TRAVIS BYRAM'S MOVIE REVIEWS

It's that time of year again, when critics announce their ten favorite films of the year!  I'm unfortunately at a disadvantage, for the year of 2011 I only saw about 20 movies in the theaters, where pro-critics see about 80-90 movies.  2011 was a GREAT year for cinema, truly marking some of the best movies I've seen a while.  You got movies about Marilyn Monroe, a man trying to find his coma-stricken wife's lover and a whole lot of movies about Paris.  Go figure.  Here are my top five films of the year, some others that didn't quite make the cut, and some movies I wished I just hadn't seen.  I plan on seeing other 2011 films before Oscar season, like "The Artist," "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" and "The Iron Lady," but since I'll be seeing them in 2012 they won't necessarily count for this list. 5.   MONEYBALL Just like with last year's "The Social Network" Aaron Sorkin writes another incredible scr...

Had I not read Sara Gruen's electrifying novel of the 1930's Depression era Circus there was no chance I was going to catch "Water for Elephants," what with the "dude from 'Twilight'" Robert Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon, looks like a chick-flick right? Perhaps the chick-flick part is true, I must say that about the movie, the audience was about 80% elderly folks, probably 90& women. I read the novel when I was in late 6th grade mostly due to the lure of the critical appraisal the book had sprawled all over it's back cover and the look of a man entering a circus tent. I read the thing in a matter of days. It was so captivating: The setting of the Depression era circus, the sinister villain August, the enchanting heroine Marlena, and the down-on-his-luck underdog Pollack Jacob Jankowski who, after his parent's death joins the circus...it all seemed like a larger than life tale. And who could forget the humor of the older Jacob, who rec...