Saturday, January 7, 2012

What Moves Did I Love In 2011?

This list was constructed without me having see the following movies yet: Muppets, Melancholia, Another Earth, Hugo, The Artist, The Descendants, Tree of Life and Attack the Block.. I am sure that many will be included on this list once I get around to watching them.
















11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, there are at least six good movies on that list that I missed this year.

Cal's Canadian Cave of Coolness said...

I always feel that way too and I watch a lot of movies.

Pat Tillett said...

I need to see quite a few of those! We've been of the road so much, that I've only seen a couple this year...

Cal's Canadian Cave of Coolness said...

Enriching your brain in the wild is so much more satisfying that a good movie I assume.

Erik Johnson Illustrator said...

I don't go to the theaters as often as I used to unfortunately. I used to write reviews for the local paper, and I think it burned me out. So now I just stock up on rentals either through Redbox (for new releases) or the library (for the classics). Here's my list of the top 15 Best movies that I saw this past year (a number of them are household names, but I hadn't seen them before so bear with me)

127 Hours
Blues Brothers
Captain America: The First Avenger
Collateral
Die Hard
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Fargo
Full Metal Jacket
Poltergeist
Reservoir Dogs
Stalag 17
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)
Wait Until Dark
War Games
The Wrestler

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is still at the top of my Must See list. Now that its at Redbox maybe I can pick it up over the weekend.

What I ought to do is compile a list of my most watched movies. For me a "favorites" list is a tough call given how many different genres I watch, the list might get heavy since I would want to be fair in covering the big classics as well as my own personal gems.

That would be a great subject for a future post actually, I'd love to see what other films have "Cave of Cool" cred.

Cal's Canadian Cave of Coolness said...

I have been working on a list of my fifty favs of all time and it's impossible to put them into any kind of order of preference. Movies are enjoyable for so many reasons. For example I can watch 'Resident Evil' or 'DC Cab' each and everytime they are on TV but something like 'Tinker Tailor...' I can only enjoy once.

I should have mentioned that these were my favorite films RELEASED in 2011. I might go back through my posts and list the older movies that I finally caught up to this year.

WOW..first time for 'Die Hard'? What was that like? Did you also find the second half of 'Full Metal Jacket' to be as infuriating as I did? All the others on your list are good films. I just can't believe how many old ones you have there.

Erik Johnson Illustrator said...

I grew up in a family that was stringent on what films we watched, and that they had to appeal to "everybody" which meant we didn't watch much in the way of diversity or quality. While that meant missing out on a lot of the big hits of the time, I think it helped me to appreciate a certain films when I was older and saw them for the first time.

It wasn't until the summer in between my sophomore and junior year of high school that I really got into movies. I had just finished taking a couple of college classes over the summer and was feeling very grown up, so when Mom and Dad were away on a week long camping trip, leaving me home by myself, I worked up the guts to go out to the video store and rent all the titles that I could never convince them to watch, which included:

Brazil, The Princess Bride, King Kong, The Time Machine, and The Purple Rose of Cairo.

I can't even begin to tell you how great a week that was. I've been hooked on classic films ever since.

As for the whole "Die Hard" thing, thats really a victim of its own success. I'd been renting copies for years, but the disks were so worn and scratched that I could never get past anything more than just the minute mark. I wouldn't be satisfied watching any watered down TV Edit version, I had to see the whole thing, and finally found it via Instant Streaming during my free month Netflix trail at the start of the year.

So you can imagine my anguish when I was poking around my brother's pad this past December seeing what he had on his shelf to help inform my Christmas shopping, only to discover that he had a copy still in the plastic, and worse, that it was a copy that was packaged with a bunch of other action movies that I had gotten as a Christmas gift five years ago, and just never noticed until now! It had been under my nose, in the same house for years and I never knew! Argh!

Nick Ward said...

There's some here I didn't see because they didn't crank my turn. But since you liked them they are now on my to-do list.

Cal's Canadian Cave of Coolness said...

Thanks for you endorsement buddy. I do because I love.

Erik Johnson Illustrator said...

I'm going to have to amend my Best of 2011 list, because looking back I saw more movies that were released in this past year than I initially thought. Out of a Scale of 1 to 5, here's what I saw and what I rated it.

The Adjustment Bureau - 3
Battle: Los Angeles - 1
Captain America: The First Avenger - 4
Cars 2 - 2
Cowboys & Aliens - 2
The Green Hornet - 1 1/2
Green Lantern - 2
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 - 3 1/2
The Help - 4
I Am Number Four - 2
Limitless - 3
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides - 2
Rango - 4
Rio - 3
Rise of the Planet of the Apes - 3 1/2
Soul Surfer - 3
Source Code - 4
Super 8 - 4
Thor - 3
Unknown - 2
Water for Elephants - 3
X-Men: First Class - 3 1/2

Cal's Canadian Cave of Coolness said...

I really enjoyed 'The Help' and everyone keeps telling me to see 'Ringo'. I am pretty much in agreement with your list.