The 8 Ball 01.17.12: The Top 16 Films of 2011 (#16 - #9)

Posted by Jeremy Thomas on 01.17.2012

From Thor and Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 and more, 411's Jeremy Thomas begins his look at the top 16 films of 2011 with #16 - #9!



Welcome, one and all, to the 8 Ball in the Movie Zone! I'm your host Jeremy Thomas and as always, we will be tackling a topic and providing you the top eight selections of that particular category. Keep in mind that this list is meant to be my personal opinion and not a definitive list. You're free to disagree; you can even say my list is wrong, but stating that an opinion is "wrong" is just silly. With that in mind, let's get right in to it!




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Top 16 Movies of 2011: #16 - #9

For the last couple weeks we've tackled the worst movies of the year, so it's only fair that we give attention to the best of the year. There have been a lot of good films and a handful of truly great films; in all honest 2011 wasn't the best year for film but there have certainly been some standouts. Let's take a look and see them, shall we?

Caveat: I did not include documentaries because I did not get a chance to see many (and rarely do). If I were including them, Paradise Lost 3 and We Were Here are two off the top of my head that would have been top contenders. Also, there are several foreign films I wanted to see but couldn't such as A Separation and The Flowers of War. In terms of domestically-release films, the only ones I didn't get to see that I really wanted to were My Week With Marilyn, Shame, The Artist and Take Shelter. Otherwise I'm confident I saw most of the ones which had a good shot of making the list.

Just Missing The Cut

The Ides of March, Source Code, Carnage

#16: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2





Starting off my list is one that I had huge hopes for but was very worried about. Anticipation was huge for the final installment of the Harry Potter franchise, a film series that has run for a full decade and made millions upon millions of fans both young and old. With the end finally arrived, I was looking forward to it but I was concerned that David Yates' conclusion wouldn't be able to meet sky-high expectations that had been built. It is no exaggeration in my mind to say that the finale met almost every expectation that a reasonable fan could have. With Deathly Hallows Part 1 having excellently provided much of the set-up, 2011's chapter--the last, of course--allowed Yates and his exceptional cast and crew the opportunity to really cut loose and they certainly did that. The trio of leads in Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint come into their own and along with some of the best actors working today in names like Alan Rickman, Ralph Fiennes, Fiona Shaw they provide the right tone to take audiences along for the wild ride. The only concern this film doesn't perfectly address is finding time to give all the characters their due; a certain dual death is a bit underwhelming in its reveal, for example. But all in all this is a great conclusion to the epic franchise and gives fans the send-off they deserve.


#15: Tucker & Dale vs. Evil



I'll be honest here; as much as I was looking forward to the big-budget stuff like Thor, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Sherlock Holmes 2 and such, if I had made a top anticipated films column when 2011 opened, this movie would have topped the list. I am an enormous fan of horror comedies when done right; they're often not done right because finding that balance between the two mashed-up genres is difficult for many, but when it works it works amazingly well. Tucker & Dale vs. Evil is one of those examples where it works beautifully. Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk are flat-out hilarious as the two hillbillies that look threatening from the outside--and certainly two the group of college kids who encounter them--but in truth are more like the Rosencratz and Guildenstern of their own distinctly non-Shakespearean story. Labine in particular is a revelation as he plays his part with perfect comic timing, and he is well-matched with both Tudyk and Katrina Bowden as the college girl who ends up allied with the rednecks and being set up as a romantic interest. The kills are appropriately gory and yet always funny and the only flaw, if a flaw could be found, is perhaps that it makes the comedy go too over-the-top in the final build to the climax. Other than that slightest of nitpicks this is a great film that I recommend to everyone I can, as long as they don't mind their comedy delivered with a hefty helping of blood.


#14: Thor



In many ways, the summer of 2011 could be called the Summer of Superheroes. While superheroes didn't quite top the box office, they delivered fairly consistent quality efforts with one major exception (I'm looking at you, Mr. Reynolds). The first and one of the best examples of that is Thor, which continued the build of the Marvel Cinematic Universe making its way inexorably toward Joss Whedon's The Avengers this May. Under the guiding hand of Kenneth Branagh, the film finds just the right balance of over-the-top Shakespearean bluster, down-to-Earth character development and great fight scenes. Chris Hemsworth proves himself to be a star and a force to be reckoned with as the Mighty Thor himself while Tom Hiddleston is a worthy adversary as Loki. Supporting work by Natalie Portman, Anthony Hopkins, Stellan Skarsgard and even Kat Dennings is very solid, allowing this film to surpass any and all expectations and even gave me hope for Captain America: The First Avenger, a film that I certainly enjoyed but not quite enough to make my top sixteen. Marvel continues its run of cinematic quality, and as far as I'm concerned they show no signs of lagging at all.


#13: Win Win



This Paul Giamatti-led dramedy is one I was looking forward to, but interestingly when it arrived in its Netflix envelope it ended up sitting around for a week (a rare occurrence for me) before I got to it. When I finally did, I wanted to smack myself for waiting because it's a delightful film. Co-writer/director Thomas McCarthy did the same jobs on one of my favorite films in 2008, The Visitor, and this has the same deft balance of laughs and drama. Giamatti is engaging as the financially-struggling attorney who makes a questionable moral decision with unforeseen consequences that he finds his life surprisingly enriched by. The pace for this has that independent film feel without the need to make every character overly quirky, which makes it a better film than it would have been in another filmmaker's hands. The performances are great across the board and even Bobby Cannavale, whose character could certainly be grating with how over the top he is compared to the rest, keeps things great. The big star-making performance of course is from Alex Shaffer, who in his screen debut matches himself up very favorably with a multi-award winning actor of Giamatti's stature. Everything fits perfectly into place here and the end result is an incredibly enjoyable experience. This is one I would definitely enjoy watching again and again and even looking forward to it I enjoyed it more than I expected.


#12: Beginners



This one came out of nowhere for me; one moment I'd not ever heard of it and then suddenly it was getting huge praise for Christopher Plummer and even some early awards hype for the film itself. That hype for the film has faded and to me that's unfortunate because it is an incredibly good film. Much like Win Win it wears its independent colors proudly but does so without fitting itself into the narrow box that turns "independent film" into a genre rather than a category. Plummer is undoubtedly fantastic, but so are Ewan McGregor and Mélanie Laurent, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite "under the radar" actresses. The film is based on writer/director Mike Mills' own experiences of his father coming out of the closet at the age of 75 and learning that wasn't surprising to me because it feels real and the emotions of the film are always honest, never contrived. I don't always love overly optimistic films; they have a tendency to be too sappy and sentimental. Beginners is optimistic and sentimental, but not in a false way and that honesty is the kind of voice that makes sentiment a good thing and not something to cringe at. It's a great feel-good story that doesn't feel the need to pander, and I couldn't ask for much more than that in such a film.


#11: Super 8



J.J. Abrams accomplished the near-impossible with Super 8 and that was to make a film that pays loving homage to the 1980s Steven Spielberg films instead of being a cheap knock-off of them. Abrams' story of an alien let loose on a small Midwestern town provides a great backdrop for him to insert his characters, mostly a group of kids who end up caught in the mayhem that follows. Abrams takes his visual trademarks such as his love for lens flare and tones them down, overcoming the temptation that Zack Snyder failed to do with Sucker Punch. Nevertheless, it is clearly an Abrams film and the performances that he gets from his young cast of actors is exceptional. Elle Fanning shows that at her age she is miles ahead of where her sister Dakota was at the same age and Joel Courtney is great as the lead. The alien presence never feels like a cheat and even the needed but rote exposition in the center of the film moves by quickly and doesn't bore. Abrams continues his exceptional run as a filmmaker and comes out with another truly great genre film as a result.


#10: The Tree of Life



When I first watched Terrance Malick's epic film, I was watching it with my parents and we didn't know quite what to make of it. Everyone agreed that the acting was fantastic and that it was a beautifully-filmed piece of work with wonderful effects and some very interesting ideas to it, but there was an understanding of Malick's message that we didn't get due to the film's challenging nature. I knew that I liked it but I needed to understand why. On a second watching I began to understand the film more and I think what Malick did was a truly impressive piece of film-making. Malick has a very distinctive voice and he uses it in powerful ways, but this is not a movie for everyone. Many have called this pretentious and I can see why, but I consider it to be far from that. A pretentious film wants to be smart but fails at it. Richard Kelly is a great example of that; his films try to be exceedingly clever and brilliant but it's all a house of cards that fall apart if you look closely at all. The Tree of Life is very intelligent and it tackles some incredibly deep topics, including those of religion, morality, families, love and more. Malick's vision is beautifully realized, not only in the deliberate pacing and wonderful camera work but in the performances by Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, the young Hunter McCracken, Sean Penn and the rest of the cast. This is certainly not a movie for everyone and the pace and Malick's visual choices will frustrate some, but I walked away from it feeling very much enriched.


#9: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol



I'm a big fan of the Mission: Impossible franchise and to be honest, I had worries about this early on. That's not to say that I didn't have high hopes for it but the third entry--despite being the best--didn't perform nearly as well as Paramount wanted thanks to anti-Tom Cruise backlash and until this film he was far from being a sure bet again; there were some who even argued that he'd fallen way off the A-List based on the financial disappointment of the underrated Knight & Day. Add into that the fact that they put the film in the hands of a man whose work I respect in Brad Bird but who had never done a live-action film and certainly not one of this scope. Trust Bird and producers Cruise and J.J. Abrams to surprise everyone with a film that is easily the best of the franchise to date and delivers the best pure action film of the year. Cruise is back to top form and he has the best supporting cast. It has always been my contention that a Mission: Impossible film is only as good as its team and Simon Pegg, Paula Patton and Jeremy Renner are the best team Ethan Hunt has had yet. The action scenes are universally thrilling, particularly the two Dubai action sequences, and the continuity in this film is a lot tighter than any of the previous entries. This film doesn't just feel like another disconnected entry; it feels like the next chapter of a story and that makes it better. This was by far the best surprise of the year.

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Current Doctor


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Last Serial Completed: Tooth and Claw - The Doctor and Rose shoot for 1979 but end up in 1879, where they become wrapped up in a plot against Queen Victoria involving warrior monks, the Empire of the Wolf and the Torchwood estate.
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Unfortunately unforeseen circumstances have left me so busy that I didn't get to comments. They'll come back soon, promise.

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And that will do it for us this week! Join me next week when we'll finish our look at the Top 16 Films of 2011. Until then, have a good week and don't forget to read the many other great columns, news articles and more here at 411mania.com! JT out.