Usually I’m quite cynical about end-of-year lists, as they demand a forced encapsulation of an arbitrary block of time that is not yet over into something simplified. I typically find end-of-year lists fun, but rarely useful. But 2011 is different. As Scott Tobias pointed out, while “quiet,” this was a surprisingly strong year for interesting and risk-taking films. What’s most interesting has been the variety: barely anything has emerged as a leading contender that tops either critics’ lists or dominates awards buzz. Quite honestly, at the end of 2010 I struggled to find compelling topics, trends, and events to define the year in cinema. The final days of 2011 brought a quite opposite struggle, for this year’s surprising glut of interesting and disparate films spoke to one another in a way that makes it difficult to isolate any of the year’s significant works. Arguments in the critical community actually led to insightful points as they addressed essential questions of what it means to be a filmgoer and a cinephile. Mainstream Hollywood machine-work and limited release arthouse fare defied expectations in several directions. New stars arose. Tired Hollywood rituals and ostensibly reliable technologies both met new breaking points. “2011” hangs over this year in cinema, and the interaction between the films – and the events and conversations that surrounded them – makes this year’s offerings particular to their time and subject to their context. This is what I took away from this surprising year:

Cary Fukunaga will no doubt have a long and steady career because the young director came right out of the gate with the beautifully brilliant Sin Nombre and followed it up with a more than capable period piece in Jane Eyre. He’s an auteur who 1) is still building his style and 2) refuses to work within one genre. Even if he’s still developing his signature, hopefully Fukunaga will bring his sense of atmosphere and environment to his forthcoming sci-fi drama. Spaceless, according to The Hollywood Reporter, tells the story of “an assassin who wakes up inside a spacesuit tumbling helplessly through space, with a computer designed to keep him company until his air runs out. He must try to solve the mystery of his death, which began when he broke into an orbiting space station to carry out a hit. The man, however, begins to question his reality, unsure if he is succumbing to madness or in an artificially created environment.” It’s a fun idea (that certainly borrows from other ideas), and it’s great to see Fukunaga continue to elude definition. The director will also rework the spec script written by Jeff Vintar (no stranger to sci-fi himself), Gore Verbinski will produce, and it seems like the only actor not up for the role would be Sam Rockwell because, well, you know. There’s no way they could hire Sam Rockwell for this. They’re going to, aren’t they?

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a movie news column that wonders: “does your daddy know that it sneaks into your room every night?” In a slightly less creepy description, it’s a column that, as of tonight, is of two minds: one that thinks about movie news and is seemingly on vacation, and another that is all about television. Like The Adventures of Pete and Pete. No, seriously. Tonight’s top story is an imperfect first look at Colin Farrell in the Len Wiseman directed reboot of Total Recall. Some sites are dedicating primo space to such an image, so I thought I’d throw it up there because it’s a decent sized fish on a day where news has been flowing into our nets plentifully. In other non-fishing references, the Total Recall character looks a lot like plain old Colin Farrell. Nothing to see here, I suppose.

This isn’t what I expected Jane Eyre to look like. This may be from my own ignorance of not having read Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel, but where’s the standard period piece fluff? To my (great) surprise, director Cary Fukunaga is bringing Jane Eyre more into the suspense and supernatural world; the eerie score from Suspiria makes this a dead giveaway. This doesn’t look like the usual period piece we get, and having the director of Sin Nombre makes that no shock. Fukunaga seemed like an odd choice for Eyre, but it’s now apparent the strange pick was for the better.

Sayra (Paulina Gaitan) is a teenage girl reuniting with her father to join him on a trek from Honduras to a dream life in the United States. Willy (Edgar Flores) is a member of Mara Salvatrucha, a ruthless Mexico City gang trying to escape.