The Big Picture: MovieBob's 2011 Top Ten

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

Agree 100% up to the Tree of Life. Seriously? The Tree of Life your #1? It was terrible! It was a nothing movie that tried to get away with making no sense and having nothing substantial to it by just having a load of space/time imagery shout in your face "LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT WHAT AN ARTISTIC STATEMENT I'M MAKING!" I'm not against movies making artistic statements, I'm all for it actually, but they also have to not suck. The most powerful emotion that I ever felt when watching The Tree of Life, was the soul crushing sadness at how I was never going to get those two hours of my life back. It was that bad.

That's Malick for ya; a man who keeps getting away with crap like this. If I want a GOOD version of something like this I'll just watch the batshit INSANE finale of Neon Genesis Evangelion which was at least serving a purpose. Malick is just using this as a biopic of himself. And surprise, his life WAS NOT FUCKING INTERESTING.

 

[moviedork]

MovieBob, you seem to be struggling between keeping your credentials as a film critic (Midnight in Paris, Drive, and Tree of Life--You? Really, Bob?) and keeping your credentials as a nerd (Captain America as Number 2?!???). The result (your list) is honestly a bit unsettling and I'm not sure if you're being completely honest with us here. I know this year hasn't given us as many movies to love like the past couple years have (heck, last year EVERYONE's top 10 list was pretty much the same). Even Oscar is already talking about cutting the Best Picture field down from 10 (again). I say pick a side and stick to your guns. I feel like you probably spent a couple hours looking at other critics' lists and grabbed the overall consensus of their best movies, and then arbitrarily slapped the comic book ones in there to make the fanboys happy.

I disagree about your statement about not giving very many movies to love this year. In previous years, it's a lot easier to make a top 10 list, not this year. I do agree that his fan-dom for comic book movies is absurd, I don't have any comic book movies in my top 10 (highest is Thor @ 17).

 

[b1aksh33p]

I don't watch a lot of movies, but some of those movies look interesting enough to try to watch sometime.

 

[Primus1985]

Huh weird, I liked Thor, as much if not more than Captain America. Cap was a bit slow at parts(and the singing and dancing went on a little long) but Thor was pretty well paced, the stuff on earth wasnt drawn out and we saw much of Asguard.

Yeah I pretty much saw all those, they where good I admit. I also liked "In Time", and throughly enjoyed "Real Steel". If any movie can do a franchise its Real Steel.

 

[aristos_achaion]

I typically agree with Bob on movie issues, but Tree of Life was easily one of the *worst* films I've seen this year, or, really, in my life. It felt pretentious while still managing to be trite, symbolically confusing while managing to remain shallow, and somehow manages to say essentially nothing while being incredibly offensive and sexist. So the kid's father is emotionally and physically abusive to both the kids and their mother? Tree of Life seems to think it's not his fault, and uses the mother as a constant emotional punching-bag while basically ignoring her role in the kids' lives. Meanwhile, while the astronomical/underwater/dinosaur scenes were visually striking, they seemed incredibly out of place and context and went on for far, far too long. Unlike 2001, Tree of Life fails at pacing and relevance, giving us striking visual images and ostensibly deep symbolism while not communicating to us why we should care or what relevance this has to the rest of the film.

 

[Zorg Machine]

I agree with all those movies except for Muppets (I never watched them as a child) midnight in paris (haven't seen it yet) and tree of life...I feel bad for saying this because i know that the movie is technically "good" but it is the most boring, uninteresting movie I have seen this year. If they took the "beginning of the universe" scene and put in on youtube, it would be awesome but the movie itself, meh.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Comparing Tree of Life to 2001: A Space Odyssey isn't saying a whole lot since 2001: A Space Odyssey bored the the living fuck out of me. I mean sure it was all moving and whatever, but did Kubrick really need to take 20 min. to show the ship landing?

 

[JenSeven]

So, Bob has been a bit busy on Twitter trying to defend his choice of Attack The Block.
Many people have commented that they cannot identify with the chav leads of that movie, basically because these are guys that you can run into on the streets, and mug you.
Bob has been defending it saying that Hollywood has put many "bad" guys in hero roles (Han Solo, Jack Sparrow) and that the chavs from Attack The Block fall into that same category and should be seen in the same light.

Well Bob, here is a movie pitch for you:

Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer and Son Of Sam team up to fight an evil PMC trying to push trough the SOPA law.

Would you defend that, if it made for a compelling movie?

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

I typically agree with Bob on movie issues, but Tree of Life was easily one of the *worst* films I've seen this year, or, really, in my life. It felt pretentious while still managing to be trite, symbolically confusing while managing to remain shallow, and somehow manages to say essentially nothing while being incredibly offensive and sexist. So the kid's father is emotionally and physically abusive to both the kids and their mother? Tree of Life seems to think it's not his fault, and uses the mother as a constant emotional punching-bag while basically ignoring her role in the kids' lives. Meanwhile, while the astronomical/underwater/dinosaur scenes were visually striking, they seemed incredibly out of place and context and went on for far, far too long. Unlike 2001, Tree of Life fails at pacing and relevance, giving us striking visual images and ostensibly deep symbolism while not communicating to us why we should care or what relevance this has to the rest of the film.

Actually there's never ONCE a moment in the film where he's hitting his kids or his wife. There's one point where the wife is hitting HIM, but never the opposite. If anything it just makes the kid version of Penn look like a whiny, spoiled, creepily incestuous brat who probably didn't get smacked ENOUGH. Pitt's character the only likeable character in the whole film.