My 10 Favourite Male Performances of 2011.

After checking out my favourite directors and ladies of 2011, it is time to look at the lovely men that impressed me on screen. Tomorrow, it'll be time to unveil my favourite films of 2011 - finally! However, back to the men of 2011: wasn't last year really a 'year for actors'? There were so many great performances that it made it hard for me to cut my list down to ten. Hence the fact that I have a rather long list of honourable mentions, who in a perfect world, would have all been in my top ten. Seriously, all of them just missed out on a place.

Honourable mentions: Ezra Miller - We Need to Talk About Kevin, Max von Sydow - Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Ewan McGregor - Beginners, Christopher Plummer - Beginners, Colin Firth - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Mark Strong - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Tom Hardy - Warrior, Joel Edgerton - Warrior, Patton Oswalt - Young Adult, Leonardo DiCaprio - J. Edgar, Rhys Ifans - Anonymous, Antonio Banderas - The Skin I Live In, Ben Kingsley - Hugo, Ralph Fiennes - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, Kenneth Branagh - My Week with Marilyn, Ryan Gosling - The Ides of March, Ryan Gosling - Drive, Albert Brooks - Drive, Jonah Hill - Moneyball, John Hawkes - Martha Marcy May Marlene, Peyman Moadi - A Separation, Andy Serkis - Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Hunter McCracken - The Tree of Life, Brad Pitt - The Tree of Life, Michael Fassbender - X-Men: First Class, Adrien Brody - Midnight in Paris, Corey Stoll - Midnight in Paris, Tom Hiddleston - Thor, Anton Yelchin - Like Crazy, Matthew McConaughey - The Lincoln Lawyer, Michael Fassbender - Jane Eyre, Christian McKay - I Melt with You, Peter Mullan - Tyrannosaur, Paul Rudd - Our Idiot Brother, Joseph Gordon-Levitt - Hesher.

10. Michael Shannon as Curtis LaForche in Take Shelter.

Michael Shannon has always been a great actor who has taken supporting roles and stolen the entire film within a few minutes. Revolutionary Road was a classic example of that. In Take Shelter, Shannon gets the lead role, and totally rocks the entire film. Curtis is a rather difficult character who is on the cusp of madness, constantly trying to make everyone believe that there's an apocalypse coming. Shannon's performance is a study of paranoia, instability and weakness. If it hadn't been Shannon playing him, I doubt that I would have felt so connected to Curtis. Instead of viewing his actions as irrational, I definitely felt as if I should get a shovel and pitch in with his plans.
Key scene: "There's a storm coming!"

Underrated Supporting Performances of 2011

I'm still a good few months away from releasing my official list of favourite 2011 films (I still need to see The Artist, Shame, 50/50, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy etc etc etc), but I may as well start getting nostalgic now. I was watching Melancholia last weekend and I was thinking about how underrated everyone's performances were in that particular movie. Which prompted me to look back at all of the performances that were severely underrated for some reason or another. So instead of showcasing one underrated film, let me showcase ten underrated supporting performances in 2011, ranked...

10. Hayley Atwell in Captain America: The First Avenger.

Chances are that I won't have too many people queueing up to agree with me - this is a choice that comes straight from an extremely mainstream blockbuster. However, I've always been a fan of Hayley Atwell, and I found her to be the most awesome thing about an already awesome movie. While her character may be written as a typical tough girl, Atwell brings her an edge that makes her the perfect companion to Cap - actually, she seems a lot stronger inside than he is. If only she could somehow not age and go on that date with Cap in The Avengers...that would make me happy.

"Life is only on Earth. And not for long."

Film: Melancholia
Writer/Director: Lars von Trier

Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland, Alexander Skarsgård, Charlotte Rampling, John Hurt, Stellan Skarsgård, Brady Corbet, Udo Kier.
Running time: 136 min


You can love him. You can loathe him. In fact, there are probably a lot more people against Lars von Trier nowadays after his Nazi gaffe at a press conference in Cannes earlier this year. Cannes booted him out, but luckily they didn't boot his film, Melancholia, out of the competition, and Kirsten Dunst ended up winning Best Actress. Lars, a Danish director with the word 'fuck' proudly tattooed on the fingers on his right hand, is not known for making pleasant films and doesn't shy away from much on screen (let's just take the genital mutilation in Antichrist as an example here...) Melancholia, however, may be one of the most tame films that he has done in a while, and apparently his first to have an unhappy ending. Still, while I don't really respect von Trier as a person, he sure knows how to make a good film.