My top ten lists inevitable fill with movies that are best taken in with good strong coffee. I like movies that linger in the mind and befuddle, that play on multiple levels and touch on broad existential themes. Movies about time or the nature of art? Yeah. I’m there. But sometimes it is great to watch a movie that’s just fun. Here are my favorite films from 2011 that are great for just kicking back with friends and knocking out a couple of hours.
Drive: Nicolas Refn’s movie is cropping up on lots of top ten lists. Understandable. The film is a heart-pounding intoxicant that drips with cool. But I found Drive’s pulpy-pop a tad over played, its central character (Ryan Gosling’s nameless driver) something of a rock with make up, its violence derivative, and its final act tawdry when compared with the action coup of the film’s initial forty five minutes. Yes, I know that’s the point. But this time of the year, it is all about separating the good from the great, and Drive is just good. Really good. Take it for it a spin.
X-Men: First Class: Back in the dismal early June, playing against the likes of Thor and The Green Lantern, the latest installment in the X-Men franchise felt like watching King Lear debut at the Globe. A psychologically sophisticated blockbuster that pitted two cerebral heroes – Professor X (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) – in an emotional chess game set against the high-stakes of world domination, X-Men: First Class is everything a big summer movie should be. It flies, it explodes, and it thinks.
We Need to Talk About Kevin: Tilda Swinton is brilliant in this gut-tying thriller about the worst child ever born. Yes, Kevin will have you squirming, pulling at the seat crushing, and holding your breath as it careens towards the inevitable terrible conclusion. But this is an especially great date-in movie for married couples with kids because of how cathartically hilarious it is to watch your worst parental nightmares rolled into one awful little boy.
Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows: My review full review will be posted this Thursday at noon, but I’ll just pull this excerpt: “Guy Ritchie gets to the heart of those primary rumblings that vibrate through all good action-adventure extravaganzas, those earth-pounding basses that power movies that feel like sex. And he matches the virility of violence with a foppish wit, a self-deprecating, homoerotic smirk that only a British filmmaker can flash just right.” Yeah, it’s buckets of fun.
