2011 In Review.

2011: In Review

Image from stardusttrailers.com.

It's that time again. Time to wrap up the year with a bundle of theater tickets and see which $12.50 I regretted spending the most. I've got to say, where last year felt mostly like a very steep roller coaster with some movies reaching high portions of epicness while others threw me under the bus, 2011 was a bit of a relief. Despite most of the crap 3D churned out, overall I'd say it was a pretty even keel year. Some good shit, some bad shit, end of story. Nothing that completely mindfucked me into oblivion, and I'd probably be hard pressed to call any of these movies "classics". Still, I feel like I got a lot of nice, feel good movies that I'll find myself watching over and over again in the years to come, which is really more than I could ask for. With that, drum roll please...

What's not to love?

BEST OF 2011:
*Hanna.
Best movie of 2011.
So Hanna now seems miles away, having come out at the very start of the year, but I've got to say, despite all the great films that popped up over the course of 2011, still nothing could top this. Great action, great music, great acting, great, simple plot. Great little girl badass. I'm sold. It's really fucking hard to do better than Saoirse Ronan kicking the shit out of everyone who stands in her way.

*X-Men: First Class.

Best gay sex of 2011.

It's like Brokeback Mountain. But with funny hats. Wait. Still like Brokeback Mountain. Anyway, by far one of the best X-Men films out there (if not the). A fucking great origins story, which is especially refreshing after Wolverine did some shit so nonsensical that even he didn't want to remember it. Fassbender (who seems to have stolen this year out from under everyone's nose) and McAvoy did a brilliant job with their characters and with their bromance. Best of all? The script was airtight. It was just good, clean fun. And very, very gay.

*Cowboys & Aliens.

Best cowboys of 2011.

Best aliens of 2011.

It was just a good movie. Straight up. Everything that it set out to do with a title like Cowboys & Aliens, it did. Somewhere along the line, someone figured out if you just give your movie an easy title like Hot Tub Time Machine, everyone knows what they're getting into and no one's disappointed. This was my Hot Tub Time Machine of the year. I got exactly what I wanted--Harrison Ford strutting atop his horse, aliens with terrifying stomach hands, and best of all, an excuse to dyke-it-out and wear chaps for Halloween.

Super 8.

Best anti-drug PSA of 2011.

Basically, it's the year of the kickass little people heroes. And no one does little people heroes quite like Steven Spielberg. I mean, J.J. Abrams. Sorry, who wrote this movie again? Tomatoes, tomahtoes. Either way, it was just a fun alien movie. Like Cowboys & Aliens but...you know. Nice aliens. I'll rephrase: nice aliens who don't share Olivia Wilde's brand of creepy face.

Warrior.

Best "I''m not crying, I've just got something in my eye" of 2011.

I've got a soft stop for Tom Hardy, I'm not gonna lie. And this movie just confirmed my instincts. If The Fighter hadn't sucked up everyone's interest in ring fighting for the next couple years, this one would've done it. It was rough and tumble, but with a good deal of heart. 

And by devil I mean her legs.

Drive.

Best hammer of 2011.

Here's the thing. I wasn't half as crazy about Drive as most people were. I don't think it's particularly the movie of the century. But movie of the year? Yeah, I can give it that. Might not top everything that is badass in Hanna, but it's a good, solid film. Ryan Gosling certainly gave Michael Fassbender a run for his money this year as one or the other seemed to show up in every movie poster. 

Drive Angry.

Best devil of 2011.

I need to write up a review for this movie. Need to, need to, need to. But let's face it. This movie would've been good if it had just been William Fichtner disappearing and reappearing in random places, spouting caustic one-liners and performing deeds of massive badassitry. Oh wait--that is what this movie is? I'M THERE! And Amber Heard is a lesbian. So really. Really. There is nothing for me NOT to like. 

Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
Best "that was fun, let's do it again!" of 2011.
Was it as good as the Swedish version? Maybe not. But it had a lot going for it--acting wise, direction wise, script wise. Overall, a solid, good movie on it's own. Too bad it has a equally pretty sister. But who said anything about choosing when you can have them both?

BLEH OF 2011:
Let's start with the positives. There were a couple good surprises this year, and I always approve of a little mindfuckery. The movies that really caught me off guard with their awesome included Red State, which just happened to be even more brilliant than it promised. Then there was Thor, also known as the best other hammer of the year. Maybe not a great superhero movie, but hell, it was a great comedy. Someone clearly just stacked it in the wrong shelf. And for the most surprising surprise yet, Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes? Awesome. Who knew? Not me.

Draco Malfoy playing...Draco Malfoy.

Next up, those movies that were just...you know. Good. Worth the watch. Contagion was good in a sort of "this is a good movie but takes itself too seriously for me to watch more than once" kind of way. 30 Minutes Or Less appealed to both the audience member in me who likes to watch things blow up and enjoys Danny McBrides's crazy tomfoolery. Horrible Bosses was amusing in it's own way, and that way was namely referred to as Jason Bateman's comic timing. I think Captain America: The First Avenger was good, but I was also pretty stoned at the time so it's really hard to say. And Sherlock Holmes had even more gay sex that X-Men, which is saying a lot, so even though the plot was shoddy I forgave it for the bromance.

Lastly, there were the movies that...were just okay. Movies that had good spots and bad spots, but to me were...just fun movies. To every one else, they seemed to have polarizing effect--you loved it or you hated it. Me? Eh. It wasn't total shit, but it wasn't movie of the year either. Those two movies for me were The Hangover Pt II and Sucker Punch. Love it or leave it. I'll leave both, but won't regret seeing them either.

WORST OF 2011:
And now for the best part. The most fun you'll have out of the theaters all year...

This is how an acting career dies.

Priest.
Biggest dick slap in the face of 2011.
Sucked balls. Sucked major balls. I cannot even begin to tell you how many balls it sucked. Spoiler alert: lots of them.

The Green Hornet.
Greenest movie of 2011.
A superhero movie. With cool gadgets. And Christoph Waltz. Sounds promising, right? Well, that's what I thought too. Until I saw it. And it was like someone had taken a large, green, 3D crap on the screen. Yeah. Not so much fun.

Apollo 18.
Best comedy of 2011.
I'm going to own up to something. I snuck into this one, I caught the last half of it, and I'm fucking glad I didn't have to suffer through the first half. There was no bromance, nothing interesting about the two main characters, and no matter how many "legitimate" URLs you put at the end of your movie, I'm not going to believe moon rocks are out to get me.

MOVIES I JUST DIDN'T GIVE A CHANCE.

Yet another year goes by in which I failed my Pokemon Master and could not catch them all. Here's the list of all the movies I missed out on this year...any worth checking out? Any I should avoid like the bubonic plague? Let me know!

Movies I legitimately meant to see: Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (I will see this one, just not before midnight). Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (ditto). Shame. The Rum Diary. The Mechanic. The Guard. The Debt.

Movies I kind of hoped to see: Dream House. Immortals. Fright Night. Killer Elite. Colombiana. Rampart. Fast Five. Tower Heist. The Adjustment Bureau. Unknown. Conan the Barbarian.

Movies I went out of my way not to see: In Time. Limitless. Source Code. The Three Musketeers. Battle: LA. Season Of The Witch. The Lincoln Lawyer. Transformers: Dark Of The Moon.

That's all, folks! Hope everyone celebrates the New Year with champagne, car chases, and couple well timed fruit cart explosions. See you next year!

What, No Zombies? I Want My Money Back.

CONTAGION (2011)

Dr. Ally Hextall being a BAMF.

It's happened. Labor day weekend has come and gone, and now we can finally strap in as the disappointingly "eh" summer movies fade away and we prepare ourselves for the badassitry that is going to be this winter. Contagion (2011) is a wonderfully concise way to shed the dead skin of summer and enjoy a little taste of panic, desperation, and sneezes just in time for flu season. The funny thing about this movie is that it is really the movie that shouldn't have worked. There's no real main character, no real defeat of the antagonist, no car chases, no explosions, and no fucking zombies. It's a movie about a really bad case of the swine flu and the various ways people deal with it. The end. And yet, thanks to a little thing we call star studded cast and excellent acting, they somehow pull it off. 

Image from daemonsmovies.com

Since there's no real singular plot that follows through the movie except "holyfuck, bacteria!", I'm just going to highlight some of the major plots I appreciated. My favorite segment was definitely anything and everything that happened around Dr. Ellis, played by none other than Morpheus himself. I've always had a soft spot for Laurence Fishburne, and he pushed every emotional button here. Ellis was the "go-to" man for emotional problem, it seemed, and he played out an excellent, subtle bromance with Dr. Erin Mears, AKA, the lovely Kate Winslet. I call it a bromance because that's exactly what it was--a great, platonic friendship between two characters built off of a few spot-on scenes. 

We had a bunch of really excellent female characters, while on the topic. Marion Cotillard was fucking sexy. Oh, and a great actress and stuff. She helped save the world. Whatever. Even though her segment didn't...seem to have a real end? But maybe I just wasn't reading into it hard enough. However, the real heroine of the movie is Dr. Ally Hextall, played by Jennifer Ehle. Know her? Me neither. Her previous credits include "Brooklyn Ice House Bartender" in The Adjustment Bureau. Yet, even among all these big name actors, she shines in a organic, easy way. Her character remains the same stubborn, persistent doctor throughout the entire movie and doesn't seem to go through any major changes, and yet she more or less singlehandedly saves mankind. So I think she deserves a pat on the back for that. I know I should probably say something about Gwyneth Paltrrow here but...I don't really like her, so I was just happy to see her die right away. I think she did an excellent job foaming at the mouth. A +.

Image from daemonsmovies.com.

Another character I've got to mention is Alan Krumwiede, played by Jude Law's teeth. Seriously. Look at those chompers. Am I right? But in all seriousness, he's an excellent obnoxious blogger trying to turn a profit (or prophet) out of others' misery. I've always thought Jude Law does his best when he's an asshole (I'm looking at you, I Heart Huckabees (2004). Which, by the way, is an excellent stoner movie. Just throwing that out there. Pressing on--), and he doesn't disappoint here. He's smarmy, but you can't help but enjoy every moment he's on screen. 

The last subplot I'm going to go into is Jason Bourne's whole bit. Jason Bourne plays Mitch, who's wife (Paltrow) is one of the first to die, and ends up waiting out the storm with his daughter. Except Mitch has a secret. He's Jason Bourne. And Jason Bourne doesn't get sick. Sick gets Jason Bourne. Jason Bourne is immune to every disease. Ever. It might wipe out the entire human race, but not Jason Bourne. Chuck Norris can stay too. With that said...alright. So they give Mitch this great immunity that no one else has. Awesome! And then he spends the rest of the movie...doing absolutely nothing with it. The only reason his immunity exists seems to be so he can hold his wife as she writhes and comes out on the other end alive. The government isn't able to use him, he can't do anything special with it. Instead, he just holes up in his house with a shotgun and protects his daughter. Which I'm cool with. Really. I liked the whole father/daughter dynamic. But I was left a little unsatisfied with his whole immunity bit. 

On the thread of unsatisfying things, I'm going to say that while I liked the film a lot as a whole, the end didn't really do it for me. I know, when we're dealing with a multi-plot movie that evolves around a man-killing disease, there's no real logical way to end it except to somehow neatly wrap up each segment. You can't really fire a bazooka into a contagious disease and call it a night. Still, you did get the feeling that the writers just didn't know how to end it. So they found the cure. Great! But then they had to give it out to the public. Done! And then they had to deal with the people waiting on the cure, denying that it worked, giving the government hell. I was waiting for a skip into the future when we find out the vaccine gave everyone AIDS and they all died anyway. Limp ending aside, the movie still packed an emotional punch I wasn't expecting from an infection movie. The characters were well thought out, the events seemed believable, and the writing was natural and organic. It was just a good end-of-the-world movie, without being so...end-of-the-worldy. 

Dramatic Kate Winslet is dramatic.

With all that said. There is one final point I have to make. Which is...Zombies. Because someone had to say it. Now, I like a good infection movie as much as the next person. And I'm cool with an outbreak of the batty swine flu without any undead, brain-eating zombies coming to life. Really, go ahead and make your "intellectual" outbreak film. But I have a personal bone to pick here. The book World War Z by Max Brooks was pretty popular recently, and if I could make love to a zombie infested book, it would be this one. Yet, as I was watching Contagion, I could not stop thinking about World War Z. World-wide infection. Various different character stories. A bit of politics here and there. I'm not by any means saying Contagion "ripped off" the book, because infection-movies are hardly a novel idea. However, they've got a World War Z movie in the making, which will hopefully come out sometime next year. The lesson I hope people take form Contagion is that a multi-plot multi-location movie can be done, and done well. Except now I'm suddenly holding my breath and waiting for that person who talks out of World War Z going "What the hell, that's such a rip-off of Contagion." After which zombies will eat their face. There. I got it out of my system. Back to our regularly scheduled programming. 

In short, Contagion was a unique look at infection movies. It went with a relatively simple plot and churned out a compelling story with many captivating characters. Well worth the watch. Just let someone else touch the door handle for you on your way out.