The Best and Worst of 2011 So Far

As always, I like to write about my favorite movies of the year so far before film festival season starts. I also like to point out if any of the movies I liked have any Oscar chances, and if they do I point them out.

So, how has the year been so far. I haven’t seen a lot of the main attraction like Thor, Captain America, Super 8, and even the most talked about film of the year, The Tree of Life. But from what I’ve seen, it’s been alright. I have seen my fair share of failures, as well as my fair share of decent and mediocre movies, but that’s always the case. But I have also seen more movies that I love than I would have expected. And there have even been a few movies that I loved that I never imagined I would enjoy.

So, here are my 10 favorites of the year so far, as well as the worse. Hopefully they’ll push you to either watch some of my favorite, and hopefully avoid the worst.

Review: Winnie the Pooh

Winnie the Pooh | Stephen J. Anderson & Don Hall, 2011

This last decade, we have gotten updates for some of the most beloved animated characters. Garfield, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and even later on this month The Smurfs, have gotten “rebooted.” This means that the characters are put in our modern world, the act “cool,” get into all sort of stupid shenanigans, and wear sunglasses in the posters. When it was announced that Winnie the Pooh was getting the reboot treatment I was worried. My mind immediately picture the characters in CGI, Pooh wearing a red hoodie, Rabbit wearing a baseball hat and bling, etc. Thankfully, when the first trailer came out, all my fears were put to rest and my expectations went way up. In the end, the movie ended up being everything I expected for a movie about the residents of the Hundred Acre Wood, and it set the bar high for the animated movies of the rest of the year.

Much like the feature from the 70s, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Winnie the Pooh it doesn’t follow a single story, but rather it shows Pooh going about in his never-ending quest to find honey, and the adventures that he gets into along the way. First, after waking up to find that he is out of honey, he goes out to find some. He first visits his friend Eeyore, and he is depressed as always. But this time he has something to be depressed about as he has recently lost his tail. So, he puts off looking for honey to find Eeyore’s tail. Later on, he goes to Christopher Robbin’s house to ask for some of that substance that he is addicted to, but finds a note. Owl reads it and comes to the conclusion that he was taken by a very busy moster called the Backson. And so, Pooh, Rabbit, Pigglet, Kanga, Roo, Owl, Tigger, and Eeyore set a plan to capture this beast, and rescue Christopher Robbin. But then he continues to search for that yellow and gooey elixir of life known as hunny.

D50: One Hundred and One Dalmatians

One hundred and One Dalmatians was never one of the Disney movies that I was eager to see. I did see the remake with Glenn Close, and I have fond memories of it (I wouldn’t watch it again though, fearing that these memories will disappear). In fact, I was kind of dreading watching it for this project. It turns out that my fears were unfounded, as it is a lovely movie that I would love to rewatch many times, but it’s not that great (I see a pattern forming here).

The first thing that I feel I should mention is the animation. According to Wikipedia, this is the first Disney movie where they used a machine that just scanned all the drawings the animators did, and they didn’t have to go back and make corrections to the drawings, therefore preserving the animator’s, shall we say, “vision.” But along with that, we are able to see the flaws more (and it is more apparent in The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, but more on that later). With that said, I loved it. The character design is radically different from any other Disney movies, and it fits the setting and story perfectly. I wouldn’t be surprised if this one was one of Sylvain Chomet’s biggest influences.

In terms of story, it is a nice take on parent-children relationships, and it has a clever take on pet-master relationships as well. The cast does a fine job of bringing the characters to life, and for the first time, I didn’t feel like any character was superfluous. But of course, the best thing about it is Cruella DeVil. She is easily one of my favorite Disney villains. I love it when villains have shallow motifs, and nothing gets shallower than being driven by the love of fur coats. And her song is also easily the best villain song of any Disney movie that I’ve seen.

101 Dalmatians is a nice, entertaining movie with lots of heart, but at this point, Disney seems to be in a slippery slope. Still, it’s in the top 10 of the first 17 Disneys.