Ranking my Movies of 2011

Stylish, sexy, slow burn with hyper violence. A real one of a kind film.

Who knew the most innovative use of 3D since Avatar would be spent on ancient cave walls? A transfixing transporting experience.

Marshall Curry once again is able to document a very human story while touching on very large and important themes.

Pure escapism. Great animation, the best usage of motion capture I've ever seen and great characterizations make this a must see.

It's a bit spotty but when it's firing on all cylinders The Muppets is by far the most entertaining film of the year.

A stylish, svelte flight of fancy. Paris is fantastically realized and the movie does have pertinent things to say about living in the past and being blind to the present. The only thing holding it back is some very obvious dialogue exchanges and some shaky Woody Allen specials in the characterizations of some of the women and the schlubs that love them.

The rare film with the ability to make an entire theater wash their hands after using the bathroom. Like getting SARS but without the threat of death.

A strange, bizarre often unnerving portrait of tabloid legend Joyce McKinney. The focus of the film is all over the place but it is always fascinating.

This documentary on the life of Brazilian Formula One racer manages to be both exhilarating and harrowing at the same time. It is both a celebration of Senna's life and a no holds barred look into the incredibly dangerous world of open wheel racing.

Buck is slightly uneven, but the thoroughly human story it tells of one of the last real cowboys is fantastic. It really gets into the specifics of what makes Buck tick. The emotional core is heavily weighted towards the end of the film when we learn that Buck can't save everything but it is still a great documentary.

This is essentially Tarsem doing 300 with blander characterization. That being said his visual film making ability shames Zak Snyder. It is an insane feast for the eyes.

If JJ Abrams wasn't so monster focused in the second half this would be up there with the classic adventure fare of the 80s.

Absolutely insane action sequences. And, based on the odd places and decisions the characters make, equally clinically insane plot lines.

This is the baseball film for people who don't like baseball. For a baseball lover...that "Natural" moment was so insignificant in the long run.

It might never be as smart as its sci-fi infused universe and bizarre back story might beg you to believe but when you go into Green Lantern with low expectations and Thor as a comparison it might surprise you with just how enjoyable it is. It looks good, Ryan Reynolds is charismatic and the characters are shallow, but visually interesting. It's not Shakespeare but its not a Kenneth Branagh comic book film either.

I had high hopes for this one and at times it delivers. A ton of the movie, however, is plain jane action sequences filled with unmemorable characters. I like the humor and building climbing but those are the highlights. Still the best of the series though.

It's not the slickest documentary and it uses manipulative facts and data almost constantly but it will irk you and make you think about coal energy. Again. I wish it was more focused though. The film alternates between vilifying Massey industries, to calling for wind energy to decrying school cancer. Messages can get lost when your scope is that big.

Starts off as an interesting examination of man's oddly differing perspective on "wild" and "pet" animals but degenerates into a generic action flick towards the end. There's also a ton of fan service here that people without a deep seeded interest in the franchise won't appreciate.

Pulpy comic goodness with some solid action sequences.

A very intense look at the artistic Woodman family especially focusing on their daughter who committed suicide before being recognized as a great photographic artist. This movie is mostly told through interviews with The Woodman family and the main attraction is just how bizarre they are. At one point it seems like the family deeply resents the success their daughter who killed herself has achieved after life. It's a portrayal of a strange bizarro world that is broken up a bit by an end piece that focuses on the art of the "lesser" Woodmans.

Bizarreness. Never makes total sense but decaying desert towns have never looked this good.

This is an interesting look at one of the biggest public housing failures ever. Pruitt-Igoe was built to revitalize St. Louis' urban areas but instead became widely considered a blight on the city before being torn down in 1972. This documentary looks into the possible reasons behind that failure. Its interesting in how it takes you beyond obvious surface effects but never really takes sides with what led to the breakdown. The interviews are especially good but in the end I didn't feel as if I had a clearer understanding of why Pruitt-Igoe failed. This ambivalent tone might be the point but I want answers!

It looks pretty amazing visually and the set pieces kick butt. Sadly, despite repeated desperate attempts at humor, this is one of the least funny action "comedies" I've ever seen. It makes Lethal Weapon 4's continuous self congratulatory back patting stabs at humor look like Shakespeare (funny Shakespeare that is). I'd always found Jack Black entertaining before, but now I see why haters gotta hate. He's not funny!

Matthew McConaughey proves he can still take a lead role...and play Matthew McConaughey. Looked like a TV pilot but still told an interesting story.

Gleason and Cheadle are great the plotting and pacing is a bit off for my tastes. Still a fun little flick.

An ensemble comedy in which no one but Paul Rudd is funny or even interesting. Spends way too much time turning the sisters into jackasses and way to little time resolving their situations in any reasonable way. Rudd, however, is pretty great as the ever amenable idiot brother.

If it was measured on the quality of the film as opposed to the mostly hated lead actor Abduction would go down as a solid little action flick with a god awful horribly executed ending. The action scenes, however, are pretty sweet.

It is an interesting look at the day to day operations of what many consider a dinosaur industry. The core concept, however, is the major flaw of the film as it essentially documents just about everything that happens in that year leading to a disconnected unfocused story. Still the documentation of the personalities and the journalistic process is mostly fascinating.

Chemical Brothers alone don't make a great action flick.

Margin Call, at the very least, sounds like a smart movie. Or at least does a good enough job of vocabularizing that I was convinced it was smart. However, I didn't really care what happened to anybody in it. Good acting, but this scarcely adorned workplace drama is no Glengarry Glen Ross.

It has some nice visual flair and is very British (if you're into that kind of thing), but overall Joe Cornish's effort is a bit repetitive and ridiculous in a bad way..

It looks like something the director of 28 Weeks Later would make but it never quite feels complete. Perhaps that's because it tries to blend two stories about kids being terrorized together and one is much more fleshed out than the other. It never hits that horror sweet spot melding suspense and atmosphere to create genuine thrills. It looks good, but it really could be rated PG-13 if it weren't for a random set of boobs thrown in there. Also the random twist at the end seems like a cheap way out.

Disappointing to say the least. I loved Shakespeare in Love but The Debt, despite its strong premise, is nothing to write home about. It kind of meanders and lurches around its story never providing many thrills or dramatic tension.

It's not as funny as the first one, but funnier than the second one. And, surprisingly, Neil Patrick Harris' recurring schtick is still quite amusing.

Hardly memorable comic book throwaway with fake Nazis. Ridiculous.

It is a visual feast but the majority of the characters are incredibly grating. Choosing to focus on Larry the Cable Guy's dim-witted "Mater" was a huge mistake. I more than once hoped for a hideous anthropomorphic 50 car pile up.

This documentary, about a bunch of angry Irishmen beating their problems out on each other, sounds a lot better than it actually is. The characters are uniformly impossible to understand and the filmmaker tries to turn his false sounding crisis of conscience into a major plot point. Still, its intermittently entertaining.

As a bit of historical fluff J. Edgar is interesting as it traces some of the more turbulent times in America's history in a visually appealing way. As a portrait of titular J. Edgar, however, it is a big failure. The film feels completely unnecessary and really has no new insight to share on the man. A good biopic should give us a peek behind the curtain, should help us understand why a famous person did what he did. J. Edgar provides no such revelations.

When the introduction of your star character is what ruins the pace and humor of your movie there are a lot of problems.

Ray Stevenson is half good half terribly awkward as the titular Irishman Danny Greene. The story jumps all over the place introducing then discarding characters left and right and never really creates a cohesive whole of a film. It is neat to watch all the random Final Destination like bombing scenes but not a great film overall.

The scourge of comic book movies. It's entertaining to watch Chris Hensworth do Splash with mythological warriors but there are no memorable set pieces and the locations look like they were built from clearance priced lego sets smeared in vaseline.

Not at all funny with an overly obnoxious please dear jesus like me just because our script needs you to lead character. Charmless, laughless and almost entirely joyless - an anti-comedy if it ever existed.

Nicholas Cage had a bad year for movies.

Bloated watered down epic of vapid proportions.

How can you make alien invasions, random explosions and base infiltration so boring? I didn't know the answer until I saw Battle Los Angeles. The answer - make your movie 2 hours long and repeat the same boring set kinetic camera set pieces over and over again. Mix with a faceless ensemble only found in low budget action films and voila - you have boredom.

Looks nice visually and Ron Perlman is entertaining. Sadly Nicholas Cage brings little of his crazy and the story is incredibly dim.

Just watch the Descent instead.