2011 in Review: A Look at Movies From 2011

I, of course, can’t do a recap of my own 2011 without discussing movies.  I like movies.  I like to watch movies, I like to talk about movies.  It’s fitting that I would need to do a blog entry about the movies I have seen this year.  I’m going to do two of them.  This is the first one where I’m going to discuss a few of the movies I’ve seen this year that are from this year.

Before I get into the movies I want to clarify something.  This is not necessarily my favourite movies of 2011.  There may be one or two of my favourite ten movies or whatever.  I just want to take this time to discuss some of the notable movies that I’ve watched.  I’ll write about movies that I want to write about and leave out others.  I can’t do them all or else this blog entry would go on forever.

Of course, I can’t talk movies without discussing Fast Five.  I would probably place this as my favourite movie out of the ones that I watched this year.  The action was a huge improvement over the four previous installments.  Fast Five was less about the driving, and more about the action that occurred because of how well these characters could drive.  With a reunion of almost every surviving character from the previous films, I was in the whole time.  The action was well done, blending any of the CGI work in with the excellent practical effects.  It was an impressive feat for a fifth film in a series after the previous effort had used CGI for the majority of the action sequences and made the action sequences into a mess.  Fast Five vastly improved upon this to bring an enjoyable action film that I will watch many times.

Trust is a film that I’ve been championing since I first saw it a few months ago.  The acting is superb from Clive Owen and everyone else, actually.  This might be the best performance that I have seen from Owen since Shoot ‘Em Up, or possibly even Closer.  David Schwimmer directed this movie with skill that I wouldn’t have expected from a Friends cast member.  I’m not saying that Friends was a bad show, but I wouldn’t have expected the cast members to be good directors.  Without ruining anything about Trust, I want to say that it was the most haunting ending I’ve seen in a long time.  It brings the whole story together in a way that leaves you in a state of shock.  There is no other movie this year that has left me like that.  For that reason, as well as the good movie that came before, I give Trust props.  The subject matter is also a very important thing in today’s society so it is definitely worth a watch for that alone.

If I had to pick a movie that I disliked the most out of the year, anyone looking at my blog would think I’d say Bad Teacher.  But I won’t.  Red Riding Hood went above and beyond in destroying my world.  I went into it expecting to watch a movie with some good actors in it.  Gary Oldman was there, I like me some Haas once in a while, and Amanda Seyfried isn’t bad on the eyes.  So I decided to watch it.  What I got was a movie with some good actors but no chance of being good.  It played like a Twilight movie which is definitely out of my area of liking.  It looked nice, but I couldn’t help getting annoyed at dialogue like, “I can’t stay here.  It’s too dangerous,” and the response of, “I’ll wait for you.”  Thinking about it makes me want to punch a baby.  I don’t want to punch a baby.  I’m making a new year’s resolution not to punch babies.  If I had to sit through this movie again, I might break that resolution.

To continue, I want to write a little bit about a movie called Happythankyoumoreplease.  According to imdb, this is a 2010 movie.  According to AMPAS and the theatrical run of the movie, it is a 2011 movie.  So I consider it a 2011 movie.  It was written by, directed by, and starring Josh Radner who you might know for his work as Ted Moseby on How I Met Your Mother.  I think it was a solid first effort for writing and directing.  There isn’t much to say about this film other than that point, and that there were good performances put in all around.  I’m looking forward to what Josh does next outside of his television show.  He shows promise.  Check this one out if you haven’t.

That should be a good set of four movies that I wrote about.  I was going to do a fifth but decided against it because of the length of this already.  I’d just like to mention a few quick ones here before finishing this up.  Hobo With a Shotgun was a good homage to older exploitative action movies that anyone who likes that style should likely seek out.  Attack the Block was definitely the best science fiction I’d seen this year.  I loved every minute of that one.  Red State showed me that Kevin Smith has more to offer than comedy.  I’ll be sad to see him leave the filmmaking business after his hockey movie.  And finally, Bridesmaids wasn’t as good as everyone said it was, but The Hangover Part 2 was better than everyone said it was.  People need to be more realistic with what they say rather than “Women in comedy? A+++++”, or “It’s similar to the movie that it is a sequel of so it fails on every level.”  Neither of those ways of thinking is right.  Pull your head out of your smurfing arse and judge a film on itself, not in comparison to every other film out there.  Mind you, I did say a film was very similar to Twilight above so I am kind of hypocritical there.

These are in no way all of the movies I watched that were released this year.  I would not be able to do a reasonably sized blog entry if I were to do all 44 movies.  That would take hours for me to write and hours for you to read.  I’ll leave it at where it is right now.  One more paragraph though.

It’s been an interesting year for movies.  I’ve liked more than I’ve disliked.  I’ve liked what other people hated a few times.  And as you can tell, most of the movies I’ve seen have come from summer or earlier.  I’ve only seen three movies in theaters, so sue me.  Coming up soon will be other movies that I saw for the first time this year.  I’ll give you a little teaser.  Die Hard will be there.  Okay?  I’m out.