TGT11: The Scary Movies of 2011

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While there were no straightforward horror masterpieces like Martyrs this year - every year I want another Martyrs and every year I am let down - there was a lot of fun and jumps and scariness to be had at the cinemas in 2011. Now is the moment when we honor them. The top three films on this list were already named on my Top 20 Films of the Year countdown, but we'll get to that semi-anticlimactic moment when we get to it. Y'all will probably haggle with me over my definition of horror at that point, anyway. Onto the spooks...

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (directed by Troy Nixey) - I still haven't seen the original TV movie which apparently freaked out an entire generation of slightly-older-than-me folks, but I found Nixey's film a real treat - a dark and nasty-spirited fairy-tale for the twisted kid in all of us. Bonus points for what happens to Mrs. Tom Cruise. (original review)

The Tunnel (directed by Carlo Ledesma) - I have a hunger inside my belly and the only thing that will sate it is more Blair Witch rip-offs! Seriously though I have an apparently undying affection for a solid found-footage effort, and this more than fits the bill with its [REC]-ish creepy sewer people and darkness so much terrible darkness into which we stare and stare and oh yeah there is something moving there and oh my god oh my god make it go away. (original review)

TrollHunter (directed by André Øvredal) - If there's anything I enjoy more than found footage of horrible underground swamp-people, it's found-footage of giant fantasy man-eating monsters laid out from big to bigger to biggest in excessively descriptive almost textbook form. And then we met this one, and hold god was it big, and here's all the stats from the backside of its monster baseball card. I love this shit so much. (original review)

Final Destination 5 (directed by Steven Quale) - Almost as good as the second one, which is the highest praise I can give without saying it's better than the second one, which is nigh impossible. I enjoyed part four more than most, but then I am genetically incapable of not adoring this series, but then this one reinvigorated the whole shebang all the same. (original review)

Kill List (directed by Ben Wheatley) - I don't know at what point I'll feel comfortable talking about the last twenty minutes of Kill List, but it's not yet. I think that there must still too many people out there who don't know what's coming. My original review's even vaguer than what I'm giving here. Just see it! Even before things go wrong so wrong the film's dripping with an uneasy and bizarre dread... and then things go so wrong. 

I Saw the Devil (directed by Jee-won Kim) - A year ago I couldn't get enough of this movie and it probably would've topped this list, but my enthusiasm has dampened a little bit with more viewings - the visceral shock of that first time through wore off some with revisits, and the lulls between incredible scenes begin to stand out a little bit. But man, the incredible scenes in this thing are hardcore, and it's spectacular to look at. (Especially Lee Byung-hun.)

Insidious (directed by James Wan) - Yes I had and still have some issues with that slack-jawed poppet-netherworld that Insidious builds to, but for sheer "make me jump out of my seat" chills and thrills nobody topped Wan's ode to things that go bump in the morning afternoon and still of the night. I'm not really a jumper either, but this thing had me bouncing around in my seat like a pinball. (original review)

As for the movies I consider horror that already made my earlier Top 20 list, they are Contagion, Martha Marcy May Marlene, and Take Shelter. I don't think anybody will argue over me classifying Contagion as horror - and Contagion freaked me out so badly I literally had to stop it every fifteen minutes to catch my breath before I totally hyperventilated - but I know pushing MMMM and Shelter under the genre umbrella might engage a few side-eyes from y'all... but side-eyes be damned, I says. They both present us with worlds where our protagonists crumbling grips on reality render the world a deeply unsettling and eerie place filled with monsters, albeit less fanged or troll-footed than these other picks. And they both end on notes of that incomprehensible non-reality tilting over into the real deal, sealing our dooms. If that ain't horror then consider that mewling off-screen kitten or a dripping wet  and dead-eyed Jessica Chastain fingering a fly-covered kitchen knife and get back to me.

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TGT11: The Scary Movies of 2011

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While there were no straightforward horror masterpieces like Martyrs this year - every year I want another Martyrs and every year I am let down - there was a lot of fun and jumps and scariness to be had at the cinemas in 2011. Now is the moment when we honor them. The top three films on this list were already named on my Top 20 Films of the Year countdown, but we'll get to that semi-anticlimactic moment when we get to it. Y'all will probably haggle with me over my definition of horror at that point, anyway. Onto the spooks...

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (directed by Troy Nixey) - I still haven't seen the original TV movie which apparently freaked out an entire generation of slightly-older-than-me folks, but I found Nixey's film a real treat - a dark and nasty-spirited fairy-tale for the twisted kid in all of us. Bonus points for what happens to Mrs. Tom Cruise. (original review)

The Tunnel (directed by Carlo Ledesma) - I have a hunger inside my belly and the only thing that will sate it is more Blair Witch rip-offs! Seriously though I have an apparently undying affection for a solid found-footage effort, and this more than fits the bill with its [REC]-ish creepy sewer people and darkness so much terrible darkness into which we stare and stare and oh yeah there is something moving there and oh my god oh my god make it go away. (original review)

TrollHunter (directed by André Øvredal) - If there's anything I enjoy more than found footage of horrible underground swamp-people, it's found-footage of giant fantasy man-eating monsters laid out from big to bigger to biggest in excessively descriptive almost textbook form. And then we met this one, and hold god was it big, and here's all the stats from the backside of its monster baseball card. I love this shit so much. (original review)

Final Destination 5 (directed by Steven Quale) - Almost as good as the second one, which is the highest praise I can give without saying it's better than the second one, which is nigh impossible. I enjoyed part four more than most, but then I am genetically incapable of not adoring this series, but then this one reinvigorated the whole shebang all the same. (original review)

Kill List (directed by Ben Wheatley) - I don't know at what point I'll feel comfortable talking about the last twenty minutes of Kill List, but it's not yet. I think that there must still too many people out there who don't know what's coming. My original review's even vaguer than what I'm giving here. Just see it! Even before things go wrong so wrong the film's dripping with an uneasy and bizarre dread... and then things go so wrong. 

I Saw the Devil (directed by Jee-won Kim) - A year ago I couldn't get enough of this movie and it probably would've topped this list, but my enthusiasm has dampened a little bit with more viewings - the visceral shock of that first time through wore off some with revisits, and the lulls between incredible scenes begin to stand out a little bit. But man, the incredible scenes in this thing are hardcore, and it's spectacular to look at. (Especially Lee Byung-hun.)

Insidious (directed by James Wan) - Yes I had and still have some issues with that slack-jawed poppet-netherworld that Insidious builds to, but for sheer "make me jump out of my seat" chills and thrills nobody topped Wan's ode to things that go bump in the morning afternoon and still of the night. I'm not really a jumper either, but this thing had me bouncing around in my seat like a pinball. (original review)

As for the movies I consider horror that already made my earlier Top 20 list, they are Contagion, Martha Marcy May Marlene, and Take Shelter. I don't think anybody will argue over me classifying Contagion as horror - and Contagion freaked me out so badly I literally had to stop it every fifteen minutes to catch my breath before I totally hyperventilated - but I know pushing MMMM and Shelter under the genre umbrella might engage a few side-eyes from y'all... but side-eyes be damned, I says. They both present us with worlds where our protagonists crumbling grips on reality render the world a deeply unsettling and eerie place filled with monsters, albeit less fanged or troll-footed than these other picks. And they both end on notes of that incomprehensible non-reality tilting over into the real deal, sealing our dooms. If that ain't horror then consider that mewling off-screen kitten or a dripping wet  and dead-eyed Jessica Chastain fingering a fly-covered kitchen knife and get back to me.

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TGT11: A Moment of 2011 Awesomeness

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This has been a moment of 2011 awesomeness.

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TGT11: A Moment of 2011 Awesomeness

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This has been a moment of 2011 awesomeness.

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TGT11: The Great Movies #10-1

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The 2011 Pantys are halfway over already! I hope everyone's been enjoying the wandering nonsensery. You can read what I had to say on the first half of this list of my favorite movies of the year, number twenty through number eleven, right at this link, but here's a simple list of them:

20. Margaret

19. Bridesmaids

18. 13 Assassins

17. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

16. Contagion

15. Weekend

14. The Muppets

13. Hanna

12. Beginners

11. The Future

And sans further ado, let us do MY TOP TEN!

Hugo (directed by Martin Scorsese - I don't think Hugo was even going to make this list a month ago. And then it came on DVD and I popped it in while folding my laundry and before I knew it I was laying on top of my laundry crying. Out of all the movies here it benefitted the most from me taking forever to make this list because time gave me, uh, time to fall more and more in love with it. And love it I do, like Marty loves Georges. An illicit and sexy amore! (original review)

Drive (directed by Nicholas Winding Refn) -- Okay I was kidding about the sexy Hugo thing, but I'll be goshdarned if Drive doesn't make me feel all hot under the collar. Right from the start with those Miami Vice-ready titles, the dark browns and reds and blacks undulating around Ryan Gosling's steady be-satined presence. Christina Hendricks in teensy hooves prancing across a pawn shop parking lot. Just describing moments from this movie turns me on. This shit is style to the Nth - half the world wants to be Drive and the other half wants to fuck it. (original review)

Poetry (directed by Chang-dong Lee) -- I have piles and piles of unwatched movies surrounding me at every given moment to the point where it's gotten exhausting to even choose what to watch. So sometimes you watch Soapdish for a 35th time. Or sometimes you snatch something at random, and sometimes it's awful, but sometimes half an hour later you find yourself quite unexpectedly sitting on your couch having entirely lost the outside world. I only knew that actress Jeong-hie Yun was supposed to give a good performance in Poetry - I did not know that come the end credits I was going to be so affected I'd have to sit in the dark for a couple of hours feeling shattered, emotionally spent. 

Young Adult (directed by Jason Reitman) -- Everything I wanted it to be from that time when the first trailer sent me into Charlize nirvana, and more. There's not much I sympathize more with than an unsympathetic hero - the more difficult the better, I say. Mavis, you are an MVP. Brutal and brutally funny, Reitman's film understands the beast and wedges us right on in there upending the entire romantic comedy genre in the process, turning its cutesy tropes into curdled horrors. (original review)

Shame (directed by Steve McQueen) -- I find myself facing a self-imagined wall of disbelieving boogeymen when I try to express just how deeply this film messed with me - "You only like it because of Fassy's dick being all over the place!" I hear them scream back at me. And lord knows I certainly didn't mind that. But much to my embarrassment since I was in public, I could not stop shaking after the movie finished. I found it to be a finely wrought expression of an endless emotional barrens - the fetid alleys and antiseptic lobbies of New York as hellish a purgatory as any ever dreamed. I know this New York - it's as real as any other expression of this place as I have seen. (original review)

Martha Marcy May Marlene (directed by Sean Durkin) -- I can't even wrap my head around the fact that this was Durkin's first film. It is so assured in every aspect - the visuals enrich the performances and they all plunk right down perfect tonally - that I'm a little bit in awe of him. What lucky folk we are to see what he'll come up with next. (original review)

Take Shelter (directed by Jeff Nichols) -- Another reason The Pantys got delayed this year, actually one of the main reasons, was I really wanted to see this movie a second time. I got curious comments over the past few months, wondering what my grade was for it since I hadn't reviewed it and it sat in my sidebar ungraded. So let it be said at last - this is a great film, a deeply troubling look into a mind coming unmoored, with Michael Shannon's best yet performance. There are moments herein that ripped me right up.

Certified Copy (directed by Abbas Kiarostami) -- I think Take Shelter and Certified Copy actually share some common ground, in that they both become a mind-game about what it is we're actually seeing happen. But how can I not give the slightest of edges to my most favorite of actresses Juliette Binoche giving what might be my favorite performance of hers ever?  By the time she's lounging in the half-light of that hotel attic I've just gone silly with renewed obsession. This film is so nimble and strange, following its own untrammeled path that it sucks me right in time and again, and just with words, glorious words, and they way these actors sell them. I love it so much I don't ever want any answers - I just want to roll the questions around on my tongue forever.

A Seperation (directed by Asghar Farhadi) -- Whereas Hugo moved upwards with time, I had a real struggle with my top two films switching back and forth and a month ago they would have been reversed I have no doubt. Technically I think A Seperation is a more perfectly made film - it really is as far as I'm concerned an indisputable masterpiece, not a single wrong step, and it was one of those where you can sense it from the opening credits, with those passports being xeroxed beside the titles. (original review) But there was one movie that just wrapped it's clammy hands a little bit deeper inside of me that wouldn't let go...

Melancholia (directed by Lars Von Trier) -- Other movies this year shook me, and other ones wowed me with their visuals and their performances, lord knows I've been rambling about them for three days now. But none coalesced into quite the perfect storm like Lars Von Trier's masterpiece of righteous depression did. To just think about this film literally gives me goosebumps, and think about it I have - it's hollowed out a little cave inside my head ever since I saw it in October. A little teepee of absently-yet-artfully-arranged sticks to save me from those times when it feels like the air is getting sucked right off the surface of the Earth. It's the end of the world, and I feel fucking fantastic. (original review)

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TGT11: The Great Movies #10-1

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The 2011 Pantys are halfway over already! I hope everyone's been enjoying the wandering nonsensery. You can read what I had to say on the first half of this list of my favorite movies of the year, number twenty through number eleven, right at this link, but here's a simple list of them:

20. Margaret

19. Bridesmaids

18. 13 Assassins

17. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

16. Contagion

15. Weekend

14. The Muppets

13. Hanna

12. Beginners

11. The Future

And sans further ado, let us do MY TOP TEN!

Hugo (directed by Martin Scorsese - I don't think Hugo was even going to make this list a month ago. And then it came on DVD and I popped it in while folding my laundry and before I knew it I was laying on top of my laundry crying. Out of all the movies here it benefitted the most from me taking forever to make this list because time gave me, uh, time to fall more and more in love with it. And love it I do, like Marty loves Georges. An illicit and sexy amore! (original review)

Drive (directed by Nicholas Winding Refn) -- Okay I was kidding about the sexy Hugo thing, but I'll be goshdarned if Drive doesn't make me feel all hot under the collar. Right from the start with those Miami Vice-ready titles, the dark browns and reds and blacks undulating around Ryan Gosling's steady be-satined presence. Christina Hendricks in teensy hooves prancing across a pawn shop parking lot. Just describing moments from this movie turns me on. This shit is style to the Nth - half the world wants to be Drive and the other half wants to fuck it. (original review)

Poetry (directed by Chang-dong Lee) -- I have piles and piles of unwatched movies surrounding me at every given moment to the point where it's gotten exhausting to even choose what to watch. So sometimes you watch Soapdish for a 35th time. Or sometimes you snatch something at random, and sometimes it's awful, but sometimes half an hour later you find yourself quite unexpectedly sitting on your couch having entirely lost the outside world. I only knew that actress Jeong-hie Yun was supposed to give a good performance in Poetry - I did not know that come the end credits I was going to be so affected I'd have to sit in the dark for a couple of hours feeling shattered, emotionally spent. 

Young Adult (directed by Jason Reitman) -- Everything I wanted it to be from that time when the first trailer sent me into Charlize nirvana, and more. There's not much I sympathize more with than an unsympathetic hero - the more difficult the better, I say. Mavis, you are an MVP. Brutal and brutally funny, Reitman's film understands the beast and wedges us right on in there upending the entire romantic comedy genre in the process, turning its cutesy tropes into curdled horrors. (original review)

Shame (directed by Steve McQueen) -- I find myself facing a self-imagined wall of disbelieving boogeymen when I try to express just how deeply this film messed with me - "You only like it because of Fassy's dick being all over the place!" I hear them scream back at me. And lord knows I certainly didn't mind that. But much to my embarrassment since I was in public, I could not stop shaking after the movie finished. I found it to be a finely wrought expression of an endless emotional barrens - the fetid alleys and antiseptic lobbies of New York as hellish a purgatory as any ever dreamed. I know this New York - it's as real as any other expression of this place as I have seen. (original review)

Martha Marcy May Marlene (directed by Sean Durkin) -- I can't even wrap my head around the fact that this was Durkin's first film. It is so assured in every aspect - the visuals enrich the performances and they all plunk right down perfect tonally - that I'm a little bit in awe of him. What lucky folk we are to see what he'll come up with next. (original review)

Take Shelter (directed by Jeff Nichols) -- Another reason The Pantys got delayed this year, actually one of the main reasons, was I really wanted to see this movie a second time. I got curious comments over the past few months, wondering what my grade was for it since I hadn't reviewed it and it sat in my sidebar ungraded. So let it be said at last - this is a great film, a deeply troubling look into a mind coming unmoored, with Michael Shannon's best yet performance. There are moments herein that ripped me right up.

Certified Copy (directed by Abbas Kiarostami) -- I think Take Shelter and Certified Copy actually share some common ground, in that they both become a mind-game about what it is we're actually seeing happen. But how can I not give the slightest of edges to my most favorite of actresses Juliette Binoche giving what might be my favorite performance of hers ever?  By the time she's lounging in the half-light of that hotel attic I've just gone silly with renewed obsession. This film is so nimble and strange, following its own untrammeled path that it sucks me right in time and again, and just with words, glorious words, and they way these actors sell them. I love it so much I don't ever want any answers - I just want to roll the questions around on my tongue forever.

A Seperation (directed by Asghar Farhadi) -- Whereas Hugo moved upwards with time, I had a real struggle with my top two films switching back and forth and a month ago they would have been reversed I have no doubt. Technically I think A Seperation is a more perfectly made film - it really is as far as I'm concerned an indisputable masterpiece, not a single wrong step, and it was one of those where you can sense it from the opening credits, with those passports being xeroxed beside the titles. (original review) But there was one movie that just wrapped it's clammy hands a little bit deeper inside of me that wouldn't let go...

Melancholia (directed by Lars Von Trier) -- Other movies this year shook me, and other ones wowed me with their visuals and their performances, lord knows I've been rambling about them for three days now. But none coalesced into quite the perfect storm like Lars Von Trier's masterpiece of righteous depression did. To just think about this film literally gives me goosebumps, and think about it I have - it's hollowed out a little cave inside my head ever since I saw it in October. A little teepee of absently-yet-artfully-arranged sticks to save me from those times when it feels like the air is getting sucked right off the surface of the Earth. It's the end of the world, and I feel fucking fantastic. (original review)

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TGT11: Actor to Actor #5

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What's the "Actor to Actor" series? First I pick out my twenty favorite performances of the year. Then I mix those twenty names all up and pick out two names at random. And then I imagine what a conversation between those two characters would be like. Rinse and repeat. For fun! So let's get to it. Here's MNPP's fifth pair of favorite performances of 2011....

Take Shelter's Curtis (Michael Shannon)

and Melancholia's Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg)

Curtis: The sky is falling.

Claire: The sky isn't falling.

Curtis: The sky is falling!

Claire: The sky isn't falling!

Curtis: Ahh!

Claire: Ahh!!!

PREVIOUSLY

Patton Owsalt talks to Tom Hardy

William Shimell talks to Jeong-hie Jun

Michael Fassbender talks to Elizabeth Olsen

Kirsten Dunst talks to Andrea Riseborough

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TGT11: Actor to Actor #5

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What's the "Actor to Actor" series? First I pick out my twenty favorite performances of the year. Then I mix those twenty names all up and pick out two names at random. And then I imagine what a conversation between those two characters would be like. Rinse and repeat. For fun! So let's get to it. Here's MNPP's fifth pair of favorite performances of 2011....

Take Shelter's Curtis (Michael Shannon)

and Melancholia's Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg)

Curtis: The sky is falling.

Claire: The sky isn't falling.

Curtis: The sky is falling!

Claire: The sky isn't falling!

Curtis: Ahh!

Claire: Ahh!!!

PREVIOUSLY

Patton Owsalt talks to Tom Hardy

William Shimell talks to Jeong-hie Jun

Michael Fassbender talks to Elizabeth Olsen

Kirsten Dunst talks to Andrea Riseborough

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Return in 240 Words or Less

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For a movie as low-key as Return is, it seems strange I was holding my breath so much. I was just so nervous it might topple into the standard melodrama of the situation as we've seen it played out so many times before (vet comes home from service, freaks out) that I couldn't help myself. But the film doesn't topple - it pushes aside the cliches gently, but confidently.

Similarly Linda Cardellini gives an unshowy performance, presenting a capable woman adrift in a sea of semi-recognizable faces that seem as if they're coming at her from a distant sorta hazy past, and not quite standing in front of her here and now. It's as if she's found herself in an alternate universe, and only she can see how it's not quite right anymore. We watch as Cardellini shuffles and reshuffles, trying to shake out the right shape - she stares at her friends, her husband (Michael Shannon ceding the PTSD to somebody else for a change, playing a light dude who even smiles some), and even her children with unease.

Instinctively you can't help but like Cardellini, who never comes across as anything less than genuine, but she never lets this woman off the hook - she's difficult, frustrating, and even weak. But with so little said and even more deflected, we come to see exactly who she is anyway.