Top 5 Disappointments of 2013
These movies aren't movies that are necessarily the worst this year, and they might not even be that bad. But these are movies that I thought I'd enjoy, and ranked with a 2 or less on my list. It's not based on rank, it's based on how disappointed I was walking out of the theatre with what I saw. Lets just say some of these REALLY pissed me off...
5. Dead Man Down
Dead Man Down looked like it was made for me. Its trailer sold it as a quiet but violent action film, a personal one about a man protecting a woman who was perhaps a bit too naive for the hit she hired him for. It looked like it was picking up a vibe reminiscent of the silence of Drive, with the honesty and believability of a film like The Town. Instead, it was quiet to a fault, never letting the audience feel excited or tense. Unlike the believability of the great movies it reminded me if, it had jarring tonal shifts and a very strange, disjunct script. One moment has us feeling very badly for Noomi Rapace, while other moments had me rolling my eyes at forced drama. Colin Farrell’s character had no personality to speak of, instead opting to have a character that talked more than the driver in Drive, but had no where near as much personality or immediate likability. Overall, Dead Man Down left a whole heck of a lot to be desired. And it wasn’t the worst idea.
4. RED 2
R.E.D was what the first Expendables wanted to be. It was a bunch of well known, type-cast characters put on screen to blow stuff up and kick some butt. And it worked really well, letting the audience laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of Helen Mirren with a machine gun five times her size, enjoy the crazed antics of John Malkovich playing a wonderful John Malkovich, and even had an enjoyable antihero played by Karl Urban. It was a great flick. R.E.D 2 continues the hilarity at first, but quickly fell into a lazy spy thriller with no where near as much heart as the first, which I will grant had the better story in the comic book. But what really killed it was the absolutely awful ending, an ending that not only made no sense in the context of reality, but made no sense in the context of the film. No spoilers, obviously, but it had no regard for audience intelligence or even any grasp on its own made up world. It was a disgracefully lazy ending, and one that took what little enjoyment I had.
3. World War Z
The idea of a history of a zombie apocalypse told in the style of a history book is fascinating to me, and that’s what had me gravitate towards World War Z as a book. It was a brilliant idea, written in such a way that we could grasp onto the emotion of our main character writing this account, while also feeling our inner history-buff get excited as if we were back in high school learning about our favorite war, or presidential era. And honestly, I think that’s already a great set up for a movie. Why not let one character be controlling the events around him through interviews and personal accounts? Why is this wrong? It would give such a strong sense of a new form of society. But no, what we got was a generic zombie action thriller, neither adding all that much to nor taking away anything from my favorite guilty pleasure genre. (Not that guilty, though.) The final act in particular, which had been rewritten after the filming had finished, felt rushed, senseless, and too conclusive for the trilogy that was apparently planned. The most that can be said is that it has two sequences that I will fervently defend as two of the best shots of zombies we’ve ever seen. But even so, I’ll pick 28 Days Later and even Shaun of the Dead for both scares and emotion. Heck, after playing The Last Of Us, my zombie standards are incredibly high.
2. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
I loved the first Hobbit, and I know I’m definitely a minority on that. I had a lot of fun with it. It seemed to capture the change in audience rather perfectly, showing how The Hobbit was written to be a children’s book far more than the Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, it had fun special effects, and even the high film rate, while a bit pointless, was cool and kind of trippy to watch. I’ll defend the first one. But this was a disgrace. Any sense of necessity for it to be a trilogy is completely gone. The length of this movie is really felt, something that I feel can’t be said about any of the previous LOTR films. Not to mention an incredibly cartoony dragon, one that didn’t work with the for some reason more adult focused content than the previous film. It had a horrendously pointless cliffhanger, one that felt jarring compared to every other ending in this massive series of films. There were moments that made me laugh out loud for not making any sense at all. Plus the complete lack of appreciation for dwarves pissed me off. Generally speaking, dwarves in fantasy cinema are always a punch line, joked about for their height and abrasiveness. But the first Hobbit treated them as characters, with moments of comedy that could fit any person or creature, not just dwarves. But in this, we’re right back to laughing at their stature, a big step back considering the roles of dwarves in the books and fantasy in general. I can’t defend this movie at all. The Hobbit is officially on par with the Star Wars prequel trilogy in my mind.
1. Oz: The Great and Powerful
I think if there was one movie I was looking forward to the most this year, it was actually this. Sam Raimi has proven himself again and again as a smart director, and I loved the idea this film had, even though Wicked was probably the more obvious film adaptation to go with. At first the wizard was cast as Robert Downey Jr., which I loved even more. But James Franco was a very acceptable choice. So what pissed me off? Well lets start out with the treatment of women. We have a kingdom completely ruled by two twisted, conniving women. And what tears them apart? A man. Seriously? That’s the angle you’re going to go with? And a horrendously unlikable man at that. He meets a little girl made of glass china, in China Town (which is not nearly as clever or whimsical as the original Wizard of Oz creatures), and refers to her for the rest of the film as China Girl. That’s horrendous. It’s like calling me Colombian Critic or something like that, never asking for a name and never showing a way of life or personality. And when we get her personality, it’s an ANNOYING little piece of crap. There isn’t a single likable character in this damn movie. Even our good witch Glinda played by Michelle Williams, is a HUGE step backwards both for the good witch and for Williams. The one witch who’s good is completely powerless, and looks only to have a man solve her problems, is also a ditzy, air headed looney. So much for respect to women. This film is garbage, and it’s so sad. But then again, I can’t expect any movie in Oz to be good. They never answer the fundamental question - How can Oz be real if it was all in Dorothy’s dream?!
Top 10 Nicest Surpises of 2013
We all have them - those movies that we go into with a friend, or on a half hearted date, or because you force yourself to see every movie you can possibly see. We're not expecting anything. And then, BOOM! You have a great time! These are the five movies that had low expectations, and left me feeling satisfied and very happy with the outcome. Each of these movies has to rank at 3.5 or higher. So what were they?!
5. Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (sortof...)
I was looking forward to Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters for the dumb reasons. I thought it was going to be utter crap, and a movie I was going to love to hate. Well, when we went to see it, we had a GREAT time. It was hilariously funny, and sure, it wasn’t good. But it really did have a strong sense of the kind of movie it was trying to be. Never once did it take itself so seriously that it felt forced or inorganic as fantasy, but it was also so stupid that it’s impossible not to laugh it. Equally brilliant as they were stupid plot points, such as Hansel having diabetes from eating too much candy, are so easy to appreciate and crack up at. Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton both take this movie with a lightheartedness that works, and it looks like they’re really having fun with what’s going on in this absurd story. I just can’t say anything bad about it, I had such a great time! And I’ll absolutely defend this movie to the bloody, arrow machine gun heavy, holy water induced death!
I think what made Disconnect such a surprise was the circumstances in which I watched it. I had time between rehearsals at my school, and decided to just go see something. Disconnect? Jason Bateman? Yeah I’ll give it a shot…and I’m glad I did. Disconnect is an incredibly heart wrenching three part story - Bateman’s son is cyber bullied to the worst type of extreme, a reporter tries to make a news report about underage exploitation of internet strippers, and Alexander Skaarsgard and Paula Patton track down someone who stole their identity in order to save their financial situation, and their marriage. This third story was the lowest part of the movie, having a really unbelievable story that makes pretty much no sense. But even then, the actors put 100% into everything they do, and that really saves it. The ending of it, despite the ridiculousness, is touching and satisfying. And the other two stories take you on a trip really unlike any other I’ve ever experienced at the movies. It’s a beautiful, sad, exciting, and all around beautiful movie.
3. Oldboy
I didn’t have expectations for Oldboy, not even knowing early on that it was a remake of a Japanese film. But it looked like a great idea about to go horribly wrong, an emotional story confined to the parameters of a marketable action film. But what I got was an equally smart as it was disturbing film, with an amazing performance by Josh Brolin, and an awesome creepy performance by Sharlto Copely. Again, I hadn’t seen the original, but I’ve heard this movie kind of dumbs down the violence. If that’s the case, I’m not sure how I’d feel about the violence in the original. I thought the level of violence was pretty great, making Brolin look like a badass, a smart fighter, a little twisted, and frightening all at the same time. It worked on every level of shock and cool factor, especially one particular torture scene with Sam Jackson. All in all, this movie really impressed me, and maybe I had let myself dumb down just enough, but I didn’t see the ending coming, and it made my jaw drop.
2. Turbo
A movie about a snail who wants to race in the Indy 500…Um…what? That might be one of the dumbest movies I’ve EVER heard of. How could this possibly work effectively? Well for starters, the movie can give our snail its ability to move so fast in a clever, super hero origin style backstory. It makes no sense, but it’s so darn clever and adorable I couldn’t help but like it. Add some impressive animation, super fun characters (one in particular fantastic performance by Bill Hader, and a funny cameo from Snoop Dogg), and a clever story of how Turbo made it to the race, and you have a shockingly likable movie. It’s sweet, clever, and just all around a fun flick. It’s sad it really didn’t do well at the box office, I would have loved to see some sequels.
Okay, so there’s a book about a zombie falling in love with a human by eating the brains of her ex-boyfriend…? And Simon Pegg liked it?? Oh the conflict…To love everything Simon Pegg defends, or to look at this for what it was probably going to be…It was tough going into this movie. But this movie wasn’t the corny romance I thought it would be. No, it managed to be successful both as an awesome demonstration of new ideas about zombies and as a fun little romance flick. One particular moment of brilliance is Bonies, when a zombie becomes so distressed he eats the flesh off of his own body, leaving a deformed skeleton behind. This is an amazingly creepy and actually very sad idea. Meanwhile, the romance isn’ heavy handed or stupid. Instead, it keeps itself in the context of two teenagers with a crush, that just happens to be a potentially enormous step forward both for science and zombie societies. Sure, it’s corny. But it’s just so cute, and Nicholas Hoult is just so good, it’s impossible to not find yourself sucked into the cuteness of this film.
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