyder’s masturbatory Sucker Punch, Fernando Meirelles’ 360, Green Lantern, Damsels In Distress, and Joe Swanberg’s double-bill of Uncle Kent and Silver Bullets. But for sheer mind-numbing tedium and pretension, The Loneliest Planet takes the biscuit. In my review, I offered this insight into the film’s epic failure to engage: “When the incident comes that effectively drives what passes for a plot, I was already begging for the film to end… [The film’s lead characters] are just middle class hippies shatting their ennui on a beautiful landscape. Avoid this crap!”
I gave it a score of 0/10. The Loneliest Planet: wear the Cone of Shame with pride!

Moving on to the good stuff, the Golden Stan for Best Score goes to David Wingo for his Clint Mansell-esque stirring soundtrack to Take Shelter, narrowly edging out Alexandre Desplat’s classy work on The Ides of March. Sticking with music, there’s a new Golden Stan here: Best Use of Music. That goes to The Fighter – its use of some classic rock standards aids the film and complements its narrative thrust rather than distracting the viewer from the story and the images.

The field for the Golden Stan for Best Cinematography reads like a DoP who’s who: Barry Ackroyd for Coriolanus; Phedon Papamichael for The Ides Of March; Robert Richardson for Hugo; Jeff Cronenweth for The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo; Roger Deakins for True Grit; and Hoyte van Hoytema for both The Fighter and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Deakins’ work his well up to his usual standard: it’s hard to think of anyone else who could have shot True Grit so well. However, for the sheer variety of skills on display, the award goes to van Hoytema: fluid, loose, improvised and colourful on The Fighter, and restrained, colour-drained, darkness and shadows in Tinker, Tailor.

The Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Screenplay awards took only a few minutes’ consideration. Rory Stewart Kinnear’s and Lynne Ramsay’s transfer to the screen of We Need To Talk About Kevin creates a dream-like narrative that is wholly cinematic, while John Michael Donagh’s original script for The Guard is darkly funny, staggeringly offensive and tragic, and conjures a starring role, so ripe with depth that Sergeant Gerry Boyle jumps off the page and onto the screen.

So, on to the acting categories, and before Best Supporting Actress, I must announce another new award: the Golden Stan for Best Cameo. For sheer emotional resonance, confidence and bloody surprise, the award goes to Aidan Quinn for his tour de force punch to my guts in Sarah’s Key. His three short scenes lift the entire film into another realm.

OK, here are the nominees for Best Supporting Actress:
• Amy Adams/The Fighter
• Jessica Chastain/The Tree Of Life, Coriolanus, Take Shelter
• Jodie Foster/Carnage
• Melissa Leo/The Fighter
• Vanessa Redgrave/Coriolanus
• Shailene Woodley/The Descendants
Amy Adams reacted brilliantly to being cast against type in The Fighter; Jessica Chastain, arguably 2011’s break-out star, had the worried but supportive wife role cornered; Jodie Foster was relaxed about playing comedy and allowing her character’s weaknesses and hypocrises to be so brutally exposed by her co-stars’ characters in Carnage; Melissa Leo was just a little too convincing as a pure white trash mother in The Fighter; and Shailene Woodley, as one of George Clooney’s daughters in The Descendants, has the presence of a seasoned pro. But the award goes to Vanessa Redgrave: she totally owns the role of Coriolanus’s mother and displays a comprehensive understanding of the text and her role within it – pure class.

The shortlist for Best Supporting Actor is:
• Christian Bale/The Fighter
• Tom Hiddleston/Thor
• Matthew McConnaughey/Bernie
• Ezra Miller/We Need To Talk About Kevin
• John C Reilly/ We Need To Talk About Kevin, Carnage, Terri
• Christoph Waltz/Carnage
Waltz and Reilly are great in Carnage, chewing the scenery with aplomb opposite Jodie Foster; Reilly also hones his honest, well-meaning loser schtick in both Terri and Kevin.
Ezra Miller is compelling as Kevin; he brings this new great screen villain to vivid life without ever tipping the audience the wink that he knows he’s playing the devil.
McConnaughey revealed new depths and real comedic skills in Bernie; it’s clear now that he’s not an action hero nor a rom-com lead – he’s a character actor in a leading man’s body.
Tom Hiddleston, who just lost out to Michael Fassbender for my best comic-based villain of 2011 for his incarnation of the god of mischief Loki, was inspired casting. You never could read his motives, and as the film goes on and Loki twists, and twists and twists again, I was left wondering if even Loki knew why he did what he did.
Finally, there is Christian Bale as Dicky Eklund in The Fighter. Bale has many detractors, but for bringing the damaged mind, body and soul of such a fruit-loop to the screen with such conviction, the Golden Stan is his.

Next, it’s Best Actress, and the nominees are:
• Rebecca Hall/The Awakening
• Rooney Mara/The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
• Andrea Risborough/Resistance
• Hailee Steinfeld/True Grit
• Tilda Swinton/We Need To Talk About Kevin
• Michelle Williams/My Week With Marilyn
The six characters inhabited by these actresses have, on the face of it, little in common, but the performances are all from the top drawer and make the characters, as different as they are, completely convincing.
Rooney Mara’s reading of Lisbeth Salander in David Fincher’s Dragon Tattoo is valid and ever-so-slightly different to Noomi Rapace’s in the original.
Michelle Williams absolutely becomes Marilyn Monroe: you forget you’re watching an actress pretending to be Norma Jean pretending to be Monroe pretending to be the showgirl.
Rebecca Hall brings intelligence and emotional frailty to her central role in The Awakening, and should really be recognised by BAFTA.
Fellow Brit Andrea Risborough keeps conflicting emotions (the yearning for her husband’s return, and her revulsion at her lust for the Nazi officer who’s yearning for her) tightly under control, just visible, bubbling beneath the surface.
Hailee Steinfeld chewed the scenery, spat out the witty banter and held her own against a stellar cast of experienced male co-stars in True Grit.
But ultimately the award goes to Tilda Swinton for her uncompromising performance in Kevin. Her Eva is put through the mill by her devilish son, but Swinton is brave enough to accept that Eva must be partly responsible for his out-turn.

Now, it’s Best Actor. I started with a longlist running to 13 names, but they can’t all make the (still not very short) shortlist, so with heavy heart and apologies to those that didn’t make the cut, here it is:
• Alberto Ammann/Cell 211
• George Clooney/The Descendants
• Michael Fassbender/X-Men: First Class, A Dangerous Method
• Brendan Gleeson/The Guard
• Joseph Gordon-Levitt/50/50
• Ryan Gosling/Drive, The Ides Of March
• Gary Oldman/Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
• Michael Shannon/Take Shelter
Alberto Ammann was great in the prison riot thriller; his approach and his presence suggest an ability to crossover from international arthouse to wider acceptance.
Clooney pulls out all the stops as the grieving father in what may well be his most realistic, naturalistic role and performance.
Michael Fassbender is surely not only the best actor working today, but also one of the most hard-working. The level of conviction and sheer bloody menace he brought to Magneto brushed aside the memory of McKellan, his predecessor in the role, while there was a wild-eyed wonder in his Carl Jung as he falls for his patient while falling out with his mentor, Freud.
Brendan Gleeson stepped up a gear from In Bruges (if that’s possible) to The Guard; he filled the role out, but never over-payed it, while drawing the audience into his enormous grasp.
JGL, hot off Inception and prior to Batman 3, delivered one of the surprise performances of the year in 50/50. He turns a potentially unlikeable character into someone you can’t help but root for as he comes to terms with and starts to fight his cancer.
Ryan Gosling went mainstream, at least in terms of media acceptance of his talent. His iconic driver was as far away from his detailed Democrat campaign manager as was possible, but he succeeded in both.
Gary Oldman turned down the flash in Tinker, Tailor, and continued the minimalist yet human approach favoured for his on-going role as Commissioner Gordon in the Batman films. He succeeds in his attempt to not repeat Alec Guinness beat for beat, and now finds himself no longer the enfant terrible and Hollywood émigré but rather the returning hero. He may not win the Oscar, but surely BAFTA awaits?
Michael Shannon’s ability to conjure fear, paranoia, despair and unflinching belief in the unbelievable was core to Take Shelter’s success.
So, I’m left with a tough three-way fight between Clooney, Oldman and Shannon. For his ability to merge into the shadows and to suggest so much with so little, the award goes to Gary Oldman.

On to the penultimate award: Best Director. The shortlist looks like this:
• Tomas Alfredson/Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
• George Clooney/The Ides Of March
• The Coens/True Grit
• Daniel Mozon/Cell 211
• Jeff Nichols/Take Shelter
• Alexander Payne/The Descendants
• David O Russell/The Fighter
• Martin Scorsese/Hugo
No apologies for such a long shortlist: there is just so much great work to recognise. Scorsese showed what can be achieved when a true auteur uses 3D; Russell invigorated his boxing movie, ensuring it escaped the shadow of Rocky; Payne’s delicate touch was in evidence throughout the Descendants; Mozon reinvented the male-bonding prison movie; the Coens delivered probably the most rounded film of their career; Clooney re-iterated the need for America to get wise, and avoided the potential for Ides to be worthy but dull and lifeless; and Alfredson confirmed his potential first showcased by Let The Right One In with his detailed and downbeat take on the spy drama.
But the award must go to Jeff Nichols for Take Shelter: he created a film that fairly skewered me to my seat.

And finally, it’s the big one: the Golden Stan for Best Film. Here’s the alphabetical list of the films that made me happy to sit in a cinema for two hours:
• 50/50: the best cancer comedy ever? Pitch perfect performances. Only just missed out on a 10/10 score.
• Cell 211: alongside Ralph Fiennes’ Coriolanus, the Spanish prison riot male-bonding thriller was the most muscular film of the year. See it before Hollywood remakes it!
• The Descendants: funny and sad, sad and funny – another midlife crisis masterpiece from Alexander Payne.
• The Fighter: second time around, I was still on the edge of my seat as Mickey Ward goes for the world championship. Charismatic and invigorating.
• Hugo: Scorsese’s best film since Goodfellas, and his film with the most heart. A joy to watch.
• The Ides Of March: more righteous liberalism from Clooney – the only mainstream director with the guts to tackle overtly political themes.
• Little White Lies: two-thirds comedy, one-third tragedy – the French film that truly travelled successfully outside its own borders and culture.
• Nobody Else But You: the better Marilyn Monroe of the year. A great example that the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. Endlessly enjoyable. Here’s hoping it gets a proper release in the UK in 2012.
• Take Shelter: gripping, frightening, and moving – nu-scifi has arrived!
• Thor: the best comic book movie of the year. Thrilling, funny, romantic and full of awe. Not far short of brilliant.
• Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: I still can’t work out how Smiley solves the mystery, but sometimes it’s about the journey, not the destination.
• True Grit: the Coens’ most straight-forward movie – and all the better for it. The sort of film that cinemas were made for, this is old-fashioned entertainment.

So which film gets the nod? True Grit was massively entertaining, while The Fighter was unlucky to come up against The King’s Speech and Black Swan at the Oscars – in other years it might have deservedly walked away with the big one. Little White Lies caught me by surprise and left me drained of tears at the end through so much laughing and crying.

But the film that jumped up on me out of nowhere and cast a spell over me, put me through the wringer and had me cheering on its hero as the climactic finale approached was Take Shelter. For putting me on the edge of my seat for two hours, Take Shelter is the winner.

That’s it for 2011; bring on 2012!