As the movie awards continue, it's time to examine what went into a movie beyond the usual questions. When we actually hiked our way to our local cinematic establishment, what were the most unexpected and wonderful moments that unfolded before us on the big screen this year? Well, let's count them down. Here, in Part 2, we honour the finer details of 2011's best movies!
BRENTIVERSE 2011 MOVIE AWARDS - The Finer Details
- The Screaming Naked Guy Award (For coolest moment on film)
- Jotunheim Beast Encounter (Thor)
- Erik’s submarine grab (X-Men: First Class)
- Shockwave’s tower ravage (Transformers: Dark of the Moon
- Ethan Hunt scales the Burj Khalifa (Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol)
- Hogwarts Sentinel Spell (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2)
WINNER: Shockwave's tower ravage (Transformers: Dark of the Moon)
WHY: You can complain at length about Michael Bay's Transformers movies and how much they do wrong, but I don't mind them as guilty pleasures. Besides, you have to admit that they've done some pretty rad sequences rather well, and 2011's threequel was no exception! When Shockwave began to tear apart a towering office with our protaganists inside of it, we got one of the most intense, destructive and way cool moments out of any movie this year! The scenery turned and fell apart around our heroes as the building itself toppled over in pieces, and it certainly was a sight to behold! There were some really amazing moments in the movies during 2011, but none managed to match the scale of this one incredible moment during the climactic battle!
- The Duck Hat Man Award (For biggest surprise hit)
- Real Steel
- 50/50
- Rise of the Planet of the Apes
- Bridesmaids
- Rango
WINNER: 50/50
WHY: Here's a funny idea; A comedy about cancer. What do you mean that isn't funny at all? Well, somehow, 50/50 made it funny. In fact, for my money, 50/50 is one of the best comedies that 2011 ever brought to the big screen, and there were plenty of impressive comedy offerings throughout the year! A heartfelt story about a young man's trial to overcome his seemingly fatal cancer diagnosis, 50/50 was simple, heartfelt and very clever. Audiences were divided at the announcement, but people generally agree that the movie vastly exceeded expectations. It was rightfully one of the most acclaimed movies of the normally dreary September calendar, even when no one thought it would ever be embraced by today's moviegoers. It goes to show you that challenging the audience with something really provocative every once in a while really isn't a bad thing!
- The Fidgety Pants Award (For the best marketing campaign)
- Sucker Punch
- Super 8
- Contagion
- Arthur Christmas
- The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
WINNER: Contagion
WHY: For a simple virus thriller, coming out in September no less, Warner Bros. threw a staggering amount of insane marketing behind Contagion! The posters were remarkably clever in spelling out the name with various major cities, and the marketing was so ambitious, that it even grew viral cultures for the sole purpose of growing to spell out the movie's name in display windows. Damn! No September movie ever gets promotion like that! The fact that the movie was stuffed with celebrities didn't hurt, but Contagion's merely decent final product was only given any publicity at all because these ingenious marketing tools were further complemented by an excellent set of trailers. It's an unlikely candidate for this award, but I guess it goes to show how creative a marketing team can really be, even for a September movie, when they set their mind to it!
- The Get My Good Side Award (Best poster)
- The Hangover Part II
- Horrible Bosses
- Captain America: The First Avenger
- Contagion
- Immortals
WINNER: Horrible Bosses
WHY: Horrible Bosses was a much smarter and funnier comedy than many people felt it had any right to be, and its set of posters were all very clever and eye-catching. They summed up exactly the problem that each of our leads had with each boss in one big colourful word, while placing them atop their victims with dominant poses that grabbed our attention without even trying too hard, as many of these movies often do. The result is a clever poster that says everything in all its minimalism, while also providing something a little different than crazy, impossible to decipher imagery, which isn't always the best solution. Horrible Bosses kept it clean and kept it simple, and the movie probably wouldn't have gotten nearly as much attention as it did were it not for its bright, ironically chipper posters so effectively grabbing attention!
- The Poop Volcano Award (For the flat-out worst movie of the year)
- Beastly
- Battle: Los Angeles
- Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil
- Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star
- I Don’t Know How She Does It
WINNER: I Don't Know How She Does It
WHY: You know, all of these nominees were massive turds for one reason or another, but at least they have saving graces. At least Beastly had some style, at least Battle: Los Angeles had solid marketing, at least Bucky Larson was original (for what it's worth), and at least Hoodwinked Too! sort of made sense, even if it was late to the party, for having such a surprisingly decent predecessor. I Don't Know How She Does It however is just shit. It's witless, unfunny, poorly written, terribly acted, completely uninspired, and worst of all, it is horribly, horribly offensive to both men and women alike. Girl flicks can be very hit-or-miss, but I Don't Know How She Does It was just wrong on every possible level. It was a flimsy premise at best for a novel, but as a movie, it's a disaster. It's truly remarkable how not only did the movie bomb on every conceivable level, but it even had the gall to blame men for just about all of the world's problems, while portraying women as irrational basket cases with no spine to speak of. It takes a genuine desire to destroy humanity to produce a movie this bad, but I Don't Know How She Does It is so terrible, that it may make you want to kick a puppy. It also had the dubious distinction of beating out Eclipse from 2010 for getting the lowest score I've ever given a movie to date at 16%. Oh yeah, it's that bad!
- The Exploded Ice Cream Award (For the most disappointing movie of the year)
- Sucker Punch
- Green Lantern
- Battle: Los Angeles
- Bad Teacher
- Cowboys & Aliens
WINNER: Green Lantern
WHY: Again, I will defend Green Lantern by saying that it's not NEARLY as bad as many people say. It's actually fun in several places, and if you can get past the absurd premise from the comic, it's a flashy and relatively decent superhero blockbuster. The genre has done much, MUCH worse than Green Lantern, and a lot of its bad press was due to knee-jerk reactions from fanboys, who have since cooled down about the movie. That said though, Green Lantern was still a let-down considering what went into it. It was one of the most ambitious superhero movies yet made, and it had an impressive cast, an impressive director, a massive special effects crew and budget, plus direct input from one of the finest writers that's ever worked on the comic. What happened? To make matters worse, Green Lantern was supposed to help lay the groundwork for a larger DC Cinematic Universe, but it squandered this opportunity completely. This was supposed to be DC's answer to Iron Man, but when it should have been excellent, it ended up merely decent. There's all these theories floating around about what made Green Lantern fall short, from the problematic story to the CG costumes to the excessive amount of time spent in outer space, but whatever the case, the movie didn't achieve its potential. Hopefully Warner Bros. and DC do better with a sequel...
- The Seeing Eye Dog Award (Best movie no one saw)
- Super 8
- Warrior
- Drive
- The Muppets
- Hugo
WINNER: Hugo
WHY: This was a very tough toss-up between The Muppets and Hugo, and my initial instinct was Drive, but even if that movie didn't do that great at the box office, it still technically turned a noticeable profit, so it could have been worse. The Muppets also technically turned a profit, but it should have been a much bigger profit, since the characters are so beloved, and the movie was really amazing. Sadly, people would rather see Twilight, so, again, they only have themselves to blame for the onslaught of mediocre to downright bad entertainment that gets put on a pedestal, because that's what they pay for en masse. Hugo however, by box office definitions, was one of 2011's worst bombs. It didn't even make back half of its budget, even being a 3D movie with more expensive ticket prices! What's really sad here is that this is a movie directed by one of Hollywood's best directors, Martin Scorsese, and it's a spectacular family adventure that is far and away the best use of 3D that 2011 ever saw. Again though, people ignored Hugo in favour of Twilight, which, again, is a big part of the reason why I HATE Twilight; It's happy to deliver mediocre, aggressively dumb and shallow content that is unfairly put on a pedestal, and in the process, it steals attention away from MUCH better movies that people actually put REAL effort into, like Hugo and The Muppets! The fact that nobody saw Hugo is egregiously offensive to all collective cinematic intelligence, since most audiences missed out on one of 2011's top films for little other reason than the fact that it came out too close to Breaking Dawn - Part 1, and it won't be the same when viewed on DVD without that amazing big screen 3D job enhancing every second. You only have yourselves to blame for your greedy corporate Hollywood machine, folks, and Hugo's dismal box office is yet another reminder of that!
- The Demon Child Award (Worst movie everyone saw)
- New Year’s Eve
- The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1
- The Adjustment Bureau
- Red Riding Hood
- Battle: Los Angeles
WINNER: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1
WHY: I debated giving this award to both Battle: Los Angeles and Red Riding Hood for a while, but those movies suckered people in with trailers that were actually pretty great. After typing my verdict on the last award, the winner is yet again clear. The trailers were awful, the story was absurd, and yet it became one of 2011's top moneymakers. It's once again terribly infuriating and downright offensive to real, dedicated movie crews that so many amazing movies came out in November this year, from Arthur Christmas to The Muppets to A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas to Immortals to Hugo, and hell, even Tower Heist wasn't bad. What happened though? You blithering nincompoops ignored the lot of them and flocked to Twilight, with just about all of November's releases underperforming in the process, despite how great they were. Seriously, November's movies all exceeded expectations in quality while Twilight continued to settle for its usual badness. To be fair, Breaking Dawn - Part 1 was more aggressively mediocre than downright terrible, but still, people go into this movie KNOWING that they're going to hate it, and they still make it the only movie that they see all month, a month filled with amazing releases that weren't given their due by all too many moviegoers. Twilight, even in 2011, remains a testament to the raw stupidity of consumers. The movie may have been merely mediocre, but I swear that it's at the point where the series is just coasting on its runaway success, and it's almost taunting us with how terrible it is, and how much money it steals from more deserving films. WAKE UP, PEOPLE!! If you're one of the zillions of people that saw Twilight in favour of any other movie in November, you should be very, very ashamed of yourself, and apparently, that's a lot of you. Run headlong into a wall, and then go to your room and think long and hard about what you've done. You know what the worst part is? People are just going to make the same mistake in 2012 with the Twilight finale, and I know that. Once again, the quality of Hollywood commercialism is never going to improve as long as you keep heaping money on stupid, braindead 'entertainment' like Twilight, so you have no right to complain about creative bankruptcy when you're all wasting your movie bucks on cinematic crap like this that is in fact fully aware of the fact that it's crap, and makes money anyway. Idiots.
- The Rock 'Em, Sock 'Em Award (Best fight)
- Sherlock Holmes vs. Professor James Moriarty (Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows)
- Green Lantern vs. Parallax (Green Lantern)
- Brendan Conlon vs. Tommy Conlon (Warrior)
- Atom vs. Zeus (Real Steel)
- Jane Carter vs. Sabine Moreau (Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol)
WINNER: Atom vs. Zeus (Real Steel)
WHY: As much as I'm tempted to be immature and give this to the hot lady punch-out from Mission: Impossible, I have to admit that the real winner is definitely Real Steel's climactic duel between the unlikely underdog and the unstoppable champion! This was a lengthy and surprising battle that thoroughly kept audiences on the edge of their seats, and even though it went on for a while, we couldn't take our eyes off of it. As ludicrous as a premise about boxing robots may be in the eyes of some people, this was a duel that just about any moviegoer can rightfully cheer for!
- The Hot Lips Award (Best kiss)
- Thor and Jane Foster (Thor)
- Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2)
- Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter (Captain America: The First Avenger)
- Puss and Kitty Softpaws (Puss in Boots)
- Ethan Hunt and Jane Carter (Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol)
WINNER: Thor and Jane Foster (Thor)
WHY: No, I'm not giving it to Ron and Hermione. That moment was cute, but it was also kind of forced. Thor and Jane Foster had much more chemistry, and made much more sense as a couple. Even though Ron and Hermione were in an equal sense of peril, it was Thor and Jane that really lit up the screen as their sexual tenson finally came to a head in a passionate kiss they shared, unsure of whether they'd see each other again. Thor was to travel to Asgard to battle his brother, and that may mean losing the way to Jane forever, assuming he wasn't killed as well. Jane was Thor's link to the human world, the woman who taught him humility and virtue, and the person who truly brought out the best in the previously arrogant and disagreeable god of thunder. It's up in the air whether Jane will appear in The Avengers or not, but even if I have to wait until Thor's 2013 sequel to see her again, I'll never forget the sparks that flew when she finally laid one on the son of Odin!
- The Two Scoops Award (Best sequel/follow-up/reboot)
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
- X-Men: First Class
- Rise of the Planet of the Apes
- Scream 4
- Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
WINNER: X-Men: First Class
WHY: 2011 delivered plenty of impressive sequels, and of the lot, the new X-Men and Planet of the Apes prequel/reboot combos stood tallest for sure. Deciding between the two of them was tough, but X-Men just barely edged out due to Apes not really featuring a whole lot of rising in the end. X-Men however was extremely creative, bringing the series into the swinging 60's for a prequel tale that revitalized the floundering franchise after two weak predecessors, featuring excellent new takes on both Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr, before they become Professor X and Magneto, and providing a great balance between superhero action and dramatic characterization. Many people thought that the one-two punch of X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine effectively killed the integrity of the once revolutionary superhero film franchise, but despite its hurried development schedule and weak marketing, X-Men: First Class exceeded all expectation and put Marvel's mutants back on top of the big screen! Even if you normally dislike the X-Men franchise, or perhaps know nothing about it, X-Men: First Class was an incredible retro chic superhero action flick that oozed with inspiration and imagination, beginning a promising new arc of movies that will hopefully keep this series on a positive cycle of improvement!
- The Etch-a-Sketch Award (Most promising new film franchise)
- Puss in Boots
- Real Steel
- Thor
- Captain America: The First Avenger
- Green Lantern
WINNER: Real Steel
WHY: Taking rather inconceivable superheroes like Thor, Captain America and Green Lantern, and giving them competent and believable springboard stories is no small task, but even that pales when it comes to taking a movie about boxing robots, and trying to make that credible, especially as a heartfelt father/son story! Real Steel rose to the occasion however, delivering one of Fall 2011's top surprise hits, while leaving all the promise in the world for follow-ups. With memorable human and robot characters left and right, leaving room for toy lines, comic books and video games, among other things, Real Steel should hopefully pave the way for one of the more promising fledgling sci-fi properties to come along in a while. Yes, it's a blatantly commercial movie, but it's a reminder that commercial movies don't have to be heartless, so, yes, I'm really pulling for some quality sequels here!
That's all for Part 2! Stay tuned for the genre awards, coming soon!
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