Art films don’t have to be serious, but a lot of them are. Madness, suffering, death—at times these become depressingly familiar themes at film festivals. For this reason, the rare comedy film is welcome: comedy highlights of last year’s festivals were Matchmaking Mayor at Berlin and Sons of Norway in Reykjavik. Although you’re primed to enjoy them, comedies are a reliable choice, as they typically have to be original, as well as funny, to be included in the festival.

What if you could have a festival that showed nothing but comedies? And what if it cheered you up during the most depressing month of the year? That’s just what the charity ‘Loco’ has done this year. London’s very first comedy film festival is taking place this weekend at the BFI. It started last night, and you’ll have to be quick if you want to take part: it ends Sunday night, and tickets are selling fast.

Two of tonight’s films have been selected by Edgar Wright, who wrote and directed Hot Fuzz and Scott Pilgrim vs the World. He will be at the BFI to introduce screenings of his own film, Shaun of the Dead and Mike Leigh’s Life is Sweet. Alongside these two established talents, Loco will present its ‘Discovery Screening’ this evening: Black Pond, the feature debut of Tom Kingsley and Will Sharpe, and ‘All Consuming Love: Man in a Cat’, an animated short with a decidedly unusual premise.

Sunday starts with a Keaton-Chaplin double bill (Sherlock Jr and The Champion), followed by a 50^th anniversary screening of Go to Blazes, a British comedy about a bunch of jewel thieves who choose a fire engine as their getaway car. The festival concludes with its most unusual and intriguing event: the first-ever live reading of The Day Off. The script was written in the 1960s by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson (creators of Steptoe and Son), and intended for a film starring comedy legend Tony Hancock. Unfortunately, the film was never made, but maybe a modern adaptation will be in order if this weekend’s live reading proves a success.

Last night, the festival kicked off with two previews: a sell-out screening of The Muppets, followed by The Fairy (La Fée, 2011). The Fairy is set in the port city of Le Havre, and stars the film’s three writer-directors: Dominique Abel as ‘Dom’, a night porter at a cheap hotel, and Fiona Gordon as ‘Fiona’, a scruffy guest who introduces herself as a fairy who can grant Dom 3 wishes. Bruno Romy plays the perilously short-sighted owner of a local bar, ‘L’Amour Flou’. The film’s creators act alongside an excellent supporting cast, including Philippe Marz as troublesome British guest ‘John’, with ‘Mimi’, his beloved Westie.

The programme guide describes The Fairy as influenced by Michel Gondry, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Jacques Tati. True, it does contain something of Gondry’s whimsical imagination, Jeunet’s eccentric and grotesque characters, and Tati’s near-silent physical comedy, but these are merely comparisons that help audiences to know what to expect. The Fairy has its own original spark, and couldn’t be confused with the work of any of these directors. Its comic situations are highly original, often laugh-out-loud, and at times daring: many gags made the audience not just laugh, but gasp with shock, or cringe in pain. While The Fairy pushes the envelope, its overall tone is rarely as exaggerated or baroque as either Gondry or Jeunet, and its storyline has more drive than Tati. As stand-up comedian Stephen K. Amos remarked in a surprise introduction to the film, the trailers really don’t do this film justice. Any one sequence from the film could reasonably stand alone as a comic sketch, but the real power of the film’s comedy only emerges when the scenes are linked together into a coherent whole, building on each other with their repetition and variation, enacted by an endearing cast of characters.

While The Fairy is a thoroughly enjoyable and original comedy the first time around, much of its appeal lies in surprise, so it’s probably not a film that you would want to watch again and again. Classic comic films often rely on verbal or physical gags that can be easily repeated: this way, we enjoy them again, mentally, every time we are reminded of them by situations in our everyday life (the perennial response to ‘Surely…’ in Airplane! for example, or The Young Frankenstein‘s use of ‘Ovaltine’). In The Fairy, there is very little verbal humour, and its physical humour is so extreme that it evokes cartoon more than reality—you will probably never encounter anything like it in real life. I still recommend this film wholeheartedly, though, for its genuinely funny gags, its originality, and last but not least, its lovely aesthetic, which splashes cheerful patches of colour onto a modestly washed out backdrop.

As for Loco itself, the festival is a fantastic idea, at the perfect time of year. A comedy film festival should have the potential to attract a broader audience to the festival experience. True, it’s not as though we can’t get comedy when we want it, on TV or at the multiplex. But the popularity of events like Secret Cinema has proven that people want not just content but a proper experience: a night out with friends, some live entertainment, and a chance to participate: Loco, with its parties, workshops, special guests and public screenings provides just that. I hope that it will be back again next year, hopefully lasting longer than just 3 days, and with a line-up that includes more contemporary international fare. As The Fairy proves, comedy can travel very well.

To find out more about Loco, visit their website.  To buy tickets, visit BFI.

Twenty years on, it is well worth revisiting Orlando, Sally Potter’s 1992 adaptation of a Virginia Woolf novel. Subtly convincing the audience that a person’s sex does not define them, the film achieves something which, in 2012, society is still far from accepting.

Orlando never grows old: when the film begins in the 1600s, he is a young man, and is still young when the film ends in the late twentieth century. The only difference is that Orlando is now a woman. Although changing sex certainly affects the way that Orlando is treated by other people, the film is remarkable in that the audience is prepared for this change, and experience it less as those around Orlando experience it, and more as Orlando him/herself.

From the very beginning of the film, the audience develops an affinity with Orlando and a sense of gender as something elusive and therefore of lesser importance than usual. As the film opens, the camera tracks in on Orlando, who is sitting under a tree. A voiceover narrator introduces the character, but when the camera finally reaches a close-up on the character’s face, Orlando turns his head to look directly into the camera and speaks, interrupting the narrator. Orlando is no longer ‘he’ but ‘I’: self (and personal experience) subtly asserts itself as more significant than gender. Less subtle is the fact that this male character is being played by a well-known female actress, Tilda Swinton, reminding the audience of how easy it is for adult women to pass as attractive young men. The narrator states from the beginning that there is ‘no doubt’ that Orlando is male, in spite of the feminine appearance that young men liked to adopt in Elizabethan times.

The gender bending continues apace. In another early scene, a minor character who appears much older and more virile sings in a falsetto a song about the beauty of Eliza, a queen who is now old and ugly. Queen Elizabeth, in turn, is played by Quentin Crisp: the fact that an old woman can be convincingly played by a man reinforces the point that signs of gender fluctuate with age. The Queen chooses Orlando as her ‘favourite’, another reversal of the more common scenario in which powerful men keep much younger women for their amusement. Elizabeth gives Orlando an estate to live on, with the humorous proviso that he not grow old: Orlando unexpectedly conforms to this stipulation, remaining the same age for over 300 years. Ironically, it is not age but a change of sex that forces him to relinquish his estate: as his advisors explain, in terms of property ownership being female is the equivalent to being dead.

Orlando’s sex change takes place overnight, as if by magic, during his ten-year diplomatic stint in an unnamed Middle Eastern country. Although Europeans once associated the Orient with femininity, the film does not reinforce the stereotype: if anything, it reverses it. When Orlando first meets his eloquent and manly Middle-Eastern host, it is Orlando as representative of the British aristocracy who appears feminine, with his powdered wigs and awkward waffling. Notably, Orlando is still a man when the city is attacked and finds himself ill-suited to fighting alongside his host. Orlando finally adopts the local style of dress, exchanging his ornate European dress for simple swathes of cream fabric, and immediately appears more modern and mature.

When Orlando returns to England as a woman, the reaction is predictably one of astonishment. She is still the same person as before: indeed, when she looked at herself in the mirror on morning of her transformation, she downplayed the importance of gender, saying that ‘nothing has changed’. For this reason, the change in the way others relate to her is all the more astonishing. Having seen Tilda Swinton dressed as a man for the entire film, the audience has the strange impression of feeling as though they are watching a man in drag when they see Tilda Swinton in a dress. She continues periodically to address the audience directly, however, emphasising her subjectivity, and that it is the person who matters, and their experiences, not their sex. The clothing of a woman in the 1700s and 1800s seems only slightly more fussy and restrictive than that of a man: instead, it is people’s attitudes to gender that makes her experience of life as a woman so different. She speaks to Alexander Pope, whose experience of uneducated and silly women makes him dismiss an entire sex: he cannot speak to Orlando as an equal, as he cannot see past her gender and consider her as a person. Orlando discovers that the only way for her to maintain her property is to have a son, which she does, by the twentieth century.

The end of the film brings its reflections on gender full-circle. The voiceover narrator is back again, this time noting that in the late twentieth century, women favour an androgynous appearance. Orlando now dresses in a modern unisex style, and rides a motorcycle. Her child is in the sidecar, and appears at first to be a boy. When they arrive at Orlando’s estate, the child is revealed to be a girl.

Orlando‘s treatment of gender manages to be both understated and radical: it is so natural in its treatment of gender fluidity that people who are rigid in their attitudes to gender appear unnatural. It remains a visually sumptuous and intellectually intriguing film.

Kirsten Dunst greets the apocalypse

“Melancholia” is Lars von Trier’s intelligent, melodramatic, achingly beautiful and wickedly funny new film. It tells the story of Justine (a transcendent Kirsten Dunst), a severe depressive, and her doting and practical sister, Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Justine’s depression takes the corporeal shape of a planet called Melancholia, which is on a steady collision course with Earth. In the film’s stunning prologue, Mr. von Trier tactfully relieves the audience of any suspense concerning Earth’s fate, allowing the tone to shift from an end-of-the-world thriller to a character and relationship study. “Melancholia” uses the premise of an apocalypse to expose the frays in familial bonds — specifically, the intricate bonds and dynamic between two sisters; a bond that is both affectionate and cruel, supportive and insensitive.

The film is divided into two parts named after each of the sisters. Although part one is named after Justine, the “melancholic” sister, this section of the film proves to be the most humorously absurd. Mr. von Trier is—gasp—having a bit of fun as we follow Justine through the grand charade of her wedding celebration. He has reined in all of his pals from films past to play members of the wedding party, including Charlotte Rampling and John Hurt as Justine’s backbiting parents, and Udo Kier the prim and fretful wedding planner. And despite Justine’s deep sadness during what is supposed to be the happiest day of her life, Ms. Dunst is luminous. Instead of portraying Justine as incessantly bleak, Dunst’s performance during this half the film is almost sphinxlike in its spontaneity. She does not skulk around in her wedding dress (although she does, at one point, gracefully urinate in it beneath the moonlight), but rather ventures in and out of the festivities like an elusive specter. And because von Trier has revealed the fate of these characters in the first ten minutes, the audience can empathize with Justine as she views her wedding with a growing sense of dread and indifference.

Part two is named for Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), Justine’s pragmatic but anxious older sister. Although Claire grows weary and frustrated with Justine’s erratic behavior, she understands her sister’s illness and knows how to take care of her. Claire’s relationship with Justine becomes increasingly complicated in the film’s second half, as Claire grapples with her own growing anxiety over the path of Melancholia while simultaneously caring for Justine, who has become incapacitated by her depression. In contrast to the darkly sumptuous aesthetic of part one, with an alluring Justine wreaking havoc in a wedding dress, part two is more subdued and more painful to watch; Justine has lost her enigmatic glow, and von Trier, who has long suffered from depression himself, depicts Justine’s descent with alarming candor. It has been suggested that Mr. von Trier uses female characters in his films to represent his own struggles with depression. If “Antichrist” was too vicious and misogynistic, his rendering of Justine’s inner turmoil in “Melancholia” is as upsetting as it is compassionate.

But part two is named “Claire” for a reason. As Melancholia becomes more of a threat, (the planet and the illness) Claire becomes fraught with worry that the end is near, and the sisters’ reactions to the planet begin to diverge. Justine begins to emerge from her depression and becomes more lucid, but is callous towards Claire’s distress. Justine feels a kinship with Melancholia; she embraces the planet as an actual representation and justification for her chronic illness. Yet, just as Claire strove to comfort Justine during her lowest points, Justine’s coldness turns into an intense stoicism, and eventually, into her own display of compassion, especially towards Claire’s son, Leo.

In “Melancholia,” the end of the world is not rendered with mass hysteria or with an overblown sequence of natural disasters, but rather with understated beauty. Bugs creep up from the soil, hail the color of pure white flower buds falls from the sky, all as Melancholia—massively exquisite in itself—looms closer and closer overhead. Despite its morbid theme, bone-rattling soundtrack straight from Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, and the fact that it’s a Lars von Trier film, the tone of “Melancholia” is almost soothing. Mr. von Trier proposes that the end of the world, like his film, may just be a thing of beauty.

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Vanessa is the press representative/blogger for The Plaza Cinema & Media Arts Center in Patchogue, NY. You can read her blog at stickyourthumbselsewhere.wordpress.com

How are you doing with your new year’s resolutions? Did you start this month with enthusiasm and optimism? We seem to enjoy this annual ritual of creating restrictions for ourselves. Some restrictions which seem to complement each other (like exercising and eating less chocolate) in fact serve to double the challenge (burning more calories while taking in fewer). Others (like working harder and maintaining good posture at the computer) really work against each other. Still, most of us make new year’s resolutions every year, and enjoy setting challenges for ourselves, and dreaming of success.

Creatively, challenges can work wonders. In 1960s Czechoslovakia, there was a temporary liberalisation of culture, but censorship remained in place, forcing the young Czech New Wave directors to find creative ways around these restrictions. Much contemporary experimentation comes as a way of dealing with restricted funding. But in some cases, directors can benefit from imposing restrictions on themselves. In 2003, Lars von Trier set a challenge for his friend, director Jørgen Leth: to re-make his 1967 pseudo-anthropological short, ‘The Perfect Human’, but with a certain number of ‘obstructions’ in place. The Five Obstructions presents Leth’s five re-makes, and documents the process of their creation. Every obstruction begins with a banter-filled conversation between the old friends, von Trier slyly attempting to come up with the most fiendish restrictions, and Leth for the most part accepting them with the stoic determination of an expert who will inevitably find a clever way around them.

Von Trier seemed to have several goals in mind when setting these challenges. In the spirit of artistic experimentation, he wanted to see how various restrictions on the re-make of ‘The Perfect Human’ would change the nature of the original film. He also appeared to enjoy acting as God, dictating how the remake would be made, without having to go through the agony of making it himself (except in the final of the 5 films, where Leth’s only job was to provide a voice-over and put his name as director on a film that was in fact directed by Von Trier—very Dogme). Von Trier’s own challenge was to devise the most obstructive rules for Leth. Their friendship helped von Trier as it gave him insights into Leth’s personality, as well as his artistic preferences: as a result, it didn’t take von Trier much effort to come up with obstructions that would push Leth outside his comfort zone. Von Trier appeared to take sadistic pleasure in this, but there was clearly a greater goal. Disrupting his friend’s usual approach to filmmaking, he hoped that Leth would make a different kind of film—’maybe even a bad film!’ as von Trier devilishly suggested. Ultimately, the experiment did not force Leth to let go, allowing himself simply to explore, without fear of mediocrity. If anything, the obstructions made greater demands on his sense of professionalism. Every time von Trier watched one of the re-makes that Leth had made according to his instructions, you expected him to snarl, ‘foiled again! Damn you, Leth!’, as his friend invariably used the obstructions to make the same sort of film he usually did, only better.

Some of the obstructions that seemed most certain to ruin Leth’s work turned out to make it even better. The first obstruction was that no edit should be longer than 12 frames (in other words, no shot could last more than half a second). The resulting film was not frenetically jumpy, as you might expect, but full of vitality: one of Leth’s techniques to calm the speed of cutting was to film the same subject from slightly different distances or angles, so that there was a sense of constant motion rather than an incomprehensible barrage of images. Knowing that they share a hatred of cartoons, von Trier also demanded that Leth make an animated version of ‘The Perfect Human’. This was the obstruction that seemed to disgust and discourage Leth the most, but he enlisted the help of Bob Sabiston, animator for Waking Life (2001) and A Scanner Darkly (2006): the result was a compellingly multi-layered, dynamic response to the original short, unafraid of animation’s infinite possibilities for exploring space, and unlimited strategies for aesthetic representation.

Of course, there were also obstructions that did not work out as either director would have liked. Von Trier spoke sternly to Leth when he made a film which did not respect one of his obstructions: he had told Leth to go to the most dreadful place on earth, and re-make the film there, starring in it himself, and evoking the place without actually filming it. Von Trier went to Mumbai’s red light district and re-enacted a scene from ‘The Perfect Human’, against a translucent screen which allowed viewers to see the crowd of women and children behind him. He classed this as a ‘liberal interpretation’ of von Trier’s obstruction, but von Trier insisted it had broken the rules, and imposed a punishment. He could return to Mumbai to make the same film, but respecting the rules, something which Leth said he could not do. The alternative punishment was for Leth to do a re-make exactly as he liked: the obstruction, then, being no obstruction at all, a terrible punishment for Leth who was depending on his friend’s challenges for inspiration. Confronted with the paralysing freedom of no restrictions, Leth did not make a bad film, but probably the least interesting of the five re-makes.

I didn’t expect to like The Five Obstructions, as my only previous experience of Leth’s work was his latest film, The Erotic Man (2010), which was visually dull, and ethically repellent. But The Five Obstructions was an intriguing documentary. It introduced me to one of Leth’s earliest films, ‘The Perfect Huan’, a beautiful black-and-white mock-discovery of humans, their bodies, and their habits, justly been described as ‘Surrealist’ for the way it makes the familiar seem new and strange. The original 13-minute short was interspersed in clips throughout the documentary, and was available to view in its entirety as an extra on the DVD. Leth’s modern re-makes of the film were quite different than the original, as they were in colour, and the restrictions resulted in markedly different styles, far more interesting than the approach Leth took in Erotic Man. While the misogyny of Leth’s most recent film was still present, visually the re-makes were fresh and full of life. This artistic renaissance, then, may have been a direct result of von Trier’s restrictions, an idea which makes The Five Obstructions one of the most intriguing films I have seen, in terms of thinking about the creative process. While it was enjoyable to watch the films that Leth made in response to the obstructions, it was equally exciting to listen in on the directors’ discussions, finding out which obstructions von Trier would come up with, and why, and imagining how they would affect the final film. The Five Obstructions is the sort of film that makes you want to think more deeply about the creative process, and experiment more with your own work.

Set on an island off the coast of New England in the summer of 1965, Moonrise Kingdom tells the story of two twelve-year-olds who fall in love, make a secret pact, and run away together into the wilderness. As the bumbling authority figures in their lives try desperately to find, a violent storm is brewing off-shore.

At the screening I attended of Jan Švankmajer’s Surviving Life (Theory and Practice) (2010), there were two walk-outs. I was tempted to follow, but my love of the great Czech animator’s previous work won out, making me want to experience, if not enjoy, every minute of his latest film.

Newcomers to Švankmajer would do best to start with his shorts from the 1960s and 80s, live-action Surrealist animations of everyday objects. Some people find them disturbing, but if you embrace their sheer creativity and magic, these films can take you right back to childhood, evoking its fear of the unknown, love of repetition, and sense that anything might happen.

If I hadn’t already seen two of Švankmajer’s feature-length films, having seen Surviving Life I would have said that the director should stick to short films. His tendency towards variations on a theme arguably works best in small doses, so the theme never has a chance to become tiresome. Alice (1988) and Little Otik (2000), despite being 86 and 132 minutes long respectively, work superbly, perhaps because both are based on children’s stories, and find the right balance between live action and stop-motion animation.

Surviving Life, in contrast, incorporates childhood themes, but is a decidedly adult story which, at 109 minutes, is boring in its repetition. It tells the story of a happily married man in late middle-age. One night, he happens to dream of a beautiful young woman, and subsequently becomes obsessed with dreaming in order to keep seeing her. The tune of a waltz associated with his dreams is repeated ad nauseum. The dreams don’t include enough variation to make them interesting, and the secret behind them is not much of a surprise.

The film’s biggest problem is its claustrophobic style, which combines with the repetition to make the audience feel trapped. Instead of using the live-action animation for which he is renowned, Švankmajer animates photographs of his actors, allowing for the easy introduction of Surrealist elements such as giant eggs, priapic teddy bears, and Ernst-inspired women with the heads of birds. This approach lacks the compelling originality that usually characterises Švankmajer’s films: instead, it seems a regurgitation of 1930s Surrealist collage and Monty Python’s Flying Circus animation. The live action elements are much shorter, and confined to close-ups and extreme close-ups of objects and characters’ faces.

Surviving Life begins with a message from Švankmajer himself, as an animated photo standing in the middle of a photo of a street that serves as one of his film sets. He explains that he animated photographs of his actors in order to save on production costs. This sounds like a reasonable explanation, but the director goes on to say that he is giving this introduction in order to draw the film out to an appropriate length. The introduction can be justified as meta-film, and it is a treat to see Švankmajer in his own film. However, even as a joke, the idea of throwing in an introduction to make the film longer seems like an insult to the audience, especially in light of the repetitive narrative that follows. The audience at the screening I attended clearly wanted to go along with the director, and made a few attempts at ironic or appreciative laughter throughout this pseudo-comedy, but it sounded weak and hollow.

Confirmed fans of Švankmajer’s work won’t want to miss this film: the work of a confirmed master is always of interest, even when it’s not his best. Surviving Life still features recognisable elements of the Švankmajer we know and love: giant tongues, huge appetites, and a general enthusiasm for the earthy side of life. Švankmajer also deserves praise for attempting to carry on the project that the French Surrealists abandoned after Un Chien andalou and L’Age d’or: that is, to use communicate Surrealism’s message via film.

Surviving Life demonstrates how dreams and reality overlap and does so in a straightforward manner, not by tying narrative knots so that the audience simply confuses real and imagined worlds (as in Woody Allen’s Deconstructing Harry, for instance). At the same time, while Švankmajer’s message is more meaningful than Woody Allen’s, the Surrealists would have disapproved of the fact that Surviving Life only demonstrates their point, rather than putting it in action: the audience remains an audience, simply observing how one man’s dreams relate to his waking life. As a result, the film becomes egocentric: the audience may have trouble relating to the character’s obsession with his own inner life. Ultimately, rather than showing that dream life is relevant to waking life, and is on the same plane, Surviving Life shows a man who becomes increasingly detached from his present life through dreams which are more relevant to his past.

Ryan Gosling in Nicolas Winding Refn's "Drive"

It’s that time of year again when we intrepid critics whittle down the hundreds of titles we’ve seen over the last 365 days to the top 10 that made us gasp, chuckle, cringe, hope, feel and think the most. As seems to be the trend, Hollywood left us slim pickings, so the bulk of this list is made up of independent and foreign films, not out of snobbery, but, sadly, by necessity. Here are my picks, in alphabetical order, for the year’s 10 best:

A Separation
An incisive and penetrating portrait of the immovable tenets of reality. Asghar Farhadi unwraps the layers of family life in Tehran with the deftness and care of a master. No other film released this year connects with as much truth or treats its subject with as much keenness or soberness as “A Separation.”

The Artist
I love movies about movies. I also happen to love silent films. Michel Hazanavicius’s “The Artist” is both, and it’s the most fun I’ve had at the movies this year. Style over substance? Maybe. Melodramatic? Definitely. But that’s why I love it. Jean Dujardin’s charismatic performance as a silent screen hero struggling to find his place in the emerging world of the talkie may just be the best of the year.

John Boyega leads a street gang of alien-killers in "Attack the Block"

Attack the Block
“Attack the Block” is a movie made by film nerds fed up with the depressing banality of modern monster flicks. Set in the slums of South London, a gang of street hoodlums are the first to encounter the beginnings of an alien invasion, which they meet with a brilliant combination of youthful bravado and street-informed witticisms. And underlying it all are razor sharp barbs aimed squarely at the entrenched conservative sensibilities of England’s elite.

Certified Copy
Is a fake, a phony, a rip-off as inherently valuable as the original? Director Abbas Kiarostami leaves that up to us with a wonderfully realized imitation of life in “Certified Copy.” He leaves questions unanswered, ideas not fleshed out and relationships without resolve in this plodding, dialogue-heavy picture, which was more thrilling than Hollywood’s best high-budget action flicks this year.

Drive
Director Nicolas Winding Refn, known for other savagely macho films like “Bronson” (2008) and “Valhalla Rising” (2009) continues his reflection on male brutality with “Drive.” This time, his subject is a stone-cold, badass movie stunt driver played by Ryan Gosling. “Drive” is a quiet European arthouse-style movie, punctuated by the occasional outburst of extreme, bombastic violence. One of the most stylish, exhilarating and cinematic films of the year.

Martha Marcy May Marlene
John Hawkes was born to play a coldly menacing hillbilly capable of dehumanizing atrocity. His chilling presence combined with Elizabeth Olsen’s harrowing performance and Sean Durkin’s surprisingly controlled direction make this trying-to-find-your-place-in-society-after-escaping-from-a-cult movie the best directorial debut since Steve McQueen’s “Hunger” in 2008.

Bruce Greenwood as Meek in "Meek's Cutoff"

Meek’s Cutoff
Based on real events, “Meek’s Cutoff” takes us on a slow and tedious slog on the Oregon Trail in 1845. There is no horrific violence, no melodramatic Western cliches and no satisfying resolution. Instead, director Kelly Reichardt (“Wendy and Lucy”) gives us an understated, yet powerful vision of life on a wagon train. It may seem like nothing much happens, but every scene is encumbered by an unshakable sense of devastating uncertainty and creeping doom.

Melancholia
Director Lars von Trier isn’t known for his subtlety. He did direct the genital mutilation-fest “Antichrist” in 2009, after all. But “Melancholia,” a meditation on aloofness and depression in the face of catastrophe, is perhaps von Trier at is most restrained. Kirsten Dunst turns in one of the best performances of the year as a depressed and disinterested bride nonchalantly facing the literal apocalypse. It works, strangely, as a companion piece to Jonathan Demme’s “Rachel Getting Married” (2008) and Ingmar Bergman’s “Fanny and Alexander” (1982).

Michael Fassbender is a sex addict in "Shame"

Shame
“Hunger,” Steve McQueen’s 2008 directorial debut about IRA leader Bobby Sands’s hunger strike in a Northern Ireland prison, left me speechless. It was raw, unflinching, smart and devastating. His followup, “Shame,” though not quite as transcendent as his first effort, is nevertheless worthy of the same shower of adjectival praise. The same actor who played Bobby Sands in “Hunger,” Michael Fassbender, here plays a sex addict whose habit has crippling effects. It’s the “Requiem for a Dream” of sex addiction.

The Tree of Life
Perhaps the most divisive film of the year, Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” tackles the biggest questions on the biggest scale. It combines some of cinema’s most ambitious and breathtaking cinematography with the intimacy of a small, struggling family in a small Texas town. Whether you think it’s pretentious drudgery or profound ecstasy, the one thing it’s not is ordinary.

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Also check out:
The 10 best films of 2010
The 10 best films of 2009
TMA’s 25 best film of the decade (2000-2009)
TMA’s 100 greatest movies of all time
TMA’s 25 greatest horror movies of all time
TMA’s 25 greatest sports movies of all time

The other three acting winners were Michael Fassbender winning Best Actor for his performance in “Shame”; Tilda Swinton’s work in “We Need to Talk About Kevin” won the award for Best Actress; and Christopher Plummer received the Best Supporting Actor prize for his work in “Beginners.”

The full list of winners of the 15th Annual Online Film Critics Society Awards:

Best Picture:
The Tree of Life

Best Animated Feature:
Rango

Best Director:
Terrence Malick – The Tree of Life

Best Lead Actor:
Michael Fassbender – Shame

Best Lead Actress:
Tilda Swinton – We Need to Talk About Kevin

Best Supporting Actor:
Christopher Plummer – Beginners

Best Supporting Actress:
Jessica Chastain – The Tree of Life

Best Original Screenplay:
Midnight in Paris

Best Adapted Screenplay:
Tinker Tailor Solider Spy

Best Editing:
The Tree of Life

Best Cinematography:
The Tree of Life

Best Film Not in the English Language:
A Separation

Best Documentary:
Cave of Forgotten Dreams

Special Awards (previously announced):
To Jessica Chastain, the breakout performer of the year
To Martin Scorsese in honor of his work and dedication to the pursuit of film preservation

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Founded in 1997, the Online Film Critics Society has been the key force in establishing and raising the standards for Internet-based film journalism. The OFCS membership consists of film reviewers, journalists and scholars based in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Latin America and the Asia/Pacific Rim region. For more information, visit the Online Film Critics Society at ofcs.org.

And the winners are…

Ronald Oliver of Stockton, CA
Barbara Davis of Greensboro, NC

Thanks to all who entered and to Focus Features for providing this fantastic prize!

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We are pleased to announce that The Moving Arts has teamed up with the folks at Focus Features in order to offer you the chance to win an awesome prize pack just in time for the release of the star-studded spy thriller “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” on Jan. 6, 2012.

ABOUT THE FILM
National Release Date: January 6, 2012
Studio: Focus Features
Starring: Gary Oldman, Benedict Cumberbatch, David Dencik, Colin Firth, Stephen Graham, Tom Hardy, Ciarán Hinds, John Hurt, Toby Jones, Mark Strong
Directed By: Tomas Alfredson (“Let the Right One In”)

SYNOPSIS
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is the long-awaited feature film version of John le Carré’s classic bestselling novel. The thriller is directed by Tomas Alfredson (Let the Right One In). The screenplay adaptation is by the writing team of Bridget O’Connor & Peter Straughan.

The time is 1973. The Cold War of the mid-20th Century continues to damage international relations. Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), a.k.a. MI6 and code-named the Circus, is striving to keep pace with other countries’ espionage efforts and to keep the U.K. secure. George Smiley (Gary Oldman), a career spy with razor-sharp senses is tasked with tracking down a mole, who government officials believe has been operating withing the highest levels of the SIS.

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PRIZES

Two (2) winners who will receive:

· $50 Fandango Gift Cards

· T-Shirt

· Voice Recorder Pen

· Post-it Note Cube

Prizing values: $83 per pack
Giveaway provided by Focus Features

HOW TO ENTER

Tell us what your favorite spy thriller of all time is, and why. Make your answer as specific and well-thought out as possible. You can leave your entry in the comments section below, on our Facebook page or send us a tweet with your answer.

Good luck!

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-Entry open to US residents only
-Only one (1) entry per person permitted
-Entries must be received by Jan. 6, 2012, 11:59 EST
-The Moving Arts is not liable for lost or stolen merchandise
-The Moving Arts reserves the right to award prizes at its discretion

Joining “The Tree of Life” in Best Picture are Michel Hazanavicius’ “The Artist”, Alexander Payne’s “The Descendants”, Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Drive” and Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo”. Malick, Hazanavicius, Refn and Scorsese were joined in the Best Director race by “Melancholia” director Lars von Trier.

“Drive” was the second most nominated film picking up six mentions including the aforementioned Picture and Director as well as Best Supporting Actor (Albert Brooks), Best Adapted Screenplay, Editing and Cinematography. Brooks was nominated alongside John Hawkes in “Martha Marcy May Marlene”, Nick Nolte in “Warrior”, Pitt and Christopher Plummer in “Beginners”. In Best Supporting Actress, the nominees were Chastain, Melissa McCarthy for “Bridesmaids”, Janet McTeer for “Albert Nobbs”, Carey Mulligan for “Shame” and Shailene Woodley for “The Descendants”.

Woodley and Mulligan’s co-stars shared nominations in the Best Actor slate, George Clooney and Michael Fassbender respectively, who were nominated alongside Jean Dujardin in “The Artist”, Gary Oldman in “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” and Michael Shannon in “Take Shelter”. The Best Actress category features Kirsten Dunst in “Melancholia”, Elizabeth Olsen in “Martha Marcy May Marlene”, Meryl Streep in “The Iron Lady”, Tilda Swinton in “We Need to Talk About Kevin” and Michelle Williams for “My Week with Marilyn”.

Each year, the OFCS also submits nominations for Special Achievement Awards, granted only by a majority vote of the membership. This year, the Online Film Critics have selected two individuals, Jessica Chastain and Martin Scorsese, to receive special citations.

Chastain’s tremendous and quality-filled output this year has brought her instant acclaim and recognition marking one of the most stellar debuts in recent memory.

Scorsese has long been a champion of film preservation and with his love letter to the cinema this year, “Hugo”, he continues to show his admiration for film history and the many pursuits to keeping those records alive.

The full list of nominees for the 15th Annual Online Film Critics Society Awards:

Best Picture:
The Artist
The Descendants
Drive
Hugo
The Tree of Life

Best Animated Feature:
The Adventures of Tintin
Arthur Christmas
Kung Fu Panda 2
Rango
Winnie the Pooh

Best Director:
Michel Hazanavicius – The Artist
Terrence Malick – The Tree of Life
Nicolas Winding Refn – Drive
Martin Scorsese – Hugo
Lars von Trier – Melancholia

Best Lead Actor:
George Clooney – The Descendants
Jean Dujardin – The Artist
Michael Fassbender – Shame
Gary Oldman – Tinker Tailor Solider Spy
Michael Shannon – Take Shelter

Best Lead Actress:
Kirsten Dunst – Melancholia
Elizabeth Olsen – Martha Marcy May Marlene
Meryl Streep – The Iron Lady
Tilda Swinton – We Need to Talk About Kevin
Michelle Williams – My Week with Marilyn

Best Supporting Actor:
Albert Brooks – Drive
John Hawkes – Martha Marcy May Marlene
Nick Nolte – Warrior
Brad Pitt – The Tree of Life
Christopher Plummer – Beginners

Best Supporting Actress:
Jessica Chastain – The Tree of Life
Melissa McCarthy – Bridesmaids
Janet McTeer – Albert Nobbs
Carey Mulligan – Shame
Shailene Woodley – The Descendants

Best Original Screenplay:
Martha Marcy May Marlene
Midnight in Paris
A Separation
The Tree of Life
Win Win

Best Adapted Screenplay:
The Descendants
Drive
Moneyball
Tinker Tailor Solider Spy
We Need to Talk About Kevin

Best Editing:
Drive
Martha Marcy May Marlene
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
The Tree of Life
We Need to Talk About Kevin

Best Cinematography:
The Artist
Drive
Hugo
Melancholia
The Tree of Life

Best Film Not in the English Language:
13 Assassins
Certified Copy
A Separation
The Skin I Live In
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Best Documentary:
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
The Interrupters
Into the Abyss
Project Nim
Tabloid

Special Awards
To Jessica Chastain, the breakout performer of the year
To Martin Scorsese in honor of his work and dedication to the pursuit of film preservation

Winners will be announced on Monday, January 2, 2012

Founded in 1997, the Online Film Critics Society has been the key force in establishing and raising the standards for Internet-based film journalism. The OFCS membership consists of film reviewers, journalists and scholars based in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Latin America and the Asia/Pacific Rim region. For more information, visit the Online Film Critics Society at ofcs.org.