2011 Movie Awards

So we’re finished with the formal awards, but there are always some other awards that don’t really require a lot of nominees… and there are some movies that have something so uncommon that it’s worth bringing up. Some of these awards have actually become a yearly thing, though most are still just random and, well, arbitrary. In any case, here they are:

• The “You know what happens when a toad gets struck by lightning? The same thing that happens to everything else” Award for Worst Dialogue: Battle Los Angeles. This one gets harder and harder to pick every year because who wants to go back and revisit horrible movies looking for bad dialogue? In this case, I just went from the memory of cringing at the dialogue when I saw the movie. “Maybe I can help. I’m a veterinarian.” How convenient. Cowboys & Aliens merits attention here as well.
• The Proximity to Jason Vorhees Award for Heroic Stupidity: Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark. So a little girl moves into a haunted house, and her father gets her the creepiest nightlight thing ever, then people start getting into not-so-mysterious accidents and blah blah blah, this film makes no fucking sense. Everyone in the film is a moron.
• Most Surprisingly Mediocre Movie of the Year: Limitless and The Lincoln Lawyer (tie). For some reason, I was expecting both of these to be nigh unwatchable, but they were both decent movies. Not fine cinema or anything, and probably won’t be making their way onto my top 10 or honorable mentions, but a good way to spend a couple hours.
• Best Long Take/Tracking Shot: Hanna. So Eric Bana gets off a train, and the camera follows him as he walks through the station. As he walks, you start to notice people following him; eventually he’s surrounded by enemies and has to fight them off, which he does. And this all happens in a single tracking shot. It’s a bit of a bombastic, showy sequence, but I loved it anyway.
• The Park Chan-Wook Award for Excessive Vengeance: I Saw the Devil. Those wacky Koreans really seem to enjoy their revenge movies.
• Best CGI Animal Not Named Caesar: Maurice the CGI orangutan from Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Maurice might be my favorite character in the movie, actually. Heck, he was smart before he took the drug – he was a circus orangutan and learned signing, and he’s somehow the voice of wisdom or something in the movie. He doesn’t get the emotional arc that Caesar does, but he’s still awesome.
• The About Face Award: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. I have to admit, it took guts for a guy like Morgan Spurlock, who went out of his way to destroy a brand with an earlier movie (with arguably unfair tactics) to make this movie, a movie about product placement financed completely by its sponsors and product placement in the movie. It’s a clever idea and he did manage to pull it off despite his reputation.
• Best Old People Fight Sequence: The Debt. Haha. Old people fighting.
• Best Opening Sequence:: Drive. The opening chase sequence was fantastic, tense, and exciting stuff. It tells you everything you need to know about the driver, and it’s a chase that’s more about subterfuge and hiding than pyrotechnics and speed (i.e. it’s not a Fast and Furious movie…) Also worth calling out for opening sequences: Scream 4, a pitch perfect opening for the post-modern, self-referential nature of the series. Unfortunately, neither Drive nor Scream 4 quite lived up to the promise of their opening sequence, though I think Drive managed to pull off that switch (i.e. it wasn’t a great action movie with lots of chase scenes, but it was still a good movie).
• Best Closing Shot: Another Earth. The movie has its flaws and I really wasn’t with this movie until about the last half hour, when things started to turn around. And then there’s the last shot, which is just ambiguous and surprising enough to be satisfying without spelling anything out.
• The John Carpenter Memorial Award: Attack the Block. This is a nebulous concept, but this movie really does feel like the sort of thing a circa-1985 Carpenter would have made… and it’s a ton of fun too.

And that just about wraps up the awards for the year. Look for a top 10 list in a few weeks…

The nominations for the 2011 Kaedrin Movie Awards were announced last week. Today, I’ll be announcing the winners of those awards. Later in the week, I’ll cover less traditional categories in what we like to call the Arbitrary Awards, and at some point in the near future, I’ll post my top 10 of 2011 (this will most likely happen in early to mid-February). So let’s do this thing:

• Best Villain/Badass: The Plague (Rip & Grinder), played by Nick Bateman and Peter Simas in Hobo with a Shotgun. They might not be the main villains of the piece and they’re only in the film for a short time, but they stole the show. The Plague are basically a duo of over-armored demonic bounty hunter assassins. Or something like that. At one point in the film, you see their lair, and they have a bunch of old, crossed-off bounties on the wall. Among their victims: Jesus Christ, Joan of Arc, and the Easter Bunny. The Plague was best thing about Hobo With a Shotgun and certainly the best badass villain of the year.
  

  Competition wasn’t weak either. Mickey Rourke was pretty great in Immortals. Michael Fassbender was fantastic as a young Magneto in X-Men: First Class, though he sorta straddles the line between villain and hero in this particular installment. The film wasn’t all that good and the character wasn’t written that well, but Christoph Waltz seemed to be having a lot of fun in The Green Hornet (though again, not much of a villain). And so on, but no one can compare to The Plague. My understanding is that there will be a Plague spin-off movie, which is something I would normally find uninteresting, but for whatever reason, I do want to see that movie!

• Best Hero/Badass: Hanna, played by Saoirse Ronan in Hanna. And so a young female character takes this award two years in a row. I loved the movie, a sorta art-house action flick, and young Hanna was pretty damn badass throughout (and her dad, played by Eric Bana, is no slouch either.) Competition was high for this award. Rutger Hauer’s hobo from Hobo with a Shotgun was most assuredly a runner-up, as he’s totally badass and pretty damn funny (I love the “bear” monologue in the film). Immortals had lots of heroic badassery, but it was spread out between lots of characters. I ended up picking Poseidon as the nominee because his trident made him instantly recognizable, and he was totally kicking ass against the titans at the end. I think Sucker Punch, while not without its flaws, was unfairly maligned this year, which is why I nominated it for a bunch of awards, including this one.
• Best Comedic Performance: Ellen Page in SUPER. If comic book nerds weren’t already in love with Ellen Page, then they are now. Her performance was the highlight of SUPER. She’s just so quirky and enthusiastic. A little demented too, but Page makes it work and because of her liveliness, she takes the award. None of her fellow nominees had to rise to that sort of challenge, but there’s still some good ones on the list. In a lot of ways, Midnight in Paris suffers from typical Woody Allen tropes, but the scenes in the past with the historical figures were wonderful – I picked Corey Stoll because his performance as Hemmingway was one of the more memorable things about the movie. I love the hell out of Tucker and Dale vs Evil, and Tyler Labine led that charge. I liked Bridesmaids a lot, but it just wasn’t that funny. I have a soft spot for Harold and Kumar and I was nice to see them again, but it all still pales in comparison to the original. The Muppets was a delight and Cedar Rapids was a lot of fun (and come to think of it, perhaps I should have nominated John C. Reilly for that one), but neither could really compare with Ellen Page in this category…
• Breakthrough Performance: Elle Fanning in Super 8. A mildly disappointing movie that was elevated significantly by Fanning’s performance. Her “acting” scenes in the film were probably the most memorable thing about the film and instantly had me penciling her in for this award… and no one could unseat her! Runner up would be Michael Parks’s intense performance as a cult leader in Red State. Chris Hemsworth is one charismatic guy, and he managed to single-handedly make Thor kinda interesting (despite the fact that the film kinda stunk). Alison Pil was great, but I probably should have nominated her for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World last year as that was the more memorable breakthrough performance (she was great in Midnight in Paris too). Rooney Mara did an excellent job in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a film that otherwise fell a little flat for me.
• Most Visually Stunning: The Tree of Life. Say what you will about how pretentious it is or how personal it is or how much you like/hate it, you have to admit that it’s a gorgeous film. I kinda hated a lot of things about this movie, but I was so mesmerized by the visuals that I watched the whole thing without complaint. Lots of competition for the award this year, but nothing even really comes close, which says a lot when you’ve got a category with Tarsem Singh and David Fincher movies. Sucker Punch gets another nod here too, because it was also a very pretty movie to look at. Meek’s Cutoff, Melancholia, and Drive were a little slow, but immaculately composed and shot. Rubber was too, but it connected with me a lot better… but I’m getting ahead of myself. We’ll talk more about this movie in just a moment…
• Best Sci-Fi or Horror Film: Rubber. What a wonderfully absurd and weird movie. It’s a little slow moving, but visually interesting enough to keep momentum, and it has a lot to say about movies and audiences. Plus, it’s about a tire named Robert who can use his telepathic powers to make people’s head explode. Not sure it’s really “scary”, but it was among the most interesting films of the year for me (genre film or not), so it wasn’t hard to pick this one as a winner.
  

  Attack the Block would probably take the silver here, as it was just a big ball of fun and there were some thematic confluences with real world events that helped make this movie more interesting than it even intended… Source Code doesn’t entirely work, but I enjoyed it quite a bit anyway and it’s hard to knock Duncan Jones for producing original SF material (I had a similar conflicted feeling about his previous effort, Moon). I enjoyed both Insidious and Paranormal Activity 3, but both owe a little too much to the original Paranormal Activity to warrant serious consideration. Rise of the Planet of the Apes certainly had its moments, but there were lots of things that didn’t really work for me in that movie… Also worthy of note, a last-minute addition to the nominees (as I just watched it yesterday): Another Earth was a very interesting SF movie that seems like it’s just using SF as a background, but eventually makes much more of the premise…

• Best Sequel/Reboot: The Muppets. Always a difficult category to pick, but as already mentioned, The Muppets was a delightful little film and a ton of fun. Is that nostalgia talking? Maybe, though I never watched the Muppets that much as a kid, and I probably haven’t even seen all their previous movies, so I wouldn’t say I was overwhelmed by subjective feelings here. It’s certainly not a perfect film, but how can you not like The Muppets when they’re at the top of their game? Old favorites (Rainbow Connection) and new numbers (Am I a Man or a Muppet) both connected well for me, and I generally hate musical numbers. Again, not perfect, but still fun. I’ve already talked about a few of the other nominees, but I should call out Scream 4, which I think had one of the best opening sequences of the year, and Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, wherein an animation director made a pretty great action flick. Also, I nominated Elite Squad II: The Enemy Within because I really enjoyed it, but I never saw the first one, so I should probably catch up with that…
• Biggest Disappointment: Cowboys & Aliens. And it’s probably the worst movie on the list too. It’s not like I was expecting fine cinema here, but this movie utterly failed to deliver anything of note. Awful script, mediocre performances, and rather poor visual design as well. Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark was also quite disappointing, though they did manage to evoke some sense of atmosphere in that movie (still not worth watching). The Squad was a movie that had some buzz going into Fantastic Fest (apparently Tim League loved it), but it was a terrible, terrible movie (for reasons I’ve already belabored). The remaining nominees were all actually decent movies that just didn’t manage to live up to high expectations.
• Best Action Sequences: 13 Assassins and Immortals. I couldn’t decide. This category was the most difficult of the year, as most of the nominees could easily take home the award. 13 Assassins gets the nod for its climactic battle, a well constructed 45 minute action sequence that has a lot of heft. Immortals is just gorgeous to look at, and some of the action sequences are very well composed. One thing that I’m very happy to see is that most action films this year tended towards clear, steady photography (as opposed to shaky-cam/quick cut), and that went over very well in a movie like Immortals (which also used slow motion to great effect). Rise of the Planet of the Apes really only had one great action sequence (on the Golden Gate Bridge), and Drive, well, didn’t have enough driving in it (aside from the first sequence of the film, which was superb – and I like the rest of the film a lot too, just not necessarily as an action movie). The Yellow Sea is notable mainly for its hatchet fights (yeah, you read that right – one of the characters in particular favors the hatchet as his weapon of choice, and it’s pretty badass). Hanna had a fantastic single tracking shot action sequence that was pretty astounding too (this one was also pretty close for the win). Really, this has been a great year for unconventional action movies – all of the nominees are worth watching.
• Best Plot Twist/Surprise: Tabloid. I bet you didn’t see this one coming. Especially since I didn’t nominate the winner. In looking at the nominees, nothing was really jumping out at me, so I went back through all the movies I saw, and I realized that Tabloid fit pretty well. It’s a documentary, so there’s no real “plot” twists, but the movie consistently surprised me in the direction it went. Just when I thought the story couldn’t get crazier, it did. And then it got even more crazy. None of the other nominees feature what would traditionally be called a huge plot twist, which is perhaps my problem. However, they all have surprises in them, and I actually quite enjoyed all of them. I do want to call out Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which has taken a lot of flak because it doesn’t feature a typical spy thriller twist at the end. But I found the movie quite surprising at times, and while the ultimate “mole” was kinda irrelevant, there were enough other things going on that I thought it was a worthwhile venture…
• Best High Concept Film: Rubber. I mean, come on, how much more high concept can you get? A sentient tire becomes self-animated and gains telepathic powers which it uses to go on a killing spree in the desert, all orchestrated by a weird police officer who has also commissioned an audience to watch the whole thing. Sheer insanity, and one of my favorites of the year. Other nominees are pretty good too. I love the premise of Tucker and Dale vs Evil and The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, both of which are really clever. A Boy and His Samurai has a really tired high concept premise, but executes it so well that it doesn’t really matter. Hobo with a Shotgun would have been a potential winner if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s not the first movie to be made that’s based on a fake movie trailer. But ultimately it has to be Rubber. It was always Rubber.
• 2011’s 2010 Movie of the Year: Red Hill. This is an Australian movie with no real stars (closest thing to it is Ryan Kwanten, who plays Jason on True Blood) and a pretty simple plot: A young police officer on his first day in a small town has to deal with a murderer who escaped prison and is seeking revenge. As it turns out, though, it’s a very well executed thriller. And it features someone that would have made a great nominee for best villain/badass last year (a pretty thin year for villainy). Anyways, this was a pretty lackluster category this year – I guess I saw most of the important stuff last year!

Well there you have it. Stay tuned for the Arbitrary Awards on Wednesday and, eventually, the top 10 of 2011.

Welcome to the 6th Annual Kaedrin Movie Awards! As of right now, I’ve seen 65 movies that would be considered 2011 releases. Add in the 19 movies I saw at Fantastic Fest, and that brings the grand total up to 84 movies, a record for me. This post thus commences my end of the year recap, only about one week late! [Previous Installments here: 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010] I’ll post the nominations now, and like last year, I’ll post all the winners next weekend.

2011 has been a strange year of movies. Nowhere near the lows caused by (or maybe blamed on) writers strike (or the first half of 2010 for that matter), but I don’t know that it ever really soared either. Looking through the movies I’ve seen this year, there are lots of standouts, but nothing that really hit me full on. It’s not a year of mediocrity, really. There were a ton of good, above average movies this year… but few that approached perfection (usually there’s at least one or two for me). I’m not even really close to compiling my top 10, but I have a feeling that every selection on that list will end up featuring some sort of caveat or flaw that I’m not entirely comfortable with (again, there are usually at least a few movies that are definites). There are still a few movies I want to see before I finish my top 10, but one interesting side effect of my feelings on film this year is that they’re really perfect for the movie awards. One of the points of these awards is that they allow me to give some love to films that I like, but which aren’t necessarily great or are otherwise flawed (and thus the categories may seem a bit eclectic). Some of these movies will end up on my top 10, but the grand majority of them will not.

The rules for this are the same as last year: Nominated movies must have been released in 2011 (in the US) and I have to have seen the movie (and while I have seen a lot of movies, I don’t pretend to have seen a comprehensive selection – don’t let that stop you from suggesting something though). Also, I suppose I should mention the requisite disclaimer that these sorts of lists are inherently subjective and personal. But that’s all part of the fun, right? So here are the nominees for this year’s awards:

Best Villain/Badass

A decent year for villainy (not great, but respectable), though I should note that there were a few characters in here who are only borderline villains (for example, Erik Lehnsherr / Magneto isn’t really the villain of the piece, but he sorta is and he certainly becomes one later in the chronology, but he’s not, but he is a villain?) As with previous years, my picks in this category are for individuals, not groups (i.e. no vampires or zombies as a group).

• Chudnofsky, played by Christoph Waltz in The Green Hornet
• The Plague (Rip & Grinder), played by Nick Bateman and Peter Simas in Hobo with a Shotgun
• Kyung-chul, played by Choi Min-sik in I Saw the Devil
• The Accountant, played by William Fichtner in Drive Angry
• Bernie Rose, played by Albert Brooks in Drive
• King Hyperion, played by Mickey Rourke in Immortals
• Erik Lehnsherr / Magneto, played by Michael Fassbender in X-Men: First Class
• Myung-ga, played by Kim Yun-seok in The Yellow Sea

Best Hero/Badass

It’s a rare year. Usually, a year is filled with good villainy or good heroism, but not both. This year has ample supplies of both, though perhaps a slightly better slate of heroes. Again limited to individuals and not groups.

• Hanna, played by Saoirse Ronan in Hanna
• Hobo, played by Rutger Hauer in Hobo with a Shotgun
• Soo-hyun, played by Lee Byung-hun in I Saw the Devil
• Ceasar, played by Andy Serkis & a ton of animators in Rise of the Planet of the Apes
• Babydoll, played by Emily Browning in Sucker Punch
• Mister, played by Nick Damici in Stake Land
• Driver, played by Ryan Gosling in Drive
• Poseidon, played by Kellan Lutz in Immortals
• Mary, played by Ashely Bell in The Day
• Master Huang, played by Chow Yun-Fat in Let the Bullets Fly

Best Comedic Performance

Actually not a bad year for comedic performances, a category that has suffered in recent years.

• Ellen Page in SUPER
• Corey Stoll in Midnight in Paris
• Tyler Labine in Tucker and Dale vs Evil
• Kal Penn and John Cho in A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas
• Kristen Wiig in Bridesmaids
• Jason Segel in The Muppets
• Ed Helms in Cedar Rapids

Breakthrough Performance

As with previous years, my main criteria for this category was if I watched a movie, then immediately looking up the actor/actress on IMDB to see what else they’ve done (or where they came from). This sometimes happens for even well established actors/actresses, and there’s at least one of those this year…

• Chris Hemsworth in Thor
• Elle Fanning in Super 8
• Alison Pil in Midnight in Paris
• Michael Parks in Red State
• Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids
• Patton Oswalt in Young Adult
• Rooney Mara in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Most Visually Stunning

Sometimes even bad movies can look really great…

• Rubber
• Sucker Punch
• Meek’s Cutoff
• Drive
• Immortals
• The Tree of Life
• Melancholia
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Best Sci-Fi or Horror Film

I’m a total genre hound, despite genres generally receiving very little attention from critics. This is a category normally dominated by Horror, and this year probably still favors that, but a decent showing from SF this year (including some hybrid SF/Horror movies)

• Rubber
• Source Code
• I Saw the Devil
• Insidious
• Rise of the Planet of the Apes
• Paranormal Activity 3
• Attack the Block

Best Sequel/Reboot

Typically a difficult category to populate, but we had some decent stuff this year. I also changed the category a bit to include reboots, as there are at least a couple every year that are worth checking out…

• Rise of the Planet of the Apes
• Scream 4
• Paranormal Activity 3
• A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas
• The Muppets
• Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
• Elite Squad II: The Enemy Within

Biggest Disappointment

Always a difficult award to figure out, as there are different ways in which a movie can disappoint. Usually, expectations play just as big a part of this as the actual quality of the film, and it’s possible that a good movie can win the award because of high expectations.

• Cowboys & Aliens
• Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark
• Moneyball
• The Squad
• The Adventures of Tintin
• Black Death

Best Action Sequences

A pretty darn year for action, actually. This award isn’t for individual action sequences, but rather an overall estimation of each film.

• Hanna
• 13 Assassins
• Rise of the Planet of the Apes
• Sucker Punch
• Immortals
• Drive
• Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
• The Yellow Sea

Best Plot Twist/Surprise

Well, I suppose even listing nominees here constitutes something of a spoiler, but it’s a risk we’ll have to take, right? A decent year for plot twists, though I don’t see a clear winner either… this is going to be a hard category to pick!

• Source Code
• Black Death
• Insidious
• Tucker and Dale vs Evil
• Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
• Extraterrestrial

Best High Concept Film

This is always a strange category to populate because the concept is a bit nebulous, but nevertheless, there are always a few interesting choices… and we’ve got a pretty big slate of nominees this year…

• Rubber
• Source Code
• Hobo with a Shotgun
• Midnight in Paris
• The Greatest Movie Ever Sold
• Tucker and Dale vs Evil
• Karate-Robo Zaborgar
• A Boy and His Samurai

2011’s 2010 Movie of the Year

A movie originally released in 2010 that I didn’t catch up with until 2011. This is a problem all amateur movie lovers have to confront. Towards the end of the year, 500 movies come out, but they only play in New York or LA for a grand total of like 3 hours (enough for 2 showings at each theater!) Plus, there’s always a movie I dismissed and neglected to see which I end up seeing a year later and loving. This ended up being a lackluster category this year – I guess I’d already seen most of the great stuff from last year…

• Let Me In
• Red Hill
• Hatchet II
• The Crazies

Anyone have any suggestions (for either category or nominations)? Comments, complaints and suggestions are welcome, as always.

Both Drive and Rise of the Planet of the Apes take in the most nominations, with 4 a piece. I’m a little surprised about Apes – I mean, I liked the movie, but it’s not something that’s even close to top 10 territory for me (but perhaps it will end up in the honorable mentions). Trailing closely with 3 nominations were a whole slew of films: Hobo With a Shotgun, I Saw the Devil, Immortals, Midnight in Paris (another surprise for me), Rubber, Source Code, Sucker Punch, and Tucker and Dale vs Evil. A whole slew of other films got only 2 or 1 nomination, with a grand total of 42 different films nominated (I haven’t calculated this number for all previous years, but it’s a lot more than last year’s 34 nominated films… also note, this doesn’t include the 6 “disappointing” films, nor does it include the 4 movies from 2010). Again, I think this speaks to the sort of weird above-average but not quite stellar year we’ve had.

So I’m going to let these nominations stew for a week, then announce the winners next Sunday, followed by the traditional Arbitrary Awards and eventually culminating in my top 10 of 2011 list (which may be a few weeks)…