The Artist in two shots: A Beautiful Callback

A fantastic well-executed gimmick. But also definitely not the best movie of the year. But then again, over time, strangely enough, my appreciation for this movie has grown. Where before I would have argued that sound and talk both enhance movies and The Artist was just a nostalgiaploitation along the lines of Midnight in Paris and that few if any modern viewers would watch a movies like Nosferatu or _Battleship Potemkin _or and think it was as good as There Will Be Blood or Pulp Fiction or The Prestige or Blue Valentine or whatever, now after having watched a hundred silent movies, there are soooo many that are singular pleasures that not only hold up, but transport you to another world. The greats of the silent era are almost a totally different art form. The lack of sound opens up new avenues of expression. And anything that puts that art form back on people's radars is doing Lord Film's work.