Top 25 Films of 2011: Numbers 25-11

OK so those who haven't got sick of me here we are again with my Top 25 films of 2011. Some notes before we get started I'm doing this in two segments (25-11 and the Top Ten) both of which will be in alphabetical order. If the film was released in 2011 but nominated for this year's Best Picture Oscar then it won't feature here so no Black Swan, 127 Hours, True Grit, The Fighter of The King's Speech on this list. So without further ado here are the films that did make the list:

13 Assassins 

We kick off this year's Top 25 with one of the year's most engaging action films released this year and  another engrossing Samurai film from director Takashi Miike. In this re-make of the 1963 film of the same name, Miike brings the action into full colour and assembles a great cast to take on the roles of the assassins tasked with bringing down the rule of the sadistic Lord Naritsugu whose dominant rule is oppressing the people of Japan. Although I found this incredibly talky in the early going it improved as it went on and the last hour which features the majority of the battle scenes are just spectacular. In the lead role Koji Yakusho was very good indeed but I also enjoyed Yusuke Iseya as the sort of comic relief of the piece. The film obviously draws comparisons with one of the greatest films of all time, The Seven Samurai, while its nowhere near as great as that it is still good to see films like 13 Assassins are still being made.

Arrietty 

It's fair to say that this hasn't been a great year for animated films with Pixar releasing a disappointing sequel to Cars and Dreamworks giving us an only alright second instalment of the Kung Fu Panda franchise. Thankfully Studio Ghibli are still producing beautifully animated pieces for the whole family this year adapting Mary Norton's timeless tale The Borrowers and retitling it after the name of its diminutive heroine. The story of the little people who live under the floorboards seems like a perfect fit for the studio behind such family favourites as Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle. While Hiromasa Yonebayashi directed the piece, Hayao Miyazaki was still heavily involved co-adapting the source novel to make it fit for his style of film. The results were spectacular with the animation being predictably splendid and the story flowing nicely with a focus almost solely on Arrietty and her world as well as the obsessed Haru who is convinced of The Borrowers existence who is a great source of humour for the film. The themes of family and acceptance which run throughout a lot of Miyazaki's films are present in Arrietty and at the end of the day it is just a great hand-drawn animated film that is very uncomplicated but at the same time a great film.


Attack the Block 

As a big fan of Adam and Joe I think I went into Attack the Block, the debut feature from Joe Cornish, already wanting to like it and although it's a far from perfect film it still has plenty of qualities that lands it a place in my Top 25. Instead of making this a comedy in the mould of Hot Fuzz or Shaun of the Dead this is a well-observed piece of social commentary about youths who live in council estates and their flippant nature to the world around them. When a gang of kids from the block of flats kill off an alien the rest of the race descends on the block and a war ensues between the humans and the aliens. Most of the humour within the film comes naturally as references to Fifa videogames and pay-as-you-go mobile phones make this a very British film. Though the aliens are furry creatures they are certainly still scary and Cornish isn't afraid of killing off some of his cast members. Talking of the cast there are assured performances from the majority of newcomers headed up by John Boyega as gang leader Moses while Jodie Whittaker is also great as nurse Sam someone who is mugged by the gang at the beginning of the film but is forced into helping them as the film goes on. It is rare to see a sci-fi film so intrinsically British which shows a real love and appreciation of the genre and this is certainly an assured debut for Cornish who is already making waves in Hollywood thanks to his writing on various projects.



Bridesmaids

I know this all-female comedy film divided audiences but I was in the camp who really enjoyed it and thought it was one of the funniest films of the year. Kristen Wiig, who I've always been a big fan of, wrote and takes the lead as Annie a failed baker who is asked to be maid of honour to her best friend Lilian when she announces her engagement. The film deals with themes of being stuck in a rut as Annie finds herself in a dead end job and sharing an apartment with an incestuous brother and sister pair. She also finds a rival in Lilian's new friend Helen who seemingly has the perfect life and is jealous that she may lose her old friend to a new life. What I really liked about Bridesmaids is that all of the six central characters all felt real even Melissa McCarthy who could've become the funny fat girl is afforded a scene in which she explains why she is so confident in her life. Even the love story between Annie and Chris O'Dowd's cop feels realistic and never slips into sickly sweet territory. More than anything though this is a very funny film with the scenes on the plane and at the wedding shower being my personal favourites. My only fear is that Bridesmaids will usher in a slew of new all women comedies which will be poor replicates of this brilliant original. 


The Guard 

For anyone who saw Martin McDonagh's In Bruges they know that probably the best thing about it was Brendan Gleeson's multi-layered performance that landed him a Golden Globe. So it seems that when McDonagh's brother John Michael was casting the lead for his second feature The Guard he had only one actor in mind to play the unorthodox policeman Boyle and once again it is Gleason's performance that is the jewel in the crown of this amiable comedy crime caper. When rumours of a drug-smuggling ring in Boyle's patch circulate Don Cheadle's FBI agent Everett comes over to lead the investigation. Boyle and Everett's double act is this year's funniest as the two clash but become friends throughout the film as they attempt to bring down the criminals who include Mark Strong's slightly psychopathic Clive Cornell. What I liked about The Guard more than anything was that it was a charming film with a protagonist who drunk, did drugs and used young prostitutes but was still completely likeable and relatable. To me Gleason was even better in The Guard than he was in In Bruges and deserves another award for playing one of 2011's most memorable characters.



Hugo 

I don't think any of us expected Martin Scorsese to follow-up such dark films as The Departed and Shutter Island with a 3D kids film but that's exactly what he did with the stunning Hugo. Centring around a Parisian train station Asa Butterfield stars as Hugo a boy who is secretly controlling the station's clock and is constantly trying to avoid being caught by the station guard who sends waifs and strays off to the orphanage. What I really like about Hugo is that Scorsese instantly transports you into Hugo's world of stealing croissants from cafes and going among the various stalls throughout the station. It also offers up a history lesson about early cinema from the Lumiere brothers to George Melies and how some of the early films were received by their audiences. Mixing both humour and warmth with some well-crafted scenery and a great cast which includes Sir Ben Kingsley, Helen McCrory, Christopher Lee and Sacha Baron Cohen dressed as the policeman from 'Allo 'Allo but doing a Peter Sellers impression. More than anything else Hugo is the type of film that you don't really see any more a proper film for the whole family that has engaging story and themes about family life and redemption. 


The Interrupters 

The first of three documentary films on the list, The Interrupters takes you on a ride through the gang culture in Chicago and focuses on the titular group of people who are trying to protect their streets from crime and violence. The interesting thing about The Interrupters is that many of them were part of the gang culture themselves when they were younger and they then are able to use this to relate to today's youngsters. For me I was taken with Ameena Matthews the daughter of legendary gang leader Jeff Fort who takes it upon herself to console the family and friends of murdered high school student Derrrion Albert whose death made news when it was captured on camera. Another startling scene involves another of The Interrupters convincing a young offender to go back to the barbershop which he and a group of friends previously robbed and heard from his victims their shock and fear at having guns pointed at their heads. It was the realistic nature of Steve James' film that really took me and he really made you support this group of people who were trying to rid their city of its crime element in the best way they knew how. 


Julia's Eyes 

In 2008, The Orphanage was one of my favourite films of that year a genuinely creepy Spanish horror film starring Belen Rueda and produced by Guillermo Del Toro. Producer and star reunited this year for the equally creepy if a little more predictable horror yarn Julia's Eyes. Rueda stars as Julia a woman who is inflicted with a degenerative disease which means she will go slowly blind and the beginning of the film sees the death of her sister Sara, who has already lost her sight, at the hands of a mystery assailant who then makes it look like suicide. As Julia starts to go blind she wants to investigate the death of her sister who she rightly believed was killed despite the instance of everyone that it was just suicide. Though I worked whodunnit straight away I still enjoyed the ride and there were still a few twists that caught me unawares. The best thing about it though was the concentration on sight and how vital it is to us as our heroine's vision is thwarted throughout the film the sense of peril is heightened. Director Guillem Morales makes the most of his brilliant leading lady who is by far the best thing about this film and like The Orphanage this film does not have a very happy ending but I won't spoil it for you because I would encourage everybody to go out and watch this superb chiller.



Kill List 

At the start of last year I watched Ben Wheatley's interesting debut film Down Terrace an odd family crime film which genuinely showed promise and then very recently I watched his brilliant second film Kill List which played with the genre of the crime film. Kill List is a film that can be split into three equal parts the first is very much a domestic drama about a couple with a young son trying to cope with the father's post-traumatic stress disorder following the war. The second sees the father, Neil Maskell's Jay, team up with Michael Smiley's intimidating Gal to finish off three individuals for a shadowy client. Their kill list is made up of three people who have done very wrong things usually to small children therefore the two contract killers can rightly justify their actions. The best thing about Kill List though was its final third because just as I thought I knew where it was going it turned into a horror film and evoked memories of both Rosemary's Baby and The Wicker Man. While Maskell was great playing the conflicted everyman for me Michael Smiley, best known to most people from Spaced, as the sort of big brother character who could both be charming and very sinister in equal measure. Kill List is by far not an easy watch but its combinations of three different genres and its small cast makes this a great British horror-thriller and one that I would greatly recommend. 


Life in a Day 

The second documentary on the list is Kevin MacDonald's very brave attempt to capture life around the planet on one day, July 24th 2010, by carefully editing together a numerous amount of the 80,000 clips posted on a YouTube channel by people from 192 nations across the globe. In the film we saw birth, marriage and coming-of-age tales we also saw the sad tale of the man who told his best friend how he really felt about her just to see her reject him. As anybody who saw Touching the Void knows, MacDonald is an assured documentary film-maker and the clever editing here perfectly captured the human spirit and all manner of emotions from different countries. Obviously MacDonald wanted to capture some big events, including the guy who was attempting to cycle the entire globe, but littered the film with smaller events such as people having breakfast, shaving, going to work and going to bed. One bit of the film that stuck with me was one of the final segments with a woman saying that nothing really major happened to her on that day and I think that's true of most of us because while some do experience big events on a regular basis most of us are just getting by. This was a film that really stuck with me and was a really massive project that definitely had a satisfying end result. 


Rise of the Planet of the Apes 

It has been an interesting year for blockbusters with the next chapters in the Pirates of the Caribbean and Transformers franchises being predictably crap it was the films that rebooted certain series that seemed to be better. While I did enjoy X-Men: First Class for me it was Rupert Wyatt's take on the Planet of the Apes saga that I found really engaging. Wyatt supposed that the original ape became super-intelligent due to James Franco's young scientist injecting him with a drug he was developing to combat Alzheimer's disease a condition which his father played by the brilliant John Lithgow was suffering from. Though Lithgow and Franco were both great the film was bought to life by Andy Serkis' motion-capture performance as Caesar the Ape who was really the central focus of the story. After the first half of the film explored the family unit, the second half was all about the mistreatment of apes from humans and the brilliant moment in which they finally rose up against Brian Cox and Draco Malfoy from Harry Potter. The final scenes with the battles between apes and humans were truly spectacular but this was a blockbuster that had both realistic characters and great action sequences and neither outshone the other. The only thing that ROTPOTA lacked was a decent female lead with Freida Pinto only existing to look pretty and smile occasionally but apart from that this was a great film and I'm excited to see what Wyatt does next with Caesar and the rest of his ape brethren. 


Snowtown

It is fair to say that it has been a good year for Australian cinema with the Western film Red Hill almost making the list and another Australian film making the top ten here we find the gripping and harrowing Snowtown in the bottom half of the 2011 list. Snowtown focuses on the story of how charismatic drifter John Bunting charmed his way into the hearts and homes of the people of the titular Australian town only to reveal himself to be a psychopath and a serial killer. The main focus on the film is the relationship between Bunting and young Jamie Vlassakis who was in search of a father figure and was taken under the wing of the man who began a relationship with his mother. The first half of the film showed how a mass-murderer could easily become a member of a small society while the second half concentrated on the brutal killings in which Bunting and his associates hid their victim's bodies in barrels. Overall a gripping drama with a tense lead performance from Daniel Henshall as the unremorseful Bunting the man who committed one of the most famous atrocities in Australian history.

Source Code 

Another interesting film which could be given the tag of blockbuster was the second film from Moon director and son of David Bowie, Duncan Jones. Source Code was a time-bending film starring Jake Gyllenhaal as a wounded soldier who is enlisted to try out a new military endeavour whose aim is to track down terrorists before they strike and arrest them before they are able to carry out any mass killings of civilians. In this case it was a bomb on a train and Gyllenhaal's Colter has to prevent the
bomb from going off something he isn't succesful with on multiple occassions meaning we see the same scene over and over again. What Jones' film is great at though is making this scene different every time as Colter falls for the attractive Christina the love interest of Sean Fentress the man who Colter has taken the body of. As well as the interesting story there are great performances from Gyllenhaal, Vera Farmiga, Michelle Monaghan and a slightly creepy Jeffrey Wright as the Source Code inventor. While it isn't as inventive as Moon it's good to see an intelligent blockbuster with plenty of excitement and twists as well as a cute little romantic edge and some interesting themes about what it means to exist and how we as humans can find redemption. I have to say though I'm still puzzled about that whole end scene. 


Submarine 

We end this half with two films from debut directors who are better known as actors firstly The IT Crowd's Richard Ayoade who helmed the likeable coming-of-age film Submarine. Set in the Welsh city of Swansea it follows Craig Roberts' teenage oddball seeking the love of kooky pretty classmate Jordana. For me the film perfectly captured the awkwardness of teenage affection and having to deal with both love and heartache in equal measure. Some found the character of Oliver quite annoying but personally I found him fairly endearing and his first person narrative was very well-handled. I think that Ayoade's direction perfectly suited this quirky little tale and the subplot involving Craig's mum, played by Sally Hawkins, being tempted by an ex-boyfriend was also fairly amusing. Submarine could be put into the same category as other films with strange adolescent males such as Rushmore or Harold and Maude and while it's not a patch on either of these I can definitely say that it is the best Welsh film of the year and Paddy Considine's arrogant psychic is a work of utter genius.



Tyrannosaur 

Talking of Considine his directorial debut is the final film on the list and again it isn't the easiest watch but it is a great study of the human condition. Peter Mullan puts in another assured performance as Joseph a drunk and a widower who is often getting into fights and alienates most of those around him. He forms an odd bond with charity shop worker Hannah played by the fantastic Olivia Colman who herself is the victim of abuse at the hands of her paranoid husband. With scenes of extreme violence, animal cruelty and rape, Tyrannosaur was never going to be hailed as the feel-good film of the year but what it is is the latest in a long line of great British realist films. I can't praise Colman's performance enough as the frightened and abused Hannah she owns most of the film but that's not taking anything away from the brilliant Mullan. Like with the other performers turned directors on this list it is clear that Considine is a student of the craft of film-making and displays his knowledge in full force in this gripping and compelling film.


Next time we'll get onto the Top Ten films of 2011.