Well, your boy Perspicacious P aka Vanilla Thrilla aka YUNG DOSTOYEVSKY back again with Part 2 of the 2014 Twitter-length reviews.
Like Depeche Mode once said, "I just can't get enough":
26: Pacific Rim: Robots fighting space alien sea monsters? Sounded like a boring mumblecore indie flick but I liked it nonetheless.
27: Lee Daniels' The Butler: Obvious Oscar bait, but still a great movie. The only people that didn't like it are cynical assholes, unlike me, an eternal optimist.
28. Ironclad: Movie about the Knights Templar or some old shit and a rather odd place to find Paul Giamatti as a king, right?
29. Enough Said: Last role for Gandolfini and he knocked it out of the park. Sweet story about puppy love in middle age and the complications it can bring.
30. Blue Jasmine: I hated Cate Blanchett's character so much that it ruined the movie for me. Unsurprisingly, Andrew Dice Clay was its moral center.
31. Gravity: Space in 3D and shit. Incredibly beautifully shot movie. Great year for Sandra Bullock.
32. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2: Interesting, if heavy handed, take on Immanuel Kant's Metamorphosis and Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf. German philosophy is never easy.
33. The Counselor: Holy shit this movie was terrible. Except when Cameron Diaz fucks a car. Actually, that was even more terrible.
34. Before Midnight: Best movie of the year. Best couple fight I've ever seen on-screen. It erodes the myth of "Happily Ever After."
35: Free Birds: Revisionist take on European colonialism in North America, heavily influenced by Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States".
36. Slap Shot: Cynical, chauvinistic and not very funny, except for the Hanson brothers, who were transcendent. They should make a movie about just them.
37. Frozen: Modern adaptation of Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women. The interpretation of the class issues is a bit reductive.
38. Inspector Gadget: This was terrible. Wish I could unsee it, like every time I go to 4Chan.
39. Homefront: Kept calling this Homeland to my friends. Despite this, James Franco's facial expressions make the movie worth watching.
40. Hunger Games: Catching Fire: It was a mistake going into this thinking I was seeing the sequel to Silver Linings Playbook.
41. Chopper: Incomprehensible Aussie accent by Eric Bana and low budget production. Kept waiting for him to put a shrimp on the barbie.
42. Anchorman 2: Unfunny + too long. 2nd worst movie of 2014. The good news is that there wasn't an annoying marketing blitz before it was released.
43. Elysium: Good Will Hunting in outer space and shit.
44. Computer Chess: Interesting enough oddball movie. Didn't really 'get' it although it appeared on a lot of year-end lists. Then again, I'm not that smart.
45. Italian for Beginners: Danish movie about people falling in love in their 30s and not annoying about it. Why they didn't just talk English is weird though.
46. 2 Guns: In this nuanced take on US-Mexico relations, Denzel and Marky Mark shoot and kill every fucking living thing they see.
47. Captain Phillips: 2nd best movie of the year although I advise against watching it with Thai subtitles superimposed over Chinese ones. My Somali isn't good.
48. Drumline: Pretty much the story of my undergrad years at UMass.
49. The Wolf of Wall Street: Great movie, DiCaprio was on fire, but seeing shit like this is why the rest of the world hates us.
50. American Hustle: Enjoyable caper flick and MY GOD AMY ADAMS. Bradley Cooper looks good in a perm as well.
That's the movies I saw in 2014. Some old, some new, all pretty decent except for The Counselor and shitass Anchorman 2. Maybe the director's cut will be the non-shitass version?
Coming soon: my 25 books. They are things you read that aren't the internet.
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