2011 – The Highlights (lionsroar)

Best Films of 2011

In no particular order:

THE ARTIST
While this is in some ways a novelty: a modern black and white silent film shot in the 1.33 aspect, this is really a very good movie. Set in Hollywood at the time silent films gave way to sound, it tells the story of two stars whose paths cross, as one goes to the top of the heap and the other falls into obscurity.

HUGO
Based on an award winning book, the film tells the story of an orphaned boy left on his own in a major Parisian railway station, who is obsessed with fixing an automaton that his father had found in a museum. His quest for parts puts him into contact with an old man who owns a toy shop in the station, who happens to be the great French silent film director, George Méliés. A departure from most of the films Martin Scorsese has made, this is a film that both entertains and inspires.


MIDNIGHT IN PARIS
Woody Allen continues his tour of European capitals and this may be one his better efforts of late. In typical Allen fashion, the film has many stars, but none of them outshine the script or the direction. This is a fantasy film like few others and shows that the writer/director still has some magic left.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER
While I am normally dismissive of summer blockbusters, this is perhaps one of the best comic book based movies ever and certainly the best one since SPIDER-MAN 2. After the mini-disaster of THOR, this film points the way to what should be an exciting series of AVENGER films.

RANGO
An interesting and beautifully rendered take on the animated film, RANGO is a modern western, starring the voice of Johnny Depp. Clever and funny, the film manages to rise above the normal animated films and aims at a more mature audience than expect from Nickelodeon.


Biggest Film Disappointments of 2011

In no particular order:

THOR
It wasn’t so much the film as it was the presentation. This is was the nadir of my 3-D film experiences and was almost a cure. There are a lot of industry insiders that think viewers are idiots for complaining about 3-D, after all we see in 3-D and don’t get headaches. But they never have to sit through too dark to comprehend presentations, either.

SUPER 8 and THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN
I guess we’re supposed to be overly impressed whenever Steven Spielberg works with another director. However, the sum is oftentimes much smaller than the parts. That was true of these two films. SUPER 8 presented yet another can’t kill space alien from J.J. Abrams and TINTIN, Spielberg's teaming with Peter Jackson, makes one wonder why this thin story was made and why it was made as motion capture. What’s the old saying about too many cooks?

CARS 2
This is what you get for blindly supporting Pixar. The little studio that never seems to miss is way off target with this little abomination, designed solely it seems to sell toys. For the first time I’m worried that maybe John Lasseter and his folks have gotten a little too big for their creative britches. They seem to be fully engulfed by Disney consumerism, which of late has been merchandising over storytelling.

FOOTLOOSE
While not a bad film per say, one wonders why it was made at all. This is an example of lazy filmmaking. It is sad when Hollywood can’t be more original than making remakes and sequels. Sometimes there is something wrong with the original film that a remake corrects, see last year’s TRUE GRIT. But that wasn’t the case here. At the end of this year there are reports that film attendance was down. Maybe if Hollywood was more original, then the audience would be more willing to come back to the theaters.

Footloose (2011) - Same Tune, Slightly Different Steps

The original Footloose, released in 1984, wasn't that bad of a movie, but it isn't exactly something I would watch very often. When I heard there was to be a remake, I wasn't exactly sure how it would work, considering the product they were dealing with, but I decided to see it anyway. It was better than I thought it would be, but like a good cover to a classic song, not much is different about it.

If you've seen the original Footloose with Kevin Bacon, then you already know what happens in this new version. The only major changes, aside from the new actors of course, are that the event leading up to the ban on dancing is actually depicted rather than being revealed through dialogue, the time span is set to 3 years instead of 5, and a few scenes were either changed a little or switched around. Otherwise, it is essentially the same movie, including dialogue, with (sort of) updated technology (for instance, characters are seen to have iPods).

Though the music is generally the same from the original, it still manages to hold up well and gives you the feeling that you're still watching Footloose. The new actors pull off rather good performances and provide noticeably more racial diversity than there was previously. Plenty of homages are made to the original Footloose as well, such as the iconic yellow Volkswagon Beetle and red boots used by the characters Ren (Kenny Wormald) and Ariel (Julianne Hough) respectively. However, the large number of these nods to the source can bring to question why the remake was created in the first place.

Overall, the Footloose remake isn't a bad movie, but it isn't much different from its predecessor. However, it's still structurally sound and for the most part simply updates the setting. Whether you watch this film or the the original, you're guaranteed a good time and a very catchy song.

Stubs - Footloose (1984)

FOOTLOOSE (1984) Starring: Kevin Bacon, Lori Singer, Dianne Wiest and John Lithgow. Directed by Herbert Ross. Written by Dean Pitchford. Produced by Lewis J. Rachmil and Craig Zadan. Run Time: 107 minutes, Color. U.S. Musical, Drama.

The original FOOTLOOSE, since there is now a remake, would never be referred to as a great movie, though it may well be on someone’s list of favorite films. It is sort of like cotton candy at the fair, it’s sweet, but doesn’t stay with you very long and indulging too much is bad for you. Now, watching the film won’t put on weight, unless you’re eating a big bucket of popcorn while you do, but it doesn’t seem to be the type of story that deserves multiple retellings. Once was enough.

The premise of the film is foot-loosely based on a law that had been on the books in Elmore City, Oklahoma. Dancing had been banned in this small town for 100 years, though the ban was actually lifted four years before this movie’s release.

FOOTLOOSE tells the story of Ren McCormack (Kevin Bacon), who moves with his mother (Frances Lee McCain) from Chicago to the little town of Bomont, where the local minister, Rev. Shaw Moore (John Lithgow) has gotten the city to ban dancing and rock and roll music. The reason for the ban dates back five years when Moore’s only son was killed, along with others, after a dance and a car wreck.

Ren, the outsider in a small town, quickly draws the attention of most everyone in town, as he doesn’t belong. One of the first’s to notice him is Ariel (Lori Singer), the daughter of Rev. Moore. While Ren meets resistance at first, he quickly makes a fast friend with Willard Hewitt (Christopher Penn).

But with friendship come enemies and Ren makes one out of Chuck Cranston (Jim Youngs), Ariel’s boyfriend and high school bad ass. In what must be an homage to REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, Chuck challenges Ren to a game of chicken. But rather than jalopies, the boys run tractors right at each other. In a twist, Ren tries, but can’t get out of his tractor because his shoelace gets caught on one of the pedals and Chuck is forced to leap for safety.

The hazing isn’t over, as one student tries to plant a marijuana joint on Ren in front of an all too convenient teacher. But while Ren is innocent, he develops a reputation as a troublemaker, but not because he smokes cigarettes and engages in underage drinking. Ren decides that all ills can be solved through dance and he goes before the city council on behalf of the high school seniors to have the law overturned.

When that fails, Ren finds a replacement location across the railroad tracks from Bomont. And with the blessing of Moore, who has softened his views about the evils of dance, thanks in part to his wife, Vi (Dianne Wiest), the dance goes forward. There is one last disruption, an impotent attempt by Chuck and his gang to stop it.

But in the end, all the senior high-schoolers of Bomont turn out to have a great time and despite a ban on dancing through their formative years all turn out to have a great sense of rhythm and have dance moves right out of the music videos of the day.

While watching the film is mostly a fun experience, the film does have more than its fair share of issues, most of them revolving around characters.

To begin with, Diane Wiest is pretty much wasted in the movie, as her part is somewhat pivotal but very, very small. She spends too much of the film in the background smiling or stirring a pan in the kitchen. Maybe it was early in her movie career, but she has far too much talent for the role.

John Lithgow’s Moore is not really that much of a bad guy. We do see him give one fire and brimstone sermon, but otherwise, he comes off as a moderate to a liberal preacher. Soft-spoken and almost a milquetoast father, his attempts to keep his daughter in line are limited to mostly disapproving looks, though he does slap Ariel once (more on her later). When some of the more religious zealots in town take to burning books they disapprove of, right off the shelves at the library, Moore steps in as the moral compass of the town. He must see the dichotomy of being a censor of music, but not books because it is soon after this event that his feelings start to change.

The biggest troublemaker in the movie isn’t Ren. It is the preacher’s daughter, Ariel, who is the definition of crazy bitch. Her stupid daredevil antics risks the lives of her friends (including Sarah Jessica Parker) and her then-boyfriend, Chuck, as she tries to move from a car driven by her friend to Chuck’s pickup truck, all the while riding down a highway with a big rig bearing down on them.

She is a girl with a reputation for being loose, though they never show her going further than kissing, we do see her and Chuck on a blanket outside after presumably having sex. (She does admit to her father that she is no longer a virgin.) Even Ren picks up on the fact that Ariel has been around the block a few times.

Ariel cheats on Chuck with Ren and when Chuck confronts her, she attacks him. When he fights back, she takes a pipe to his prized pickup truck, smashing headlights before he punches her. I’m all for not hitting women, but Ariel may be the exception. She is a troubled girl on many levels, but she is the one the movie wants us to root for Ren to win over. I wouldn’t wish her on my worst enemy, let alone the protagonist, I’m supposed to like, in a movie.

FOOTLOOSE is not really a musical by the definition most of us have for the genre. There is lots of dancing, but there is really no singing by the cast. The music doesn’t necessarily move the story along or comment about the actual events but is more of a backdrop to what is going on. And the music that these kids fight to hear is, for the most part, forgettable pop tunes. While Chuck has decals for Pink Floyd and the Grateful Dead on his pickup, very little of the music in FOOTLOOSE is all that original or memorable. Maybe they shouldn’t have let the screenwriter help with every original song.

There is, of course, the exception of the title song, Footloose, which does last beyond the viewing of the movie. It may be because it appears three times, but of all the original songs, it is by far the one that stays with you the longest. Way to go Kenny Loggins.

This is the movie that made Kevin Bacon a star and he is good and likable in the film. Who hasn’t felt they were the outsider at one time or another in their lives? I’m not sure how many kids really wore neckties to high school or danced to get over their anger, but he is right for the part.

While this is Bacon’s film, I think the best performance may be that of Christopher Penn as Willard. Penn has a real presence in this movie as the hick who turns into a dance phenom under Ren’s tutelage. It is a lean, happy, playful Penn in FOOTLOOSE, and it is sad to think that his career in movies was so short.