"Worst" of 2011. A Quick Purge

year in review part whichever

I use the term "worst" loosely as I am generally not paid to see the obviously terrible films that open all year round. Plus, I'm not feeling the negativity this year. Or, rather, I'm trying not to feel it. With Bridesmaids and Melancholia both speaking so eloquently on the subject of depression this year like some perfect if unlikely double feature (more on that soon) why should I wallow in my own? No, 2011 was a good year for cinema. So here is a very quick purge of the things that momentarily led me to believe otherwise. 

Hell's Multiplex
Hell's multiplex has noisy audiences, crying babies, constant texting, and 50 million miniature screens showing only 50 movies, a million microscopic screens for each sorry movie! All of them requiring 3D glasses... even the ones in 2D. I wisely avoided the films I thought might play there -- if I hear the names Nicolas Cage, Adam Sandler or Kevin James or "Part One" I run -- though I inadvertently stumbled on a few grotesqueries. I've no wish to bury amateurish festival films but bigger names and wider releases are fair games. The 8 worst films I saw this year, then, were:

• Beastly and...
• I Am Number Four 
  This Double Feature of Dickery tops the list (bottoms the list?), with both of the films starring Prince Charmless himself Alex Pettyfer. What possessed his management to give the go ahead on Beastly in particular in which he must sell -- and sells all too well -- utter despicability of character devoid of all traditional humanity? And selling that so well while playing the hero?
• Abduction [reviewed]
• Cars 2 -Cars was Pixar's previous worst film. So naturally all of Cars's worst impulses were jacked up for the sequel. Michael said it best to me when we were leaving the screening "It's like George Lucas deciding to make a Star Wars prequel with Jar Jar Binks as the lead character!"
• Green Lantern [reviewed]
• J Edgar - Less outright terrible than devoid of any reasonable expectations of entertainment value or historical insight. Cliche filled stuff spun from complex fascinating real life. [reviewed]
• The Other Woman [reviewed]
• Kaboom [reviewed]

Michelle & Nicole in widely hated filmsWorst Reviewed Movies of 2011 That I Myself Did Not See
New Year's Eve and Trespass ...yes I have every intention of seeing these two films; I am willing to suffer for my Pfandom and my Kidmania. But I'm no hurry. But those I intentionally avoided include: Jack and Jill, Just Go With It, The Roommate, Dylan Dog: Dead of Night, Season of the Witch, Red Riding Hood, Dream House, Zookeeper, I Don't Know How She Does It, The Rite, The Smurfs and Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked

Worst Actress
True story Part 1: I had never* seen Vanessa Hudgens act before seeing Beastly.
True Story Part 2: I still haven't seen her act because no reasonable person could call it such. 

Mating Rituals From Hell's Multiplex: BEASTLY

Worst Actress That Has Been Good In Other Things
If you figure out what Abbie Cornish was doing in W.E. besides counting down the days till the shoot ended please share this information. But my guess is that's what was going on because otherwise I can't figure it...

Worst Actor
Let's play "Jeopardy" instead...

Violins, totem poles, Grandma Willow, trees, 'Mr. Pointy', antiques, wardrobe, pianos, chaise lounge, picket fence, Treebeard, staves, matches, witch's broom... 

??? 

Click to read more ...

This Just In... The Official Poster for Oscar's 84th

Here he is, in all his shiny beauty and questionable* taste splendor...

"Life Camera Action... celebrate the movies in all of us" -- I'm not sure what this actually means but okay. I do like to live vicariously through movies, it's true.

* Forrest Gump, Gladiator and Driving Miss Daisy are films you want to remind me you loved more than everything else over the past three decades? And you want to compare them to Giant, Gone With the Wind, The Godfather and The Sound of Music? You're such an abusive lover... I give you so much attention, so much affection, everything! And then you slap me around carelessly with those naked gold hands and that frozen robotic face! You don't love me at all, do you, Oscar? [Weeping] You never did!

Oklahoma & Phoenix & The Supporting Actress Traffic Jam

The Artist, Albert Brooks, Michelle Williams and The Tree of Life's cinematography continue to assert dominance in the regional critics prizes as two more circles & societies weigh in. How long until we have 60 US critics organizations, one for each state plus a handful of redundant consolidating regional groups and another handful of national groups?

11 perfs by 9 women have divvied up Critics Supporting Actress prizes in North America

Meanwhile Supporting Actress --which is a real clusterf*** to predict with 6 women doing superbly in precursors and 2 more super lauded performances waiting eagerly for a miracle stumble from one of those 6 -- continues to be a total free for all among critics groups as I've illustrated with this map of the prizes thus far... so exciting! Would that more races would inspire this much healthy difference of opinion, art being subjective and all.

I've been discussing the Best Supporting Actress race with other pundits recently and I'm finding it amusing how "obvious" everyone claims it is despite no one agreeing on who is out front or who gets dumped. How then, can it be obvious? Even the statistics don't solve this equation as will be noted after the jump...

Click to read more ...

#TeamLink

Anne Helen Petersen has 5 crotchety excellent questions about The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Bad Ass Digest a terrific piece on Margaret & #TeamMargaret, the time between Christmas & New Years and the space between Mess & Masterpiece
Daily Mail Christina Hendricks returning to the 1960s for Bomb a political period piece from sporadic director Sally Potter. The film is about two teens who get involved in the "Ban the Bomb" movement. The film will star Elle Fanning and Alice Englert. Englert is actually the daughter of the great filmmaker Jane Campion though most sites are missing this info since people keep spelling her last name wrong. 

Movie|Line interviews Dee Rees on her feature Pariah which is about to open at long last. Go see it!
Black Book interviews the incomparable Sandra Bernhard before her New Year's Eve shows.
Awards Daily Sasha looks back on box office versus Oscar and how drastically things have changed over the years from when Terms of Endearment could end the year at #2 just behind a Star Wars movie. We covered this topic in great detail a few years ago but it's always worth contemplating if crazy depressing. Basically what it boils down to is adults started watching pay cable and left the movie theaters and the industry got really good at making films exactly like television: i.e. your favorite series returns on ____ . Stay tuned!

Oh look! It's one of our first official stills from Soderbergh's stripper drama Magic Mike (2012) with all of the boys four of the boys accounted for: Joe Manganiello, Alex Pettyfer, Matthew McConaughey, and Mike's leading man Channing Tatum. 

top ten bonanza! 
Beiber fever caps the Top Grossing Documentaries of 2011 according to IndieWire -- It's interesting to note that the list contains only two of the movies from Oscar's 15-wide finalist list: Buck and Bill Cunningham New York | Our friend Katey Rich delivers her top ten for Cinema Blend and boy has she stayed loyal to Meek's Cutoff  | Acid Cinema has a fun snarky preface and an individualistic top ten | Paste Magazine offers up a bizarre top 50 (Happythankyoumoreplease???? Really?) | Guy Lodge at In Contention doubles up for a top twenty with high marks for Weekend and Drive, of course, which he famously offered to have sex with at Cannes last summer |  Now Toronto's list reminds us that release dates differ greatly from country to country. 

Tuesday Top Ten: Memo to AMPAS

Oscar ballots left the Academy offices today on their way to the 6,000+ members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. If you must concern yourself with the math of Best Picture voting, here is how it works. I've always found that the discussions of hard but unknowable facts like voting percentages (no one but the accountants see them) and the math and statistics that surround them obscure the more telling aspects of like mood and buzz. Those are equally invisible things but way more honest about their own unknowability.

Anyway, sorry to distract with math. Here are the top ten things we'd respectfully like to say to AMPAS members today as they mull over their abundant choices. We may contradict ourselves a few times but so it goes in Oscar season.

TEN IMPORTANT MESSAGES FOR OSCAR VOTERS

10 We Feel For You Even When We Complain!
It's true that you can't please everyone. That's especially true if you are making decisions that millions of people are invested in even when they claim not to be. Thick skin is handy. We assume you have it when people like us start storming the castle. (If we didn't love you we wouldn't care... so stop freaking out about your relevancy)

09 Take Your Time. Watch a Few More Movies.
You have until January 13th to turn in your ballot. Yes, it sucks that at least a hundred screeners arrive between November and now assuming you have nothing better to do during the holidays than prop open your eyes with toothpicks for a marathon session. I don't want to overwhelm you further with more options so I will only boldly suggest a triple feature before you send off your ballot: A SEPARATION, BEGINNERS and MELANCHOLIA. These three films -- and several others -- won't get as much press as the bigger name movies they're superior to (*cough* You Don't Need To Horse Around With The Girl With the Iron Lady Tattoo) but that doesn't mean you shouldn't vote for them! I single them out because they're good, under-discussed and I know you have the screeners.

[Update: You don't have the screener but CERTIFIED COPY is on Netflix Instant Watch so do yourself the favor. (Whoops that's a quadruple feature!)]

08 Vanessa Redgrave in Coriolanus
You also might want to give Coriolanus a whirl too to see why some people are so excited about Vanessa Redgrave again. It's been kind of a great year for actresses and actors of a certain age (Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor may both skew the oldest ever). But don't throw that particular theme party at the Kodak and forget to invite the best one! That would be... weird.

"you are not my son"

07 On the other hand... consider rejecting the one-week qualifiers altogether.
We're not sure what went wrong in 2011 but the one-week qualifier shenanigans went viral this year. There were more of them than ever. Too many films are screaming "screw you!" at audiences and only courting YOU. This is not healthy for the cinema which is meant to be an art form for the masses. If you've ever worried about charges of elitism consider rejecting them entirely.

peek-a-boo releases, combating genre bias, and sticking it to loudmouth pundits after the jump!

Click to read more ...