There was a hell of a lot of movies in 2011 worth watching. I've probably missed more than half of them, which I'll list further down. What 2011 in film represents is probably one of the best years for genre geeks and 2012 will be even more so with big-ass mainstream releases such as The Dark Knight Rises, The Avengers and about every other comic-book property out there. Both Attack the Block and Drive are the type of films that make the whole year worth it, proving that there are directors out there who have talent and take genre films seriously. And while I really enjoy those films, I can tell you that the majority of the films on my list aren't winning any of the big academy awards, not that that truly matters anyway. It's apparently a movie geek challenge to come up with 15 films from the year that are totally worth watching and each year I feel lucky to have and take the time to do just that, now if I could only get paid for it, but that's a whole different story.
Some movies that I missed from 2011 that I really really wanted to watch: Shame, Take Shelter, The Descendents, Carnage, 50/50, We Need to Talk about Kevin, War Horse, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Conan O' Brien Can't Stop, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, The Dangerous Method, Greatest Movie ever Sold, The Artist, Certified Copy, A Better Life, Like Crazy, I Saw the Devil, Tin Tin, Hugo, The Muppets, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, Troll Hunter, The Rum Diary, The Debt and whatever important documentaries that came out.
Honorable Mentions: Melancholia, Moneyball, Red State, The Devil's Double, Bellflower, The Future, Source Code, 13 Assassins, Bridesmaids, Fright Night
15. The Ides of March - It's been a great year for Ryan Gosling. With all the varied performances he gave this year he'll be able to shake off being "The guy from The Notebook". He did the romantic comedy thing in Crazy, Stupid, Love, he did the quiet badass thing in Drive and he does the losing idealism and becoming disenchanted thing in The Ides of March. While the film doesn't tell us anything we already don't know about politics, it is a well made piece of breezy entertainment. I realize that "breezy" can be seen as a negative but the film is sharp, quickly paced and well written. Clooney has made a film that doesn't feel like an insulting liberal propaganda piece or topically dated. The film has strong performances all across the board with Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti getting some of the best lines. It's not a great film and it won't blow anyone away but it's a really good one and along with this year's Moneyball, it's the type of dialogue-driven film we need more of.
14. Bangkok Knockout - I am a huge fan of martial arts films. Sometimes they can be repetitive and any scene in between fights scenes can be cringe-worthy and Bangkok Knockout is no different. But what usually happens is that the action and fight scenes tend to be so amazing and jaw-dropping that you're able to forgive the rest of the film's faults. A recent sub-genre in martial arts films are the Muay-Thai films which tend to put an emphasis on real, no cgi, life-threatening stunts that look great on film. I wasn't a big fan of the original Ong-Bak, but The Protector and Born to Fight are probably the best martial arts movies I've ever seen. Panna Rittikrai, who was the action choreographer on those films, serves as director for Bangkok Knockout, and I'm happy to say that his film is just as good and tops both films in the stunt department. BKO is the best kind of over-the-top action film. Each progressive fight scene is better than the last and like all good martial-arts films, it borders on being exhausting. But with a film like this I'd rather have it over-deliver than be disappointing and under-deliver. There are some movies you describe to people as being "so ridiculous you have to see it", Bangkok Knockout is that movie.
13. Fast Five - With each progressing year, it seems like action fans get the short end of the stick in terms of quality. While I am a fan of Jason Statham, most of his films turn out to be the B-quality indecipherable shakey-cam crap that is popular these days, making the action scenes dull (The Mechanic, Killer Elite). Which is a huge issue for modern action films, many of them turn out to be unexciting and lifeless. Fortunately Fast Five came to the rescue this year, proving there is hope for big blockbuster action movies to be fun and exciting again. The movie is a blast from start to finish with set pieces that have build-up and payoff instead just being a quick succession of out of context money shots like anything out of Transformers or any other action film this year. Fast Five is just plain fun and a reminder that sometimes they do make them just like they used to.
12. Hobo with a Shotgun - This is the type of movie that seems to be tailor-made for me and there are many ways this movie could've been disappointing. The movie doesn't seem pandering or insulting or filled with cute nods and winks to other cult films. Hobo with a Shotgun never seems like it's trying too hard which is a problem for any wannabe cult film. Where the film could've been over-indulgent about referencing other horror films, it actually feels like it's own thing, a film that could've actually came out sometime during the 80s and was just now recently discovered. Recent cartoonish action films like Drive Angry and Machete have the right attitude toward being ridiculous and over the top but always fall short of just even being passably entertaining. I can comfortably say that Hobo with a Shotgun should be the standard for juvenile ludicrousness on film.
11. Captain America: The First Avenger - Captain America is a corny a movie, there are things about it that don't work, the war montage in the middle of the film has some of the worst cgi I've seen in a big budget studio movie but despite some glaring issues, the film's spirit and tone work so well that they make the negatives forgivable. The things that do work are great, like Chris Evan's sincere and earnest performance, the war bonds montage that proves that the people making this movie did really know what they were doing, and a relationship in a comic-book movie that didn't feel like by-the-numbers set dressing. Captain America is easily my favorite Marvel Studios film, even besting Iron Man. It's probably not the Captain America film most people were expecting and there's a sweeping of history that seems questionable, but the film succeeds in delivering throwback pulp entertainment to a cynical modern era.
10. Rise of the Planet of the Apes - There's no reason this movie should've worked. A prequel to a dead franchise from 20th Century Fox, the worst studio in Hollywood, who go out of their way to produce less than mediocre films. A laughable premise and a goofy trailer, this movie had no right being as good as it is. The film's biggest strength is Andy Serkis' performance as Caesar. The audience is able to empathize and understand Caesar who is more of an interesting and developed character than any of the actual humans in the movie, I'm not sure if this was intentional or not. Either way, the movie plays like a biopic of a cgi ape and it works. That's more than enough to recommend it.
9. Super -Super is exactly the film that Kick-Ass should've been, it is dark, cynical, and uncomfortable without being mean-spiritedly juvenile or ironic. James Gunn's second film since 2006's Slither is probably the most personal film of 2011. It is often sad, and downbeat with Rainn Wilson playing a character who is desperately pathetic. While some of the cutesy "indie" moments of the movie are flat out terrible, luckily they are few and far between. The film is filled with self-loathing and hate and gets superheroes and comic-books more than any other super-hero film. While the film is gory and violent, it never feels like a power fantasy since the movie shows us many times that Rainn Wilson's character is never empowered or confident, he's just pathetic, depressed and mentally-unhinged. This is not so much a dark comedy as much as it is just plain dark.
8. Hanna - Hanna much like 2010's The American (another Focus Features film) represent the marriage of quiet independent moody character studies and violent action films. Both movies have struck a perfect balance between the two. Hanna is easily more badass than Colombiana or any other superficial equivalent. All the performances are great, from Eric Bana's caring father, Cate Blanchett's cold-hearted villain, to Saorise Ronan's aloof performance as the titular character. The film is quickly-paced, stark, stylish and plays like a dark fairy-tale. I can honestly say that Hanna is a perfectly crafted piece of entertainment.
7. Tree of Life - I find it odd when a film is exactly what you expect it to be. If you're familiar with Terrence Malick's previous films such as The Thin Red Line or The New World, you should know to expect something that is visually beautiful, abstract and "airy". This means that Tree of Life is the most Malicky of all of his films and is the most ambitious. I can't tell you what any of it means, the whole film kind of sweeps over you and is a lot to take in. But I can say there was no movie in 2011 that was as visually enthralling as this one.
6. The Guard - John Michael McDonagh's directorial debut is a sharp and funny movie. Following in the steps of his brother Martin McDonagh who directed 2008's In Bruges, my personal favorite movie of that year, the McDonaghs are striving to make movies that feel like both celebrations and criticisms of Irish culture. The Guard takes the tired and true buddy-cop formula and uses every opportunity to poke fun at stereotypes, genre tropes and generalizations. While Don Cheadle is second billed, this is more Brendan Gleeson's film and he delivers a hilarious dry sardonic performance.
5. Contagion - Contagion is the scariest and most thrilling movie of 2011. It feels epic and has the scale that other films attempt to achieve but never quite get there. Director Stephen Soderbergh is riding the style of The Social Network hard, with a cool electronic soundtrack and a sharp visual style. Soderbergh seems to be challenging Fincher at his own game. Fortunately the film is well-written and balanced that you're able to let Soderbergh's visual imitation slide by. There's a lot of information being thrown a you during the movie but the most powerful scenes are the quick subtle moments of humanity that are shown from each character. I hope Contagion is on it's way to becoming a new classic, it deserves it.
4. Young Adult - I'm not a fan of Jason Reitman's first two films, Thank You for Smoking and Juno. They felt smug and insincere. His third film in 2009, Up in the Air felt like a step in the right direction. Even though I dislike Juno, I will defend Diablo Cody, I was one of the few people who was ready to hate Jennifer's Body only to realize it wasn't all that bad. With the re-teaming of Cody and Reitman, I was expecting Young Adult to be a pop-culture fest enamored with its own cleverness. Luckily, the film is the complete opposite of that. It eschews hip irony in favor of uncomfortable, unglamorous, and pathetic naturalism that works in its favor. It is seriously an amazing film that feels like a vicious indictment of a culture and people lost in utter self-absorption. Young Adult is pin-point accurate about what it's like to live the media super-saturated culture and is probably the saddest movie I've seen all year.
3. Drive - It's hard to talk about Drive without repeating what everyone else has said about it. It's cool and stylish, the synth 80s sounding soundtrack is incredible. Deceptively simple and rich in theme. It's perfectly cast, Mulligan is sweet and vulnerable, Brooks is slimy evil, Gosling does a whole lot by doing very little. It is a film for film geeks but is easily accessible for anyone who is patient for its payoffs. It's easily the coolest movie of 2011 and one you find yourself repeatedly engrossed in.
2. Attack the Block - Attack the Block is probably the most fun I had watching a movie in the theater in 2011. A movie for genre fans by genre fans. It's exciting, fun and adventurous, and feels like a big event movie with probably a third of the budget. There's an ill-advised attempt at social consciousness in the middle of the movie that seems ham-fisted, preachy and out of place. While it's a shame the movie couldn't find a balance between its genre parts and its "Spike Lee" parts, it's still the kind of film that genre fans should be glad exists.
1. Warrior - While this may be an odd pick for #1, I'm going with the film that affected me the most this year. While the set-up of the film seems gimmicky; two estranged brothers enter a mixed martial arts competition only to find they must face each other in the final fight sounds eye-rolling and trite but within the first scene of the film you forget all that and are completely grabbed. Previous MMA films such as Never Back Down and Fighting have been aimed at teenage mall crowds, Warrior is a film aimed a growing adults. This isn't a sports movie, it's a dramatic movie that happens to have fights in it. It is a movie that engaged me in ways that neither The Wrestler or The Fighter could. Nick Nolte's performance is fantastic and heartbreaking and he deserves a nomination for best supporting actor. Warrior is a film that puts story and character first accompanied by powerful performances. It reminds us what great movies are made of.
