2011 Films

All the films I saw at the cinema in 2011 ranked in order of preference:

1. Hugo
2. Drive
3. The Guard
4. Black Swan
5. Senna
6. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
7. True Grit
8. We Need to Talk About Kevin
9. Midnight In Paris
10. The Skin I live in
11. The King’s Speech
12. Moneyball
13. Stake Land
14. Kill List
15. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
16. Another Earth
17. Melancholia
18. Warrior
19. 127 Hours
20. The Way
21. Julia’s Eyes
22. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
23. Troll Hunter
24. 50/50
25. Source Code
26. Submarine
27. Super 8
28. 13 Assassins
29. A Lonely Place To Die
30. The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec
31. The Adjustment Bureau
32. X-Men: First Class
33. Thor
34. Captain America: The First Avenger
35. Limitless
36. My Week With Marilyn
37. The Inbetweeners Movie
38. Take Shelter
39. The Rum Diary
40. Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 2
41. The Ides Of March
42. Real Steel
43. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
44. Fair Game
45. Never Let Me Go
46. Blue Valentine
47. Tree Of Life
48. The Lincoln Lawyer
49. The Help
50. In Time
51. The Awakening
52. Sucker Punch
53. Fast Five
54. Hanna
55. Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark
56. Wuthering Heights
57. Contagion
58. The Fighter
59. Paul
60. Animal Kingdom
61. NEDS
62. Rabbit Hole
63. One Day
64. John Carpenter’s The Ward
65. Drive Angry
66. The Beaver
67. Beginners
68. Bridesmaids
69. Red State
70. Cowboys and Aliens
71. Rise of the Planet of the Apes
72. The Conspirator
73. The Art of Getting By
74. I am Number Four
75. Fright Night
76. Henry’s Crime
77. Blitz
78. Priest
79. Red Riding Hood
80. Oranges and Sunshine
81. Faster
82. 1920 The Battle of Warsaw
83. Win Win
84. Colombiana
85. Water for Elephants
86. Immortals
87. Battle: Los Angeles
88. 30 Minutes or Less
89. Hereafter
90. Biutiful
91. The Mechanic
92. The Thing
93. The Three Musketeers
94. Anonymous
95. Tomorrow, When The War Began
96. The Debt
97. Green Lantern
98. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1
99. Footlose
100. Justice
101. Attack the Block
102. Apollo 18
103. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
104. Unkown
105. Scream 4
106. The Silent House
107. The Eagle
108. The Resident
109. Season of the Witch
110. Transformers: Dark of the Moon
111. The Hangover: Part II
112. Sanctum

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Trains In Movies

As I sat watching Silver Streak on TV, a movie I haven’t seen for about twenty years, I suddenly realised something I have always know in the back of my mind; there is something magical about movies set on trains. Air travel and the jet set should be more sexy, it probably is, but its far less cinematic, Planes are little more than a mode of transport, they are the way James Bond gets from one exotic local to another, but trains are the locations in themselves. True, plains have been the setting for movies live Air Force One, Flight Plan or Red Eye, but none of these movies offer anything new that we haven’t seen before in movies like The Narrow Margin (the 1952 original, although the Gene Hackman, Anne Archer remake isn’t bad either). The size of a train is what makes it so suitable for a film, particularly a thriller or murder mystery, they are big enough to provide the space need for the action to play out but small enough to create just enough claustrophobia and intimacy.

A common theme of train set movies if people finding love, romance or just sex on a journey. North by Northwest features one of the best seduction scenes ever as Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint flirt and seduce each other over dinner. The movie then ends with the most audacious ending as the train itself becomes a phallic symbol in the most overt of innuendos that only Hitchcock could get away with. In a lot of ways Silver Streak condenses all the ideas of North By Northwest down to a train based part of the movie with just enough action, comedy and absurdity to keep it the right side of parody.

Although only a small section of Some Like it Hot is set on a train, it is a fantastic part, not least as its where we are introduced to ‘Sugar’ Kane (Marilyn Monroe). James Bond has spent his fair share of time on train, most notably in From Russia with Love (1963). Encapsulating the romance and the danger as Bond (Sean Connery) woos Tatiana Romanova (Daniela Bianchi) and fights ‘Red’ Grant (Robert Shaw). Bringing things more up to date Harry Potter first meets Hermione on the Hogwarts Express, it is also the place he first encounters the dementors.

As the world shrinks under the weight of ever the increasing progress of technology the magic of trains in movies evaporates, but filmmakers will always find ways to bring it back. This can involve setting movies in more exotic places like The Darjeeling Limited (2007) and Transsiberian (2008) or in the past: Water for Elephants (2011). In this age of laptop computers and MP3 players I wonder how often people actually strike up a conversation with a stranger on a train anymore? That could be a good or a bad thing depending on who you talk to: Guy Haines (Farley Granger) encounters psychotic Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker), who has a plan to help him get away with murder in Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (1951) (adapted from Patricia Highsmith’s novel of the same name with a screenplay by Raymond Chandler). On the other hand in Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise, American student Jesse (Ethan Hawke) has a very different experience when he meets Céline (Julie Delpy), a young French woman on her way home to Paris.

Next time you are watching a movie set on a train (and there a lot, I have only mentioned a few) have a think about the setting and if it would work anywhere else.

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