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

Critical Week(s): In the picture

Yes, as usual at a Sunday morning press screening, I was placed into the world of Megamind yesterday morning. And the film wasn't too bad either. It's been a busy week or so since the London Film Festival wrapped up, as I've been catching up on screenings and doing rather a lot of writing as I get ready to take a break next week. And it's been such a strange mix of films that I've stopped trying to get in the right mood before a screening. Not that I really do that...

I'll start with the high-minded fare - the better quality movies that make me happy to do this job. I quite enjoyed Clint Eastwood's new drama Hereafter, a moving and thoroughly involving drama that's an intriguing departure for him as a director (and for Peter Morgan as a writer). Peter Weir's The Way Back is a beautifully made epic adventure with an amazing story and a solid cast. Fernando Trueba's Chico & Rita is a stunningly animated epic romance from Cuba that really gets under the skin. Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu's new film Biutiful is a little more problematic - Javier Bardem's performance is razor sharp, but the film's a little too dense and gloomy. Even more troubling is Rowan Joffe's remake of Brighton Rock, inventively filmed but too bleak to connect with.

There were also a few ambitious little films. One documentary held the interest effortlessly while telling a disturbing story: Into Eternity is an ethereal exploration of how we protect the distant future from our toxic nuclear waste. The internet thriller Chatroom is a great idea but doesn't quite work, while the Indonesian war drama Red & White is inspirational but derivative.

Moving to the more low-brow offerings, we had Robert Downey Jr and Zach Galifianakis on the road in the angry and strangely unfunny Due Date, which will no doubt make more money than every other film I've mentioned today. Zombies of Mass Destruction is a riotous satire of both zombie movies and American politics. And then there was Jackass 3D, which was exactly what we expected from these boneheads. Pity they didn't let us put ourselves into a still from that one!

Only a few screenings ahead for me this week: Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway star in Love and Other Drugs; Cher and Christina Aguilera give it their all in Burlesque; An Ordinary Execution is about the last days of Stalin; Men on the Bridge is a documentary about people working on the Bosphorus; and then there's a little movie called Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I.