It’s 7:05 pm Pacific — beginning my sixth hour of confinement on my NY-to-LA Virgin flight. Another full hour to go. Not hellish, exactly, but coach is never pleasant. You endure it. To experience a little private air space…well, soon enough. My Macbook Pro’s power cord was lost at JFK during security scanning so no power and no filing.

The sounds coming out of this toy monkey remind me of the gaiety generated by a table of middle-aged out-of-towners who were sitting next to me at a Second Ave. cafe in late April 2010. It led to a short piece called “The Worst People in the World.” I can let that memory and essay go, but the monkey brought it back.

Now that the Dragon Tattoo and Extremely Loud embargoes have expired and I’ve seen Margaret and Mission: Impossible 4 — Ghost Protocol, here’s my final revised rundown of HE’s bests, favorites, almost favorites, mezzo-mezzos and worsts of 2011. And I’ve found a place for Margin Call, which I omitted in the initial posting.

My top ten met the usual pick-of-the-litter characteristics — quality, audacity, originality, personal satisfaction, stylistic excitement, something strong and central that said felt new or bold or extra-cool. Aesthetic judgment, personal delight, etc.

If you include the “decent, not half bad” category the bottom line is that 2011 delivered around 65 films that ranged from excellent to very good to respectably passable.

HE’s 11 Best of 2011 (in this order): Moneyball, A Separation, The Descendants, Miss Bala, Drive, Contagion, Win Win, The Tree of Life, Margaret, In The Land of Blood and Honey, Tyrannosaur. (11)

Special “I Don’t Know Where They Precisely Belong But I Like ‘Em More Than Some Of The Others” Distinction (i.e., Close With Unlit Cigar): Attack The Block, Beginners, Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, X-Men First Class, Captain America, Hugo, 50/50, Young Adult, The Artist, Hanna, The Guard, Bridesmaids, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Buck, Page One: Inside The NY Times, Rampart, Margin Call. (17)

Good & Generally Approved With Issues (in this order): Take Shelter, A Better Life, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Ides of March, Midnight in Paris, A Dangerous Method, Albert Nobbs, J. Edgar, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Applause, Melancholia, Mission: Impossible 4 — Ghost Protocol, The Lincoln Lawyer, Another Happy Day, Source Code, Point Blank, Cedar Rapids, The Iron Lady, Happy Happy, Super, The Housemaid, Carnage, Another Earth, Le Havre. (24)

Frostily, Tiresomely, Enervatingly Good: Shame. (1)

The Wrong Stuff: War Horse, Tintin, The Lie. (3)

Decent, Not Half Bad: Coriolanus, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2, Insidious, The Last Lions, Myth of the American Sleepover, Tabloid, Super 8, The Trip, Making The Boys (doc about Mart Crowley and The Boys in the Band), Jane Eyre, Paranormal Activity 3, Restless, Submarine, Take This Waltz, Thor, Meet Monica Valour, Rango. (18)

Approved But Lesser Almodovar: The Skin I Live In. (1)

Lesser Dardennes: The Kid With A Bike. (1)

Lesser Kiarostami: Certified Copy (1)

Respectable Intentions, Didn’t Get There: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Meek’s Cutoff, London Boulevard, Texas Killing Fields, Warrior, Straw Dogs, The Way Back, Like Crazy, The Rum Diary, Sleeping Beauty, The Adjustment Bureau, The Company Men, White Irish Drinkers, The Devil’s Double, The Dilemma, Warrior, We Bought A Zoo, Wuthering Heights, Anonymous. (20)

Meh, Underbaked, Less is Less, Insufficient: Rubber, Ceremony, Hall Pass, Bullhead, Fright Night, The Help, Magic Trip, Our Idiot Brother. (8)

Most Dislikable Sundance 2011 Film: Bellflower. (1)

Regretful Shortfallers: 30 Minutes Or Less, The Beaver, Higher Ground, Knuckle, Larry Crowne, Limitless. (6)

Haven’t Seen ‘Em (Guilt Factor): Black Power Mixtape, Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within, Jeff Who Lives At Home, The Last Circus, The Oranges, Paul Williams Still Alive, Project Nim, Red State, Pina, Pariah, The Deep Blue Sea, This Must Be The Place, The Turin Horse. (13)

Haven’t Seen ‘Em & Don’t Care That Much: Apollo 18, The Lady, Arthur Christmas, Soul Surfer, Henry’s Crime, Blank City, Cold Weather, Blackthorn, Bonsai, A Boy And His Samurai, Burke & Hare, Cars 2, The Catechism Cataclysm, Conan The Barbarian, The Double, Gnomeo & Juliet, Happy Feet 2, The Human Centipede II, I Am Number Four, Jack and Jill, Just Go With It, Kung-Fu Panda 2, The Muppets, Mars Needs Moms, My Sucky Teen Romance, No Strings Attached, Paul Williams Still Alive, Phillip The Fossil, Priest, The Sitter, The Smurfs, Snow Flower & The Secret Fan, Sound Of My Voice, The Thing, The Woman, The Three Musketeers, Alvin And The Chipmunks: Chipwrecked. (38)

Acute Dislike, Blah, Nothing, Stinko: The Big Year, Arthur, Bad Teacher, Battle: Los Angeles, Butter, The Caller, Cat Run, The Change-Up, Cowboy & Aliens, Colombiana, Crazy, Stupid, Love, Dream House, Fast Five, Final Destination 5, Five Days of War, Footloose, Friends With Benefits, The Green Hornet, Green Lantern, Hall Pass, The Hangover Part II, Hobo With A Shotgun, Horrible Bosses, Kaboom, Machine Gun Preacher, New Year’s Eve, One Day, Paul, Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Red Riding Hood, Sucker Punch, Transformers: Dark Of The Moon, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 1, Tower Heist, Twixt, Water For Elephants, We Need To Talk About Kevin, Your Highness, The Zookeeper, Your Highness, Miral. (41)

On 12.22 The Hollywood Reporter‘s Pamela McClintock posted a summary listing of 2011’s worst box-office performers. And yet for some reason she declined to name the worst performer in terms of production cost-to-earnings.

The worst wipe-out wasn’t Cowboys & Aliens or Green Lantern or Anonymous. And it wasn’t Arthur or Sucker Punch or The Thing or Conan The Barbarian. No, the movie that lost the most money in proportion to what it cost (according to McClintock’s figures) was David Frankel‘s The Big Year (20th Century Fox).

The bird-watching comedy costarring Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson cost $41 million to make and took in a worldwide total of $7.4 million, which is 18% of its production budget. Add in marketing costs (which you should, of course) and it’s an outright calamity.

The Big Year‘s biggest proportional-loss competitor was Disney’s Mars Needs Moms, which cost $150 to make and earned a worldwide theatrical gross of $39 million, or 26% of its production budget.

Update: Martin Scorsese‘s hugely expensive Hugo was a big loser also, but the proportional pain wasn’t as bad as that suffered by The Big Year and Mars Needs Moms. It cost $175 million to make and and has so far earned a worldwide box-office tally of $51,343,914, or 29% of its production budget.

“This weird mashup of The Zookeeper (with Matt Damon instead of Kevin James as the suddenly single guy who talks to the animals) and The Descendants (a man grieving for his wife and taking his two kids on a journey of discovery) might seem an odd detour for Cameron Crowe, who in his early 20s wrote the Rolling Stone article that became the 1982 teen comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

“Crowe graduated to writer-director and made three good movies: Say Anything…, Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous. That last film came out more than a decade ago, yet such was our pleasure in it and its siblings that we’re still in mourning for his late talent. How could we have known that his last film, Elizabethtown, about a depressed man coping with a family death, was not an arrant misfire but the launching of Crowe’s soupy-sappy period?” — from Richard Corliss‘s 12.22 Time review of We Bought A Zoo.

I’m not quite down with the punctation of Mr. Clooney’s first sentence. The “quite honestly, I am” isn’t necessary. The second passage should read “Democrats eat their own — they find singular issues and go, ‘Well, I didn’t get everything I wanted.”’ And the third passage should read “Republicans are always better at this. If Obama was a Republican running,” etc.

I’d been meaning to re-watch Melancholia, but putting it off at the same time. Then I saw this still and decided to watch it again without fail.

Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Jerome Simpson leapt over Arizona Cardinals linebacker Daryl Washington for a touchdown yesterday. Jamie Foxx did the same thing in Oliver Stone‘s Any Given Sunday…but he didn’t land on his feet.

You can never foresee a fall-holiday lineup a year or ten months ahead of time. Winners are always concealed. Surprises always happen. That said, 2012’s award season seems undernourished. September through November, I mean. December looks decent. This is only a first-glance, cut-and-paste spitball list. A mere 16 films. HE conveys special interest.

September 2012: Argo (9.14, HE), d: Ben Affleck, cast: Ben Affleck, Alan Arkin, Bryan Cranston, John Goodman, Kerry Bishe, Kyle Chandler; Looper (9.28, HE), d: Rian Johnson, cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt, Paul Dano, Jeff Daniels, Piper Perabo; Savages (9.28, HE), d: Oliver Stone, cast: Taylor Kitsch, Blake Lively, Aaron Johnson, John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Benicio Del Toro, Salma Hayek, Emile Hirsch, Demian Bichir. (3)

October 2012: The Gangster Squad (10.19, HE); d: Ruben Fleischer, cast: Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone; Untitled David Chase ’60s “Music-Driven” Film (1.19, HE), d: David Chase, cast: James Gandolfini, Brad Garrett, Bella Heathcote, Christopher McDonald. (2)

November 2012: The Silver Linings Playbook (11.21, HE), d: David O. Russell, cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro, Jacki Weaver, Chris Tucker, Julia Stiles; Gravity (11.21, HE), d: Alfonso Cuaron; cast: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney. (2)

December 2012: Les Miserables (12.7, HE), d: Tom Hooper, cast: Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway; Great Hope Springs (12.14), d: David Frankel , cast: Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones, Steve Carell; The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (12.14); Untitled Kathryn Bigelow Osama bin Laden Film (12.14, HE); This Is Forty (12.21, HE), d: Judd Apatow, cast: Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, Albert Brooks, Megan Fox, Melissa McCarthy; World War Z (12.21), d: Marc Forster, cast: Brad Pitt; Lincoln (mid to late December, HE), d: Steven Spielberg, cast: Daniel Day Lewis, Sally Field, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tommy Lee Jones; Django Unchained (12.25, HE), d: Quentin Tarantino, cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson, Sacha Baron Cohen; The Great Gatsby (12.25, HE), d: Baz Luhrman, cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Joel Edgerton, Carey Mulligan, Isla Fisher. (9)