2011 Best Reviewed Movies (Page #5)

Beginners explores the hilarity, confusion, and surprises of love through the evolving consciousness of Oliver (Ewan McGregor). Oliver meets the irreverent and unpredictable Anna (Mélanie Laurent) only months after his father Hal (Christopher Plummer) has passed away. This new love floods Oliver with memories of his father who – following 44 years of marriage – came out of the closet at age 75 to live a full, energized, and wonderfully tumultuous gay life.

"Tucker and Dale vs. Evil" is a genre-bending indie horror comedy. Labine stars as Dale alongside Tudyk as Tucker, two good-natured hillbillies mistakenly accused of being psycho killers by a group of college kids camping at the same lake where the hillbillies have just acquired a dilapidated cabin as their "summer home."

Carlos Galindo (Demián Bichir), a simple, decent, 40-year-old Mexican man, doesn't ask much from life - just to keep tending the yards of L.A.'s wealthy and to give his estranged son Luis (Jose Julian) a better life than he had. But when a business opportunity that would have allowed him to take control of his destiny is stolen from under his nose, his life is thrown into chaos.

The story of a Midwestern family in the 1950's. The film follows the life journey of the eldest son, Jack, through the innocence of childhood to his disillusioned adult years as he tries to reconcile a complicated relationship with his father (Brad Pitt). Jack (played as an adult by Sean Penn) finds himself a lost soul in the modern world, seeking answers to the origins and meaning of life while questioning the existence of faith.

A young communications director works for a fast-rising presidential candidate. During the course of the campaign, the idealistic young man falls prey to the backstabbing and other dirty trickery of seasoned rival politicos.

At the height of the Cold War, Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), a.k.a. MI6 and code-named the Circus, has been compromised. An ever-watchful former top lieutenant and career spy, George Smiley (Gary Oldman), is called out of retirement by the government to help identify and track a suspected mole at the top of the agency. The list of suspects is narrowed to five men. Even before the startling truth is revealed, the emotional and physical tolls on the players enmeshed in the deadly international spy game will escalate…

In the story, Jane Eyre (Mia Wasikowska) flees Thornfield House, where she works as a governess for wealthy Edward Rochester (Michael Fassbender). As she reflects upon the people and emotions that have defined her, it is clear that the isolated and imposing residence – and Mr. Rochester’s coldness – have sorely tested the young woman’s resilience, forged years earlier when she was orphaned. She must now act decisively to secure her own future and come to terms with the past that haunts her – and the terrible secret that Mr. Rochester is hiding and that she has uncovered.

An ex-Marine haunted by a tragic past, Tommy Riordan returns to his hometown of Pittsburgh and enlists his father, a recovered alcoholic and his former coach, to train him for an MMA tournament awarding the biggest purse in the history of the sport. As Tommy blazes a violent path towards the title prize, his brother, Brendan, a former MMA fighter unable to make ends meet as a public school teacher, returns to the amateur ring to provide for his family. Even though years have passed, recriminations and past betrayals keep Brendan bitterly estranged from both Tommy and his father.

But when Brendan’s unlikely rise as an underdog sets him on a collision course with Tommy, the two brothers must finally confront the forces that tore them apart, all the while waging the most intense, winner-takes-all battle of their lives.

In the early summer of 1956, 23 year-old Colin Clark, just down from Oxford and determined to make his way in the film business, worked as a lowly assistant on the set of The Prince and the Showgirl, the film that united Sir Laurence Olivier with Marilyn Monroe, who, whilst shooting, was also on honeymoon with her new husband, the playwright Arthur Miller.

Mickey Haller (Matthew McConaughey) is a Los Angeles criminal defense attorney who operates out of the back of his Lincoln Continental sedan. Haller has spent most of his career defending garden-variety criminals, until he lands the case of a lifetime: defending a Beverly Hills playboy accused of murder. But the seemingly straightforward case suddenly develops into a deadly game of survival for Haller.