And 192 films later another year has passed. A year in which I've grown increasingly jaded with the decisions being made in cinemas, been forced to travel longer distances in order to see something decent and sat glassy eyed through a lot of awful kids movies.
Nonetheless the gems are out there and so as usual here's 10 favourites, in order, along with 5 notables from the torrent of film that constantly surges through my TV.
Obviously the end of the year wouldn't be right if I didn't do an awful lot of swearing about some bad films, so there's 10 of those too, also in order. Like order matters when stuff is that bad.
10 Favourite New Films At The Cinema:
1: Drive
Hard boiled, intelligent and cool as fuck.
2: Kill List
Begins as keenly observed British melodrama and ends like somebody screaming point blank in your face.
3: The Skin I Live In [La piel que habito]
A study of perception with a stunning revelation at its core which is never concealed but slowly unravelled to its fullest extent, often with exruciating levels of tension.
4: Tyrannosaur
I was surprised to discover that Paddy Considine has gone on to make Shane Meadows' best film. I wonder if Shane Meadows is aware of this?
5: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Normally political power play is the kind of thing I struggle with but every minute of this was a joy, it's a rarity these days to walk into the local pit and bear witness to such elegant film making.
6: Black Swan
A perfect Polanski homage and a phenomenal display of Aronofsky's talent.
7: 13 Assassins [Jûsan-nin no shikaku]
Miike harnesses his incredible powers of invention to portray epic honour and glory without ever losing his multitude of idiosyncratic touches.
8: Attack The Block
The best aliens I've seen in a while. The most I've laughed at teenagers swearing in a while too.
9: Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes
Everything rides on Serkis' skilful portrayl of Caesar's development. Which is fucking brilliant, so that worked out well.
10: Sucker Punch
A portmanteau compendium of short action cinema masterpieces. The wrap around story is a bit shit, but who cares when give it a few minutes and giant stone samurai are getting shot in the face. In slow motion.
5 Favourite Films I Watched Through A TV:
1: Martyrs
The last two years have seen 'extreme' titles in this spot and this year is no exception. As gruelling as it is excellent, which on both counts is 'very'.
2: House Of The Devil
Both this and "The Innkeepers" demonstrate West's extreme prowess with glacial pacing.
3: A Prophet [Un prophète]
Survival portrayed as magnificence.
4: Machete
In which an enjoyment of genre nonsense flows so freely it's impossible not to succumb.
5: Freaks
If only for the sight of a man with no arms or legs lighting a cigarette with a match.
10 Shittest Films:
1: Rubber
Who makes a film that sets out to actually insult its audience, then get all smug about it? Prick.
2: Loaded
Written by one of the lead actors transparently under the notion that he'll make himself look extremely cool. Unfortunately he ends up looking like a twat in a crap film.
3: Horrid Henry: The Movie
Nothing to do with me being all grown up. I've read the books, they're good. I've watched the cartoon, it's good. I've sat through this hideous fuck up, it's bollocks.
4: Your Highness
Not Funny. Very shit.
5: A Night In The Woods
An apalling lift of Blair Witch. When the director was talking about it afterward he appeared to actually be proud of the fact that they had no script. What a nob.
6: Transformers: Dark Of The Moon
A garish, technicolour abortion useful only for giving Michael Bay an erection.
7: Cowboys & Aliens
Badly plotted, risible nonsense.
8: Bad Day
If the high point of your film is a member of Girls Aloud being punched in the face you probably shouldn't be making it. Awfulness further compounded by the fact that everyone in this film with actor or actress on their job description is a fucking liar.
9: Air Buddies/ Snow Buddies/ Santa Buddies
Bored animals with crudely CG'd mouths telling everybody to work as a team and love each other. Not my thing admittedly.
10: Season Of The Witch
Ah, but is she a witch? Is she really? Oh, hang on, yes she is and a shit one at that. Fuck
Postscript:
Whilst I was writing this, Charlotte wanted to know what I was doing. I discovered it's not easy to explain the point of picking films you've seen and putting them in a strict heirarchical order, but she got enough of the gist to want to have a go herself. So I went through what we had watched (endured) across 2011 and she picked her 5 favourites:
1: Puss In Boots
2: Kung Fu Panda 2
3: Tron: Legacy
4: Horrid Henry: The Movie
5: Yogi Bear
To put this in perspective when I was nine I was enthusing over Transformers: The Movie, Labyrinth, Basil: The Great Mouse Detective, An American Tale and Flight Of The Navigator.
Charlotte's worst movie she saw in 2011? Megamind. A bit harsh I thought.
Roll on 2012. As long as Roland 'Fucking' Emmerich isn't in charge of it, that is.
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A full list of what I saw last year in approximate order and with Al style short reviews can be found via http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10089738/Film%20of%202011.rtf
ReplyDelete10 Worst films of the year
10 - Season of the Witch
One of those films that your can just about make out the movie everyone signed up for, but has gone so badly wrong it ends up a tragic mess.
9 - The Other Guys
Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg in a comedy that's tryin gto be a film and forgets to be funny.
8 - Insidious
The first half is a really good, atmospheric, coherent horror movie about a woman being tormented while her neglectful husband is a selfish twat. And then halfway thru it skips forward 6 months and becomes stupid nonsense where the neglectful husband remains neglectful, yet we are supposed to give a shit about him, the tormented wife gets pushed the side and ignored and everything set up in the forst half is ignored so it can become a terrible Poltergeist remake. I actually want this to be lower.
7 - Whatever Works
Larry David playing Woody Allen in a New York set Woody Allen comedy should work. It really doesn't.
6 - Burke & Hare
Allegedly John Landis's return to form. It's not. It's an unfunny comedy about intriguing dramatic true life events with Simon Pegg hopelessly miscast and Andy Serkis showing why he should work solely in mo-cap.
5 - Jonah Hex
Butchered beyond an inch of it's life this studio hacked apart mess has hacked at all the wrong parts; removing any story coherence, but keeping an utterly irrelevany (and appalling) Megan Fox.
4 - Law Abiding Citizen
Right wing propaganda revenge nonsense where Jamie Foxx plays the most stupid super lawyer committed to celluloid.
3 - Rubber
A 10 min short film stretched beyond breaking point into a short feature film that insults the viewer at every turn.
2 - Sucker Punch
4 fun, but slightly overlong, action sequence cannot make up for the appalling characters and plotting. So desperately thinks it's clever, but the only similarity with clever it can muster is the same first letter. Crap. I shining example of why some directors should never be allowed to make their passion project.
1 - Transformers : Dark of the Moon
I liked both the first two. They supplied ample Tranformer fun and a likable human hero. The second may be a pretty terrible movie, but it's escalating TF action is what I generally want from a TF movie. So this should have delivered, but the best it has to offer is the odd second here and there of TF coolness. The story (more coherent than TF2) is told so clunkily, the action too often cuts away to humans instead of Transformers, but the thing that totally kills it is every character this time round is utter, utter shit. For 2 films Shia has been a likeable geeky prescence throughout; he has some natural movie star charisma. But here he's become such a whiny twat ("I have a luxury apartment, a sexy girlfriend and my car is a fuckin' Transformer, but I'm going to be a whiny bitch because I can't get a super highpaid job I can't possible have got the qualifications for") you want Bumblebee to forget to eject him before he transforms. And Patrick Dempsey plays possibly the worst screen villain ever. Literally nothing his character does makes any sense. And Huntingdon-Whiteley manages a level of awful I didn't think was possible... I missed Megan Fox and that's something you should never say about a movie.
Honourable Mentions
ReplyDeleteDanny Boyle's Frankenstein
Undoubtedly this would have been in my top 10, but despite seeing it in the cinema, it's not a film. If they decide to reshow it at cinemas I couldn't recommend this higher.
Best performances of the year
Gary Oldman - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Andy Serkis - Rise of the Apes
Tilde Swinton - We Need To Talk About Kevin
Ryan Gosling - Blue Valentine, Drive
Colin Firth - The King's Speech
Jeff Bridges - True Grit
Rooney Mara - Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
James Franco - 127 Hours
The main kid in Animal Kingdom
Best scenes
The motorbike chase through Morocco in Tintin
The elevator scene in Drive
Smiley recounting his past in Tinker Tailor
Best Comedy
Midnight in Paris
Best horror
Contagion
Best stupid movie
Fast 5
It was a good year for...
Sport movies. The Fighter, Warrior and Moneyball were all excellent.
And so, my top 10...
ReplyDelete10 - Rise of the Planet of the Apes
After a second viewing the Apes just about edge out the likes of Tinker Tailor, Attack The Block, Black Swan and Never Let Me Go, despite all the human villains being complete arse. It more than compensates by having the best lead character in a blockbuster for a while in Caesar. How the Hollywood studio system allowed a franchise cash-in to become the most thoughtful blockbuster in many a moon is beyond me, but we can all be thankful it slipped thru the gap.
9 - Rango
The first film of the year I fell genuinely in love with. Despite it's kids movie facade it never panders to them (unless you consider slapstick for kids only. I don't) and is full of more ideas than almost everything else I saw last year combined. A joyful mash of oddball characters, westerns, Chinatown and Hunter S. Thompson.
8 - 127 Hours
Cinema's least cinematic concept (man trapped by rock cuts arm off) is one of the years most cinematic treats. Franco is magnificent, holding your attention for 90 minutes.
7 - The Fighter
Boxing's two biggest movies are combined to making a fantastic family drama. Bale, Adams and Leo have the showy roles, and each is fantastic, but Wahlberg holds it all together brilliantly.
6 - The Adventures of Tintin
The most balls out entertaining movie of the year, a 100 minute thrill ride with Spielberg clearly having an absolute ball with new technology. The chase through Morocco towards the end was the coolest action sequence I've seen in many many years. Quite superb.
5 - Drive
Nicolas Winding Refn goes from being an interesting film maker I'd likely check out to someone who's next film is a must see before it's even made. A quite brilliant medley of noir, western, 80's and contemporary. The coolest film of the year.
4 - Hugo
Possibly Scorsese's best film for 20 years, the most amazing use of 3D, but most of all a simply wonderful love letter to the power of cinema. Beautiful.
3 - 13 Assassins
Miike goes epic with a truly mesmerising varation of Seven Samurai, littering it with many uniquely Miike moments.
2 - True Grit
The Coen's at possibly their most faultless. Sublime dialogue with a subtle humour to it throughout, fantastic performances, some of the most gorgeous cinematography and when he shoots the horse.. oh man. The second best remake ever made.
1 - Animal Kingdom
There aren't enough superlatives for this magnificent Australian crime drama. Without you even realising it it crawls under your skin from the opening scene and it's not until the film ends and you return to reality that you realise just how much. It is pretty much everything top level adult drama should be.