So Christmas is nearly here, and with the end of the year in sight, my thoughts have turned to the movies I’ve seen over the past 12 months. Some have been good, some have been bad, many have been thoroughly shrugworthy. Here’s some of the best (and worst).

The Best

5. The Guard

Criminally overlooked for anything like a decent run at the major multiplexes but rightly praised by critics, The Guard is an unlikely gem. Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle are the odd couple police partnership charged with taking down a murderous international drug smuggling operation currently working out of Ireland, headed by Mark Strong (surely one of the busiest men in acting?). Watching a difficult friendship blossom between Cheadle’s tight ass FBI Agent and Gleeson’s drunk, womanising Guard is hilarious, the performances are spot on and it’s excellently paced right up until the explosive finale.

Buy this movie right now! You owe it to yourself!

4. Senna

As someone who’s never really taken an interest in motorsports, I went into Senna based on recommendations and hoping for the best. It turned out to be absolutely gripping, becoming almost unbearably tense as we led to to film’s inevitable conclusion. Seeing, as you do, the sheer amount of love that so many people had for Ayrton Senna makes it impossible not to be deeply moved as you watch the collected footage of the indicent at the San Marino Gran Prix in 1994 and aftermath.

Buy this movie right now! You owe it to yourself!

3. Super 8

Paying reverence to the style of filmaking seen in classic blockbusters such as ET, Super 8 was my film of the summer. Genuinely scary and tense in places, and surprisingly moving toward the end, this movie actually made me feel, the same way so many of my childhood favourites did and still do. If you didn’t feel at least a little choked up after Joel Courtney’s final little speech, I don’t believe you are fully human.

Buy this movie right now! You owe it to yourself!

2. Drive

Drive was this autumn’s best surprise at the movies. Ryan Gosling plays an unnamed stunt driver who moonlights as the best getaway driver for hire around. He is inadvertantly dragged into the life and affections of his next door neighbour, Carey Mulligan, whose ex-con husband has to perform one last job to satisfy his drug dealer bosses. Things spiral rapidly out of control, and Gosling becomes Mulligan’s knight on horseback hero. The film fires along at a cracking pace, and characters are dispatched with barely a second thought. There’s an ace soundtrack that fits the tone of the film perfectly, and a supporting cast including Ron Perlman, Albert Brooks and Bryan Cranston, whose TV show Breaking Bad I’m a big fan of.

Buy this movie right now! You owe it to yourself!

1. True Grit

As a huge fan of the Coen brothers movies, and The Big Lebowski in particular, I was very excited to hear that the Coens and Jeff Bridges would be working together on a new film, even though it was a to be remake of a Western, a genre I’m not overly familiar with. As it turned out, I had nothing to worry about, as this turned out to be an exceptional film. The story is fairly simple - a young, precocious girl hires two lawmen to help her bring her father’s killer to justice in the Old West. But as with the best Coen movies, the pleasure is in the telling of the story. Their trademark humour is tuned down in True Grit to suit the film’s cinematic tone, but there are still plenty of laughs to be had from the witty script, especially from the competitive animosity between Bridges’ drunk US Marshall Rooster Cogburn, and the pretentious & arrogant Texas Ranger, LeBoeuf, played by Matt Damon. All three leads (Hailee Steinfeld plays the humourless but still endearing Matty Ross) are played faultlessly, and it’s the sort of film in which every shot seems to be somehow slightly more beautiful than the last. Topped off by a beautiful score by Carter Burwell, this is by far and away my favourite film of the year.

Buy this movie right now! You owe it to yourself!

Honorable Mentions

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows prt 2

Although I’ve not really got on with the previous Potter films, I was tempted along to this by the the climactic scenes offered by the trailer, and I came away having really enjoyed it. The exciting pace makes me wish they could have ditched the padding from the previous Potter films (which you can still find in this film) and slimmed the whole thing down a LOTR-style trilogy, although I’m sure a billion Potter fans would disagree.

You really should pick this movie up some time, it’s pretty good!

X-Men : First Class

Another smash from Matthew Vaughn (after last year’s brutal but incredibly entertaining Kick Ass), First Class is the best X-Men movie yet. It’s written with a lot of humour and heart, and leading men James MacAvoy and Michael Fassbender play out the frought friendship between politically opposed mutants Charles Xavier / Professor X and Erik Lehnsherr / Magneto perfectly. There’s plenty of other mutants in the supporting cast, but as with the other X-Men films, very few of them get the time and attention to feel fully fleshed out.

You really should pick this movie up some time, it’s pretty good!

Bridesmaids

“Chick flicks can be funny!” said the reviews. Of course they can. But then what’s a chick flick? A flick (movie) for chicks (women)? But not for men? I don’t know. I do know that I found Bridesmaids hilarous throughout. It only benefits from the obvious comparisons to this summer’s chief turd, The Hangover Part 2. They were both crude and offensive and equal measures, but Bridesmaids was written with heart, and a clear fondness for its characters. The Hangover 2’s phoned-in writers didn’t seem to care what any of their characters did or said, so long as it got a laugh. The gender of the lead characters doesn’t really come into it.

You really should pick this movie up some time, it’s pretty good!

Attack The Block

As a big fan of his radio and TV work with Adam Buxton, I was really looking forward to this first film from Joe Cornish, and for the most part it didn’t disappoint. The film aimed for and achieved the same throwback feel as Super 8, but played out in a modern London tower block and estate. Being honest, I struggled to really relate to or care for many of the central characters (it does begin with them mugging a young girl, after all), which kept me from loving this film as much as I might have hoped to.

You really should pick this movie up some time, it’s pretty good!

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes

ROTPOTA was clever, modern take on the origins of the intelligent chimps of Planet Of The Apes, although its success makes it likely that it will be the first of a series of new Apes movies. Andy Serkis plays his mocap chimp Ceaser to perfection, the human cast do a decent enough job, and the storyline itself makes much more sense than you have any right to expect from a film about chimps taking over the world via San Francisco.

You really should pick this movie up some time, it’s pretty good!

Dishonourable Mentions

Cowboys and Aliens

I love the idea of alien invasion being a part of the past instead of the future (think Predator), so I was looking forward to this quite a lot. Shame it turned out to be a bit of a stinker.

Don’t buy this movie! Seriously!

Battlefield Los Angeles

It’s amazing something so big and loud as Battlefield LA could be so crushingly dull. And the aliens were rubbish.

Don’t buy this movie! Seriously!

Transformers : Dark of The Moon

Fuck you, Michael Bay. Seriously. The rumours that you may yet sign up to direct a 4th movie make me stabby.

Don’t buy this movie! Seriously!

Friends With Benefits

Two young, smug, and beautiful ad execs are having it away while trying to avoid falling in love. They fall in love and are really smug about it. Yay.

Don’t buy this movie! Seriously!

The Hangover Part 2

Urgh. Why?

Don’t buy this movie! Seriously!

[Disclaimer: The links to Amazon throughout this post are tracked via Amazon Associates, so if you go on to buy anything from Amazon after clicking them, they bung me a bit of cash. Baby needs shoes!]