Lupe's Top 20 of 2011

All of Hollywood's millions of hours of hard work don't amount to much in the worst year for movies since I started doing these lists.  Try harder, celebutards!

20. The Artist (drama)
Critics can see through style over substance when its in service of a big dumb action movie, like 300, but always get taken in by the novelty when it's Oscar bait, like Moulin Rouge, or like The Artist.  But it doesn't make the characters any less flat, or the story less shallow.

19. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (crime)
If the original Swedish version didn't make you feel uncomfortable enough, this should do the trick.  About as bad as the shot for shot remake of Psycho.

18. Super 8 (sci-fi)
A cross between ripoffs of ET and The Goonies, if that's your thing.

17. Young Adult (drama)
The writer behind the Mary Sue is an unpleasant alcoholic.  Kinda makes sense.  Diablo Cody without the charm of Juno. Or even Jennifer's Body.

16. Hugo (family)
Scorsese has two passions: filmmaking and the mob.  Sadly, this movie is about filmmaking.

15. The Adjustment Bureau (sci-fi)
Matt Damon plays a politician whom the world actually revolves around.  As if a politician's ego isn't big enough already.

14. Source Code (sci-fi)
Jake Gyllenhal sure can play a torso.

13. Hanna (action)
A seventeen year old girl experiments with murder and lesbianism.  That's a small and scary target audience.

12. The Help (drama)
Nothing makes me love my fellow man more than a poo pie.  I wonder if Gandhi ever borrowed that recipe?

11. The Descendants (drama)
George Clooney opens the movie by telling us that Hawaii is as humdrum as any other place.  Then we find out that he owns this vast, unspoiled tract of idyllic beachfront paradise.  Up yours, George Clooney.

10. Thor (action)
The son of Odin is just a bad dude until Natalie Portman tames his impudent heart.  He may be whipped, but he still knows how to hoist his hammer.  For Asgard!

9. My Week With Marilyn (drama)
In the real world, Lawrence Olivier's "be a dick" approach would be way more productive than falling in love with your psycho starlet.

8. The Lincoln Lawyer (drama)
Feels like a big budget TV pilot, though I doubt they'd get Bongo McConaughey to come back for the series.  Maybe if it was on HBO and they offered him copious nude scenes.

7. Captain America (action)
Heil Hydra.  Cut off one head and two more shall take its place.  Cut off their balls, though, and they'll be a little more housebroken.

6. A Dangerous Method (drama)
This looked like a lot of fun for the actors, especially the spanking scenes.  And then she was murdered by Hitler.  As Freud would say, sometimes a cigar is just a Nazi firing squad.

5. Moneyball (drama)
One of the better movies from this otherwise regrettable year, but they could have made the porn version of its title just a little less obvious.

4. X-Men: First Class (action)
Mystique never does the whole "mutant and proud" thing with Banshee because he's a ginger, and that's nothing to be proud of.

3. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (spy thriller)
Before long, George Smiley finds out that his frumpy Panamanian housemaid was secretly Karla all along, if that Soviet spymaster's name is anything to go by.  Power to the Smiley's People!

2. 50/50 (comedy/drama)
JGL: "I have cancer."  Seth Rogen: "And your girlfriend's a bitch."  Definitely one of the year's few good movies.

1. The Devil's Double (drama)
They could do this same story by replacing Uday Hussein and his Iraqi schoolgirls with Michael Jackson whisking away young boys to Neverland Ranch and it might be even more horrifying.  Or is it still too soon?