Critical Week(s): Tis the season

Frankly nothing kicks off the year quite as satisfyingly as a silly Nicolas Cage movie, and Season of the Witch is one of his most pointlessly ridiculous films in years. It's also strangely entertaining, in a "what were they thinking?" sort of way. Much less enjoyable is the year's first real blockbuster, Seth Rogen's take on The Green Hornet, which has the distinct ill-conceived whiff of Wild Wild West about it.

Otherwise, the last few weeks were spent catching up on awards-consideration screeners like Last Train Home (a remarkable Chinese doc that made it into my top 10), Son of Babylon (a terrific Iraqi road movie), GasLand (one of the most cleverly rage-inducing docs in years), Freakonomics (the inventive anthology doc), Aftershock (China's overwrought, big-budget epic hope for this year's foreign film Oscar), and Tiny Furniture (a clever but indulgent indie comedy). I also took the chance to revisit some of my favourites from the year on DVD, including The Kids Are All Right and The King's Speech, both of which hold up - and then some - on second viewing.

Back in the screening saddle, we've had Keanu Reeves in the existential rom-com caper movie Henry's Crime, the hilariously silly animated comedy Gnomeo & Juliet, the superb drama Ballast (which wowed Sundance audiences, erm, three years ago but is only just now coming to the UK), the freaky French homage to Italian giallo cinema Amer, and the rather annoying mock-doc Midgets vs Mascots, which aimed for Borat but comes across as sub-Jackass.

Up next for critics are Ron Howard's comedy The Dilemma, the British comedy Anuvahood, the architectural doc How Much Does Your Building Weigh Mr Foster, something called Oranges and Sunshine, and one of my most-anticipated films of the year: Werner Herzog's 3D doc Cave of Forgotten Dreams.

Welcome to Shadows Volume 27

Yes, with the start of 2011, Shadows on the Wall heads into its 27th year. We launched in print in 1985 (Vol 1) and here we are.

As it's been a couple of years since the last website makeover, the homepage has a new look, complete with a magazine-style cover that will be updated every week (well, most weeks is probably more realistic). And I'll post each cover here on the blog before it goes live.

Otherwise, I'm making no resolutions for this year. Here's hoping it's a happy one...

Rich.

The 30th Shadows Awards

Happy New Year from London! I somehow managed to see 484 films in 2010, and here are my best and worst of the year. And if this isn't enough, there are longer lists and rather a lot more of them on the 30th Shadows Awards page...

TOP 10 FILMS:

1. The Kids Are All Right (Lisa Cholodenko)
2. Of Gods and Men (Xavier Beauvois)
3. Inception (Christopher Nolan)
4. Toy Story 3 (Lee Unkrich)
5. The Arbor (Clio Barnard)
6. 127 Hours (Danny Boyle)
7. Last Train Home (Fan Lixin)
8. The King's Speech (Tom Hooper)
9. The Secret in Their Eyes (Juan Jose Campanella)
10. Restrepo (Tim Hetherington, Sebastian Junger)

DIRECTOR:

1. Christopher Nolan (Inception)
2. Bong Joon-ho (Mother)
3. Danny Boyle (127 Hours)
4. Clio Barnard (The Arbor)
5. Lucrecia Martel (The Headless Woman)

WRITER:

1. Michael Arndt (Toy Story 3)
2. Lisa Cholodenko, Stuart Blumberg (The Kids Are All Right)
3. Christopher Nolan (Inception)
4. Xavier Beauvois, Etienne Comar (Of Gods and Men)
5. Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network)

ACTRESS:

1. Rosamund Pike (Barney's Version, Made in Dagenham)
2. Annette Bening (The Kids Are All Right)
3. Maria Onetto (The Headless Woman)
4. Jennifer Lawrence (Winter's Bone)
5. Tilda Swinton (I Am Love)

ACTOR:

1. Colin Firth (The King's Speech)
2. James Franco (127 Hours, Howl, Eat Pray Love, Date Night)
3. Edgar Ramirez (Carlos)
4. Ricardo Darin (The Secret in Their Eyes, Carancho)
5. Riz Ahmed (Four Lions)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS:

1. Olivia Williams (The Ghost)
2. Mila Kunis (Black Swan, Date Night)
3. Melissa Leo (The Fighter, Conviction)
4. Ruth Sheen (Another Year)
5. Mia Wasikowska (The Kids Are All Right, Alice in Wonderland)

SUPPORTING ACTOR:

1. Jason Isaacs (Green Zone, Skeletons, Harry Potter 7)
2. Andrew Garfield (The Social Network, Never Let Me Go)
3. Christian Bale (The Fighter)
4. Mark Ruffalo (The Kids Are All Right, Shutter Island)
5. Geoffrey Rush (The King's Speech)

WORST FILMS:

1. Old Dogs (Walt Becker)
2. All About Steve (Phil Traill)
3. Grown Ups (Dennis Dugan)
4. Jonah Hex (Jimmy Hayward)
5. Vampires Suck (Jason Friedberg, Aaron Seltzer)

Critical Week(s): Family reunion

That slightly too high-octane cast reunites once again for Little Fockers, the second Meet the Parents sequel with a whiff of desperation about it. The cast makes it watchable, but the story is episodic and rather joyless. That sentence also describes the other late-screened Christmas blockbuster, Jack Black's takeover of Gulliver's Travels. And it's not far off the strange concoction that united Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp on screen in The Tourist, also screened a little too late to review in print.

Smaller British titles included the rather oddly truncated Age of Heroes, reuniting Danny Dyer and Sean Bean for what is intended to be a trilogy about the creation of the SAS, and Wake Wood, an enjoyably offbeat creepy-village horror movie.

Critics also got to indulge in the joys (and some disappointments) of year-end awards contenders like the Coen brothers' True Grit, Nicole Kidman in Rabbit Hole, Paul Giamatti in Barney's Version, Reese Witherspoon in How Do You Know, Robert DeNiro in Stone, Kevin Spacey in Casino Jack and the unforgettable killing fields doc Enemies of the People. There are still a few of these to come.

So my votes are already in for the London Critics' Circle Film Awards - the nominations will be announced tomorrow. And my voting deadline is this coming weekend for the Online Film Critics Society nominations. I also plan to have my top 10s (aka The Shadows Awards) ready to unfurl next week, so I can sit back and look forward to the awards mania leading up to Oscar night. For which the stars of Little Fockers probably needn't worry about preparing a thank you speech.

Requisite Blog Photo: Trapped in Lilliput

Critical Week(s): Guilty pleasures

It's been awhile since the last entry in this blog, mainly due to the fact that I was in Los Angeles for two weeks visiting friends and family. I also managed to see five films while I was out there, including the almost criminally enjoyable Burlesque, Cher's first film in seven years, which she steals effortlessly from first-time actor Christina Aquilera. It's bad, but it knows it. The other guilty pleasure was Unstoppable, Tony Scott's true-life runaway train action movie, which is lent gravitas by Denzel Washington but never tries to be anything more than a roaring thriller. I also saw Morning Glory (good undemanding fun), Fair Game (slightly too-demanding drama) and Tangled (enjoyably unambitious).

Before leaving London, there were screenings of: the Jake Gyllenhaal / Anne Hathaway romance Love & Other Drugs, which I really enjoyed (and which was followed by a lively interview with Jake, Anne and director Ed Zwick); Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, which was more emotional than expected; An Ordinary Execution, a darkly involving French drama about the last days of Stalin; and Men on the Bridge, an intriguing drama about people working on the Bosphorus.

Since returning home, we've had: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the enjoyable but childish third Narnia adventure; Tron: Legacy, the disappointing 28-years-later sequel;Cell 211, the rightly acclaimed gritty Spanish prison drama; and Norwegian Wood, a moody, gorgeously filmed drama from Japan.

And coming up this week are The Tourist (Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp), Rabbit Hole (Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart), Barney's Version (Paul Giamatti and Dustin Hoffman), Gulliver's Travels (Jack Black), and two films I know nothing about: The Wake Wood and Age of Heroes. Not to mention a growing stack of awards-contender DVDs I have to watch. I think I need another holiday.

Requisite Blog Photo: Into Narnia