So I cannot recommend anything higher than Lynn Ramsey’s “We Need to Talk About Kevin”. In fact I recommend you not even view the trailer, but see the film cold. Truly has everything a good story and a creative, daring film should have.
Alright so I FINALLY finished up with all the movies and such that I wanted to see from last year. This is a first that I’ve done this quite this fast, but it feels fucking awesome. Probably because the last few I saw I really, really loved. So this is my Favorite 20 plus all my SIDE B picks and my worsts. Which is other stuff I thought was awesome. I don’t like recommending just a bunch of the same type of movies. It’s like pushing a ton of the same times of music or books onto people. Options are what’s important. So for those you care, here’s a bunch movies I liked from last year that MAAAAAAYBE you’d like as well. Spinning wheels…
TOP 20 1. Drive 2. Take Shelter 3. Moneyball 4. Beginners 5. The Tree of Life 6. (TIE) Tabloid & Young Adult 7. Carnage 8. Project Nim 9. Contagion 10. Bullhead 11. Hugo 12. The Skin I Live In 13. The Descendants 14. Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest 15. War Horse 16. Rango 17. 13 Assassins 18. Uncle Boonmee: Who Can Recall His Past Lives 19. Martha, Marcy May, Marlene 20. Rise of the Planet of the Apes
SIDE B! (aka a bunch of other stuff I really dug as well for whatever reason.) The Muppets| Cave of Forgotten Dreams| 50/50| The Robber| I Saw the Devil| My Week with Marilyn| Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol| Attack the Block| Meek’s Cutoff| Hanna| The Guard| Red State| The Artist| Super 8| Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows—Part 2| Midnight in Paris| Immortals| Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen| Anonymous| The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo| Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy| Cedar Rapids| A Very 3D Harold & Kumar Christmas| The Adventures of Tintin| Fast Five| Insidious| Hobo with a Shotgun.
THE SHITS! 1. The Roommate 2. Big Mommas Like Father, Like Sun 3. (TIE) Jack & Jill and Just Go With It 4. Hop 5. Abduction 6. Cowboys & Aliens 7. Another Earth 8. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn— Part 1 9. Battle: Los Angeles 10. The Thing
If you liked ‘The Cove’ I highly recommend James Marsh’s “Project Nim”. A flooring piece of work that chronicles the life of Nim, the first Chimp humans took and attempting to teach sign language and raise as a human child. The film has an unsettling current that flows through the entire running time.
“Drive” really divided people last year. I get it, I totally get it. Its not going to be the populous favorite. Not yet at least. I never really got into my thoughts on the film aside from lists and random fan art. For me “Drive” was one of the perfect movies at the perfect time. It’s a story I’ve seen before in new skin thanks to Nicolas Winding Refn and Ryan Gosling and it works. It’s violent without neglecting humanity. It never goes out of its way to explain itself nor its characters. And it has a slow pace, but when it kicks off its extremely aggressive.
Refn’s liking to 80s style which helped make several of his past films as inspired and fresh feeling was in full effect without being obvious. Its a lot of slight tricks. Its simple storytelling with a dynamic style and fantastic performers on every level. The music is so counter what we get in these sort of movies and THANK GOD! I’m tired of the same synth electric rock/tones. Overall it was theatrical experience I loved and a film that stayed with me strongly for months. Anyways this is the Alamo Drafthouse and Mondo’s limited poster for it going on sale Thursday.
Happy New Year peeps! Here (at long last, for me) is my Top 20 films of 2011. I’ll probably be doing some posts about ones I sadly missed (stupid limited releases and slow expansion…) but then again its the same story every year. Anyways enjoy interested parties!
Sony really did appear to have a particular marketing scheme for this and furthermore they’ve delivered and catered more to fans than to the presses. Viral sites that ask interested parties to go around certain cities and find art and other pieces from the movie, signed by Fincher that they can keep. Plus over the weekend they raffled off tickets to various screenings of the film across the country for today. Truly I haven’t seen such service done to fans like this before. It’s nice.
Now for everyone else we have a very Fincher-sque music video for Karen O and Trent Reznor’s cover of Immigrant Song. Much like what was done with the opening credits of ‘Se7en’ and somewhat so of ‘Fight Club’ we see the various themes of the story placed out and melded together in a disorienting and interesting manner. I believe the first full blown reviews will start coming out tonight and into tomorrow. The film was also on AFI’s best films of the year list which was released yesterday. As for us normal ass folk, we’re waiting till the 21st. Or midnight of the 20th for the overly excited.
