The Guilty Pleasure Films of 2011

Film: Drive Angry

Director: Patrick Lussier

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Amber Heard, Billy Burke, William Fitchner, David Morse

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Display Width: 200Drive Angry

Leave it to Patrick Lussier, director of 2009’s guilty pleasure gorefest My Bloody Valentine, to strike guilty pleasure gold again in 2011. Drive Angry is pure exploitation trash from start to finish. Nicolas Cage plays a man who has escaped from Hell to prevent a satanic cult from making his infant granddaughter a human sacrifice. He favors big cigars, big guns, and early ‘70s muscle cars. Ass-kicking waitress Piper (a tough-as-nails Amber Heard) just happens to own an early ‘70s muscle car and has nowhere better to be. So she teams up with Cage for a cross-country trip to track down the cult. What follows is an orgy of car chases, shootouts, and 3D used exclusively to throw crap at the audience. While Drive Angry sometimes gets too self-consciously over the top for its own good, the gung-ho cast keeps it afloat. Billy Burke is hilarious as the Elvis-aping evil cult leader, Tom Atkins has a great cameo as a sheriff, and William Fitchner steals the show as the buttoned-down emissary from Hell sent to bring Cage back. Chris Conaton

 

Film: Immortals

Director: Tarsem Singh

Cast: Henry Cavill, Stephen Dorff, Luke Evans, Isabel Lucas, Kellan Lutz, Freida Pinto, Mickey Rourke

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Immortals

Tarsem Singh can do better. He proved it when he wrote and directed the gorgeous, inventive, and moving labor of love The Fall. Immortals, his entry into the 300 knock-off club, drops all of those descriptors save “gorgeous”, and even Tarsem’s living-painting compositions, so vivid and arresting most of the time, can occasionally look cheap (or at least fake), or dimmed by the 3-D version many people doubtless saw. Yet, this deeply stupid warriors-versus-gods-versus-warriors with zero interesting characters is also a lot of fun, full of crazy dissolves, baroque ultraviolence, and elaborate costumes. In other words, it’s a lot better than The Cell, Tarsem’s last wide-release project. For that matter, it’s a better movie — less self-serious, less racist — than 300, too. Jesse Hassenger

 

Film: Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star

Director: Tom Brady

Cast: Nick Swardson, Christina Ricci, Don Johnson, Stephen Dorff

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Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star

I may be the lone critic who will actually admit to having enjoyed Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star. Was the film brimming with crude, juvenile, sex-based humor? Absolutely! However, if you’re expecting a cinematic classic on par with Citizen Kane from a film in which Nick Swardson stars as a buck-toothed Midwestern yokel who discovers his parents were porn stars in the ‘70s, you’ve obviously approached Bucky Larson with the wrong frame of mind. Armed with his pornographic pedigree, Bucky tries to make it big in the San Fernando Valley. Initially laughed at for his “small” screen presence, Bucky eventually becomes a star because he makes his audience feel better about themselves by comparison. It’s a stretch to read a deeper message on train-wreck culture into Bucky Larson. That said, I still find it far more shameful to admit to having watched Kim Kardashian’s wedding for “cultural value” than Bucky Larson. Lana Cooper

 

Film: The Rite

Director: Mikael Håfström

Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Colin O’Donoghue, Alice Braga, Toby Jones, Rutger Hauer

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The Rite

After a string of humdrum roles, Anthony Hopkins redeems himself as Father Lucas Trevant, a possessed priest in The Rite. As far as horror films go, The Rite is enjoyable, yet far from groundbreaking. It blatantly flips through “The William Peter Blatty Handbook” to come up with a story of a young man of the cloth confronted with a crisis of faith — and a mentor possessed by a demon — when he travels to Rome. The film’s plot is a little above your standard horror flick possession (thankfully, they forwent the omnipresent “shaky cam” which seems to be a fixture in this type of movie), but Hopkins sells it. He goes from likeable, slightly rebellious ex-pat priest to a deliciously scenery-chewing fiend, smacking kids and hurling insults while under the influence of a demon. The plot may be somewhat familiar, but Hopkins’ performance makes The Rite… ahem… compelling to watch. Lana Cooper

 

Film: Your Highness

Director: David Gordon Green

Cast: Danny McBride, James Franco, Natalie Portman, Zooey Deschanel, Toby Jones, Justin Theroux

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Your Highness The ingredients for a prestige picture are all here: Oscar-certified young stars Natalie Portman and James Franco, revered character actors Charles Dance and Toby Jones, and director David Gordon Green — onetime heir to the Malick throne. One would expect the product of their combined talents to be met with awards-season lauds. Not so with Your Highness. Written by actor Danny McBride and Ben Best and following McBride’s collaboration with Green on Pineapple Express and Eastbound and Down, Your Highness parlays the success of that comedic output into a fifty million dollar period fantasy about two princes on a Krull-like quest to rescue a maiden (Zooey Deschanel) from a maleficent wizard (Justin Theroux). Released in April, the film was met with terrible reviews and disappointing box office, resulting in what could quite literally be described as an “epic” failure. Yet for a small minority of filmgoers — me included — the movie’s affectionate and absurdist take on the fantasy genre is one of the funniest and guiltiest pleasures of the year. Splendidly shot by cinematographer Tim Orr, Your Highness provides a level of escapism rarely achieved by a straight take on this kind of material. Much of this is due to the brotherly chemistry of Franco and McBride and especially the vengeful comic verve of Portman as a warrior princess. Make the quest. Thomas Britt

5 – 1

Film: Passion Play

Director: Mitch Glazer

Cast: Mickey Rourke, Megan Fox, Rhys Ifans, Bill Murray, Kelly Lynch

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Display Width: 200Passion Play

Watching Passion Play is like reading a book full of the most outrageous purple prose you’ve ever encountered. It’s maudlin, syrupy and melodramatic, bathed in mellow light to remind us that this, indeed, is a tragic story about the trumpet player who was chased by gangsters because he fell in love with a girl with wings. It should be obvious from that premise that the movie is a mess, but it’s by turns weirdly fascinating for its sappy excesses and fun to watch for the perplexed expressions of the actors – Mickey Rourke, Bill Murray, Megan Fox – wondering how to handle the bizarre material. It’s hard to hate, if only because it so, well, passionately believes in itself. Andrew Blackie

 

Film: Paul

Director: Greg Mottola

Cast: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Seth Rogen, Jason Bateman, Bill Hader, Kristin Wiig

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Paul

It’s certainly a comedown for Greg Mottola after Adventureland, and it’s never as sharp as Hot Fuzz or Shaun of the Dead, the two previous Simon Pegg and Nick Frost parodies. But if you’re going to make a spoof, you could do a lot worse than the enviable cast assembled here: Seth Rogen is much better as a stoner alien than as a superhero, Jason Bateman is amusing playing it straight as a black-clad secret agent, and there is an inspired cameo from Sigourney Weaver. Paul is an easy-going and light-hearted yarn that succeeds as a mash-up of sci-fi and road movie. Andrew Blackie

 

Film: True Legend

Director: Yuen Woo-ping

Cast: Vincent Zhao, Zhou Xun, Jay Chou, Michelle Yeoh, Andy On, David Carradine, Guo Xiaodong

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True Legend

It’s been too long since these shores have seen an honest-to-god wuxia film that didn’t try to be too jokey or rely too much on bad special effects. We’re a long way from the height of Jackie Chan’s and Jet Li’s crossover careers. This blazingly-paced effort from Kill Bill and Crouching Tiger stunt choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping is a classically-oriented bit of high-kicking awesomeness. In 1860s China, a pair of bald half-brothers – the bad one snarls a lot and has armored scales grown into his skin — fight for dominance in an escalating series of sharply-shot fight scenes. One of the year’s few true escapist joys. Chris Barsanti

 

Film: Sucker Punch

Director: Zack Snyder

Cast: Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens, Jamie Chung, Carla Gugino, Oscar Isaac, Jon Hamm, Scott Glenn

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Sucker Punch

Okay, we’ve just lost ALL credibility, right? You just can’t imagine anyone — at least anyone who considers themselves a credible film critic — championing Zack Snyder’s excuse of male menopausal masturbation material, can you? Well, hear us out. Sucker Punch, for all its Hustler by way of Heavy Metal sex fetishism, remains one of 2011’s grandest experiments. Sure, it tried to mesh the Burly-Q with battle and overdid the grrrl power grunt, but this was an amazing visual feast filled with electrifying imagery and inspirations. Did the story make a lick of sense? Hell no! Could that be because of studio interference, suits mandating that movie’s musical (?) numbers be cut for the sake of audience sanity? Perhaps. Whatever the case, thanks for stopping by… oh, and we will defend this pick to the death. Bill Gibron

 

Film: Attack the Block

Director: Joe Cornish

Cast: Jodie Whittaker, John Boyega, Alex Esmail, Franz Drameh, Leeon Jones, Simon Howard, Luke Treadaway, Jumayn Hunter, Nick Frost

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Attack the Block

Writer/director Joe Cornish’s Attack the Block poses a very simple question: what if aliens invaded the hood? The short answer in this case is that a group of roustabout London street toughs, led by Moses (John Boyega), will give them all the hell they can handle. A near perfect mixture of sci-fi, horror, action, comedy, and social relevance, Attack the Block is fun and funny, full of adventure, and genuinely moving. And the monsters are some of the most inventive, unique creatures you’ve seen in some time. Brent McKnight