Well, it's that time of year again. The time when I, along with so many other people, look back on the year that's passed and pick out my favourite and least favourite movies.
Now, depending on what country you live in, your perception of what came out this year may be completely different from someone else's – particularly if, like me, you live in the British Isles, where movies from the States can sometimes take months to cross the pond. So perhaps I'd better explain my own criteria for what qualifies for my end-of-year recap. Unlike IMDb, I judge strictly by when a movie is released to the general public. So films that have, as yet, only seen the light of day at film festivals are ineligible in my book. I also don't count movies that were released in one country in an earlier year but didn't make it into another until the year in question. This is so I don't cheat and include movies like Django Unchained and Wreck-It Ralph, which were released in the US late in 2012 but didn't make it to the UK until the first couple of months of 2013.
And keep in mind that this is going purely by what I've seen myself. I do try to see as many movies as possible for the sake of these lists, but there will obviously be some that, for whatever reason, I never got round to. It's been like that every year, but this year I suffered an especially unfortunate blow in the form of a financial setback that meant that, for six weeks, I wasn't receiving any income, so I had to cut down almost completely on expenses. But, despite everything, I came through and ended up with a good variety of movies both good and bad! :)
But before I get into the specifics on that front, I feel compelled to sum up 2013 cinema as a whole. Honestly, this was a terrible year for movies! It had a greater number of soul-crushing low points than any other year I can think of, and even the best-of list had a miserably subpar line-up of candidates compared to previous years. I hardly saw any movies that struck me as real masterpieces. Hell, there were only a couple that I even gave five stars!
I also have to say, I'm amazed at just how many movies we had this year based on true stories! :) The Conjuring, Captain Phillips, 12 Years a Slave, Rush, Diana, Behind the Candelabra, Lovelace, Pain & Gain, The Iceman, Jobs, The Frozen Ground, Saving Mr Banks, and I'm sure the list goes on to at least double that length! Like, what was the obsession with fact-based dramas this year?
Well, now that I've got the general remarks out of the way and delayed this as long as possible, let's get to the actual lists! :) If you've regularly been following my "first impressions" reviews, you might even be able to predict what some of my top choices are going to be. But now's the time to lay them all down.
I don't know about you, but I prefer to start with the bad news so that the good news seems so much more rewarding. :) So here come my top ten least favourite movies of 2013. Among a year chock full of failures, these are my picks for the worst of the worst.
But first, I'd better spotlight a few movies I haven't seen for which I've heard a lot of negative buzz, movies that you might be disappointed aren't on my list. For example, there are several sequels that I avoided simply because I haven't seen their predecessors yet: The Last Exorcism Part II, Fast & Furious 6, The Smurfs 2, Machete Kills, Red 2, and above all, Grown Ups 2 and Scary Movie 5. Neither did I see Ender's Game (because I want to read the book first), The Call, Insidious: Chapter 2, the Oldboy remake, Getaway, Stranded or RIPD, just to name a few. I also want to give a special mention to Suddenly: bad enough that it's an Uwe Boll movie, but it's also a remake! And then there's Jobs and Paranoia… neither of which show any sign of a British release yet.
All right, enough stalling! :) On with the list…
First of all, I just can't let one particular runner-up, Man of Steel, go without a special mention. Let's ignore the injustice done to the Superman character and just look at it as a standalone movie. It keeps building up that Superman will be a beacon of hope, an inspiration to the people. Well, too bad the movie doesn't practise what it preaches! Because dear God, this is one of the least inspiring movies I've ever seen! Everything about it is dull, depressing and soulless. Needless to say, I'll take the Richard Donner movies and the Animated Series any day. I tried my best to keep this on the list, but there just turned out to be ten movies that I hated more.
And here they are…
#10 = The Heat
I was really dreading this one, not just from the promotional content, but because it's from the director of Bridesmaids, another movie I despised. And, while it turned out not to be as excruciating as I feared, it was mostly kind of messy, especially with a false transition to the third act that made the movie seem overlong. The opening scene royally pissed me off for making every cop unprofessional and incompetent just to make Ashburn look better, and the scene where Mullins rants about the captain's balls was a joke that went on way too long. Still, the climax was admittedly pretty good.
#9 = Pain & Gain
Because of my seething hatred for Michael Bay, this is probably the one I wanted to see the least. It's not as sickeningly loathsome as Bad Boys or Transformers 2 or anything, but it is agonisingly boring for the most part. It's a two-hour movie, but it feels more like four! I think it's mostly because the characters are such idiots that it's just not interesting to watch them constantly making such blinding mistakes. But, much like The Heat, it does perk up a bit towards the end; the scene where they're trying to dismember the bodies is actually pretty funny.
#8 = After Earth
I get the feeling this was a pet project of Will Smith's: to make a movie with his son in the starring role. But what they came up with is one of the worst executed sci-fi concepts ever. The script is beyond awful, with more lapses in logic than I can even count. For example, last I checked, baboons and bison didn't live in the same area! But the big one that constantly drove me nuts is how the duration of those air filters is so inconsistent. And I can predict the "fear is a choice" thing becoming another infamous Shyamalan meme.
#7 = A Good Day to Die Hard
To say this is by far the worst Die Hard movie is an immense understatement! This is one of the dullest, blandest, most generic action movies you'll ever see, complete with the constant shaky cam that pollutes the action genre today. The plot is so poorly established that it's at least half an hour before you have a clue what's going on or what's at stake. The hero might as well not even be called John McClane. The original Die Hard is one of the most perfect action movies ever made, so it's really disheartening to see the franchise degenerate to this point.
#6 = Movie 43
This is a movie that mistakes plain and simple vulgarity for humour. The result is an anthology of some of the most unfunny, repulsive sketches you'll ever see in your life, be it Anna Faris asking her boyfriend to "poop" on her like it's the equivalent of proposing engagement, or Hugh Jackman sporting a scrotum on his neck! So why isn't it higher on the list? Because, as hard to watch as it was, I was actually kind of bizarrely fascinated by it: like, "How did they come up with this shit?!" The top five, however, elicited violent emotional responses; they made me angry.
#5 = Passion
Boy did this one piss me off! It's a remake of the French-language film Love Crime, which I haven't seen, but it must surely be more fleshed out than this piece of shit! This movie is so shallow and oversimplified that it's almost like it was purposely made just to annoy me! The characters, especially the smug manipulative bitch Christine, are so one-dimensional that it strips their rivalry down to complete bare bones, and it just leaves me angry at the creative team for expecting me to take it seriously. The only redeeming factor is Dani, the only sensible character in this entire travesty.
#4 = Walking with Dinosaurs: The 3D Movie
I hated this movie from the moment I first saw the trailer – not just because it's a misguided, annoying, condescending mess, but because it took something that I genuinely cared about, something I loved as a child, and violated it! Walking with Dinosaurs was a serious documentary miniseries that attempted to portray dinosaurs as they really were; now they've turned it into a crass would-be comedy with talking dinosaurs [groan!] and an all-too-familiar Moses story. Words can't even begin to describe how betrayed I feel! They took Walking with Dinosaurs… and made it a children's movie! They completely destroyed everything that it stood for!
All right, now for the top three. It was actually really hard to choose between these ones, because they were all absolutely atrocious. But here's the order I settled on…
#3 = Free Birds
It's about turkeys who travel back in time to try and stop people from eating turkey at the first Thanksgiving! It's every bit as moronic as it sounds, and the fact that it's so painfully unfunny makes it even more unbearable! The President pardoning a turkey, a turkey somehow speaking English to order pizza, the turkeys of the past being Native American allegories for some reason… practically every single scene had me facepalming! This movie should become a poster child for the sorry state of children's entertainment these days. It just blows my mind that anyone would greenlight this, would actually invest money in it!
#2 = Only God Forgives
I've heard this movie was booed at Cannes, and I don't blame them! Forget the disgracefully slow pace and the uncomfortable level of red in the colour scheme; the movie's biggest sin is how it handles its depravity. The characters are completely devoid of personality, so all you're left with is the actual horrible acts they commit. Simply presenting violence without any context is just downright unpleasant and mean-spirited. I particularly lost it when the mother tries to defend her son's raping and murdering a teenage girl: I actually said out loud, "NO! No, there is no excuse for that!" It's a truly reprehensible film.
And #1 = The Purge
Fuck me, this is a dumb movie! Other people have already detailed how ludicrous the whole concept of the Purge is; even a sieve doesn't have as many holes as this plot! It's trying to make a statement about poverty by pretending it understands the criminal mind. But more importantly, the characters are complete morons! The invading party makes it clear that the family will be left alone if they just give them the guy they want, so why young Charlie insists on hiding the guy, risking killing the whole family, is quite beyond me! It's just all-around one of the most insufferably stupid movies I've ever seen, and that's why it gets my vote as the absolute worst movie of the year.
Runners-up:
• The Bling Ring leaves you stuck with an ensemble of the most annoyingly bratty bubbleheads I've ever seen.
• Diana, while not quite as bad as its reputation, is about as sappy and bland as it gets.
• The Host is also unbearably sappy, which ruins a promising alien infestation premise.
• Man of Steel, I already mentioned.
• Olympus Has Fallen is hideously boring and takes itself way too seriously; there's no sense of escapism to it.
• Stoker, considering Park Chan-wook's track record, was probably the year's biggest disappointment.
• And World War Z is not only boring, but sometimes unforgivably uses shaky cam to censor the violence.
So that's the worst-of list. And there was no shortage of candidates! There were so many uninspiring, unimpressive duds that I seriously considered extending the list to a top twenty.
But there were a few bright spots in that sea of disappointment! :) They weren't that bright, though – especially compared to the best of last year: The Cabin in the Woods became one of my new favourite movies. I'm not sure if any 2013 movies will end up joining the ranks of my all-time favourites, but the ten I'm about to list still stand proudly above all their peers.
Now, again, my somewhat pessimistic assessment may be a tad premature, because I didn't see everything this year. There are a few movies I missed that sound like they might have been relatively enjoyable, like Riddick, About Time, 2 Guns and The Wolverine. But perhaps the one that I'm kicking myself the most for missing is Philomena. There's also 12 Years a Slave, American Hustle, The Wolf of Wall Street and the Coen Brothers' Inside Llewyn Davis, which sadly don't come out until January here in Britain. I'm also really looking forward to when Hayao Miyazaki's final film, The Wind Rises, finally makes it overseas.
But, out of what I did get to see up until the last day of the year, here are the ten movies that made 2013 slightly more bearable…
#10 = The Croods
After Free Birds made me lose all hope in modern children's entertainment, this movie restored that hope. :) It's not a stunningly clever, layered family film or anything, but it's a laugh riot from start to finish. A lot of the humour stems from this family of cavemen discovering new things and slowly abandoning their primitive savage ways, and almost every joke hits its mark. And the characters are so likable that the sentimental turn the movie takes towards the end works really effectively too. It's a movie that both children and adults alike can have a tonne of fun watching.
#9 = This Is the End
This is another one that, for the most part, doesn't aspire to be anything more than hilarious. I think the main reason it's so effective is the simplicity of the premise: how many jokes can we make about a bunch of celebrities holed up in this one house during the apocalypse? Maybe the movie bites off more than it can chew by examining faith at the end, but it still keeps up the same humour all the while, so it never feels out of place. How can you not love sarcastic demons? :D It all just made me laugh a lot; that's all I really needed.
#8 = Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 2
The conclusion to the animated adaptation of Frank Miller's classic graphic novel (which I haven't read yet). It's definitely the darkest, most brutally grisly Batman story I've ever seen – especially regarding the Joker – but it's also, in just about every respect, the perfect swan song for Batman. It goes into what he means to the public, which ultimately proves to be his greatest foe. I especially like how its themes and plot points are very different from part one, but it's still very well connected; they definitely seem like one whole. And the climactic battle with Superman is nothing short of spectacular.
#7 = The World's End
What a coincidence to have two apocalyptic comedies with such similar names within the same year! :) This, the dream team of Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright's third collaboration, is not quite as good as Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, but it still brings constant merriment, so it's really a treat. I especially like how, contrary to the other two films, Pegg plays the wild and free character while Frost is the stick-in-the-mud. And the moment that first reveals what's happened to the town is hilarious not just for what happens, but because of just how out of the blue it is. :)
#6 = Frozen
Disney does it again with a splendid animated feature inspired in part by the Snow Queen fairytale. It's all the more surprising considering the trailers made it look painfully unfunny. But the film itself turned out to be a witty, very well written and endlessly charming work. The characters are so lovable that they draw you in instantly, so even the overly modern jokes that annoyed me in the trailer actually do work in context. Plus, there's one particular plot thread that becomes an expert satire on how brief Disney romances can be. :) This could potentially become one of my new Disney favourites.
#5 = Thor: The Dark World
I'd point to this movie as a masterpiece of building momentum. The first act, while often laugh-out-loud funny, isn't all that compelling. But as it progresses, each scene adds to the previous one so seamlessly that the audience's investment and excitement rises like a straight, constant incline – to the point where I was on the edge of my seat during the portal-hopping climax. It's not much more than a typical action blockbuster, but with enough wit and enough focus on its simple premise to be consistently entertaining. Ultimately, I enjoyed it even more than the first Thor; it's more focused and more consistent.
#4 = Gravity
This is a good, solid thriller whose single greatest strength is how perfectly it nails the illusion of being in space. The way they simulate zero-gravity is utterly convincing, right down to the minutest details, and the cinematography adds all the more to that by making the camera seem like it too is floating. This flawless recreation of space also enhances the desperation of the story, as Sandra Bullock's character succumbs more and more to loneliness and the pressures of the danger she's in. Plus, I saw it in IMAX, and I could go on forever about how well it suited the format! :)
#3 = The Way Way Back
This is one that I really underestimated. I had a feeling I'd enjoy it, but I didn't expect it to be this endlessly funny and charming! :) It's about fourteen-year-old Duncan, who's forced into a summer vacation with his mother and her new boyfriend, but a welcome distraction is provided when he finds friends in the oddball staff of the local water park. Duncan's new friends, as eccentric as they are, are so delightfully funny and charismatic that I couldn't help but share whole-heartedly in the relief that their company provided. In fact, I honestly didn't want to leave them, they're so much fun! :)
#2 = Superman: Unbound
After the miserable Man of Steel, this movie was a frigging godsend! :D I mean, talk about the complete opposite! It's an adaptation of a comic book story arc that was written before every superhero story decided it needed to be The Dark Knight, so it's fun, good-natured and paints Superman in the inspirational light he should be. The story itself is fantastic, too. It involves Superman attempting to rescue the captured Kryptonian city of Kandor from one of Brainiac's glass jars, while also preventing Brainiac from reaching Earth – so he has a more personal goal as well as the safety of the world at heart.
And #1 = Rush
It's an account of the 1976 Formula One season, especially the rivalry between James Hunt and Niki Lauda. And boy is it aptly named! :) It's such a rush that even someone who doesn't give a shit about Formula One (like me) can still find it exhilarating. Like a good sports movie should be, it's more about the people than the sport itself, and their passion (as well as the filmmakers') is conveyed so effectively that the audience can't help but share in it themselves. James and Niki are both really likable in their own ways, but neither one is completely blameless, so I ended up rooting for them both perhaps equally. On top of that, the cinematography is great, the action is great, the acting is great… It's just a thoroughly masterful, and clearly deeply passionate, film. It's my favourite movie of the year.
Runners-up:
• Captain Phillips is far more interesting than its terrible title, especially in Tom Hanks' performance.
• The Conjuring, though not truly scary, is still one of the best crafted horror films in recent years.
• Don Jon is a funny, thoughtful and relevant look at relationships, particularly in how they're two-way streets.
• The Kings of Summer is a captivating and dryly humorous coming-of-age drama with a great lead trio.
• Monsters University, despite having no reason to exist, is still relentlessly fun and enjoyable.
• Pacific Rim is a masterful blockbuster that's basically what the Transformers movies should have been.
• Prisoners' single greatest strength is the never-ending sense of realism to both its tone and its characters.
• Saving Mr Banks is a poignant and irresistible work about how one of the definitions of childhood came to be.
• And Star Trek Into Darkness is a superior sequel to the first JJ Abrams Star Trek that's sadly let down by its ending.
And those are my lists. If you seriously disagree with my picks, or if there's a movie that you feel really strongly should have been on one of the lists… well, that's why they're my own lists! :) If you want your opinion to be heard, all you have to do is make a list of your own. I'm sure most of us know better than to try to tell someone else that their list is "wrong".
Now let's wait and see what 2014 has to offer. I certainly hope it doesn't produce as underwhelming a library of movies as 2013 did. At least it's shaping up to be pretty interesting, with The Lego Movie, the new Godzilla, Christopher Nolan's Interstellar, and a whole slew of sequels with big shoes to fill: How to Train Your Dragon 2, Rio 2, X-Men: Days of Future Past, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (it was a long wait for that one!), Muppets Most Wanted and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. There are also a couple that I'm already dreading, though. For example, I've heard that even Hunger Games fans don't like Mockingjay. But personally, I'm most gritting my teeth for Transformers 4; I'll be very surprised if it turns out not to be the worst movie of the year! In any event, I could use a better year than the one I just had, so here's hoping for it. :)
Thanks for reading. See you round.
No, that title isn't a typo! :) My best-and-worst list for 2013 will be coming tomorrow, but for now, in accordance with the lists I post every Monday, I think I'll share the first annual recap I ever did. I already posted my recap of 2012, but I did do another one before I started this blog.
Since I'd seen tonnes of people do lists of their favourite and least favourite movies of the year, in 2011 I decided to join the club. Out of the movies I'd seen that year, I did a recap of the year, picking out my favourites and least favourites, and posted it on December 31st. But, of course, in the time since then, I've seen quite a few more movies from 2011. And in some cases, I may have rewatched some of the movies that I'd already seen and found they only got better with repeat viewings. So what I'll be sharing with you now is not the original list that I posted at the end of the year itself, but rather a more up-to-date version.
And keep in mind that, though I do try to see as many movies as possible, I didn't see absolutely everything that came out in 2011, and even today I still haven't got round to everything I wanted to. So there might be some glaring omissions on these lists, particularly for the worst-of one.
There are quite a few films that I'm sure would have been in the running had I seen them, though. So, before I get to the actual top ten list of my least favourites of the year, I'm just going to call out a few movies that I haven't seen, but that I'm sure would be bad enough to be contenders.
The first movie I'll mention is The Fast and the Furious 5, which I avoided for the simple reason that I haven't seen any of the first four. But from what I've heard, there is absolutely no reason for this movie to exist! The original film was about street racing, but they've long since abandoned that idea to make the series about whatever the hell they want. To quote Film Brain, the original was about people with cars, but by now the series is just about people who happen to have cars, which is a huge difference.
In fact, there were several shameful-sounding sequels that I was able to get out of just because I hadn't seen their predecessors, like Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2, Spy Kids 4 and Big Momma's House 3 – which, honestly, just hurts me to even know that it exists!
Neither did I see the remake of Footloose, again because I hadn't seen the original yet. But I've heard that the remake is a complete carbon copy, which of course is never a good thing.
Johnny English Reborn looks excruciatingly painful! I like the original enough, but I still don't think it warranted a sequel. Besides, there was only one part in any of the trailers that made me laugh; all the rest just had me facepalming.
Abduction – you know, that one with Taylor Lautner – got some of the worst reviews of the entire year, so it might well have been in the running too.
And finally, a movie that probably would have been in the top three had I gone to see it (but I didn't because I still had some shred of dignity left) is, as you can probably guess, Twilight: Breaking Dawn – Part 1. Now, the trailer for this popped up a few times when I went to see other movies in the cinema, and I felt dirty just having to sit there and watch that! I guess it still gives its target audience exactly what they want, but I'm sure I'd find it just as dull, overlong and vapid as any of its predecessors.
And now on to the actual list. :)
#10 = J Edgar
It breaks my heart that this is on the list, because I'm a big fan of Clint Eastwood as a director. So imagine my disappointment in this case. I mean, what happened, Clint? I kept catching brief glimpses of what this movie could have been, but I was constantly distracted by consistently poor lighting (and not just in the scenes where everything's dark) and the absolute worst old-face makeup I've ever seen, so I didn't care about either of the two stories the movie juggles. A good biopic of J Edgar Hoover could certainly be possible, but this definitely isn't it!
#9 = Rango
I already talked about this in the top ten movies that I hate but everyone else loves, so I don't want to repeat myself too much. I didn't mention before, though, that I never bought into the idea of the desert animals setting up their own town like this. I know it's a typical kids' movie setup, but it always seemed kind of pointless to me. The extremely realistic-looking CG animation is admittedly cool, but Happy Feet came out five years earlier, and I think it handled that animation a lot better. And like I said before, it's just not a pleasant film to watch.
#8 = New Year's Eve
This is a movie like Valentine's Day that's so obviously trying to be Love Actually, with its schmaltzy tone and a huge ensemble cast. Let me make one thing perfectly clear: I really do like Love Actually. But this movie, even though it makes it clear that it's trying to tug on your heartstrings, is simply not in the same league. Maybe it's because I don't feel the same way these characters do about New Year's, or maybe because I simply don't like any of the characters themselves or their situations. In any case, this is an ill-conceived, unfunny and joyless movie.
#7 = Battle: Los Angeles
In this case, the key word is "boring". Oh, God is this movie boring! It's pretty much just wall-to-wall military combat, which gets old really fucking fast! The fact that so much of the action is shot in shaky cam certainly doesn't help, because it means you can't even see what's happening. And even though it takes the time to introduce all its characters at the beginning, it's pointless because there are so many and they're thrown into the action so quickly that you're not given any time to take them in, which just strips you of your final reason to care.
#6 = Bridesmaids
Probably the most unpopular pick on my list. This is another one I already covered in the hate-but-everyone-else-loves list. You know my main problem is that the characters are complete immature assholes. So perhaps I should address the humour in the movie. It didn't do a thing for me at all. It seems to stem mostly from the fact that these characters are women, and women aren't supposed to do things like take massive shits in a sink! I only laughed once in the entire movie, and ironically it's when a character says, "Don't laugh!" :D I really just don't see the appeal of this film.
#5 = Horrible Bosses
This movie can kiss my ass! Again, I already covered this one in the hate-but-everyone-else-loves list. Yeah, 2011 was a really big year for my disagreeing with the public! :) I really thought I was going to like this flick, but it turned out to be one of the most unfunny so-called "comedies" I've seen in quite a while. As far as making me laugh, this one has all the no-nos: clowning and screaming just for the sake of clowning and screaming, completely idiotic characters who don't know when to shut up, and thinking it's being cute by arbitrarily referencing other, better movies.
#4 = Auschwitz
I guess I really should have expected no better from director Uwe Boll, but there really is no excuse for fucking up a subject matter as serious as Auschwitz. The middle section of the film is not believable as a drama because the actors never convince you of the torture they're supposed to be going through, and the documentary side of it is laughable because of the absurd stupidity of the teenagers being interviewed. You can get a bit of fun out of spotting typos in the subtitles, but for the most part it's just a mind-numbing, festering ball of nothingness.
#3 = Priest
I haven't read the comic books this movie's based on, but they surely can't be this bad! The whole narrative is kind of like a runaway train. It all rushes along at breakneck speed without ever bothering to set up its characters, and the action scenes seem so rushed that they never have a chance to excite. As a result, the running time is reduced to about eighty minutes, and it's maddening because you never have a chance to get invested. The sheer level of frustration I felt while watching this movie is really what puts it at the number three spot.
#2 = Sucker Punch
Perhaps the most annoying and despicable movie of the year. I highly doubt it accurately represents retreating into your mind as a coping mechanism! And it fails as an action fantasy because none of the action scenes have any tension or stakes whatsoever, since they are, after all, just in the main character's head. The oversaturation of CGI robs them of any grandeur, too. But my real issue with the movie is how downright mean-spirited it is, with one of the most shockingly cruel openings and endings I've ever seen. It's just a thoroughly unpleasant movie, and it really left a scar in my soul.
But, there was really never any doubt what #1 was going to be.
Transformers: Dark of the Moon is seriously one of the most boring, worthless movies I've ever seen in my life. It's certainly not as bad as Revenge of the Fallen, but that would be one hell of an accomplishment! It still has many of the same problems, though, like the practically nonexistent story, the unrelenting, tiresome action scenes, the disgracefully vulgar humour, and the special effects that look like they belong in a PS2 game. The Transformers sequels perfectly sum up everything that's wrong with the film industry, and Dark of the Moon is just such a nothing movie that it was, hands down, the most miserable movie-watching experience I had all year.
Runners-up:
• The Dilemma bills itself as a comedy, but takes itself so seriously that it's actually quite depressing to watch.
• The Hangover Part II is just a mean-spirited copy of the first one.
• Mars Needs Moms is boring and nonsensical, so it's no wonder it was such a gigantic bomb!
• Red Riding Hood tries way too hard to be Twilight, ending up being just as dull and poorly acted.
• Retreat is so predictable that it's not suspenseful at all – just kind of nothing.
• And Season of the Witch occasionally gets laughably stupid, but overall it's just underwhelming and not entertaining.
Well, there you have it: the top ten 2011 movies that really made me regret my compulsion to stick with any movie to the very end. So now let's wash those ten awful tastes down by going to the other end of the spectrum! :) Here are my top ten favourite movies of 2011.
Now, again, I admit this list may be as yet incomplete, because there were several reputedly good movies that I still haven't seen, like The Help, The Muppets, The Descendants and many others. So again, this is just going by what I've seen to date.
So, without further ado, let's get started. :)
First I'm going to throw in Rio as an honourable mention, because this, honestly, was the surprise of the year for me. I was all ready to hate this one in advance, but it turned out to be one of the finest family films I've seen in quite a while. The characters are interesting, the colourful nature of the rainforest is used to good effect, and there aren't even as many songs as you might expect, which proves that kids can handle straightforward drama. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, and am most disappointed that it ultimately got bumped off the list.
Which begins now…
#10 = Captain America: The First Avenger
If the Transformers movies are big-budget blockbusters at their worst, then these Marvel Comics movies are definitely the best kind! Why? Because they're not stupid! They're witty stories based on interesting characters. And this is by far my favourite of the four building up to Avengers Assemble. Thanks to the careful build-up in the first two acts, you get a perfect sense of the character's ideals and root for him completely, and his progression to superhero status actually makes a lot of sense. Plus, the action scenes are just fantastic. It all perfectly balances the line between legit drama and tongue-in-cheek fun.
#9 = X-Men: First Class
This was actually my first exposure to the X-Men franchise – I'd seen neither the classic animated show nor the first three movies – and what a place to begin on! :D It does a terrific job at juggling its many characters so that they all get their moment in the spotlight, and everyone's motivations are crystal clear (even if I do think James McAvoy is slightly miscast). The action scenes are some of the best I've ever seen in a comic book movie, particularly the flying scenes. I was looking forward to seeing other X-Men material anyway, and this most definitely got me hyped! :)
#8 = Drive
If you're expecting a high-octane, Fast and the Furious-style action-fest, then you're going to have to excuse this one, because that's not what it's all about. It's a drama first and foremost, and it really takes its time to let its characters develop relationships in plenty of quiet moments. These moments spent getting to know the characters are so tender and work so well that every act of violence later on feels like a genuine punch in the gut, and that makes the action scenes even more exciting. And, of course, you have a stellar, chilling central performance by Ryan Gosling.
#7 = Hugo
Hugo was sneered at before its release, since it was Martin Scorsese's first family film. But, as it turned out, it towers high above many family films on the market these days! :) The film really demonstrates Scorsese's love for cinema, by having the classic era of silent film be central to the plot, and it's rich in themes of purpose, dreams and imagination. I should also mention that I did see it in 3D, and it looked glorious! As well as one of the best movies of the year, it's one of the most intelligent and charming family films in several years.
#6 = March of the Dinosaurs
Granted, it's a TV movie, and a documentary at that, but it shows that even the natural world can make for a compelling narrative story. It's divided into two parallel stories: a juvenile Edmontosaurus called Scar joining the perilous thousand-mile migration south from Alaska, and a young Troodon called Patch trying to survive the winter back home. I was far more interested in Scar's story; I really felt for him when he starts to run into peril after he gets isolated. It's one of my favourite dinosaur films ever, and the main reason I can't take the recent Walking with Dinosaurs movie seriously.
#5 = The Skin I Live In
This one is nearly impossible to talk about without getting into heavy spoilers, but, suffice to say, it kicks insane amounts of ass! :) Antonio Banderas stars as a scientist with a troubled past, who's working on a new type of skin. But he's hiding a cold secret behind the closed doors of his experiments. Banderas firmly casts his ladies' man persona aside here, and gives a fantastically dark performance. And when the truth behind the experiment is revealed, you will be talking about it, most likely confused and deeply shocked. But you're going to have to find out why for yourself.
#4 = Attack the Block
This movie does something incredibly rare, which is to set up completely detestable characters in the first ten minutes (young South London hoodlums) and quickly get you to root and cheer for them. So, as they defend their apartment block from an alien attack, I'm along for the ride one hundred percent. Most people might opt for a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster, but this is my idea of simple entertainment: a relatively low-budget indie flick that's immensely fun to watch because you get the feeling that everyone was having a blast while making it. That's all there is to say: it's just so much fun! :)
#3 = Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
I'm a Harry Potter fan through-and-through, and this franchise finale was everything I wanted it to be – and more! This is the first Harry Potter movie that I'd call genuinely great! :) It's easy to dismiss it as simply an action-filled offset to all the build-up in Deathly Hallows: Part 1, but what really sets it apart from all the rest is how it manages to perfectly balance really intense battle scenes with genuine heartfelt drama. It all amounts to a relentlessly captivating thrill ride. It has to be the closest a Harry Potter movie has come to being my favourite movie of its respective year.
#2 = Source Code
Not since Groundhog Day have I seen such genius in the concept of reliving the same circumstances repeatedly! :) Director Duncan Jones really is establishing himself as a force to be reckoned with. I'm a big fan of thrillers, especially sci-fi thrillers, and this is one of the smartest, most exciting and most intriguing I've seen in a long time. It's 2011's equivalent of Inception: twisty and complex, but also very entertaining to watch. I even love the ending, though a lot of people say it let the movie down. On the original end-of-year list, this was straight in at number one.
But my #1 favourite movie of 2011 is now… The Artist
I didn't catch this until January 2012, and it completely blew me away! :) If Hugo was classic silent film in theory, then The Artist is silent film in practice. It attempts to recreate those olden-day silent movies, which today have a charm all of their own. It just goes to show that you don't need bright colours or even sound to make a great movie: just a good story. When sound is used, it's used to terrific effect. And the story itself is a deeply heartbreaking one, about a silent film actor losing his job with the coming of sound movies – which, again, rings very true, since it's reminiscent of what happened with a lot of actors in real life. The Artist is a flawless tribute to the roots of cinema, and it truly deserves every ounce of praise it gets. It's nothing short of genuine movie magic.
Runners-up:
• Arthur Christmas is one of the best Christmas movies in many years, embracing the whimsy of the holiday.
• Crazy, Stupid, Love is a surprisingly charming romantic comedy, thanks to its stellar cast and fun scenarios.
• The Ides of March is one of very few political movies I could get into, because it's more about trust and betrayal than anything else.
• Paul was probably the funniest movie of the year, thanks in no small part to Paul himself.
• Puss in Boots is a relentlessly witty and fun adventure that I liked better than any of the Shrek movies.
• Rio, I covered already.
• Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a wonderfully exciting ride, with near-perfect build-up and character development in the first two acts.
• And Submarine is a low-key, poignant comedy drama that really succeeds in putting you in the mind of a teenager.
And those are my lists of my favourite and least favourite movies of 2011. I hope you enjoyed them. Be sure to check in tomorrow for my best-and-worst recap of 2013. And next Monday, the first list I post in the brand new year will probably be my most anticipated so far.
So have a great New Year, and I'll see you on the other side. :)
Well, I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. :)
I missed out on last week's "first impressions" entry because I was away for the weekend, without Internet access. I did think about postponing it to Christmas Eve, which I felt would have been an appropriate time, but I never got round to actually writing the reviews by then. So here I am, in my last batch of reviews for 2013, going over two weeks' worth of movies. (Two rather quiet weeks, that is.)
First up, I finally got back to my library of downloads from ages ago, interspersed with the James Bond series. The next in line was another one that I was only watching for the sake of completing the Compatibility Test on Flixster.
Hitch (2005)
I'd describe Hitch as somehow predictable and offbeat at the same time. It's a romantic comedy about Alex "Hitch" Hitchens, a professional "date doctor". It's divided into two parallel romances: Hitch's latest client Albert, and Hitch himself smitten with Sara Melas. I cared so little about Albert's story that I just started to wonder how much Alex earned for this job. But the main scene I remember is when Sara's misunderstanding is exposed at the end of the second act, because the truth rightfully comes out almost immediately, and the movie grinds to a complete halt after that. My rating: 55%.
Next up, a pair of movies I saw in the cinema.
Walking with Dinosaurs: The 3D Movie (2013)
The trailer for this movie had me screaming "betrayal" just like Spoony did with XCOM! Seeing Walking with Dinosaurs, a serious documentary miniseries that I loved as a child, turned into a crass children's movie with talking dinosaurs… it really does feel like a violation! The film itself is basically a remake of Disney's Dinosaur. It's just as unfunny as the trailer implied, and it keeps pausing to introduce the animals by name, which completely takes you out of the movie anyway. It's an annoying, misguided and condescending mess – and of course, for me, it's a personal insult. My rating: 15%.
Frozen (2013)
Sometimes I complain about trailers misrepresenting a movie because the film ends up letting you down, but this time it was quite the reverse. :) The trailers for this movie made it look painfully unfunny. But the film itself turned out to be witty, very well written and endlessly charming – thanks in no small part to its genuinely lovable characters. Early on, when Elsa is trying to contain her powers, the tension is unbearable. Also, I don't want to spoil anything, but there's one particular plot thread that becomes an expert satire on the nature of Disney romances. In short, yet another triumph for Disney. My rating: 85%.
A Christmas Story (1983)
I try to make it a tradition every Christmas to see at least one new Christmas movie, and this year it was A Christmas Story. And boy was it a good choice! :) This is one of those movies that takes you right back to your childhood: the innocence, the excitement, the daydreams… This is aided all the more by the narrative structure: it simply presents one day at a time in this boy's life, which makes you feel like you too are living it. In a time when Christmas sadly seems to be growing stale, this movie reminds you how magical it used to be, and ensures that the Christmas spirit never dies. My rating: 80%.
The Accused (1988)
I have conflicting opinions on this movie. On one hand, I highly commend it for portraying rape as the beyond unjust atrocity that it is; the movie doesn't make any attempt to glorify it. But on the other hand, as a courtroom drama, I have to admit some characters are quite right in that it's a very flimsy case; it's about trying to convict the men who cheered it on, and there's no proof. At first, I didn't think they were ever going to actually show the rape itself – which I thought would have been a nice touch – but I'm glad that, when it is, it perfectly conveys the horrific nature of the scene. My rating: 80%.
And finally, my last batch of Xtra-vision rentals for the year.
Elysium (2013)
Director Neill Blomkamp's follow-up to District 9… is not very good. :( The real-world allegories (to the first and third worlds and illegal immigration) are painfully obvious and sometimes very poorly executed. For example, early on, what's the point in shooting two of those shuttles down when they just send the third one back to Earth anyway? And the abuse of shaky cam in this movie is just ridiculous! It makes the action practically unwatchable. The premise had potential and the plot does have its moments, but the characters constantly drag it down by being complete idiots. My rating: 40%.
Lovelace (2013)
Based on the true story of Linda Lovelace, who was forced into pornography by her domineering husband, Chuck Traynor. While watching the movie, I got the distinct impression that it was holding something back – and indeed, a lot of people have complained that it severely tames down the truly brutal truth – but I think it still gets the point across. Here's a woman who just can't catch a break – not just from Chuck, but even her mother is overly strict. And what makes it even worse: without Chuck, she has no money to call her own, so she's effectively trapped. It's a deplorable situation. My rating: 65%.
The Way Way Back (2013)
Fourteen-year-old Duncan is forced into a summer vacation with his mother and her new boyfriend, then a welcome distraction is provided when he finds friends in the oddball staff of the local water park. Boy did I underestimate this movie! It's basically a catharsis for anyone in a stressful situation. I really felt for Duncan wanting to escape his home company, and his new friends are so relentlessly funny and charismatic that they really do make for the best companions possible. In fact, I honestly didn't want to leave this place. :) This is, hands down, one of my absolute favourite movies of the year. My rating: 85%.
I was already working on my best and worst movies of the year lists, but after this lot, I had to do a couple of revisions to both lists. Check in on New Year's Eve for the final results. :)
