The justAtad Essentials: Top 20 of 2011

I think I need to preface this list by saying that I hate lists. I’ve discussed this before. I had ranking films. It’s the worst thing ever, and it’s almost always arbitrary. I could labour over my rankings for hours and then be switching things back around the next day. But hey, it’s the end of the year and if I’m going to talk about my favourite films, might as well put them in a list, rank them, and earn some praise and scorn.

(As a side-note, I tried to leave off films from TIFF that haven’t gotten a theatrical release yet, but there are a few exceptions in cases where I really wanted to highlight them.)

Also, I think it’s appropriate now to comment on what kind of year 2011 for film. Well, I think it was a pretty phenomenal year, but also an odd one. There weren’t really any films that stood out as obvious #1s, but I think a lot of that is because there were so many amazing films that were all great for very different reasons.

To give you an idea of just how good I thought this year was, while my top film is pretty well solid, any of the films in my 2-15 would likely have been Top 5 level any other year. In fact, there are a couple of films that just missed my Top 20 from earlier this year that I swore would make my Top 10. It’s been THAT good a year. Anyway…

On to the list!

TIFF’11: The Great Wrap-Up!

Well, after about a week’s distance, I think it’s time to take stock of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. There were highs and lows; there was a lack of sleep; there were friends and beers; there was plenty of malnutrition; there was a ton of waiting in line-ups.

All in all TIFF’11 was the best TIFF year for me so far. The primary reason for this was not the films, though there were a few good ones, it was the friends. Prior to the festival, Courtney Small, from Big Thoughts From a Small Mind, invited me to a monthly Toronto film bloggers meet-up. Through that meet-up, and another during the festival, I got to enjoy drinks with a ton of really awesome film bloggers. The result was that, other than a couple of screenings, I did not see any movies by myself. Many of the people I met were actually at several of my screenings. Here’s a list of some of the people I got to hang out with:

Ryan McNeil, from The Matinee (@matinee_ca)

Bob Turnbull, from Eternal Sunshine of the Logical Mind (@TheLogicalMind)

Shannon the Movie Moxie (@MovieMoxie)

Sasha James, from Final Girl Project (@FinalGirlProj)

Matt Brown (@tederick) and Matthew Price (@mattmovies), from the wonderful Mamo Podcast

Julian Carrington, from a Healthy Disdain (@aHealthyDisdain)

James McNally, from Toronto Screenshots (@toscreenshots)

Leora Heilbronn (@leoraheilbronn)

Shane McNeil (@come_back_shane)

Andrew Parker, from Criticize This! (@AndrewJParker)

Titania Plant, from Classic Flick Chick (@classicflikchik)

Danielle D’Ornellas, from blogTO (@ellstar)

That’s quite a list of people. I might have missed a few names—I probably did—so if you feel slighted, just leave a comment and I’ll add you. And to all of you, I say thank you. Sincerely, I mean it. Thanks for making this my first real social TIFF experience. It was a lot of fun, and I cannot wait to do it again next year, along with all the monthly meet-ups in between.

As for the festival itself, the movies are the movies. Some were great, some were terrible. C’est la vie.

I’d like to do a list of Best and Worst from TIFF’11, but first I will simply list off all the movies I saw, with links to my reviews.

• Into the Abyss
• Le Havre
• Wuthering Heights
• A Separation
• You’re Next
• Twixt
• Crazy Horse
• Livid
• Extraterrestrial
• I Wish
• Shame
• Like Crazy
• Jeff, Who Lives at Home
• Violet & Daisy
• Take Shelter
• Tyrannosaur
• Carré blanc
• Kill List

A fair number of films and one heck of a festival.

Continue to the next page to read my choice for the TIFF’11 justAtad Awards!

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TIFF’11 Review: You’re Next

It takes a lot for a movie to really scare me. They can make me jump or flinch a little, but to really scare me is difficult. It’s for that reason that I tend to prefer watching horror films with a more comedic edge. You’re Next fits into that mould perfectly. The movie is genuinely suspenseful, with some spectacular jump scares during the first half, but it’s also very funny and very clever.

You’re Next is at its base a home invasion flick. A family gets together at a summer home, and while they’re having a lively family dinner they come under attack by men in creepy goat masks. They don’t know how many men are attacking them or why, but we get to watch as one by one most of the characters are picked off. Emerging as the hero of the film is Erin, played by Sharni Vinson, the fiancé of one of the sons. She’s an outsider to this family, but she ends up taking control of the situation and kicks some serious ass in the process.

Where the comedy comes in is mostly through the extremely sharp dialogue. Many people unfamiliar with horror would likely find the dialogue laughably bad, but in truth the constant cliché and on-the-nose speech is clear satire of horror tropes. For example, when one character suggests hiding in the basement, Erin responds thatthe bad guys could just throw gas down there and set them on fire. This level of awareness is very funny, and it’s compounded by the fact that the characters end up falling into those cliché situations anyway.

The light satire makes You’re Next a ton of fun to watch, especially in a Midnight Madness-type setting, but the film doesn’t hold back on the scares. The jump scares in this movie are amazing, even when they’re telegraphed far in advance by staging and music. Those men in masks are really creepy, and a lot of the deaths are gory and gross. Director Adam Wingard pushes the film to the limits when it comes to the horror and violence, which only adds to the frantically fun lunacy.

You’re Next is the perfect film to watch with a big, rowdy, excited group of horror fans. It’s got blood and guts and jumps and laughs and a kick-ass lady for a lead. The film takes cues from Scream and Home Alone and Alien and Evil Dead, and if that kind of crazy mixture sounds fun to you then You’re Next is definitely a horror film to watch out for.