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 (M.I.F.F.)

My final film seen at this years M.I.F.F. festival turned out to be the pick of the bunch. Super is 96 minutes of 100% joy. James Gunn’s violent, funny, blackly comic affair delivers on all counts and then some.

Super is the story of Frank (Rainn Wilson), a mildly depressed diner chef, who loses his wife (a recovering addict, played by Liv Tyler) to a shady drug dealing strip club owner (Kevin Bacon). In order to save her and in the midst of his depression Frank decides, with the help of his friend Libby, to become a masked Superhero vigilante. The premise will of course draw comparisons to Kick Ass, but let me assure you that right off the bat, Super is the vastly superior movie. The World it inhabits is our reality. There is no fantasy Gotham-like world here. This is the World outside your door right now.  When the Crimson Bolt hits somebody in the face with a pipe wrench, you know that they feel it!  The movie is flat out hilarious, and punctuated by bouts of sudden and brutal violence; so it is by turn riotously funny and grimly violent.  It has it all, basically.

From the moment it kicks off with a GLORIOUS, kinetic, animated credits sequence, you know that you’re in for a wild ride. It never lets up and left me striding out of the cinema with a grin a mile wide and blabbering like an excited kid.

Super was written and directed by James Gunn, who made the criminally underrated Slither. Slither was for all intents and purposes a fairly shameless ‘homage’ to Night of the Creeps, as alien space slugs invaded the Earth and took control of its inhabitants; but it worked in much the same way as Super does by delivering on both the horror and comedy aspects and managing the tone so it didn’t veer too heavily in one direction.

Cast wise, it couldn’t get any better. Quality all round.  Rainn Wilson, who most will know as Dwight from The Office, is superb. Ellen Page as Libby/Boltie is incredible. Together they lynchpin this movie into complete awesomeness.  Kevin Bacon turns in a suitably slimey performance as the villan, Jock. Bubbles from The Wire is in it! Nathan Fillion shows up as God bothering television superhero, The Holy Avenger (and is fantastic as always); and Michael Rooker plays an intimidating henchman, as only Michael Rooker can (I wonder if Michael Rooker is that intimidating in real life? Something about his movies always makes me think that he must be!)

I really don’t want to say too much more about what happens in this film, lest it diminish some of the outright DELIGHT this film dishes out. Super never really lapses into genre predictability and there are some real unpredictable surprises in store for those of you that get on board with it. Suffice to say the sight of a man in a home made costume, delivering vigilante justice, one brutal pipe wrench beating at a time is a joy to behold.

Super is the kind of movie that makes you want to rush out and tell everyone how great it was. And if they let me decide the Oscar winners this year, Super will win everything (I’ll even find a way to give it best documentary and best foreign film!).

It would be an absolute fucking epic tragedy if this film ends up living in the shadow of Kick Ass or falling into underrated obscurity like Slither. Go see this film, then make your friends go watch it, and then make THEIR friends go watch it.

On the MIFF rating system I attempted to give this film 10 stars out of 5, but mathematical convention prevented me from doing so. Therefore I had to rate it 5 stars out of 5.

IMDB: Super