Months in Review: Films of July & August (part 2)

With a bit of a delay, below is the second part of my impressions of the new-to-me films I watched in August.

GAME NIGHT (2018) [ 3.5/5 ]

A truly wonderful cast delivers in spades in the often-hilarious Game Night from directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein. What impresses most for a movie like this is the directorial prowess with which it’s filmed, adding substance to an already funny film. In the lead Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams offer chemistry that works both romantically and comically, stealing the show with a couple of stand-out scenes that show how insanely talented these two actors are when it comes to finding the right comedic rhythms.

The Best Films of 2011 (updated)

It comes 10 months into 2012 but, for the first time, I am confident enough to make my own list of the “best” films of 2011.

Imagine how important it was for me to wait until now to publish this list, that the film that eventually ends up at the top is one that I only managed to watch 3 weeks ago. Without it, this list would have been a crime against my own taste.

Instead of giving you a top 10 or a top 20, I simply give you a run-down of all of the films that received, at the very least, a 4/5 (very good) in my rating system. The result is that there are 17 films out of the almost 100 films from 2011 that I managed to watch, 11 of which received a 4/5, five films received a 4.5/5 and only one received the very rare 5/5.

Despite still missing some highly praised films released the previous solar year (it is impossible to cover them all), I now give you my favorite films of 2011 (and why they are) when we are already in October 2012:

Senna and I, my tearful relationship to the idol and the film

It was a typical Sunday morning. I was either 8 or 9 years old. My dad had woken me up so I could join him in our black leather couch. In front was the tv on channel 10. Another race of the F1 Championship was about to start, a sport my dad had taught me to appreciate from an early age.

I probably started watching F1 when I was 5, circa 1990. Obviously I did not have the capacity to have an informed opinion of the sport just yet. What was clear, even to my young eyes, was that there were two pilots battling for the championships every season. Back in the late 80s and early 90s you could either be a fan of Alain Prost or Ayrton Senna, there were no others. The first was the cool, calculated champion. The most disciplined guy in the sport. The second was the exciting, unpredictable and incredibly talented Ayrton Senna. It was a rivalry that exceeded the track. Prost and Senna did not like each other. They had been teammates and bad ones at that and the two never reconciled. My dad was a Prost fan, and I immediately had a liking for Senna.