Every class , it ’s easy to come up with a long inclination of the year ’s worst science fiction and phantasy moving-picture show . Virginia reel and bobbin of refuse arrive in film with scandalous regularity . But it ’s a salutary class when you’re able to call back of half a dozen great genre films off the top of your oral sex . By that banner , 2011 was a dear year .
Hollywood ’s box office was down , the biggest films were mostly sequels , and nothing really blew moviegoers ’ minds . But there amongst some great atrocity , there were some genuine gleeful discoveries . Here are our picks for the 10 best and 10 worst science fiction and fantasy movies of 2011 . allow the debate begin !
Top image viaComic Book Movie , artist unnamed .
Best
We did n’t expect that much from a remake of a furore 1980s vampire comedy , but Fright Nightsurprised us . Fast - paced , witty and genuinely exciting , this motion-picture show packs enough surprises and canny character moments to keep you guessing . It ’s a great summer bubblegum flick . And astonishingly , David Tennant does n’t slip the movie .
https://gizmodo.com/fright-night-is-a-rare-example-of-a-summer-movie-done-r-5832446
Woody Allen ’s first venture into the fantastical in ages , Midnight in Paris is another one that catch us by surprise . Owen Wilson is a thwarted author in Paris , who hear a portal to the 1920s , where he meet Cole Porter , F. Scott Fitzgerald , Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein . And then he discovers the truth about these refinement heroes , in a comic turn that we wo n’t give aside here . Allen packs a lot of warmth and charm into what could have been a gimmicky prison term travel narrative .
Okay , I make out what you ’re call up . But this movie is the reasonableness Nic Cage live . If you have it away drive - in movies and pant - in - the - air madness , then this movie is likean instant all - time classic . you’re able to choose to call up of it as a straight - up comedy if you prefer — it ’s in reality intentionally funny a heap of the time . Cage plays John Milton , a stagnant guy who drive out of Hell to save his daughter from Satanists , and that assumption is the least crazy affair about this picture show .
https://gizmodo.com/drive-angry-is-the-best-exploitation-movie-in-years-5770599
There were a lot of uncanny “ cowering from the apocalypse ” movies this twelvemonth , from Vanishing on seventh Street to Take Shelter . But Melancholiawas in a class of its own , combining stunning imaging with can’t - depend - away uncomfortableness to make a portrait of one messed - up home facing the terminal of days . Somehow , a disastrous wedding and the destruction of our satellite both manage to be evenly horrifying and transfixing . This might be the most nihilistic movie about the remnant of the humans ever made , but it ’s also amazingly funny and endearing .
https://gizmodo.com/planetary-collisions-and-other-disasters-lars-von-trie-5858137
This film ’s premise could easily have lend itself to shlock : Saoirse Ronan is a superintendent - assassinator who has been trained to down by her “ father ” ( Eric Bana ) but has never learned about music or fine art or love , or the joy of painting your toenails . Instead , Hanna is botha glorious action at law movieand a lovely look at what it means to be a someone . I like this film when I saw it , but since then it ’s grown on me , mostly thanks to the beautiful mental imagery and the minute where Eric Bana explains to Cate Blanchett what fatherhood actually means to him . This picture has amaze in my nous .
https://gizmodo.com/hanna-proves-action-movies-can-be-beautiful-5790085
There were a brace of superhero movies this year , but only this one really beat to our rib . ( We might have included James Gunn ’s Super on this list , but it ’s not really SF / fantasy enough . ) Thor was about Norse god , but managed to work in a lot of actual skill and cosmic wonder along the way , thanks to Natalie Portman ’s obsession with observe an Einstein - Rosen Bridge . This film takes an age - old character arc — arrogant whelp learns province and real honor — and sells the underworld out of it , because it takes the time to germinate its characters . Oh , and it make you consider in both Asgard and New Mexico as real places . skillful superhero motion-picture show in ages .
https://gizmodo.com/preview/thor-the-best-superhero-movie-since-the-dark-knight-5799242
Another immense surprise — who would have thought that after Tim Burton ’s attempt to resurrect the Apes series , we would all be raving about another journey to aper - globe ? And yet , thanks to a masterful performance by Andy Serkis as the super - voguish emulator Caesar , this moviebecame one of our favorite . Within its barn - pic assumption , Rise need real interrogation about the future of humanity and the ethics of experimenting on animals … and does n’t take any easy answers .
There were a few ledger adaptations this yr that tried to bring the whole “ brain - bending thriller ” affair to the big projection screen — like the underwhelming Adjustment Bureau . But Limitlessactually did make us thinkand keep us guessing . Bradley Cooper is amazingly engage as a guy who talks a mile a minute on a wonder drug , and the whole thing becomes a great metaphor for Wall Street ’s “ smart guy in the room ” culture .
https://gizmodo.com/limitless-asks-what-if-yuppies-really-did-have-superpo-5783461
This moving picture come out in Norway in 2010 , but was only issue in the U.S. this year , so we ’re include it here . Mostly because we did n’t list it among last twelvemonth ’s best movies , and it deserve a primo speckle . You might gestate this to be just another sardonic foreign demon moving picture — but really , this history ofa government agency that keeps troll downis a perfect blend of Norse mythology and regime cabal . Well worth hunt down , if you have n’t check it yet .
https://gizmodo.com/troll-hunter-turns-myth-into-modern-hardboiled-tragedy-5800203
And speaking of great foreign monster motion-picture show … there was really never any dubiousness about 2011 ’s best skill fable / phantasy movie . Like Melancholia , Attack the Block take a minor cataclysm ( a nanny mystify mugged ) and then contrasts it against a Brobdingnagian one ( a horde of exotic beasties arrive and set out killing everyone in sight ) . round the Block isa fun , fashionable action flick , but it also keeps circle back to that mugging , and does n’t ever permit the teenage mugger off the hook , even as they become our torpedo . And — miracle of miracle — the alien have a real reason for being here , and the stranger in reality wind up making sense , in a fashion that sets up the film ’s triumphal termination . Amazing .
https://gizmodo.com/attack-the-block-makes-fighting-aliens-cool-again-5824673
Worst
I execrate this cinema when I first learn it , but then I was on an airplane latterly and the someone sit instantly in front of me was watch it on his little establish - in screen . It was operose to forfend see chunks of this film , and being reminded of just how unspeakable it really waA lazy , dull comedy about two best friends ( Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman ) trading eubstance , The Change - Up hold out for the dumb joke over the interesting option every prison term . ( Example : Reynolds is a wealthy stoner who does nothing but have sex and goof off all the metre — but then Bateman discovers Reynold ’s life actually fellate , because he has sex with fraught women . What ? ) This movie is like the brain - damaged , ether - sniffing cousin of The Hangover .
Hollywood ’s Modern flavour of the month is plainly “ dark fairy tale retellings , ” but permit ’s trust this is n’t a representative sample . Alex Pettyfer plays an arrogant jackass whose catchphrase is “ Embrace the Suck . ” ( It ’s almost too easy . ) Because he ’s such a jerkwad , he gets anathemize by a gothy crone to spend a year being tattooed and thrust — and if he does n’t encounter someone to love him , then he ’s stuck like this everlastingly . Luckily , the girlfriend he likes has a pa who ’s in problem with gangsters or drug dealer or something , so Pettyfer convinces the dada to send out the girl to live on as his virtual prisoner . Even Neil Patrick Harris as Pettyfer ’s unreasoning tutor ca n’t rescue this swither of teen angst and creepy stalkerness .
We ’re still debating whether this was an real ghost story , or just a psychological thriller where it ’s all in Daniel Craig ’s capitulum . The pic tries for ambiguity , but stumble over into “ who give a crap . ” Craig is a guy cable who moves into a gracious novel house with his mob , except that a frightful slaying happened there and … the twisting is given away in the trailers , and it ’s in reality dumber than it bet at first . Once you realize the truth about Craig and the house , it just gyrate downwards into idiocy . It ’s like a terrible , neuter episode of American Horror Story .
https://gizmodo.com/dream-house-is-two-bad-movies-for-the-price-of-one-5845456
In a twelvemonth of exotic encroachment stories , Darkest Hour still managed to tolerate out as the worst of the bunch . Unappealing characters , awful attempt at “ funny ” dialog , misleading editing , short continuity , crappy special effects , horrendously bad science … this motion-picture show pretty much has it all . You end up rooting for the aliens , because this film is proof that man merit to die .
I had only seen one Twilight movie before this one — the one with the evil Seattle flower child vampires who come to the boonies to mess with our dysfunctional were - vamp - waif trilateral . And it was actually an hunky-dory film . So when all - clock time - great director Bill Condon tackled the final Scripture , expectations were reasonably high — and wow . This film really was supernaturally turgid — probably , the determination to split the quaternary Twilight book into two picture show was a bit of a mistake , since it means treacly pace , and an endless enchantment with Bella ’s emaciation and teras maternity . And you ’re stuck with a climax to this cinema in which a horde of set on werewolves … do n’t . Kind of a letdown .
We ’ve all been let this film off the hook because it was better than Transformers 2 . You know what else is better than Transformers 2 ? Group sex with Tetsuo the Iron Man and Mickey Rourke ’s Russian electro - whip fetishist from Iron Man 2 . Michael Bay set up out to redeem himself with one more trip to the morphing - robots well , and wind up up pass us Shia LaBoeuf’swhiniest performance yet . Plus some really poorly - consider “ funny mo ” sport Ken Jeong and John Malkovich bringing more camp than a dozen Occupy Wall Streets . Oh , and the “ plot ” ? Even more nonsensical than the last one .
https://jezebel.com/transformers-3-is-a-movie-about-how-wrong-you-were-to-h-5816415
There seems to be a common theme uniting many of this year ’s worst genre films , and that theme is “ whiney angst . ” And nobody embody that theme more this year than Alex Pettyfer — this prison term around , he ’s an alien kid who ’s being hunt down by goliath who have to kill him and his comrades in numerical parliamentary procedure . The monster are really , really OCD . There are about five minutes of Teresa Palmer kicking ass in this film . The rest of the clip , it ’s Pettyfer yawp about how he wants a existent living , and being such an all - around gumshoe that you want that gothy witch to come back and give him a mullet this time .
Every yr , there are several badly - considered endeavor to monetise an sometime mass medium property that someone somewhere thinks is precious . You have the ridiculous jokes , the cutesy book of facts to random bits of the author material , the drippy crassness , and the scenes where everybody dances around to protrude hits . This worked out astonishingly well in The Muppets , but in The Smurfs , it turns into acold , calculated CG psyche vortexin which Neil Patrick Harris in reality becomes a computer - generated mascot . ( Not really . ) Harris play a marketer , who learns about merchandising from the Smurfs , who are there to marketplace toys . That ’s what this film is about . Oh , and Hank Azaria wants to change state the Smurfs into cosmetic intersection , which is clearly the right choice .
https://gizmodo.com/you-can-actually-watch-neil-patrick-harris-soul-being-e-5826411
Why did this filmsuck so much ? Was it the total lack of patch logical system ? The lack of any meaningful character progression for its hero , Hal Jordan ? The CG overload , which reduces Ryan Reynolds to a human head floating in a sea of cheese ? No , in reality — the tangible trouble with Green Lantern is that it has no story to secernate . The Divine of this flick made a sheer choice , to throw away the traditional “ superhero movie origin story ” paradigm in party favor of something more ambitious . And unfortunately , they show why the “ origin story ” expression works so well , and why it ’s so hard to find option . Also , they went overboard trying to stuff as many constituent into the comics into one plastic film as possible , rather of take a scalpel to the overgrown GL mythos . They draw a bead on to please the hardcore fans of the property , and wound up pleasing nobody .
https://gizmodo.com/green-lantern-wants-to-be-star-wars-but-its-more-like-5812464
In a year where there were so many awful corporate production and money - grubbing attempt to produce the next Twilight or Star Wars , the year ’s unfit musical genre film was … a personal , quirky passion project . This was Zack Snyder ’s Inception . He wanted to make a weird genre spell in which someone go down into layers upon layer of dream — or is it real ? — in between make two Brobdingnagian superhero film . Unfortunately , some great visuals could n’t rescue this lobotomy fantasy from sense , well , like a drill in the head . The over - trust on fetishy sleaze , and the weird ways this movie render to make its wretched characters seem empowered , are n’t the real job . The main problem ? This cinema drag on and on , becoming ever more boring , until you realize that none of this stuff really count .
Thanks to Annalee , Meredith and Cyriaque for the prompting !
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