I’m trying something new this year. I’ve traditionally ranked my end of year list top to bottom, and it’s been incredibly difficult, not to mention a false, unfair measure. This year, I’m grouping them by star-rating.
I’ve been using Flixster for the past 1.5 years, but this year, I’ve made a conscious effort—for every movie I’ve seen this year that’s in Flixster’s database—to add a star rating, and write a review; be it a sentence or a rare, wordy exposition. Note that this will also contain random, older movies I’ve seen at home, etc throughout the year.
One thing I’m noticing now is how extremely difficult it has been for me to award something 5 stars. It’s silly in retrospect, but shows I don’t completely believe in my ratings, or am afraid to say, “hey, I think this is worth 5 stars and found basically nothing I didn’t love about it”. Considering the extremely subjective nature of it all, I don’t know why, so I’ll have to normalise some of that now.
On the flipside to that, you’ll also notice how rather positive I am with my ratings in general, because, heck, I love my movies, dammit! At least in the context of everything else on here, it can be taken as relative.
Oh, and just to clarify, these are movies I’ve seen at the cinemas in the year of 2011, in Australia and Austin, during SXSW. While looking back, I was surprised that some of these weren’t 2010 releases, but then remembered Australia’s backward nature in receiving them.
I’ve written a relatively large amount about movies in 2011 across Twitter, posts on this blog, Flixster, and the /r/movies subreddit, so this is simply going to be a list.
Here they are, grouped by star-rating out of 5, and alphabetically within the groupings.
A Separation
Black Swan
Le Quattro Volte
Midnight in Paris
Senna
Take Shelter
The Tree of Life
Warrior
We Need to Talk About Kevin
127 Hours
Apart
Barney’s Version
Drive
Incendies
Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
Never Let Me Go
Project Nim
Rabbit Hole
Submarine
Super 8
The Beaver
The Hunter
The Ides of March
The Skin I Live In
13 Assassins
Armadillo
Attack the Block
Bill Cunningham New York
blacktino
Burning Man
Contagion
Fast Five
Hanna
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2
Hobo With a Shotgun
Jane Eyre
Kumaré
Lebanon
Life in a Day
Martha Marcy May Marlene
Meek’s Cutoff
Melancholia
Moneyball
My Afternoons with Marguerite
Natural Selection
Secretariat
Snowtown
Somewhere
Tangled
The Adventures of Tintin
The Forgiveness of Blood
The Lincoln Lawyer
Thor
Transformers: Dark of the Moon
True Grit
Tyrannosaur
Wasted on the Young
X-Men: First Class
Beginners
Biutiful
Black Venus (Venus Noire)
Captain America: The First Avenger
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Crazy, Stupid, Love.
Hereafter
Horrible Bosses
Paul
Red State
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Sound of My Voice
Sleeping Beauty
Tabloid
The Adjustment Bureau
The Debt
The Eye of the Storm
The Fighter
The Green Hornet
The Guard
Unstoppable
A Year in Mooring
Cowboys and Aliens
Battle: Los Angeles
Happy, Happy
Insidious
Real Steel
Source Code
Sucker Punch
Terri
The Hangover Part II
Toomelah
Arthur
Bridesmaids
Ceremony
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
The Tourist
Unknown
In Time
Limitless
Green Lantern
c0up 
Last year I made an effort to watch some of your top ranked movies…and failed. A resolution for next year is to watch all of your 5 star rated movies. So far I’ve seen 1!
Bless, Christopher <3Your mileage may vary, especially on Le Quattro Volte and The Tree of life, but let me know how yo go!
I posted this on FB but I srsly dont understand the hype around "Drive". Seemed very slow and boring for me. But maybe it was a "dark and different" movie.
@NJ: It was super dark, and the Driver’s character was one of the most interesting of the year. He’s essentially trying to be a superhero and everything to everyone; the way he dresses, acts, the mask / non-mask, etc, but he’s not the best at switching and compartmentalising the two!Heh, you say slow and boring, and I remember thinking, the pace is perfect.There’s the whole silence aspect to it, which I thought worked well, and the way he’s directed it, with basically every frame looking so hot!
Wow, you really do watch a lot of movies.Like the Bridester, I think i’ll start using your lists as a starting point when looking for movies to watch, and leave behind good ol’ Margaret and David.
@tim: thanks, Timbaland! I’m hoping to get a show on ABC too, but I’ll just talk to myself in a female outfit
And you’ll have to smoke a lot, wear a lot of make up and give 4 stars to anything ‘heartwarming’
I’m ok with all those things!