Movies of 2011

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Just gorgeous, looks and sounds amazing and is one of the great love letters to music

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Watched this in Hi-Def on a 76” inch TV with a bunch of friends at about 3am on New Years Day. Makes me pine for the days that Murphy was genuinely funny. A-

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A perennial favourite, I kind of love the film but loathe its fan base.

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Love this film, it's such a great display of technical filmmaking and even though I have a few issues with the nature of the story it's got a lot of heart and a lot of style.

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Still a lot of fun despite a few odd decisions. Dafoe is probably the film's secret weapon even if he spends half the movie obscured by his costume.

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Spider-Man 2 is still my favourite superhero film and watching it again does little to change that. Just a perfect mix of heart, humour and action.

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I love elements of the film and individual scenes and sequences are perhaps the best in the entire trilogy but it feels edited out of sequence and never really holds together and it’s undone by a largely wretched final twenty minutes (but I love the Jazz club dance)

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Feels more like a comedy with a few action sequences than an actual action comedy. Still Shane Black’s script is funny and Willis and Wayans make a fun team, but it feels like the least of Black’s films

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Weightless and inert and the songs aren't particularly good. Just generally disappointing aside from some fantastic design work. When compared to Coraline by Henry Sellick you start to realise who the real mastermind behind A Nightmare Before Christmas actually was.

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Feels like a natural companion piece to Elephant, where by focusing on the banality of an important, and terrible day, it helps to give a human face to a tragedy. Really gripping stuff and fantastic central performance by Michael Pitt.

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Still a lot of fun, but it’s telling that it works better when Tony’s in his lab than when he’s busting heads.

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An all time favourite, the emotional beats still work, the script still sparkles, the film still looks flat out gorgeous.

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Why can’t Singer make more films like this, so great and noiry. Although it's very much a one time only film, watching it again sort of feels odd due to the final reveal invalidating a lot of what you've just connected with.

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Enjoyed this way more than I thought, really great showcase for Sam Rockwell as a lead and Clooney as a director.

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Loved this. Fan of Danny Boyle anyways but I liked how the relatively low budget tempered Boyle’s flair and focused the film on the fantastic script

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Really brutal and visceral, but perhaps a little mawkish towards the end.

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Really sweet and funny Italian comedy, kind of a throwback at times but with some stunning cinematography and a lot of great performers.

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Loved this, feel like it would make a great double bill with THE GRAND ILLUSION.

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Not in the pantheon of good Bay films (like THE ROCK and BAD BOYS 2) and it feels like a collection of sketches with little connective tissue. Fantastic set pieces though

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Surprised by how much I liked this. Just works incredibly well and looks amazing on Blu-Ray. Robert Patrick is the star of the show though and Hi-Def really accentuates his fantastic performance.

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A lot of fun, but sort of meanders towards its climax. Great cast elevate it and Patrick and Evans are the MVPs

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It reminds me a lot of Daybreakers in that it does a fantastic job of world building and injecting some life into clichéd ideas. It’s also well served by Jude Law and Forest Whitaker who elevate a lot of the material. Let down by a bit of a clichéd, and cheap, denouement and a very flabby second act, but some of the set pieces in the film are just mental. In particular a weird homage to Oldboy involving hacksaws, knives and hammers is probably one of the most brutal fight sequences I’ve seen since Tom Yum Goong. Also loved the use of music, some fantastic audio choices and it’s always nice to see UNKLE get a little love. But the Director directed the shit out of the film, just looks and feels fantastic even if it’s ultimately hollow.

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A comic masterpiece. An amazing blend of hilarious scripting, absurd acting and tensionless scares. Whalberg and Deschanel make the worst of a terrible script, sapping any semblance of humanity or rationality from their characters and their joined by a cast of characters defined solely by their inevitable deaths. At 90 minutes it is overlong, but it's worth the slog for its moments of glorious, grandstanding, stupidity. n

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Sam Mendes and Conrad Hall build this amazing, captivating, emotive world and then don’t find anything to do in it. Some great performances from Newman, Craig and Hanks almost distract from the languid pacing.

Thematically it’s a very slight film which would sing if it was a little shorter, as it is the pace kills the thing and nearly undoes a lot of good work. The amazing score by Thomas Newman both helps and hinders the film, giving it a dreamy quality which almost lulls the viewer.

Still the first and last fifteen minutes are kind of amazing, it's such a shame the film can't crystalise into something great.

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An intriguing, urbane and fun look at the rise and metamorphosis of the slasher film. Features some great interviews with legends such as Carpenter and Savini and is chock full of great anecdotes and fantastic clips.

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Fascinating look into a complex designed to house radioactive waste. Feels almost like a Werner Herzog film at times. Lots of shots of underground corridors and an odd lack of scope do hurt the film a little though.

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Lazenby has the dubious honour of being my least favourite Bond in one of my favourite Bond films. Despite my general nonchalance towards the antipodean variant on Bond I kind of adore On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. In contrast to Lazenby’s kind of dorky portrayal of the character the film itself is kind of cool with a style and tone like a pure distillation of James Bond without reverting to the usual Bond tropes. Even the music is cool with the opening credits scored to John Barry’s groovy titular theme, which would become almost as iconic as the main Bond theme and a genuinely great use of Louis Armstrong. What OHMSS has going for it, more than anything else, is an unusual cadence.

Its loser and freer than pretty much any other entry in the series, with Lazenby playing Bond far more amoral than Connery. He’s a bit of a fuck up, and a bit of a sleaze in the film, but it works to give Lazenby a certain edge. His complicity with shadier characters and aptitude for arrogance and petulance almost makes him feel like a forebear to the harder Bond of the modern films.

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Kind of terrible, feels like we're watching a bunch of people being antagonistic for no real reason. Just never bought into the Top Gun ideal.

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Kind of took me by surprise how much I enjoyed this. Once the film goes into full montage mode it's just deleriously entertaining. I could do without the slower start as it feels like the film is designed to be a shot of pure adrenaline. I also found myself more sympathetic to Drago rather than Rocky.

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So dumb, but so fun. This is probably the leanest, meanest Arnold film and it is just a blast to watch. The final thirty minutes is one of my all time favourite action sequences. It's also got a fantastic score by James Horner and fun turns from Vernon Wells and Dan Hedaya as the mail villains.

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So BORING. Edward Norton and Eva Green are perhaps the MVPs of the film, but I'd have preferred the film to deal more with the political stuff around Baldwin than an hour long, very unexciting, battle sequence.

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More like a fever dream than anything else, Herzog builds an insistent sense of claustrophobic dread. Klaus Kinski in particular is a highlight as Count Orlock, managing to avoid his usual psychosis and quirks and deliver a creepy and intimidating performance.

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Way better than I was expecting. Hampered a little by lack of budget, but this is a fun B-Movie elevated massively by a great script and a cast of utterly fantastic genre actors. Virgina Madsen, Eric Stoltz and Elias Koteas all do great work but Christopher Walken as the main villain of the film steals the show. Viggo Mortensen with a small role as Lucifer is extraordinary as well, doing a lot with an exceptionally small amount of screen time.

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A fantastically tense thriller. Does amazing work building up tension without any real action and is a great showcase for Ewan McGreggor, Pierce Brosnan and Olivia Williams. It's nice seeing McGreggor with a decent script again and it's probably one of his finest roles since his work with Boyle. Brosnan meanwhile brings a frustrated tension to his character, portraying Lang like a trapped animal.

With an amazing score, some beautiful cinematography and a fantastic final fifteen minutes this is probably one of the best thrillers in a while.

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Bleak, frentic, hilarious, brutal.

Still one of the best films of the 1990s and probably the overall strongest work by Danny Boyle. It’s a film populated by scumbags, set in the midst of a cultural quagmire and yet it feels utterly vital. Combining an amazing soundtrack with a lyrical translation of Irvine Welsh’s original book the film just pulses with energy and never shies away from the harsher realities of heroin addiction. The entire cast is excellent but Jonny Lee Miller and Ewan McGreggor are perhaps the stand outs, perfectly capturing the intelligence and malaise of Welsh’s characters. Robert Carlyle is bruisingly terrifying as the psychopathic Begbie but the real star is Boyle’s assured direction.

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SUNSHINE, on second viewing, is genuinely great. I know a bunch of people HATE the third act but I kind of like how the struggle for survival in the film essentially changes from being pragmatic to philosophical. Also the score is amazing. Just gorgeous.

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Kind of amazing. Probably one of the best Pacino performances I've seen. He's amazingly complex as Sonny. The film itself is fantastic, just tensely shot, nicely scathing of people and society and refreshingly funny. It's film making at it's finest.

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To overblown for my tastes. I'm usually a fan of Oliver Stone, but his characters just feel screechy in this. It's a great performance by Tom Cruise, but he doesn't have the presence to really make the time spent with a character as repulsive as Kovic bearable. Stone's direction and in particular his use of colour is fantastic, but there's an overwhelming sense of melancholy to the film which kind of clashes with the style of the movie.

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Halfway through the film I was getting worried that this might be the worst misstep Weir, a personal favourite director of mine, had made. At the end of the film despite a few misgivings I'd rank this up there with the best of his work. It's definitely better than FEARLESS at least.

The problem is that the first half is just twitchy and rushed feeling. Despite the plot being relatively simple and being the sort of thing that would favour lots of character development the film feels populated by ciphers. Essentially the film is about a bunch of political (and non-political) prisoners escaping from a Gulag in Siberia in 1939 and walking to India. However the film only really comes alive and makes you feel for these characters after we've spent at least two thirds of the film with them. The problem is that the editing murders the film at times, scenes just going on a second too long and not really connecting with what went before or what goes after. Essentially the first hour of the film feels like it has no connective tissue and as such the ardous trek through Russia feels airless and weightless. You don't get a sense of time or place and whilst Weir films the vistas of Siberia with great aplomb the panoramas ultimately outweigh the cast.

The cast is injected with life by the late arrival of Saoirse Ronan who breathes life into the film and wakes Ed Harris from the hypnotic stupor he's in for the first hour. Ronan gives a sense of warmth and community to the group and it's through her that we start to actually, y'know, like the people we're following. Which is good because the second half is almost completely reliant on you rooting for these guys as they go through hell after hell to finish their journey.

Ronan's reinvogaration of the cast really helps the film storm from a limp to a sprint.

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It's a middling Fincher film. It's nowhere near as good as his classics like Se7en, Fight Club and Zodiac, but it's well above some of his more soulless affairs like Benjamin Button and Panic Room. Michael Douglas is definitely the MVP of the film, but Fincher shows a gift for Hitchcockian suspense and there's a fantastic sense of humour that runs through it's heart. It's also possibly the most positive Fincher take on humanity and the ending feels uncharacteristically uplifting.

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A genuinely fascinating look at the making of Darkness on the Edge of Town. First tracing the legal wranglings that stopped Bruce Springsteen making a record immediately following the runaway success of Born to Run and then showcasing the meticulous writing and recording process of the album this documentary is remarkably candid and full of fantastic clips from the production. In fact it's worth watching just to see Bruce and Steve working on soon to be aborted songs on the piano. Well worth watching for any fans of Springsteen or music in general.

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Slow as molasses, populated with vacuous people and made with an almost sociopathic disregard for humanity. The main issue with the film is that it's neither interesting or cinematic, in fact it's a generally quite flat with the occasional great moment.

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Slow as molasses, populated with vacuous people and made with an almost sociopathic disregard for humanity. However the difference between Armageddon and Independence Day is that Michael Bay has a filmmakers eye, if not heart, and fully embraces how innately silly the film is. It's filled with great, quirky, performances and just has a tone that is almost comic book like.

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A charming and genuinely funny film which showcases the genuine talents of Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush. Firth in particular has slowly being building himself a catalogue of fantastic leading performances and whilst his performance in this as Prince Albert doesn't feel as nuanced as his role in A Single Man it's still a captivating central performance. He's helped a lot by assured direction from Tom Hooper and great supporting turns by Helena Bonham-Carter (delivering the most interesting work she's done in a decade), Guy Pierce, Michael Gambon and Derek Jacobi. The film's secret weapon however is Rush who never overshadows Firth but provides a fantastic counterpoint to the lead performance.

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Just a fantastic farce. A delightful madcap comedy which focuses on a somewhat jaded publisher. Every Wednesday he and his friends hold an idiot dinner in which they bring the stupidest person they can find to be mocked. Having found what he believes to be the prize idiot of all he invites him to his home and then watches as his life slowly unravels. Blessed with a kind heart the idiot tries to help as best he can and each attempt to help exacerbates an already out of control situation.

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Holds up better than I expected it to, but it's still kind of not great. Dolph Lungdren makes the film work, but in reality it's an action movie with kind of insubstantial action. One of the best surprises is Ally Walker who is a lot of fun as the main romantic interest.

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The first film was a genuine surprise. I was expecting crap and I got greatness. This is just depressing and inert. Even Walken seems to not really care. It just feels like it has no style or sense of itself.

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Genuinely fascinating. Werner Herzog travels to an island recently evacuated due to an upcoming volcanic eruption. His roving camera catches a deserted town and a sea full of dead snakes. The footage is haunting and Herzog's historical research on a similar subject is intriguing but it feels more like an exercise than a fully formed film.

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There's a moment close to the start of this documentary which switches its tone from a standard documentary to an almost perfect representation of Werner Herzog as a documentary maker. Starting with a brief montage about the birth of manned flight and the death of Zeppelins the documentary quickly cuts into the lab of a British inventor named Graham Dorrington. Dorrington gives us a tour around the lab, his energy infectious like a children's TV presenter as he takes us through experiments designed to test his prototype flying machine. Dorrington stops his preamble and beams into the camera waiting for a cut, Herzog keeps filming and asks about two missing fingers on Dorrington's hand. Dorrington explains about an accident when he was a boy with a rocket and is obviously flustered, finally saying "and that's why I can't be an astronaut" his eyes wide with fear and apprehension.

That gets to the heart of The White Diamond which is one part a documentary about an attempt to fly a prototype air ship across the canopies of an African jungle and one part examination of a man who is haunted by past mistakes. There's an ethereal quality to Dorrington at times and Herzog knows exactly when to push his subject and exactly when to allow his camera to rove elsewhere. Capturing the characters who make up the local populace to better flesh out the feel of the film. Like Grizzly Man and the majority of Herzog's fictional work this film is largely about obsession and about the loss of sight of a man on a mission, Dorrington almost oblivious to the stories that Herzog keeps finding around them.

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Just an amazing experience and a fantastic showcase for the particular talents of John Ford and John Wayne. John Wayne is perfect as the man almost out of time, hardened and resolved to a point that clashes with his younger companions idealism. John Ford shoots the film with an understated humanity, playing out scenes which could be melodramatic with restraint and allowing humour and pathos to swell naturally from his script.