So, we’re coming up on the end of the year, which means lists, which means we like to ask you, our gentle reader, to weigh in.
We want two things from you: first, to vote for the movies you actually liked in our Facebook poll, and second, to weigh in, in the comments, with what you liked.
Don’t worry, we’ll be getting to what you didn’t like. But we have to do the cuddly stuff first. But as Creative Director, I can weigh in with a few possibilities:
- “Another Earth” is probably the best “movie” in the sense that it would actually win awards and I’d show it to people who are not nerds.
- “In Time” and “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” were both shockingly good, “Apes” moreso if for no other reason than it actually managed to revive the franchise’s social awareness roots without making it preachy or annoying, a minor miracle in of itself. My respect for Rupert Wyatt really went up: he managed to make a serious tear-jerking drama AND a full-on action movie.
- “Thor” and “Captain America” both managed to take a spin on Marvel Studios’ usual “first movie” formula and work it in two different directions. “Thor” was actually one of the most consistently funny movies put together, and Kenneth Branaugh turned out to be a really good choice. “Captain America” committed, hard, to being a period picture and managed to capture a pulpy ambiance in movies that reminded us that, oh yeah, Joe Johnston is actually really good.
- That said, Marvel, you’ve had a suite of “first movies”, you’ve got “The Avengers”…let’s step it up a notch. I’d really like to see a genuinely thoughtful movie on the level of “The Dark Knight”; you’re certainly willing to pay for the talent to pull off something like that. So go for it, for Mjolnir’s sake!
How about you? What do you think?