Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Top 10 Films of 2011.

Regardless of the quality of his films, Nicolas Cage must feature in all collages.

Although the Academy is being particularly offensive with their nominations this year, 2011 has made the atrocity of 2010 seem like a bad dream.  There were twenty to thirty films in 2011 that I wouldn't yell at someone for including in their best of the year list.  Either I'm growing as a person (I'm not), or 2011 was a pretty good year.  So, brace yourself, this is going to be a long entry.  This list, as always, does not include documentaries.  Let's start with some honorable mentions/films of note.


Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Chronicle or, Don't Fly At Me, Bro.



At this point, I'm so sick of superhero movies, I don't even want to see The Avengers.  In about ten years, we've had four X-men films, three Spiderman films, three Batmans films, two Fantastic Four films, two Iron Man films, Thor, Green Lantern, Captain America, three different actors playing the Incredible Hulk...  Chris Evans has even played two different superheroes.  It's gotten out of control.  Of course, not all these films are bad, but I'm burnt out.  Let's move on to something new.

Likewise, apart from Rec, found footage films are welcome to follow the repetitive superhero formula into hell.  After The Blair Witch Project, Hollywood suddenly decided to stop hiring writers and just give their actors camcorders.  The results are mixed, but a gimmick is a gimmick.

And now we arrive at Chronicle, the found footage superhero movie.  I use "superhero" in the loosest sense; but superpowers are involved, so we'll count it.  It is entertaining, which is more than I'll say for half the movies previously mentioned, but the justification for a diagetic camera grows weaker and weaker with every scene.