The best and worst is a very irresponsible subject for a movie column when, according to some, I haven’t seen the best movies of 2011.
My criminology prof accosted me in the middle of an exam to demand that I see Hugo—I haven’t. The Help was apparently a collective orgasm for the world but it’s still sitting unwatched in my movie queue. So this list is more of a “Best of 2011: According to the Very Lazy Cinephile.” Screw consistency, I’m going rogue.
Those of you who haven’t seen Bridesmaids can go straight to hell – or Jumbo Video, whichever is closer. It’s not fine cinematic art, but it’s genuinely hilarious. From dueling engagement speeches, to Kristin Wiig’s drug-fueled provocations of a snippy flight attendant, each scene is alternatively bawdy, awkward or candidly romantic.
The cast performs together like a rat pack in high heels, but Melissa McCarthy steals the show with her fearless performance as a puppy-stealing broad who has telepathic experiences with dolphins.
Also floating my boat was The Trip: a mockumentary starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon as “themselves.” The two go on a gourmet tour of England, eating steamed snails while they bicker amusingly about who can do a better Michael Caine impression.
Woody Allen is another cantankerous old man who proves he’s still got it with the time-traveling Midnight in Paris. Fans of “A Moveable Feast” can delight in the scenes set in 1920s Paris where a sexy Ernest Hemingway raves about bullfighting and the Fitzgeralds booze ‘til dawn, but Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams are horribly miscast as the leads. Block out their Hollywood toothiness and you’ll see some nostalgic magic happening.
Speaking of magic, our entire generation concluded puberty with the release of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 2: Neville Gets Hot. Die-hard Potterheads know that the movies are nothing more than a footnote to the emotional gut-punch of the books, but what the hell. Alan Rickman owns the day and that uncomfortably sexual hug between Draco and Voldemort alone deserves an Oscar forged from phoenix-tears.
On the more serious end there are Beginners and The Descendants. Beginners is a film based on a true story of a man (Christopher Plummer) who comes out of the closet in his eighties with beautiful yet tragic results. George Clooney’s The Descendants is a meandering tale of a father who finds out about his wife’s infidelities after she falls into a coma. Both films broke my heart, but in a good way—like when Kevin left the Backstreet Boys and you realized that he never contributed anything anyway.
Speaking of heartbreaking, there was also some real shit in theatres this year. When trying to recall the foulest movies of 2011, I naturally popped onto IMDB to see what Matthew McConaughey has been up to lately. But he was the least of movie-goers’ problems with train wrecks like Jack and Jill and Transformers vomiting on our I.Q.s. There was also the millionth installment of Twilight; pro-life twaddle disguised as an angsty teen gore-mance. Go to college, Bella!
Overall it was a decent year for film, but not a spectacular one. While there’s nothing wrong with going to the theater to lose oneself in amusing entertainment, I’m looking to have my socks knocked off and this year’s offerings left my woolly argyles immobile. So that’s the challenge I give to the movie makers of 2012: Come at my socks, bro.
