This year I’ve been to the cinema 23 times, which is not bad. It only pales in comparison to a couple of years ago when I saw almost 60 films at the cinema. Another big difference is that this year I only saw a handful of films on DVD (and didn’t really bother to review many of them) whereas a couple of years ago I rented tons of movies and saw three or four a week. I’m not sure exactly why I’ve lost my enthusiasm for films, but it does correspond with me reading a lot more and watching a lot more television, and overall I’m okay with that.
I do still enjoy going to the cinema though. Of the 23 films I saw on the big screen this year, 3 were actually older films, while 20 were new releases in 2011 (although actually some of them may be from 2010 if you live in the US where movies tend to be released earlier than here in the UK).
So here are some of my favourite films of the year (the links take you to my reviews):
My absolute favourite was The Adventures of Tintin, because it was just so wonderfully fun and unexpectedly good, and looking back at the list of films that I saw it is the one that most stands out as being something I loved.
Another great film and a close runner up is Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which was a brilliant and clever espionage film. I actually went to see it twice, and the second viewing did help in figuring out exactly what was going on!
True Grit is one that I think the purists would probably argue belongs on a 2010 list, but it wasn’t released here until February which is when I saw it, so I’m going to say it counts for my 2011 list. It definitely deserves a place at any rate.
There were two good science fiction films that I enjoyed this year. Super 8 is the Abrams/Spielberg film about a group of kids who discover an alien; it was maybe a bit predictable but very impressive. Source Code is a film that plays around with time travel and alternative realities in an interesting way, and it was only disappointing in comparison to director Duncan Jones’ earlier film Moon.
I’ve rather lost interest in superhero films but one that I thought was a good one this year was X-Men: First Class. I was pleasantly surprised by it, and I thought it was fun and entertaining in exactly the way you want a superhero film to be.
This year I also enjoyed Arrietty, the Studio Ghibli version of The Borrowers. I didn’t think it was a great as some of the other Studio Ghibli films that I’ve seen, but it was still a good film and an interesting version of the story.
Finally, I really liked Attack the Block, a British film about an alien invasion on a tough London estate. Think Shaun of the Dead but with aliens instead of zombies, and more properly scary.
Making this list I was struck by the fact that there were relatively few films I saw this year that I really loved, and indeed some of the ones I’ve written about here would never have made the list if this was a few years ago when I was seeing far more movies. Quite of a lot of the films that I saw this year were merely okay. I also skipped a lot of the more serious films that again I would have made the effort to see in previous years. In addition there were quite a few films that I did want to see but missed at the cinema because I didn’t have time to go; those I will hopefully catch on DVD next year. Overall it wasn’t a great year for movies for me, but I think partly that was due to my attitude and the films that I did actually go to see.
