With Part 1 out of the way, in which I talked about my feeling on the year as a whole and the good and bad trends that in my view defined it, the time has come to say fair's fair, to pay my due now and share my view about the best, the worst and the disappointments of 2011.
First off, here are those that I anticipated seeing, looked forward to seeing and then when I saw them was left with disappointment, a bitter after taste for any movie going person, you can't taste but you know it's there and you it know it to be true.
Cars 2: Disappointing suits this movie to a tee, I kind of enjoyed the first Cars film and from the handful of previews Disney released for the film this one looked like a lot of fun, high action and energy done with that certain Pixar spice would have you thinking "Home Run" right?
Wrong, sadly and the reason it feels so disappointing is that it wasn't fun at all and Pixar just didn't really know how to tell their story and make it mesh together into a cohesive and satisfying whole, normally Pixar could pull that off in their sleep but here they just fumbled the ball big time and left a lot of its fans and movie critics as a whole shocked as a result, but as someone once said "Nothing Lasts Forever" and Pixar will have to do a lot with the upcoming Brave to prove they still have the magic formula and that this movie was merely a bump in the road rather than the start of a long term decline.
Green Lantern: Again like Cars 2 this film had disappointment written all over it, I was really looking forward to this one as it looked good from the previews I saw and I like Martin Campbell as an action director, who unlike Michael Bay can actually shoot his action scenes coherently and not move his camera here, there and everywhere in almost EVERY. SINGLE. SHOT.
But what made Campbell's action work stand out was missing from this movie and it has the feel of a film that was ripped out of his hands and taken over by a studio committee going through the check list of what looked like a film that would take a killing in the box office, well the opposite happened and the film died there instead, maybe Warner Brothers and DC might want to heed the lessons of their recent Batman films and actually let their director do the job they bloody well paid him to do and not second guess his every move, hopefully Campbell will bounce back from this disaster sooner rather than later though sadly that will be easier said than done.
The Adventures of Tintin: Easily thundering typhoons above the disappointments of last year was Tintin, the long awaited collaboration between Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson.
I was SO excited for this film, probably more than most in a long time having been a big fan of the Tintin books and cartoon series from the 90s so any Tintin film was going to be high on my must watch list but after seeing the film I felt a sense of anticlimax, in that my long wait for it turned out to not mean anything in the end, a sense that the world as I saw it felt that tiny bit different somehow, it's hard to explain but I know it to be there and to be true, I'm just that certain of it but I suppose it just comes with the territory sometimes.
That was the year's most disappointing out of the way, let's get onto the worst of the year, the ones that made even the best of us recoil in anger and kick in the balls simply for taking away precious time and money that we'll not only never get back but give us the feeling that we could have done something special with it.
One Day: Easily one of the worst movies I had the displeasure to sit through all year was the rom com One Day based on the bestselling book.
The reasons this is one of the worst movies all year are threefold first Anne Hathaway's appalling British accent which went here, there and everywhere and ended up more like an impression of Mrs. Potts and THIS is the new Selina Kyle, oh great hopefully she doesn't cock that up too.
The second was the endless misery and drinking throughout the whole film, for fucks sake people I'm really getting annoyed at this I mean Jim Sturgess's character seems to be drinking in almost every scene.
And the third was the whole thing of "If you did that thing in the first place" syndrome, I mean if the whole thing with the two leads had happened earlier everything would've been better, you wouldn't have the "I need a beer, 2 bucks a glass" parts of the film nor would you have the "oh dear, I knew this would happen, it always does" scenes, makes you appreciate just how good When Harry met Sally...
Source Code: A controversial choice to be sure as many others liked it a lot more than me but I did not as it was a film that wanted its audience to play along but had no real confidence in itself to do the same thing.
Apart from that the film's script was also full of plot holes, endless questions regarding the who, what, where and why that just get annoying VERY quickly as well as the film's insulting ending that's put on there purely to try and market the film towards a more mainstream audience that want more of a "love is in the air, every sight and every sound" style of an ending, give me a fucking break, at least Chris Nolan's Inception one of 2010's best movies had a sense of style and confidence about it, this one just feels like the bastard step child of that film.
Transformers - Dark of the Moon: Easily the worst of the worst, the bottom of the pile and the top of the junk pile was this movie.
And the reasons this is the worst film of the year for me are a few, how few are they, let thee count the ways:
The overall awfulness of it: The overriding opinion I had regarding this film was that it was awful, nothing in this movie made any logical sense, there was no real heart to any of it, everything moves so quickly you can't take it in nor can you really sit back and enjoy the scenes on screen, the complete disregard for anything resembling a storyline but worse worse worse of all was the endlessness of the entire film, the whole thing rambles on from one scene to another when some serious editing was needed to get it down to 2 hours or under, there was just no reason at all for a Transformers movie to be 2 hours and 40 minutes long but then that's what happened when you keep saying "yes" to this bozo rather than actually growing some balls and saying "No, this is too long, cut it down" or "No, this isn't funny, try something else."
And speaking of Mr. Bay, this leads me to my next point which is the dishonest spin that was employed in promoting the film, when talking about the release of the last Transformers film Revenge of the Fallen in the DVD Making Of, Bay took pot shots at the films critics, effectively saying they were wrong.
Well as it turned out, when that same public heard about this movie being made, they started to groan and both Bay and the series' main actor Shia LaBeouf were going on the record saying lines like these.
"We missed the mark"
"It was crap"
"You couldn't tell what was going on"
"There was a writers strike and we had to get a story together in 3 weeks"
"We let everyone down"
"This time however, we got it right"
Wrong wrong wrong, both Bay and LaBeouf lied to their audience, pure and simple and yet we all fell for it by going to see the film based on the lies you've read above, this really makes me mad, luckily most saw right through the lies and said the film was crap and for the record, I will be forever grateful I didn't see it in 3D as if I did I would've been A LOT harsher on the film.
But wait folks, I ain't done yet as to make matters worse, the first trailer for the new Transformers game Fall of Cybertron debuted last month and it looked fantastic, it was dark, exciting and heartfelt, none of which were in any of Bay's movies at all.
And best of all, it has a game director (Matt Tieger) who is actually sincere about atoning for the mistakes of his previous Transformers game, War for Cybertron and is finding various ways to correct for it in terms of creating new enemies, weapons and more, but then High Moon Studios know what they are doing, Bay and Co do not.
But enough rambling about the worst, lets turn the dial towards sunny days, clear blue skies, light winds, rainbows and lollipops by which I mean the best of the year.
3. Captain America: Coming in 3rd place is that Star Spangled Man with a Plan, Captain America.
The reason this is 3rd on my list is that I had so much fun watching this movie and was reminded very much of a modern day Raiders of the Lost Ark, which is no surprise given that Joe Johnston who directed the film worked on Raiders also as well as directing 1991's The Rocketeer which could easily go on a double bill with this movie, the highlight of the film without a doubt was the "Star Spangled Man" song composed by Alan Menken, hearing that reminded me very much of "Prince Ali" from Aladdin in terms of its lyrics and overall style.
2. Senna: Racing into 2nd place is the Formula 1 documentary Senna, based on the life and times of F1 driver Ayrton Senna from Brazil.
What makes this doco so good and transcend its genre is Senna himself, his life and times are perfect big screen material, his strong belief in the love of God, his ruthlessness and determination on the track and the rivalry he had with French driver Alain Prost, which makes for a damn good hero/villain dynamic if there ever was one, not to mention that extraordinary F1 footage of high speed excitement, exhilarating turns and gasp inducing crashes which remind you that this is the real deal, not some fancy computer graphic.
1. Super 8: Yes folks, coming in pole position for 2011 was JJ Abrams's collaboration with Spielberg, Super 8
Simply put, this was a wonderful film, full of danger, excitement, emotion and wonder, Kyle Chandler, Elle Fanning and the group of young boys were fantastic as was the score by Michael Giacchino possibly the first composer since John Williams to truly understand his style and bring it to a new generation to cinemagoers, though I must also mention the huge improvement in Abrams's direction, a far cry from his wobble cam mess of Star Trek, his action staging and editing seems much improved and I hope it continues long into the future.
So there you have it folks, my look back at 2011 in a cinema near you and me, hopefully 2012 is a good year also though with Ridley Scott's Prometheus, his first sci-fi film since Blade Runner, the Fire I mean the Dark Knight Rises, Marvel's the Avengers, Skyfall the new 007 film and Part 1 of the Hobbit, expectations will be high for each but will they reach them or fall doing so.
As someone once said, Only Time will Tell and I'll see you at the movies.
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