The bowl was like that when I got here

#334: Her Smell (2018)

Rather unpleasant! With no deeper underlying truths beyond “sometimes artists are unstable people” to salvage it. I wonder why Elizabeth Moss was interested in doing this movie.

#333: High Noon (1952)

Ok, ewwwwww. I could not get past the 28-year age difference between the leads. Additionally, I had seen many other westerns in ’22 before this one so while it was narratively innovative in a historical sense, it was also the 8th time I watched this plot. Pass.

#332: The Incredible Hulk (2008)

The poor reputation checks out here. Just a mess of nonsense and stupid decisions driven only by a not-thought-out script and not character choices that would make any sense. Amazingly, the She-Hulk miniseries somehow redeemed The Abomination, which was wasted here.

#331: The Cursed (2021)

Tries to straddle the line between supernatural and historical fiction and actual witches vs excuses for aggressive othering persecution, and trying to be all things to all people results in not making anyone happy. Trailer looked great, cinematography was excellent, plot was blah.

#330: Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)

At around 90 minutes in I was getting pretty aggravated that they dared to waste SO MUCH of my time with this. Then there were some flash-bang action sequences and Cameron totally Titanic’d up the whole thing and it was kind of bitchin’ for a bit. The setting and graphics were cool, as you would expect, although a surprising number of times I thought someone had stood up in the theater only to realize it was a foreground character on the screen. Teenager Sigourney Weaver was cool, although that character’s godlike savior thing is only going to become more annoying as these go on. Overall not worth the time commitment.

#329: The Keep (1983)

Classic 80s sci-fi nonsense with “good” Nazis and “bad” Nazis and just….yeah, no. Some interesting plot stuff and quasi-religious themes that actually nod toward complicated philosophy and the such raise this over the depths but still.

#328: After Midnight (2019)

Kind of intriguing and I wanted to like it, but ultimately just not interesting enough that I cared about what was happening. Also, the fact of this being a movie tipped off the “is there a monster or is he just insane” calculus because if there was no monster this just was not going to be nearly interesting enough.

Up Next: Not For Me

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Nobody will notice, right?

Herein be the movies that weren’t bad per se but something was off enough about them that I would not only not recommend them but if asked would suggest something else. If the movie isn’t good enough to make it to the “this is fine” category then you should have better options.

#340: Amsterdam (2022)

Proof that a great cast and even a decent general story outline do not guarantee a good movie. It felt like the entire movie was “oh, hey, now look over here at *this* new crazy character tic!” without actually delving deeply into the characters or the plot. It’s like the script/director was too busy stuffing quirks into the characters and didn’t leave any room for them to expand into feeling like actual people.

#339: Dark Waters (1993)

Tries to be moody and atmospheric while also telling a spookums mystery/morality tale. But it would’ve been much better off just focusing on the moody and atmospheric and leaving the obvious and, frankly, boring and predictable “mystery” out of it entirely.

#338: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005)

Frankly offensive to me personally that they would adapt this masterpiece of modern literature* and somehow completely miss the humor, tone, and style.

*Yes, I mean that earnestly – come at me bro!

#337: West Side Story (2021)

A completely faithful remake of the original. Raising the question: why? Who was this for? Why not just rewatch the original?

#336: Wedding Crashers (2005)

We’re supposed to be rooting for these creeps? Also, the main conceit – that these guys are so good at what they do that they become the total life of the party and everyone loves them – just totally grated on me; do the brides and grooms not have any actual friends? Lifted out of the abyss by a few truly LOL moments and a go-for-it nuts performance by Bradley Cooper but overall I wanted these two to get their comeuppance more than anything else.

#335: Let Us Prey (2014)

Could’ve been a tense thriller but they decided to go with “crazy religious badassery” instead and it was the wrong call. Stuff happens that is just on the wrong side of being interesting – honestly, with not that many tweaks this could’ve been really interesting but instead it’s a weird “people are all terrible, aren’t they” story with a tacked-on avenging angel prequel setup. I suspect that they just came up with the “witty” title and stopping working at that point.

Up Next: Flawed Part II

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Uhhhhhhhhh…….

I was really hoping that I would be able to avoid this, but it turns out that there were just some movies that I know I watched but I only very dimly remember. So for convenience I have just put them here as an acknowledgement that they can’t have been good or interesting if I forgot them but they also can’t have been just abysmally terrible. So…..you’re welcome I guess?

#347: Countdown (2019)

What a KILLER APP! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!!! HA HA HA HA HA!!!!

Sorry.

I remember a couple of things about this one but not whether or not our hero survives or if we ever figure out what the deal is with the app or what. I figure that’s a particularly bad sign for a horror movie.

#346: The Devil Below (2021)

They delved too greedily and too deep. Apparently the monster was some manner of giant person-eating worm? That seems like the sort of thing that would stick with you, but apparently not.

#345: Gaia (2021)

I know that dad was keeping our hero (?) separate and apart from society but not whether that was some kind of cruel torturous thing or for the righteous protection of society or her. I do remember the forest setting being very pretty.

#344: Without Remorse (2021)

I was told that this Amazon John Clancy adaptation was forgettable….and, well….yep!

#343: Black Widow (1987)

We did see this, right? For Movie Club? I don’t think I wrote it down in the “watched” list by accident….

#342: The Girl on the Third Floor (2019)

Oddly, I remember more meaningless details about this one than most of the others in this category, but not what the deal was with this film’s whole thing. Was the house haunted or something? Or driving him crazy, or trying to eat his family? No idea. I do know that CM Punk should stick with wrestling.*

* I guess? Not like I’ve ever seen him wrestle but he’s one of the big stars now, right? And he can’t act worth a crap.

#341: Law Abiding Citizen (2009)

Gerard Butler is….trying to get revenge for….something? But he’s actually….a good guy? No, is that right? Secretly a bad guy pretending to be a good guy? And he….gets away at the end? Geez.

Up Next: Flawed

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Movies are supposed to be fun and good!

#354: Friday (1995)

This one is probably on me. Just not my kind of humor. I really expected the oft-quoted Daammmmmn, Felicia to have more of an in-movie payoff?

#353: Suspiria (1977)

Sorry Claire, but $19.99 worth of art direction just isn’t going to get it done for me. I assume that they were going for a dream-like quality here but I kept getting dragged out of it by “guy-in-plastic-gorilla-mask” quality SF and ketchup bottle blood.

#352: Rock of Ages (2012)

Hooooo, boy. Tom Cruise, as always, gives it his all, the male lead had a great voice, =CZJ was obviously having a lot of fun, and the surprising club owner love story was sweet. Pretty much everything else was terrible – jukebox musicals are always iffy, but this was stretching *really* hard to shove sings into the plot and the script was a complete mess.

#351: Before I Wake (2012)

Kinda-okay spooker ruined by over-explaining everything. Maybe let the mystery live a little bit next time.

#350: Black Adam (2022)

What could’ve been at least a replacement-level superhero flick, ruined by two major miscalculations: (1) that we would care about the noble sacrifices of heroes that we had never heard of before,* and (2) that the least interesting character could hold the movie because he was played by Dwayne Johnson.

I would have enjoyed a movie about Dr. Fate and Hawkman so much more than this. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that DC missed the boat again. Maybe Gunn will give me that Weasel movie I’ve been craving?

* Obviously a a comics nerd growing up I knew all about Dr. Fate and Hawkman and etc but you know what I mean. No backstory provided here or in any other movie context.

#349: Near Dark (1987)

These are the stupidest damn vampires you’ll ever see. They are CONSTANTLY surprised that the sun is coming up – buy some watches and a Farmer’s Almanac you morons! And they steal cars and drive around, not bothering to cover the windows until sun-up. They can (apparently) be killed by fiery explosions….which they they cause themselves. No preparations whatsoever when they know that they are being hunted. Ok, they have a major cool look and ‘tude, but they should’ve been dead long before this.

#348: Men (2022)

Possibly my biggest disappointment this year, this movie theoretically about the many ways in which men suck* gives us a protagonist that is not allowed any true internality, simply reacting to men treating her like crap, and instead invests all of its gimmicks in the men – or man, really, as Rory Kinnear conspicuously plays all of the male characters in the villiage where the vast majority of the film is set (without that decision ever paying off in any way I could discern). The trailer was more interesting than the movie.

* No lies detected, but Men has nothing original or interesting to say about it.

Up Next: I Saw These, I Guess?

If it weren’t for those meddling writers, directors, and actors!

#361: The Blob (1958)

I guess this was better as a concept than as a movie, as the idea of the blob has lived on in B-movie legend but this film is a stinker. Excessively few action moments (basically there is the famous theater scene and mayyyyybe one other one if you want to stretch it) and everyone acts like an idiot around the Blob (“Ooooh, lookie there Hank, it’s some glowing crud that fell to Earth from space! Let’s get up real close and touch it!)

#360: Sans Soleil (1983)

In retrospect, maybe I was supposed to be stoned? I just did not get this AT ALL. Occassionally interesting (but more frequently just plain boring) slice of life documentary shots accompanied by college-sophomore philosophical stylings. Yawwwwwwwn.

#359: Annie Hall (1977)

Christ, what an asshole

#358: Identity (2003)

Sometimes John Cusack gives you a Grosse Pointe Blank, sometimes he gives you an Identity. What ya gonna do.

The writers here were trying way too hard to be cute, resulting in a movie that felt off the whole time and not in a “ooooh, what is really going on here” sense but in more of a “wow, this is a jumbled mess that isn’t internally cohesive but that they are going to try to pull together with a last-minute twist.” You get a nickel for guessing whether or not they succeeded.

#357: The Dark and the Wicked (2020)

Pulled off making a spooky-as-hell setting and a sense of building dread but then it built to…..nothing. Incredibly unsatisfying – what I thought was going to be a slow burn was just an unfinished script or something. I seriously went to see whether or not I somehow missed something or my stream got cut off early.

#356: Fantastic Planet (1973)

In fairness, I think I knew that I was supposed to be stoned for this one.

Should’ve-been-rejected first draft plot, dull animation style, ick. Do better, classic 1970s sci-fi animation.

#355: A Day in the Country (1946)

I guess this was supposed to be revolutionary for displaying its characters like real people but I didn’t find that to be the case any more so than other 40s films I’ve seen, and then the core story (such as it was) doesn’t come up until the last 20 minutes when two people who have barely even met fall in love forever (but still have to part – this is a French movie after all!).

Up Next: The Thrilling Conclusion to the Suboptimal Category!

I mean, it is still ice cream. Is there a 5 second rule for pavement?

Moving now into the category of movies that I didn’t really like but that didn’t arouse a negative emotional response. We’re talking gradations of blah here, people – I have to cut the divisions pretty fine with this many films. Some of the ones in this category were just generally meh and some others have solid artistic/comedic merit but just didn’t hit with me personally for one reason or another.

#368: Haxan (1922)

Deliberately sensationalist but not by 2022 standards – I would imagine that heads were exploding at some of this imagery 100 years ago. So much blatant nonsense though – I somehow doubt that the claim that “over 8 million women and children were burned as witches” is technically accurate – makes it hard to sit through, especially when it’s presented in a semi-documentary format.

#367: The Warriors (1979)

Mimes! They made a movie about street gangs that had a whole gang that dressed like mimes! MIMES!!!!

And there was a baseball-players-in-makeup gang, an overalls gang, the requisite girl gang, a ridiculous blacksploitation pimp gang, and so many more, each apparently ruthlessly enforcing their respective dress codes.

Sadly, the batsh!t crazy gang design is the only good thing about this otherwise rote and dreary show.

#366: Daughters of Darkness (1971)

I dunno man, I think I just don’t get the 70s.

#365: Daisies (1966)

Apparently considered a masterwork of surrealist comedy, this just didn’t land for me at all – for the most part it felt like a below-average Benny Hill episode without the mandatory Yakkity Sax chase scene. This may be hard to hear, but inserting a blue (or green or red or….) filter over the camera does not by itself make a big statement.

#364: Wolfen (1981)

Innovative Wolf-O-Vision tragically let down by a pretty boring plot about urban redevelopment and, like, 3 total maulings. Gregory Hines doesn’t even tap dance!

#363: Sator (2019)

In what will become something of a recurring theme, I searched out a lot of horror movies this year as a break from the classics and, having already seen a lot of horror, I ended up looking for things that just sounded like stuff I would like regardless of any reviews or recommendations. Sometimes that ends up with the discovery of a hidden gem! And other times you get this. It sounds just like my kind of thing, with a cryptic semi-insane person who may actually be possessed or hiding some terrible secret. But it’s really just a jumbled mess.

#362: Thirst (2009)

Of course, just because something has a solid reputation doesn’t mean it’s particularly good either. The main character of this odd vampire tale makes so many inscrutable decisions that it took me completely out of the story. If the plot might go anywhere on a whim for no reason, it’s difficult for me to care about what happens as a result.

Up Next: Supoptimal Part II!

So much time lost…all these moments, lost in time, like tears in the rain…

More bad stuff. But these movies didn’t make me mad….just disappointed.

#376: Society (1989)

What the hell was that??? Normally, when you queue up a movie titled “Society” with a bunch of rich and influential characters you expect some kind of lesson about the corrupting influence of power or some such, but this was….well, I think the picture above says it all. Excessively weird, and the soap-opera-level acting and student script before the fleshy bacchanal kicks in didn’t do it any favors either.

#375: Morbius (2022)

In fairness, this was exactly as bad as I expected it to be. Like – exactly, nailed it, 100% on point. Matt Smith’s “I WILL have fun making this movie, dammit” performance saved it from being Valley Girls (2020) level terrible, but still. I wonder why Jared Leto keeps getting cast in things. Must be because he’s so swell to work with.

#374: Prospect (2018)

Aggressively dull. I actually remember this movie and its plot* but it’s the dullest, least interesting version of this story imaginable. I wanted to see something else from Sophie Thatcher after watching season one of Yellowjackets, but there isn’t much she can do with this yawner of a script.

* This will, of course, not always be true for this exercise. Hey – YOU try watching more than a movie a day for a year and see if you can remember all of them later.

#373: Dark Shadows (2012)

Depp is cute in his trying-hard role but far too much emphasis is placed on the “man out of time” premise and the purported kitschiness of the ’70s setting, without ever getting around to making a plot that felt like more than an afterthought. I wonder if it would’ve been better if they just focused on making this an interesting character study instead of trying to shoehorn some kind of historic family business nonsense and a ridiculous climatic fight scene.

#372: The Eternals (2021)

An unmissed return to slapdash-style 80s superhero movies that exist for no appreciable reason and will be quickly forgotten by all. Poor Harry Styles features (briefly) once again in the bottom tier of movies.

Just look at that nonsense above! What are the odds that it will ever be acknowledged in another Marvel movie? Who signed off on this crap?

#371: eXistenZ (1999)

David Cronenberg making a movie about videogames. Tons of fun to mock the various squelching noises with Movie Club but ultimately the film itself just made no sense, the “twist” ending came from out of nowhere, and the “game” was nonsense.

#370: The Matrix: Resurrections (2021)

The returns keep on diminishing. While there was some cute meta-commentary on sequels, this actually was just a rehash of the first movie re-cut for some reason as a love story. No artistic reason at all for it to exist, but good for the Wachowskis for extracting more money from their original idea I guess.

#369: Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)

Oh, this was so close. The first 20 minutes was a lovely old fashioned odd-couple romance between a man and his symbiote as they learned to live, laugh, and love together. But then they grafted on a bog-standard boring supervillain plot with an out-of-control Woody Harrelson and more “star blogger” nonsense with, frankly, rather poor CGI F/W. Blah.

Up Next: Suboptimal

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Eeyore really gets me, you know?

Thanks be to Our Dread Overlord Cthulhu, nothing that I saw this year dove down to the depths* of prior terribleness established by The Nightingale, FDR: American Badass, or – god forbid – The Rise of Skywalker.

But that doesn’t mean that all of 2022’s films were good, either. There were numerous clunkers and time-wasters amidst the year’s viewings, and other movies that really, really annoyed me but had a couple of redeeming features to raise them above the dreck. But these 5 films just sucked. Blech.

#381: Valley Girl (2020)

God DAMMIT Hollywood, how DARE you waste Jessica Rothe like this! And not only that, but to subject her to the indignities of incredibly poor 80s covers squeezed into bad-a capella dance moves and a so-so-so-painfully obvious “plot” within a lame framing device. And then have her nominal pre-punk boyfriend played by Logan Paul?!?!? AUGHHHHHH.

I so wanted to like this movie. I mean, it would not have been hard to make a version of this that I would have loved, right? Cheesy 80s nostalgia plus Rothe, right? But noooooooope, not even close. I had to try 3 times just to get past the first 10 minutes of this clunker. Ick.

And, look, Jessica – you know I only want the best for you, right? You have a fantastic Karaoke Night voice but maybe let’s not try to sing in any more movie musicals, mmmokay? Looks like this monstrosity kind of threw her career off track a bit too. Dammit.

#380: The General (1926)

I think that my overall rankings will show that I appreciated many classic films, but this Buster Keaton flick totally left me cold. For one thing, Keaton (at least in this movie) could not hold a candle to Charles Chaplin, but much more importantly there was nothing in this movie that felt like fun or silliness or anything remotely enjoyable.

Our “hero” is an idiot who decides to fight for the South in the Civil War because his paramour’s father makes one comment about how anyone not fighting is a coward. I suppose it goes without saying that the reasons for the Civil War or fighting for slavery are never discussed at all and the South is presented as nobly trying to preserve Southern customs – something that had nothing to do with the goddamn Civil War (other than to the extent that enslaving people was a “Southern custom”).

Anyway, I pretty much started out enraged with this garbage and nothing that happened in the film made me revisit that perspective or like any of the people we were watching at all. I figured for most of the year that this would capture my bottom spot, but when it came down to it the Valley Girl remake was even worse (yikes!).

#379: The Seventh Veil (1945)

Speaking of ridiculous and actively harmful tropes, this silly woman just needs to break through her silly womanly mental blocks to realize that she deeply loves her cousin (ick), who took her in and raised her since she was little (double ick), and was a super-stern domineering taskmaster (triple ick), which was both necessary and appropriate to turn her into a piano maestro whereas she otherwise would’ve wasted her silly woman’s life (quadruple ick). Basically every moment of this made my skin crawl, but it was played as a straight-up romance. <shudder> <barf emoji>

#378: Halloween Ends (2022)

Garbage. I don’t see why I should spend more time thinking about this than the filmmakers did. Laurie Strode deserved better, The Shape deserved better, we all deserved better. The opening sequence was kind of cool, but having come up with that they then apparently called it a day and stopped working on anything resembling an interesting movie at all and went into cruise control. Things happen because the script says so and for no other even vaguely plausible reason. Jamie Lee Curtis physically fighting The Shape to a standstill would’ve been a huge stretch in the first movie, but at her current age…..yeesh.

I should’ve learned my lesson with the just-as-bad-if-not-worse Halloween Kills, but after they got everything so right with the first of the reboots I just cannot fathom how they blew it this bad.

#377: Don’t Worry Darling (2022)

I mean, what are the odds that my worst-of category would feature Jessica Rothe and Florence Pugh???

All honor and glory to Ms. Pugh, as she does the best that she can with this and she and Chris Pine are clearly the best parts of the movie. I guess it looks pretty retro-cool too. But the script JUST. DOES. NOT. MAKE. ANY. SENSE.

[Spoiler warning, I guess, since this is a new-ish movie]

So Pine/Peterson comes up with technology THAT WOULD MAKE HIM BILLIONS AND BILLIONS OF CASH DOLLARS. But for reasons, instead of buying a continent or whatever, he uses this genius tech exclusively to help pathetic man-children who want slave wives, who then have to go to work to earn money to pay for it by…..doing….something? (I mean, Harry Styles** had his crisis because he lost his job and couldn’t get a new one but now….he…..can, I guess?) And nobody misses any of these women? They don’t have friends? Families? It doesn’t seem like the flophouse where they are being stowed would be hard to find? And why does Pine’s ultimately-supportive wife decide to stab him in the end while making some crazy-ass quip that suggested something that was never even hinted at on screen? And how were the women’s bodies being preserved, anyway? Wouldn’t their muscles atrophy and their eyes dry out?

Look – if you’re going to make a mystery box movie, and then reveal the mystery, it HAS TO MAKE SENSE! If you can’t do that then just leave it mysterious and try to 12 Monkeys your way out. Doing it this way is just insulting and dumb.

*Sorry, I just saw Avatar: The Way of Water the other day.

**While his character is terrible, I did feel pretty bad for Harry himself since he was making his big acting debut next to one of the top actors of her generation – and BOY was the difference obvious.

Next Up: Other Bad Movies!

Whelp, time to atone for my many many sins I guess

Ok, if you’re reading this then you likely know that I was on a quest this year to expand my general film knowledge.* I succeeded at watching all of my previously-unseen AFI Top 100 Films and made a solid start on the Sight and Sound lists, although those bastards cruelly revised their list at the end of the year.**

Anyhoo, having started down that path I got more interesting in “catching up” on various other acclaimed movies that had slipped through the cracks for me and I ended up prioritizing movie watching to a previously unimagined extent and, long story short(er), I watched (gulp) 381 new*** movies this year.

So, we’re going into new realms of madness here. I will keep the disclaimers short up front, but (i) these rankings are subjective and based entirely on how I reacted to the movies, (ii) I generally thus did not give much weight to “this changed everything!”style movie developments****, (iii) I watched a lot of great films this year so even, like, #300 was probably really good,***** everything is relative maaaannnn, and (iv) all of these rankings are objectively correct and if you disagree then you are wrong and bad.

Ok! On with the stupid list!******

*And if you didn’t know, then hey! Guess what?

** Okay, so they have been doing that every 10 years for quite a while now and thus it was due to happen in 2022, that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t specifically targeted to hurt me personally.

***”New” meaning new to me. Many of these films are older than I am, but if I hadn’t seen them before this year then they’re eligible for the list.

**** Not necessarily “fair” that I’m judging something like the first-ever jump scare as something that happens all the damn time, but also who cares about “fair”? I’m betting that the celebrated director that died 50 years ago doesn’t really care very much about where she’s ranked on some moron’s blog.

***** Will I remember to check this when we get to movie #300? Let’s find out together!

****** Are these endnotes getting annoying? I think they might be getting kind of annoying.

#1 – The Green Knight (2021)

What is the purpose of live? Without getting too overblown about it, that is really what this movie explores, with an incredible overlay of Arthurian style and breathtaking scenery.

Our callow and cocksure young knight who has gained his position through family connection and not merit, is eager to be known for brave and dangerous works – to become a legend. When the chance to fulfill what he sees as his destiny presents itself he takes it…and is shocked to find that he has entered into a deal that may have true consequences.

The Arthurian setting primes us toward thinking about certain themes – honor, duty, loyalty, and the like. Lowrie skillfully plays with this along Gawain’s journey – does he really want to do brave and heroic deeds, or would he like to be known for them without, you know, actually putting in the work.

Everything that happens on the long trek pushes Gawain toward a resolution*. Will he continue on the dangerous path? What will he do if he reached the end of it? Would it be better for him to just turn back and say that he went to meet the Knight? What does he owe to himself, and would it be better if he played it safe?

* Okay, not the one short scene with the giants, which just sort of….happens? It does look pretty cool though.