REVIEW OF 2011

Ok so it’s time for the old annual review of the year here at Reel Important. The following thirteen films are my favourites from 2011. I couldn’t narrow it down to a Top 10, and the rough order of preference is likely to fluctuate at any given moment. Anyhow, these here are this year’s best to my reckoning. A couple of these have not had reviews on the blog yet, but are likely to follow.

1.    Super
2.    Submarine
3.    True Grit
4.    13 Assassins (a.k.a. Jûsan-nin no shikaku)
5.    Tucker & Dale Vs Evil
6.    Melancholia
7.    Super 8
8.    Beginners
9.    X-Men: First Class
10.    The Trip
11.    Attack The Block
12.    Captain America
13.    Thor

1. Super

James Gunn’s fantastically violent and hilarious vigilante / superhero movie. Left me grinning like an idiot and wanting to watch it all over again the minute I stepped outside the cinema.

2. Submarine

Richard Ayoade’s sublime directorial debut. A hugely enjoyable and funny coming of age story, set in 1980’s Wales. Wonderful stuff.

3. True Grit

Although technically a 2010 release, the Coen Brothers stunning western hit Australian shores in January so qualifies for the 2011 list.  A mesmerising central performance from Hailee Steinfeld either side of the excellent Jeff Bridges and the outstanding Matt Damon made this absolutely riveting stuff. It is nigh-on perfection.

4. 13 Assassins (a.k.a. Jûsan-nin no shikaku)
Takashi Miike’s awesome samurai scrap sees the eponymous 13 Assassins sent on a suicide mission to kill a brutal feudal warlord. Thrillingly exciting and joyously violent, Mr Miike considers it a ‘family film’. Despite what he says, don’t take your Nan to see it.

5. Tucker & Dale Vs Evil

Fantastic, funny twist on the college-kids-attacked-by-hillbillies genre. Slipped under the radar of most, yet deserves to be seen by all. Review to follow.

6. Melancholia

Lars Von Trier’s polarising, 2 hour-plus study of a woman with chronic depression, set against the backdrop of catastrophic global annihilation. Dunst, Gainsbourg and Sutherland were all incredible in this movie and I loved it. Review to follow, hopefully.

7. Super 8

JJ Abrams and Steven Spielberg channel Stand By Me, Close Encounters and E.T. and come up with a charming, heartfelt coming of age/creature feature medley.

8. Beginners

Endearing comedic drama following Ewan McGregor embarking on a new relationship in the aftermath of his father’s recent death. Warmed the cockles and tugged the heartstrings without being too saccharine.

9. X-Men: First Class

Rollicking good fun origin story; shifting the excitement meter back into territory last seen in X-Men 2, and helping aid the suppression of X-Men 3 and Wolverine memories.
(I still have a review of this that’s only about ¼ completed. I hope it sees the light of day in 2012)

10. The Trip

BBC TV series pared down to feature length. Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon traverse the Lake District in a 4x4, eating in posh restaurants and trying to outdo each other’s Michael Caine impressions (sounds like an Alan Partridge TV pitch!). Gently hilarious. It made me miss the U.K.

11. Attack The Block

Joe Cornish of Adam & Joe fame directs his debut movie, as a bunch of London kids defend their estate from alien attack. Played out as more serious sci-fi than broad comedy, and with a set of principal characters that are largely hard to like, it defied some expectations and garnered some not undeserved comparisons to early John Carpenter.

12. Captain America

Marvel geared itself up for the Avengers with a nifty, Red Skull smashing, WWII winning, origin story spectacle that laid off any distasteful patriotism in favour submarine punching heroics and 1940’s ‘derring-do’!

13. Thor

Flash Gordon-lite as Hemsworth, Hopkins, Skarsgard and Portman make a fine fist of one of Marvel’s less appealing heroes. It’s no Iron Man, but it is another splendidly entertaining entry in the Marvel canon. (Another half finished review lurks, unpublished, on this blog.)

Honourable mentions:

I enjoyed the slow burn adaptation of Murakami’s Norwegian Wood; Snowtown, although very good indeed, just failed to make my list on account of the fact it is so grim I can’t imagine when I would want to sit down and watch it again; Natalie Portman going berserk in Darren Aranovsky’s Black Swan was certainly of note; The Inbetweeners Movie was a fitting swansong, although let’s be quite clear that the whole thing has run its course now; and Rise of the Planet of the Apes soothed away the pain of Tim Burton’s ill conceived remake.

Other films I enjoyed from 2010, too late to make it on to last year's list, included Alexandre Aja’s grisly Piranha reboot; Emma Stone comedy vehicle Easy A, replete with Stanley Tucci scene-stealing; and Sally Hawkins proving that it is flat out impossible for her to make bad film, with the warmly enjoyable Made In Dagenham.

Worst: The Future

I’m not sure that I can properly convey, within the confines of the English language, just quite how much I despised The Future. Having been utterly revolted by it at M.I.F.F. this year, the reviews upon its general release seemed to be largely positive, thereby proving beyond any doubt that people have absolutely no taste whatsoever. It is the nuclear bomb of cinema – humanity wishes it could be uninvented because we are stuck with it and it’s ruining lives. A strong, strong contender for being quite possibly the worst film I have ever seen (bearing in mind that I HAVE seen Crash).

SUPER 8

JJ Abrams and Steven Spielberg's Super 8 has been touted around as Stand by Me meets The Goonies meets E.T. via everything else in between, and whilst those movies would seem to be disparate poles apart on the face of it, the reality is that this mash up works really rather well indeed. Super 8 is a great fun adventure ride with a soft, sympathetic centre.

I'll be frank straight off the bat though, I'm no fan of JJ Abrams whatsoever. Cloverfield was fun I admit, but he didn't direct it. His Mission Impossible 3 was boring, I couldn't give a rat's ass about dismal shit like Lost, and his Star Trek reboot (although I have warmed to it on secondary viewings) was a Star Trek movie made for people that don't like Star Trek (i.e. bad to the point of being offensive).  Spielberg on the other hand is a different kettle of fish. He’s very easy to knock and take pot shots at, but the geezer knows his onions, and the day I badmouth the man responsible for Raiders of the Lost Ark is the day them pigs start flying! So yes the creative forces behind this have many varying, different degrees of quality between them.

After a poignant opening, we meet Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney), son of a small town policeman trying to deal with the premature death of his mother in a tragic work accident. 4 months on from the tragedy and he's being recruited by his movie obsessed best buddy Charles (Riley Griffiths) to help him complete a Super 8 zombie movie over the school holidays in order to eventually enter it in a competition; getting all their mates on board including new friend Alice (Elle Fanning). Alice is the daughter of the man Joe's father holds responsible for his wife's death and so both father's are dead set against their friendship.  The kids set to work making their movie anyway, filming after school and in the evenings. One evening they all head off to the train tracks to film a new scene and it at this point the film diverges from one genre to the other. I'd be lying if I didn't say I wasn't curious to see this film without the extraterrestrial aspects. On it's own as a coming of age tale this could indeed have been very interesting and is clearly where all the Stand By Me comparisons are coming from. Nonetheless the alien element is cracking fun and the film is not diminished by it. It's just different, and takes the film off on quite a tangent.

At the train track filming the kids witness a spectacular train crash. In a stunning set piece, carriages are flung far and wide, things explode, and ultimately a rather aggressive alien is unleashed. In the aftermath of the crash they find their school science teacher has a long held secret regarding some top secret government work, and gradually strange things start happening in town. Generators and microwaves and car engines are all stolen and every single dog in the area runs away!

Now from this point on the film is not perfect, but it is above all else a lot of fun. In particular the design of the alien is very uninspired. Looking like a mix of something from Men In Black, and a Transformer it's poorly rendered cgi means the creature leaves little to no impression on the viewer. The anchor of the film is left to be the kids and their friendship, and fortunately this gets us through! That's not to give the impression that everything involving the alien is bad though. There are some cracking set pieces, from the train crash to a bus attack to a suburban war zone; and once the alien was unleashed we feel more like we're in a Spielberg film. There's some classic Spielberg-ian show and tell going on. Show you everything but tell you nothing. A cherry picker scene amongst the tree tops (with an unseen force the other side of the trees being very reminiscent of some Jurassic Park velociraptor interfaces); or the gas station incident with the local sheriff, both straight out of Spielberg’s big book of classics.

There is much fun to be had with Super 8. I saw it on a grim, wintery Friday afternoon. At a loose end with the afternoon off work, Super 8 was the perfect way to spend the time.

Super 8? More like Super Great!

IMDB: Super 8