Meh. Meh? Meh.

47 – Angel Has Fallen (2019)

It’s fine. Fine. If you’ve seen one of these you’ve seen them all – President in danger, heroic secret service agent takes extraordinary measures to save him….and America. The f/x are good, the battle scenes are fine. It’s fine.

Note, of course, that this all feels VERY DIFFERENT now, but I’m going to try very hard not to think about that in the context of a fun little movie review countdown.

46 – Miss Americana (2020)

Very slight, of interest to Taylor Swift fans who want actual footage of old home movies and behind-the-scenes stuff. It does include a couple of interesting scenes of Swift struggling with whether it’s reliant on her as a decent human being to speak out against the various ongoing evils while knowing that there will be backlash from a significant portion of her fan base. But even that isn’t *too* interesting – it goes the way you think it would (or, if you even casually follow her, as you already know it would) – other than one all-too-brief scene where her father starts to push back and she rightfully punts him into the stands.

45 – Going in Style (2017)

The picture above really tells you everything good about this movie – some good older actors are having a good enough time and the film is a nice relaxed hang. Good to watch with your parents.

44 – Snatch (2000)

Shouldn’t this be fun? I thought that the point of these heist movies was that they were fun. The performances are good (aside from Pitt’s choice to make his character incomprehensible due to his “accent”) and it’s professionally shot and directed. But boy, it’s just a slog. Making Statham the main character was not a good call.

43 – The Proposal  (2009)

Cute enough I suppose, but I still think of Sandy as America’s Sweetheart, so seeing her be the cutthroat overworking boss character was odd. And this is firmly in the period where Hollywood didn’t know what to do with Ryan Reynolds (he’s cute! make him a traditional leading man!).

I watched around 60% of Jingle Bell Bride on the Hallmark Channel while mostly walking in-and-out of the room where it was on, and it covered the same ground as this and was noticeably better. Not a good sign.

42 – Tickled (2016)

The first thirty minutes of this documentary was an ever-escalating series of screaming “WHAT???” at the screen. It kind of lost me after that as it became more about the trials and travails of actually making the film itself and also verged kind of close to kink-shaming at times. Ultimately not compelling enough to recommend despite some wild turns.

41 – Toy Story 4 (2019)

Sorry, Forky.

Far, far less than the sum of its parts. There were a lot of things I liked here – forky’s existential crisis (duh), Keanu’s French-Canadianism, Bo Peep’s self-actualization…heck, Key & Peele were obviously having fun and that was cool to watch. But the main plot was uninspired/nonexistent, this was the first entry in the series to not really plumb new emotional ground, and the whole thing just felt so very unnecessary after the perfect ending of the trilogy with TS3.

Next: Not Quite Good (7)

This category is less about a failure to meet expectations, and more about “I want you to sit there and think about what you’ve done.” None of these are bad, exactly, but I could’ve used my time better than watching the below.

I’m not mad….I’m just disappointed.

53 – Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn (2020)

Okay, in this particular instance I am mad. What a goddamn waste. The world only gets a precious few Mary Elizabeth Winstead performances these days, and one is thrown away in this? Hell, Margot Robbie is giving her all and manages to make some sequences pretty interesting (thinking of the bodega breakfast sandwich), but overall this is a boring-as-hell time waster. Who was the villain again? I know Zsasz was in it (for no apparent reason), but can anyone remember who the big bad was or what he was trying to accomplish?

Whatever, everyone should watch the animated Harley Quinn, which covers this material a billion times better in every respect. Hrmph.

52 – Waffle (2020)

Cute, but ultimately more like a lesser Black Mirror episode. Also a short film not really a full movie but if you think I’m going to mess up my numbering by not including it at this point, you better think again.

51 – Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991)

Too thin to take itself nearly as seriously as it did. Also, not sure if anyone else has ever noticed this, but Costner is not an actor with incredible range and depth. Honestly, I kind of felt myself nodding off a couple of times and that’s with incredible (online) company while watching it!

50 – Double Dragon (1994)

Ah, the ’90s and the bizarre trend of making movies “based on” video games, using the cheapest of practical f/x. I wonder if any of Mark Dacascos, Robert Patrick, or Scott Wolf ever think about being in this. For what it was, it was actually pretty decent. But what it was is pretty bad.

49 – Class Action Park (2020)

An interesting story, competently portrayed. Didn’t really add anything to my understanding from reading the original spate of articles a few years back, but seeing people actually ride some of these things was something else.

48 – The Bling Ring (2013)

Just too sparse and languid for me. Watching vapid people be vapid for 90 minutes felt at least twice that long. Meanwhile, more interesting side-stories (did Marc really need to do this to try to fit in; what exactly was the deal with Chloe and Sam) were under-served.

This did move up several spots for Emma Watson’s dead-on delivery of the line of the movie (actually a direct quote from the real Nicki outside the courthouse):

I’m a firm believer in karma and I think this situation was attracted into my life as a huge learning lesson for me to grow and expand as a spiritual human being. I wanna lead a huge charity organization. I wanna lead a country one day, for all I know.

Next: Meh (7)

It’s time for MovieFest 2020, aka Tom Rambles On About Every Movie he Watched for the First Time in 2020! Wooooooo! Don’t pretend that you haven’t been waiting anxiously for this! I watched CONSIDERABLY fewer movies in 2020 than ’19 (less than half as many, in fact!), due primarily to <waves at everything>.

Thankfully, that reduced viewing enabled me to be slightly more selective, and nothing I watched last year made me want to wash my eyes out with lye or hunt down and strangle those responsible. Big improvement from 2019! So instead we’re starting with the movies that were just….bad.

60 – The FP (2011)

It had its moments and, honestly, the concept of people settling their problems through Dance Dance Revolution is rather appealing right now. But on top of the generally bad acting and shoestring budget, the rampant homophobia, transphobia, and other casually discriminatory attitudes made watching this very difficult. I tried to give it a “hey, it’s a creature of its time” semi-pass, but then I realized that the mid-80s production values were a choice (or due to lack of funds) and this was actually from 2011! Ick.

59 – FDR, American Badass (2012)

The first 20 minutes or so were really quite humorous. Unfortunately, this seemingly fun idea then went off the rails and stayed there. There are only so many times (0) that the ol’ s**t-in-the-jar routine can be funny. How did they get this cast for this material??

58 – Cats (2019)

As God is my witness, I thought this would be campy and ridiculous and enjoyable to make fun of, à la Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Ooooof. The FP and FDR: American Badass should feel really terrible for ranking lower than this boring mess.

57 – Jupiter Ascending (2015)

I…..what? What was this? I literally could not summarize this if I had to…but let’s try! Mila Kunis is…a clone (?)…of the Queen of the Universe? And people with huge armies and interplanetary death ships need her because….she would become Queen of the Universe for…..reasons? And there is a Dogboy of some kind? And Eddie Redmayne was forced to overact (underact?) in the worst way possible? And….and….what???

56 – Gymkata (1985)

One of the most absurd premises in cinematic history, sadly ruined by Kurt’s inability to act and very long stretches of pure nothing-happening boredom.

55 – Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

What a mess, and such a disappointment after the general good times of the first Wonder Woman movie. The plot was a mess, Cheetah was both wrong and pointless, the f/x weren’t very good – the whole thing just felt stupidly rushed. Somehow the ending was much, much worse than that in the first Wonder Woman, as the world is saved by the power of everyone in it accepting that wanting more than they already had would be bad.

54 – It Chapter 2 (2019)

Largely pointless. It Part 2 continues the long-lived Stephen King tradition of problems with endings, as Pennywise…does….some stuff? But nothing too severe unless the plot demands it? Then dies because our heroes aren’t afraid of him anymore?

#1 – Lost in Translation (2003)

152 movies later, the choice for the best film I watched in 2019 was remarkably easy.

This movie is just about perfect. It’s about loneliness, the universal sense of just not fitting into the world quite right, and the redemptive power of making a true human connection. Neither Murray nor Johansson have ever been better, whether because they connected to the material or Sofia Coppola’s direction, or for some reason we’ll just never know.

And honestly, in the end, that not knowing fits just perfectly. Why do Bob and Charlotte click? Well, there are some certain shared sensibilities to be sure, and the circumstances they both find themselves in make them open to a new friendship, but ultimately they make a connection just because they do. We often don’t know why we find ourselves more comfortable with certain people, but it’s undeniable that it happens.

Lost in Translation evokes so many of the core things about being human in a way that is true but uplifting without being saccharine. And I love it very, very much.

#2 – Burning (2018)

So, look, I liked Parasite and while it obviously wasn’t my choice (Ari Aster was robbed again!) I’m happy that it won Best Picture this weekend. All I’m saying is that if the Academy wanted to finally, belatedly recognize the great cinema coming out of South Korea, they were a year too late.

Honestly, Burning doesn’t have a lot in common with Parasite, but both of them being minor cross-over successes from South Korea makes for an obvious comparison. But while I felt that the more recent movie was kind of smacking me upside the head with its message, this film is almost perfect in setting a mood and letting you just marinate in it so much that you don’t even really notice what is happening until it’s too late.

I really want as many people as possible to see this movie and I doubt that most of you have, so I’m not going to get too much into this here but if subtitles don’t bother you then this gets my highest recommendation. It’s a low-stakes mystery, until it isn’t, and an exploration of how you never *really* know another person, however much you may think that you understand and relate to them.

I’m also still not sure whether or not we have an unreliable narrator here, and surprisingly untroubled by that lack of certainty, which fits the themes of the movie so well without being too overt about it. Did the last scene actually happen or not? Does it even really matter whether it did?

#3 – Midsommar (2019)

A transfixing meditation on grief, codependency, and finding a way to move on dressed up as a top-notch psychological horror movie with stunning visuals, I still can’t really stop thinking about Midsommar and Florence Pugh’s performance therein.

For the second year in a row, my favorite movie of the year was written and directed by Ari Aster and I would like to find a way to ensure that he keeps making one every year for the forseeable future. Completely original, this film has you on edge from the shocking but inevitable-feeling ending to the shocking but inevitable-in-retrospect ending. Pugh delivers a devastating (devastated?) performance as a woman who has never taken charge of her own life, surrendering first to her extremely disturbed sister and then to her largely-disinterested boyfriend, who finally decides (with extensive, um, encouragement from the locals) to take charge of herself and free herself from the bonds that she was using as an excuse (not unjustifiably in some circumstances) to not have to choose her own path.

Of course, this is a horror movie, so that’s all done with a *lot* of blood, gore, and trauma. But hey, sometimes that’s what it takes.

Up Next: #2!

#4 – First Reformed (2017)

A start, unforgiving portrait of a fundamentally good and decent man shaken to his core by a crisis of faith, First Reformed is not a fun movie but it’s also not the bummer that a description of the plot would make it seem. The main character is largely inscrutable but always feels fully inhabited. Some of his decisions are extreme, obviously, and they aren’t the most obvious ones that the character would make, but it was nevertheless believable that he was making them.

That belief is made possible by a staggering open and empathetic performance by Ethan Hawke, who inexplicably lost the Best Actor Oscar to….wait. Wait wait wait. He wasn’t even *nominated*??? Man, screw the Oscars. That’s just indefensible. His minister is deliberately internal and thoughtful, but you can feel what he’s going through just by watching him – slight adjustments to his posture, his walking pace, how discomforted he is just occupying space. A true tour de force in subtle characterization.

I also thought that the few moments of magical realism were perfect. As mentioned above, I found this to primarily be a movie about faith – and thus moments of profound personal importance were conveyed in a manner that is not literal in the earthly sense, but conceptually shown to us as an experience of his internal feelings.

Up Next: #3

#5 – John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019)

I am a fan of the MCU, Star Wars has kind of gone off the rails lately but it’s still Star Wars, Tom Cruise’s never-ending quest to kill himself for our entertainment in the Mission: Impossible movies cannot be naysaid….but for my money the best ongoing franchise in cinema is John Wick. Not only does it so obviously have the best action, but it has this *whole world* that you can fall into that is so richly realized. It truly is like A New Hope in that not only is what we’re seeing so compelling, it feels like there is a whole separate plane of existence that surrounds the characters that is just as interesting (if not more so).

I’m honestly torn as to which is the best feature of Parabellum – the kinesthesiology of the action sequences, the breadth of the world-building, or the excellent character moments. The battles are breathtaking not just because of the raw violence but because of how the bodies fill and move in the spaces. Of course, hiring the supporting cast of The Raid is going to help with that, but it’s also filmed for maximum effect and the plotting allows for a boss fight to break out at any time to keep you on your seat.

Meanwhile, Keanu plays a somewhat-more-engaged version of his blank slate Neo, theoretically at the center of everything but giving everyone else so much space to embellish their own characters while bouncing off of the legend of Baba Yaga.

All together it makes for the most engaging and imaginative action movie I’ve seen in a long time.

Up Next: #4

#6 – Suspiria (2018)

I am not generally a huge proponent of auteur theory but certain movies just have such a captivating overall feel to them but such trivial things as plot and making sense are simply not as relevant. Every choice made by Luca Guadagnino in this film is perfectly calculated to advance the sense of unease and surreality.

Not that Suspiria doesn’t make sense, per se, it’s just that the plot itself is not nearly as important and the tone of the movie. The visuals are breathtaking, both in terms of art design and shot composition. While Thom York’s soundtrack perfectly fits the material, I could watch this entire movie again right now with the sound off and appreciate it almost as much.

Perhaps the highest compliment I can give the movie is that its batshit insane ending is the ultimate capstone to the material and fits like it is the only sensible way for it to end.

Up Next: #5

7 – The Lodge (2019)

What, I loved an atmospheric horror/thriller distributed by a noted taste-making indie company (NEON, muscling in on classic A24 territory)? Who ever would’ve guessed?

This film is being released in the US one week from today and if the first sentence made you even slightly interested in it you owe it to yourself to go see it in the theater and to avoid any reviews, spoilers, cast lists, or other information about it whatsoever. I’m not sayin’ nothin’.

Okay, fine, you want a plot synopsis? Here: A number of people make grave errors in judgment. Now go see the movie.

Up Next: #6