The 10 best movies of 2011

From young love to a documentary on capital punishment, here are the 10 movies that wowed Monitor film critic Peter Rainer at the multiplex this year

1. 'A Separation'

Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s powerful drama is a prime example of how a smallscale domestic crisis can stand as a microcosm for a much larger crisis within society. The film inexorably gathers force until the full range of human interaction seems to play itself out before our eyes.

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