Hard to sum up this year in movies. I have yet to see Casino Royale, but I heard it is quite good. Overall, I saw 13 movies this year, which included one I downloaded and 2 I saw on the airplane. So basically, I have no legs to stand on when reviewing the entire year in movies. But this is my blog. HAHAHA.
I have listed the movies I liked in reverese chronological order, from the movie I disliked the most to the movie I liked the most.
13. Pirates of the Caribbean 2 – I don’t care how much money this movie made. It was a piece of crap. I wanted to leave the theatre halfway thru, I have never sat thru a movie that long where nothing really happens. Sure Johnny Depp is pretty good as captain whatever, but really, aside from a big krakon, this movie brought nothing to new to the table and the movie felt stale after about 25 minutes. Huge disappointment.
12. X3 – Seeing how Brett Ratner directed, I was predispose to this movie sucking, which it kinda did. While it wasn’t a complete Joel Schumacher Batman butcher job, Ratner pretty much destroyed all of Bryan Singers work. Where was nightcrawler? Granted there was a couple cool scenes, but for a semi conclusion to what was a set of movies, this was highly disappointing. Was it me, or did that asian porcupine dude have the worse power ever? what was with the tranny prince lookalike and the clapping thing, and why did all the ‘bad’ mutants look like they just came out of an industrial goth club?
11. The Sentinel – lets see..Michael Douglas has an affair, and gets in trouble. Keifer Sutherland hunts someone down and takes no shit from anyone. Where oh where have we seen these before. Despite much nostalgia watching Michael Douglas squirm after doing something bad, this movie was somewhat generic and predictable. I mean, its not a horrible movie, but its a movie you’d watch and tv and be like..that ain’t too bad. Eva Longoria is in it too, but she doesn’t really do much, either in acting or eye candy.
10. Cars – Pixars’s ode to Americana and the Midwest. This movie was pleasant, and I guess it can’t hurt to cater to the Nascar crowd, since thats about half of America. The movie seems to want to return to the good ole days of Americana in the 60s where life was simple, people went to diners, drive-ins and did not know terms like racism or sexism because those things were okay back then. Probably the worse Pixar movie yet.
9. 16 Blocks – Bruce Willis plays a grizzled veteran cop who has seen too much in his day. Sounds like every Bruce Willis movie. This movie gets bonus points for being filmed in Toronto. Its always fun to try and figure out what street they were filming it on. Mos Def did a good job in this movie, and is probably one of the top rapper-actors out there. LL Cool J is an okay rapper actor too, but he plays the same role in every movie, as does that guy who owns the rottweilers. I guess ice cube was in Three Kings, and that was good. Worse rapper-actor out there is probably Shaq.
8. Borat – Most people will probably have it higher, but I have seen both the UK and US series of Ali-G, so the Borat character is pretty familiar to me. There are a lot of laugh out loud scenes, but the movie loses so much steam after the hotel scene, and its more or less the same schtick over and over again. The movie is based on shock value, so I don’t think this movie will age well, specially since most of the stuff is only funny the first time around.
7. Nacho Libre – Obviously, this is a Jack Black movie, but I thought it was hilarious.
6. Superman Returns – The 3D scenes were kinda lame, but this was a pretty well constructed movie. Kevin Spacey overacts some scenes, but he pretty much tries to chew up any movie he has been in since American Beauty. Kate Bosworth looks a hell of a lot like the girl from Prison Break. The airplane scene was spectacular, and I thought the movie was pretty solid.
5. V for Vendetta – I actually don’t really remember much of this movie, but I enjoyed it. Anything with sai’s is pretty damn cool. I didn’t really think knife-time was that cool, but this movie reminded me a lot of equilibrium, actually. That was a decent movie too.
4. She’s The Man – Saw this on a flight to Edmonton (or back). I thought it was pretty funny, I think it is loosely based on Shakespeare. It seems pretty lame to put a teeny bopper movie this high, but I laughed pretty hard at several scenes.
3. Mission Impossible III – Despite the fact that he is a crazy midget and married Katie Holmes (who I thought was hot in Dawsons Creek..and really, how many people saw the gift cos they heard she had a topless scene?….i err…didnt) …. tom cruise can make an okay movie occasionally. I liked collateral and last samurai. i didnt watch war of the worlds and can’t really watch spielberg movies ever since someone pointed out that spielberg always films close up shots where the actor looks away from the camera…its just too distracting now and could pretty much be turned into a drinking game. Anyways, this was a good movie, Phillip Seymour Hoffman was a great bad guy.
2. Brick – Had no idea what this movie was about going in, but man was this an awesome movie. Turns out its a film noir that takes place in the high school world. Hard to explain. go watch.
1. The Departed – Fantastic movie, I am sure everyone who has seen it enjoyed it and should win many awards come Oscar time. The Chinese version still had a better ending and death scenes though.
