[Wombi]

[CellarDoor]

[Jackwc]

LOOKS LIKE IT'S JACK'S TIME TO SHINE!

...later, when I finish my movie list.
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A dick that's bigger than the sun.

Music sucks. Check out my favourite movies, fam:
http://letterboxd.com/jackiegigantic/

[Jackwc]

2011: the year with more sequels released than any other year in history. Not a joke either, look it up. All those sequels and 90% of them were pure crap - oh, what a world we live in! Well, it wasn't all bad: here's ten reasons it wasn't.

10. The Artist
I JUST watched this. Like, a few hours ago. Give it some time, it could make it up to #3. Maybe even #1. WATCH IT. IT'S FUCKING GOOD.

9. The King's Speech
I've always found the Royal Family very fascinating, and as such I've always really enjoyed movies about them - The Queen, for example, was one of my favourite films from the last decade. This... isn't quite as good, but it fits the bill. Did it deserve the Oscar? Hell no.

8. Ides of March
I'm gonna try to review this without going off on Ryan Gosling's looks... hmm... it's a very well-paced political thriller, and what I ESPECIALLY liked was that, unlike other more recent political thrillers, it actually includes, you know, actual politics. What could it have done better? Still not quite enough politics for my taste.

7. X-Men: First Class
I. AM. A NERD. I love the X-Men. I LOVE THEM. And I hated the old trilogy. HATED IT. But this movie approaches the subject matter with much more class, and, perhaps this is only because I'm an LBGT myself, but I really enjoyed the more obvious parallels this time around between the mutants struggle and the racial and sexual civil rights movements. A superhero movie CAN have a message, people, it CAN.

6. Melancholia
Lars von Trier has done better - much better. This film is pretty good, but, to be honest, if you haven't seen his older films please watch those first. Movies like the Dogma-95 flick "The Idiots" don't quite rely on the same amount of spectacle that his recent movies such as this and Antichrist do. This one... I mean, it was GOOD, but it was just so damn over-hyped it made it hard to appreciate.

5. Hobo With A Shotgun
...this was good? B-but how? Crap, it was actually REALLY good. Anyone who appreciated Drive this year will probably appreciate this as well - a throwback to old, gritty spectacle films done half-tongue-in-cheek and half stone-faced serious. A fine and fun time for all. Hurrah!

4. Rise of the Planet of the Apes
I'll never understand why fanboys have such a hardon for this franchise. There have been six movies in this series in the past - FIVE OF THEM WERE SHIT. Well, now we have a new one, and, you know what? It isn't shit. It's very good. You should go see it. Fanboys will love the SEVERAL throwbacks and references to the original series, so many of which you'll need to see it more than once to get them all, but like I said, most people shouldn't care considering how crappy most of the originals were.

3. 50/50

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A GOOD Seth Rogen movie? Jesus, haven't seen one of these in a while. Not since Superbad, and that was, like, what, four years ago? This movie has all those classic Seth Rogen staples we've come to expect and typically groan at, and he's essentially playing the same character he's played since Donnie Darko, but this time the movie has what most of his previous endeavours have been lacking, and that is a heart. This movie never gave me any crazy "laughing-my-ass-off" moments like his other movies aim to do, but it was charming and it kept me smiling.

2. Drive

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Ryan Gosling~! <3 Okay, okay, look, Ryan Gosling is hot. I'm the last one to deny it. But still, this movie does not simply hold itself to Gosling's physical merits. It's a fine, fine film, a tribute to early Scorsese flicks like Taxi Driver, which were in turn tributes to the gritty, substance-less noir movies of the 40's and 50's. But you know what? Drive does it's job smashingly. It's like a beautiful caricature of the genre, as painted by Peter Paul Rubens with a score pulled straight out of the hauntingly ethereal 1980's electropop stream (oh, and the soundtrack is on my 10's chart).

1. The Tree of Life

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It's basically "what if Stanley Kubrick directed Leave It To Beaver?"
Just fucking watch it, okay? It's good.

Haven't seen Midnight in Paris yet, but I plan to soon, although I'm damn sure (or at least I HOPE) that this year's REAL winner will be Tintin. But a boy can only dream.
_________________
A dick that's bigger than the sun.

Music sucks. Check out my favourite movies, fam:
http://letterboxd.com/jackiegigantic/

[Wombi]

Looks like we may agree on film more than we do on music

Pretty much exact same thoughts on Melancholia and Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes and all your other choices that I've seen (everything except 50/50 (which I might watch now), Hobo with A Shotgun and The Artist (Dammit want to see so freaking badly) are good, Although Ides I only thought was only okay and First Class kinda sucked on re-watch (and I lurve the X-Men franchise too! )

[Fergenaprido]

Admittedly, I have not seen nearly enough movies from 2011, mainly due to living in places where said movies are either inaccessible or horribly dubbed. So, I can only give you four for now, none of which are terribly amazing.

Harry Potter
Bridesmaids
The Guard
Attack the Block
(those last three I managed to watch all on one flight)

The other movies I've seen that were just okay (no terrible films yet) are X-Men First Class, Cowboys and Aliens, Limitless, Green Hornet, Transformer 3, and Bad Teacher.

So yes, I still have to see a lot of the "must-sees", which I might get to do when I go home for the holidays.

And Jack, with regards to XMen, #2 was very much LGBT-related... surprised you didn't like that one.

Also, I just found Jhereko's link to the movie checklist... very cool idea indeed, so I created an account. :p

[Wombi]

[Wombi]

[Jackwc]

[nrs182]

My favorite movie came last year: The Secret in Their Eyes. I seriously recommend it.