We have six months to go and a lot of movies left to watch, and as was evidenced by the six films I included in my “Top Ten of the Year Contenders” on yesterday’s The Best and Worst Movies of 2011… So Far post, there haven’t been a ton of excellent films in theaters just yet. Three of those six films I saw at the Cannes Film Festival and only one of them has hit theaters so far (Midnight in Paris). This means we have to wash away the taste of the last six months. Sure, there were some good films and films we will all likely revisit over the years, but I think we can all generally agree 2011 hasn’t exactly been a stellar year for movies.
So what’s coming up? Well, I was able to compile a list of the top 21 (plus three) films I’m personally looking forward to seeing. Of course, this means several films were left off the list that could potentially be better than any of the films I have listed. I don’t know, say films such as the ’80s horror remake Fright Night, the last hope for 2011 superhero movies Captain America: The First Avenger, the Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis comedy Friends with Benefits, the potential disaster that is Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Ruben Fleischer’s 30 Minutes or Less, Bennett Miller’s Moneyball, George Clooney’s The Ides of March, Ralph Fiennes’s directorial debut Coriolanus, Alexander Payne’s first feature since Sideways, The Descendants, the return of Downey and Law in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, David Wain’s Wanderlust, Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar with Leonardo DiCaprio, the return of Cameron Crowe with We Bought a Zoo and a pair of Steven Spielberg films in The Adventures of Tintin and War Horse. I mean, seriously, the fact I got this down to 21 (plus three) is amazing. I originally only started with the intention of doing ten.
That said, let’s get started before I get to rambling too much with a trio of films I’ve already seen and reviewed, but would have been on this list had I not. That said, I will be seeing all three again in theaters.
Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive starring Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan is probably my favorite film of the year so far. It centers on a Hollywood stunt driver (Gosling) who moonlights as a getaway driver-for-hire who gets mixed up with a young mother (Mulligan) and her family when he attempts to help them out after the father of their child (Oscar Isaac) is released from jail. I saw this film at Cannes (my review here) and absolutely can’t wait to see it again. FilmDistrict is set to release it in theaters on September 16.
Attack the Block (my review here) is a sci-fi comedy adventure that isn’t the funniest film I’ve seen all year, but it is one of the most entertaining and undoubtedly hilarious, but more in that dry deadpan kind of way rather than the “Saturday Night Live” bit-style comedy of say Bridesmaids. It centers on a gang of teenage thugs who are forced to defend their South London tower block from outer space marauders and offers a mix of Goonies meets Gremlins meets Half Baked. Attack the Block hits theaters on July 29.
Then there’s We Need to Talk about Kevin, one of the most artistic horror films you will ever see. Bathed in bright red and dripping with sinister intentions, this film was an absolute stunner when I saw it at Cannes earlier this year (my review here) as it asks us just who’s to blame for the evil our kids do? To say anything more would be to ruin the surprise. Oscilloscope Laboratories is set to release the film later this year, most likely with the intention of earning Tilda Swinton a Best Actress nomination.
I also saw Pedro Almodovar‘s The Skin I Live In (review here) and Michel Hazanavicius‘ The Artist at Cannes, and both are also worth checking out.
Now, with the preliminaries out of the way. Click over to the first of four more pages of films I’m most looking forward to seeing over the course of the final six months of 2011 and when you’re done be sure to share your list in the comments below.
