Roger Ebert's Top 20 Films from 2011

Here's Ebert's list:

1. A Separation — “‘A Separation’ will become one of those enduring masterpieces watched decades from now.”

2. Shame — “Michael Fassbender’s brave, uncompromising performance is at the center of Steve McQueen’s merciless film about sex addiction.”

3. The Tree of Life — “A film of vast ambition and deep humility, attempting no less than to encompass all of existence and view it through the prism of a few infinitesimal lives.”

4. Hugo — “Could anyone but Scorsese have made this subject so magical and enchanting?”

5. Take Shelter — “Director Jeff Nichols builds his suspense carefully.”

6. Kinyarwanda — “[A]n independent film of great emotional impact.”

7. Drive — “‘Drive’ looks like one kind of thriller in the ads, and it is that kind of thriller, but also another and a rebuke to most of the movies it looks like.”

8. Midnight in Paris — “A fabulous daydream for American lit majors.”

9. Le Havre — “Aki Kaurismaki is a Finnish director who makes dour, deadpan comedies about people who shrug their way through misfortune. They have a hypnotic fascination for me.”

10. The Artist — “What audacity to make a silent film in black and white in 2011, and what a film Michel Hazanavicius has made!”

11. Melancholia — “The details matter less than the grand overarching mood.”

12. Terri — “He may be a kid who is fat and weird, but he’s much more than fat and weird.”

13. The Descendants — “George Clooney in one of his best performances.”

14. Margaret — “[W]hat’s important is the conflict between the young woman’s perfectionism and things as they are.”

15. Martha Marcy May Marlene — “[B]uilds on the strong Elizabeth Olsen to show how easily groups can control their members.”

16. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 — “[A] solid and satisfying conclusion.”

17. Trust — “The bravest thing about David Schwimmer’s ‘Trust’ is that it doesn’t try to simplify.”

18. Life, Above All — “The seriousness and solemnity with which she performs this task is heart-rending and heart-warming.”

19. The Mill and the Cross — “Any description would be an injustice… It is a film before which words fall silent.”

20. Another Earth — “This one doesn’t presage the end of the world, but represents perhaps our very same Earth, in another universe that has now become visible.”

Ebert then goes ont to list some more of his favorite movies that didn’t end up on his list:

• 13 Assassins
• The Adventures of Tintin
• Beginners
• Blue Valentine
• Boy Wonder
• Certified Copy
• The Future
• The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
• The Guard
• The Help
• Higher Ground
• I Will Follow
• J. Edgar
• The Last Rites of Joe May
• Le Quattro Volte
• Margin Call
• Meek’s Cutoff
• Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
• Moneyball
• Mysteries of Lisbon
• My Week with Marilyn
• Poetry
• The Princess of Montpensier
• Rango
• A Screaming Man
• Silent Souls
• Tyrannosaur
• Queen to Play
• Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
• The Whistleblower

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Roger Ebert Acurately Predicted the Future of Film in 1987

When asked "How will the fierce competition between television and the movies work out in the future?" by Omni Magazine in 1987, Ebert answered:

"We will have high-definition, wide-screen television sets and a push-button dialing system to order the movie you want at the time you want it. You’ll not go to a video store but instead order a movie on demand and then pay for it. Videocassette tapes as we know them now will be obsolete both for showing prerecorded movies and for recording movies. People will record films on 8mm and will play them back using laser-disk/CD technology.

I also am very, very excited by the fact that before long, alternative films will penetrate the entire country. Today seventy-five percent of the gross from a typical art film in America comes from as few as six –six– different theaters in six different cities. Ninety percent of the American motion-picture marketplace never shows art films. With this revolution in delivery and distribution, anyone, in any size town or hamlet, will see the movies he or she wants to see. It will be the same as it’s always been with books. You can be a hermit and still read any author you choose.

By the year 2000 or so, a motion picture will cost as much money as it now costs to publish a book or make a phonograph album."

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Roger Ebert's Top 10 Films of 2010

1. The Social Network

David Fincher's direction, Aaron Sorkin's screenplay and the acting by Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Timberlake and the others all harmoniously create not only a story but a world view, showing how Zuckerberg is hopeless at personal relationships but instinctively projects himself into a virtual world and brings 500 million others behind him.

2. The King's Speech

Tom Hooper's filmmaking itself is crafted in older style, depending on an assembly of actors, costumes, sets, and a three-act structure. The characters project considered ideas of themselves; "The Social Network," in contrast, intimately lays its characters bare. From one man speaking at a distance through the radio, to another man shepherding hundreds of millions through a software program, the two films show techology shaping human nature.

3. Black Swan

This film depends more than many others on the intensity and presence of the actors, and Portman's ballerina is difficult to imagine coming from another actor.

4. I Am Love

In this film and "Julia" (2008), Tilda Swinton created masterful performances that were largely unseen because of inadequate distribution. Is it an Academy performance if no one sees it?

5. Winter's Bone

Debra Granik, the director and co-author, risks backwoods caricatures and avoids them with performances that are exact and indelible, right down to small supporting roles. Ree is one of the great women of recent movies.

6. Inception

Inception led me to speculate that my mind, at least, generates architectural pathways, and that one reason I responded to Inception is that, like all movies, it was a waking dream.

7. The Secret in their Eyes

No, this isn't a silly movie love story. These are adults--experienced, nuanced, survivors. Love has very high stakes for them, and therefore greater rewards.

8. The American

A standard thriller plot, but this is a far from mainstream thriller. Very little is explained. There is a stark minimalism at work. Much depends on our empathy. The entire drama rests on two words, "Mr. Butterfly." We must be vigilant to realize that once, and only once, are they spoken by the wrong person -- and then the whole plot reality rotates.

9. The Kids Are All Right

Sure. In a comedy with some deeper colors, the film is an affirmation of--family values.

10. The Ghost Writer

This movie is the work of a man who knows how to direct a thriller. Smooth, calm, confident, it builds suspense instead of depending on shock and action. The actors create characters who suggest intriguing secrets.