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The Artist
Michel Hazanavicius
2012
A love-letter to the bygone silent era, The Artist is a charming film that reflects on cinema’s formative years while also relighting the fires of interest in a style of filmmaking that was once considered consigned to the history books forever. To see it back on the big screen at a time when two of the longest-running Hollywood studios, Universal and Paramount, are celebrating 100 years in business, is almost poetic. It’s already picked up numerous awards and looks set for Oscar glory to add to the romanticism, but the gushing praise for The Artist is well-deserved.
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Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
Brad Bird
2011
All four Mission: Impossible movies have carried their director’s distinct style to varying degrees of success. De Palma kicked off the movie franchise effectively then John Woo went so OTT on action that the brooding intelligence of the first was lost. JJ Abrams offered a solid reboot of sorts which played up teamwork rather than one-man-army Cruise. Abrams drew on his experience working on television series, but it looked like the A-list actor would struggle to find a mass audience again when the box office take of his recent films went downhill. For this fourth edition Pixar director Brad Bird has made his first foray into live action cinema following hits with The Incredibles, The Iron Giant and Ratatouille. To make a success of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Bird would have to strike a balance of the insatiable Cruise star power and giving screen time to more than just his elaborate stunts. That might be considered an impossible mission itself, but he’s performed admirably to ensure all of Ethan’s team get a chance to shine.
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The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn
Steven Spielberg
2011
Journalist and adventurer Tintin arrives on the big screen with a CGI-makeover that goes three dimensional. Sewing together three 1940s stories The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham’s Treasure, this big budget re-imaging of Herve’s classic is a thrill ride of set pieces, yet lacking the classic Spielberg story weaving of his live action equivalent Indiana Jones.
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Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Rupert Wyatt
2011
Tim Burton’s update of The Planet of the Apes 10 years ago, dressing up A-list actors in hairy costumes and a preposterous ending put paid to a reboot to the much-loved franchise. Burton’s movie lacked the dark overtones the director was renowned for and had none of the camp charm of the original, leaving a soulless Hollywood blockbuster. But nothing is normally more soulless than a Hollywood prequel, usually full of by-the-numbers plotting and characterisation as it plods towards a pre-determined end with a few winks along the way. Incredibly, Rise of the Planet of the Apes isn’t one of them: helmer Rupert Wyatt brings us a well-acted, engaging origins story with genuine emotion behind all the CGI apes and creative action scenes.
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Sucker Punch
Zack Snyder
2011
Hollywood has often granted hotshot directors creative freedom after they’ve proved themselves a top talent. Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate in the 1980s almost brought down a studio under the weight of the director’s ambition and, more recently, Kurt Wimmer and Kerry Conran showed that putting too much faith in the hands of the director can result in poor returns. Zack Snyder’s efforts remaking Dawn of the Dead and then bringing graphic novels 300 and Watchmen to the big screen earned him free reign for his live action follow up Sucker Punch. An action/drama spectacular drenched in fantasy, Snyder’s computer game-esque sequences see a group of girls battling all manner of enemies to escape a brothel that is used as symbolism for a girl’s entrapment in a mental asylum. This premise gives Snyder plenty of opportunity to flex his creative muscle, but this original effort exposes his shortcomings as a writer.
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Senna
Asif Kapadia
2011
“The late, great Ayton Senna” is how possibly the finest Formula One commentator Murray Walker used to describe the legendary driver on air before he retired, and possibly still does. This documentary follows Senna from his karting days through his conflicts with F1 rival Alain Prost to his untimely death at Italy’s Imola circuit in 1994. It’s an emotional journey that puts the hero of the piece on a pedestal as a Brazilian and sporting icon, but paints a one-dimensional view of the legend.
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Scream 4
Wes Craven
2011
The Scream series was once the talk of horror fans. Writer Kevin Williamson and veteran slasher director Wes Craven teamed up to create the first real tongue-in-cheek dressing down of the genre with the original, yet also managed to craft their own inventive classic at the same time – a feat that would propel the series on for a better-than-expected sequel which continued the tradition of high school kids geeking out over horror film cliches while being involved in the same scenarios.
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The Eagle
Kevin Macdonald
2011
Kevin Macdonald, the British director who brought us the likes of Touching the Void, The Last King of Scotland and State of Play suffers his first major misfire with his latest offering The Eagle; an adaptation of Rosemary Sutcliff’s historical adventure novel The Eagle of the Ninth. A sword and sandals piece, The Eagle follows Marcus Flavia Aquila (Channing Tatum), a Roman legionary who seeks to restore honour to his besmirched family name by recovering the symbolic golden eagle, which his late father lost in battle, along with his whole legion (the ninth), during an infamously ill-fated attempt to conquer northern Briton.
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Animal Kingdom
David Michôd
2011
It is incredibly rare that a director of sheer quality is able to hone his or her talents expertly enough to achieve the unimaginable and produce a masterpiece upon debut. Few have managed it but those who have are now among Hollywood’s studio elite as a result. Bryan Singer with The Usual Suspects, Quentin Tarantino with Reservoir Dogs, the Coen Brothers with Blood Simple and now the extremely exciting David Michôd with his astonishing feature debut Animal Kingdom.
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Gnomeo & Juliet
2011
Shakespeare’s plays have been told in many forms, in particular Romeo and Juliet which Baz Luhrmann brought to vivid life in 1996 with Leonardo di Caprio and Claire Danes embodying the titular characters for a generation of film fans. Then the tragedy was relocated to Verona to give it zest while retaining the original dialogue, for this very British production the twist on the famous tale is the warring Capulets and Montagues are gnomes living in rival gardens next door to each other. With producers including David Furnish and Elton John its got plenty of stars behind the animated adventure, however there’s very little life in it beyond the child-friendly introduction to the work of William Shakespeare.
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