2011 Retrospect: Movies

With 2011 coming to a close, I've decided to mention my favorites of the year (and at the same time update my blog). I'm only posting Music and Movies since TV is more seasonal than yearly, but I will quickly say that my favorite Series Finale was Smallville's "Finale", which was AWESOME, and my favorite TV movie was "Phineas and Ferb: Across the 2nd Dimension", which was the best animated DCOM since "Kim Possible: So The Drama".

Let's start off with my Top 3 and Bottom 3 Movies, the Top being the awesome ones and the Bottom being THE WORST. First off, the TOP 3 BEST Movies of the year!

1. Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, Part 2: It's often hard to make a movie franchise last EIGHT movies, but Warner Bros. did it. This film was in my opinion a great ending to a great franchise. The acting was great. The effects were great. The story, mainly the second half of the book, was great. The 3D was OK. People have said that it was too confusing and that it didn't make sense. My advice to them: READ THE BOOK! It's been out for FOUR YEARS!!!
2. The Twilight Saga - Breaking Dawn, Part 1: I honestly HATED the first three films. The first one looked liked it was shot with the lights off (and no one in the theater would SHUT UP), New Moon felt depressing to watch (although a friend of mine, an ex-Twilight fan, said that it was meant to show how Bella felt without Edward), and Eclipse (which surprisingly in Spanish is the exact same word) just made me feel like screaming at the two guys to shut up and just get married (Seriously, they banter in EVERY SCENE they're both in). Breaking Dawn: Part 1, on the other hand, was surprisingly great. The actors finally got it right, I actually laughed (although at the wrong time, seriously why show Bella and Edward on top of dead, bloody wedding guests?), the story was well-paced, and it was very good. The only complaint I have is just that they got carried away with all the blood when (SPOILER!) Bella gave birth and they tried to bring her back to life. Also, just like the other three films, the music was AWESOME and enjoyable. I especially liked one song, but more on that later.
3. Something Borrowed: Probably the only ORIGINAL movie I saw this year (the rest were sequels, Superheroes, Muppets, or Lion King), this film captivated me with the story, which I have to say was different from other "Chick flicks" I've seen. Instead of the "man taking another man's fiance" cliche, it's the complete opposite, with the woman taking her best friend's fiance. It was highly criticized for bad acting, but the story makes up for it and I actually liked it.

Now for the Bottom 3, or as I call it, Crap.

1. Sucker Punch: Zack Snyder is a great director. 300 was an awesome and bloody film. This felt like it was supposed to be the female equivalent of that film. And it SUCKED. It felt like Snyder resorted to cliches from that film for most of this film. For example, the main character DIES. Sound familiar?! Then there's slow motion. Gee, where have I seen that before?! The acting is just like 300, only sounding SLOW, and the effects are fine. The only good parts I can think of are when they shot Blondie, played by High School Musical's Vanessa Hudgens (Yes, THAT Vanessa Hudgens), because that's the closest you'll see anyone from Disney get shot at, and Jon Hamm, who was great in his BRIEF role. Also, the soundtrack was great, especially the Queen mashup of "I Got It All/We Will Rock You", although I had to pay FULL Price for the album to get ONE Song.
2. Bridesmaids: Like Sucker Punch, this film was said to be the female equivalent to a male-based movie, in this case The Hangover (By the way, the sequel was OK). But like Sucker Punch, it also SUCKED. This film is NOTHING like The Hangover. The only thing it has similar to that film is Las Vegas, which they say they're going to, BUT NEVER DO. There's a storyline with Annie living with a British roommate and his sister which went nowhere (What happened, did she pay her rent but they still kicked her out? Were the brother/sister practicing incest? WHAT?!), nobody realizing Helen's evil (Why couldn't Lillian clearly see Helen was making her hate Annie?!), and Jon Hamm being COMPLETELY USELESS in this film (at least in Sucker Punch he was fine, but here he has no excuse). The only thing I honestly liked from this film was when Annie threw a tantrum when she saw how Helen was clearly upstaging her in front of Lillian, which was great. Kristen Wigg and Maya Rudolph are great actresses, but this film just pissed me off. The acting's fine, but the story is just CRAP.
3. Real Steel: This one is weird. The effects are amazing, the acting, especially Hugh Jackman, was great, the music was great, but there is just one thing that made me hate this film. THE ENDING. If you're not planning to see it, the main robot of the film makes it to a fight with the meanest robot of them all and wins... sort of. While the robot clearly beat the crap out of the other, they give the win to the other robot. Look, I know that in boxing films there always has to be the main character losing at the end (see Rocky and Rocky Balboa), but WHY do you have to fall back on this depressing cliche? It's fine in Rocky, but as you can clearly notice, this is NOT Rocky. It's Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots: The Movie. Next thing you know, Battleship: The Movie will end with the famous line "You sunk my Battleship" with the ship ACTUALLY SINKING.

There is one more movie which I liked, but also hated at the same time. That film being Puss in Boots, a prequel to the Shrek franchise. Like the other films in the franchise, it was great. Even Zack Galifianakis, who would probably sound out of place in a family movie, is great as Humpty Dumpy. The disappointing half comes from several factors. First, it felt like they put all of the fairy tales they haven't parodied yet in this film, making it look like "Shrek's Table Scraps". Second, NO ONE from the other films appeared, not even in a cameo. I saw the WHOLE FILM, including the end credits, and was disappointed they couldn't even get the King from the second film to make a cameo, which would have been a great way to connect the film to the franchise. Yeah, I understand they probably might make more films with Puss and his female counterpart, but look at X-Men: First Class and they managed to get Wolverine in their film (and it was AWESOME!). And third, it's Zorro for cats. Yes, Puss is supposed to be a Zorro parody since Antonio Banderas played him in two live-action films, but why parody this YEARS after everyone has forgotten about them?

And that's it for Movies, next off Music!

Joel Garcia

2011