So I am doing things differently. Each month, I will review each and every movie I watched that month. 5 movies will advance to my year end ranking, the rest will miss out. Now 12 months - 5 movies a month - that adds up to 60 movies. At the end of the year I will eliminate 10 of these movies and rank my top 50 of the year. I think this is a better way of doing it, as I can have these movies fresh in my mind as I do my little write ups of each film.
I will go through these films in the order in which I watched them. They are not ranked in any specific order. That will come at the end of the year.
If anyone has any feedback on this, bring it now or forever hold your peace. And as always, I will spoil every and anything on the list, so if you don't want to be spoiled, skim over the movie write up.
Without further ado, let's do January!
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The Gift
This movie is about a young upstart couple who are moving into a new neighborhood and looking to start a life and build a family together. They run into a guy who knows the husband from high school, and he instantly starts worming his way into the couple's life despite their disinterest in him. Odd things start to happen. He often shows up unexpectedly at their house and invites himself in. He buys them random things, like a koi pond for their yard. Nothing overly threatening, but strange considering he barely knows these people. Stalkerish. He invites them over to his house for dinner, only to have the couple later find out that it wasn't his house - its family was out of town and he had broken in. They then decide to terminate the creepy friendship.
This angers the man and he goes on a revenge war path, psychologically tormenting the couple but without physically tormenting them. We find out as the movie goes on that the husband (Bateman) had ruined the man's life when they were in high school and this is his revenge for that.
I liked the movie and it had me on edge all the way up until the end. I didn't like the ending at all. The husband finds a video tape that seems to indicate that the stalker raped his wife while she was passed out. And now, 9 months later, the wife is pregnant. And then the movie ends.
I think it is supposed to be open ended. The stalker never physically hurt the couple, so maybe this is just another way of tormenting them by letting them think he raped her. Or maybe he did rape her and the child is his, and that is his ultimate revenge. Who knows? I have read theories on both. Either way, it seemed like kind of a cheap ending to me. There was no true confrontation. No real answers given. I am not a fan of open ended movies. I like a clear defined ending. And this movie definitely did not present one to me. I really liked the whole movie, but the end... hmm....
Will it be one of the top 5 movies to move on from January? Read on (or scroll down to the bottom of this blog entry) to find out.
Beasts of No Nation
When Netflix comes out with an original movie or TV show, it is usually pretty quality stuff. I have recently taken an interest in the atrocities and injustices going on in Africa. I like Idris Elba. Plus I am a big Netflix fan as you know. So I figured I would love this movie.
I don't know... at first I liked it. The movie does a great job at transporting you to not only a different country, but a different way of life that is so strange to us that it may as well be on another planet. I forget which country in Africa this is, but the movie really builds a believable environment here. I liked watching the people go about their lives. I enjoyed watching the kids play. If nothing had happened the whole movie, and it was just showing these peoples' lives I probably would have liked the movie more than I did with what actually happened.
Military troops come in and kill everyone trying to root out rebels. A young boy runs after seeing his family killed and encounters the rebels in the forest. He is taken in by them and forced into the life as a child soldier.
I really wanted to like the movie. Truly. It got off to a promising start, like I said. But once the bad stuff started happening I started losing interest. And it is usually the other way around for me. I am a sadistic bastard and I like gruesome, cruel, heartbreaking violence in films. But it just didn't really seem to phase me here. I think maybe I expected the atrocities to be worse? I don't know.
And I like Idris Elba, but I thought he was one of the worst parts of the movie. Not that he did a bad job acting but that he seemed kind of preachy, too preachy for my tastes. I got bored, which I never thought would happen with this movie. The phone came out and I started playing games, and once that happened the movie lost its battle for my attention.
I think it was a little too long, things were a little too dragged out. Maybe if they had compressed the events after the first half hour of the film into an hour and a half instead of two I would have liked it more.
But as it stands, it is definitely a bottom tier movie for me with no shot at cracking my top 50.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
I watched this movie for the first time back in December of last year. I usually don't watch movies twice so close in proximity to one another, but I made an exception for Star Wars. My wife wanted to see it, and I didn't mind going out and getting the full theater experience one more time. I was sure there were things I missed the first time around anyway.
To my surprise, I actually enjoyed the movie the second time around much, much more than I did the first time. I am a big reader of the expanded universe books, so when all that had happened in the books was tossed aside and discarded, it kind of peeved me a little the first time I watched this movie. Now though I simply accepted this fact. I knew what to expect this time, so I was actually able to just sit back and enjoy the movie for what it is rather than sitting on the edge of my seat wondering what they were going to do with the story line.
This movie is super, super good. There is no doubt about it. I had an absolute blast. I loved it, my wife loved it. A good time was had by all. I think knowing what was going to happen actually made me more emotional than I was the first time. When Han died, I was like WTF that isn't supposed to happen. I was more mad than upset. This time, I knew it was coming. Seeing the scenes with Han and Leia was heartbreaking, especially since I knew what was coming. I shed more than a few man tears this time around.
I think that the emotional attachment, plus the acceptance that this is the direction Star Wars is taking, plus the fact that this is simply just a kick ass movie really made me enjoy it more than I did the first time I watched it. Top 50 in my top movies of 2016? No question about it.
Cake
This is a movie I have been intrigued by since I first read about it in Entertainment Weekly a year or two ago. I didn't know much about it coming in, other than that it was about a woman with some kind of mental illness. These types of movies are usually hit or miss for me. They are either boring and preachy or full of sad, profound moments of revelation that hit the mark with me.
Fortunately, this movie fits into that latter category for me. I enjoyed it immensely.
The film doesn't give you much info as it starts out. It follows Jennifer Aniston's character around her daily life. It becomes clear she is rich, eccentric, and has some kind of facial scarring. A lot of the film centers around her running around with her maid and doing crazy things. One moment it seems like she is the biggest bitch in the world, the next like she is exceptionally kind.
Eventually we discover the reason for her scars. She had a son and was in a car accident that killed him and almost killed her in the process. I don't know if the money came from a big settlement, a rich husband, if she was already rich, or what. But even with more money than she knows what to do with it can't buy happiness and patch the hole in her heart that the loss of her son has left behind. All her eccentricities and occasional acts of bitchiness are just her way of coping with undoubtedly the worst experience of her entire life.
Over the course of the movie, she finally starts to come to terms with what happened. She doesn't fully recover. Of course that will take time, and lots of it. But you can see she is making steps. I think the film ends with a lingering camera shot of a photograph of her and her son before taken shortly before the accident.
Definitely a very good movie. I enjoyed it much more than I ever thought I would. It is not all gloom and doom like I was worried it was going to be. It is funny, it has heart. There is hope and the promise of possible happiness in the future for her character. The movie is more about grieving and the recovery process of losing a loved one than it is about mental illness like Alzheimer's (I think I may have gotten this confused with Still Alice when I fired it up). It did make me tear up on a few occasions, which doesn't happen much when I watch movies.
This was super good and I would recommend it to anyone who likes a good tearjerker every now and then.
American Sniper
I had heard a lot about this movie but I was never in any real rush to watch it. I'm just not a big war movie guy, especially movies about the war in Iraq. I think if I knew more about the main character Chris Kyle's story line in real life, I would have been more interested in watching this. But I didn't. Plus the reviews I had read were very inconsistent. So I kept putting off and putting off this movie as long as I possibly could.
Finally one day I was like - I wanna cry damn it. So I put this in. The movie didn't actually make me cry. There may have been a spot or two where I teared up, but if there were I don't remember them. That said though, I still really liked the movie.
The movie isn't obnoxiously long like I thought it was going to be, so that helped. Despite me not liking war stuff, I really got into it too. The movie does a great job at building up this character and making you really care for him. He seems like a good guy. He is good at his job. And he is not like one of those asshole military stereotypes you see in movies. He doesn't seem to enjoy killing people. He is out there for his country and to stand up for what he believes is right.
That is what makes his personal plight upon returning home so much more relatable, and what happens to him at the end that much more tragic too. Even though the movie is based on a true story, I am sure that a lot of what happened in the film is fabricated. That is to be expected. But I definitely felt for the man.
I thought it was really good. I liked the tense beginning where we are forced to wonder if he is going to shoot a kid or not. I like how we got to see a little bit of Kyle's life before he enlists, plus his motivations for enlisting. I didn't mind the personal life stuff one bit. Even when there wasn't death or drama of some kind happening on the screen, the film was still really good.
Big surprise for me here. I expected to find this movie boring or some kind of cliched propaganda machine, but I actually ended up having a great time with the film. This cracks my top 50 of the year easily.
Guardians of the Galaxy
I watched this movie back in 2015 as well, but I had watched it very early in the year... I believe it was January. So enough time had passed for me to give it another go. I liked it the first time, perhaps because I had low expectations and didn't know anything about these characters. The movie was surprisingly fun with great effects, solid action scenes, fun characters (Groot rules) and an even better soundtrack.
But when I thought about the film, I couldn't really remember what the story was about. So I figured I would give it another watch. I still really like the movie, but I wasn't as enthralled the second time around. I still love the characters, still love the music. The effects were even more eye popping than I remembered, and the movie still made me laugh - in fact I think I laughed even more this time around than I did the first.
The story is just really not that memorable. There are a bunch of aliens, factions, and alien factions after this artifact that is supposed to make whoever possesses it powerful and unstoppable. It is something we have all seen many many times before. There is a lot of running around, a lot of chasing. A lot of narrow escapes.
What I am saying is that it is not the most horribly deep film ever invented. That doesn't mean it is bad though. It is still a really fun movie. I had a good time watching it. It is kind of an up and down roller coaster type movie that offers a lot of laughs and a lot of thrills, but not a lot of substance.
I guess the upside to the movie is that it brought all the Guardians together. So now if and when there is another movie, we will be able to just jump right into the action. And hopefully there will be a better story line the next time around.
Predator
I actually have a long history with this movie. It was a favorite of my brother and of my family, so I saw it more than a few times growing up. The first time I saw it, it was late one night at my moms house. I was somewhere in the 6 to 8 age range. I liked the movie, but I was told to look away when the skinned, hanging corpses were shown because they would scare me. So I did.
Every subsequent viewing of the movie from then on, I would look away when the skinned corpses became visible in the trees. One time it caught me unaware and I caught a glimpse of them before I could divert my eyes. It was indeed very, very scary. It wasn't until my teenage years that I braved it and finally looked at the bodies. And now they don't bother me. But it is funny how scared of them I was as a kid just because I was told they would be scary. I bet if my mom hadn't said anything I would never have cared.
Anyway, the movie is still pretty darned good. I love the cast in this movie. It seems like every member of Arnie's group is some kind of famous actor I recognize from something or other. The concept of the movie is pretty cool - the hunters becoming the hunted. The Predator himself is pretty bad ass with his invisible camoflauge, his funky heat based vision, and his wide array of weapons.
This is one of those movies that I have seen SO many times in my life, that I found it a little hard to pay attention to. The first part of the movie I don't think I understood as a kid, so I liked all that with the military stuff and the manly men joking around. But once we got into the actual Predator action I was like "OK, seen this a hundred times". I knew what was going to happen, so it lost a bit of its suspense for me. But still I liked it.
Predator is a very iconic movie with a lot of great scenes, great lines (get to the choppa!), and great characters. The action is a mile a minute, and I think every technical aspect of the movie withstands the test of time. This will never go down as one of the greatest movies of all time, but for action fanatics, it is one of the best in the genre.
Predator 2
I watched both of the original Predator movies in January, both of them on back to back days. Of course, I watched the original first - so this was second on my agenda.
I actually didn't like this movie as much as I did the first one. The first was so iconic with Arnold and his buddies, all the classic lines spouted through out the course of the film. It is a serious movie, but it has a sense of fun to it that Predator 2 seems to lack.
The sequel is definitely more action based. It is set in Los Angeles during a time of heavy fighting among gangs. The Predator arrives to take advantage of all this and pick off the gang members, who he probably thinks are fierce warriors, and add their skulls and other assorted body parts to his collection.
Danny Glover plays the hero of the film, a rugged cop who is infamous on the force for the level of violence he uses when dealing with criminals. I must say that although I like Danny Glover, he is no Arnold Schwarzenegger. He lacks the charm and the charisma, and a lot of his dialogue seems forced an unnatural like he is reading from a queue card.
One thing I don't get about the movie is how much the Predator seems to understand about humans. We see what he sees, which is a bunch of colored blobs moving around his field of vision. He doesn't seem to be able to understand much of what is being said. So how is he able to follow these crime lords around the city in order to kill them one by one? Like - after Danny Glover talks to the voodoo guy in the alley - the Predator swoops in and kills him after Danny leaves. The guy wasn't doing anything violent, wasn't near any violence. How did the Predator know to kill him? How does he show up at the cemetery toward the end of the movie? How does he then show up at the subway to fight all the violent criminals on it?
Logistically the movie makes far less sense than the original. I like how the film enhances the mythology of the series, however. We see Gary Busey (!) and his character and how he has tracked Predators since the first incident with Arnie in that South American jungle. We see the Predator ship and all the other Predators aboard. The gun that the head Predator gives Danny Glover indicates that they have been on our world for far longer than anyone could have suspected.
All that is really cool. It makes you feel like the movie and its predecessor are just small samples of something bigger going on than what we can see. But as for the actual movie itself?
Ehhh, I just couldn't help but think the whole way through it that it wasn't as good as the first. And it definitely wasn't. I love Gary Busey, and even he couldn't quite make me fall for the film. It was okay, but I wouldn't go any further than that.
Dan trivia: I was originally supposed to see this movie with my brother, dad, and grandma in the theater when it first came out but they thought it would be too scary for me. So we went to see Ghost instead. It was a wise choice. Not because the movie is too scary (it's not) but because Ghost is a much better film.
The Rite
I was bored one night, and just really wanted to give something a shot that I would never normally watch. I am very specific about what movies I want to see, and I have to be in a certain mood to watch things, or I will hate the movie even if I have seen it before and know I like it. But this night I was open to anything. I figured something scary would be good, and I have read somewhere online that the Rite was supposed to be scary. Plus I like Anthony Hopkins. So I gave it a shot.
No.
The movie started out promising. The main character works in a mortuary, and the opening scene is him preparing a corpse for a funeral. It was pretty gross and it repulsed me right off the bat to the point where I wasn't even sure if I wanted to continue watching the movie. So why did I say it was promising? I like gross stuff and I like being made uncomfortable. I am weird, I know. Movies usually don't provoke such a strong emotional reaction from me, but this one did right off the bat.
I thought, if I am this repulsed now, just imagine how repulsed I will be when the scary stuff actually starts happening. Unfortunately, the opening was about as good as the movie got. The main character (I have already forgotten his name) goes off to become a priest. He questions his faith and gets brought in to learn about exorcisms from the master in that field - Anthony Hopkins.
Standard possession movie stuff happens here while he learns. Eventually one of the demons jumps into Anthony Hopkins' body, and the student is suddenly thrust into the role of having to deal with this exorcism himself. More standard possession movie chanting, holy water sprinkling, and whatnot occurs.
I just watched the movie not more than a week ago and I have already forgotten how it ended. I assume he vanquishes the demon and life goes on happily ever after. Really though, I stopped caring about a half hour in. This movie is dull, slow moving, and very, very boring. It takes a while to get to any of the exorcism stuff, and then when it does - it is cliched stuff that we have all seen a million times before. I was willing to be patient at first, but it just doesn't get any better. This movie does nothing original. It innovates in absolutely no way whatsoever.
I thought it was dull as dull could be. And aside from the opening, the movie didn't put me on edge, didn't scare me, didn't make me jump one time. Not once.
Boo!
Friday the 13th Part II
I watched the original Friday the 13th movie back in 2015 and it ranked a surprisingly high #17 on my year end ranking. I never would have guessed coming in that I would like it so much that it would beat out 100 something other movies on my list.
I made it my goal this year to get through as many movies in the series as I can. I'll probably try to get through one a month. It may vary. I'm sure there will be some months I watch more and some that I don't watch any. There are so many Friday the 13th movies who knows if I will be able to get through them all by the end of the year? But that is my plan!
After liking the first movie so much, my expectations were high for its sequel. Jason's mother was the killer in the first film, so I knew that this would be the movie we finally got to see Jason himself.
Same premise here as in the first move. Several years have passed since Jason's mom killed a group of campers in an act of outrage over her son dying while the lifeguard was off getting banged. Now a new group of campers has taken up near the site of the original incident and they are getting picked off one by one by Jason himself. I always wondered if the mom knew that he was really alive or not. Why would she flip out over him dying if he was okay all this time? Was he hiding from her? Did he fake his own death? Did he get lost? He also seems to have aged way more than he should have since his brief appearance at the end of the last film. I'm sensing some continuity issues here. And continuity is very, very important in slasher movies like this.
Sarcasm.
Jason wears just a white sheet over his face. He hasn't quite discovered the infamous hockey mask yet. He silently stalks, people die. At the end he is believed to be dead, but of course we know it isn't that easy. He leaps through a window and grabs a hold of the main character, and the end credits start to roll. Again? They pulled that with us in the last movie when he dragged the woman out of the boat and into the water.
Obviously he isn't dead as there are many more movies to go. Will the next one pick up where this left off? I hope so because it felt a little unresolved at the end there. The whole last part of the movie was this woman running from and fighting Jason. Seems kind of cheap to have her go through all that and then leave her fate hanging in the air.
Oh well! I still really liked the movie. These old Friday the 13ths were trendsetters and inspired the slasher movies we know and love today. The film may seem cliche ridden, but back then these cliches didn't exist so I am willing to forgive it for that.
It is fast paced. It is fun. the kills are good. We get to see naked boobies (although the one girl who actually had big ones - they didn't show. WTF?). I just really had a good time. I even enjoyed the moments there were no killing or violence or nekkidness on the screen. Usually in these kind of films the characters are so despicable you don't mind seeing them die, but I felt quite the opposite here.
I liked it. I wonder how long it will be before these movies start to suck, or if they ever start to suck. I guess we shall see.
Oh by the way, I Googled the one chick with the big boobs that they didn't show - and this is what she looks like today:
Yikes.
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The 5 movies that will move on are:
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
Cake
American Sniper
Predator
Friday the 13th Part II
It was a close call with the last two movies, but it was mostly because of a lack of other suitable options. I can easily see those 2 cracking the top 60 but getting cut before the top 50. We shall see.
Here's to a strong February!
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