2011 films

here are all of the 2011 films i saw before the end of the year (updated because i totally forgot about win win):

16. cars 2 - a pure cash grab if there ever was one.  putting characters from a well-known, profitable film into a completely unrelated spy-movie is a terrible, but ultimately money-making idea so this one will be followed in 2012 by madagascar 3 where the same thing happens.

15. horrible bosses - this one would probably be better if i saw a pg-13 edit.  vulgarity is not my cup of tea.

14. the green hornet - michel gondry usually does better work so i'm blaming this one on seth rogen and his writing partner.

13. the mechanic - not much to be said about this one.  okay at best.

12. limitless - bradley cooper and robert deniro probably did this one for the exact same reason: cash.  cooper has to strike while the iron is hot and deniro must owe someone a lot of money to keep doing this stuff.  it was a fun concept, but the movie was nothing exceptional.  

11.  thor - this film slides into the sweet spot superhero films occupied comfortably before batman begins.  on the plus-side, this one was fun and hit most of the right notes for a superhero film.  as for the negatives, the plot was a bit weak and predictable.  also, i have a hard time buying how thor fits into the world of the other marvel comics where heroes are humans with strange abilities and/or exceptional skills.  thor, on the other hand, is a norse god and that's never really worked for me.

10. source code - too clever by half.

9. kung fu panda 2 - we saw this with our nephew and he was transfixed the entire time.

8. rango - sometimes a movie is advertised as a straightforward family film when it's really an oddball story better-suited for a more knowing audience.  this is one of those films.  i imagine kids enjoyed this one, but i also think they'll get a lot more out of it when they're older.

7. x-men: first class - after the final films of the hugh jackman x-men era, i was ready to be done with these mutants for quite a while.  then, of course, this movie came along and now i'm back.  clearly more than a prequel, this one was a good reboot for the films and had a solid cast.  i'm not sure how potential sequels will work now that first class' plot has inserted the x-men into real-world events, but i'd like to see it.

6. the adventures of tintin - though i had heard about tintin years ago, i had never read any of herge's work so i didn't really know what to except going in to this one.  it was an enjoyable adventure with maybe one or two too many false endings.

5. captain america: the first avenger - a lot of people thought this movie was boring and slow.  i disagree.  for me it was a throwback to an earlier style of movie, sort of like the original indiana jones trilogy.  it's hard for most people to accept a captain america-type in these cynical times, but i must be some sort of idealist because sometimes i like a hero whose faults aren't his defining characteristics.  i know that doesn't jibe with a post-christopher nolan superhero world.  as much as i like a hard-edged, conflicted batman, i like a straightforward, uncompromising cap.

4. the girl with the dragon tattoo - i'm really of two minds about this movie.  on the one hand, it was a well-made film based on what seems to be a good mystery novel.  at the same time it's a film with the most brutal scenes i've ever seen.  maybe i'm weird, but i think the film would have been just as good (or probably better) if the worst of the scenes were edited down and more was implied than shown.  i'm told all of that stuff is in the book, but i think we'd all have gotten the jist with a bit more implication and a lot less explicit visualization.

3. win win - when i first wrote this i totally forgot that this came out in 2011.  this movie, although fictional, is a more realistic version of the blind side.  here the kid is trouble, the family who rescues him is in trouble, and nobody is perfectly cheery or honest. 

2. moneyball - aaron sorkin knows his way around a script, brad pitt & jonah hill know how to act, and this movie knows exactly how to get people to think that the a's still have a clue.  the only thing dragging this one down is that, in the near-decade since the movie's 2002 season, a lot of things have changed in baseball that make billy beane look less like a genius and more like a guy who got lucky with three of the best young starters in baseball.

1. the muppets - this movie was great.  i'd be pretty stoked to get my very own 80s robot.