There were some supposed protagonists I loathed this year — everyone in Transformers: Dark of the Moon, that asshole narcissist Hal Jordan, the annoying Jack Sparrow — but there were plenty who showed honorable and, yes, badass traits. 2011 brought a few real American heroes (and from parts elsewhere), both in personality and actions. One doesn’t need superpowers or a gun to be a hero, but, as shown by a few choices I made, those simple good traits. And, even if one’s not the greatest of people, you can still be a great hero, as shown by the a*hole category that kicks off the list…

Some other sites or site runners may look down on lists, but those people are what are known as no-fun douche bags, because really, lists are awesome. They are short, easy to digest little morsels that you can wash down with a carbonated beverage, argue about, and take recommendations from. If you don’t like lists, you are worse than Hitler. You know what’s better than Hitler? Lots of stuff, like peanut butter cookies with little peanut butter cups pressed into them. That, and also these ten action movies, which are my favorite for the year. Yeah, you’ll probably disagree, so comment below or get your own damn website.

Merry Christmas movie/TV/goat-cheese lovers! As part of our week-long gift guide extravaganza thingamajig we’ve put together a list of Blu-rays, DVD and a few other ideas for you to use when shopping for others or for putting on your own Christmas list. Or both. Some of the films below are from years past, but they all hit Blu-ray and/or DVD this year so they totally count for this gift guide. Click on the links to be magically transported to Amazon, AmazonUK and other places where lovely things can be found.

It’s a dangerous time of year for movie merchandise collectors – unsure what your partners, friends or family have decided to buy, and yet torn by the need to invest in the latest additions to the market, many collectors go stir-crazy and can be found roaming the streets of every major city in the snow, tragically calling out for Turbo-Man. So the best thing to do to avoid that entirely fictional eventuality is to make a list, check it twice… that sort of thing. Only instead of writing doing which children are naughty and which are nice (and probably inviting some suspicious inquiries from disgruntled and probably scared parents), populate said list with all of the goodies you require come December 25th. That way, you can spend the rest of November and December buying the cheaper things you want yourself – that’s right, leave the £650 Batman busts for Grandma to buy. With that in mind, here we go with this week’s triumvirate of movie merch goodness – at “pocket money” prices for pockets that are beginning to feel the festive pinch…

This is the best week of Blu-ray releases of 2011. Mark my words. No seriously, write it into your calendars. Between the breakout geek genre hit of the year, a Blu-ray set 65 million years in the making, a hero we can all believe in, creepy Finnish Santas, some Criterion confusion and Serbians doing terrible, terrible things to each other, this may be the most well-rounded, exciting week of releases we’ve seen in a long time. And it all begins with a must-have Pick of the Week… Attack the Block When Joe Cornish and Edgar Wright got together and decided to make a film about a group of hoodlums who face down an alien invasion, they probably didn’t think of you or me once. They didn’t know that they’d be custom-tailoring a sci-fi comedy for the nerd set that would ignite crowds and become the cult hit of this (and probably a few other years). They couldn’t have known. But they moved forward anyway, with a cast of unknowns and some killer creature designs, creating what could go down as the geek film of 2011. What’s more impressive about this release? Even though I didn’t receive a review copy, I’m making it pick of the week. Usually I’m a big whiney baby, who gets a bunch of review material, only to pick it apart week to week. But this week I’m putting my own money where my mouth is. In a week when competition comes from one of the longest awaited Blu

Labor Day marks the end of summer, and like every other year the online bitching and moaning about how bad of a summer it was at the movies has already begun. Twenty-one rejects got together for our bi-weekly bake sale/FSR office cleaning day, and we got to thinking. That’s just bullshit. Because there were actually some surprisingly solid and entertaining movies that hit theaters over the past four months. From comic book heroes that soared above the competition, to legendary directors who returned with their best work in decades, to R-rated comedies that made us wet ourselves, to prequels that proved going backwards can sometimes be a genius move, this summer offered up plenty of bang for the buck. So we each jotted down our five favorite films of the summer, assigned a point value to each rank (5 pts for 1st, 4 pts for 2nd, etc), and fed the raw data into our Commodore Vic-20 office computer. It finished processing eighteen hours later, and we ended up with the results below. So screw the haters… let’s embrace the movies that made us laugh, gasp, applaud, and sit up and take notice this past summer. Here are FSR’s Favorite Movies of Summer 2011!

The big budget 3D film Captain America: The First Avenger was one of the summer’s huge movies. Few remember, however, the 1992 direct-to-video release of Captain America, starring Matthew Salinger and Ronny Cox. Now, Fox has released a new DVD of that ’92 film for a new generation to enjoy… or make fun of… take your pick. So until Captain America: The First Avenger hits DVD in a couple months, you can enjoy this film with a drink in hand. It’s either that or a drinking game for The Vampire Diaries or Desperate Housewives this week. Trust me… this film will be more fun.

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Source Code…and, for that matter, Avatar. Recently in Hollywood, the physiological capabilities of our heroic protagonists have owed a great deal to modern medicine and technology, specifically from the military. Whether it be the unique opportunity provided for the paraplegic Jake Sully in Avatar, the incredible and unwanted responsibility of the nearly-dead Colter Stevens in Source Code, or the intravenous hyper-bulking of Steve Rogers in Captain America: The First Avenger, Hollywood has given us a spate of unlikely protagonists connected specifically by the fact that their initial disabilities provide for them a unique opportunity to become exceptionally enabled.

What is Movie News After Dark? Usually it’s a nightly movie news column that finds a way to be verbose. Tonight, not so much. But it’s still going to do the news. We begin tonight with a look at Rooney Mara’s Girl with the Dragon Tattoo meeting with what we can only assume is her parole officer. Those familiar with the original film or the books know how that relationship turns out. It makes my skin crawl — Rooney Mara is exactly the right amount of creepy.

What is Movie News After Dark? It is our nightly promise to keep you on the up-and-up in the world of movie news, interesting links, strange occurrences and developments in the world of Breaking Bad. It is also breaking new ground this evening by defying popular opinion on the new Batman movie and featuring stories about not one, but two pop stars! Tonight’s top story, a first look at pop star Rihanna in Battleship, making her big screen debut as a member of the Naval squad who happen upon some Transformers-esque alien tech in the middle of the ocean and are forced to battle it out via a decades-old board game. B2! Oh, you sunk my interest in her character.

Can you even imagine? A world overrun by Reject Reports? It’s like there’d be no movies, but we’d still report the weekend box office. While I stew over the quandary that’s just created, the world outside is still running smoothly. Blockbuster movies are still hitting. Small indie flicks are dividing audiences around certain parts of the country. Transformers are raking in a billion dollars. But this week, like it or not, belongs to the apes. Not Nim. I looked into it, and he’s safe, but the other ones are about to rise up and start fight back. Let’s see just how well those apes can handle themselves against the collective force of Smurfs, Captain America, and Jason Bateman.

Now, before I even get close to making a point about where the love is in the film critic world, I know how absurd it may seem to talk about love in a column about hate. But as the saying goes, it’s a fine line between love and hate and all of my rage comes from a place of love. I love movies and film and art and entertainment. I get enraged when things I love are threatened. Whether it’s Evil Dead or the actual theater-going experience, I try to only get mad for reasonable things. I mean, I get unreasonably mad, that’s true, but generally with good intent in my heart. But it seems these days it’s hip to be an asshole. It’s cool to shit on things before we know anything about them. It’s one thing to get mad early once in awhile – like against the new Evil Dead – but it’s another to get mad about everything early. It seems like every day my Twitter feed is full of two things. First, news. Second, people hating it. Where is the love?

What is Movie News After Dark? It is a nightly movie news column that is definitely holding a picture of Harvey Dent. Not because it has anything to do with The Dark Knight Rises, but because it still believes in Gotham’s white knight. As any seasoned FSR reader could tell you, we don’t really like running an abundance of set photos. Because, as any filmmaker or film purist might tell you, set photos are never delivered with the right context or polish, thus you’re not really getting a look at the finished project. That said, I’m sure I’d be run out of town if we didn’t at least mention the new Dark Knight Rises set photos floating around the web, as they reveal Batman and a fully costumed Bane (Tom Hardy) duking it out in the snowy streets of Pittsburgh. The lead image tonight is perhaps the best of them, but more can be found over at ComicBookMovie.com.

What is Movie News After Dark? It certainly is not a nightly movie news column produced in someone’s mother’s basement. However, it is written by a man with a strict no-pants policy. Now please go forth and enjoy tonight’s news with that in the back of your mind. We begin tonight with Chris Evans, Captain America, and some of his costume from The Avengers. Earlier today, Marvel Studios released a teaser for next summer’s big superhero team-up that also includes the final scene from Captain America: The First Avenger. It’s perhaps the scene you’d expect to lead us forward on this path, but if you haven’t seen Cap, then you might want to skip on down to the rest of tonight’s stories.

San Diego’s Comic-Con has come and gone once again with 2011 marking my fourth straight year of attendance. Living in Los Angeles, it’s easy for me to shoot down there for the weekend, but beyond that, I actually like Comic-Con, seemingly unlike the majority of my colleagues. It’s only been three days since the Con ended, which means the memories are still fresh and the bones still ache, so it’s a perfect time to pop some Advil and reflect on SDCC, on the good and on the bad. Without further words to flush out the introductory paragraphs on the homepage, I present to you Comic Con 2011: 10 Things I Liked, 5 I Didn’t.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly movie news and link collection column that is running late, but it’s not sorry about it. Tonight it went to see Cowboys & Aliens, which was a lot of fun. So deal with it. As you know, it is always worth the wait, baby. We begin tonight with the first look at Blake Lively and Chloe Moretz in Hick, which was released as part of the Toronto International Film Festival laying down its Gala and Special Presentation line-up. Lively is a drifter, Moretz is a runaway and in this scene, they’re moving quickly away from something. Perhaps its Lively’s cinematic career thus far. Someone should tell her there’s no escaping that wooden performance in Green Lantern.

On the final big movie day for Comic-Con, Cole, Robert and Jack had their sanity tested and almost passed. Proof of this came at the end of the night when all three ended up delirious in a fancy hotel room watching the Resident Evil movies. What on earth could cause anyone to watch those movies? Exactly. This year’s Con was subdued in a great way. The movie content suffered because of it (in terms of blockbusters and big moments) but it also triumphed because smaller films were able to have their day in the sun. Day One was full of great toys and strange Twilight moments, Day Two had R-rated pizza guys and a Spielbergian explosion, so what did Day Three have in store?

Listen, 3D is a contentious issue. Lots of people hate 3D and let it be known almost daily. I guess I get it. I mean, sometimes 3D is done poorly. Sometimes it’s annoying. It’s kind of a gimmick. Then again, there has been some good 3D, too. Transformers: Dark of the Moon looked amazing, Thor and Captain America were both well done, and plenty of movies from My Bloody Valentine 3D to the Final Destination films (recent ones) have been fun in 3D. We’re also moving into a new age of 3D, one where some of the most respected directors in the world are making 3D films. Peter Jackson, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Francis Ford Coppola, Ridley Scott, all the major players are going to play with 3D and many of them love it – like Ridley Scott who said, perhaps exaggeratedly, that he’d never make a film without 3D again. So, for now, 3D is here to stay and while it can be imperfect, often it’s fun. There is one instance, however, when the 3D kind of sucks no matter what.

He might not be the richest Avenger. It’s pretty hard to compete with the billions upon billions Tony Stark living on, but Captain America does hold the 2011 title. At least for opening weekend numbers. Captain America: The First Avenger topped Thor by just over $100,000 to have the biggest opening for a super hero movie this Summer. Yeah, that’s a pretty in-depth quantifier that only puts it in contention with three other movies, but when those movies are Thor ($65.7m opening), X-Men: First Class ($55.1m opening), and Green Lantern ($53.1m opening), you can go ahead and hand out the bragging rights. Of course, The First Avenger came nowhere near the opening numbers for either of the Iron Man movies, and Marvel and Disney may start moving towards pimping Robert Downey, Jr. in their Avengers marketing if they want next Summer’s film to have massive numbers.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr goes retro this week and injects himself with strange chemicals in an attempt to become a World War II era super soldier. Hop over to the Fat Guys at the Movies page to see if his physique has reached the pinnacle of that of Chris Evans from Captain America. After recovering from the procedure, Kevin randomly wandering the streets, looking for hot ladies like Mila Kunis who just want to have sex but with no emotional baggage of a relationship. Sadly, this will probably end up as empty and worthless as his similar attempt last January when No Strings Attached came out.