Yesterday, I decided to make a list of my ten favorite films of 2011. I thought about it for a while, and then realized that I couldn’t. These are the only films released in 2011 which I have seen (in no particular order):

Midnight in Paris, dir. Woody Allen
Weekend, dir. Andrew Haigh
The Trip, dir. Michael Winterbottom
Meek’s Cutoff, dir. Kelly Reichardt
Cave of Forgotten Dreams, dir. Werner Herzog

Even worse: technically, The Trip, Meek’s Cutoff, and Cave of Forgotten Dreams came out in 2010, as they premiered at film festivals that fall and winter (they all had a limited run in the US in spring/summer 2011).

While I am not entirely embarrassed about this (I have certainly watched a large number of films in the past year, just not many new releases), I remember when I worked at a movie theater in college and would see an average of three to four films a week in a theater (even more during breaks from school), and this makes me sort of sad. On the other hand, I tend to think that the good ones will float to the top after a year or two: I may have lost the theatrical experience (which, don’t get me wrong, I adore), but the film itself won’t be lost. Or so I try to tell myself, a supposed film scholar behind on the most recent trends.

With that said, here are a few films released in 2011 which I am sorry that I missed, but which I look forward to seeing in the future (again, in no particular order):

Melancholia, dir. Lars von Trier
The Skin I Live In, dir. Pedro Almodóvar
Drive, dir. Nicolas Winding Refn
A Dangerous Method, dir. David Cronenberg
The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, dir. Göran Olsson
The Tree of Life, dir. Terrence Malick
The Artist, dir. Michel Hazanavicius
The Future, dir. Miranda July
Pina, dir. Wim Wenders
Contagion, dir. Steven Soderbergh

If there are others that I should not overlook, do let me know.