2011 Year End Popcorn Jockey Report
2011 Box Office, you were a strange mistress. Or at least the most easily forgettable mistress on record. I mean, even Pixar made a completely forgettable film this year. I remember being excited this time last year, and now I barely remember what I was so excited for this summer.
So what went down in 2011?
Dreamworks actually made two movies better than Pixar. Marvel set up the Avengers home run next year with a double and a triple in one short summer session. Tucked away in another season of uninspired BigDumbLoud™ sequels, we had two directors wring something unexpected out of decades old, well-worn franchises. The guy who made museum movies with Ben Stiller stuffed Rocky Balboa into a Rock’Em Sock’Em Robot and somehow made the best “Boy And His Robot” movie since Iron Giant. And Baby Goose and the Sidewinder pulled the rug out from under every other movie this year.
A while back I summed up all of my movie visit tweets, and in the rear-view mirror of my couch and X-Box, I went back and adjusted some scores. You can check those out back here, while the back half of the year is marked below:
2011 Mid-Year Popcorn Jockey Report
Walking out of Rango earlier this year, my friends and I realized we were looking at a poster-filled lobby and were on the precipice of a jam-packed summer season. Talk about potential – almost every week for three straight months there was something one of us was mega-excited about.
Let’s see, we had 3 important Marvel movies plus a risky new DC entry, sequels to recent animated features, big ILM-fueled VFX extravaganzas, and the closing chapter to the most loved film franchise of all-time.
Since I normally tweet out a review right as I’m walking out of the theater, the only bias here is the anticipation I had walking in. After the jump, there’s the breakdown of what I had to say on Twitter fresh from the end of the credit roll. It’s a long post.
Two Timing LA Movie Day
The Short Review
Two completely different sci-fi movies in one day – one a big bang summer blockbuster and the other a no-budget mumblecore affair.
Both miss the mark.
Cowboys & Aliens: 5/10
Stuff sure blew up good but who was I rooting for again? Murky character motivations and flat-line character arcs kept me from caring about anyone: did Daniel Craig’s character change or grow one iota throughout the movie?
The tone changes from flippant to gravely serious as often as an episode of Glee. What started out as a wonderful & languidly paced Western goes into plot pacing overdrive the moment one of the main characters is injured in a riverbed – from there on out the movie tries to outpace the Pirates Of The Caribbean sequels in terms of set pieces and action scenes.
Thankfully a charismatic and inspired cast saved it from being a total dud: bucket loads of great character spots from Rockwell, Goggins, and of course Harrison Ford made the moments between explosions worthwhile.
Another Earth: 4/10
Such a brilliant sci-fi premise wasted on the trials (and boredom) of youth. A few true moments of tension and heartache ended up spoiled by overly long stretches of nothing to do, punctuated by some of the most annoying camera work in recent memory.
