POP! LIST: TOP 10 FILMS OF 2011

POP! LIST: TOP 10 FILMS OF 2011 

BY JAKE MATHISON/February 15, 2012

10. REAL STEEL (PG-13)
One of the year's biggest surprises, Shawn Levy's Real Steel is a great underdog story and sensational pop filmmaking-- especially if you're a sucker for anthropomorphic robots or Hugh Jackman, or both.


9. YOUNG ADULT (R)
Jason Reitman's Young Adult is a purposefully uneasy film, meant to hit home and hit hard, allowing for an extremely interesting, nuanced performance by the venerable Charlize Theron.

8. THE IDES OF MARCH (R)
George Clooney's big year was punctuated by his poignant political thriller, The Ides of March, which in a turn of cinematic magic, saw him sparring with heavyweight Ryan Gosling.

7. THE DESCENDANTS (R)
Alexander Payne's The Descendants is a lovely, forthright film built around an unusually vulnerable performance by the stalwart George Clooney as a father trying to piece his family back together.

6. THE HELP (PG-13)
Tate Taylor's Civil Rights-era exploration, The Help, is an talent tour de force that features phenomenal work from its ensemble cast, including Viola Davis, Emma Stone, Octavia Spencer, Bryce Dallas Howard and Jessica Chastain.

5. 50/50 (R)
Joseph Gordon-Levitt is fantastic as a young cancer patient in Jonathan Levine's touching 50/50, which also features another great turn from the meltworthy Anna Kendrick.

4. MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (PG-13)
Marion Cotillard dazzles in the charming time travel flick, Midnight in Paris, which down the road, has the potential to be considered one of Woody Allen's finest, most approachable films.


3. DRIVE (R)
In Drive, Nicolas Winding Refn takes us on a timeless, complex joyride through the seedy backstreets of gritty L.A. with a resurgent Albert Brooks and two of the very best young talents working in the industry, Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan.

2. ANOTHER EARTH (PG-13)
Mike Cahill's feature debut, the duplicate Earth drama Another Earth, took the festival scene by storm, and for good reason-- it's full of fresh, character driven sci-fi goodness and features a bold, breakthrough performance by writer/actress Brit Marling.

1. THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (R)
David Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo impressively outdoes the Swedish original (an excellent film in its own right) in every way, and Rooney Mara's Lisbeth Salander will leave you gobsmacked.

COMING SOON: 10 WORST FILMS OF 2011 

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LATE NIGHT MOVIE SERIES: EYES OF LAURA MARS (2/11/2012)

LATE NIGHT MOVIE SERIES: EYES OF LAURA MARS (1978)

BY JAKE MATHISON/February 11, 2012

Eyes of Laura Mars piqued my interest for a couple of reasons. The foremost being that George Lucas, after seeing some of its early test footage, hired its director, Irvin Kershner, to helm The Empire Strikes Back. But it also caught my eye because it's based off a spec script by horror legend John Carpenter. Double the intrigue, double the fun.

It's a typical '70s Gothic mystery flick about a shock photographer named Laura Mars, played by Faye Dunaway (Chinatown), who gains the ability to see through the eyes of a serial killer. And as expected, it's as ridiculous as it sounds.

Though it's beautifully shot, the film is wildly inconsistent and its plot lacks even a single coherent thread running through it. In fact, the film's story is so counter intuitive and confusing that even its Wikipedia description had no idea what was going on (I've since fixed this to the best of my ability). The pacing is also atrocious, and Dunaway dreadfully overplays every line to the point where you'll wonder whether or not she's having some sort of seizure. Worse yet, the never ending red herrings are just plain obnoxious and the twist ending is unbelievably silly.

On the plus side, we do get a very good (albeit nasal) performance from a young Tommy Lee Jones, and the late Raul Julia turns up briefly as a creepy former beau. It was also clearly shot on location in New York City in the late '70s, so it does have that authentic, seedy disco era vibe to it. And it's easy to see why Lucas became so enamored with Kershner, as there is a lot to love about the film's production quality and the ethereal, dreamlike way it was shot. It's also a very good stylistic example of the giallo genre. But you can't polish a turd, and the script is just that. Though, to Carpenter's credit, the story does have good bones, and with a little common sense and a lot of revision, it could be ripe for a remake someday (even though Jessica Alba already came close in her impotent 2008 vehicle The Eye).

Quite frankly, if you're big on substance, give this one a pass. It's all style here. But with that being said, I'd still probably pick up a copy of Eyes of Laura Mars if it ever came out on Blu-ray, if only to admire its shear beauty with a proper transfer and better resolution.

BEST LINE: "I'm completely out of control!" -- Laura Mars (Faye Dunaway)

Eyes of Laura Mars is rated R and is available from Amazon on DVD or as a digital download

LATE NIGHT MOVIE SERIES: INNERSPACE (2/8/2012)

LATE NIGHT MOVIE SERIES: INNERSPACE (1987)

BY JAKE MATHISON/ February 8, 2012

Growing up, the first VCR we owned was a top loading movie muncher. But for the longest time, we had barely any VHS cassettes to feed it. And the only place in town that rented them was a bizarre combination ice cream parlor & porno shop run by a blind couple. So I mostly resigned myself to watching things that had been taped for me by relatives in Minneapolis with cable. I had a copy of Superman II, complete with an interrupting speech from President Reagan (the '80s equivalent of a special feature), and also a partial copy of Innerspace that was missing somewhere between 5-10 minutes of establishing scenes and Dennis Quaid's buttcheeks.

I must have played those tapes until the ribbons tore. And as such, I'm particularly ashamed to admit that I never saw those first few scenes of Innerspace until I happened across a copy caged in some discount bin at Wal-Mart a few years back.

Needless to say, it's still really frakking good. And with the added bonus of those previously unseen (at least to me) first 10 minutes, it's even better. Dennis Quaid buttcheeks and all. It's a badass, sci-fi lite micro-epic. I mean, who wouldn't want to get miniaturized and injected into Martin Short? Yes, the science is ambiguous. Yes, the characters are ridiculous. But you can't go wrong with Quaid's charismatic grin, Short's manic physicality and Robert Picardo as a tech fencing cowboy. And if that's somehow still not enough for you, it's also a pretty good reminder that Meg Ryan used to be hot.

Innerspace is easily Joe Dante's best film (sorry Gremlins), and even as it approaches its 25th anniversary, it remains fresh, stylistically sleek and most importantly, still funny.

Now, where's that Blu-ray Warner Bros.?

BEST LINE: "I'm possessed!" -- Jack Putter (Martin Short)

Innerspace is rated PG, and is available from Amazon on DVD or as a digital download

ONE FOR THE '90s (2/4/2012)

ONE FOR THE MONEY (PG-13)

BY JAKE MATHISON

February 4th, 2012

Starring: Katherine Heigl, Jason O'Mara and Daniel Sunjata

Directed by: Julie Ann Robinson

Written by: Stacy Sherman (screenplay), Karen Ray (screenplay), Liz Brixius (screenplay) and Janet Evanovich (novel)

One for the Money is a dated film that may have worked, and even worked well, a decade ago. But as it stands, it's not fresh enough to keep an iPhone era attention span, and its obvious '90s shtick mostly misfires when translating to its modern setting. It's a shame, too, because this is probably Katherine Heigl's (Knocked Up) least offensive role in, well, forever. But the Stephanie Plum of One for the Money clearly hasn't aged well as a character, and the film's weaksauce plot is only barely masked by the explosive charisma of Jason O'Mara (TV's Life on Mars and Terra Nova) as an ex-flame on the lam. Fans of the cozy mystery genre, without a particular allegiance to Ms. Plum, would do better to revisit 1998's brilliant Zero Effect instead.

2.5/5 stars

One for the Money is rated PG-13 for violence, sexual references and language, some drug material and partial nudity

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