2011 in Film.

Ten days into the new year, it’s past time to knock out GitM’s best-of-2011 list. To be honest, last year’s movie crop was somewhat underwhelming, and as always, there are a few more gaps I’d love to have plugged first — Cedar Rapids, Margin Call, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Take Shelter, Warrior — but, for what I saw last year, here’s the best of ’em…

Top 20 Films of 2011
[2000/2001/2002/2003/2004/2005/2006/2007/2008/2009/2010/The Oughts]


1. Midnight in Paris: Its wry take on the perils of nostalgia notwithstanding, my favorite film of 2011 didn’t aspire to be much more than a fun, low-key time at the movies. And that it was. One of the most carefree films in Woody Allen’s long and storied career, and featuring one of the best Woodster stand-ins in recent decades with Owen Wilson, Midnight in Paris was an amiable lark that entertained with a light touch and without resorting to the occasionally frantic enthusiasm of The Artist. In short, an unmitigated pleasure: In a so-so year for film, we’ll always have Paris.


2. Attack the Block: While this dubstep-fueled blend of sci-fi horror, Occupy London social commentary, and stoner humor may not be to everyone’s taste, Joe Cornish’s impressive debut was also a surprisingly fun movie and perhaps the purest adrenaline ride of the summer. In a year of big budget and often-suspect alien invasions, it was this lo-rent Block that best delivered the goods, bruv. Believe.


3. The Descendants: With carefully modulated performances from everyone involved, this well-observed dramedy about grief, infidelity, and family in Hawaii was Alexander Payne’s most humanistic film yet. And unlike, say, The King’s Speech or Shame, The Descendants for some reason never set off my usual annoyance with “poor little rich guy” tales — a testament to its emotional resonance.


4. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: The Circus has been compromised: With great actors all over the place, Tomas Alfredson’s dark, circuitous and densely plotted adaptation of John Le Carre’s cloak-and-dagger novel, redolent of cigarettes, desperation, and Cold War paranoia, is the 2011 movie I’m most looking forward to revisiting in the future. Give Gary Oldman the Oscar already.


5. X-Men: First Class: In a better year, this movie would probably be hovering around the ten spot. But, in 2011 — a year that saw no shortage of superheroics at the multiplex — Matthew Vaughn’s Mad Men-era reboot of the X-Men universe was one of the more entertaining and successful-on-its-own-terms films to come down the pike, with James McAvoy, Kevin Bacon, and especially Michael Fassbender adding ballast to the proceedings. To me once again, my X-Men.


6. Contagion: Ahem…sorry to cough a fine spray of phlegm all over the keyboard and mouse you’re currently using. Where was I? Ah yes, Contagion, Steven Soderbergh’s highly creepy medical disaster movie, which carries all the more punch for being so grounded in daily reality. With Haywire and Magic Mike heading to theaters this year, hopefully Soderbergh will continue to postpone his much-publicized retirement, at least until the plague comes through.


7. Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol: Utilizing techniques honed at Pixar’s impressive animation stable, Brad Bird moved to the forefront of contemporary action directors and managed to revive both Tom Cruise’s waning career and a moribund franchise with this visceral and engaging thrill ride. This was easily the best pure action film of the year, or of the past several years, for that matter.


8. The Muppets: Overburdened with anachronistic 80’s nostalgia, yet leavened by a blissful infusion of Conchords — and, really, isn’t everything better with more Conchords? — Segal, Stoller, and Bobin’s heartfelt reintroduction of the Muppets was another very enjoyable evening out. I wasn’t much for the Walter framing device, but it was definitely grand to see Kermit, Fozzie, and the gang once more.


9. War Horse: Granted, putting animals in wartime peril is an easy way to get an audience emotionally invested. Still, Spielberg’s War Horse eventually overcame its early schmaltziness to become unexpectedly moving. And, if he’s up for more wartime shenanigans, perhaps Joey the wonder steed can get a cameo in Lincoln.


10. Hanna: When first putting this list together, I almost forgot this kinetic fairy tale, which, like Attack the Block, enjoys the benefit of a propulsive 21st-century score (here furnished by the Chemical Brothers.) One of the hidden gems of the spring.


11. Drive: I liked this Lynchian escapade less than a lot of critics. Its great opening scene aside, I found Drive to be all sleek surfaces and very little depth, and unfortunately the gorefest second-half never lives up to the meditative-samurai promise of the first hour. Still, the film looked great, and I look forward to seeing what director Nicholas Winding Refn comes up with next.


12. The Artist: There may not be much there there, and I wouldn’t pick it for Best Picture — but The Artist is a hard film to hate on. This is a movie that works overtime — and without the benefit of sound — to show you a good time.


13. Source Code: While it’s not nearly as layered or as satisfying as his first film, Moon, Duncan Jones’ Source Code is still a small, well-made Twilight Zone episode of a movie. And it shows Jones has the chops to stage more than one compelling science fiction tale — Hopefully, his next, as-yet-untitled sci-fi film will make it a trifecta.


14. Captain America and Thor: I have a sneaking suspicion Joss Whedon’s The Avengers (from which the pic above is taken) isn’t really going to work. Still, veteran hands Joe Johnston and Kenneth Branagh managed to conjure up surprisingly engaging films out of Cap and Thor respectively. In both cases, I had a better time than I had originally expected.


15. Jane Eyre: The first film on the list I didn’t actually see in the theater, Cary Fukunaga’s worthy retelling of the oft-filmed Charlotte Bronte novel succeeds mainly by playing up the Gothic horror elements of the story. It also enjoys some of the most lavish cinematography of the year (this side of The Tree of Life.)


16. Young Adult: Thanks in no small part to Charlize Theron’s praiseworthy turn as “that girl” from high school all thirty-something and curdled, Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman’s darkly funny tale of When Rom-Com Values Go Bad represents a career highlight for them both.


17. The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn: Granted, I have a childhood fondness for Herge’s world that predisposed me to enjoy myself at this film — I have no idea how this flick plays for folks who’ve never heard of Captain Haddock or the Thompson Twins. But speaking for myself, I had a grand old time, and was glad to see that mo-cap is starting to move past the dead-eyed trough of the Uncanny Valley.


18. Crazy, Stupid, Love: A smart and tightly-written romantic comedy that I just caught on Netflix this past weekend. Crazy, Stupid, Love doesn’t break any new ground per se, but it’s still quite good for what it is — and given how terrible 21st century rom-coms can be, that is no small thing.


19. 50/50: Here’s another small-bore film that won’t light the world on fire. Still, Jonathan Levine’s cancer dramedy, thanks to Joseph Gordon-Levitt and work in the margins from Angelica Huston and Matt Frewer, works surprisingly well at straddling a delicate balance in tone between Apatowish bro-humor and Lifetime movie-of-the-week.


20. Bridesmaids: For better or worse, 2011 was a year in film that almost relentlessly looked backwards: From Midnight to Muppets to Hugo to The Artist, this was a year that wallowed in nostalgia for days gone by. (The future, it seems, brings either aliens or humanity-destroying plagues.) So, while Beginners, Win Win, The Trip, Hugo, or The Ides of March could’ve gone here, last spot goes to Paul Feig, Kristen Wiig, and Annie Mumolo’s funny, feminist reconception of the gross-out comedy. Let’s hope more mainstream films in years to come, comedies or otherwise, actually manage to pass the Bechdel test.

Most Disappointing: Had I more faith in Zack Snyder beforehand, this would go to his thoroughly terrible Sucker Punch, and, alas, the unfortunately botched Green Lantern came close to taking this spot as well. In the end, though, this goes to Jon Favreau’s misfire Cowboys and Aliens. Cowboys! Aliens! Daniel Craig! Harrison Ford! And yet, this one came out duller than dirt.

Worth Netflixing: The Adjustment Bureau, Beginners, The Conspirator, A Dangerous Method, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Pt. 2, Hugo, The Ides of March, J. Edgar, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, The Tree of Life, The Trip, Win Win

Don’t Bother: Battle: Los Angeles, Blue Valentine (2010), Friends with Benefits, Limitless, Meek’s Cutoff, Shame, Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows, Somewhere (2010), Super 8, Water for Elephants

Best Actor: Gary Oldman, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy; George Clooney, The Descendants; Michael Fassbender, Shame
Best Actress: Rooney Mara, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Charlize Theron, Young Adult; Mia Wasikowska, Jane Eyre
Best Supporting Actor: Uggie, The Artist; Christopher Plummer, Beginners, Eric Bana, Hanna; Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hardy, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Best Supporting Actress: Shailene Woodley, The Descendants; Jessica Chastain, The Tree of Life, Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids, Cate Blanchett, Hanna

Unseen: 30 Minutes or Less, Albert Nobbs, Anonymous, Another Earth, Apollo 18, Arthur, Arthur Christmas, Atlas Shrugged, A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas, Bad Teacher, Barney’s Version, Beastly, The Beaver, Bellflower, Biutiful, Carnage, Cars 2, Cedar Rapids, The Change-Up, Colombiana, Conan the Barbarian, Coriolanus, The Darkest Hour, The Debt, The Devil’s Double, The Dilemma, Dolphin Tale, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, Dream House, Drive Angry, Dylan Dog: Dead of Night, Everything Must Go, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Fast Five, Footloose, Fright Night, The Guard, The Hangover Pt 2, Happy Feet 2,The Help, Hesher, Horrible Bosses, I Am Number Four, Immortals, Incendies, In the Land of Blood and Honey, In Time, The Iron Lady, I Saw the Devil, Jack and Jill, Killer Elite, Kung Fu Panda 2, Larry Crowne, The Last Circus, Like Crazy, The Lincoln Lawyer, Margaret, Margin Call, Martha Marcy May Marlene, The Mechanic, Melancholia, Moneyball, Mr. Popper’s Penguins, My Week with Marilyn, New Year’s Eve, Our Idiot Brother, Paranormal Activity 3, Pariah, Paul, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Priest, Puss in Boots, Rango, Real Steel, Red State, Rio, The Rum Diary, Sanctum, Scream 4, Sleeping Beauty, The Smurfs, Something Borrowed, Straw Dogs, Take Me Home Tonight, Take Shelter, The Thing, The Three Musketeers, Tower Heist, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Twilight: Breaking Dawn, The Way Back, Warrior, We Bought a Zoo, We Need to Talk about Kevin, Winnie the Pooh, Your Highness, Zookeeper

    A Good Year For:
  • Jessica Chastain (Coriolanus, The Debt, The Help, Take Shelter, Tree of Life)
  • Electronica Soundtracks (Attack the Block, Drive, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Hanna)
  • Film History Buffs (The Artist, Hugo)
  • Ryan Gosling (Crazy, Stupid, Love, Drive, Ides of March)
  • Marvel (Captain America, Thor, X-Men: First Class)
  • Michael Fassbender (A Dangerous Method, Jane Eyre, A Dangerous Method, Shame, X-Men: First Class)
  • Tom Hiddleston (Midnight in Paris, Thor, War Horse)
  • Parisian Nostalgia (Midnight in Paris, Hugo)
  • Scene-Stealing Dogs (The Artist, Beginners, Tintin)
  • The Sex Lives of Depressed People (Shame, Somewhere (2010))
  • Emma Stone (Crazy, Stupid, Love, Friends with Benefits, The Help)
    A Bad Year For:
  • Gimmicks to Fill the Seats (3D, Reserve Seating)
  • Tom Hanks (Larry Crowne, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)
  • Missions in Budapest (MI: Ghost Protocol, Tinker Tailor)
  • Movies starting with S (Shame, Sherlock 2, Sucker Punch, Super 8)
2012: 21 Jump Street, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, The Amazing Spiderman, American Reunion, Argo, The Avengers, Battleship, The Bourne Legacy, Brave, Bullet to the Head, Butter, Cabin in the Woods, Casa de mi Padre, Chronicle, Cloud Atlas, Cogan’s Trade, The Cold Light of Day, Contraband, Cosmopolis, Damsels in Distress, The Dictator, Dog Fight, The Dark Knight Rises, Dark Shadows, The Dictator, Django Unchained, Dredd, The Expendables 2, The Five-Year Engagement, Frankenweenie, Gambit, Gangster Squad, GI Joe: Retaliation, The Grandmasters, Gravity, The Great Gatsby, Great Hope Springs, The Grey, I Hate You Dad, Haywire, The Hunger Games, Hyde Park on Hudson, Inside Llewyn Davis, Jack the Giant-Killer, John Carter, John Dies at the End, Lay the Favorite, Les Miserables, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Lock-Out, Looper, Magic Mike, The Master, Men in Black 3, Mirror Mirror, Moonrise Kingdom, Neighborhood Watch, Nero Fiddled, Only God Forgives, Outrun, Paranorman, The Pirates: Band of Misfits, Premium Rush, Prometheus, The Raid, Rampart, The Raven, Red Dawn, Red Hook Summer, Red Tails, Rock of Ages, Savages, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, The Silver-Linings Playbook, Sinister, Skyfall, Snow White and the Huntsman, Take This Waltz, This is Forty, The Three Stooges, Total Recall, Twilight: Breaking Dawn Pt. 2, Warm Bodies, The Wettest County, The Wicker Tree, The Woman in Black, World War Z, Wrath of the Titans, and…


No hat, no stick, no pipe, not even a pocket handkerchief! How can one survive?

These ARE Your Father’s Mutants.


Before we discuss that colorful, mutant-ridden year of 1962, journey if you will, faithful readers, back to June of 2005: Fresh off the impressive Layer Cake, director Matthew Vaughn decides to beg out of the ultimately atrocious X3: The Last Stand in pre-production, due mainly to the highly-compressed production schedule. In his own words, “‘What happened with X-Men 3 was I didn’t have the time to make the movie that I wanted to make.‘”

And so the studio decided to replace Vaughn with veteran hack Brett Ratner, who, true to form, subsequently delivered an egregious cash-grab of a movie. (To be fair, Ratner’s hands were tied by a terrible, death-heavy script that never should’ve been greenlighted.) Thus was destroyed much of the goodwill Fox had built up with Bryan Singer’s X-Men and X2: X-Men United, and the studio’s reputation was cemented as the place where otherwise decent comic book properties are squeezed for an opening weekend box office haul and then left to die. (See also: Daredevil, Elektra, and Tim Story’s two terrible Fantastic Four films.)

So when news broke in May of 2010 that director Matthew Vaughn would be returning to the X-franchise for X-Men: First Class, Fox’s Mad Men-era reboot of Marvel’s most famous mutants — due out the following summer! — the fanfolk out there had to wonder: Would the consistently solid Vaughn, now with Stardust and Kick-Ass under his belt, actually be able to churn out a high-quality X-film under even more ridiculous time constraints? The answer, happily, is yes. Jaunty and briskly paced throughout, this globe-trotting X-adventure has the comic book energy and sense of fun its predecessor lacked. And even with a bevy of C-lister mutants on the roster (more on them in a moment), X-Men: First Class could very well be the best X-film in the franchise. (It and X2 would have to slug that out in the Danger Room, I think.) If nothing else, it’s the second surprisingly solid Marvel film this summer — let’s hope Cap can make it a trifecta.

Just as J.J. Abrams and co. made the best of the Star Wars prequels in Star Trek, one great decision Vaughn and his six-deep story and writing team make is to unabashedly borrow from other genre influences. Vaughn himself has described the movie as “X-Men meets Bond,” and that he molded “a young Magneto on a young Sean Connery. He’s the ultimate spy — imagine Bond, but with superpowers.” And it works, in part because Fassbender, like the young Connery, has charisma to spare. For the first half-hour or so, it’s inordinately good fun watching the young mutant master of magnetism (and languages) channel Bond-by-way-of-Simon-Wiesenthal and scour the globe for ex-Nazis to get payback for his parents (not to mention, in a clever switcheroo, Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man.)

But 007 isn’t the only genre influence at work here. As it does in the comics, if you think about it, the earliest iteration of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters here also has a touch of the Hogwarts magic, especially when our first team of young mutants — here, Mystique, Beast, Havoc, Banshee, a Pixieish Angel, and Darwin — show each other their powers. And, of course, there’s more than a bit of an Obi-Wan-Anakin-and-the-Emperor triangle going on with Professor X, the big M, and Kevin Bacon’s impressive Big Bad, Sebastian Shaw, albeit with less whining and green screen-induced thousand yard stares.

Speaking of Bacon: You really can’t say enough about the exceptional cast of X-Men: First Class. It would be very easy to imagine this film falling on its face if folks other than he, Fassbender, James McAvoy, and Jennifer Lawrence were carrying the acting load here. As it is, you don’t get the sense from any of them that they feel like they’re slumming it here. (Sadly, one does gets that sense from January Jones as Emma Frost, a.k.a. the White Queen. She’s as wooden as Betty Draper and is…not good. The originally cast Alice Eve, or Rosamund Pike, would have been better.)

The only real qualm I have with X-Men: First Class, and it’s ultimately a minor one, is that this isn’t actually X-Men’s First Class — likely because Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Iceman made it into the first few films — and the roster they chose here feels rather budget. (Havok and Banshee, for example, have pretty much exactly the same power when you get right down to it, and other than Banshee’s “sonar” moment, everything they do here could’ve been done by Scott Summers.) Still, the beauty of the X-franchise is that the roster is always getting rejiggered in some way or another — even death is merely a setback — so they can always bring more intriguing heros on for X-Men: Second Class. Let’s just hope Fox has learned to keep Vaughn, or another director of his caliber, in the director’s (wheel)chair this time.

20th Century Marvels.


On the Marvel front, recent weeks has seen an impressive Super Bowl spot for Joe Johnston’s Captain America: The First Avenger and a decent trailer for Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men: Mad Men…err, X-Men: First Class. (Screenshots are here and here respectively — Note Hugo Weaving’s Red Skull unmasked.)

In case you were wondering, that’s skinny Steve Rogers (Chris Evans + CGI) above, and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) apparently enjoying some downtime below.

Also not to be forgotten, we have another official pic of Marc Webb’s Amazing Spiderman. Looks good in a dark room, at least.

Magneto, how does he work?


The best way of describing it is X-Men meets Bond, with a little bit of Thirteen Days thrown in for good measure. It’s set in the ’60s, and I basically molded a young Magneto on a young Sean Connery. He’s the ultimate spy — imagine Bond, but with superpowers.

Also backlogged for a week or so: After a not-so-great initial photo leak, Matthew Vaughn of Layer Cake, Stardust, and Kick-Ass talks about what to expect from his X-Men: First Class. “It’s got a lot of teenage angst. The Twilight girls will like it.” Hrm.

The Warriors Three (and a Team of X.)


Lots of action on the Marvel movie front this past week. The powers-that-be have granted us our first looks at Chris Evans as Captain America, and Andrew Garfield as the new Peter Parker, along with another shot of Chris Hemsworth as the Mighty Thor. Hmm…three-for-three, I’d say, although I still have a bad, straight-to-video-y feeling about the god of thunder.

Update: Just as I finished posting this, a promo image leaks from Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men First Class. From left to right: “Michael Fassbinder as Magneto, Rose Byrne as Moira MacTaggert, January Jones as Emma Frost, Jason Flemyng as Azazel, Nicholas Hoult as Beast, Lucas Till as Havoc, Zoe Kravitz as Angel Salvadore, Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique, and James MacAvoy as Charles Xavier.” Looks…crowded.

Goldeneye and Green Machines. [+X]

A publicity still from Kenneth Branagh’s Thor featuring Odin, Thor, and Loki, a.k.a. Anthony Hopkins, Chris Hemsworth, and Tom Hiddleston respectively, materializes on the tubes. Well, I’ll defer my full assessment until I’ve seen the characters move around under cinema lighting, but, to my mind, these outfits don’t look so hot. I guess they were going for Kirbyesque, but they look too plastic-y and space-age to me. (Also, Loki needs horns badly, but they’re too iconic not to show up in the final movie, I’d think.)

Elsewhere in comic-to-film-news, EW gets a look at Ryan Reynolds as Green Lantern (again, too early to tell, but this CGI-approach could work), and, in lieu of Eric Bana and Edward Norton, Mark Ruffalo may well be Hulking out for Joss Whedon’s Avengers. (Eh, fine.)

Update: Forgot to mention the recent goings-on with Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men: First Class. Joining McAvoy, Fassbender, and Eve as Xavier, Magneto, and Emma Frost are Kevin Bacon and Jennifer Lawrence (of Winter’s Bone) as the Big Bad (Mr. Sinister?) and Mystique respectively. Also along for the ride: A Single Man‘s Nicholas Hoult as Beast, Friday Night LightsCaleb Landry Jones as Banshee, Hannah Montana‘s Lucas Till as Havok, and purportedly Kick-Ass‘s Aaron Johnson as Cyclops, altho’ that last one is still up in the air.

Update 2: More Thor and Green Lantern images emerge.

Emma Let You Finish…

In the Jonah Hex review below, I mentioned the intriguing casting of James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender as Professor X and Magneto respectively. Now, Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men: First Class circles ’round its White Queen in Alice Eve of She’s Out of My League and Sex and the City 2. Haven’t seen either of those, but she looks the part…although I still might’ve gone with Rosamund Pike myself.

A Glutton for (Mutant) Punishment.

Vaughn’s involvement had been on and off, with negotiations resuming yesterday thanks to the involvement of producer Bryan Singer. Another factor had been Fox’s desire of wanting to have a finished film for next summer, making the search for a director who can deliver a quality film a priority.

Hmm…strange. Elsewhere in comic-to-film news, Layer Cake, Stardust, and Kick-Ass helmer Matthew Vaughn — who memorably left X3 before it became a Ratner hack job — is now back with the mutants for X-Men: First Class, i.e. the Professor X & Magneto backstory. I’d kinda soured on the X-franchise after the last two Fox ventures — never even saw Wolverine — but Vaughn instantly makes this interesting again.