2011 - Movies of the Year

Let's start with the turkeys... click the links if you want to know just how much I hated them.

Worst Five Movies of 2011

5. The Thing (2011)

4. Immortals

3. Season Of The Witch

2. Transformers 3

1. Green Lantern

Despite those, it's actually been a really good year at the cinema and I could easily have filled a Top 20 with runners up including Never Let Me Go, The Adjustment Bureau, The Skin I Live In, X-Men: First Class and The Guard. But if I have to pick 10...

My Top Ten Movies of 2011

10. The Inbetweeners

9. Thor

8. Another Earth

7. The Big Picture

6. The King's Speech

5. We Need To Talk About Kevin

4. 127 Hours

3. Source Code

2. True Grit

1. Super 8

Super 8 might not be the best film of the year, but it's the one which gave me the warmest glow - nostalgia for the kind of movie I grew up loving, like Back To The Future with aliens. The long awaited Coens / Bridges reunion was a shoe-in, but Super 8 had more twinkly eyed magic than I'd expected and deserves its place at the top... though I'm sure many would disagree.

What was your favourite movie of the year?

Movie Review - Super 8

I'm late reviewing Super 8, so I have little time left to convince you to go see the best film of the summer before it departs our multiplexes... but if you're one of those people who believes "they don't make 'em like they used to when I was a kid" and you were a kid back in the 1980s, you really are missing a treat.

JJ Abrams has recaptured the spirit of movies like The Goonies, Back To The Future, ET and Gremlins in this heartwarming monster movie that, yes, may veer ever so slightly off the tracks into schmaltz (particularly with its 'Our Two Dads' subplot) but ends up no worse for that. Because, you know what? Those films we love from the 80s came with a fair slice of schmaltz too... but they also made you care. And I cared about this film more than I have any other movie of the summer.

Watching Super 8, I yearned for my youth. Abrams could easily have told this story in the present day, but it wouldn't have had half as much charm. I live a big chunk of my life on the internet, yet still I found myself longing for simpler days when the most complex bit of tech in a teenager's bedroom was a handheld Pac Man, when kids made models and played vinyl records and argued with their siblings over what to watch on the only TV in the house. Rose-tinted nostalgia? Perhaps... I do remember the first time I saw Back To The Future back in 1985 thinking how much better it would have been to grow up in the 50s with Marty McFly's parents... Hollywood only ever reminds us of the good times in movies like this... but is that really such a bad thing?

I couldn't help but sympathise with the Sheriff Pruitt when he told a youth with a clunky cassette Walkman... "kids walking round with their own stereos is the last thing we need - it's a slippery slope!"