Best genre films of 2011 from the Arrow in the Head News Staff

Last Updated on August 3, 2021

The Arrow in the Head NEWS STAFF has picked their best genre flicks of 2011. Enter the list to discover their choices! And
give us your TOP 10 of 2011 here!

ATTACK THE BLOCK (JARED PACHECHO)

Like many of you I kept hearing amazing things about Joe Cornish’s ATTACK THE BLOCK. Actually… I don’t remember hearing a single negative thing about it. But we’ve been fooled by that before, haven’t we? So personally I tried to keep my expectations of ATTACK THE BLOCK low, as to not be disappointed. Let me tell you… disappointed I was not.

What is it exactly movies set out to do? Entertain? Inspire? Tell a story? … Well ATTACK THE BLOCK nails em all! Don’t get me wrong, this year had a lot of winners but when I thought about it the only viable contender to come to mind was Cornish’s sci-fi romp. You’re pulled in from the very beginning and you hang on to the very end. I’ve seen this flick countless times already and I can’t remember the last movie I could say that about.

If you want to break it down to the nitty gritty ATTACK THE BLOCK even scores below the surface. The writing, the direction… even the acting is phenomenal. There’s a reason this thing scored as much praise as it has. Believe!

JAKE DEE (DRIVE)

As the 2011 calendar comes to a close, it’s time to award our favorite film of the year. My fellow Arrow in the Headers have cited some very solid work international work, and even though my choice had a Dane at the helm, it’s indisputably the coolest American movie to come out in quite some time. Perhaps a decade. Maybe since PULP FICTION. The movie I’m talking about is of course Nicolas Winding Refn’s existential neo-noir DRIVE.

I know DRIVE hardly registers as horror per se, but it is a genre flick of sorts, and I’d argue that there’s not only more bloodletting in this movie than a vast majority of out-and-out horror joints, it’s also handled the most viscerally, the most emotionally. When we see violence in DRIVE it makes a deep impression, and that is a direct result of the emotional heft brought to the table by the characters (the scenes where Driver shows down with Nino is actually quite eerie as well). But aside from its justified codification, the movie is simply the best I’ve seen this year. The look, the sound (awesome soundtrack), the story, the acting…all harmonize in a confluence of brilliance. Ryan Gosling anchors the show with as compelling a turn I’ve seen all year, lending a brusque take-no-shit exterior with a soft, heroic inner-core. Here’s a man you don’t want to cross, but if on your good side, will never hang you out to dry. I’ll be honest, I wanted to be Driver for about a month after seeing the film (twice in theaters mind you)…fuck I even stole a raft of toothpicks from a local Cuban restaurant. Yes I did!

Gosling aside, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the against-type work of DRIVE’s supporting cast, especially the principal heavy, Albert Brooks. Here’s a man whose onscreen persona has not much changed in 30 years or so; he’s known for biting comedies and stand up specials. Now he flips the script and turns in a frightening role as Bernie Rose, gangster extraordinaire. An supporting Oscar nod should be the very least dude scores for his work here. And while I wouldn’t go that far with the other supporters, they are no less believable than the rest. Carey Mulligan has a vulnerability that makes you want to wrap her up in a bear-hug and squeeze. Oscar Isaac’s work was good enough to land him a follow-up role in the Coen brothers new movie. Ron Perlman has scene-chewing fun as a Jewish gangster trying to hit the big time. All of these characters mesh well and bounce off each other in a way that feels authentic, despite how stylized-cool Refn’s look of the film maintains. Tie it all together with that 80s retro synth-soundtrack (“Real Hero” by College and “Under Your Spell” by desire), and this movie will easily DRIVE you to places you’ve never been. A true great!

COLD FISH (MARCEY PAPANDREA)

2011 saw the release of some fantastic genre films, however for me personally it wasn’t ones from the US that really left their mark on me, it was ones from overseas. The strangest experience I had was with Sion Sono’s COLD FISH, and it made the top of my list of genre films for the year. This could possibly be one of the most unique films involving a serial killer. I have not in my life seen anything quite like this and I am probably not going to unless Sono’s name is attached. This was actually my first venture into his works, and it was a great place to start.

The film centers around a family who get involved with another family due to their troubled daughter and both heads of the family own Tropical Fish stores. But as one man slowly gets involved with the other, it becomes apparent this man is not at all what he seems on the surface and he is in for the wildest ride, as are the audience. It sounds strange just describing it in its simplest of terms, but it is so much more and so much more off beat. I really hate to divulge too much because going in without much prior knowledge will have this film really kicking your ass.

The visuals of this film are brilliant; Sono is an extremely talented director. The film has a very odd opening and we don’t even get the title screen till 20 minutes in. It goes for almost 2 and a half hours but you could have sworn it was only 90 minutes long. It flies by as does the world you are draw into and it won’t give you back. It will leave you reeling as it finishes and for days this will stick with you. The performances are all fantastic, every single member of the cast went above and beyond all expectations and I applaud them for what they achieved. COLD FISH is a must see and easily one of the best genre releases for the year and just one of the best overall films of the year

I SAW THE DEVIL (ERIC WALKUSKI)

There are many great moments in Kim Jee-Woon’s uncompromising, twisted, crazily entertaining thriller I SAW THE DEVIL, but one of my favorites is a little one, where the villain, a heartless serial killer named Kyung-chul (played superbly by Choi Min-sik), groggily wakes in a shallow grave after being handed a thorough ass-kicking by the husband – a detective – of one of his victims. A stack of money is left by his side and he is completely free to go on his way. He laughs at the absurdity of the situation, but he’s also clearly unnerved, realizing that he may have just bumped heads with someone crazier than he is.

Absurdity reigns in I SAW THE DEVIL; not absurdity of the abstract kind, but the same absurdity that rules our daily lives and makes reading the newspaper a joyless trip through the muck. (Some of the bad guys in this movie are really bad, the type whose real-life counterparts regularly make us gag with disgust.) But because Kim is such a skilled craftsman, the film’s brutality is almost electric, and we find it impossible to look away, even when supremely terrible things are occurring. There’s almost certainly no other director working today who attacks his sequences of violence with such ferocious grace; it’s like Kim is conducting ballets of bloodshed. Anyone who has experienced I SAW THE DEVIL won’t soon forget the massacre in the taxi cab, the greenhouse fight, the cop’s siege on the mansion, or that coldblooded finale – and there are a half-dozen similarly gripping scenes that also take up prominent space in the memory bank. Kim isn’t just an action technician, however.

He wrings seriously intense performances out of his fine cast; Choi Min-sik, whom we fondly recall as the noble and sympathetic hero in OLDBOY, plays a psychopath so loathsome here that only a great actor could make Kyung-chul as enjoyable to watch as he is. And Lee Byung-hun, as the cop risking his sanity, career and life in the name of revenge, is utterly perfect; the actor’s solemn visage conveys both his humanity and the dread that he’s on the verge of losing it. The two leads, with their director, take the viewer on a harrowing, queasily thrilling ride; a tale of good vs. evil that ultimately ends with both sides bloody and broken.