The Year in Film:
American Gothic
It was a bad year for America at the movies. Of course, that’s rarely not the case in these days of CGI disaster porn and 3D monstrosity. Still, the threats facing the nation in 2011 movies were exceptional.
Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion sent a plague across the land, with only Matt Damon’s plucky determination and Laurence Fishburne’s cool composure standing between the easily panicked populace and both total decimation and a skeevy Jude Law. The dull-eyed ambition of James Franco doomed humanity in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. An alien armada in Battle: Los Angeles blew up a good part of the Southland, either a natural-resources grab or just for kicks. And Transformers: Dark of the Moon made Chicago feel special, finally noticed by Hollywood long enough for Michael Bay to annihilate it…
You can read my article “American Gothic,” and all the gloomy portents it contains, over at PopMatters.
Chris Barsanti 