By: Jarred Braxton
The Top Five
2011 is history, but there are moments that deserve to be observed and remembered. In this case, these moments will be defined by the movies.
Before, ten motion pictures were recognized for their certain achievements but this time, my focus will be on five movies.
These are the five best movies of 2011. Let’s start with number 5.
5) Evolution Yields Revolution: The #5 movie of 2011 is “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”, starring Academy Award nominee James Franco (“127 Hours”). Franco plays Will Rodman, a prominent scientist who is on the verge of a breakthrough for a cure to Alzheimer’s. Rodman then discovers a baby chimpanzee who was a test subject on this cure and circumstance then yields him to take the chimp home to study and raise. The chimp named Caesar, played by Andy Serkis (“The Lord of the Rings”) is gifted with tremendous intelligence, and he is intelligent enough to gather an army of apes to rise against humanity and put apes at the forefront of the world pyramid.
Director Rupert Wyatt just came out of nowhere and delivered a summer blockbuster home-run. This movie shined with a great screenplay, great direction, great acting, brilliant visual effects and really hit home with a message about the hubris and arrogance of humanity.
4) These ladies have spunk: Coming in at #4 is the first legitimate Academy Award contender of the year, “The Help”. Based on the bestselling novel by Kathryn Stockett, this film was written and directed by Tate Taylor (Pretty Ugly People). The story is about a young journalist named Skeeter, played by Emma Stone (“Easy A”) who aims to break racial barriers in Jackson Mississippi, by conducting a series of interviews about the African-American housemaids who raise white children. Skeeter aligns herself with Aibileen, played by Academy Award nominee Viola Davis (“Doubt”), and Minny, played by Octavia L. Spencer (“Seven Pounds”), in order to get a good idea of what life is like for the help.
Equal parts wrenching, hysterical, poignant and charming, “The Help” is completely moving and a complete winner in the terms of the performances fromDavis, Spencer, Stone, Bryce Dallas Howard (“Spider-Man 3”) and Jessica Chastain (“The Tree of Life”), as well as the direction and writing fromTaylor.
3) Tropical islands have drama too. Academy Award winning writer-director Alexander Payne’s new film is “The Descendants”. It stars Academy Award winner George Clooney (“Syriana”, “Michael Clayton”) as Matt King, a dad who has to step up and give his daughters some structure while he is expected to sell a large area of valuable untouched real-estate that has been passed down through his Hawaiian bloodline for generations while dealing with the fact that his wife had an affair before she became comatose.
This movie is a beautiful portrait of life and its drama in one of the most unlikely of settings. With its heavy ethical dilemmas lacing the storyline as well as gripping and powerful performances from Clooney and relative newcomer Shailene Woodley (from TV’s “The Secret Life of the American Teenager”), “The Descendants” is a very moving, well-executed story from Payne.
2) Spielberg’s latest creature feature: “War Horse” is my #2 film of 2011. Legendary director Steven Spielberg’s (“Schindler’s List”, “Jurassic Park”) latest film centers around the story of a horse named Joey, who experiences the hardships of the First World War. He encounters many different figures along his journey, from Nazis to small farmers, all while trying to find his way back home to his trainer Albie, played by Jeremy Irvine. It is based on the book by Michael Morpurgo.
On paper, this movie looks like a bore, but leave it to Spielberg and his iconic vision to make a movie with no A-list actors, and the only star of the show is a horse, and make it so critically successful, it could be an Oscar contender.
1) A timeless masterpiece. 2011’s biggest achievement has to be none other than Academy Award winning director Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo”. An enchanting tale about a young orphan, title character played by Asa Butterfield (“The Boy in the Striped Pajamas”), who lives in the walls of a Parisian train station tasked with keeping the clocks running.
What makes “Hugo” so special is that it says volumes about Scorsese, not only as a director but a preservationist, and this movie is a love letter to the early pioneers of moviemaking, and is still engaging as feature film overall. This movie was gorgeously crafted, effortlessly portrayed and wonderfully ambitious since Scorsese was out of his comfort zone of the gangster genre. This movie is, in my opinion, the best movie of 2011 and a major Oscar contender.
The Bottom Five
When taking shots, there are hits and there are misses. Sometimes the misses are so small, they can be forgotten or so big they can never be forgotten.
Producers take chances on making movies and sometimes they don’t exactly work out, and the resulting effects can linger. A bad movie can turn out to be the worst of the worst.
It is time to take a look at which five movies turned out to be the worst films of 2011.
5.) Dumas’ disappointment: The latest film adaptation of the classic Alexander Dumas novel, “The Three Musketeers”, takes the #5 spot of the worst films of 2011. Director Paul W.S. Anderson (“Resident Evil”), helms the story of the hotheaded D’Artagnan, played by Logan Lerman (“Percy Jackson and the Olympians: the Lightning Thief”), who teams with three rogue musketeers to foil the treasonous plot of Cardinal Richelieu, played by Academy Award winner Christoph Waltz (“Inglorious Basterds”), to become king of France.
This was another unsuccessful attempt to bring a classic novel to the big screen. The cast was either incredibly stale or completely out of place, the plot never took itself seriously, the direction was completely lighthearted. This film is an overall failure, especially with the lame 3D effects.
4.) LA Anarchy: The #4 spot on the list belongs to “Battle:Los Angeles.” Director Jonathan Liebesman, (“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning”), spearheads this sci-fi war flick about hostile alien invaders who use their incredible technology and vast armies to overwhelm the planet, wipe out all humans, and usurp the Earth’s natural resources. All that stands in the extraterrestrial’s path of total worldwide destruction is a small band of Marines who fight to the finish to defend the city ofLos Angeles.
Where Liebesman falls short is the department of creativity and originality. There was absolutely nothing special about the performances of the actors, the interpretation of the aliens, the screenplay or the execution of the film. Everything about this movie in particular just lacked that punch you want in an action flick.
3.) Just pull the trigger already: Academy Award nominee Saoirse Ronan (“Atonement”) stars in the third worst film of 2011. Hanna is the story of a young woman who was brought up to become the perfect assassin and ventures acrossEuropeto evade capture by CIA operatives to find the woman responsible for the death of her mother. Along the way she finds answers to the questions of her past, whether she is ready to know them or not, while sticking to the rule that her ex-CIA father, played by Eric Bana (“Munich”), taught her: adapt or die.
It is unclear as to what concept director Joe Wright (“Atonement”) wanted to use when it came to this movie, which is supposed to be an action movie. The problem with Hanna is that it just lacked the power to draw people in and hold the interest of the audience.
2.) This film lives up to its name: The runner up for worst movie of 2011 is “Sucker Punch”. Director Zack Snyder’s (“Watchmen”) visually stunning action feature stars Emily Browning as a young woman who is trapped in an insane asylum and hatches a plan to escape with four other inmates before they suffer a terrible fate. Browning’s Babydoll has to retreat to a fantasy world she concocts in order to do so.
This is truly the second worst movie of 2011 because, quite simply, this movie is pretty to look at but there is nothing under the surface. The cast was far from memorable, Snyder’s vision is completely predictable, the story was completely outlandish and had no relative strength and finally, it is just boring as an action movie and can’t be taken seriously.
1.) I wouldn’t even waste 10 minutes for this: The worst movie of 2011, is “30 Minutes or Less”. Academy Award nominee Jesse Eisenberg stars in director Ruben Fleischer’s (“Zombieland”) screwball comedy about a pizza deliverer who is abducted by a pair of amateur criminals, played by Danny McBride and Nick Swardson (“You Don’t Mess with the Zohan”), and forced to rob a bank. Otherwise, the bomb strapped to his chest will go off.
The main problem with this movie is that it just isn’t funny: it is life-draining, immature, classless and borderline insulting. What is really disappointing in this movie is Jesse Eisenberg; he is so much better than this role and it seems practically insulting for him to stoop down from his performance as Mark Zuckerberg in “The Social Network” to appease this director’s folly.
Whoever is smart enough to see this movie will not be dumb enough to indulge it or take it seriously. “30 Minutes or Less” is hands down 2011’s worst movie.
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