And now we have the kinda meh movies that were elevated by good performances. I guess I would recommend these, but only on the assumption that you like the actors featured therein.

#120: Solace (2015)

The script is not good, but Hopkins and Ferrell are having a lot of fun and that makes it fun to watch, and even the third lead is played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who is always great. Hopkins is some kind of bizarre psychic or something, and maybe Ferrell is too, I dunno, the plot is not memorable or particularly important.

#119: The Pale Blue Eye (2022)

Weird little murder mystery inexplicably featuring Edgar Allen Poe. The mystery was a bit overly complex but ultimately not bad, but it’s Christian Bale’s oddball performance as not-Poe that makes this Netflix Original worth seeing.

#118: Memory (2022)

Liam Neesons! I assume he just does these in his sleep. It’s possible that it has developed into some kind of condition that he wishes he could stop but he can’t. That would make this run of movies make more sense I guess. But somehow he never phones it in. In this one he has a special set of skills but also Alzheimer’s. <shrug>

#117: Hypnotic (2023)

Basically what you think of when you think “Made for Streaming Movie Starring Ben Affleck.” Ben is fine, the script could’ve used more attention, but the draw here is Alice Braga as the former partner. It’s solid, with a somewhat interesting quirk, just don’t think too hard about it.

#116: Stir of Echos (1999)

Kevin Bacon over-emotes (positive) as only Kevin Bacon can in this not-really-horror ghost revenge story. Really bizarre to see a very young Kathryn Erbe (Criminal Intent’s Det. Eames).

#115: Peppermint (2018)

Avenging Angel Jennifer Garner. Good in this but really pigeonholed into these action roles when she has better range than that.

#114: Come and Find Me (2016)

Aaron Paul and Annabelle Wallis have great chemistry, which is needed for a movie that really revolves around them and their relationship. But who is she, really……

#113: Faults (2014)

Somewhat cool triple-cross cult deprogramming, but the obvious hook for me was Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Loooooove me some Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

Up Next: We Can’t Operate at a Higher Level Without Consistency (Part III)

So, should I spend a bunch of time apologizing for being so erratic this year, or just get to it? Oh….you….want an explanation….no, just getting to it, sorry.

These are the movies that got over the line. Everything from here on out I would generally recommend, with varying levels of enthusiasm of course. To use the crude vernacular, these are “good movies.”

#128 – Down Terrace (2010)

Your standard lower-class British crime family drama. Plotting was solid, acting was good. The most B- of B- recommendations.

#127 – Dio: Dreamers Never Die (2022)

Makes a pretty solid case for Ronnie James Dio as a foundational metal god. But he’s frankly just not that tremendously interesting? Solid documentary, great access, and I listened to a fair amount of this stuff in junior high so maybe more interesting to me than it would be in general.

#126 – Mirrors (2008)

Weirdly not scary horror movie that still had a creepy tone to it. Every mirror-based horror movie pales in comparison to Oculus.

#125 – The Drop (2014)

Standard hard loner with a heart of gold. See puppy above. Hardy plays it well though.

#124 – Bajocero (2021)

Ice Truck Breakout Heist!

#123 – The Blue Dahlia (1946)

Hard-boiled noir with a fabulous Veronica Lake performance, but just so slow and not in an about-to-boil-over good way. And yeah some troublesome gender dynamics.

#122 – Pianoforte (2023)

Surprisingly interesting documentary about a year of the Chopin contest in Vienna. Unfortunately the only really compelling character development was one contestant’s crippling breakdown under the pressure, which was not so fun to watch.

#121 – Radius (2017)

Great idea – everyone who comes within a certain, um, radius of our protagonist dies. No saving throw, that’s it. The movie does some decent exploration of the consequences – it doesn’t look good when, say, a curious police detective drops dead in your wake. The ending is a bit of a woo-woo hash for my taste but generally a solid flick.

Up Next: More of the Same! When will it be? Who Can Tell!

I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed.

We finally made it through the section of uninspiring movies! Hooray!

After this tier, there are the 128 movies I saw last year that I would at least conditionally recommend. So let us salute these final loser wannabes.

#133: Inside (2023)

Better as a short? DaFoe is always fun (I loved his cameo in The Norseman so so much), but this doesn’t really merit a 1:45 running time. There are only so many ways to torture someone stuck in your luxury apartment.

#132: The Thing (2011)

What is particularly sad is that this stealth prequel is not a terrible movie. I am, as is well known, a sucker for Mary Elizabeth Winstead, but the whole cast is pretty good and there are some legit scares and a decent job with the mandatory sense of paranoia. But they just could not resist tarnishing the memory of the original by going with all the CGI for the creature F/X and most of that looks terrible.

Also, entirely too many dogs receive inappropriate treatment.

#131: Blue Beetle (2023)

Kind of pointless, and superhero movie fatigue is real, but this is at least good spirited and not a complete mess. The CGI was generally “not terrible” although the very fact that that constitutes a major factor in evaluating the movie is depressing. Sarandon’s character had none of the pizzazz that you might expect, but not sure if that’s because it was terribly underwritten or because she was just grabbing that sweet paycheck.

#130: Violent Night (2022)

Sadly this is not an actual still from the movie, but I just couldn’t resist this one.

Badass Santa. There, that’s everything you need to know. Well that and that Badass Santa is played by David Harbour. Pretty sure you got it now. Not sure we really needed a 1:52 movie to illustrate the premise but it’s perfectly adequate if you also have, like, a crossword or something to occupy your mind.

#129: Titane (2022)

Bwuhhhh???? Definitely the most “what the !$#%! was that?” movie I saw last year. Fascinating but not something I would recommend to anyone who wasn’t wiiiiide open to different cinematic experiences. Like, if you love Davids Lynch and/or Cronenberg then go for it. Otherwise, maybe just keep on moving.

Up Next: Good Movies I Recommend! Finally!

So, okay, maybe service will continue to be erratic for a while? The management apologies for the unreliability of the trained monkeys. The trained monkeys apologize for nothing.

#138: Trespass Against Us (2016)

A mix between poverty porn and a “wow look at this messed up family” – so yeah, full time gawking material, very little of it pleasant. Fassbender and Gleason elevate the material somewhat and get it just up to (but not over) the line.

#137: The Boogeyman (2023)

Your bog-standard contemporary monster horror. It’s all about the *idea* of being afraid, the monster feeds on the negative emotions, etc etc. Not bad, per se, but it’s all been done better at this point. Guess whether or not they actually are able to finally kill the beastie.

#136: The Odd Couple (1968)

Maybe my impression was colored from growing up watching Randall and Klugman, but this version seemed mostly sad and unnecessarily misogynistic. Jack Lemmon always makes for a pretty decent time though.

#135: Vivarium (2019)

So, seriously, what was the point? Yes yes yes it’s about the mind-killing nature of modern suburbia….maybe? I mean maybe not even that?

The weird thing is that it’s a pretty good puzzle box – you see them being put through the wringer for mysterious ends, creepy crap happens, enigmas keep popping up…..but then there is never any reason for it. Like, who is responsible for any of it and why? Not only is it never explained, I can’t come up with any reason why any of it would have happened.

#134: Run Rabbit Run (2023)

Tries to be an interesting psychological horror freak-out, but doesn’t really get there, mostly because all of the “twists” are pretty obvious. I understand that the characters don’t know that they’re in a horror movie, but just the tiniest bit of genre sense would’ve helped everyone out (well, the living characters) quite a lot.

Up Next: The Last Entry in this Category! Hooray!

Something doesn’t look right. Does this look right to you? Hmmmm…

#144: Beau Travail (1999)

So it turns out that Claire Denis and I are just not on the same wavelength. I hated High Life and while I respected this it was just not my thing. I ranked it higher than the other film with Beau in the title, but I’m not sure I enjoyed it any more – but then, nothing in this one made me want to throw things at the screen either, so there’s that.

#143: Deadfall (2012)

A movie that has all the trappings of a psychological thriller, but they forgot to put in the psychological part. And most of the thriller too. All of the actors are exactly fine, no better no worse (with the exception of Sissy Spacek in a smaller role, who appears to be the only one actually trying). You might be able to guess the big shocking ending without me even telling you the plot.

#142: No One Will Save You (2023)

I’m an OG Kaitlyn Dever fan from the Justified days (what an incredible turn as Loretta McCready). And she’s good here too, there just isn’t much to it beyond the cute self-imposed challenge of making a film with virtually no dialogue. The scares aren’t, you know, scary or even really surprising. The ending could’ve been interesting but I think we would’ve needed to know her character better to have it really hit.

#141: 2012 (2009)

“NASA deems ‘2012’ absurd” is a real article title I just now saw on the internet. Amazing. What a world.

If you can keep your brain from exploding over all the incredibly bad science, it’s a fine “watch while folding laundry” flick. And Cusack always brings a little extra.

#140: L’Atalante (1934)

Apparently this was an incredible step forward for movies at the time, and I can see that in the plotting and acting and a better understanding of human motivations than many current movies. But ultimately it was just so foreign to my experience that I couldn’t really connect to it. I wonder what people in 2099 will think of 2012?

#139: A Knock at the Cabin (2023)

An intense and interesting philosophical experiment mostly ruined by the cop-out ending. All that tension and speculation wasted. Harrumph.

Up Next: Still Fine! But only for like 2 more of these! I promise!

Now, this is just for our records, it should only hurt for a moment.

Apologies for the delays in service. We hope that our regularly scheduled nonsense should resume momentarily.

#150: The Invitation (2022)

Perfectly cromulent, but this is what happens when people don’t spend any more time on a concept than they have to. Or, alternatively, when Netflix focus groups a film to death.

#149: Cassandro (2023)

Oddly by-the-numbers treatment of an extremely not by-the-numbers subject. I want to watch the documentary that these same filmmakers did first now.

#148: Chicago (2002)

I’ve just….never loved the show? Zellweger and the other leads all play their characters well, there are a couple of good songs, but it just never really comes together for me. Maybe it’s all a bit obvious? Not entirely sure why I never cared for it, but figured that if any version would work for me it would be this one. So I guess now I know.

#147: Gerald’s Game (2017)

The site I grabbed this image from had the headline “Great Stephen King Story Hurt by a Bad Ending” and I mean, need I even go on? In that sense I suppose that this is the perfect Stephen King Movie Experience, as that is kind of the whole deal with a lot of his film adaptations.

In this particular instance I was expecting a psychological dread kind of experience, and I got that for a while….but then the Moonlight Man shows up? And we have to hunt him down? What???

#146: Gangs of New York (2002)

Well put-together (I mean it’s Scorsese, come on) but ultimately just mean-spirited. These people are terrible, the fights are terrible, the things that they do are terrible, it’s just terrible. Just when you start to root for a John Reilly he gets his skull fricking caved in. Yeesh.

#144: Sometimes I Think About Dying (2023)

Ridley somehow finds a way to make an extremely passive character kind of compelling, but I think I may just be kind of done with movies about depression. Sorry.

Up Next: More Fine! But more fine than these.

Wait, what? Who are you again?

Ah yes, the annual group of movies that I know I saw but I just cannot remember. Hopefully I did watch them and it’s not that someone snuck into the sacred Movie List and just put them on there to mess with me.

#156: Out of Time (2003)

Bonus demerits for somehow making Denzel forgettable. I think this was about whether or not he was being set up to take the fall but I have no recollection as to whether or not he actually turned out to be the bad guy.

#155: Aftermath (2021)

Some kind of “what is going on in this house” situation. I vaguely remember this guy was like living in the walls or something, which is pretty creepy, but no idea what his deal was.

#154: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Go ahead, tell me that you remember what this movie was about. I dare you.

I had to look up pictures for this before I even remembered that Namor was in it, but was he the big villain in the end? Or did he, like, team up with the secondary Wakanda characters to stop some other Big Bad? I have no idea and, frankly, don’t care. RIP Chadwick.

Still better than Quantumania though.

#153: Dream Lover (1993)

Who can even keep track of the ’90s James Spader twisted psychological sex movies? 

#152: Stay (2005)

Gosling/Watts/McGregor should result in a decent film, right? I remember the gimmick here being pretty abrasively obvious but I have no idea which of Gosling or McGregor was the one who was the focus of it. I do remember yelling at the movie to just do something though, which is not a good sign.

#151: Blackhat (2015)

Special award for this one – later in the year I saw a mention of this as a disposable action techno-thriller so I added it to my “movies to watch” list for when I was in the mood for such a thing….but then it turns out that I had seen it earlier in the year. What was it about? No freaking idea.

Up Next: It’s Fine, It’s All Fine (Part IV)

#163: The Old Ways (2020)

More or less ok, but just uninteresting. A movie in the 2020s needs some kind of angle on this material beyond “you westerners and your fancy technologies are meddling with forces you cannot understand.”

#162: The Ghost Writer (2010)

Pierce Brosnan was born to play James Bond, but he should also have made a fantastic semi-disgraced former Prime Minister writing his memoirs. The cast is filled out well, the direction is good (I realized after the fact that this was Roman Polanski, which, ewww, but it’s not like he’s a bad director), the cinematography is nice….but this just never gets going. I can’t cite any specific problems (although the “twist” ending was wildly telegraphed) it just never actually got interesting.

#161: Suspect Zero (2004)

Kind of the flip-side of The Ghost Writer – this was quite interesting and Kingsley and Eckhart really sell their characters, but the plot just didn’t make a lick of sense. You really generally shouldn’t overthink these kind of precognition / time-travel mystery movies (cf, as always, Primer) but this repels basically any attempts at comprehension.

So this is something I’ve learned about myself I guess: interesting nonsense > well-crafted but uninteresting .

#160: Over the Top (1987)

I still can’t believe that they made a movie about arm wrestling. And look at all those fans in attendance!

#159: L’Argent (1983)

Just too goddamn depressing.

I mean, look, I get it, that is the entire point, how the careless and/or selfish actions of people can have profoundly negative consequences for other people. But unlike, say, The Bicycle Thieves, it feels like this was cruel just to show how cruel people can be and how terrible the world is.

#158: The Nun (2018)

It’s fine?

Replacement-level horror. Perfectly acceptable for having on while you’re doing laundry or whatnot.

#157: Executive Decision (1996)

Not quite wacky enough to be good but pretty silly fun. Impressively bold choice to kill off Steven Seagal (well, his character) so early. Perfect for MovieClub.

Up Next: It’s Fine, It’s All Fine (That I Don’t Remember These Movies)

The more times someone says it’s fine, the more fine it is. That’s just science.

This is the group of movies that I didn’t really dislike but that I wouldn’t recommend. If one of y’all told me you were going to see one of these I wouldn’t feel the need to warn you off. They’re….fine.

#171: The Addiction (1995)

You guys you guys you guys – did you know that vampirism….can be a metaphor….for drug addiction??? WHOA!!!!!

I dunno, is it wrong to expect more from an art-house movie than decent black and white visuals? Don’t be fooled by the above BTW, Walken is in this for all of one scene.

#170: Voces (2020)

Your standard haunted house movie. The boy has disturbing visions of the future, the evil whatsit tells terrible lies, everyone has visions, bad things happen. Meh.

#169: The Forgotten (2004)

Decently done mystery starring Julianne Moore and Dominic West where children are disappearing and then everyone just, well ummm, forgets that they ever existed. But then it turns out that…aliens were doing it just to fuck with us, using magic box woo-woo super technology. Seriously, what is even the point of having a detailed setup when that’s what you’re swerving into in the last 10 minutes? And of course once the bad aliens (just the one bad alien? not entirely clear) are gone everyone forgets that anything ever happened and all the kids are back now. Yay?

#168: Marnie (1964)

Perfectly good movie but I just could not abide the bad psychological underpinnings and the offensive gender politics. Basically it was too 1964 for me; made me too aggravated to get into the film.

#167: In Time (2011)

Just on the wrong side of too stupid to be watchable pulp. Possibly Justin Timberlake’s second-best acting performance (after The Social Network), but he’s just too slight of a presence to carry a movie on his shoulders. Cillian Murphy is interesting as the kind-of-bad guy but the script ends up stranding him with muddled motivations. The movie was so captivating that I can’t remember how it ended.

#166: The Ninth Gate (1999)

Pardon me, I just need a moment to glory in that facial hair.

Ahem. Ok. 

Not as mysterious or creepy as it thinks it is. And the evil force could’ve won at a thousand different points if it wasn’t just so frickkin’ stupid.

#165: Clive Barker’s The Plague (2006)

Hulu is a great place to find B-tier horror /action thrillers. This attempted update of Village of the Damned* is surprisingly watchable even if it’s totally unnecessary and unoriginal. In other words, it’s some of James van der Beek’s best work.

* Pretty bold of Barker to slap his name on this as though it’s an original concept when, I mean, come on dude. Everyone saw that movie. It’s a classic.

#163: Annabelle: Creation (2017)

I already said the thing about being desperate for horror movies I haven’t already seen right?

This was mostly fine. The ending was kind of stupid and predictable, but given that this was a prequel to the haunted evil doll movie (which was a spinoff of another movie) it’s hard to be too rough on them about that.

Up Next: More Baseline Competence

Oh no it’s alright, I’m sure that’s supposed to look like that.

#177: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)

At least he died as an Avenger.

On the one hand, not as terrible as it’s reputation. On the other, it’s still a long, long way from good. This got on some good lines/moments (“I have holes!”) and the inherent and apparently unstoppable likeability of Paul Rudd. But a muddled plot, superhero (and especially multiverse) fatigue, and some pretty bad F/X make this highly skippable. Especially now that they need a different solution for Kang with Jonathan Major’s firing. 

#176: Rollercoaster (1977)

A ’70s disaster-of-the-week movie where the disaster was…..rollercoaster bombings? Sure, why not! Looks like they spent about $20 on making this, most of which presumably went to the craft services table for the Sparks concert.

#175: Enys Men (2022)

Avant garde movie that feels like it has a point to it, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out what that point might be. I feel like I didn’t get it, but reading about it afterwards it seems that even the people who liked it cannot explain anything about it at all.

#174: Automata (2014)

The kind of dystopia film where the future just seems…exhausting. Not terrible or doomed (although not not that I suppose) but just like everything is a total pain in the ass and nothing works like it’s supposed to (least of all the frankly totally unimpressive robots).

#173: Blade II (2002)

Right? Right???

#172: Beau Is Afraid (2023)

Look, I am a huge Ari Aster fan – Hereditary is one of my all-time favorites, I adored Midsommar, I have tracked down and appreciated* all of his shorts. But someone needed to rein my boy in on this one. There are large chunks of the movie that could be completely excised without losing anything. The allegorical bits swing between far too obscure and smacking-you-in-the-face obvious. A lot of things** seem to have made it in because someone thought that they sounded cool so they just ran with it even when it should’ve been pretty clear that they weren’t working.

sighhhhh

I’m still excited for whatever he does next. Just…maybe take it down a half notch, okay?

* I can’t say that I liked, for example, The Strange Thing About the Johnsons, but it was very good.

** Man if you’ve seen this movie and you can’t list like 5 things that this could be referring to then I got nothin’ for ya.

Up Next: It’s Fine, It’s All Fine