At some point over the last year, I decided that when I wrote a review for this website, I was going to try and be professional, always backing up my judgments on whatever movie I was criticizing with fair and objective reasoning. But then it came to my attention that this is a really boring way to discuss movies, and that there really is no way to objectively judge something since it’s all shaped by our personal tastes and opinions anyway. So, since it’s 2012, I’m going to start making these reviews a little less academic, and a little more…readable.

So, anyways…Man On A Ledge.

Man On A Ledge is basically just Ocean’s Three, except with no one quite as famous as Casey Affleck or Scott Caan. There’s a plot to steal a diamond from a greedy real estate tycoon/jeweler, and a big, elaborate scheme that doesn’t really make all that much sense, but it’s missing all of the style and clever twists of mostly every other heist movie to come out in the last fifteen years. And while it does kind of keep you guessing how everything’s going to turn out, the non-revelation that everything is almost exactly as it seems, along with some easily foreseeable twists, kind of kills any excitement or tension as the movie chugs along. It’s almost remarkable how lucky the thieves end up considering how poorly planned out the robbery is, and how bad they seem to be at their jobs, but, hey…that’s the movies!

Now, despite how kind of dumb and straightforward most of Man On A Ledge is, that doesn’t keep it from being at least fun. Laughing at Sam Worthington as he attempts to figure a way out of his position as decoy after his role in the heist ends after the twenty minutes, and realizing that everything that the trailers made seem smart and cool is actually the complete opposite makes the movie a pretty good time if you don’t try to pick it apart too much. Ed Harris, as the tycoon under attack, seems to have a good time screaming at various underlings to go places and perform tasks, and it’s at least interesting to see how the robbers clean up the various messes they get themselves into. Throw in some light nudity, action packed flashbacks, and enough moments of logic defying, ledge-based drama, and you’ve got yourself an entertaining little movie. And that’s just what Man On A Ledge is.

Cause, hey...why not?

There’s not much else to say, really. There’s nothing here that especially screams, “See me!,” and I’m sure the critical raves aren’t going to be dragged out for something like this. Man On A Ledge was made for and aims to please the kind of people who know what they want in a movie about a guy on a ledge for 105 minutes, and it gives it to them. It moves along at a nice pace, doesn’t try to change the world, and tells a complete story with a few moments of tension and a nice ending that should satisfy anyone who puts themselves in the 99%. One day this will fit right in on HBO’s Tuesday afternoon schedule, but until then, you could do much worse at buying a ticket blindly based on the words at the top of the multi-plex marquee.

6 out of 10.

The rules that define a horror movie have long since moved past simply including a scary monster, spooky sound effects, and black cats jumping out from off-screen. Surprisingly, many of the better horror movies over the last few years have gotten far more subtle, creating a long, drawn out sense of dread that gives way to on-screen insanity, rather than cheap scare tactics, making most of them not even seem like what is normally considered a horror movie at all. On paper, Lynne Ramsay’s We Need To Talk About Kevin seems more like a hard drama, telling the story of a mother recollecting her struggle to raise her seemingly sociopathic son, all the while finding herself chastised and punished in the present day for something horrible he’d done. However, it is presented in such a way that creates a mystery about the nature of Kevin, and a sequence of events which aim to shock the audience as they wonder which one of these people is the real monster.

Chronologically beginning before Kevin has even been conceived, We Need To Talk About Kevin flashes back and forth from the past to present day as Eva (Tilda Swinton) thinks back on her life in an attempt to figure out how it all went so wrong. Her main source of frustration and blame comes in the form of her son, Kevin, who, even as an infant, seemed to do everything in his power to purposely make her life difficult, always putting on a happy façade whenever in the presence of anyone but his mother. While the beautiful, dream-like photography and scattered editing does a good job at setting up Eva’s almost always delirious mental state and providing clues about what exactly Kevin did, it also helps to keep the movie from feeling generic and makes some of the more questionable aspects of the story more dark and dreadful, as opposed to how silly they could’ve seemed in hindsight. It also helps give depth to Tilda Swinton’s nearly comatose present day persona, allowing us to visualize what’s running through her head as she wanders from location to location, finding comfort in the smallest victories and shock from the sudden outbursts of unexpected hate directed towards her.

It’s the narrative combination of this version of Eva, along with the harried mother persona that we see in the flashbacks, that provides one of We Need To Talk About Kevin’s greatest assets: the relationship between Eva and Kevin, and the question of parental responsibility in the outcome of a child. As the story is told from Eva’s perspective, there is no reason for us to believe that Kevin is anything but a bad seed, who naturally acts difficult and belligerent for no reason but to be a burden on his mother. However, as the movie proceeds, and we see how initially reluctant Eva was to have Kevin, and how this attitude towards parenthood, as well as an impatience and ignorance for her child’s needs, may have created the monster that Eva comes to fear. There are several moments during the childhood of Kevin where we see him delight in simply getting the attention of his mother, thriving in her discipline, which seems to scare her, creating a cycle in which Kevin does terrible things to get his mother’s attention, which only serves to drive her further away from him.

We Need To Talk About Kevin isn’t always an easy movie to sit through, and there definitely aren’t any happy endings, but it’s style is almost hypnotizing as the audience never knows where or when each lens flare or focal shift will take them, or what terrible thing Kevin will do next. Lynne Ramsay, along with co-writer Rory Kinnear, has created every expectant parent’s worst nightmare with Kevin, not only providing one of the worst child characters ever put to film, but also providing the idea that the primary blame on the behavior of such a creature will always fall squarely on the parents, following them around for the rest of their lives. Perhaps it’s this realistic take on the “bad kid” sub-genre of movies combined with the absorbing power struggle between Eva and Kevin that makes the movie feel as engaging and tense as it does, but whatever it is you get out of We Need To Talk About Kevin, it’s definitely not a movie you will forget about anytime soon.

8 out of 10.

A successful movie, if nothing else, is greater than the sum of its parts. It stops being a few terrific performances, a good script and cool direction, and becomes a big, cohesive, singular entity. However, even though a movie isn’t perfect, or really doesn’t come together in the end, that doesn’t mean it can’t have some really fantastic moments. And while 2011 may not have been a great year for movies as a whole, there were definitely some pretty great moments.

Now, these might not be the best films I saw this year, but when I thought back on everything I saw at the movies, the things that made me laugh the hardest and think, “I liked that. That was good,” these are the first things that popped into my head.

So, here are my ten favorite movie moments of 2011.

#10. Bad Teacher – No Map

Look, Bad Teacher isn’t a great movie. But, if nothing else, it’s got some really funny performances, especially that of Jason Segal as the inhumanly sarcastic gym teacher who barely tries to win the heart of Cameron Diaz’s titular character. Nearly every line his character has is so simply written, but it’s his delivery that makes everything he says gold. His greatness is especially apparent when responding to the newly minted, “too-cute” couple of Justin Timberlake and Lucy Punch, fawning over each other while recollecting the events of their weekend, making his performance one of my favorite of the year.

#9. Insidious – Holy Shit, It’s Darth Maul!

There’s nothing that incredible about Insidious, a horror movie that’s basically about a haunted kid. You know, like a haunted house, with ghosts and stuff, but inside a kid instead of a house. But even though it wasn’t mind-blowing, genre-bending material, it’s still a pretty awesome horror movie with a ridiculous amount of surprises and scares. It’s this exceptional ability to surprise its audience, combined with a pretty mellow first half-hour, that made the first appearance of Insidious’ main villain all the more startling and shit-inducing, making it stand out as one of the movie’s better moments, and making Insidious one of the better horror movies of the year.

8. The Help – The Moment I Realized It Was About Shit

When posters and trailers started appearing for The Help, most people just assumed they knew exactly who the movie was made for: women, and more specifically, moms. However, somehow everyone outside of this demographic accidently found themselves walking into the wrong theater, and ended up loving The Help, including even the most jaded, male moviegoer like myself (although, my 82 year old grandmother turned it off after 45 minutes, so…there’s that). Now, it wasn’t the powerful story of civil rights and the struggle for human equality that broke down my impenetrable wall of cynicism, it was the fact that The Help, first and foremost, is about going to the bathroom, and, more specifically, going number two. And it’s a critical and commercial success that’s a shoe-in for several catagories this awards season. And it’s about shit. That’s cool.

#7. Paranormal Activity 3 – The Oscillating Camera

The found footage format has hit some kind of a boom in the last few years after taking a well-deserved break after the one-of-a-kind success of The Blair Witch Project. However, over the last three years now, the Paranormal Activity franchise has never failed to show up in theaters with a slightly altered version of the last movie, which always manages to feel brand new while also providing the series’ signature sense of dread, which is stretched out to almost unbearable lengths in almost every scene. However, with the first two installments doing all they could with static security cameras, the directors of Paranormal Activity 3 came up with the brilliant idea of having their protagonist attach his camera to an oscillating fan, so the audience can see what’s going in two rooms, but only if the timing is right. Not only does this provide a welcome change to the format of the movie, but ups the ante as far as tension is concerned, letting us know where and when the scares are going to happen, but never letting us know what until it’s too late.

#6. Crazy, Stupid Love – “I Think It Stands For Asshole”

Aside from it falling into some pretty cringe-worthy romantic comedy clichés in the lat act, the rest of Crazy, Stupid Love was one of the bigger surprises of the year, putting together an incredible cast with a clever script, and turning out a movie that pretty much anyone can enjoy. Of all the fun characters and plot twists, however, one of the best scenes comes from lovelorn pre-teen Robbie, who gives a pretty spot-on literary analysis of “The Scarlet Letter” after being spurned by his love interest, the baby sitter.

#5. Kung Fu Panda 2 – The True Nature of Po

No one was more surprised that I after witnessing Kung Fu Panda, a Dreamworks animated movie that contained none of the dated pop culture references or characters singing along to pop-songs that the studio is infamous for stuffing their movies full of. And count me just as surprised when they matched the quality of the first movie with this year’s Kung Fu Panda 2, continuing with the story of the Furious Five, and delving deeper into the mythology of Po, the titular kung-fu master of the series. As he begins to regain memories of his real parents, Po discovers that it doesn’t matter where he comes from that makes him who he is, but what’s inside that counts. Sure, it’s a pretty old lesson to learn, but there’s something in the way the filmmakers present it that can make any fan of the franchise well up.

#4. War Horse – The Wire Cutter Truce

Steven Spielberg’s War Horse is a very impressive movie, if for no other reason than its sprawling scope that follows one boy’s journey to find his horse as World War I rages on all across Europe. However, there come several moments during the movie where someone is crying or vowing to give their lives for this animal, and you can’t help but say to yourself, “Come on! It’s just a fucking horse!” Surprisingly, when one such moment comes at around the three-quarters mark of the movie, which finds a British and German soldier rising from their barracks to help said horse escape from a tangled mess of barbed wire in the middle of no man’s land, instead of coming off as saccharine or stupid, it feels like one of the most sincere moments of the film. Reminiscent of the true story of the Christmas Truce of 1914, seeing the two seemingly different soldiers working together and exchanging pleasantries, knowing that they will soon be trying to kill each other when the morning comes, says more about the human condition than the rest of War Horse manages to do with in the other 135 minutes of its run time.

#3. Rubber – The Opening Scene

So, you hear about a movie called Rubber. It’s apparently about a sentient tire with telekinetic abilities that goes on a murderous rampage throughout the American west. Of course, as with all movies, one must have expectations when preparing to see a movie such as this, and the filmmakers of Rubber knew this. So instead of simply giving the people what they want, they surround their knowingly ridiculous concept with a direct commentary on the events of the movie, and shed some light on their intentions with a bizarre and clever opening that will catch anyone with no prior knowledge of the movie off guard in the best way possible.

#2. Shame – “Touch Head”

For a movie about a sex addict’s life spiraling out of control, it’s funny to see a scene that is so funny, realistic and sweet thrown right in the middle of it. The fact that Michael Fassbender’s Brandon seems to honestly like Maryanne so much that he can’t even allow himself to kiss her, knowing that it would ruin the otherwise innocent evening, not only adds another side to a character that, up to this point in the movie, we’ve mainly seen moving between fits of anger and sex, but also makes us almost root for him to finally find a girl that can maybe help change his ways.

#1. Thor – “Another!”

I thought Thor was awesome, and, in a year full of superhero epics, the best of the bunch. I won’t get into why that’s how I feel here, but I will say that this clip, in which Chris Hemsworth’s Asgardian prince has a meal with his discoverers after crashing to Earth, is a prime example of what makes Thor work so well. Since there’s no point in ruining a joke by explaining it, I’ll simply say that having gone into Thor with no expectations, it was its sense of humor and the honest portrayals of its characters, especially its hilariously entitled titular character, that made it stand out from the pack, and made this my favorite movie moment of the year.