Film Review: The Cabin In The Woods (2011)

The Cabin In The Woods, the directorial debut of Cloverfield writer Drew Goddard, which was co-written by Buffy creator and all-round geek idol Joss Whedon, is great. It's genuinely fantastic. It's a thrilling, wildly inventive horror film that plays beautifully off genre cliches whilst also managing to make those cliches work in its own interests. It's a horror comedy which is both scary and uproariously funny, and I would be very surprised if there is a better mainstream American film released this year. If it isn't in my Top Ten at the end of this year, then there must be some damn great films ahead of us, because I can't imagine it being easily dislodged from that spot.

Unfortunately, it's also the sort of film that cannot be discussed without ruining all the fun. It's not that it is a film that hinges on a twist which, if revealed, would completely suck all the joy out of the experience, but the various turns it takes are so much fun that they are best enjoyed with as clear a mind as possible.

To that end, I am going to say right now that this review will contains no major spoilers, so reading it won't ruin any of its surprises. However, if you don't want to know anything going in, stop reading now. If you're wondering if you should see The Cabin In The Woods, then take this as a hearty recommendation that you should because you will not regret it. Heck, I'll save you the effort of scrolling down to the bottom of the page to see the grade. This is a solid, unqualified A. You will have a blast.

Now that is out of the way, let's delve into why The Cabin In The Woods is such fun.

Film Review: Michael (2011)

Michael (Michael Fuith) is a seemingly ordinary man living a seemingly ordinary life. He goes to work at an insurance firm, he keeps himself to himself and tries not to cause any trouble for anyone else. Yet Michael has a young boy named Wolfgang (David Rauchenberger) held captive in his cellar, and Marcus Schleinzer's film, Michael, examines the queasy and awful relationship that develops between captor and captive.

Film Review: The Descendants (2011)

That The Descendants is the weakest film of Alexander Payne's career says far more about its creator than it does about the film itself. Since his debut, Citizen Ruth, Payne - alongside his frequent co-writer Jim Taylor, who only serves as a producer on The Descendants - have specialised in a particular brand of wry, acerbic comedy that has produced the great triumvirate of Election, About Schmidt and Sideways in relatively quick succession. The Descendants lacks the hard edge that made so many of Payne's previous work so distinct and funny, but that does not mean that it is without its own charms.

Film Review: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011)

Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy has proven to be that rarest of things, a literary blockbuster in an age when book sales seem to be perpetually in an irreversible tailspin. Not only that, but they have succeeded despite incredibly dark and violent subject matter, particularly aimed against women, which seems like it might render the stories unpalatable to a mainstream audience. Yet the success of the books - no doubt driven in part by the mystique cultivated around Larsson's death from a heart attack at the age of 50 - speaks for itself, as does the staggering success of the trilogy of Swedish television films based on the books which were released worldwide in 2010, to considerable acclaim. (For the record, I thought they were pretty unspectacular, though I liked the books well enough.)

Film Review: Shame (2011)

Shame, the second film by artist-turned-director Steve McQueen, is a technically dazzling examination of Brandon (Michael Fassbender), a sex addict whose carefully cultivated routine of Internet pornography and meaningless one-night stands is thrown into disarray when his younger sister (Carey Mulligan) comes to stay with him. It's important to mention Shame's technical prowess up front since its meticulously planned tracking shots, languid pacing and evocation of New York at night, great though they are, only serve to mask the fact that the film they are in service of is shallow, banal and dull.

Film Review: Equity (2011)

Claire (Francile Albright) is a young mother struggling to pay the rent and to keep a roof over the heads of her family. When a mysterious man (Karl Bury) offers her a job that will solve all her financial problems, she agrees to take it. Unfortunately, the ‘job’ is to kill Jack (Tony Nam), a man who has become estranged from his wife and daughter.  As Claire sees the life that Jack leads, she finds it increasingly difficult to carry out the task assigned to her, even as she knows that the consequences of not doing so will be very dire indeed.

Film Review: The Muppets (2011)

Every time an old cartoon or sitcom is dusted off and given the big-screen treatment, they tend to feel like such cynical cash-grabs, ones that are so completely devoid of love, wit or grace, that it's hard to imagine anyone involved actually had any genuine passion for the source material in the first place. No matter what they may say to the contrary, it's clear that the people behind The Smurfs and Alvin and The Chipmunks have no interest in making good films with characters that they actually have any interest in or affection for. The same could not be said of The Muppets, a film which radiates love for the work of Jim Henson from its very first frame to its rapturous finale.

Film Review: Young Adult (2011)

Not pictured: Ryan Gosling doing a keg stand.

 Since winning an Oscar for writing Juno (a film which I thought was terrific and still like very much), Diablo Cody has had a pretty rough couple of years. Her follow-up, Jennifer's Body, was a trashy bit of fluff that was duly trashed by critics and was stillborn at the box office, and her frequently brilliant television series The United States of Tara was unceremoniously cancelled after three seasons. It's not difficult to see Young Adult, which re-unites Cody with her Juno director Jason Reitman, as Cody's response to the last few years. In moments when Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) talks about the cancellation of the series of young adult novels that she has spent over a decade ghostwriting, it certainly feels as if Cody is working out some of her own issues.

Film Review: Drive (2011)

Drive, Nicholas Winding Refn’s minimalist action movie about a stunt driver (Ryan Gosling) who moonlights as a getaway driver, feels like a film out of time. Its methodical pacing, neon-soaked vision of L.A. and electronic soundtrack give it the feel of a lost Michael Mann film and it’s easy to see why the film received such a mixed response from audiences on its theatrical release. Anyone expecting Fast Five would be sorely disappointed by its lack of traditional spectacle in favour of a slow, chaste love affair between Driver and his neighbour, Irene (Carey Mulligan), broken up by scenes of startlingly brutal violence.

The film that scared me the most as a child and still does, sort of

One of small pleasures of New Year's Day is seeing what old films the various terrestrial and digital channels dig out of their vaults to give a fresh airing since they don't have any original programming to fill the schedule. It's usually the same four or five old war films or comedies from the 1960s, but every so often an interesting little curio slips through. Such was the case this year, as Channel 5 decided to air a double-bill of The Wizard of Oz and its belated sequel, Return to Oz.

Ed's Top 20 Films of 2011

They sure are happy to have the Number One spot.

First off, I'd just like to wish everyone reading this a Happy New Year. I hope that you all had a great couple of days and are quietly dreading the return to the normal grind of working life as much as I am. (If you work in a capacity that meant that you have not had any time off over the last few weeks, my heart goes out to you. I worked over Christmas and New Year the last few years and it is the worst.) I saw the New Year in by getting ferociously drunk in a cottage just outside of Blackpool with a bunch of my friends, and it was terrific.

Film Review: War Horse (2011)

War Horse is a heartfelt, affecting film about the devastating power of war that is almost undone by the incredibly silly conceit at its heart. Based on Michael Morpurgo's children's book and the absurdly popular stage play that it inspired, Steven Spielberg's film tells the story of World War I not through the eyes of the soldiers fighting it, but by following the journey of a horse named Joey, who is raised by a young man named Albie (Jeremy Irvine) in Devon, then sold to the Army by Albie's father (Peter Mullan) to pay the rent on their farm. Once he is on the continent, Joey is passed from owner to owner, and through him Spielberg depicts the various ways in which war affects all those who are touched by it.

Film Review: The Artist (2011)

French director Michel Hazanavicius has established a strong reputation as a master at mimicking the works of others; his two hilarious OSS 117 films skewer the silliness of spy movies by recreating their style and tone, whilst throwing a healthy dose of modern absurdity into the mix to create films that feel both like undiscovered cult gems and very fresh, irreverent modern works. With his latest film, The Artist, Hazanavicius reaches for something grander by using the style and conventions of silent cinema to create a funny, touching and thoroughly charming romance that doubles-up as a tribute to the earliest days of Hollywood movie-making.

Film Review: Hugo (2011)

Martin Scorsese loves cinema. This is pretty much indisputable. Ever since he was an asthmatic youth who fell in love with figures dancing across a shimmering screen, and all through his career as one of the world's greatest film-makers, that obsessive passion has guided and shaped his best films. Even outside of his directorial work, he has forged a second life as a champion for film preservation, establishing The Film Foundation and overseeing the restoration of such great works as Peeping Tom and The Red Shoes. Few can lay claim to have done more to promote the transcendent power of film than Scorsese.

Film Review: Moneyball (2011)

I feel I need to begin this review by admitting two things: that I don't understand baseball and I hate maths. So Moneyball, a film about highly complicated mathematical formulae and the impact they had on professional baseball that runs over two hours, should be my idea of Hell. If you break down the basic conmponents of the film, it should be the driest, dullest story in existence, and one that should have no audience, because there's nothing that hardcore math fans hate more than sports stepping all over their spreadsheets. Oh, and I guess the reverse is probably true for baseball fans.

Film Review: Take Shelter (2011)

Though he has only directed two films (Shotgun Stories in 2007 and his latest, Take Shelter), Jeff Nichols has already established himself as one of the most exciting directors in modern American cinema. His subtle yet explosive examinations of conflicted men trying to escape the pressures of their past are quietly yet deniably powerful ones that are imbued with an almost mythic sense of importance. He creates modern fables that feel as old as the world itself, and in his latest he creates a work of staggering vision, dread and fear that ranks amongst the best films of the year.

Film Review: The Rum Diary (2011)

"Wow, I just realised how incredibly pretty we both are. I have nothing but pity for the normal looking."

The Rum Diary finds Johnny Depp returning to the work of his friend Hunter S. Thompson a mere thirteen years after he starred in Terry Gilliam's hallucinatory adaptation of Thompson's Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas (though he did revisit the character of Raoul Duke earlier this year for a blink-or-you'll-miss-it cameo in the surprisingly fun Rango, so there's that). As in the early film, Depp plays a Thompson surrogate, this time failed novelist-turned-journalist Paul Kemp, who winds up in Puerto Rico after he applies for a job writing for a rundown paper overseen by Richard Jenkins. Having got the job, though admittedly he was the only applicant, Kemp quickly falls deeper into the bad habits that were full blown before he arrived; he spends his days drinking with a photographer (Michael Rispoli) and a Nazi-obsessed fellow journalist (Giovanni Ribisi), accidentally angering the local population and falling in love with a glamorous blond (Amber Heard) whose boyfriend (Aaron Eckhart) wants to recruit Kemp to help push through a shady land development deal.

Film Review: Immortals

"Be honest with me, guys - do you think that we over did the gold a tad?"

Tarsem Singh's 2006 film The Fall was a completely brilliant and completely bonkers work that was an act of pure artistic expression on the part of its creator. Filmed in pieces over the better part of a decade in between other commercial projects, it was a real labour of love for Tarsem and that love shone through in its unique and visionary nature, which combined stunning vistas from across the globe with a heartrending story of two broken souls finding solace in a shared fiction. To expect his follow-up, the Greek myth-flavoured Immortals, to have the same kind of personal resonance would be foolhardy since there's no way that a film with so much money behind it could retain even half of the idiosyncratic charm of The Fall. Even so, considering how striking Tarsem's work has been in the past, it's surprising how thoroughly bland the resulting product is.

Film Review: Wuthering Heights (2011)

It’s hard to watch Andrea Arnold’s version of Emily Brontë’s novel about the destructive, all-consuming power of love without comparing it to Cary Fukunaga’s adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, which was released mere months earlier. This is, to an extent, superficial, since the two might not have been compared if they weren’t released within the same twelve month period. There have been plenty of adaptations of both works, why compare these two merely because they are the most recent?

Film Review: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a film that, on a purely technical level, is hard to fault. It's beautifully shot by Tomas Alfredson, who previously directed the superb Let The Right One In, well acted by a rogue's gallery of great British acting talent and it has a wonderful sense of time and place to it. Alfredson and his crew capture a decaying Britain that is slowly suffocating under the weight of the Cold War and its own sense of increasing obsolescence. Much like the John le Carré novel upon which it is based, the film really conveys a sense that the spies and intelligence agents that populate it have seen better days and are now going through the motions, no longer certain that the war they are fighting is really worth a damn anymore. It's a Cold War thriller that is appropriately chilly.