Film 2011

With a New Year comes a new thread to keep our movie reviews together.

So, what can we look forward to over the coming year?

Well, as always January will see a glut of artsy, meaningful movies as the race to beat the Oscar deadline nears and passes, and to capitalise on any buzz the academy awards creates for some movies. Ones to look forward to would include The King’s Speech, Black Swan and 127 Hours

Remakes appear to be as popular as ever, with the likes of I Spit on Your Grave. True Grit, Brighton Rock, Footloose, Fright Night, Conan the Barbarian and closing out the year, a remake of this year’s Scandinavian release The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo coming out in the next twelve months.

We also have Big Screen adaptations for The Inbetweeners, Johnny English, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Smurfs, and Yogi Bear to come, with the last two seeing cartoon characters cross over into the real world.

Comic Book continue to be a source of inspiration for movie companies. Perhaps the most intriguing is Thor. Marvel continue their big plan for multi-film universe, but unlike The Incredible Hulk, X-men, Iron Man, or Spider-man, Thor doesn’t have a huge cartoon series or built in mainstream recognition. This film will show how viable their decision to mirror their comic world in film will be. The added variable in this is the interesting choice of Kenneth Brannagh as director. Also vying for Comic Book Movie honours this year are Green Lantern, Green Hornet, and Captain America: The First Avenger

There are a lot of sequels (and a few prequels) due out this year, some to recent hit, some to older franchises. Tom Cruise returns for Mission Impossible 4, can Guy Ritchie recapture the magic for the return of Sherlock Holmes, Twilight 4 steals marketing ideas from Harry Potter splitting its final instalment into two parts to grab more cash from the fans, (Harry Potter 7 part two is also out this year to close that franchise out, at least until they're inevitably remade), Paranormal Activity 3 continues the trend of asking people to pay to watch nothing happen, it turns out what was supposed to end with number four, continues with Final Destination 5, Spy Kids 4 is on its way, Pirates of the Caribbean 4 hopes we haven’t grown tired of Captain Jack, and the dormant Scream returns for a fourth with Kevin Williams back as writer, and Wes Craven still in the director’s chair.

Happy Feet 2 3D, Kung Fu Panda 2, Alvin and The Chipmunks 3D and Cars 2 make sure you get your fill of animated sequels.

The Thing is a prequel that give us the story of what happened to the Norwegian crew Kurt Russell and friends came upon in that horror classic, Rise of the Apes hopes you forget about that Burton mistake, by telling you how the apes came to power for the classic movie instead of the wahlberg one, Bryan Singer is back on board as producer for X-men: First Class to tell us the story of a young Magneto and Young Professor Xavier.

If you’re looking for something a little more original, The Fighter sees Christian Bale teach Mark Wahlberg to box, Zack Snyder brings us Alice in Wonderland with machine guns in Sucker Punch, Jon Favreau gives us the supposedly serious Cowboys and Aliens, JJ Abrams has kept tightlipped about his new film Super 8, Red Riding Hood seems to be asking “Do people want to see how fairytales were before they were sanatised for kids?” as we see the non-child friendly version of the story, and the futuristic Real Steel sees Hugh Jackman as a promoter of robot boxing.

Of course, as Uncle Spielberg started this thread in 2009 (and I presume before then) I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that one of the big releases this summer will be Transformers: Dark of the Moon, which sees the team behind this beast hoping for a return to form of the first movie, no Megan Fox, replaced by Rosie Huntington-Whitely and rumours of Unicron (the planet sized bad guy from the animated movie). With the people working on the movie admitting they slipped up with the second, hopes are (comparatively) high for this one. Some interesting casting choices (John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, Alan Tudyk) also have people hoping for the best.

Here's hoping this year shows an improvement in cinema offerings. Leave your reviews for his year's movies here.

I had my first cinema visit of the year today.

Love and Other Drugs
I really didn't know as much about this as I thought I did. I was expecting it to be an indie style romcom. I had no idea anne's character would be ill, so early in the film where she is introduced as suffering from parkinsons I thought she was playing some sort of angle for some reason. It was part romcom (with obligatory judy greer, and bonus oliver platt - two more things I was unaware of), part commentary on the drug industry in america, and part commentary on how the insurance industry is screwing up the american health care system, without being preachy or distracting. Quite subtle, and maybe I was reading too much into it.
Good performances, slightly novel hook to a tired genre, and anne and jake were both likeable non-threatening actors who make a cute couple on screen, so I did rather enjoy it.

Burlesque
For the first 40 minutes I couldn't decide if I liked it because it was good, or because of it's campy badness. I knew I was far from impressed with Christina's performance, and Cher is just looking scary now. She has completely lost the ability to have any facial expression which impacts badly on her ability to act. After 40mins I started to feel like the film was really dragging (despite the good music every so often). By the end of the film, I realised it seemed like Christina and Cher (and dianna agron in her brief scene) were playing it straight, while the established and (at least) able actors (stanley tucci, eric dane, cam gigandet, peter gallagher, and kristen bell) were playing it for campy fun (albeit with straight faces).

The group behind me really didn't like it, uttering under their breath about how slow it was, how awful cher was. I can see this becoming a bit of a campy cult classic, like Coyote Ugly, I think (I remember that getting a lot of bad reviews and not being a huge success and now being looked at with a degree of fondness by some).

I went to see the trimmed version of Carlos today. Last year, i know, but was gripping for two hours. You can see that the last 45 minutes were 3 hours edited down to size. Decades passed for the Jackal and the incidents they chose to keep weren't keeping the story in a coherent line. Good stuff in general though.

I saw Black Swan last year, but i'm gonna go again. I loved it. And True Grit is getting some very good write-ups, so that's on my list. 127 Hours will be good, i suppose. Boyle's flashfire scene construction should make it thrilling, but characterless as per usual.

In terms of Thor, he was the hulk's sort-of sidekick in a film in about 1990. Terrible. I remember in the comic for a long spell his nemesis was Loki, his mischievious half-brother and of course son of Odin. Not sure they'll have him again. Marvel are scraping the barrel for their age-old heroes. Captain America was much-derided in the collection world once comics became a little grown-up. He was as empty as Superman. I'll still see them, of course, but not hunger for them with baited breath.

Meade's_Ball said:

In terms of Thor, he was the hulk's sort-of sidekick in a film in about 1990. Terrible. I remember in the comic for a long spell his nemesis was Loki, his mischievious half-brother and of course son of Odin. Not sure they'll have him again. Marvel are scraping the barrel for their age-old heroes. Captain America was much-derided in the collection world once comics became a little grown-up. He was as empty as Superman. I'll still see them, of course, but not hunger for them with baited breath.

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I'm a bit of a superhero movie junkie. I love them even when they're bad (Batman and Robin, Daredevil, etc.). I know the Hulk TV Movie you speak of. I believe it was the incredible hulk returns. (There was also the trial of the incredible hulk with daredevil , and death of the incredible hulk).



I know they will be empty, and Green Lantern looks like it's going to be bad, but despite this I do hunger with baited breath for them.

I believe Loki is in this version of Thor (played by Tom Hiddleston). I'm not sure how big his role is, because there's also Destroyer (a giant metallic robot like thing) that is there to be beaten. Loki will also be in The Avengers, the film that is the result of marvel's multi film universe plans. Rumour has it Hawkeye will also make an appearance in Thor, too.

I'm also excited by the fact Kat Dennings is in Thor.

With the look of that list, Acker, ( Which I believe you have lifted ! ) I won't be taking the fragrant Mrs Veg to many films this year. Only a smattering have any appeal at all and some are quite a horrifing prospect. Even worse is the release of Pirates of the C 4... yawn ! Methinks I will hitting The Duke Of York's for some classy independants and foreign language films.

I summarised using this list. I've read a few 'films to watch out for this year' articles so may have subconsciously copied elements, but otherwise it's all my own work.

I imagine some of the less recognisable titles on that list may provide some of the better movies, but I was being lazy and couldn't be bothered to investigate unknown titles, sticking with just the ones I recognised.

Yeah i've seen all those Hulks too.
Afternoon fare. Until Bixby met his maker. It was either that on or Peter Falk knowing who killed someone for 2 hours, just as we did, and boringly questioning them until they (a Shatner or Katt) admitted it to either him or his floppy-eared dog.

Christ, Hawkeye? The Avengers was properly shit. They mirrored Justice League of America at DC, which was not that good either but had Batman and Superman and Wonder Woman in it together. Not until X-Men did a decent team come together. And they've sort of watered that brand to death already.
They always need to find a character that had something to them in comic form. Ghost Rider didn't, and made for a bad film. Catwoman too (which i watched for about the 4th time this evening). Having character in comics is no guarantee of a good film though either. Swamp Thing and Daredevil and Elektra were all duds and almost trod roughly on their inky heritage.
Thor is a bad choice. His human side, the limpy doctor, had nothing to him at all and had little hardship. They'll have to try and make a story up for him, a background that doesn't have us always wishing he'd crack his cane, say his rhyme and become the aryan god of thunder again.

For me so far there's only been Batman Begins, X1 and 2, and Spidey 1 and 2 that have been decent comicbook films in the last decade.

There's a sequel to ghost rider due out early next year, too. Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2012) - IMDb

Acker79 said:

There's a sequel to ghost rider due out early next year, too. Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2012) - IMDb

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Heh. It says Christopher Lambert (in talks).
"We're making a terrible film and would like a terrible actor other than Nicholas Cage to be in it. We'll give you £200k. In?"
"Of course i f***ing am!"

going to watch Black Swan myself. Read good reviews

Call yourself a film buff. You missed out on the biggest release of the year

9/9/11 - Steven Spielberg - Warhorse.

saw tron legacy with the kids yesterday, half decent film with good effects and a rather humpable, miss olivia wilde......yum yums...!!

Uncle Spielberg said:

Call yourself a film buff. You missed out on the biggest release of the year

9/9/11 - Steven Spielberg - Warhorse.

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I missed out a lot of films.

But the biggest film from the greatest living director and his first in over 3 years.

Unforgiveable.

I make no apologies.

Follows a young man named Albert and his horse, Joey, and how their bond is broken when Joey is sold to the cavalry and sent to the trenches of World War One. Despite being too young to enlist, Albert heads to France to save his friend.

The making of the stage version has been advertised on sky (sky arts, I think).

With a young British cast including Benedict Cumberbatch who excelled as Sherlock Holmes.

Cast
Credited cast:
David Thewlis ... Lyons
Benedict Cumberbatch ... Major Stewart
Tom Hiddleston ... Captain Nichols
Toby Kebbell ... Geordie
Emily Watson ... Albert's mother
Peter Mullan ... Albert's Father

Do you know if he'll be using a puppet horse, or a real one?

A real one.