The Favorite Films Of My Lifetime: 2011

This was the year that was supposed to just be the summer to get through in order to get to summer 2012 which was supposed to be the real big deal.  Well, summer 2011 turned out to be pretty great in the big time pictures department while 2012 wound up severely lacking.  The awful Green Lantern aside, Summer 2011 had some great superhero pictures to boot.  This was an Academy Awards year that disappointed plenty of people and many didn't care for the "cute" movie winning Best Picture.  Still a more impressive movie than King's Speech (ok, ok, I'm done harping on that haha).  I had an absolutely horrible time trying to cut this damn thing to 6.  I had a hard enough time getting it to 10 prior to that.  When I had it to 8, every movie was passing my relevancy to myself test that I've been using when decision making.  What makes it equally hard is that we're not that far removed from this particular year and have a passage of time that may make these cuts harder.

My 2013: 10 Best or Favorite New Characters In 2013

In this portion we discuss the characters that quite delighted me and that I may remember most glancing back to 2013.  Whether it be what they did, contributed to a movie's plot or someone just gave a terrific performance these folks just stuck in my mind the best.  This list was actually quite a bit tougher to edit down than I had thought.  All of them will be in alphabetical by character name until then end where I present the absolutely best and most memorable character of 2013 (that one was easy).

FURIOUS RANKING

 

So, I came into this series a nay-sayer.  As a longtime film aficionado, I scoffed and felt myself above a series like The Fast & The Furious.  It was junk, garbage, for morons, bros, idiots.  It was stupid and Americans were dumb for dumping their money into it.  All these presumptions I could make from only having seen one film in the entire franchise.

Forgive me, I was wrong.

REVIEW: FURIOUS 6

Furious 6

2013

Director: Justin Lin

Starring: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne THE ROCK Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Sung Kang, Jordana Brewster, Gal Gadot, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Gina Carano (please take this movie and retire from acting with it), Luke Evans

Rated PG-13

You’ve got some serious balls, man.

                        ~Letty Ortiz

The Fast & The Furious franchise stays the course in its newest installment.  All the good will from Fast Five is carried over.  This film escalates the action by going bigger and taking stakes up a notch as it rightfully should.  I don’t think it sails by Fast Five, but it manages to come up to par with it.  And…it’s a one damn fine thrill ride of a movie.

FAST & FURIOUS RETROSPECTIVE - PART VII: FAST FIVE

Fast Five

2011

Director:  Justin Lin

Starring:  Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster, Dwayne Johnson, Sung Kang, Tyrese Gibson, Chris Bridges, Matt Schulze, Gal Gadot, Elsa Pataky, Joaquim de Almeida

Rated PG-13

Running ain’t freedom.  You should know that

                        ~Dominic Toretto

It took 5 tries, but the Fast & Furious franchise put out a great movie!  And a super awesome one at that!  Ditching the forced racing aspects in favor of a pure action movie with the guise of a heist plot, the series is able to fully breathe and become a summer popcorn thrill ride that allows you to enjoy and not care too much about detailed semantics of its plot.  The film boasts an ultimate team up of who’s who from the entire series, giving those who’ve been paying attention some rewarding character moments while at the same time not reminding the viewer of the shortcomings of those previous films.  The cast gels and carries this thing along quite nicely.