Year-End Lists

Karina Longworth: Best Films of 2011, as published by The Village Voice

NOTE: For the The Village Voice year-end film poll, Longworth submitted a slightly different list that put the Cronenberg film at #8, put the Ferrara film at #9, and omitted the films by July and Miller. She also submitted a slightly reordered list for the indieWIRE survey. For the list above, we’ve favored the personal write-up in The Voice over the submitted ballots.

[see also 2018 • 2017 • 2014 • 2012]

1. Margaret
   Kenneth Lonergan
2. Melancholia
   Lars von Trier
3. Meek’s Cutoff
   Kelly Reichardt
4. The Tree of Life
   Terrence Malick
5. The Arbor
   Clio Barnard
6. A Separation
   Asghar Farhadi
7. Drive
   Nicolas Winding Refn
8. Contagion
   Steven Soderbergh
9. The Future
   Miranda July
10. Moneyball
    Bennett Miller

Films That Almost Made the Cut, Alphabetically

• The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceauşescu
  Andrei Ujica
• Beginners
  Mike Mills
• Certified Copy
  Abbas Kiarostami
• City of Life and Death
  Lu Chuan
• A Dangerous Method
  David Cronenberg
• Dragonslayer
  Tristan Patterson
• Fast Five
  Justin Lin
• Go Go Tales
  Abel Ferrara
• House of Pleasures
  Bertrand Bonello
• Jane Eyre
  Cary Fukunaga
• The Lincoln Lawyer
  Brad Furman
• Love Exposure
  Sion Sono
• Martha Marcy May Marlene
  Sean Durkin
• Mysteries of Lisbon
  Raoul Ruiz
• Rubber
  Quentin Dupieux
• Silver Bullets
  Joe Swanberg
• Take Shelter
  Jeff Nichols
• The Trip
  Michael Winterbottom
• Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
  Apichatpong Weerasethakul
• Winnie the Pooh
  Stephen J. Anderson and Don Hall

Jonah Weiner: 10 Favorite Albums of 2011, as published by Slate

1. XXX
   Danny Brown
2. Instrumental Mixtape
   Clams Casino
3. Blvcklvnd Rvdix 66.6 (1991)
   Spaceghostpurrp
4. Take Care
   Drake
5. LIVE.LOVE.A$AP
   A$AP Rocky
6. James Blake
   James Blake
7. inhale c-4 $$$$$
   BEBETUNE$
8. Eye Contact
   Gang Gang Dance
9. Severant
   Kuedo
10. Whokill
    Tune-Yards

Jody Rosen: 10 Favorite Albums of 2011, as published by Slate

1. Whokill
   Tune-Yards
2. Watch the Throne
   Jay-Z and Kanye West
3. All I Want Is You
   Miguel
4. Hell on Heels
   Pistol Annies
5. So Beautiful or So What
   Paul Simon
6. Soul Punk
   Patrick Stump
7. XXX
   Danny Brown
8. Chief
   Eric Church
9. Nostalgia, Ultra
   Frank Ocean
10. Femme Fatale
    Britney Spears

Pinpoint Music: Top 25 Albums of 2011

1. No Time For Dreaming
   Charles Bradley & Menahan Street Band
2. Smoke Ring for My Halo
   Kurt Vile
3. Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming
   M83
4. Father, Son, Holy Ghost
   Girls
5. On the Water
   Future Islands
6. David Comes to Life
   Fucked Up
7. Bon Iver
   Bon Iver
8. Black Up
   Shabazz Palaces
9. El Camino
   The Black Keys
10. Too Beautiful to Work
    The Luyas
11. Burst Apart
    The Antlers
12. Moody, Standard and Poor
    Obits
13. Georgia Swan
    Sundelles
14. Let England Shake
    PJ Harvey
15. Cults
    Cults
16. James Blake
    James Blake
17. The King of Limbs
    Radiohead
18. A Good Woman is Hard to Find
    PAPA
19. Yuck
    Yuck
20. I Am Very Far
    Okkervil River
21. 936
    Peaking Lights
22. Whokill
    Tune-Yards
23. Carrion Crawler/The Dream
    Thee Oh Sees
24. Days
    Real Estate
25. Strange Mercy
    St. Vincent

Village Voice Film Poll: Best Films of 2011 (as published by The Village Voice, compiled from the votes of 95 critics)

[see also 2020 • 2019 • 2017 • 2016 • 2015 • 2014 • 2013 • 2012]

1. The Tree of Life
   Terrence Malick
2. A Separation
   Asghar Farhadi
3. Melancholia
   Lars von Trier
4. Certified Copy
   Abbas Kiarostami
5. Mysteries of Lisbon
   Raoul Ruiz
6. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
   Apichatpong Weerasethakul
7. Margaret
   Kenneth Lonergan
8. Meek’s Cutoff
   Kelly Reichardt
9. Drive
   Nicolas Winding Refn
10. Take Shelter
    Jeff Nichols
11. Hugo
    Martin Scorsese
12. A Dangerous Mind
    David Cronenberg
13. Martha Marcy May Marlene
    Sean Durkin
14. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
    Tomas Alfredson
15. The Descendants
    Alexander Payne
16. Weekend
    Andrew Haigh
17. The Artist
    Michel Hazanavicius
18. Poetry
    Lee Chang-dong
18. Shame
    Steve McQueen
20. Film Socialisme
    Jean-Luc Godard
21. The Interrupters
    Steve James
22. Tuesday, After Christmas
    Radu Muntean
23. A Brighter Summer Day
    Edward Yang
24. The Arbor
    Clio Barnard
25. The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceauşescu
    Andrei Ujica
26. Le quattro volte
    Michelangelo Frammartino
27. To Die Like a Man
    João Pedro Rodrigues
27. Nostalgia for the Light
    Patricio Guzmán
29. Midnight in Paris
    Woody Allen
30. The Future
    Miranda July
31. City of Life and Death
    Lu Chuan
32. We Need to Talk About Kevin
    Lynne Ramsay
33. Beginners
    Mike Mills
34. Le Havre
    Aki Kaurismäki
34. Rise of the Planet of the Apes
    Rupert Wyatt
36. Jane Eyre
    Cary Fukunaga
37. Bellflower
    Evan Glodell
37. Into the Abyss
    Werner Herzog
39. The Skin I Live In
    Pedro Almodóvar

This list summarizes other lists, including these:

• Village Voice Film Poll: Jonathan Rosenbaum: Favorite Films of 2011

The New York Times: 100 Notable Books of 2011, alphabetical by title

[see also The 10 Best Books of 2023 • 100 Notable Books of 2023 • The 10 Best Books of 2022 • 100 Notable Books of 2022 • The 10 Best Books of 2021 • 100 Notable Books of 2021 • The 10 Best Books of 2020 • 100 Notable Books of 2020 • 100 Notable Books of 2019 • The 10 Best Books of 2019 • 10 Best Books of 2018 • 100 Notable Books of 2018 • 100 Notable Books of 2017 • 10 Best Books of 2017 • 10 Best Books of 2016 • 10 Best Books of 2015 • The 10 Best Books of 2014 • The 10 Best Books of 2013 • 100 Notable Books of 2012 • 10 Best Books of 2012 • Ten Best Books of 2011]

Fiction

• The Angel Esmeralda

  Nine Stories
  Don DeLillo
• The Art of Fielding
  Chad Harbach
• The Barbarian Nurseries
  Héctor Tobar
• Big Questions. Or, Asomatognosia

  Whose Hand Is It Anyway?
  Anders Brekhus Nilsen
• The Buddha in the Attic
  Julie Otsuka
• Canti
  Giacomo Leopardi
• The Cat’s Table
  Michael Ondaatje
• Changó’s Beads and Two-Tone Shoes
  William Kennedy
• Come on All You Ghosts
  Matthew Zapruder
• 11/22/63
  Stephen King
• The Free World
  David Bezmozgis
• Ghost Lights
  Lydia Millet
• The Grief of Others
  Leah Hager Cohen
• Gryphon

  New and Selected Stories
  Charles Baxter
• House of Holes

  A Book of Raunch
  Nicholson Baker
• The Last Werewolf
  Glen Duncan
• The Leftovers
  Tom Perrotta
• Life on Mars
  Tracy K. Smith
• The London Train
  Tessa Hadley
• Long, Last, Happy

  New and Selected Stories
  Barry Hannah
• Lost Memory of Skin
  Russell Banks
• The Marriage Plot
  Jeffrey Eugenides
• A Moment in the Sun
  John Sayles
• Mr. Fox
  Helen Oyeyemi
• My New American Life
  Francine Prose
• 1Q84
  Haruki Murakami
• Open City
  Teju Cole
• The Pale King

  An Unfinished Novel
  David Foster Wallace
• Parallel Stories
  Peter Nadas, translated by Imre Goldstein
• Say Her Name
  Francisco Goldman
• Scenes from Village Life
  Amos Oz, translated by Nocholas de Lange
• The Sense of an Ending
  Julian Barnes
• Seven Years
  Peter Stamm
• Shards
  Ismet Prcic
• Space, in Chains
  Laura Kasischke
• Stone Arabia
  Dana Spiotta
• The Stranger’s Child
  Alan Hollinghurst
• The Submission
  Amy Waldman
• Swamplandia!
  Karen Russell
• Taller When Prone

  Poems
  Les Murray
• Ten Thousand Saints
  Eleanor Henderson
• This Beautiful Life
  Helen Schulman
• The Tiger’s Wife
  Téa Obreht
• The Tragedy of Arthur
  Arthur Phillips
• Train Dreams
  Denis Johnson

Nonfiction

• And So It Goes. Kurt Vonnegut

  A Life
  Charles J. Shields
• Arguably

  Essays
  Christopher Hitchens
• The Art of Cruelty

  A Reckoning
  Maggie Nelson
• Assassins of the Turquoise Palace
  Roya Hakakian
• The Beginning of Infinity

  Explanations that Transform the World
  David Deutsch
• Believing is Seeing

  Observations on the Mysteries of Photography
  Errol Morris
• The Better Angels of Our Nature

  Why Violence Has Declined
  Steven Pinker
• Blood, Bones and Butter

  The Inadvertent Education of  a Reluctant Chef
  Gabrielle Hamilton
• Blue Nights
  Joan Didion
• The Boy in the Moon

  A Father’s Journey to Understand His Extraordinary Son
  Ian Brown
• Caravaggio

  A Life Sacred and Profane
  Andrew Graham-Dixon
• Catherine the Great

  Portrait of a Woman
  Robert K. Massie
• Clarence Darrow

  Attorney for the Damned
  John A. Farrell
• Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness
  Alexandra Fuller
• Destiny of the Republic

  A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President
  Candice Millard
• The Ecstasy of Influence

  Nonfictions, Etc.
  Jonathan Lethem
• 1861

  The Civil War Awakening
  Adam Goodheart
• Examined Lives

  From Socrates to Nietzsche
  James Miller
• 1493

  Uncovering the New World Columbus Created
  Charles C. Mann
• George F. Kennan

  An American Life
  John Lewis Gaddis
• Great Soul

  Mahatma GAndhi and His Struggle with India
  Joseph Lelyveld
• Harlem is Nowhere

  A Journey to the Mecca of Black America
  Sharifa Rhoes-Pitts
• Holy War

  How Vasco de Gama’s Epic Voyages Turned the Tide in a Centuries-Old Clash of Civilizations
  Nigel Cliff
• In the Garden of Beasts

  Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin
  Erik Larson
• Inferno

  The World at War, 1939-1945
  Max Hastings
• The Information

  A History, a Theory, a Flood
  James Gleick
• Inside Scientology

  The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion
  Janet Reitman
• Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything
  David Bellos
• Jerusalem

  The Biography
  Simon Sebag Montefiore
• The Keats Brothers

  The Life of John and George
  Denis Gigante
• Knocking on Heaven’s Door

  how Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World
  Lisa Randall
• Malcolm X

  A Life of Reinvention
  Manning Marable
• The Memory Chalet
  Tony Judt
• Midnight Rising

  John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War
  Tony Horwitz
• Moby-Duck

  The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea & of the Beachcombers, Oceanograp hers, Environmentalists & Fools Including the Author Who Went in Search of Them
  Donovan Hohn
• My Song

  A Memoir
  Harry Belafonte with Michael Shnayerson
• The Net Delusion

  The Dark Side of Internet Freedom
  Evgeny Morozov
• One Day I Will Write About This Place
  Binyavanga Wainaina
• The Origins of Political Order

  From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution
  Francis Fukuyama
• Pauline Kael

  A Life in the Dark
  Brian Kellow
• Pulphead
  John Jeremiah Sullivan
• The Quest

  Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World
  Daniel Yergin
• Rights Gone Wrong

  How Law Corrupts the Struggle for Equity
  Richard Thompson Ford
• Rin Tin Tin

  The Life and the Legend
  Susan Orlean
• [sic]

  A Memoir
  Joshua Cody
• The Storm of War

  A New History of the Second World War
  Andrew Roberts
• The Swerve

  How the World Became Modern
  Stephen Greenblatt
• Thinking, Fast and Slow
  Daniel Kahneman
• To A Mountain in Tibet
  Colin Thubron
• To End All Wars

  A Story of Loyalty and Rebellionm 1914-1918
  Adam Hochschild
• A Train in Winter

  An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France
  Caroline Moorehead
• Van Gogh

  The Life
  Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith
• Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness? What it Means to be Black Now
  Touré
• Why the West Rules — For Now

  The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future
  Ian Morris
• A World on Fire

  Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War
  Amanda Foreman

Sarah Rodman: Top Albums of 2011, as published by The Boston Globe

1. Resolutions
   Dave Hause
2. 21
   Adele
3. The King is Dead
   The Decemberists
4. Lorraine
   Lori McKenna
5. Chief
   Eric Church
6. The Light of the Sun
   Jill Scott
7. Guitar Slinger
   Vince Gill
8. Wasting Light
   Foo Fighters
9. Undun
   The Roots
10. Go-Go Boots
    Drive-By Truckers

Austin Town Hall: Top 50 Albums of 2011

[see also 2018 • 2017 • 2016 • 2012]

1. Civilian
   Wye Oak
2. The Twerps
   Twerps
3. The Ornament
   Gold Leaves
4. Days
   Real Estate
5. Cloud Nothings
   Cloud Nothings
6. Pleasure
   Pure X
7. Go With Me
   Seapony
8. Burst Apart
   The Antlers
9. New Brigade
   Iceage
10. Helplessness Blues
    Fleet Foxes
11. Tamer Animals
    Other Lives
12. Light for Fire
    Light for Fire
13. Dead to Me
    Girls Names
14. Belong
    Pains of Being Pure at Heart
15. Diamond Mine
    King Creosote & Jon Hopkins
16. Laminate Pet Animal
    Snowmine
17. Portamento
    The Drums
18. Howl of the Lonely Crowd
    Comet Gain
19. The Big Roar
    Joy Formidable
20. Yuck
    Yuck
21. Idle Labor
    Craft Spells
22. Mind Spiders
    Mind Spiders
23. Parallax
    Atlas Sound
24. Fading Parade
    Papercuts
25. Ducktails III
    Ducktails
26. Slave Ambient
    The War on Drugs
27. Hollow
    Cut Off Your Hands
28. Prom
    Grooms
29. No Future
    Wax Idols
30. Dye It Blonde
    Smith Westerns
31. Hit After Hit
    Sonny and the Sunsets
32. I Am Very Far
    Okkervil River
33. Euphoria
    Devon Williams
34. Cherish the Light Years
    Cold Cave
35. In Love With Oblivion
    Crystal Stilts
36. Nothing Hurts
    Male Bonding
37. Diaper Island
    Chad Van Gaalen
38. Apokalypsis
    Chelsea Wolfe
39. Kings of the Weekend
    Bad Sports
40. Magic Trick
    Tim Cohen
41. Loud Planes Fly Low
    The Rosebuds
42. Moody, Standard and Poor
    Obits
43. Kaputt
    Destroyer
44. Only in Dreams
    Dum Dum Girls
45. Vanity is Forever
    Geoffrey O'Connor
46. Embracing the Modern Age
    Blue Skies for Black Hearts
47. Departing
    The Rural Alberta Advantage
48. Celestial Electric
    AM & Shawn Lee
49. Strange Hearts
    Secret Cities
50. The New Tigers
    The New Tigers

SFGate: 10 Best Albums of 2011

1. 21
   Adele
2. Barton Hollow
   The Civil Wars
3. 4
   Beyoncé
4. Watch the Throne
   Jay-Z and Kanye West
5. Nostalgia, Ultra
   Frank Ocean
6. The Movie
   Betty Wright and the Roots
7. Hell on Heels
   Pistol Annies
8. Undun
   The Roots
9. Own the Night
   Lady Antebellum
10. Hot Sauce Committee Part Two
    Beastie Boys

Dennis Cooper: Favorite Albums of 2011

[see also 2019 • 2015 • 2013 • 2012]

1. Let’s Go Eat the Factory
   Guided By Voices
2. New Brigade
   Iceage
3. Aesthethica
   Liturgy
4. Alien Observer/Dream Loss
   Grouper
5. David Comes to Life
   Fucked Up
6. A New Way to Pay Old Debts
   Bill Orcutt
7. Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming
   M83
8. Ravedeath, 1972
   Tim Hecker
9. Parallax
   Atlas Sound
10. L’un n’empêche pas l’autre
    Brigitte Fontaine
11. Wild Flag
    Wild Flag
12. Elegy for Beach Friday
    Bee Mask
13. Red Barked Tree
    Wire
14. Palace of Marvels (queered pitch)
    Marcus Schmickler
15. The Clearing
    Locrian