When this time of the year rolls around, I always sit down at my computer and look at all of the movies that were released in the preceding 12 months. I put checks next to the ones that I saw. And then I try and remember what each movie was about and whether or not I actually liked it.
There were 216 movies that were released into the North American market since Jan. 1, 2014 and I saw approximately 40 of them. The only one that I don’t remember (or even have a reasonable grasp of the plot of) is The Lego Movie. I know that it had Lego characters in a Lego world but that there wasn’t even one piece of actual hard plastic Lego in it. It was all computer generated. I’m so disillusioned.
It was the absolute worst movie of the year, as far as I’m concerned, and that’s saying something considering this was also the year of The Monuments Men, which was a total piece of smelly garbage.
The Lego Movie should have had a Surgeon’s General warning on it for how it makes people stupider and stupider. It was surely written with stupidity as its goal as characters spoke at 1.5 times normal speed saying witty mindless quips as the plot proceeded like a Mexican jumping bean in a pinball machine on a rollercoaster. My head is still spinning from its insipidity and I can only say that its sequel (coming in 2018) is the only movie of 2018 that I’ve already scratched off of my ‘must see’ list.
I suppose it’s good to start off such articles by getting a few things off of my chest. It’s important to talk about disappointment in a healthy way. At least then it gives you a better understanding of what foolhardiness you put your hopes into and why.
Perhaps it’s because movie marketing is such a powerful force that it can make garbage seem like gold. Or perhaps it’s because memory has a way of blinding people, a phrase that sounds akin to how hindsight is 20/20. What I mean is that if I enjoyed watching the movie 300 in 2006, does that mean that I’ll equally enjoy watching the sequel eight years later? No, it does not. In fact, 300: Rise of an Empire was an auspicious waste of time, as the filmmakers were different and didn’t seem to have as much interest in telling as compelling a story as the first ones.
Also, I think that there should be a general rule of thumb for moviemakers who are considering making a sequel: two to three years after the original is an ideal time frame. Five years is too much, usually. If it runs up to eight years then you had better have some pretty sweet material, like James Cameron following up Terminator with T2 seven years later, featuring a liquid metal villain.
300: Rise of an Empire had a protagonist devoid of charisma doing his level best to act buff and macho, still trying to chew his way through his scenes but without any teeth. Gerard Butler, sad as it might sound, could act circles around Sullivan Stapleton.
Then there was A Million Ways to Die in the West, the most uneven pile of cow flop on the dusty prairie landscape. Seth MacFarlane has a unique talent for taking offensive material and making people laugh at it. It’s too bad he didn’t exercise any of that talent with this dreary dustup about a wimpy sheepherder who takes a stand against a gruff outlaw. Perhaps he should rethink his storytelling ability and hire a different editor.
I could go on. Perhaps it’s easier (or more fun) to rant about the duds instead of rave about the diamonds.
I was terribly pleased to have missed both of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s new movies this year: Expendables 3 and Sabotage. I saw Escape Plan a year ago and immediately wished that I hadn’t. His time as the governor of California seems to have diminished his already insubstantial acting abilities. For what it’s worth, I do still really miss Conan and the Terminator, but that doesn’t mean I want more Terminators or Conans on the big screen.
At least I’m glad that I didn’t see Vampire Academy, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, Divergent, Heaven is for Real, Saving Christmas, Left Behind, Transcendence, Edge of Tomorrow, Blended, Transformers: Age of Extinction, Deliver Us from Evil, Planes: Fire and Rescue, Hercules, no the other Hercules, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Into the Storm, Let’s Be Cops, Fury, Ouija or I, Frankenstein.
On the other hand, I wish that I had seen Zero Theorem, Godzilla, Love is Strange, Lucy, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Top Five, The Drop, Gone Girl, The Equalizer, The Theory of Everything, John Wick, Dumb and Dumber To, Penguins of Madagascar, How to Train Your Dragon 2, A Field in England, The Art of the Steal, Dom Hemingway, Under the Skin, The Unknown Known, Oculus, Only Lovers Left Alive, Joe, Cold in July, and The Grand Seduction.
I’ve found that my enjoyment of movies is indirectly proportionate to the budget of the movie itself. For instance, a Transformers movie that costs $200 million to make is only going to be about as good a scraping gum off of the bottom of my shoe, while Lawrence and Holloman, the greatest Canadian movie of the year, probably had a budget of 1/200th that amount or less. It was also the smartest, cleverest, funniest, saddest and most life affirming movie that I’ve seen in a long time. That, and it had a wealth of Edmonton talent all over it, so the local theatre scene should be proud.
This was one of the reasons that I made a concerted effort to get out to the Metro Cinema more often. It’s not just because I was dealing with the loss of my beloved Grandin Theatres. It’s because it’s the only place in town that you can catch such small wonders as The Babadook, Force Majeure, Listen Up Philip, and Filth, not to mention catch such glorious and great film festivals including Global Visions, the Edmonton International Film Fest and, of course, the Just for Cats Film Festival.
Still, I always find myself missing some movies from my must-see list. This year, I still haven’t marked off Birdman, Boyhood, Nightcrawler, Noah, Foxcatcher, and St. Vincent. It’s probably interesting to note that none of these are on the top ten list of box office blockbusters either.
I think that it says something profound about your society’s interest in intelligence and creativity when only one of the top ten grossing movies that came out in 2014 was from an original script, and not a remake, nor part of a franchise, and definitely not a franchise movie based on the sequel of a remake either.
That movie, by the way, was Interstellar, a movie partially shot in Alberta. It made just under $600 million by my last check, which is still a far cry from the nearly $1.1 billion achieved by that stunning work of cinema, Transformers: Age of Extinction. It is now the 19th film to surpass the ‘Big B’ mark and is the 10th highest grossing film of all time.
I have always lamented the decline of clever, unique movies. It’s been more than a decade since Adaptation, the Charlie Kaufman script and one of the cleverest stories ever told even though it’s not totally original. It was, after all, based on a book, but the way it was told was absolutely incredibly distinctive, thus making it such an original story.
Thank goodness that Wes Anderson is still out there, quietly putting out his well-told tales like The Grand Budapest Hotel, which was the best movie of the year (that I’ve seen). It was well-acted, smart, deftly directed, had an interesting plot structure and was funny as hell. Anderson, a grand film historian, pays homage to cinema of days gone by while making lovely modern tales that pay attention to technique without becoming overly technical. May he never change careers, I say.
The problem is that even though moviemaking is a creative arts discipline, the bottom line is the bottom line: it is still a business. Hollywood is, was, and always will be about making money. If they can make more and more money by doing less and less work then they will.
It also means that I won’t feel bad when I don’t see Captain America 2 or the new X-Men movie. That’s because I feel like I’ve already seen them before.
