Top 10 Best Films of 2011

Well, we’ve just got through all of those films which I just couldn’t stand. Now to move onto the films I just couldn’t help but love. These are the films that I thought to be the best of those released in 2011.

Now excuse me whilst I gush.

10. Source Code

This was probably the biggest surprise of the year for me. I just went into it thinking that it looked like it would turn out to be alright, but whilst watching it I realised it was amazing. Source Code turned out to be an extremely intelligent science fiction film which shows what we would do in order to save people we don’t even know.

Sure, at times it did seem like he was forced to do everything, but most of the time his actions seemed to be ultimately altruistic and, being one of the few people in the world who believes altruism can exist, I found this refreshing.

The only reason this film isn’t higher on the list is because the ending was a bit too cheerful and ‘Disney, but the film did do things that other films don’t do nowadays. In fact, just thinking about all of the slow reveals of this film still gets me excited. Source Code is definitely a film you should watch.

9. Paul

Earlier today I was talking about how The Big Bang Theory just gets geek humour and geek culture wrong. I know a lot of people love that show, but this is just my opinion. Paul, on the other hand, gets it all right.

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are just hilarious in this film, and them being the British geek comedy icons it seems perfect that they should be in a film full of references from Star Wars to Aliens and even subtle references to things such as the comic series Invincible. And it all seems right. In addition to these references we also have a great plot with some pretty good twists and amazing acting.

If you like Spaced I’m almost certain you’d love this film. The humour is quite similar and somehow it actually worked when exporting it to the US.

 8. The Inbetweeners Movie

If you didn’t watch the series or if you just don’t like it I doubt you’d like this film. This film is filled with vulgar and sexual humour that only the Inbetweeners cast seems to be able to carry off. But that’s why I loved this film: I loved the series. I’m sure that maybe newcomers could watch the film because it actually does a good job to introduce the characters to the audience and give them a new story that doesn’t require complete knowledge of the series to understand.

Of course, loving the series doesn’t just make it a good film. The film is just funny as hell. Jokes come thick and fast and it’s great to see these social outcasts try and find love, or a quick shag, out in Greece. The acting is great and the script is perfect. I’m sure that if you wanted to see this film you already have. If you haven’t then give it a try, but it might not be to your tastes.

7. Cowboys & Aliens

I don’t get why this film was so badly reviewed. It might just be the premise of Western meets science fiction. Personally I loved the film. How couldn’t I? How couldn’t anyone?

This film is just fun from beginning to the end. It has a great cast, especially its leads Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford (who’s still got it, by the way), and they just make you care about the characters with their amazing acting. Not only this but we have interesting new aliens  with motives that we have to try and put together.

The film also utilises practical effects as well as CGI to make the film feel as real as possible and it does. You could honestly believe this took place. And of course the film is filled with tragedy, but also high points to create a complex story. Cowboys &Aliens is probably one of the best Westerns I’ve seen as well as one of the best science fiction movies.

6. True Grit

From a science fiction Western to a normal Western. True Grit was the only proper Western I watched this year, alongside Cowboys & Aliens and Rango. Whilst the former is one of the best Westerns I have ever seen, True Grit is the best Western I have ever seen. OK, to be fair, I haven’t seen many, but this film makes me want to see more.

The Coen Brothers continue to show that they are great at telling stories through both their characters and the visuals. You just have to look at some of the locations or people and know their story. True Grit was beautifully directed, but that wasn’t the thing that really made me love the film. It was the characterisations.

I cared about every single character. All of them. Even the side characters who had one scene. Everyone was acted so well and characterised perfectly. Hailee Steinfeld was perfect, Jeff Bridges was perfect, Matt Damon was perfect, Josh Brolin was perfect. Everyone.

5. Arthur Christmas

Aardman, you utter geniuses. You do it time and time again. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bad film from them and this is probably my favourite of theirs. Yes, I know, Chicken Run is great and Curse of the Were-Rabbit was amazing, but Arthur Christmas was just better. Never before has a film meant for kids, let alone for Christmas, made me laugh and emote as much as this film did. In fact, I was laughing so much I had to try and stop myself just so I could tell what was going on next.

It’s hard for me to explain what I love about this film other than it is completely hilarious. Of course, every time that I tell people to see this film I am met with a look of scepticism, but this film is an absolute treat and will, hopefully, become a Christmas classic.

Oh, and being British and seeing a Co-Op in a film is like seeing the Somerfield in Hot Fuzz.

4. X-Men: First Class

When I first saw the trailers to this film I wasn’t really that up for it. I didn’t think either the main actors looked like they would be either Professor X or Magneto. How wrong I was.

X-Men: First Class is probably one of the smartest superhero films out there. Less concerned with showing us a group of superheroes stopping a villain from destroying a city, First Class is more concerned with averting the entire Cuban Missile Crisis. Seeing as I already love Cold War history this just spoke to me in ways you couldn’t imagine. It deals with the entire situation with such grace and finesse that it is hard not to love it.

With this on top of all the 60s imagery and fun and likeable new characters it is safe to say that First Class is one of the best superhero movies out there. Though it might mess with the continuity of the films a little it still all works and comes out rather nicely to create one of the more intelligent films of the year.

3. Kung Fu Panda 2

What? So what if Kung Fu Panda 2 is so high on this list, if at all? I loved this film. It was just fun from the outset and has GARY FUCKING OLDMAN in it as the main villain. What isn’t to love?

Talking of Gary Oldman, his character of Shen is probably one of the most complex villains I have ever seen, he wants vengeance but also realises his actions are not right. He wants to do good, but is so stuck in his evil ways that he can’t help himself but continue. He shows weakness, but is still threatening. On top of this the ending is possibly one of my favourites in all of cinematic history. I discuss the ending in my review of the film, but I advise you watch Kung Fu Panda 2 yourself.

Oh, and the film starts with the genocide of an entire race. I’m so glad kids films have started to stop talking down to kids, because this really created a lot of dramatic tension and helped flesh out the main character, Po.

2. Black Swan

This film was just beautiful. It was fantastically directed, extremely well acted and had an amazing plot. I really don’t want to spoil the film for anyone because this is a film everyone should watch. You might think it doesn’t look like your cup of tea, but it is. 

I found myself loving every moment of this film and when it came to its ending I was overcome with emotion. I think that there will be people out there who will cry at how bittersweet it is. This film is a dramatic psychological thriller at its very best and it is probably close to absolute perfection.

However, I did have this as my number 1 film of 2011 for a long, long time. But what film knocked it off the gold medal spot? Well, I honestly think most people will be surprised and not agree with me, but I loved this film. It’s:

1.  The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn

I was shocked recently to find out there a quite a few people who don’t like Tintin, but his adventures with Snowy, and sometimes Captain Haddock and Professor Calculus, were a big part of my childhood. I read the comics and watched the TV show. Actually, I own the TV show on DVD. I still love it. So when I heard there was a Tintin film coming out I couldn’t be any more excited. And look at those people working on it. Just look!

Turns out my excitement was totally justified, because this film is great. This is probably not only the greatest use of motion capture I’ve ever seen in a film but also the greatest use of 3D to build both atmosphere and have the pokey-out fun 3D offers. The film takes place all over the world on increasingly larger locations, going from a small street in Belgium to a chase scene involving cars, boats, running and riding on falling buildings. There’s a scene within the mind of Captain Haddock of a battle between pirates that is simply stunning and it isn’t just there to be pretty but serves a point in the plot. But this isn’t the best scene. The film ends by defeating the villain in a duel with cranes. You get that? A CRANE DUEL!

OK, I’m getting a bit out of hand there, but this film is just one of the greatest films out there. Not a minute of this beautiful film is wasted. Everything slots in perfectly. I know I have a bias towards it, but I care not. It is simply perfect and is just amazing. Watch it as soon as you can because it doesn’t matter if you did or didn’t like Tintin before, this film will give you a different view on him. This is just how an adventure film should be done. I... I just love this film.

Top 10 Worst Films of 2011

Well, the last list I put up of worst films had people getting annoyed at me for reviewing things that I have never seen. I’m pretty sure that list was not a review of anything, but instead me saying I didn’t want anything to do with those films. Well, here’s a list of more films I don’t like, but instead, this time, I’ve seen them. I’m leaving the best films for the next list, we need something happy to get over some of these films.

10. Mars Needs Moms

Everything in this film is freaky. Everything. Not just the martians, no, they at least look cartoony. It’s mostly the people who look freaky. It’s the uncanny valley problem. They look real but not real and it just makes you feel uneasy. This makes just watching the film difficult. Maybe it looked better in 3D, but I doubt it.

But on top of this the actual plot to the film is boring. It’s not terrible, really, it’s just really, really boring. Boring, dull, snoozefest. That’s the entire film. Nothing the characters did made me care. All of those incredibly annoying characters. Don’t get me wrong, if the voice actors were trying to make me hate them all then they did a great job.

Mars Needs Moms also defies physics and biology. I just couldn’t let that slide. Not sure why, I guess I was just picky with this one.

9. Gnomeo & Juliet

I’ll be honest, I was kind of looking forward to this film. Despite the terrible pun in the title, I thought the trailers made it look funny and maybe it could have been a good family film. I certainly went into it with higher reservations than Mars Needs Moms. With such an amazing voice cast I thought it would be passable at a bare minimum.

How wrong I was. This film is completely horrendous. There are two likeable characters in the film (Stephen Merchant and Jason Statham) but with such a wide cast these barely helped. Whilst the animation was fun the jokes were stale and were generally cringe-worthy. There was barely a single funny moment in this entire film and the film tried so hard to make us laugh.

It was upsetting to see this. I wanted to like this film and it is likely this film would not be on my list, but then it seemed to comment on the fact that this is how Romeo & Juliet should have ended like the film did: with a happy ending and a sing song. Sure, the film couldn’t have ended like Romeo & Juliet but the film goes out of its way to say that this is better. I just couldn’t stand that.

8. Your Highness

This film seemed to be going for a Mighty Boosh meets Monty Python and the Holy Grail vibe but completely failed. I love Danny McBride, James Franco and Natalie Portman but this film just showed them refusing to act. Their British accents were terrible and they couldn’t convey more than one emotion at a time.

On top of this the script was horrible. At no point did I laugh. It was extremely unfunny and seemed to be trying its hardest for jokes. Furthermore, the swearing does not fit the setting at all. It just created a massive disconnect between setting and dialogue. I will honestly be happy to never see this film again.

The only reason this film isn’t lower on the list is the fact that I just didn’t find it funny. I think I might not have got it, but it still seemed like it was terrible. Plus, it didn’t make me angry. Unlike the next film...

7. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

This is probably one of the best examples of how to destroy everything from the previous series: take a popular character and give him his own adventure. Well, Puss in Boots, surprisingly, doesn’t look too bad actually, but On Stranger Tides was annoying as hell.

I loved Jack Sparrow. Everyone did. But when he is the sole focus of the movie he just becomes... irritating. Extremely irritating, in fact. When he took the forefront there seemed to be no characters around him serious enough to make his kooky actions funny.

The plot was also terrible. A lot of people have a go at At World’s End but that was just boring, not stupid. This just seemed completely phones in and didn’t have enough likeable characters to push it on.

6. Battle: Los Angeles

This one I can get over with quickly: dull characters, dull plot, crap CGI, camera was too shaky, I didn’t care about anyone, the cinematography was awful and it was incredibly forgettable.

I wonder if the Asylum version was any better...

5. Almighty Thor

Speaking of the Asylum, look at this travesty. Whilst most don’t expect anything from the Asylum, I do believe they are capable of making good films. Such as Sherlock Holmes... That might be it, actually. Thing is, though, is that I don’t expect complete crap from them like I used to. They could have made this rip-off good. But it wasn’t.

Probably the worst thing about this film was that everybody was detestable. I hated everyone in that movie. I couldn’t care less if they anyone survived or not, or even if the hero or the villain survived. The acting is awful and this really doesn’t help with liking anyone.

One of the few saving graces of this film is that the effects were laughably awful. However, the plot is terrible and the characters are dull. Keep far away.

4. Hop

Hop is one of the worst Christmas films ever made. Yes, you may think this is a film about the Easter Bunny and was set in Easter and released in Easter has to do with Easter. But it doesn’t. It’s a Christmas film.

Let’s see: sleigh, check; operation run by millions to get presents to children, check; trying to a non-believing character to believe, check. Yeah, there are more elements, but I really don’t want to spend too much time on this film. Just be aware of one thing: Easter films will NEVER become a thing.

EB, the main character, is annoying. The guy with him is annoying. The only good things about this film are Hugh Laurie and a 4^th wall breaking joke near the end. Oh, and David Hasselhoff. He’s awesome no matter what.

3. Beastly

Well, this is the first film that I hate. No, not just hate, I detest. I wish to see this film, and the next two, get completely wiped off the face of this planet.

I love Beauty and the Beast, so of course this film interested me as it’s a modern retelling of that fairy tale. But of course I was disappointed. Turns out this film takes everything that was great about Beauty and the Beast and gets rid of it.

But this isn’t the big problem with the film. The biggest problem is the characters and the relations between them. The two leads have an impossibly contrived relationship which just makes you think the guy is an arsehole. In fact, he goes from ‘kind of a dick’ to ‘utterly despicable’. At no point is he charming or likeable, but the film pretty much tells us he is likeable, so we have to. Venessa Hudgens is just bland as hell.

Whilst Neil Patrick Harris could have helped improve this film, his talent was wasted and anything he did inject wouldn’t have saved this film. Especially the ending. Well, the next film has a disappointing ending but no likeable actors to try and save it.

2. Sucker Punch

Holy crap this film made me angry. This film just offended me in every way possible. It started off amazing. I was really into it for the first 5 or 10 minutes. The cinematography was great, the soundtrack was great and the style of storytelling was great. Then it all began to fall apart...

For the rest of this film I sat there wondering what any of the visuals had to do with anything. I have pondered this many times. And I have come to a conclusion: Zack Snyder wanted women to be dressed in sexy clothing but he wanted to get away with it, so tried his hand at making art.

That is all this film is. It’s just scantily clad women with bits of ‘plot’ in the middle. But none of it goes anywhere. It just seems like Zack Snyder had a few ideas for video games, but only came up with one scene for each, so put them together and made some shit up about a burlesque house and a mental asylum to tie it all together. It was a mess.

And then he has the balls to call it art. Well, let me be a little vulgar here: Fuck you, Snyder.

In almost every way a disappointment (apart from the opening of course, but this just made the rest of the film more disappointment) I thought this would be my most hated film for the entire year. I’m pretty angry just writing about it.

But then I watched:

1. Anuvahood

Anuvahood is possibly one of the worst excuses for a film to ever exist. At every single point in this film I was not happy. I couldn’t laugh. I liked one character in this entire dog turd and they even ruined him by making him a dick. The plot is non-existant. The acting is even less so. The directing was terrible.

I was just angry at this film. It gave me absolutely nothing to be happy about. I didn’t have high expectations going into this movie but even expecting it to be a pile of crap would be giving this film too much credit. I have no words to properly describe my rage at this film other than what I have already put. This film is detestable, despicable and is only outdone on unfunny humour by Freddy Got Fingered. And that’s only by a gnat’s wing! Don't see this film unless you want to lose hope in humanity.

Top 5 Best Films I Didn’t See in 2011

Sometimes you see that there’s a film in the cinema that looks like something you’d really like. Sadly, due to budgetary constraints or pure lethargy you just don’t end up going. Then you need to wait until the DVD gets released or it is shown on TV before you actually see it and you end up kicking yourself for missing the theatrical release.

This is a list for those films.

5. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

When I worked in a book shop I saw this book everywhere and it never really interested me. I heard it got made into a film and I didn’t care. Then it got remade and released just two years later and I still didn’t care. Then I saw the theatrical trailer for the remake.

This film looks like an action-packed film filled with intelligence. These seem so hard to come by today, and sometimes that’s a good thing. Commando wouldn’t have been any good if it decided to spend time on the plot rather than the action. But The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo just looks like David Fincher’s directing brings intelligence and action together so beautifully.

I love the style of the film, the action and the conversations between the characters already. All of this and I haven’t even seen the film yet.

4. Bridesmaids

Bridesmaids just looks hilarious. There’s no doubting that at all. The trailer alone is hilarious. And sometimes that is all you want from a film. Bridesmaids certainly looks like it delivered.

When I first heard of the film, though, I was against it. I just put it down because it looks so damn girly. I need to learn to not do this, because I am certain there’s stuff in there for the guys as well.

Well, that’s that film: it looks hilarious. Not sure if I expect it to be any more than that, but if it was to deliver I would love it.

3. Captain America: The First Avenger

God damn it Marvel films have been good this year. I was apprehensive about Thor, even though I already loved both Iron Man films, which I found out were in the same film universe as Thor. Yet it turned out to be a great film. So I checked out Captain America and it looked great. Brilliant, in fact. I had to see it. But of course, I didn’t.

Captain America looks to be another great origin story of a popular super hero, just like the other Marvel films. Whilst I doubt it will be better than Iron Man it still looks great and well worth a watch. It seems to have a good amount of action as well as honouring the comic books.

Especially after all the hiccups with previous iterations of Captain America this film could still, easily, be terrible. But there’s something about it that just looks great. You can tell a lot of effort was put into this film to get it just right.

Also, look at Red Skull. He looks so cool.

2. West is West

I love East is East. In fact, most people I know at least like the film. It’s a great look into how another culture operates without laughing at them but instead with them. Not only that but it felt like you knew everyone in that film. They all felt so familiar, as if it was someone who lived within your community, just down the street. So when I found out there was a sequel I was overjoyed.

Then I found out I had just missed it.

West is West looks like it captures the vision of East is East and looks to be an extremely funny comedy. This time, however, rather than just looking at the family within the community it will be in their home of Pakistan, introducing us to their traditions.

Hopefully this film did everything the original did and more to get the tone just right and give us a funny film that had a heart behind it.

1. Hugo

Did you see the trailer? Did you? No? Well watch it. Seriously, this film looks great. The rest of the films on this list I’m sure I’d like, but I’m not sure if they would go into my Top 10 Films of 2011 list. This film would, no doubt. It looks simply wonderful.

Everything about this film looked great. The acting of everyone, Christopher Lee!, the style of the film, how crisp the film looks, the setting, Ben Kingsley!, the visuals, the effects, Sacha Baron Cohen! I need to see this film. Apparently in 3D. I’ve heard the 3D is amazing, even if you don’t like 3D it’s good.

Well, it seems I need to go see this film at some point and- Wait, Hugo has a robot in it?! Awesome!