The 20 Best Films I Watched in 2011.

I hope everyone had a good holiday season. Much like in 2010, I just don't get to watch a lot of new releases. I don't have time for theatres (or at least easy access to a good one) so I generally have to wait until something comes out on video and I have time off to actually sit down and watch the film. My list of the best films I watched in 2010 reflected this. I do watch a lot of films and I have a quite large DVD collection at this point with a couple hundred films I haven't even watched yet (you can thank those ultra-cheap 50 film DVD sets for that!). So yet again I'm going to list the 20 films I enjoyed the most this year, regardless of what year they are actually from. They don't even have to be "good" movies, they just had to be films that were new to me, that I enjoyed. Most of the films on this list have yet to be reviewed by me officially for the blog. Hopefully they will all be written about soon (if my plans to post more often hold up). I've written a small blurb for all of these. Hopefully there will be a couple of films on this list that may spark some interest for you.

20. Conan the Barbarian (2011) | Directed by Marcus Nispel.

This film deserved a better script and a better director, but Jason Momoa is the right guy for the role (he's a much better fit physically and verbally than Arnold Schwarzenegger ever was). He makes the most out of what he's given here in this otherwise drab and by-the-numbers CGI-ridden sword and sandals film. At the very least he's got some really solid villains to go against and the film does stick a bit closer to the original stories. There is potential here for the future, but I fear we'll never see a proper Conan series.

19. Nightmare City (1980) | Directed by Umberto Lenzi.

Perhaps the most crazy of all the late '70s-early '80s zombie films to come out of Europe. There's no doubt there's some distasteful treatment of women in this film (a not uncommon attitude from Euro horror films of this era) but one can not deny the charm of the "zombies" in this film. Here we have crazy, radiation-infected, fast zombies, long before 28 Days Later came to be. They use weapons, they bite, they infect everyone they come in contact with. Mobs of them swarm the city without fear. They are almost unstoppable. The heroes are more keen to run and evade than fight, and of course the military is to blame, and are unable to fix their mistakes. It's almost like Romero's The Crazies on speed. Not a great film, but great fun.

18. Jive Turkey (1974) | Directed by Bill Brame.

This is a prime example of those everything including the kitchen sink cheap Blaxploitation films. The Black crime lord vs the Italian Mafia with the white establishment caught in the middle, and other various standard stock characters thrown in, all with different motivations. Lots of action, violence, and a cross-dressing hit man! This was an era where the word "nigger" was thrown at the viewer a mile a minute (even one of the theme songs is called "Nigger Rich"). The film is an entertaining piece of trash.

17. Black Fist (1974) | Directed by Timothy Galfas and Richard Kaye.

A refreshing Blaxploitation film where the hero isn't anything more than a street tough who works his way up through an illegal street-fighting ring. He makes a lot of money for the local crime boss and the dirty cop, but when he wants to stop playing their game and get out, things cycle out of control and into violence that affects his family and friends. Cheap, but well-acted, and there's a message about what a life of crime and solving violence with more violence will lead to. This one, I think, screams for a remake because the message is solid.

16. Black Swan (2010) | Directed by Darren Aronofsky.

Another look at obsession from Aronofsky. Parts of this film leave me cold, and it was a much over-hyped film, but it is well acted, and it does look great. I just feel it pales in comparison to The Wrestler. Perhaps it's just because ballet is not my thing. Still, a fairly strong effort overall. Vincent Cassel's slime ball character here is great.

15. Red State (2011) | Directed by Kevin Smith.

The most un-Smith Kevin Smith film, with a stand-out villain in Micheal Parks' crazy fundie preacher. He pretty much steals the entire film away from everyone else. The film itself is not greater than the sum of its parts and Smith backs away from a real daring ending after teasing us, but it's still a good effort considering he stepped way out of his comfort zone for this. It may be his best film as far as serious work goes, and it's really not a bad little horror film all things considered.

14. Monsters (2010) | Directed by Gareth Edwards.

I don't know if I can properly sum this one up until I've seen it a couple of more times. I know there were aliens but the film is not really an alien invasion flick. I know there was a dangerous journey and an understanding that develops between two people put together in a bad situation. I also know quite liked it. Singular.

13. Hanna (2011) | Directed by: Joe Wright.

I think some will be rubbed the wrong way watching a film about an innocent-looking, willowy teen-aged girl being a highly-trained assassin on the run, but for everyone else, this is a top-notch action film with a bit of Euro travelogue thrown in. It plays out at times like a fairy tale and indeed presents us with one hell of a nasty wicked stepmother for a villain. The key to the whole thing is that although Hanna is programmed to be a killer, she really is a sensitive, intelligent and inquisitive young woman looking for a family and a sense of purpose in a world that may as well be another planet for her. All the chase scenes involving sadistic hired goons looking for Hanna, and Hanna dealing with them in nasty ways, are just nice window dressing.

12. The Eagle (2011) | Directed by Kevin Macdonald.

A really well done adventure following the son of the last eagle standard bearer of the Ninth Legion looking to reclaim it for Rome. He goes behind enemy lines into the wilds of unoccupied Britain with his British slave. Their quest, which involves a test of trust and loyalty between the Roman master and his slave is only half the story, as we also get a look at what the Celts and Picts may have been like, as well as the day-to-day life of the Roman foot soldier guarding the border that was Hadrian's Wall. A fun film for a lazy night. Neil Marshall's Centurion would pair well with this film.

11. Black Death (2010) | Directed by Christopher Smith.

A men on a mission film set in the newly plague-ridden England of 1348. Mercs led by Sean Bean's knight Ulric go on a holy quest to find what they believe to be the supernatural cause for God bringing his punishment down upon them. They bring a young, innocent monk along with them as they hunt down a supposed necromancer in a pagan village that is free of the plague. The actors are good, the film moves at a good pace, and we are wisely kept in the dark about if there is any real supernatural forces at work, as these two religions clash. Does either one have any moral high ground in the end? Gory, tough, good.

10. Mesrine: Part 1 - Killer Instinct/Mesrine:

Part 2 - Public Enemy #1 (2008) | Directed by Jean-François Richet.

Every bit one film as the Kill Bill films are, so I include both parts here as one entry. A stylish, never boring, bio pic about the real life international criminal Jacques Mesrine. Vincent Cassel gives a great performance, keeping you glued to the screen as he does the most awful things to whoever gets in his way. Like most bio pics, it's a bit episodic, and real life facts get compressed, switched around and sometimes just dropped altogether. But somehow it works very well as a lean, mean gangster film and a look at the persona Mesrine created for himself with the media, up to the very end of his life when the police most likely put a hit out on him.

9. Red Hill (2010) | Directed by Patrick Hughes.

An escaped convicted murderer, looking like some sort of cowboy from hell, sets to take his revenge on a small rural Australian town. The new rookie cop is caught in the middle of it, looking to get to the bottom of just who this man is and why he's got such a grudge, when it's obvious the rest of the local cops know more than they are letting on about the situation. Stylish, well-acted, and moody. Makes you think it is just another low budget slasher film, but then it throws you a few curve balls to keep you on your toes. I really enjoyed this one.

8. Stake Land (2010) | Directed by Jim Mickle.

A dash of I Am Legend (the novella, you mook, not the damn Will Smith film) and the visual style of The Road and Children of Men. This vampire-hunting journey in a vampire plague-destroyed USA is not only an eye-catcher, it's also well-written and well-made indie effort that puts many big budget horror films to shame. It's almost a really gritty, humorless version of Zombie Land. I went in expecting nothing and came out quite impressed. There is real talent here. Why can't all indie horror be this good?

7. True Grit (2010) | Directed by Ethan Coen & Joel Coen.

If you want the closest adaptation to the original book, this is where you should go. To hell with John Wayne playing a grumpy John Wayne with an eye patch. Jeff Bridges loses himself in the character and the film really does have the true grit the original lacked. Hailee Steinfeld and Matt Damon provide good foils for this Rooster. Barry Pepper and Josh Brolin are great, believable villains. This isn't the greatest western made in the last twenty years or so, but it's one of them, and it feels like one of those brave westerns from the 1970s, when the genre was in its death throws.

6. My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009) | Directed by Werner Herzog.

Herzog gives us what first appears to be a very by-the-numbers police procedural and throws it on its head when put in contrast to the deep insanity Willem Dafoe's tired cop encounters on one bright and sunny morning, as a man has snapped and killed his mother with a sword. Micheal Shannon is totally believable as a man who has lost his mind somewhere after a trip to Peru. He's one of the best and most singular actors out there. Maybe the new Christopher Walken? Produced by David Lynch...did he also provide the craft services for this film?

5. Attack the Block (2011) | Directed by Joe Cornish.

The best alien invasion film I've seen in years. Fun action, good characters and effective alien designs. Animalistic aliens that are apparently jumping from planet to planet in a mating/eat-the-native-creatures cycle. They meet up with some teen-aged London street toughs who don't feel too keen on being food for these "gorilla-wolf motherfuckers", as our heroes so coin them. This sets up what I think can best described as the film John Carpenter might have made if he was given the Goonies script and allowed to rewrite it as an alien invasion film. The set-up is so simple, yet there's also some depth, with good character stuff here. And it's not one of those safe films about young heroes saving the day and living happily ever after. Some bad shit does go down for some of them. A real gem genre fans should be looking out for.

4. Inception (2010) | Directed by Christopher Nolan.

A visual mind-fuck, but not nearly as confusing as it could have been...and this film is not as dependant on its secrets as Nolan's Memento was. After all the flashy (and first-rate CGI) effects and high-profile cast are set aside, one can see a sad, haunting ghost story in the heart of this, pretending to be sci-fi. What is a ghost anyway, but guilt or memories of past mistakes? Leonardo DiCaprio's character, with out a doubt, is haunted here.

3. Strangers on a Train (1951) | Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

An early classic from Hitchcock's American films. I can't properly sum up how many great things are going on in this chance meeting between two strangers on a train, which leads to a murder and our meek playboy hero trying to dig himself out of the hole Robert Wagner's foppish psycho has put him in. So much of what would come later in Hitchcock's best loved films is present here. And the film itself is quite subversive for its time. This film is overlooked quite often, which is a shame as it's a first-rate thriller.

2. 13 Assassains (2010) | Directed by Takashi Miike.

One of the few films of Miike's I've seen or was interested in seeing for that matter, and it was well worth it, even if the international version cuts twenty minutes from the film and stashes them in the DVD special features as deleted scenes. Restrained for Miike, but still shocking in key places, he makes his own stab at creating an epic samurai film in the Kurosawa mold. Although he's not as visually talented as Kurosawa was, this is no mere imitation of Seven Samurai (actually, it's a remake of a 1963 film of the same name). Miike takes the central idea and runs it down several winding paths. The samurai here are not all as well-defined as in Seven Samurai, but their goal is broken down to the finest gritty detail: save the empire from war by ambushing and killing a sadistic lord before he takes power. They all realize that at the same time they are helping doom the samurai way of life for good. Brutal and bloody, but humor and a nice little twist of the supernatural make their way into this impressive film, where more than half of it is taken up in a bloody, desperate battle.

1. Black Dynamite (2009) | Directed by Scott Sanders

The best film of the year of its release, as well, now that I think about it. I was expecting to find something akin to the awful Undercover Brother -- or if I was lucky, one of Tarantino's fun recreation-with-a-twist genre exhumations that doesn't quite hit the mark. I was blown away to find such a dead-on recreation of the Blaxploitation film, that I was often fooled into thinking I was watching one of those so-bad-they're-great budget Blaxploitation films, that throw everything including the kitchen sink at you. Great cast, great intentional mistakes throughout the film, and the film just looks and feels like the real deal. The only slip-up is that unlike the films in the genre it's paying respects to (great or awful), there are no slow moments. Every scene seems like it was taken from a reel of the best bad moments in Blaxploitation film history, forgetting just how many of those films had a lot of slow exposition and scenes where nothing happens, thrown in to pad the running time.

Honourable Mentions:

Wake Wood (2011) | Directed by David Keating.

The Town (2010) | Directed by Ben Affleck.

Machete (2010) | Directed by Ethan Maniquis & Robert Rodriguez.

Let Me In (2010) | Directed by Matt Reeves.

I Sell the Dead (2008) | Directed by Glenn McQuaid.

Predators (2010) | Directed by Nimród Antal.

Road Kill (2010) | Dean Francis.