Saturday, December 31, 2011 at 5:45PM Josh's Top 5 Films of 2011
With everyone else tossing around their best and worst of 2011 picks , I just had to join in on the fun. But to look back at 2010, 2011 seems to be a lackluster year. 2010 had movies abound with "Oscar Buzz" and some pretty big movies and performances. In comparison, 2011, at least to me, has been a bit more... quiet, somehow. But that's not to say there hasn't been several great movies this past year.
5. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
It's rare that I think any sequel is better than the original, and as I went to see Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, my expectations were pretty low. The first one was fun, but rather unmemorable; yeah, I liked the new take on Sherlock's mythology, and if it weren't for Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, the film probably would have sucked. But it seems Guy Ritchie really listened to the criticism of the first film, and redeemed himself on the second. I'm really interested to see how he develops future installments of Sherlock Holmes.
4. Hanna
Part spy-thriller, part action, part adventure, toss in a bit of fairy tale, and you begin to see where Hanna came from. But it's so much more than these individual pieces, in part due to great performances from Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana, and Cate Blanchett, and the fact that everything fit so well together. Easily forgotten because it was released last April (when good movies rarely come out before summer), make sure you go find this one and watch it, if you missed it like many people did.
I've come to expect so very little from any movies based on comics, video games and books (speaking of, The Hunger Games better be good!). So despite an excellent cast (James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence) and a well known director (Matthew Vaughn), I still had really low expectations for X-Men: First Class. But I realized something about halfway through the film; this movie is about people, with real ambitions and problems, but they just happen to have super powers. Their super-human abilities just took second chair to everything else going on, which really made this film great. Take note, all you studios wanting to turn a quick buck with a comicbook/video game-based movie.
2. 50/50
50/50 proves that Joseph Gordon-Levitt really needs to be a leading man in more movies. He handles comedy with excellent timing, knows when to pluck our heart strings, and can even tame Seth Rogen. He's come a long ways from 3rd Rock From the Sun, and here's hoping his career continues to grow exponentially.
Seriously. Go watch this one, and tell me if you disagree that Joseph Gordon-Levitt doesn't deserve at least an Oscar-nod for his performance.
1. Bridesmaids
Bridesmaids is probably the best film of the year that none of us got to review in time. Seriously, I didn't see it unitl it's 5th week or so in the theaters, and on a weekend matinee, the theater was still packed. While it's word-of-mouth advertising didn't cause it to blow up like The Hangover, Bridesmaids was still a treat. Kristin Wiig proves she's a comedic genius, and the whole world got introduced to Maya Rudolph and Melissa McCarthy (if you didn't know them already). If anything, they proved a movie starring nothing but women can be hilarious for everyone.
Honorable Mentions (in no particular order:
Bellflower (they had a $14k budget and made a pretty damn good film)
Still Need to See:
Josh Baldwin | Permalink | in 50/50, Bridesmaids, Hanna, News, Sherlock Holmes, X-Men | Print Article | 3 Comments | Share Article 
Reader Comments (3)
Has anyone on your staff seen The Descendants???
Looks good, now I have some movies to see.
Thank you :)
Chris: Yes, Kerry Fleming wrote a review of it in fact. It may have been one of his top films of the year, but he wasn't able to write about his top films this weekend, so I guess we'll never know.
http://www.getthebigpicture.net/blog/2011/11/18/movie-review-the-descendants.html