 Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami (Certified Copy) once again triumphantly disrupts the natural order of mainstream cinema. With his latest offering — the sleek, dreamy yet hyperreal Like Someone in Love — Kiarostami has positioned himself as the maestro of experimental filmmaking. Transitioning from the romantic vineyards of Tuscany to the metropolitan claustrophobia of Tokyo, Kiarostami presents a vastly different side of Japan’s capital city, one that’s free of the glitz and futuristic glamor we’re accustomed to seeing. In Like Someone in Love, Tokyo’s lighted skyscrapers and frenetic pulse are barely touched upon — instead, Kiarostami is more interested in its people, wondering what lives they lead and what secrets they hide underneath their façade of cheery, social conformism. Directed with strict adherence to mise-en-scene and untainted realism, Kiarostami and his gifted trio of actors unearth the underlying woes of all urbanites, crushed by the weight of capitalistic-fueled machismo and misogyny.
Read more on Like Someone in Love (***½)…
 As the year stands behind us and we gear up for the upcoming award shows including the Critics Choice Awards which will be broadcast on VH1, Thursday, January 12th @ 8pm ET. Make sure you tune in.
As for our own critics here at the Awards Circuit, I am pleased to present the Staff Writers choices for the Top 10 Best Films of 2011. Having a hand in hiring most of these writers that are on board, I am also eager to see the eclectic tastes as we try to form a non-consensus here at the site. We fully embrace how we are all different and look at film in a different way from our next critic or reader. We respect and we view with curiosity. I sincerely hope the readership of the Awards Circuit will share your Top Ten films in the comment section because I’m eager to hear what you guys and gals loved in 2011 as well.
Read more on Awards Circuit Staff Top Ten of 2011…
Categories: Community, Editor, Staff Tags: Beginners, Bellflower, Best of the year, Bridesmaids, Certified Copy, Crazy Stupid Love, Drive, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, Horrible Bosses, Hugo, Insidious, Melancholia, Midnight in Paris, Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol, Moneyball, Of Gods And Men, Project Nim, Rango, Red State, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Shame, The Adventures Of Tintin, the artist, The Beaver, The Descendants, The Help, The Ides of March, The Interrupters, The Muppets, The Tree of Life, Top Tens, war horse, Warrior, We Need To Talk About Kevin, Weekend, Win Win, Young Adult
2011 presented a nice eclectic view of cinema we haven’t seen throughout the years. If we summed it up to a ‘theme’ for the year, “silence” or “origins of cinema” would come to mind. Films like Michel Hazanavicius’ “The Artist” and Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo” would fall in line with those thoughts.
When creating my ballots for the Best of the Year, the are obvious categories that are stacked to the brim which would be inevitable for some omissions that in other years would either make the shortlist or be the clear front winner. I’ll address all of these as the week’s ‘Year-In-Review’ winds down but I’ll be curious to hear the thoughts of our readership.
Listed below is the Honorable Mention films ranking my #20 through #11 along with the unranked citations of certain films from the year.
Read more on Year-In-Review (Editor’s Honorable Mentions)…
Categories: Community, Editor Tags: arthur christmas, Best of the year, Bridesmaids, Carnage, Certified Copy, Crazy Stupid Love, Hugo, Like Crazy, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Midnight in Paris, pariah, Super 8, Take Shelter, The Descendants, The Muppets, The Tree of Life, Top Ten, Top Tens, war horse, Warrior, Winnie the Pooh
Read more on Circuit Round-Up (Week Ending 12/11)…
Categories: Circuit Round-Up Tags: Certified Copy, Circuit Round-Up, Hugo, I Melt With You, Meryl Streep, My Week With Marilyn, New Year's Eve, Nostalgia for the Light, Puncture, The Debt, the girl with the dragon tattoo, The Iron Lady, The Muppets, The Turin Horse, Young Adult
 I wish I could write more film reviews for The Awards Circuit. My busy schedule and availability of titles relevant to the site (as well as films I actually want to see) prevent me from publishing more than a meager amount of articles focused solely on analyzing a single film. This is also partially because I try to be as topical as I can with every article of mine. If too much time has passed between a film’s theatrical release and my viewing of it, then I don’t write a review. To me, my opportunity has gone and the readers have moved on.
I now realize the foolishness of that position, particularly for something I love, as I can think of no more egregious disservice to a great film than staying silent on it. I hope I can at least partially rectify that mistake with a belated endorsement of Abbas Kiarostami’s warm, beautifully played and flawlessly acted Certified Copy, which I caught back in late March and still remains one of the year’s standout achievements. Read more on Certified Copy (****)…
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