One last post, and then I’m done for a bit, though I may return to film blogging when the Oscars happen. As usual, I had finished writing most of this series of year-end posts just before seeing the Coen Brothers’ True Grit, which would have easily found a place on many of the Best Of lists here: certainly it would be on the 25 Best films list, as would ace cinematographer Roger “King” Deakins and lead actor Jeff Bridges. I expect to be seeing The Fighter and The King’s Speech soon too. I have high hopes for one of them: anyone who knows me will know which one that is. As ever it difficult to do these posts in timely fashion, and I envy critics (especially US ones) who get to sample so many movies with plenty of time to compile lists. Sad, really. I’d love a job as a critic not because I love films so much, but because I want more time to make a bunch of pointless lists. I may need to reassess my life-goals here.
So anyway, this is a bunch of extremely miscellaneous gubbins. Have at it.
Best Movie From 2009 That We Saw In 2010: The Princess and the Frog
2009 was the best year for feature length animation that I can recall, thanks to the efforts of Pixar, Studio Ghibli, the Cloudy chaps, and Henry Selick. Just as Christmas rolled around lucky Americans got one last treat: a cel-animated Disney musical good enough to stand next to their 90′s run of classics. Ron Clements and John Musker got back the mojo they had started to slowly lose after Aladdin with a joyous and spry reworking of the Grimm Brothers fairy tale and subsequent novel by E.D. Baker, smartly adding iconography and mythology from African-American history. This decision seemed to rejuvenate the creative powers of all involved: it’s funny, moving, energetic, has a cast of utterly charming characters — plus Keith “Superawesome” David’s Dr. Facilier, the best Disney villain since Little Mermaid‘s Ursula – and features songs and music from Randy Newman that eclipse anything else he’s done in years. A triumph, in short, and one that already needs to be reappraised after it came and went from public view with such little fanfare.
Honorable Mentions:
Bright Star – Another great movie from Jane Campion: no real surprise there. What was unexpected was how much this tale moved a schmuck like me, who thinks that films about writers are usually only interesting if they feature Mugwumps. Credit is due to Ben Whishaw and Abbie Cornish for bringing the fragile love affair of John Keats and Fannie Brawne to such vivid life, and even more credit is due to Paul Schneider, who is truly excellent as the repellent Charles Brown, lingering in the shadows and spitting poison at the lovers.
Sherlock Holmes – Haters can suck it. Guy Ritchie’s surprisingly entertaining romp caught two-thirds of Shades of Caruso completely out by not being awful. Quite the opposite, in fact. It’s loyal to the books, very funny, properly exciting and imaginatively filmed. It’s also the most successful film Joel Silver has produced in years: as a fan of his output from the 80s and 90s, it’s good to see him hit big every once in a while, especially as he seems increasingly keen to promote smaller genre movies like Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and Splice and he isn’t making much money from them.
Worst Movie From 2009 That We Saw In 2010: Whatever Works
Whenever I impotently but passionately rail against the staggering of global release dates for films, I should always be grateful for one thing: the fact that Woody Allen’s movies seem to arrive here very late or not at all, even though Britain is supposed to be one of the countries that are most fond of the increasingly irrelevant old grouch. Whatever Works limped over to the UK about a year after it was released in the States, and really, thanks so much to UK distributors Warner Bros. for getting a last few spins out of those worn-out prints. This is not quite as bad as Cassandra’s Dream, but it’s considerably worse than Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which was already not that great. Basically it’s just an excuse for the once-great director to hire nubile Evan Rachel Wood to bounce around in front of his latest ancient proxy in a tight-shirt-and-hotpants combo and acting like one a’ dem Suthners frawm thuh Red Stayts what is men-ta-lee challunjjed. It’s nothing more than a snide wank fantasy. I fucking HATED IT. I note that Peter Bradshaw is YET AGAIN tying himself in knots to justify the formerly brilliant director’s descent into awfulness. Not mediocrity: I’m talking total and utter artistic decrepitude. Give it up, man!
Dishonorable Mentions:
An Education – Carey Mulligan is transcendentally wonderful in this uninspiring coming-of-age tale, perhaps so much so that some critics failed to see what a lemon they had on their hands. A lot of great work was done to give this adaptation of Lynn Barber’s memoirs an authentic period feel, but the tone is all over the place. Alfred Molina seems lost in his scenes, broadly playing a character that could have done with being quieter, though thankfully he is skilled enough to add some nice notes. Worst of all of Nick Hornby’s clunking screenplay, banging the movie’s points as hard as possible in case the audience was asleep. Dispiriting stuff.
Nine – How do you make a clumsy and unappealing musical worse? Get Rob Marshall to make a hash of filming it! As if Maury Yeston’s lyrics weren’t already excruciating to listen to (Possibly my least favourite lyric ever: “My husband makes movies / To make them, he makes himself obsessed. / He goes for weeks on end without a bit of rest. / No other way can he achieve his level best.”), now they’re linked to dance routines whose listless choreography is only matched by Marshall’s inability to put the camera in the right place, or cut to the most dynamic moments. If you thought Chicago was badly filmed, stay the hell away from this. Only the godlike Marion Cotillard and Fergie’s voicebox come out of this with any credit. A pox on it. Watch 8 ½ and then go watch the nearest Sondheim revival.
Invictus - Forgive me for taking the review I wrote on Flixster several months ago and just dumping it here, but it says what I need to say about Clint Eastwood’s horrid sport-uplift-a-thon better than anything I could no crank out, many months later:
For an hour Morgan Freeman’s performance as Nelson Mandela is entertaining enough to hold the audience’s attention even with the overwhelming treacle-thick sentiment pouring out of the screen and into your face. After that, nothing can save it. Endless – ENDLESS – scenes of incoherently edited rugby matches drag the movie to a halt, as the slow-motion sports scenes get slower and slower and slower. By the end you can’t remember who is playing any more. Which end of the pitch are they supposed to run to? Who is passing the ball? Why is he passing it now? Who’s that guy?
It eventually becomes an avant-garde exercise in deconstructing linear experience by bringing it to the temporal equivalent of absolute zero. Someone slowly points left. Another man falls over. Who are all these people watching? Morgan looks a bit excited. Another man points. A ball arcs slowly into another man’s chest. Matt Damon is tired now. Or in pain.
By now the movie has been on for fourteen years. The ball bounces across the floor. Morgan looks scared. The sound of cheering is like the screaming of God. Matt Damon leaps into the air: it takes so long he might be flying. Another shot of the crowd: CGI never looked so real-ish. Is that a goal? It can’t be. The South Africans shout “NO!” Oh, actually, they shout “YES!” The sound design is such that I cannot tell any more. Did they win? The uplifting music suggests they did: I check Wikipedia just to be sure.
In all, it is a staggering triumph.
South Africa’s victory, I meant. The movie’s shit.
The one comment I got on this was someone pointing out that the South African rugby team for that year was actually really terrible. If the worst team won, this conclusively proves my point about all sport being a total waste of time.
Best Movies I Saw in 2009 That Were Released In 2010 And Got On A Few Best Ofs And Thus Make My Exclusion Of Them Look Like I Didn’t Like Them Which Just Isn’t True, And Just To Prove It You Can Follow The Hyperlinks To My Reviews Of Them: Enter The Void / A Prophet / Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans / White Material
Ranking Decision Made In Last Year’s Best Movies List That I’ve Come To Regret: Placing Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet at number five in the list behind Avatar at number four has dogged me ever since I did it. That’s not to say I now dislike James Cameron’s slightly successful space opera: after seeing it a few times since I stand behind my glowing review 100%. Nevertheless, I suspect seeing it in IMAX just a couple of weeks before finishing my list may have pushed it a little higher than it deserves. I’m retroactively knocking it down to number five, and putting Audiard’s peerless prison classic up to four, because this shit is important to me. I wonder which of this year’s choices I’ll regret next year…
Best Hero: Shinzaemon Shimada (Kôji Yakusho) - 13 Assassins
Honorable Mentions:
Quorra (Olivia Wilde) - Tron: Legacy
Olive Penderghast (Emma Stone) – Easy A
Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) – Winter’s Bone
Robin Hood (Russell Crowe) – Robin Hood
Kick-Ass (Aaron Johnson) – Kick-Ass
Best Villain: Lotso (Ned Beatty) - Toy Story 3
Honorable Mentions:
Lord Narigatsu (Gorô Inagaki) – 13 Assassins
Fergus ‘Fergie’ Colm (The late, great Pete Postlethwaite) - The Town
Mal / The overwhelming guilt felt by Cobb that has forced an intervention by his therapist [Delete according to your theory of Inception's meaning] (Marion Cotillard) – Inception
Cheng (Zhenwei Wang) - The Karate Kid
Godfrey (Mark Strong) - Robin Hood
Worst Hero: Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman) – Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief
Dishonorable Mentions:
Milo Boyd (Gerard Butler) - The Bounty Hunter
Bazil (Dany Boon) – Micmacs
Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) – The Expendables
Soren (Jim Sturgess) – Legends of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole
Aang The Avatar (Noah Ringer) – The Last Airbender
Worst Villain: Arnold Wesker (Shawn Roberts) – Resident Evil: Afterlife
Dishonorable Mentions:
Other people’s feelings and needs / the concept of working for a living / the world just being SO MEAN and not, like, totally spiritual and stuff – Eat, Pray, Love
William (Aaron Johnson) – Chatroom
Ilosovic Stayne, the Knave of Hearts (Crispin Glover) - Alice in Wonderland
God (Played by nothing) – Legion
Fitzgerald (Peter Sarsgaard) - Knight and Day
Best Hero… OR IS SHE??!?!!?: Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) – Salt
Worst Hero… OR IS HE?!?!??!: Roy Miller (Tom Cruise) – Knight and Day
Worst Nazi Owl: Metalbeak (Joel Edgerton) – Legends of the Guardian: The Owls of Ga’Hoole
Most Passive Character: Bella Swan - Twilight: Eclipse (second year running, and still spending most of the movie being protected by the big strong men in her life UGGGHHH.)
Douchiest Crimefighter of the Year: FBI S.A. Adam Frawley – The Town
Most Annoying Character(s) of the Year: Those goddamn squeaky minions in Despicable Me
Dishonorable Mentions:
Rashid (Amit Shah) – The Infidel
Rhiannon “Rhi” Abernathy (Aly Michalka) - Easy A
Captain H.M. Murdoch (Sharlto Copley) - The A-Team
Lou Dorchen (Rob Corrdry) – Hot Tub Time Machine
Paul Hodges (Tracy Morgan) - Cop Out
Unluckiest Character of the Year: Rafael Dacanay (Joel Torre) – Amigo
I won’t go into the details of what happens to the hapless town leader in John Sayles’ excellent historical drama, but let’s just say, if you think you’re having a bad day, this character’s troubles might make you feel better about your life. Poor guy.
Most Entertaining Scumbag: Stans (Walton Goggins) - Predators
Honorable Mention: Jason Patric (Max) - The Losers
Least Entertaining Psychic: Uxbal (Javier Bardem) - Biutiful
Badass of the Year: Hitgirl (Chloe Moretz) – Kick-Ass
Most Surprising Badass of the Year: “The Tough Guy” (Adrien Brody) – Predators
Most Debonair Badass of the Year: Eames (Tom Hardy) – Inception
Best Couple of the Year: Erin (Drew Barrymore) and Garrett (Justin Long) – Going The Distance
Best Parents of the Year: Dill (Stanley Tucci) and Rosemary Penderghast (Patricia Clarkson) – Easy A
“I Hope Those Crazy Kids Make It” Couple of the Year: Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts) and Jordana Bevan (Yasmin Paige) – Submarine
“Dear God, Just Split Up Already” Couple of the Year: Nick Twisp (Michael Cera) and Sheeni Saunders (Portia Doubleday) - Youth In Revolt
“I Realise Now That I’ve Never Really Cared Whether Or Not You Make It Work” Couple of the Year: Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) and Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) – Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World
Most Tedious Couple of the Year: Samantha Wynden (Whitney Able) and Andrew Kaulder (Scoot McNairy) – Monsters
Most Improbable Couple of the Year: Mahmoud (Omid Djalili) and Saamiya Nasir (Archie Panjabi) – The Infidel
Least Credible, Charming, Sexy, Appealing or Tolerable Couple of the Year: Milo Boyd (Gerard Butler) and Nicole Hurley (Jennifer Aniston) – The Bounty Hunter
Best Scene: The hour-long setpiece finale of Inception, from the “beginning” of the dream to the end.
Honorable Mentions:
Annette Bening and Mark Ruffalo temporarily bond over Joni Mitchell in The Kids Are All Right.
MacGruber creates a fiendish trap using water, string, a cup and a corpse.
The heartbreaking sack of the Alexandrian Serapeum in Agora.
Jonah Hill strokes the furry wall while Diddy goes berserk in Get Him To The Greek.
The first sighting of “Space Dad” in Megamind.
Best Action Scene: 13 Assassins vs over 200 warriors in a town filled with traps. For 45 minutes. 45 unbelievably exciting minutes.
Honorable Mentions:
The Wheel King’s assassins’ attempt to kill Drizzle is deflected by her protector (spoiler obscured there) in Reign of Assassins.
Matt Damon, Jason Isaacs and Khalid Abdalla race across war-torn Baghdad at the end of Green Zone.
Iron Man and War Machine in a Genndy-Tartakovsky-choreographed blitz of orchestrated chaos against evil drones at the end of Iron Man 2.
Angelina Jolie and her stuntperson chase the President down a lift shaft in Salt.
Jason Statham destroys a pier with machine guns and a flare gun in The Expendables.
Cruellest Moment In Cinema History: The toys chase Lotso through a trash incinerator in Toy Story 3
Most Excruciating Moment in Cinema 2010: Futterwacken – Alice in Wonderland
Most Exciting Scene Involving Rampaging Bulls: 13 Assassins
Least Exciting Scene Involving Rampaging Bulls: Knight and Day
Most Satisfying Finale: Black Swan
Honorable Mentions:
Inception
Kick-Ass
Toy Story 3
The Karate Kid
The Ghost Writer
Least Satisfying Ending: The Infidel
Dishonorable Mentions:
Remember Me
Twilight: Eclipse
Jonah Hex
Resident Evil: Afterlife
Knight and Day
Best Twist of the Year: There’s a corker about halfway through The Disappearance of Alice Creed. I shall say no more about that, or all of the other almost-as-good twists. Good work, J Blakeson.
Worst Twist of the Year: The end of The Book of Eli is not only nonsensical, but I’m really not sure it adds anything to the movie, either narratively or thematically. I’d go back and rewatch to see how well it’s set up, but I really can’t be that bothered.
Satisfying, Unhistrionic and Beautifully Performed Ending That Made Me Sob And Sob And Sob: Rabbit Hole
Most Batshit Crazy Ending of the Year: The Killer Inside Me / Skyline
Directorial Debut of the Year: Richard Ayoade – Submarine
Honorary Mention: J Blakeson – The Disappearance of Alice Creed
Most Egregious Waste of a Musical Resource: Mastodon – Jonah Hex
Most Appropriate Use of David Byrne and Brian Eno’s Album Everything That Happens Will Happen Today As A Soundtrack Choice: Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, as Oliver Stone added a couple of tracks from their previous collaboration — My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts — to the first and far, far inferior Wall Street movie. It’s, like, a homage or something.
Best Trailer: Clash of the Titans
Best Poster: Black Swan
Worst Poster: Death at a Funeral (Bad though the Photoshop is, it’s the exclamation point at the end of the tagline that sealed it.)
Creepiest Poster: Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore
Most Misleading Poster: The Last Exorcism (Nothing like this happens in the movie.)
Least Informative Poster: Knight and Day
Best Promotional Campaign: Inception
Remember the first trailer for Inception, the one that came out in 2009? What the hell is this?, we all thought as we rewatched it for the twenty-hundredth time. It makes no sense but is so pretty and sounds so nice, what with that cool booming thing going on. I can’t recall the last time I got so excited for a movie on such little information. Keeping the plot a secret for so long was a brilliant move. With no recognisable characters or source material to look at, there was no way anyone could have known what Christopher Nolan had in store for audiences. The next trailer almost drove me out of my mind. The sight of Paris folding over was like a mindbomb going off. Had Nolan made something completely unprecedented in popular cinema? You know a promotional campaign has hit paydirt when something as innocuous as the booming noises in Zack Hemsey‘s Mind Heist end up being mimicked and mocked over and over again.
That noise seemed to soundtrack the entire year, but credit where credit is due, it’s also down to possibly the best poster campaign I’ve ever seen for a major movie. Despite no one knowing what the movie was going to be before release, the campaign rested on cryptic but epic-scale posters featuring flooded or folding cities and characters listed as The Shade and The Extractor. It was utterly baffling and incredibly exciting. A week before the movie was released, almost to the hour, a flood of reviews washed across the internet as Warner Bros. embargo ended. The sense that a genuine event was about to occur was palpable. Seeing it a week later at the IMAX near Waterloo was one of the most thrilling experiences I’ve ever had in a cinema, and much of it was due to the audience. Primed for the cerebral narrative to come, we raced through Nolan’s maze and came to that divisive and bold final shot, and greeted it with shouts of “NO!” and “What the fuck!” And then the applause. The campaign worked. Dismiss it as hype, but there’s almost an art to hype if it’s done right and used to promote something of actual merit. I doff my cap to everyone involved.
Worst Promotional Campaign: The Bounty Hunter
One of the most dispiriting sights of the year was watching the cynical promotional campaign for this lifeless romactioncom spill out across the pop-culture spectrum. Seemingly aware that there was nothing interesting to say about the punch-card-generated tale of a bounty hunter on the hunt for his ex-wife (LOL), the publicists were forced to play the weakest hand in their deck: the are-they-aren’t-they “romance” between stars Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler. Not only was it lazy, but the actors obviously wanted nothing to do with it. Their fidgety non-commitals and attempts to brush aside questions from chat-show hosts and E! reporters were not just an attempt to create ambiguity: they looked genuinely embarrassed. The weak box office shows that no one else was interested either. Luckily once the movie was gone everyone could just forget about it, as if it was a drunken fumble between cousins that no one wants to talk about ever again.
Bravest Promotional Campaign of the Century: MacGruber
This notoriously unsuccessful but hysterical comedy — arguably the funniest of the year — featured one of the boldest performances of all time. Will Forte is utterly shameless as the hapless, cowardly mercenary, but the depths to which he was willing to plunge in order to generate a laugh happened offscreen, with this series of NSFW images. Maybe this was the reason the film sadly only made about $14, a half-full Starbucks loyalty card, and a poorly coloured-in photocopy of a $20 bill.
Best Hair: Pretty much everyone in Inception
Worst Hair: Scoot McNairy – Monsters
Best Wig (Male): Nicolas Cage – The Sorceror’s Apprentice
Best Wig (Female): Mary Elizabeth Winstead – Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World
Most Eclectic Collection of Wigs: Thekla Reuten – The American
Honorary Manuela Velasco Award for Services to Scream-Queen Culture: Rooney Mara – A Nightmare on Elm Street
Most Comfortable Actor of the Year: Denzel Washington, who gets to sit down for most of Unstoppable
Most Convincing Lust Object of the Year: Danny Fucking Trejo – Machete
Honorary Mention: Mila Kunis – Black Swan
Least Convincing Lust Object of the Year: Bradley Cooper – The A-Team
Dishonorable Mention: Megan Fox – Jonah Hex
Best Use of a Gun To Intensify Usual Levels of Hottness to Almost Unbearable Levels: Helen Mirren – Red
Best Value For Money of the Year: Alfred Molina
As you would hope, Molina takes a couple of underwritten roles in two Bruckheimer misfires and makes the most of them. In both movies he gives the liveliest performances of the entire cast, saving both movies from being consigned to the bottom half of my 2010-movie-quality-spectrum. Long may he get cast to add some spice to underwhelming action comedies. Or, you know, get the lead in a really good movie. That would be nice, HOLLYWOOD!
Lamest Contribution to a Major Battle: The end of Sir Ridley of Scott’s Robin Hood: The Puffy Years features a big pitched battle on a beach between the English and French. Midway through Maid Marian rocks up with her Feral Boys in an attempt to help repel the French using ponies and sticks. There’s about 12 of them, they do nothing, and then Marian ends up getting smacked around by Sir Godfrey until Robin saves her. Not sure what the point of this was other than to have Robin do something heroic for his suddenly useless lady. Not cool, Sir Ridley.
Best Movie Featuring Liam Cunningham as a Fearless Badass From Ancient Times: Centurion
Worst Movie Featuring Liam Cunningham as a Fearless Badass From Ancient Times: Clash of the Titans
Best Robot: Madd Chadd in Step Up 3D
Most Listless Movie: Somewhere
A half-asleep arse-poot of a movie that says nothing about life other than it’s easy to get a bit bored when you have a lot of money. Makes Sofia Coppola’s previous movie – Marie Antoinette — look like Trainspotting. Consider this half-hearted critique my homage to Coppola’s work ethic.
Most Unsuspendable Mountain of Disbelief: Legends of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole
I tried so hard — SO HARD — to buy into this movie’s central conceit, but I could not get past the fact that it was a movie about warrior owls, no matter how beautiful it looked (and trust me on this, it’s one of the most beautiful computer-animated movies yet made: almost every shot is breathtaking). The killing blow was the shot of an owl blacksmith hammering away at a hot piece of metal, sparks flying everywhere. It’s an owl blacksmith. An owl, working as a blacksmith, with its tiny little talons gripping a huge hammer and smacking at a hot piece of metal it had just pulled from a furnace made by other owls in a tree village designed by owl architects and built by owl builders carrying little hods in their tiny owl hands. Maybe in the book this could work. Onscreen? Not so much.
Most References To Other Movies: Repo Men
Controversy surrounded this reasonably entertaining sci-fi movie after it became apparent that it bore some similarity to Repo! The Genetic Opera, though according to this HuffPo article this has been amicably resolved by all involved. Certainly the increased possibility of artificial organs being developed and then sold on by private insurance companies in the US is bound to get many writers’ minds working: I wonder how many thousands of potential novels and screenplays withered on the vine as Repo! and The Repossession Mambo (the novel on which Repo Men was based) were released. Nevertheless, the makers of Repo Men certainly owe huge debts to Martin Scorsese and Nick Pileggi for the framing device and freeze-frames they incorporated from Goodfellas, Chan-wook Park for the Oldboy-esque action scene that occurs close to the end of the movie, and Terry Gilliam for… well, let’s just say the ending seems rather familiar. As I say, I kinda liked it: the gore was plentiful and amusing, and the leads (Jude Law, Forest Whitaker and Liev Schreiber) were very entertaining. It did feel like it ran down some well-trod paths, though.
Most Amusing Number of Publicity Photos of a Director Pointing And Thinking And Holding A Camera: Alejandro González Iñárritu
While looking for publicity shots of the dirge-like Biutiful, I noticed that director Iñárritu (as he now prefers to be called — thanks to ace Tweeter and film blogger @iambags for spotting that) crops up in a surprising number of pictures looking all handsome and directory. Almost as many as lead actor Javier Bardem in fact. Not as many as Michael Bay, but then Bay has made more movies, so you’d expect that. I’m going to keep an eye on this race to become IMDb’s most photographed and photogenic director.
Most Frustrating Directorial Decision of the Year: The Last Exorcism
This Eli-Roth produced horror “documentary” featured a terrific breakout performance from Patrick Fabian — a familiar face who has had recurring roles on Veronica Mars and Big Love but has never headed up a film before — but sadly director Daniel Stamm let him down after an hour of commanding the screen. Whether through poor editing or a lack of money or some other unforeseen and unavoidable problem, the final half an hour, with all of its craziness and weird reveals, happen in a blur of badly-chosen camera angles and looping. The biggest emotional moments come at the end, and hopefully would have shown Fabian at his best, but the camera barely focuses on his face in the last act, with his moment of revelation seemingly shot from under his armpit and his final lines almost inaudible due to some muddy sound design. It’s a shame, as up to that point he had made a huge impression. Let’s hope the success of this low-budget movie convinces someone else to give Fabian another chance at the prize.
Worst Loss Of Superproducer Mojo: Jerry Bruckheimer
Two expensive potential tentpoles (Sorcerer’s Apprentice and Prince of Persia, obvs) crawled towards the edge of profitability thanks to worldwide box office, but it’s fair to say Bruckheimer won’t be trying to keep these frankly half-hearted franchises going. What’s worse is he only seems to have Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides lined up for next year, and though the Captain Jack Sparrow fan in me is excited (perhaps not as excited as the Elliott & Rossio fan in me, but still), it’s directed by Rob Marshall. I honestly don’t know what Jer (as he likes me to call him) was thinking. Let’s hope the main man gets his mojo back soon. Or hires Elliott and Rossio to write all of his movies, what with them being totes awesome and all that.
And with that little expression of hope, that we can see a franchise come back on track just through the power of the writer, I’ll leave it there. Thanks to everyone who has responded to these posts: your contributions and comments have been greatly appreciated. Let’s hope we have a thrilling 2011 in movies.
