Best of 2011: Movies
If I don’t get working on this list, I never will. Next thing you know it’ll be coming up to 2013 and a)it’ll be a bit late to be writing a Best of 2011 list or b) the Mayans will be correct and we’ll all be knee deep in hellfire and doom.
And so… (it’s a long one.)
Best Movie
Drive. I can’t even think of another movie that moved me, shook me and entertained me more than this did.
Ryan Gosling has had such an incredible track record for choosing roles as of late. Between this, Crazy, Stupid, Love (a movie I would rank in my top #3 of the year) and The Ides Of March, this really was the year of Gosling (runners-up: Michael Fassbender, Rose Byrne and Jessica Chastain. Those bitches be ubiquitous!).
What I loved most about this movie isn’t the performances (stellar all around, even if Carey Mulligan’s character existed only to be frail. A lot of early Oscar talk has Albert Brooks a shoo-in for Supporting Actor but I would submit Bryan Cranston for the same. He was perfect.), the direction, the music (*shivers*), or the overall atmosphere. It was the violence, or really the use of it. Violence in movies is often a given. Shit’s gonna blow up, people are gonna get smacked around. We’re so immune to it anymore that it serves no real function other than to titillate really. In Drive, violence arrives so unexpectedly, so…violently, that when it does the audience is flabbergasted. For the first time in recent memory, the violence portrayed elicits a genuine reaction of shock and fear, which is really what it should do. There’s a sudden understanding that this is a dark and dangerous movie and that the stakes for the characters just got elevated by a large margin. You fear for what will happen to the characters you’ve just come to know and love. Without spoiling anything, the movie is divided like this: first half is quiet, slow and almost sweet as Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan bond. Second half is OH SHIT NO WHAT IS GOING ON THAT WAS SO GROSS PUT DOWN THE HAMMER DON’T GO IN THE ELEVATOR AHHH MY EYES AHH MY EYES!! (I really should write the blurbs for the back of movie cases.) It’s such an incredible, intelligent approach to using something that audiences are familiar and fairly immune to and making it something new and potent for the sake of deepening the story.
Plus, Ryan Gosling is still sex on feet, whether he’s covered in blood or not.
My one gripe with this movie is the Carey Mulligan character. I like her as an actress, but this role (while being important) was barely a character. You could take her out of the movie, replace her with a piece of wood with PLOT DEVICE written on it, and you’d really accomplish just about the same thing. I understand that she’s meant to be small and frail and that you want Ryan Gosling to be there to protect her but, seriously, just draw a sadface on that piece of wood and there ya go.
Nevertheless, that one (tiny) flaw cannot detract that this was the single most original, entertaining thing I saw this year. I wouldn’t be surprised if this movie wiggles it’s way up onto my Fave Movies of All Time list.
Best Superhero Movie
In a summer fairly drowning in superhero shenanigans, three stand out in different ways.
X-Men: First Class was a surprisingly humane, sensible movie that just happened to have characters who could do crazy shit. I’m a big fan of the original three X-Men movies (I refuse to acknowledge X-Men Origins: Wolverine. So… awful…) so I was intrigued to see how First Class would be. I was expecting something good out of it, and I was happy to say that it was, indeed, quite good.
Thor, on the other hand, was a big, thunderous (ha! see what I did there?) flop. I knew it was a big, f/x heavy summer superhero movie. I had my expectations set for that. Somehow, it managed to limbo right under that low, low bar. The effects were neat. Chris Hemsworth is a sexy, sexy man. Kat Dennings is a hoot. It just felt like nothing came together as a successful product. It’d be like saying “well, I like bacon, banana muffins, and steak, so mashing those together will be DELICIOUS!”. Spoiler alert: no they won’t. Loki needed to be a clearer villain (or at least that frost giant dude). Thor’s merry band of helpers (seriously, they should just be renamed the No Purpose Crew) needed to be axed. Chris Hemsworth needed to be shirtless way more. A disappointment.
Captain America: The First Avenger was a total surprise to me. Here was another movie I had low expectations for (albeit slightly higher than Thor). When I finally got around to seeing it I was pleasantly shocked to find I really, really liked it. Chris Evans was the right balance of jacked up hero and noble kid, Hugo Weaving was effective as the Red Skull (ahh, the benefits of having a clear villain), and I really liked they evoked the era of 40’s/50’s wartime. It was cleverly used and it added an element of story and setting that is often ignored in movies. My biggest gripe with this movie is silly: why did they have Chris Evans shave his chest?!? Is a superhero not allowed to have scruffy man-chichis?! I loves me some scruffy man-chichis and Chris Evans has the BEST (see: Cellular, the Fantastic Four movies).
All that said, while it is a clooooooooooose battle, my fave superhero movie this year was Captain America. X-Men was great and I thought it would be, but it was Cap’N which really surprised me. Thor…I am disappoint.
Other Notable Movies
Harry Potter 7 Part 2- what an emotional, fantastic ending to an incredible series of movies (#2 notwithstanding). The sight of McGonagall as she charges up to defend the school got me sobbing and Mrs. Weasley’s “NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!” deserves to go down as one of the best lines in film (perhaps side-by-side with “get away from her YOU BITCH!” from Aliens, clearly the inspiration).
Insidious- what a great, divisive horror movie. The first half works so much better than the final act, but I was thinking about this movie long after leaving the theatre. I know people who hated the movie based on it’s final act, but I loved it’s willingness to just go effing weird. This movie scared me, made me laugh, weirded me out, and left me totally entertained.
Bridesmaids- doesn’t it really need to be mentioned that this was the best comedy this year? Of the past few years? I think not. Everyone seems to focus solely on Melissa McCarthy’s performance as Megan (and she was AMAZING), but I think that Kristen Wiig was just balls out phenomenal in this. Not merely as a comedic performance but as a total package performance.
Sucker Punch- oh shit, this was just the worst damned thing I saw this year. Oh it looked snappy and nifty, but beyond that it was soulless, uninteresting, noisy and pointless. Literally, the big, dramatic sequences in the movie were basically daydreams these girls were having. I can close my eyes right now, imagine myself battling dragons or robo-samurais, and it would have as much dramatic weight as this movie. And that’s actually what happens in the movie. If I could poop on this movie, I literally would.
