LPTJ's top films of the year 2011

[Babar]

So, let's get it on. I listed all the movies that I've seen from this year. I put them in three different tiers, top tier, mid-tier and suck tier which are separated by a --------------------------. Like always, there are some movies I've yet to watch that I expect to be on the list like The Tree of Life and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy...

1. Drive [Nicolas Winding Refn]



The pink typeface of the title is beautiful.

2. Contagion [Steven Soderbergh]



Hand down best disaster film I have seen. Apparently it made 100+ million dollars at the box office but I feel like it didn't get the attention it deserved. There's nothing quite as queasy as sick people on film. I can handle all the blood spatters and crushed body parts you throw at me, but a pale and lifeless person coughing and throwing up and shit is what really gets me.

3. Moneyball [Bennett Miller]



A good year for subgenre films, because this very well might be the best sports film I've seen... after Raging Bull of course.

4. The Skin I Live In [Pedro Almdóvar]



Sick and twisted. I'm afraid I'll spoil by saying more.

5. Red State [Kevin Smith]



Had me on the edge of my seat the whole time. Michael Parks gives a performance worthy of hefty praise, which it won't get. Definitely Smith's best film since Clerks. I think it's better than Clerks, in fact.

6. Midnight in Paris [Woody Allen]



A beautiful film about nostalgia. I love the dislikable characters in this film, no one writes assholes like Woody Allen.

7. We Need to Talk About Kevin [Lynne Ramsay]



That fucking kid. I loved hating him. Tilda Swinton is very good in this.


------------------------------------



8. The Ides of March [George Clooney]



Another great performance from Ryan Gosling and another good film from George Clooney the director.

9. I Saw the Devil [Kim Ji-woon]



Has some of the best violence scenes I have seen. Recommended for everyone that likes violence and darkness.

10. X-Men: First Class [Matthew Vaughn]



Favorite scene from the movie is when Angel Salvadore is revealed. The first 30 minutes with Kevin Bacon being a nazi was also great.

11. Margin Call [J.C. Chandor]



A movie about people making incredibly hard life-changing decisions with a straight face. A debut from Chandor, looking forward to see what he does next.

12. The Man from Nowhere [Lee Jeong-beom]



A bleak film with a depressing plot. Contains the best knife fighting sequence I've seen in a film.

13. Rise of the Planet of the Apes [Rupert Wyatt]



Hmm, turned out to be a good film.

14. Tropa de Elite 2 [José Padhila]



This one gets more praise than the first film, but I liked the first one better. This one is still very good.

15. The Lincoln Lawyer [Brad Furman]



A court room drama thriller. I have accepted Matthew McConaughey as a person that exists.

16. 50/50 [Jonathan Levine]



Best bromance film of the year.

17. Melancholia [Lars von Trier]



The first half of the film I hated Kirsten Dunst, the second half I related to her.

18. Super 8 [J.J. Abrams]



The fat kid was the best thing about this film. It kinda sags in the last half an hour, but the whole build up is really fun.

19. Limitless [Neil Burger]



Thought it would suck but it turned out pretty good. Not really a film that makes you think, but I don't demand that from every film I see.

20. Hobo with a Shotgun [Jason Eisener]



Dutch legend Rutger Hauer is a down on his luck hobo... with a shotgun. Great splatter B-movie fun.

21. The Troll Hunter [André Øvredal]



I know it's a small budget film, but the special effects kind of took me out of the story a bit. I'm spoiled by multi-million dollar CGI in that regard. Still a fun movie.

22. Attack the Block [Joe Cornish]



Really fun action alien-invasion movie with an interesting take.

23. Ip Man 2 [Wilson Yip]



The first movie was a sensational martial arts film. This one is pretty far behind and even a little exploitive. The evil British boxer was a ridiculous character. Not any more ridiculous than Asian stereotypes in Western films though.

24. Win Win [Thomas McCarthy]



I like Paul Giamatti. It does get a little cringy nearing the end.


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25. Warrior [Gavin O'Connor]



This movie gets a world of praise for some reason. I thought it was pretty dull and without any interesting characters.

26. Tekken: Blood Vengeance [Youichi Mori]



Of course I had to check out the new Tekken movie. It delivered on pretty much everything I was hoping for, doesn't make it a good movie though.

27. Source Code [Duncan Jones]



I just didn't like this film, I'm trying to remember why.

28. Captain America: The First Avenger [Joe Johnston]



Most awkward love relationship I've seen in a Hollywood film for a while. Why did he have a picture of the girl in his wallet??? They hadn't even kissed. Plus, it's the 50s. Did he tear her picture out of a US Army document to put in his wallet? The red Kevin Bacon bad guy was pretty cool, I guess.

29. Another Earth [Mike Cahill]



I was hoping that this would be a top film of the year. It has a great concept but it falls flat with the acting and the dialogue, and that's pretty much 90% of the movie.

30. The Adjustment Bureau [George Nolfi]



A modern depiction of angels that wear fedora hats.

31. Green Lantern [Martin Campbell]



A superhero film in the outdated 2002 style of such films. The real sad news is because of the failure of Green Lantern and The Green Hornet, no one will be willing to finance a Green Arrow movie. Maybe that's actually a good thing.

32. The Beaver [Jodie Foster]



This probably would have been at the bottom if I hadn't found it so hilariously bad. Right from the get-go the French riviera accordion music caught my attention from then on I feel like Jodie Foster was trying to make a film that feels like a foreign/indie film for a Hollywood market, she just gets it so wrong every time. I had accepted the premise of the plot before watching the movie, thinking that this might be a misunderstood gem. No, it's really really bad.

33. Battle: Los Angeles [Jonathan Liebesman]



I admit that this is the only film on this list I didn't finish watching all the way through. I almost NEVER do that.

34. Insidious [James Wan]



The director of Saw trying to make an "atmospheric" horror film. I say: stick with body mutilations.




Alright kids, what movies did you like/dislike from this year.

edit: I chose not to have any documentaries on the list because it's difficult for me to evaluate them as I do feature films. Mainly because it's hard to separate the subject matter from the documentary itself, like I would probably put Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest somewhere near the top because I love ATCQ but not because it's such a great documentary. It's pretty good though, but a must-watch if you are a ATCQ fan. I also saw Martin Scorsese's Living In the Material World about George Harrison and liked it a lot.

[Chet]

I liked Super 8.

Hated Tree of Life.

Norwegian Wood made me LOL, but I don't think it was meant to.

I didn't see many films this year.

[jebreject]

Yo, Red State was straight up one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Michael Parks' performance was incredibly good, but didn't come close to elevating this thing off the dung pile. It was unfocused, changed tone and genre roughly every fifteen minutes, had probably the most absurdly long and tedius gunfight I've ever seen on film, and I had no emotional investment in any of the characters whatsoever. It wasn't a good scary movie, it wasn't a good action film, the comedic bits fell flat, the dialogue was stiff, and it didn't have anything interesting to say about religion, fundamentalism, bureaucracy, the police state, rurual communities, whatever the hell else it thought it had something interesting to say about.

I didn't do a very good job of seeing new movies this year, though, even though there were a hell of a lot of them that I wanted to see (and will now add to my Netflix queue and never get around to watching).

[Babar]

The way it changed genre every 15 minutes is a big reason for my adoration of it. I also don't mind if a film doesn't have anything to say. I think telling a story for the sake of telling a story is a noble pursuit. I didn't feel emotionally invested in any of the characters either, but it didn't bother my enjoyment of the film.

Sometimes I feel like there's no value but face value. I mean, I definitely agree with you on some points and the movie is not perfect by any stretch but when the credits rolled I thought "that was an awesome fucking movie" and by the end of the day that's all that matters.

[elpollodiablo]

I didn't see a ton this year, and definitely didn't see a ton that I liked. Some of the highlights:

Hanna
Bridesmaids
Muppets
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Contagion
Drive
A Dangerous Method
The Mill & the Cross
Meek's Cutoff (technically late 2010)

...not sure what else.

[Babar]

Googled The Mill and the Cross because I had never heard of it. Wow, I must see this movie now.

[hannah]

Oh, what the hell. I'll be catching up on a lot of movies these next two weeks, but in the meantime here are some of my favorites, roughly in order from most to least (though I still liked the ones at the bottom):

The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
Certified Copy
In Search of the Monkey King
Drive
Meek's Cutoff
The Tree of Life
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Moneyball

[elpollodiablo]

I really wanna see the Nicolae Ceausescu thing.

[YojimboMonkey]

Out of Babar's list, I've only seen Super 8 and HOBOWITHASHOTGUN. HOBOWITHASHOTGUN fucking ruled. Super 8 was kind of fun I guess, the kids dug it.

[jm]

I guess Troll Hunter was technically from last year, but it was definitely the best movie I've seen this year.

[edison]

I really wanna see the Nicolae Ceausescu thing.

Yeah, me too.

Worst films I've seen this year were in chronological order Black Swan, Rio Sex Comedy, Midnight in Paris (seriously, Babar? Those characters are not even characters! Just vehicles for one-liners that aren't even funny once) and Melancholia. Hopefully that list is done.

Best is clearly Essential Killing, but I have a few things to catch up on after Christmas before making a top ten, I think.

[Greg Nog]

Here are the films I saw in 2011 that came out in the US in 2011, ordered from favorite to least favorite:

Really enjoyed:

1. Drive
2. Cave of Forgotten Dreams
3. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
4. X-Men: First Class
5. Captain America: The First Avenger

Middle of the Road:

6. Bridesmaids
7. Rise of The Planet Of The Apes
8. Immortals
9. The King's Speech
10. Trollhunter

Hated:

11. Conan The Barbarian
12. Thor
13. Hugo

Drive was far and away my favorite film of the year, and Thor would have easily gotten the bottom slot if Hugo hadn't made me so unbelievably angry. 

And looking at lists of films that came out this year, I am amking a note to see the following, which I have not yet seen but would like to:

13 Assassins, OKA!, Fast Five, Mia and the Magoo, Hanna, The Last Lions, Rango, Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance, Ip Man 2, Big Money Rustlas, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

[elpollodiablo]

Did we ever really talk about Drive? It was in my most notable of the year, but probably near the bottom in terms of year-end favorites. I thought it had huge script problems and really disliked Gosling's performance. As I mentioned to Greg, the most fun I had during that movie was imagining a Shyamalan-like twist in which he turns out to be deaf.

[Greg Nog]

I don't think we did!  I don't know that I really have all that much to say about it, though, beyond what I've already said, which is that I found its pacing (much like Valhalla Rising) hypnotic and fascinating. 

I was actually just thinking the other day about it and Tao Lin's Richard Yates.  At some point, I put my finger on why I felt so much animosity for the latter, despite thinking it was stunningly well-written -- that the authorial voice feels like a prey animal, constantly skittish, staring out in 360 degrees around it, purely reactive.  Drive, I think, appealed to me because the authorial voice feels more like a predator than anything else I've ever seen.  Its long, quiet opacity punctuated by intense violence felt like a movie made by a snake.

At any rate, having been so completely head-over-heels about Drive, I now feel like I should revisit Jeanne Dielman, because I wonder if I would get way more out of it this time around.

[elpollodiablo]

The pacing was definitely not the problem for me. I really liked the direction.

[jebreject]

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is probably my favorite film of the year, out of what I've seen. I would make a list, but I don't know if I even saw more than ten films that came out this year.

[Greg Nog]

I was surprised to see how many I'd seen!  Like, "Oh yeah, Conan.  That happened."

[auto-da-fey]

have you people who like Drive seen the 1978 Walter Hill film The Driver that it's wholly stolen from?

just curious

because The Driver is way, way better.

[auto-da-fey]

I also did not like Contagion, and found Bridesmaids middling at best.


but I do plan to compile my own list soon so people can tell me which of my picks suck.

[RoyBiggins]

I can scarcely remember what I saw this year!  I saw more than in the previous year or two.  Also, most of the stuff I saw this year was not new.

The best things I saw were probably Black Dynamite, Super 8, Blank City, and one of the Rock Hudson/Doris Day movies I had not seen.  Really enjoyed all of those.  Coincidentally, I saw all of them except Super 8 in the same theatre.  I've got Attack The Block at home right now, so I'm excited to watch that too.

[jebreject]

I also did not like Contagion, and found Bridesmaids middling at best.


but I do plan to compile my own list soon so people can tell me which of my picks suck.

Is Red State on it? Because that movie sucked.

[jebreject]

I can scarcely remember what I saw this year!  I saw more than in the previous year or two.  Also, most of the stuff I saw this year was not new.

The best things I saw were probably Black Dynamite, Super 8, Blank City, and one of the Rock Hudson/Doris Day movies I had not seen.  Really enjoyed all of those.  Coincidentally, I saw all of them except Super 8 in the same theatre.  I've got Attack The Block at home right now, so I'm excited to watch that too.

Attack the Block was really fun!

[Thermofusion]

Shit I liked:
I Saw The Devil
General Orders no. 9
Black Death
Drive Angry
The Inbetweeners Movie
Hobo With A Shotgun
Moneyball
Chop
Real Steel
Your Highness
Paul

Shit I Sorta Liked:
Blitz
Hanna
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark
X-Men 1st Class

Shit I Hated:
Drive
Source Code
Bridesmaids
Atlas Shrugged pt. 1

Shit I Still Wanna See:
Mary Marcy May Marlene
Warrior
Shame (so I can hate it)

[milly balgeary]

The way it changed genre every 15 minutes is a big reason for my adoration of it. I also don't mind if a film doesn't have anything to say. I think telling a story for the sake of telling a story is a noble pursuit. I didn't feel emotionally invested in any of the characters either, but it didn't bother my enjoyment of the film.

Sometimes I feel like there's no value but face value. I mean, I definitely agree with you on some points and the movie is not perfect by any stretch but when the credits rolled I thought "that was an awesome fucking movie" and by the end of the day that's all that matters.

I'm surprised you liked Red State but panned Insidious, which for my money was the best horror movie of the year, and Red State the worst "big budget" horror film.

I loved Warrior. I like the sport, though. It wasn't "The Fighter" but Tom Hardy is BANE for real. He should have been cast as Conan in the Conan reboot. Dude is killin it with these performances.

[milly balgeary]

Oh, what the hell. I'll be catching up on a lot of movies these next two weeks, but in the meantime here are some of my favorites, roughly in order from most to least (though I still liked the ones at the bottom):

The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
Certified Copy
In Search of the Monkey King
Drive
Meek's Cutoff
The Tree of Life
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Moneyball

Uncle Boonmee is 2010, so is Meek's Cutoff, Certified Copy, and Ceausescu.