An Alternative Top 10 Films of 2011 List!
Unlike our dear Front of House Manager, I am (or at least was. Thanks, graduation) a film student and thought I’d throw in my whole two cents on whether or not we are pretentious via my top 10 films of 2011 list. May as well make it clear that under no circumstances do I think my opinion’s more valid than anyone else’s because I studied film (in fact it probably makes it less valid since 3 years of doing a film degree has made it impossible for me to watch a film without analysing the mise-en-scene and the Freudian implications of the film to death and tainting my opinions)!
Right, here we go then:
Honourable Mentions
Super 8, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Source Code, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Senna, Fast Five
Really wanted to include all of these but the annoying thing about top ten lists is that there are only ten spaces. All were incredible to watch, particularly Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Senna – two riveting documentaries that everyone really should see. Anyway, the top 10…
One of the few flaws I found with Apes is that it wasted James Franco’s acting talents a bit. He was fine in it, but Will Rodman was a bit of a stock character that any chump could have played. Not so in 127 Hours, where Franco brought a huge amount of likability and sympathy to a man who, when you think about it, is a complete moron for not telling anyone where he was going. Danny Boyle’s direction was pretty top-notch too, wringing a surprising amount of energy out of a film that’s about a dude stuck under a rock. Oh, and fainting during the infamous amputation scene? You wussies, it wasn’t that bad.
Two spots in and my list is already similar to Andy’s! Film students aren’t different! We’re real people after all! Rejoice! Aside from the usual nonsense that every review has stated about this film proving that women can be vulgar and funny blah blah blah, Bridesmaids is a sweet, hilarious and hugely lovable romcom that does everything right. A masterclass in awkward moments (like the bridal shower toast-duel between Kristen Wiig and Rose Byrne) and hugely funny set pieces (the plane) made this the funniest film of the year, bar none.
8. Moneyball
As someone who cares as little about sports as is humanly possible and as someone who has never sat through a sports movie without wanting to throttle the main character, I found this baseball drama thoroughly engaging. Brad Pitt and especially Jonah Hill give career best performances in this true-life tale of the Oakland A’s, whose unorthodox tactics reinvented the game. A smart and witty script by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin, along with the fact that this is a sports movie without any actual sports in it, won me over instantly.
“Cancer” and “comedy” isn’t a combination you hear very much, let alone in the feelgood, lightweight realm of Hollywood. In truth though, this isn’t a comedy at all, just a very real story of how one dude – an Oscar-worthy Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and if you don’t believe me, watch the car scene in the third act – and his best friend deal with a devastating illness: by laughing and joking about it. Adam’s situation is never played for laughs: how he chooses to deal with it is, and even then, the laughs are contrasted with serious and often very moving discussions on cancer, death and how people deal with it.
X-Men: First Class revitalised a franchise that had really gotten terrible thanks to the combined efforts of X-Men 3 and X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Robin. McAvoy and Fassbender (especially Fassbender, dodgy accent aside) were incredible and Matthew Vaughn’s brilliant direction made this the film of the summer. Incidentally, the reason I haven’t included any posters in this top 10 list are A) I’m too lazy, and B) the terrible posters for X-Men. A monkey whose intelligence had been enhanced with ALZ-112 could have done a better job with those posters. Thankfully, a bad marketing campaign does not make a bad film, and X-Men: First Class was the summer’s blockbuster to beat.
NOW we’re in real film-student territory. A Martin Scorsese picture set in the 1920s? A kid’s film masked as a meditation on the birth of silent cinema? Where are my pretentious glasses?! Thankfully, Hugo was nowhere near as up-it’s-own-arse as it had the potential to be, with charming performances and art direction across the board and fantastic use of 3D. The success of both this and The Artist could potentially lead to more people being educated on early cinema than ever before, and that is a very, very good thing.
Here’s the obvious one that’s on everyone’s top 10 lists. Quite right, too. There’s not a whole lot I can say about this one that hasn’t been said a thousand times over by the critics – coolest movie of the year, great direction, Ryan Gosling is amazing, etc etc – but it really is amazing. The opening “chase” where Ryan Gosling drives around eluding the cops is one of the best sequences of the year and the extremely graphic destruction of not one, not two, but three people’s heads was just awesome. Each and every one of Gosling’s performances this year – Blue Valentine, Crazy Stupid Love, The Ides of March and this – was incredible, but this one was by far the best.
Cast your minds way back to January 2011 and you might remember this gem from the Coen brothers. The fact that I’m a massive Coen fanboy had no impact on True Grit’s high placement on this list. Okay, it did a bit, but can you blame me? This one has all the best Coen-isms rolled into one: surreal moments (the dude wearing a bear’s skin), cracking dialogue, a brilliant period setting (with kick-ass recreation of the period), a huge amount of attention to detail, a unique spin on genre conventions, and Jeff Bridges. What more could a Coen fan want, other than John Goodman?
2. Cell 211
Leave it to a film student to feature so highly on a top 10 list a film that no-one has seen. A shame too, because this is absolutely terrific. It’s got everything: a killer concept (a prison guard, on his first day on the job, becomes trapped in the middle of a prison riot, and has to pretend to be an inmate in order to survive), incredible acting, and is hands down the most thrilling and tense film I saw this year. No one saw it because it’s Spanish and it barely got a release. And unfortunately it’s already being remade by Paul Haggis, who’s already proven he’s crap at remakes of European thrillers with The Next Three Days (sorry Andy). A shame. This is out on DVD now, do yourselves a favour and at least give it a rent.
1. We Need To Talk About Kevin
Yup. Of course I went for an arthouse, low-budget independent British film as my number one pic of the year. But you know what?! So did Andy! See? Film students are just as normal! Ha ha. Ahem. Anyway, here’s why Lynne Ramsay’s terrifying domestic horror got the coveted title of Bill’s Film of the Year: because it is amazing. With all the other films on this list, I came out thinking “Well, that was great! On with my day!”, but this one haunted me for days. I could not stop thinking about it. Not including the incredible performances from Tilda Swinton and Ezra Miller as a broken mother and son, nor the brilliant direction from Ramsay, the fact that I couldn’t get this film out of my head for such a long time meant it had to be my number one pick of the year. It’s on at Union Films next Tuesday. Go and see it.
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