December 16, 2011

Tough Women, Candid Candidates

By ALESSANDRA STANLEY

BEST is the worst of categories, because there are so many different standards for television — “Breaking Bad” may offer the most searing performances, but plenty of seemingly high-minded people get a kick out of “Hoarders” or “Chelsea Lately.” There was a lot of good television in 2011, but it was also a year that stood out for deliciously bad entertainment as well.

HOMELAND on Showtime was just plain great, and certainly the best espionage thriller in a long time, a “24” for grown-ups. As Carrie, a C.I.A. officer with psychiatric issues, Claire Danes found the sweet spot between heroism and obnoxiousness. Carrie was wrong about a lot of things, but she had every reason be obsessed with Brody, the returned P.O.W. played by Damian Lewis, and national security was only one of them.

PARKS AND RECREATION isn’t new; it is in its fourth season on NBC. But like “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” which was also remarkably good, it managed to stay fresh — and very funny — even after breaking the sexual tension between Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) and her co-worker Ben (Adam Scott). This was a year of new sitcoms featuring strong female leads and strong women behind the camera — notably “Whitney” and “2 Broke Girls.” Those comedies about urban sophisticates had their moments, but neither proved as witty or winning as the one set in a municipal bureaucracy in Pawnee, Ind.

THE HOUR was a newsroom-espionage thriller on BBC America set at the time of the Suez Canal crisis, a British period drama that for once didn’t focus on manor house privilege but instead reveled in cold-war decline. Snobs, spies and a sexy romantic triangle made the six parts of “The Hour” fly by like minutes.

DOWNTON ABBEY on PBS did go big for Gilded Age nostalgia, and while it wasn’t in the least bit original, it became an instant classic, a loving and lovable knockoff of “Upstairs, Downstairs” and “Gosford Park” and so many others. It was a Ladurée macaron that felt heart-healthy — a guiltless pleasure.

REVENGE on ABC was more of a shameful self-indulgence on the order of a half-gallon of Ben & Jerry’s Chubby Hubby ice cream. Set in the Hamptons and very loosely based on “The Count of Monte Cristo,” this nighttime soap mixed the campy melodrama of “Dynasty” with the chic knowingness of “Gossip Girl.” As a conniving but guilt-ridden society matron, Madeleine Stowe is the new Alexis Carrington, with a touch of Lady Macbeth.

THE VOICE was the better singing contest, certainly more engaging than “The X Factor.” It was a reality show in tune with the 99 percent, collapsing the lofty remove of judges — the panel included Christina Aguilera and Adam Levine — and putting them on the line alongside contestants. Singers picked which judge would serve as mentor; judges had a personal stake in their team. And the stars performed occasionally, a reminder that they are artists, not just celebrities and industry executives. Even the audition gimmick of turning judges’ backs to the aspirants, so they had to assess them by voice alone, was a refreshing break from the customary obsession with looks.

LAW & ORDER: SVU deserves a nod for most improved series. With a new show runner, new cast members and without Christopher Meloni, this aging series got a new look and a fresh start, much of it thanks to Andre Braugher as a skillful defense lawyer. One recent stark episode about a music student who is raped in her apartment was as startlingly realistic and unflinching as any in the series’s early days.

BOB COSTAS of NBC had the best, if creepiest, interview of the year by keeping his cool — and holding onto the phone — while talking to Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State assistant coach accused of sexually molesting children. Mr. Costas had very little notice but politely managed to keep Mr. Sandusky answering harrowing questions without in any way feigning sympathy.

THE REPUBLICAN PRIMARY DEBATES were too often disparaged as a reality show, but they had all the best elements of the genre and none of the Kardashian excess. Candidates took chances and exposed themselves. Newt Gingrich acted superior and surged back from nowhere, and Rick Perry fell hard with his “oops” fugue. Even the imperturbable Mitt Romney got rattled and dropped his Everyman mien to morph into the trading-floor hotshot who bets a cool $10,000 when challenged on a fact.

LATE NIGHT WITH JIMMY FALLON is the most enjoyable late-night show, partly because Mr. Fallon broke with talk show tradition and brought the Roots, a real hip-hop band. In ensuing years he made the most of his “Saturday Night Live” talent for skits and impersonations, and tapped into younger viewers with Twitter and video games like Batman: Arkham City. Conan O’Brien makes fun of people. Mr. Fallon looks as if he’s having fun.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 25, 2011

A television column last Sunday about the best shows of the year — including the ABC series “Revenge” — misstated the given name of the character played by Joan Collins on the old “Dynasty” TV series, which “Revenge” was compared to because of its campy melodrama. The character was Alexis Carrington, not Alex.

Theater Talkback: The Year in Miscellany By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

DECEMBER 15, 2011, 3:04 PM

Theater Talkback: The Year in Miscellany By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

Richard Termine for The New York TimesKatherine Waterston, left, and Dianne Wiest in Chekhov’s “Cherry Orchard” at the Classic Stage Company.

The approach of a new year brings reflections on the old. For writers about culture, this is a fancy way of saying it’s time to compile a list of the finest achievements of the year in the field you cover, preferably keeping the number to an easily digestible 10.

Accordingly my colleague Ben Brantley and I have assembled our lists. I generally prefer to keep my choices in alphabetical order. These lists are ornery things to put together in the first place, and somehow deciding which show is worthy of crowning the list feels artificial and often impossible. To begin with, comparing, say, a new musical with a Shakespeare revival, and then ranking one above the other, is an absurdity. Also I always feel that being No. 10 on someone’s ranked-in-order top 10 list must give little more joy than being left off entirely.

Inevitably there are also worthy achievements that you want to acknowledge but can’t. So as you, readers, begin calculating your own lists – yes, here’s your chance to feel the peculiar pinch of this part of the critic’s job – here are some other reflections, assessments, and fantastical fake awards that I wasn’t able to include in my ranking.

Most unexpected surprise (pleasant) The arrival of not one but two superb Chekhov productions in a single calendar year. I often feel that Chekhov’s plays are even harder to get right than the mighty Shakespeare’s. The magic of Shakespeare is multifarious and sprawling; they’ve got lots of working parts, and at least some of the parts are likely to work. They are symphonic; Chekhov’s plays are more like perfectly put-together string quartets, requiring perfect coordination among players.

I haven’t cared for any of the Classic Stage Company’s three prior forays into the Chekhov canon, finding them all disorderly and out of tune. But Andrei Belgrader’s zesty version of “The Cherry Orchard” won me over entirely with its fluid mixture of pathos and humor. And the production of “Uncle Vanya” from the Sydney Theater Company that, alas, only visited the Kennedy Center, was equally delicate, funny and assured. It’s a great pity that the Lincoln Center Festival, say, couldn’t find it a New York accommodation. Which brings us to…

Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“King Lear,” with Greg Hicks, left, in the title role and Geoffrey Freshwater as Gloucester, at the Park Avenue Armory.

Most unexpected surprise (unpleasant) The Royal Shakespeare Company’s residency at the Park Avenue Armory as part of the Lincoln Center Festival. These productions – of “As You Like It,”“Romeo and Juliet,” “The Winter’s Tale,” “King Lear” and “Julius Caesar” – were by no means inept or wrongheaded or disastrous. But the company’s reputation is such that I expected quite a bit more in the way of commanding or revelatory performances. The whole package, which included the construction of an amazing replica of the company’s Stratford home base inside the armory, turned out to be more exciting than the contents.

(Honorable mention in this category goes to the cancellation of “Funny Girl,” one of the few name-brand Broadway shows — thanks to you-know-who — that has not been seen in a major revival.)

Solo performance of the year It’s a tie! Mike Daisey’s sharp-minded inquisition into the works of Steve Jobs’s mind and the workings of the corporation he led to such renown in recent years was this distinctive monologuist’s finest work yet. It returns for an encore run at the Public Theater on Jan. 31, and all Mac-heads should lend an ear, if they can tear themselves away from their iPhone 4Ss. But favoring Mr. Daisey’s “Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs” over John Hurt’s brutally funny, achingly moving performance in Samuel Beckett’s “Krapp’s Last Tape,” which continues through the weekend at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, is impossible.

Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesReed Birney in “A Small Fire” at Playwrights Horizons.

Hardest-working actor Reed Birney, who appeared in three significant Off Broadway shows during the year and was excellent in all. In “A Small Fire” by Adam Bock he played the husband of a woman stricken by illness; in David West Read’s “Dream of the Burning Boy” he was an English teacher whose star student suddenly dies; and in Adam Rapp’s “Dreams of Flying, Dreams of Falling”he was the quietly suffering husband of Christine Lahti’s rapacious social lioness. Quiet suffering seems to become this terrific actor, but if you recall his performance in Sarah Kane’s “Blasted,” you know he’s capable of much more.

Most fabulous costumes Sorry, “Priscilla Queen of the Desert,” and nice try, “Sister Act,” but the prize goes to the splendidly loony work of an artist known as Machine Dazzle, who created the eye-popping costumes in Taylor Mac’s “Walk Across America for Mother Earth,” from what appeared to be the contents of several dumpsters in the fashion district, and the unsold stock left over from the Ricky’s makeup chain.

Finest company not enough people know about The Red Bull Theater Company, which specializes in the difficult plays of the Jacobean period – and for the most part, not Shakespeare’s. This year they presented a captivating production of “The Witch of Edmonton,” starring Charlayne Woodard, and earlier I caught a terrific staging of Thomas Middleton’s “Women Beware Women.” They regularly host Monday-night readings of plays that attract terrific casts. Next up: Gogol’s “Government Inspector,” featuring Stephen Spinella and Marsha Mason, on Dec. 26.

Richard Termine for The New York TimesThe playwright Young Jean Lee in her one-woman show.

Shape-shifter award Young Jean Lee, the playwright and performer whose next project is always as surprising and often as rewarding as her last. After establishing herself as a playwright to watch with “The Shipment,” a seriocomic play about black identity, and then having the temerity to rewrite “King Lear,” Ms. Lee put herself center stage this year, performing a very funny solo show, “We’re Gonna Die,” including goofy pop songs and personal reflections on life’s many perils, death very much included. In January she tears off in a new direction, with “Young Jean Lee’s Untitled Feminist Show” at the Baryshnikov Arts Center. Expect the – well don’t bother with expectations. They will be confounded.

(Honorable mention in this category goes to the reliably surprising David Greenspan. This year alone he wrote a softly hued and essentially traditional comedy drama, “Go Back to Where You Are,” before resurrecting a forgotten chestnut from 1925, “The Patsy,” in which he played all the roles.)

The what-were-they-thinking award To the producers of “High,” the quick-flop drama by Matthew Lombardo starring Kathleen Turner, inexplicably imported to Broadway after a none-too-impressive staging in Hartford, Conn.

The enough-already award Ingmar Bergman movies on stage. “Autumn Sonata,” “Through a Glass Darkly” and “Cries and Whispers,” all in one year? Those hard-working people who produce the Criterion Collection DVDs have a lot to answer for. I await with fear the 27-hour stage marathon of “Scenes From a Marriage.”

Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesLaura Osnes and Jeremy Jordan in “Bonnie and Clyde.”

The chutzpah award To the indomitable Frank Wildhorn, who continues to brave Broadway despite reliable evidence that neither critics nor audiences (in sufficient numbers) have any great affection for his work. It’s notable for any composer to have two shows open on Broadway in a single year. That Mr. Wildhorn achieved the feat with the ill-received “Wonderland” and “Bonnie and Clyde” beggars belief.

Most promising out of town development The appointment of the director Les Waters to head the Actors Theater of Louisville, which hosts the annual Humana Festival of New American Plays. This festival has been drifting toward obsolescence in recent years, as more and more regional theaters compete for new work from emerging playwrights. Mr. Waters has just the kind of adventurous eye (he was crucial in helping establish Sarah Ruhl as a playwright of consequence) that the theater needs at this juncture.

Most overhyped show Another tie! Between two musicals of vastly different fates, and indeed qualities. “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” managed to turn turmoil and near-calamity into surprisingly robust ticket sales, although the possibility of it recouping its massive investment still seems remote. Meanwhile, the unceasing barrage of advertisements for “The Book of Mormon,” to which you cannot get a ticket for love or money (well, maybe for lots and lots of money) has begun to seem positively sadistic. I’m so tired of the television ads I’ve had to stop watching “The Daily Show” at night. Wake me when it’s over.

OK, I’ve had my fun. Time for you to append your top 10 lists, or your randomly assorted choices for outstanding achievement, good or bad.

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This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 15, 2011

An earlier version of this post misstated the opening date of the return engagement as well as the title of the show "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs." It also misidentified the theater where “Young Jean Lee’s Untitled Feminist Show” will be performed. It will be presented at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, not PS 122. It also misstated the role of the director Les Waters. He is to head the Actors Theater of Louisville, which hosts the annual Humana Festival of New American Plays, not just the festival itself.

December 15, 2011

Without Hype, Playwriting Thrives By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

FOR the second year running I quickly totted up my list of my favorite nights at the theater before noticing, to my happy surprise, that the lineup didn’t include a single revival. This year, perhaps just as remarkably (if less happily), it doesn’t include a single musical either. True, it was hardly a stellar year for either genre.

The ecstatically received “Book of Mormon” practically swallowed the Broadway season whole, critically and promotionally speaking, while the endless debacle that was “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” gobbled up all the attention left over. And although the New York theater continues to be a leader in the recycling business, aside from Brian Bedford’s scintillating revival of “The Importance of Being Earnest” and a frisky and fresh “Cherry Orchard” from the director Andrei Belgrader, the year was mostly devoid of revelatory reimaginings of classics.

The inspiriting truth is that, while most of the media attention and dollars continue go to the overhyped fare that is more branded entertainment than art, American playwriting that strives to tell subtler if less handily marketable truths is in surprisingly strong shape. Here, in alphabetical order, is the proof:

‘BELLEVILLE’ Amy Herzog emerged in just a little over a year as a fully developed playwriting talent. Last year her “After the Revolution” made my list, and this year she wrote two plays of distinction, in intriguingly different styles. “Belleville,” which I saw during its premiere run at Yale Repertory Theater, blends elements of a straight-up psychological thriller into a keenly observed examination of a young couple’s disintegrating marriage.

‘BENGAL TIGER AT THE BAGHDAD ZOO’ Rajiv Joseph’s dark comedy about the chaos consuming the lives of soldiers and one grumpy tiger in the immediate aftermath of the American invasion of Iraq was a challenge for Broadway audiences, even with the beloved comic actor Robin Williams portraying the feline victim. But this richly imagined play, directed with finesse by Moisés Kaufman, depicted with a bold lyricism the murky world of warfare from the perspective of both the soldiers on the ground and the Iraqi citizens.

‘BLOOD AND GIFTS’ J. T. Rogers’s incisive study of the roots of the American involvement in Afghanistan was as dramatically engaging as it was rooted in the complex history of the region. Bartlett Sher’s lucid hand at the helm, and a winning performance by Jefferson Mays as a jaded British operative straight from the pages of a Graham Greene novel, helped turn what might have been a dry history lesson into an evening of theater that entertained even more than it edified.

‘4000 MILES’ The second of Ms. Herzog’s plays to make my list, this delicately drawn comedy-drama featured superlative performances by the veteran Mary Louise Wilson, as an aging lefty grandmother, and the talented newcomer Gabriel Ebert as her grandson. Their genial relationship deepens when he spends a few weeks in her New York apartment after a cross-country bike trip marred by tragedy. The best news: this wise, funny and heartfelt play will return to Lincoln Center Theater in the spring, with the cast intact.

‘JERUSALEM’ Mark Rylance is an actor of such protean gifts that he manages to turn his Tony acceptance speeches into quirky displays of bravura (albeit slightly irritating ones). In the roistering Rooster of Jez Butterworth’s elegiac play about the dimming fortunes of an England in decline — the lone London import on my list — he gave one of the great performances of the year, finding the spiritual beauty in a study in willful dissipation.

‘KIN’ Bathsheba Doran’s ensemble comedy-drama was an evocative exploration of the manner in which each human life touches gently on innumerable others. Sam Gold, who has become a sought-after director for his ability to mine every nuance of feeling in this kind of layered, naturalistic play, was at his finest here, bringing his tender, whispering touch to Ms. Doran’s story of interlocking lives.

‘THE ____________ WITH THE HAT’ Stephen Adly Guirgis’s comedy with the unprintable name was worth every four-letter word. An exhilarating head rush of a play, expertly directed by Anna D. Shapiro, it was enlivened even further by a fiery performance from Bobby Cannavale as an ex-con fighting to stay sober and keep the tenuous lifeline connecting him to his equally troubled ex-girlfriend from snapping.

‘SONS OF THE PROPHET’ In the standout play of the fall season, the playwright Stephen Karam depicted a kaleidoscope of human suffering with both biting humor and boundless compassion. The gifted actor Santino Fontana led a flawless cast, portraying a young man plagued by a mysterious ailment who also has to cope with the sudden death of his father, the failing health of a troublesome uncle, and a needy boss also battling the brutal fates.

‘VENUS IN FUR’ David Ives brought a moribund Broadway genre, the sex comedy, roaring back to life with his sneaky two-hander about a sexually fraught encounter between a desperate but calculating actress and a high-handed playwright-director. Reprising the role that made her a name to watch when the play was first produced Off Broadway, Nina Arianda gives a performance that reaffirms one’s belief in that elusive thing known as star quality.

‘THE WALK ACROSS AMERICA FOR MOTHER EARTH’ The only true downtown entry on my list, this insightful, gently satiric and play by the drag performer and writer Taylor Mac depicted a ragged band of freak-flag-waving activists treading from coast to coast to protest the depredations being visited on the planet. With this fully realized play, Mr. Mack established himself as a dramatist of more expansive gifts than even his most ardent followers might have imagined.

December 15, 2011

From the Past, but Looking Forward By BEN BRANTLEY

THIS was a year for celebrating both the enduring power of traditional theater and the creative stealth bombs that can be planted within it, for putting new and explosive life into classic vessels. “The Book of Mormon,” the year’s biggest hit, is on one level as cheerful and predictable an organic musical as anything Rodgers and Hammerstein might have come up with. But it’s also a sustained act of gleeful subversion. And while plays like “Jerusalem,” “The _______ With the Hat” and “Other Desert Cities” are anything but experimental in form, each seduces its audiences into traveling into places that they hadn’t expected (or thought they wanted) to visit. With one notable exception (the Belarus Free Theater’s galvanizing “Being Harold Pinter”) the shows listed below have the pleasingly familiar surface appearance of the Broadway of decades ago. What lurks in the hearts and minds of the original productions here (the revivals are another matter, but only just) is very much of the 21st century.

‘THE BOOK OF MORMON’ In what was generally a weak year for new musicals this audacious portrait of missionary innocents abroad managed all by itself to generate the energy and excitement to light up a whole season. Impudent, scurrilous, impious it may be. But this collaboration among Trey Parker and Matt Stone (the creators of “South Park”), the composer Robert Lopez and the director Casey Nicholaw is also a starry-eyed, lace-trimmed valentine to the good old-fashioned musical that grandma and grandpa used to fall in love with.

‘JERUSALEM’ Jez Butterworth’s drama about a drug-dealing, middle-aged Pied Piper in a bucolic corner of England, directed by Ian Rickson, was almost Aristotelian in its adherence to symmetries of time and place. But with a brilliant Mark Rylance in the central role, this production soared beyond “real time” into a primal, ageless realm of myths and giants that a spiritually impoverished world hungers to believe in, whether it knows it or not.

‘OTHER DESERT CITIES’ The long-promising American playwright Jon Robin Baitz finally delivered the complete drama his fans had been hoping for: a carefully plotted, hyper-articulate portrait of a raging family that discovers heroism — and a kind of blessed tranquility — in places where you never expected Mr. Baitz to find it. Joe Mantello oversaw the finest ensemble of the year.

‘BEING HAROLD PINTER’ Simply getting to New York (with the aid of the Public Theater and La MaMa) was a cloak-and-dagger adventure for the Belarus Free Theater, which is banned from performing in its own country. The show this troupe presented here in January — an inspired exploration of Pinter’s work as an anatomy of totalitarian oppression and the sadistic will to power behind it — was a searing, profoundly inventive reminder that theater can still be revolutionary, in all senses of that word.

‘THE __________ WITH THE HAT’ The season’s unlikeliest Broadway hit, Stephen Adly Guirgis’s foul-mouthed comedy about love and addiction (and love as addiction) dared to turn the language of 12-step programs inside out, reminding us that what draws people together and tears them apart (and sometimes makes them destroy themselves) is way too complex to be contained by a set of inspirational rules. Anna D. Shapiro oversaw a red-meat cast that seemed stark naked even with their clothes on.

‘THE NORMAL HEART’ A play that everyone expected to register as, at best, a worthy dinosaur — Larry Kramer’s 1985 drama about the early plague years of AIDS in New York — turned out to be a very-much-alive, inexhaustibly angry dragon that still breathed fire.

‘GOOD PEOPLE’ David Lindsay-Abaire’s quiet, seemingly uneventful drama about former sweethearts from South Boston who (briefly) reunite in middle age turned out to be a trenchant assessment of the divisive power of class in this country. And as an obdurate blue-collar gal who kept her secrets to herself, Frances McDormand provided a master class in beneath-the-skin acting in Daniel Sullivan’s deceptively easygoing production.

‘FOLLIES’ Four decades after it first dazzled and baffled Broadway, Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman’s musical about a reunion of former Ziegfeld Follies-style performers returned in a heartfelt production (from the Kennedy Center) that reconfirmed its status as the greatest show-biz eulogy — and benediction — ever written. Eric Schaeffer directed a starry cast to die for that found the emotional transparency in the shadows of spectacle past.

‘THE CHERRY ORCHARD’ A Chekhov tragicomedy that nobody ever seems to get right was done full, revelatory justice in a tiny Off Broadway theater (the Classic Stage Company). Andrei Belgrader’s funny, sad and freshly conceived interpretation opened the walls between Chekhov’s then and our now. Rarely have this play’s endlessly frustrated Russians (played by a cast that included Dianne Wiest and John Turturro) seemed to speak so directly and affectingly to an audience.

‘SWEET AND SAD’ The unspeakable resonated beneath and within the everyday conversational prose of Richard Nelson’s quiet, eloquent drama about a family that reunites in a town in upstate New York on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. This work’s gentle indirection, given life by a perfectly melded ensemble at the Public Theater, made it the most affecting play to date to deal with the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

The Best Books Of 2011: The Complete List - NPR

The Best Books Of 2011: The Complete List


text size A A A November 20, 2011 Use the list below to browse NPR's Best Books Of 2011 recommendations. Each critic's list is presented separately. Click on the article names to read our critics' comments about the books.





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Year-End Wrap-Up: The 10 Best Novels Of 2011

Recommended by MAUREEN CORRIGAN



Swamplandia!, by Karen Russell, paperback, 400 pages, Random House, list price: $14.95



Open City, by Teju Cole, hardcover, 259 pages, Random House, list price: $25



The Submission, by Amy Waldman, hardcover, 299 pages, Farrar Straus & Giroux, list price: $26



The Art Of Fielding, by Chad Harbach, hardcover, 512 pages, Little Brown & Co, list price: $25.99



The Illumination, by Kevin Brockmeier, hardcover, 257 pages, Random House, list price: $24.95



The Leftovers, by Tom Perrotta, hardcover, 355 pages, St Martins Press, list price: $25.99



The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides, hardcover, 406 pages, Farrar Straus & Giroux, list price: $28



State Of Wonder, by Ann Patchett, hardcover, 353 pages, HarperCollins, list price: $26.99



Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson, hardcover, 116 pages, Farrar Straus & Giroux, list price: $18



The Pale King: An Unfinished Novel, by David Foster Wallace, hardcover, 548 pages, Little Brown & Co, list price: $27.99



... And Two Nonfiction Titles You Shouldn't Miss



In the on-air version of her year-end list, Maureen Corrigan also included two nonfiction recommendations:

To End All Wars: A Story Of Loyalty And Rebellion, 1914-1918, by Adam Hochschild, hardcover, 480 pages, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, list price: $28



The Swerve: How The World Became Modern, by Stephen Greenblatt, hardcover, 320 pages, W.W. Norton & Company, list price: $26.95





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7 Books With Personality: Nancy Pearl's 2011 Picks

Recommended by Nancy Pearl



In Zanesville: A Novel, by Jo Ann Beard, hardcover, 289 pages, Little, Brown & Co., list price: $23.99



A World On Fire: Britain's Crucial Role In The American Civil War, by Amanda Foreman, hardcover, 958 pages, Random House, list price: $35



Blind Sight, by Meg Howrey, hardcover, 289 pages, Random House, list price: $24.95



The Summer Of The Bear, by Bella Pollen, hardcover, 448 pages, PGW, list price: $24



By George: A Novel, by Wesley Stace, paperback, 383 pages, Little, Brown & Co., list price: $14.99



Vaclav & Lena, by Haley Tanner, hardcover, 292 pages, Random House, list price: $25



Down The Mysterly River, by Bill Willingham, hardcover, 336 pages, Starscape, list price: $15.99





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Booksellers' Picks: Catch The Year's Freshest Reads

Recommended by Lucia Silva, Portrait of a Bookstore



A Christmas Tree For Pyn, by Olivier Dunrea, hardcover, 32 pages, Philomel, list price: $16.99



The Toaster Project: Or A Heroic Attempt To Build A Simple Electric Appliance From Scratch, by Thomas Thwaites, paperback, 191 pages, Chronicle Books LLC., list price: $19.95



Unpacking My Library: Writers And Their Books, by Leah Price, hardcover, 201 pages, Yale University Press, list price: $20



Forgotten Bookmarks: A Bookseller's Collection Of Odd Things Lost Between The Pages, by Michael Popek, hardcover, 182 pages, Penguin Group USA, list price: $18.95



How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive, by Christopher Boucher, paperback, 239 pages, Random House, list price: $15



Recommended by Rona Brinlee, The Book Mark



Birds Of Paradise, by Diana Abu-Jaber, paperback, 368 pages, WW Norton & Co., list price: $15.95



The Girl Who Would Speak For The Dead, by Paul Elwork, hardcover, 308 pages, Penguin Group USA, list price: $24.95



A Good Hard Look, by Ann Napolitano, hardcover, 326 pages, Penguin Group USA, list price: $25.95



On Canaan's Side, by Sebastian Barry, hardcover, 256 pages, Penguin Group USA, list price: $25.95



Pasta By Design, by George L. Legendre, hardcover, 208 pages, WW Norton & Co., list price: $29.95



Rules Of Civility, by Amor Towles, hardcover, 335 pages, Penguin Group USA, list price: $26.95



Recommended by Daniel Goldin, Boswell Books



American Boy, by Larry Watson, hardcover, 251 pages, Milkweed Editions, list price: $24



The Unwanteds, by Lisa McMann, hardcover, 390 pages, Simon & Schuster, list price: $16.99



Gimbels Has It!, by Michael J. Lisicky, paperback, 157 pages, History Press, list price: $19.99



The White Woman On The Green Bicycle, by Monique Roffey, paperback, 439 pages, Penguin Group USA, list price: $16



Just My Type: A Book About Fonts, by Simon Garfield, hardcover, 356 pages, Penguin Group USA, list price: $27.50



This Burns My Heart, by Samuel Park, hardcover, 310 pages, Simon & Schuster, list price: $25





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Top 5 Books For Backseat Readers (Age 9 And Up)

Recommended by Michele Norris



Heart And Soul:The Story Of America And African Americans, by Kadir Nelson, hardcover, 108 pages, Harpercollins Childrens Books, list price: $19.99



The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In A Ship Of Her Own Making, by Catherynne M. Valente, paperback, 272 pages, Feiwel & Friends, list price: $6.99



The Secret History Of Balls: The Stories Behind The Things We Love To Catch, Whack, Throw, Kick, Bounce, And Bat, by Josh Chetwynd and Emily Stackhouse, paperback, 221 pages, Penguin Group USA, list price: $13.95



Drawing From Memory, by Allen Say, hardcover, 63 pages, Scholastic, list price: $17.99



Saint Louis Armstrong Beach, by Brenda Woods, hardcover, 137 pages, Penguin Group USA, list price: $16.99



Honorable Mentions:



Tall Story, by Candy Gourlay, hardcover, 293 pages, Random House Childrens Books, list price: $16.99



Jefferson's Sons: A Founding Father's Secret Children, by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, hardcover, 360, [4] p., Penguin Group USA, list price: $17.99



Inside Out & Back Again, hardcover, 262 pages, Harpercollins Childrens Books, list price: $15.99



The Unforgotten Coat, by Frank Cottrell Boyce, hardcover, 112 pages, Gardners Books, list price: $17



The Romeo And Juliet Code, by Phoebe Stone, paperback, 304 pages, Scholastic Paperbacks, list price: $6.99





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Conversation Starters: 2011's Top 5 Book Club Picks

Recommended by Lynn Neary



State Of Wonder, by Ann Patchett, hardcover, 353 pages, HarperCollins, list price: $26.99



The Sense Of An Ending, by Julian Barnes, hardcover, 150 pages, Random House, list price: $23.95

We The Animals, by Justin Torres, hardcover, 128 pages, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, list price: $18

Caleb's Crossing, by Geraldine Brooks, hardcover, 306 pages, Penguin Group USA, list price: $26.95

The Sojourn, by Andrew Krivak, paperback, 191 pages, Consortium Book Sales & Distribution, list price: $14.95





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From Tiny To Tome, The Best Gift Books Of 2011

Recommended by John McAlley



The New York Times Magazine Photographs, by Kathy Ryan, hardcover, 448 pages, Aperture Foundation, list price: $75



Harry Potter Page To Screen: The Complete Filmmaking Journey, by Bob McCabe, hardcover, 540 pages, Harper Design International, list price: $75



Life Upon These Shores: Looking At African American History, 1513-2008, by Henry Louis Gates, hardcover, 512 pages, Knopf, list price: $50



The Art Museum, by Phaidon Press, hardcover, 992 pages, Phaidon Press, list price: $200



The 50 Funniest American Writers: An Anthology Of Humor From Mark Twain To The Onion, by Andy Borowitz, hardcover, 461 pages, Penguin Group, list price: $27.95



Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, by Andrew Bolton and Susannah Frankel, hardcover, 240 pages, Yale University Press, list price: $45



Pilgrimage, by Annie Leibovitz and Doris Kearns Goodwin, hardcover, 244 pages, Random House, list price: $50



Theodore Gray's Elements Vault: Treasures Of The Periodic Table With 20 Removable Archival Documents, A Model Pop-Up Atom, A Poster, Plus 10 Real Elements Including Pure Gold! by Theodore Gray and Nick Mann, hardcover, 128 pages, Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, list price: $39.95



The Art Of Walt Disney: From Mickey Mouse To The Magic Kingdoms And Beyond, by Christopher Finch and John Lasseter, hardcover, 503 pages, Harry N Abrams Inc, list price: $85



The American Heritage Dictionary Of The English Language, by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, hardcover, 2112 pages, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, list price: $60





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Plot Driven: Alan Cheuse's Top 5 Fiction Picks

Recommended by Alan Cheuse



The Tiger's Wife, by Tea Obreht, paperback, 337 pages, Random House, list price: $15



The Art Of Fielding, by Chad Harbach, hardcover, 512 pages, Little, Brown & Co., list price: $25.99



Once Upon A River, by Bonnie Jo Campbell, hardcover, 348 pages, WW Norton & Co., list price: $25.95



1Q84, by Haruki Murakami, hardcover, 925 pages, Random House, list price: $30.50



The Night Eternal, by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan, hardcover, 384 pages, HarperCollins, list price: $26.99





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Sherlockian Mysteries That Will Keep You Tied Up

Recommended by Maureen Corrigan



The House Of Silk, by Anthony Horowitz, hardcover, 294 pages, Little, Brown & Co., list price: $27.99

On Conan Doyle: Or, The Whole Art Of Storytelling, by Michael Dirda, hardcover, 210 pages, Princeton University Press, list price: $19.95



Ghost Hero, by S.J. Rozan, hardcover, 325 pages, St. Martins Press, list price: $25.99

The End Of The Wasp Season, by Denise Mina, hardcover, 390 pages, Little, Brown & Co., list price: $25.99



A Drop Of The Hard Stuff, by Lawrence Block, hardcover, 319 pages, Little, Brown & Co., list price: $25.99





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2011's Best Cookbooks: Revenge Of The Kitchen Nerds

Recommended by T. Susan Chang



Cook This Now, by Melissa Clark, hardcover, 396 pages, Hyperion Books, list price: $29.99



The Food Of Spain, by Claudia Roden, hardcover, 609 pages, HarperCollins, list price: $45



All About Roasting, by Molly Stevens, hardcover, 573 pages, WW Norton & Co., list price: $35



The Food52 Cookbook, by Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs, hardcover, 440 pages, HarperCollins, list price: $35



What Chefs Feed Their Kids, by Fanae Aaron, hardcover, 211 pages, Globe Pequot Press, list price: $24.95



The Country Cooking Of Italy, by Colman Andrews, hardcover, 392 pages, Chronicle Books LLC, list price: $50



Lidia's Italy In America, by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich and Tanya Bastianich Manuali, hardcover, 359 pages, Random House, list price: $35

The Food Of Morocco, by Paula Wolfert, hardcover, 517 pages, HarperCollins, list price: $45



Ruhlman's Twenty, by Michael Ruhlman, hardcover, 367 pages, Chronicle Books LLC, list price: $40



American Flavor, by Andrew Carmellini, hardcover, 323 pages, HarperCollins, list price: $34.99



The Rosie's Bakery All-Butter, Cream-Filled, Sugar-Packed Baking Book, by Judy Rosenberg, paperback, 418 pages, Workman Pub Co., list price: $15.95





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What Sticks: Five 2011 Books That Stay With You

Recommended by Heller McAlpin



The Sense Of An Ending, by Julian Barnes, hardcover, 150 pages, Random House, list price: $23.95



There But For The, by Ali Smith, hardcover, 236 pages, Random House, list price: $25



Blue Nights, by Joan Didion, hardcover, 188 pages, Random House, list price: $25



The Art Of Fielding, by Chad Harbach, hardcover, 512 pages, Little, Brown & Co., list price: $25.99



Moby-Duck, by Donovan Hohn, hardcover, 402 pages, Penguin Group, list price: $27.95

ecember 14, 2011

Old-Fashioned Glories in a Netflix Age By A. O. SCOTT and MANOHLA DARGIS

MANOHLA DARGIS As we know, it’s become ritualistic for critics to whine about the end of the year being crowded with Oscar hopefuls. Oh, pity the poor movie critic forced to watch a new Martin Scorsese movie, a new David Fincher and two from Steven Spielberg in short succession! Yet while this period seems jammed with Important Movies From Harvey Weinstein, the rest of the year looks dire only if audiences count on the major studios and usual suspects for their film fixes. The problem is that the race to the Oscars now so profoundly consumes everyone’s attention that it has distorted the perception of what’s actually available.

In recent years smaller distributors and studio subsidiaries have become hip to the Oscar-driven seasons and adjusted accordingly. Now some of the best films turn up in the late winter, early spring. If you lived in New York between January and April, you could have seen “Go Go Tales” (Abel Ferrara); “Cold Weather” (Aaron Katz); “Poetry” (Lee Chang-dong); “Of Gods and Men” (Xavier Beauvois); “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” (Apichatpong Weerasethakul); “Foreign Parts” (Véréna Paravel and J. P. Sniadecki); “Certified Copy” (Abbas Kiarostami); “Le Quattro Volte” (Michelangelo Frammartino); “Meek’s Cutoff” (Kelly Reichardt); “To Die Like a Man”(João Pedro Rodrigues); “A Screaming Man” (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun); “The Princess of Montpensier” (Bertrand Tavernier); and “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” (Werner Herzog).

Not all made my list of favorites, but many are so very good and are superior to some of the most prominent Oscar front-runners and favorites that are taking up so much of everyone’s mental (and advertising) space.

A. O. SCOTT It’s funny how abundance can sometimes feel like scarcity. Even someone who does not live in New York — a thriving metropolis of multiplexes, art houses, nonprofit institutions and pop-up screening sites — could have seen a great many of the “smaller” movies you listed and others like them, thanks to new, still-emerging forms of distribution. “Margin Call” (one of my favorites) arrived simultaneously in theaters and on video on demand, and many other movies were available to cable subscribers before opening in theaters. There will be more of this in the future as big and small companies test the digital waters to find a sustainable business model.

In the meantime I suspect many people (not only critics) will continue to complain about the dearth of movies in the midst of plenty, as what the psychologist Barry Schwartz calls “the paradox of choice” becomes more and more acute. With so much to choose from, how is anyone supposed to decide what to see, and how can anyone measure the aesthetic value or cultural importance of a given movie? Sometimes a film will assert its significance by becoming so popular that it can’t be ignored (like the “Harry Potter,” “Twilight” and “Dragon Tattoo” franchises), sometimes by pushing topical buttons (like “The Help” or “Margin Call”) and sometimes by being so weird as to compel intense arguments for and against (“The Tree of Life,” most obviously).

But there is still a nagging sense that movies — and the public discussion of movies — are not what they used to be. That kind of nostalgia informed a lot of the recent writing about Pauline Kael on the 10th anniversary of her death this year, and it also shows up in a lot of movies. Cultural nostalgia in general was the subject of Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris,” which just missed my Top 20, but backward-looking movie love informed some of the most interesting releases of the year: Michel Hazanavicius’s “Artist” and Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo,” which both evoked the glories of the silent era; Steven Spielberg’s “War Horse,” which evoked the glories of old-fashioned, wide-screen epic filmmaking; and “Super 8,” which evoked the glories of Steven Spielberg. I’m ordinarily suspicious of antiquarianism, but I have to say that in most of these cases I found the impulse to explore the cinematic past refreshing, as much about recovering the idea of the new as about worshiping the old.

DARGIS The movies are not what they used to be and haven’t been since people started watching them on television in the 1950s, a process that made the sacred cinema object more profane. The de-sacralization continues and now seems nearly complete, which is why I cherish the ecclesiastical rituals of moviegoing even more. I like the convenience of streaming movies, but it’s transporting to sit in the dark, alone and with other people, watching bigger-than-life images. It can be especially affecting when the audience is with a movie, as they were when I caught “Warrior” a few months after it opened, and everyone burst into sustained applause at the end.

I can’t imagine, for instance, watching “War Horse” on a television, much less an iPhone: this is a self-consciously old-fashioned movie, shot in gorgeous film, which deserves to be seen projected on a big, bright screen and not via a thinner-looking “digital cinema package.” (This is the studios’ term for the compressed and encrypted digital files they use to store and distribute content, i.e., movies.) The use of the past in, say, “The Artist,” a cute gimmick stretched to feature length, is very different from how Mr. Spielberg (in “Tintin” and “War Horse”) and Mr. Scorsese (in “Hugo” and last year’s “Shutter Island”) self-consciously invoke and engage the cinema of earlier eras.

Both these filmmakers, two of the greatest of the movie-brat generation, are preoccupied, in their respective ways, sometimes nostalgically, with older movies, both European and Hollywood. (The movie brats are New Hollywood directors schooled in cinema who emerged in the 1970s; the other great being Francis Ford Coppola.) That nostalgia is sometimes inscribed both in the filmmaking and in the story, as with “Raging Bull,” a (largely) period piece shot primarily in black and white and very much a film about Mr. Scorsese’s own love of movies, with one of his touchstones, for instance, the black-and-white cinematography of “Sweet Smell of Success” (1957). With “Raging Bull” Mr. Scorsese even started a campaign to raise awareness about the fragility of color film.

The heart of “Hugo” is Mr. Scorsese’s ode to the early filmmaker Georges Méliès, a homage that’s also a tribute to cinema, which gives the movie a sense of urgency, particularly because what cinema was, for much of its history, has been eclipsed by the convenience of televised and now streaming images. Film history also matters in “War Horse,” and that’s partly why it’s so involving. It isn’t just about war and loss, which makes tears flow; it’s also about movies as they once were (and can be, as this film proves). When Mr. Scorsese was asked about the influence of Samuel Fuller’s “Shock Corridor” (1963) on “Shutter Island,” he said of the earlier film, “It’s in me.” Looking at “War Horse” you can see how John Ford’s “How Green Was My Valley,” among many other films, is in Mr. Spielberg.

SCOTT Although I admired the visual bravura of “Hugo” and was touched by its sincere affection for Méliès and his work (the gorgeous restoration of his masterpiece “A Trip to the Moon” that was shown at the Cannes and Telluride film festivals was surely a cinematic highlight of the year, maybe the century), I was not as enthralled as perhaps I should have been. Or as enraptured as Mr. Scorsese clearly wanted me to be. The many breathless invocations of “the magic of cinema” lessen the magic, and the busy, showoffy historicist aesthetic prevents a deep and powerful register of feeling from developing (except in Ben Kingsley’s marvelously melancholy face).

“War Horse,” in contrast, uses its saturation in older styles of moviemaking to stir up the sort of simple and emphatic emotions that have always been central to the collective moviegoing experience. Mr. Spielberg’s formidable technical command is very much in evidence, but it is placed in the service (as it was in “E.T.”) of forceful and almost naïve sentiment. In other words, the movie does not seem to be, as “Hugo” is, primarily about its director’s bottomless love of movies.

Still, I am happy to have seen so many senior auteurs pushing themselves in ambitious and surprising new directions. A year with noteworthy new work from Mr. Spielberg, Mr. Scorsese, Mr. Allen and Clint Eastwood — as well as Jean-Luc Godard (“Film Socialisme”), Pedro Almodóvar and Raúl Ruiz, who made more than 100 films in his life and saved one of his very best, “Mysteries of Lisbon,” for last — cannot be a bad year. And there was also a lot of ferment on the younger end of the generational spectrum, and quite a few exciting movies that were no less ambitious for being modestly scaled, intimately focused and absorbed in the present.

Steve McQueen’s “Shame,” with the ubiquitous Michael Fassbender as a sex-addicted yuppie (is that still what they’re called?), has received a lot of attention for its frankness, but I think it and its admirers confuse moralistic misery with honesty. I found more of that — more real tenderness, anguish, longing and humor — in Dee Rees’s “Pariah,” about a Brooklyn teenager coming out; in Andrew Haigh’s “Weekend,” about a one-night stand that turns into something more; and in Radu Muntean’s “Tuesday, After Christmas,” about the catastrophic impact of adultery on a marriage. I like to be deceived by movies, to be beguiled by fantasies and seduced by magical thinking, but I also like movies that feel like they’re telling the truth.

DARGIS There’s more to “Hugo” than Mr. Scorsese’s passion for movies, though there’s nothing wrong with that. It is also an argument for cinema, for cinema as a constituent part of modern life, which means it’s also a way of telling the truth. “Hugo” largely concerns its title character, who’s at once a watcher (like the viewer) and something of a director in the sense that his observations of the habitués in the train station where he lives resemble little movies. (I think he’s a proxy for the young Mr. Scorsese.) These vignettes or cine-fragments show us how Hugo views the world, how he makes sense of it and, importantly, they also show him the way to finding his place in it. As that great philosopher of film, Stanley Cavell, has written, “It is through fantasy that our conviction of the worth of reality is established; to forgo our fantasies would be to forgo our touch with the world.”

I like Mr. Fassbender, though I don’t at all like “Shame,” which is British film miserabilism at its most miserable. The obviousness of that movie contrasts vividly with another much-talked-about if little-seen American movie from this year, “Margaret,” from Kenneth Lonergan. To recap briefly, Mr. Lonergan had a difficult time finishing the movie; received editing help from Mr. Scorsese; entered into legal wrangling; and a 2 hour 29 minute cut — not Mr. Lonergan’s longer preferred cut — received a cursory, perhaps contractually obligated theatrical release by Fox Searchlight. It was reviewed, somewhat favorably, if often with hesitations and qualifications, and then disappeared after four weeks only to become the subject of a passionate campaign to have it reshown to critics for awards voting.

I saw the movie finally a few weeks ago and was surprised by how much I liked it, despite its unevenness. I really admire its ambition. It makes such a stark contrast to so much American independent cinema, less in terms of budget and production scale than in its towering ambition toward that most fascinating subject: another human being. Part of what Mr. Lonergan has in mind is nothing less than the inner life of a teenager, Lisa (Anna Paquin): not just her boy problems and mother troubles but the entirety of her being at a certain moment in post-Sept. 11 time on the Upper West Side, New York, the United States, the World, the Universe.

SCOTT Yes, cinema is an integral part of modern life, but that does not mean that modern life is all cinema, which is part of the structuring fantasy of “Hugo.” And movies that construct dreams primarily out of other movies — “Hugo” and “Inception,” but also “Captain America” and “Sucker Punch” — often close off other avenues of imagination and leave vast realms of the modern unconscious unexplored, or even obstructed. Mr. Scorsese, following Brian Selznick’s wide-eyed and meticulous picture book, makes a strong case for Méliès’s visionary originality. But (since we’re quoting philosophers) why shouldn’t Mr. Scorsese, like his predecessors, enjoy an original relationship to the universe? Why should we, because we happened to arrive late in the short history of cinema so far, settle for secondhand, recycled dreams?

“Margaret” is most certainly a movie that fights, like its young heroine, to free itself from received wisdom and genre conventions. I’m afraid it scores, at best, a Pyrrhic victory. There are scenes as wild and insightful as anything on screen this year: the fatal bus accident that sets the story in motion; the awkward, funny, ruthlessly serious sex scene involving Ms. Paquin and Kieran Culkin; the angry, precocious classroom political debates. But then, after about 90 amazing minutes, it all falls apart. The writing becomes more shrill, the scenes choppier, the themes at once hectically muddy and overemphatic. And a story that seemed so wonderfully expansive dwindles back into anecdote.

“Margaret” was not the only movie that tried to take account of that feeling of bigness, of mystery, that lurks within ordinary experience. “The Tree of Life” went the furthest in connecting the individual soul with its cosmic correlatives, and even though I’m skeptical of Terrence Malick’s cosmology, I believe in his movie completely. And I have faith in “The Future” as well, a mopey hipster breakup movie bent by Miranda July’s deadpan rigor into a DIY sci-fi epic, a surreal foray into the inner lives of its passive, wounded characters, including the cat who serves as its conscience and narrator.

Speaking of which: What a year for animals! Uggie, the dog from “The Artist,” may have the Oscar buzz at the moment, but we should not forget the goat in “Le Quattro Volte,” the ape men and the amorous catfish in “Uncle Boonmee” and Caesar, the noblest ape on the planet.

DARGIS Oh, and let’s not forget the magnificent horses in “War Horse,” though I wish I could forget the poor cat Ms. July’s character lets die as she tries to find the meaning of life while examining her navel lint. It’s funny that Ms. July’s husband, the director Mike Mills, has such a memorable dog in his movie “Beginners,” a Jack Russell terrier named Arthur who talks, via subtitles, to his human, Oliver (Ewan McGregor). “Beginners” didn’t fully work, but the scenes between Oliver and Arthur were true and soulful, and it’s lovely that Cosmo, the dog who played Arthur, was a rescue. Thank goodness he didn’t star in Ms. July’s movie or he would have never made it out alive.

SCOTT In the end, though, no one, human or beast, gets out alive, except perhaps in “The Tree of Life,” which leaps on the wings of celestial music from Waco, Tex., into eternity. It is surely a sign of these anxious times that, while some filmmakers looked back in fondness at the picturesque past, others squinted into the future and saw the end of everything. Apocalypse now, indeed, starring Kirsten Dunst (“Melancholia”), Michael Shannon (“Take Shelter”), Matt Damon (“Contagion”) and James Franco (“Rise of the Planet of the Apes”). A year from now, if we’re still around, we can talk about what it all means.

A. O. SCOTT’S BEST OF 2011

In alphabetical order:

“Bridesmaids” (Paul Feig); “A Brighter Summer Day” (Edward Yang); “Cedar Rapids” (Miguel Arteta); “A Dangerous Method” (David Cronenberg); “The Descendants” (Alexander Payne); “The Future” (Miranda July); “The Help” (Tate Taylor); “Incendies” (Denis Villeneuve); “Into the Abyss” (Werner Herzog); “Margin Call” (J. C. Chandor); “Meek’s Cutoff” (Kelly Reichardt); “Mysteries of Lisbon” (Raúl Ruiz); “Le Quattro Volte” (Michelangelo Frammartino); “The Tree of Life” (Terrence Malick); “Tuesday, After Christmas” (Radu Muntean); “War Horse” (Steven Spielberg); “Warrior” (Gavin O’Connor); “Weekend” (Andrew Haigh); “Winnie the Pooh” (Stephen J. Anderson and Don Hall); “Young Adult” (Jason Reitman).

MANOHLA DARGIS’S BEST OF 2011

In alphabetical order:

“Abracadabra” (Ernie Gehr); “Aurora” (Cristi Puiu); “The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu” (Andrei Ujica); “Bridesmaids” (Paul Feig); “Contagion” (Steven Soderbergh); “A Dangerous Method” (David Cronenberg); “J. Edgar” (Clint Eastwood); “Le Havre” (Aki Kaurismaki); “Hugo” (Martin Scorsese); “Melancholia” (Lars von Trier); “Moneyball” (Bennett Miller); “My Joy” (Sergei Loznitsa); “Mysteries of Lisbon” (Raúl Ruiz); “Of Gods and Men” (Xavier Beauvois); “Poetry” (Lee Chang-dong); “Le Quattro Volte” (Michelangelo Frammartino); “The Return” (Nathaniel Dorsky); “Seeking the Monkey King” (Ken Jacobs); “The Skin I Live In” (Pedro Almodóvar); “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” (Tomas Alfredson); “Voluptuous Sleep” (Betzy Bromberg); “Warrior” (Gavin O’Connor).