Margaret, Melancholia and More: Alison's Top 10 Movies of 2011

I found 2011 to be a great, overstuffed year in film, though the sweeping trend of nostalgia that peaked during this awards season left me a little cold. Hugo, War Horse, The Artist, The Adventures of Tintin, The Help, even the self-aware looking back of Midnight in Paris -- when it's been such a turbulent 12 months beyond the movies, the comfort of evoking the past, especially the cinephilic past, is understandable, particularly with attendance down once again. But the features I really loved tended to be more prickly, vital affairs, about tragedy and life messily, stubbornly going on in its aftermath -- ones that reminded us that film can not only be a great escape, but can also engage and reflect the outside world.

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