The Ur-Spy Thriller, what every Bond movie aspires to!
Not every aspect of the fairly complicated plot really holds together, but then again that isn’t the point – the point is to have a series of compelling set pieces and support them with enough suspense and intrigue that you don’t really worry about why exactly they’re hanging off of Mount Rushmore or what precisely is the conspiracy that is acting against our hero or why their diabolical plan had to be so complex and whether our heroine’s actions really make sense in retrospect.
There are, of course, less explosions than we are now accustomed to, although I would argue that that is a good thing. Not every story – even an action story – needs to have world-shaking stakes with hundreds or more of lives at stake Maybe I’ve been numbed by seeing the fate of all existence threatened too often, but the focus on two people makes the story actually seem more compelling
This isn’t my favorite Hitchcock, or even in my top three, but that’s hardly damning. Highly enjoyable and a great blueprint for many other highly enjoyable films to come!
Way back when Looper came out I figured that we were about done with time-travel movies for the most part; sure there would be one now and again, but the idea had been played out and wouldn’t be a big part of the cinematic landscape.
Yep, nailed it. I sure know how to call the trends.
Palm Springs doesn’t really innovate and the instigating factor is classic McGuffin territory, but the script is fantastic, the leads give compelling performances, and the whole thing is just a lot of fun. This seems like a film really made for Samberg, possibly literally written for him, right in his wheelhouse, and he nails it exactly like you knew he would.
Cristin Milioti, though! Who knew??? She grounds the entire movie and creates the perfect comparison to Samberg’s customary never-changing stunted adolescent and gives him something to play off of. She’s funny and dark and inquisitive and maybe hiding something and she manages to pull it all off and still seem like a real person.
And of course JK Simmons is good in everything and he does provide an interestingly different perspective on what how someone could react to a time loop.
In the end, this is just a fun movie. The characters are believable and fun to spend time with and they react to a ridiculous nonsense situation in believable but interesting ways. Joe Bob says Check It Out!
Yeah, so, I’m not going to pretend that I have anything at all original to say about Apocalypse Now.
The problem with seeing classic films so long after they were actually released is that the things that everyone stole from them are now tropes instead of innovations. These rankings are my subjective impressions, so it comes in (relatively) low, but intellectually I obviously get how great and influential this was.
Also: They’re all so young! Baby Lawrence Fishburne!
Sooooo….since I’m fortunate enough to have seen Hamilton on Broadway, it’s extremely difficult to even really think about this as a movie.
The show is great! But nobody should doubt that, of course. Honestly I don’t have much interesting left to say about it at this point. LMM is a genius (although he’s the weakest performer in the cast….not that he’s not good enough, he is, but he’s not quite on their level). The songs are great, even if (like me) you don’t catch all of the musical references.
Anyway, I guess this is a compromise ranking – the show is great, the filming isn’t particularly innovative, the performances are tremendous, it’s all so so so much better live. Hopefully that will be an option again soon.
I’m a big fan of David Byrne and his music and general sensibilities. This show is designed to take us inside those sensibilities and also show us an enjoyable time without ever departing from Byrne’s take on important messages in his own inimitable fashion.
Obviously, with….everything….watching a stage show has an extra impact right now. And while filmed live performances can normally feel static and removed, Spike Lee’s camerawork perfectly captures the energy and involvement of the show almost as though you’re on stage.
But if you’ve seen it, you know the real reason why this film is so magical. His name is Chris Giarmo, and he is fantastic. Some people just capture your eye and refuse to let it go, and I would watch him move for hours and hours if I could. He also choreographed the show and it’s impossible to focus on anyone else, even Byrne, for an extended period. A true bravura performance.
I went through a long phase of not liking zombie movies after getting kind of freaked out watching 28 Days Later while feverish. Perhaps that says too much about me.
It’s disturbingly hard to watch [rec] in the manner in which it should be watched – the only rental versions available are terrible, terrible English-dubbed garbage. Obviously anyone with sufficient taste to be reading this blog knows better than to watch English-dubbed movies. Ewwww. Eventually I signed up for a trial subscription to Shudder as the only way I could track down the Spanish-language original.
[rec] is worth the search though. Made near the tail-end of the “found footage” craze, the film makes the most of the conceit. As a two-person low-level ride-along tv team, it makes sense for Angela and Manu to not only set up the establishing background but also to try to “break” the incredible story they end up stumbling into.
[rec] also does the viewer the service of not spoon-feeding them exactly what’s going on and why. Few things turn me against a horror movie faster than the trope of the old mystic/fortune teller/rabbi who just happens to know every detail about the specific curse tormenting our hero. It’s considerably more frightening to know that something terrible is happening but have no idea how or why. And [rec] is the scariest movie I saw this year.
These movies get the official Sparky Seal of Approval! Not quite good enough to make my top 10 (top 11 this year actually), but these are the movies I recommend for all viewers! See them now!
18 – Captain America: The First Avenger(2011)
Weird to think about it now, but when the whole MCU thing started I was extremely wary of the enterprise, as the best Superhero Movie to that date was clearlyBlade. So, you know. Anyway, now we all know what these movies are: well-constructed, good-looking, enjoyable entertainments. Some of them (Black Panther, Thor: Ragnarok) rise above that standard, some of them (Avengers: Age of Ultron, Thor: The Dark World) are kind of a mess, but they are all within a certain range of minimum watchability.
So anyway, this is fun! Chris Evans was born for this role, the villain makes more sense than usual for the MCU, and of course Hayley Atwell is the perfect smarter-and-better-than-you-and-also-gorgeous love interest.
17 – Doctor Sleep (2019)
What a surprise! The plot sounds far too ludicrous and the very idea of a sequel to The Shining….yikes. But no! Somehow this is actually good! A completely different movie from The Shining and arguably it would be even better without the connection to the Overlook, but this was considerably more interesting and effective than I expected.
16 – The Grudge (2004)
Fabulously spooky. This first wave of US adaptations of Japanese horror was very cool before it, inevitably, got more standardized for American tastes.
15 – Blockers (2018)
The movie subverts the expectations for what it’s going to be just enough to be surprising and fun, while still generally sticking to the tried and true formula. Leslie Mann and all of the kids (particularly Kathryn Newton) are very fun and it’s nice to have a movie without anyone that you really want to root against (although it takes the non-Cena dad a little bit to get to that point).
14 – Jumanji: The Next Level (2019)
Kept pretty much everything that made the first one so fun while plausibly advancing the characters in ways I cared about. I could’ve done without the DaVito/Glover plotline that does exactly what you expect in more or less exactly the ways you expect it, but everyone is having such fun and the movie conveys that so well.
13 – The Babysitter (2017)
There isn’t anything really new here, but they lean into it and embrace it, and handle all of the tropes pretty much perfectly. If you’re in the mood for a cheeky update to an 80s-style devil-worshipping teen comedy this is going to hit all the good spots.
12 – Anna and The Apocalypse (2017)
If VelociPaster is the movie that we could’ve created, Anna and the Apocalypse is the one that we WISH we could’ve created, but we’re not actually talented enough to have done so.
Just another zombie apocalypse high school musical about outsiders and overachievers – I honestly wouldn’t be entirely surprised if this was directly targeted at me in some fashion. And Avery loved it too!
Nothing loaded in using a facebook button, nope nope nope
Now we’re really getting into the good stuff!
25 – The Game (1997)
Good concept that generally does keep you guessing throughout – I switched from “haha, this is all part of The Game” to “nope, it’s definitely off the rails now” several times during the watch. The filmmakers cheat a little, but not so much as to make it distracting from just enjoying the madness. I choose to believe that the last scene with Christine was just the way she was trained to disengage and not the beginnings of a possible real relationship.
I wonder just how big the bill was that Conrad paid, but they did make these dudes seem rich enough for that not to be a problem.
24 – A Christmas Prince (2017)
Adorable. Not too saccharine about it, and just the right amount of comfortably formulaic without being too by-the-numbers. A bit odd for this to be the first time I’ve seen Rose McIver do something that wasn’t iZombie, but she pulled it off nicely!
23 – Ghost (1990)
Only 30 years late on this one!
The major plot developments were fairly obvious (or maybe I had picked them up via osmosis over the years) but the cast, particularly Whoopi, all gave good performances without going crazy over-the-top as I had been previously led to expect.
22 – The VelociPastor (2018)
The idiot movie than me and my idiot friends would’ve made if we ever got up the gumption to actually make a movie. Possible that this scored higher due to the online company with which it was watched than for its pure artistic merit.
21 The Old Guard (2020)
You mean it’s actually possible to make an action movie not based on preexisting IP????
Very well done, a solid concept without too much explanation but enough sense of the rules to know what’s what. Good times.
20 – Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016)
If you’re only going to watch one of this surprisingly-full genre of movies (and that is the right number to watch), definitely make it this one! Contrary to all expectations, they actually tried on this movie and it totally paid off. From action scenes that were clearly actually choreographed to having scene transitions and exposition that added to the momentum of the film, this is a classic “better than it had to be” piece of entertainment. Lily James is in this thing! What???
19 – What Keeps You Alive (2018)
Very creepy naturalistic atmosphere underlining the hopelessness and the existential angst of the characters. Unfortunately, the plot doesn’t quite hang together – I get that having this be the first anniversary makes the betrayal sting much worse, but if Jackie is half the sociopath she’s made out to be it’s pretty inconceivable that she could hide it that well for that long. But if you want to get creeped out and feel terrible about humanity without thinking too hard about it, this is your film.
The flip-side of the prior category, these are the movies that were just good enough for a qualified recommendation. Not You-Must-See-This, but more hey, if you’re into this sort of thing, you should check these out….
33 – Malevolent (2018)
Florence Pugh’s least-captivating performance is still quite good. There are no real surprises in this spookfest and they dropped the conceit of these paranormal investigators being scammers before really doing anything with it, but even a paint-by-numbers horror movie can be fun if it’s done well.
32 – Ronin (1998)
Yikes, De Niro was already playing world-weary I’m Too Old For This @$#* characters 22 years ago? Very interesting script and talented actors but it just didn’t grab me as much as it should’ve on paper. A solid watch, entirely possible that someone really into this sort of thing would’ve appreciated it more than I did.
31 – Magic Mike (2012)
The dancing routines were great! The plot….not so much. Everything about the background club storyline, from the general mentorship and camaraderie to McConaughey turning out to be pretty scummy, was interesting. The central love story was….there, I guess? Seemed like Brooke was trying WAY too hard to not admit to herself (or anyone else) that a big part of why she was into Channing was because he was hot as hell. And I, mean, go get you some, girl! Don’t be afraid of that! But there was no other apparent reason why she would be into him.
Also, did I mention that the routines were great?
30 – Cruel Intentions (1999)
I think that they wanted this to be so-bad-it’s-good. And they were close! Better casting could’ve made this a total classic. Reese and SMG (duh) were awesome. Phillippe just couldn’t quite hang with them though, and Blair was a disaster. Still a ton of fun as the movie deliberately (I think) leaned far into camp. Definitely my second-favorite film adaptation of Les Liaisons Dangereuses.
29 – Road House (1989)
Swayze! Swayze doing tai chi! Swayze fighting for the little guy! Swayze beating up dudes! Swayze…running a bar! Swayze…involved in a gun battle…in some rich dude’s trophy hunting room? Sure, why not!
Amazingly, this was not my favorite Swayze vehicle on the 2020 list.
28 – The Vast of Night (2019)
Nicely done and I appreciated the smallness of it in a way (not every alien movie has to take place on the spaceship, after all). However it seemed almost too much of a slice-of-life approach in light of the subject-matter. Impressive debut feature for Andrew Patterson, who will likely be directing something in MCU Phase 5 or whatnot.
27 – The Town (2010)
So Boston that it couldn’t be more Boston or have any Boston Boston Boston. Boston.
There was some cognitive dissonance for me in that the plan that these super-thieves had wasn’t particularly impressive, but that’s likely because I’ve seen a lot of heist movies where impossible schemes go off with relatively few hitches, whereas this seem in retrospect more like a relatively sophisticated real-life experienced-robber plan. The level of believable menace from Renner was the big surprise I appreciated after a decade or so of Hawkeye blandness.
26 – Con Air (1997)
Didn’t make a lick of sense, and I don’t care at all. What fun madness from a bunch of crazy damn actors having a good time. From that wonderful era where we all thought Nic Cage was a lunatic but we actually had no idea how far he would end up going.
There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so
These are the best of the bad – the movies that I overall kind of enjoyed, but not enough to recommend them or to say that they met the nebulous standard of “good.” This is also the graveyard of Great Idea, Not-So-Great Execution.
40 – Krampus (2015)
It really needed to lean either more or less into the mythology of the Krampus. If there was a grumpy sad kid and then Krampus came and ravaged his family and nobody really knew why? Scary! If the wizened grandmother knew all about Krampus but had an actual hidden reason for never speaking of it (or, you know, warning any grumpy kids) and there was a hunt for how to send Krampus away, that would be fun too. Instead they kind of half-assed it and then I guess everyone was trapped in a bottle universe forever at the end? Some fun performances though.
39 – The Irishman (2019)
There was probably a great movie in there somewhere. Heck, there might have been 2 or 3 good movies in this bloated monument to the necessity of editors. Just wayyyyyyy too much pursuing of random subplots. This so didn’t need to be 3.5+ hours long.
38 – Anaconda (1997)
This movie’s ranking is entirely due to Jon Voight. His batshit insane madness and “accent” work was delightful to experience, but I also don’t enjoy thinking about Jon Voight these days.
37 – Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006)
An incredible premise – an up-and-coming serial killer invites a behind-the-scenes style film crew to document his emergence into the scene and the beginning of his spree. But the movie didn’t end up truly committing to the bit, with the crew quickly horrified that Leslie is actually hunting and killing people and it quickly devolves into a standard-fare B-grade horror movie after spending precious little time up front actually having fun with the premise and the well-known tropes.
36 – Color Out of Space (2019)
Whelp, that was certainly insane. Pretty much exactly what I expected from a 2019 Nic Cage movie adapted from an HP Lovecraft story. Yup.
35 – The Gentlemen (2019)
A better version of Snatch. Guy Richie has made quite the career with these films since Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, but in my opinion the definitive apex of the form was Daniel Craig’s Layer Cake.
Anyway, this was fun and the Guy Ritchie-ness of the whole thing was toned down enough to make it somewhat more comprehensible. Of course I’m always up for some Michelle Dockery and Matthew McConaughey. A touch too self-satisfied to truly recommend though.
34 – Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (2020)
I wanted to love this movie soooo much. The premise is big fun, Rachel McAdams is great, Will Farrell does his thing, of course I adore Dan Stevens. And, well, I just couldn’t get there. It’s certainly not bad but for most of the film I felt like I was just waiting for the real great stuff to come out that was surely right around the corner. But it never came. Even the “look at this ludicrous madness” competition scenes weren’t really any more insane than actual Eurovision routines.
I kind of feel bad saying I didn’t really like this because I want people to take more swings at this kind of material and I want to support the people involved….but I didn’t really like this one.
