Monday 19 December 2011

Best of 2011

 Best Films

The Tree Of Life- Amazing style and complicated emotions.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - Terrific reworking on a great story
Living In the Material World – A terrific 4 hour documentary by Scorsese (his best film for years) on George Harrison.
Inside Job - A horrifying look at the financial meltdown. Very well-researched and put together.
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol – Great suspense and action scenes, some decent humour and a game cast, make this the most enjoyable entertainment of the year.
Super – A twisted tale of a wannabee super-hero with a religious edge. Very funny and dark.
Attack The Block - Energetic, fun pulp, done the way it should be. Fun characters, a defined space, and a story that flows logically from one situation to the next, with an emotional resolution. So few modern films can do that.
Good entertainments

Fast Five – Was simply stupid entertainment of the highest order. A simple heist that’s a backdrop for over the top- action. A bank gets dragged through a city and destroys most of it. No explanations necessary.
Thor – An entertainment that’s more character-based than most superhero films. Nothing original in it but the execution was consistently engaging and the story moved forward with pace.
The Fighter – Shallow Rocky-type story that is predictable in every story beat but the director gave it a solid world to build from, giving the film a pleasing feel. Not a world-beater
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo – Over-long, and not quite as smart as it thinks it is, (I spotted both twists halfway through). Yet the atmosphere and pleasing grumpiness of the lead characters, as well as the sense of a corrupt world choking itself, keep the story working.

Worst Films

Suckerpunch- Probably likely to be the worst film of the decade. Sexist, tawdry, idiotic and boring.
Super 8 & Source Code – Were fine and over-done in style/acting for a time then the films got into the third act and got stunngingly/insultingly dumb. Annoying waste of potential.
Green Lantern - Was fun in a laugh at it way but was also really stupid in basic plot and character. It had a finale that lasted about three minutes and made little sense, had a dumb finale twist, and generally felt like it had been put together without any real care. A real waste of time and money.
Pirates Of The Caribbean 4: Whatever The Hell Its Called - Boring, repetitive, with a plot that should take up about ten minutes of screen time. For every decent idea, there's about three bad action scenes to drag you down.


Television

I’ve been watching a lot more TV than films. A great year for that.
Dr Who Series 6, Breaking Bad Season 1 & 2, Party Down Season 1 & 2, Community Season 2, Mad Men Seasons 2 & 3, Sons of Anarchy Season 1, Generation Kill, Treme Season 1, Chuck Season 4, Lost (all seasons), Wonders of the Solar System & Universe, Monty Python - The Truth - The Lawyer’s Cut, Star Wars Clone Wars seasons 1 & 2


Best films seen from previous years

Alice, The Gorgon, Hell Comes To Frogtown, Privilege, Piranha 3-d, Coraline, Lilo & Stitch, Only Angels Have Wings, The Smashing Machine, Spellbound.

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