Every film you've watched in 2016

[Donomark]

Dave: I paused the Hey! An Actor episode when Ian first exclaimed how much he enjoyed this movie. It's free to find on YouTube. It's really good. The film takes a shticky premise where you can easily imagine Pauly Shore or one of the sillier Baldwins to goof the movie up, but it's played almost entirely straight. Kevin Kline, whom I've not seen a lot of, gives an incredibly sincere and genuine performance that grants the movie an honest quality that keeps you into it.

One thing I appreciated was the realistic nature of the First Lady's love for Dave, which grew over time. But she never reciprocated his feelings until her husband had passed away in the end. I thought that was a smart detail which spoke well of the First Lady. It didn't indulge in romantic shlock in that way.

[teenalphabro]

Romeo and Juliet: I never liked the play and I absolutely don't like this movie. I award it no points, and may god have mercy on its soul.

Films Watched: 90

[You Know Who]

Romeo and Juliet: I never liked the play and I absolutely don't like this movie. I award it no points, and may god have mercy on its soul.

Films Watched: 90

Is this the Baz Luhrmann version you're talking about?

[Dread]

Jesus...it's gotta be the first time I've gone longer than a week not watching a movie maybe since I lived in Scotland. CRazy. Tonight, an assortment of the last shorts for the film festival:

Never Tear Us Apart/Bitch, Popcorn & Blood/Into The Mud/The Monster/Tik-Tik/Graveyard Shift/Redhead

Features: 153

Shorts: 83

Documentaries: 14

[teenalphabro]

Romeo and Juliet: I never liked the play and I absolutely don't like this movie. I award it no points, and may god have mercy on its soul.

Films Watched: 90

Is this the Baz Luhrmann version you're talking about?

Nah, Zeffirelli

[You Know Who]

Romeo and Juliet: I never liked the play and I absolutely don't like this movie. I award it no points, and may god have mercy on its soul.

Films Watched: 90

Is this the Baz Luhrmann version you're talking about?

Nah, Zeffirelli

Ah ok. Luhrmann's is even worse. If you want a really good Romeo and Juliet adaptation, look no further than West Side Story...or Hot Fuzz.

[teenalphabro]

I almost want to argue with you on the Hot Fuzz thing, but that's actually really accurate. 

And I've always avoided West Side Story specifically because of how much I hate Romeo and Juliet. I'll actually have to give it a fair whack at some point.

[dc20willsave]

Definitely do so. Partially because the music is great, partially because it is so well directed, and the Romeo and Juliet aspects aren't nearly as cringey as they are in the play.

[Stavros]

Additional praise for West Side Story.

[Dread]

Another batch of shorts for the festival:

The Birch/Nasty/Nighttime is Cold and Lonely Like a Motel Alongside a Desolate Road

Features: 153

Shorts: 86

Documentaries: 14

 

[Donomark]

Diary of a Mad Black Woman: My first experience with a Tyler Perry movie. There are some really good actors giving top notch performances throughout. The central message is definitely heavy-handed in the exact way the Boondocks lampooned it years ago. But it's a decent message that is worth having in a movie like this. But the fucking wacky humor goes from downright unfunny (Tyler Perry plays both his mother, father and himself as a lawyer (???)) to outright cruel and mean-spirited. Part of the plot is a woman dealing with a betraying husband after 18 years of marriage. Much of his comeuppance consists of Madea destroying his house, threatening to kill him and his girlfriend, getting shot and being a paraplegic who his cuckolded wife proceeds to torture for weeks. It is not funny, and at one point she very nearly kills him by drowning. There's too much wish fulfillment and not enough maturity to make this movie work, but it has a few things going for it.

[teenalphabro]

Train to Busan: To say this film is getting me back into my groove is a massive goddamned understatement. 

Films Watched: 91

[teenalphabro]

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: That was pretty good. Not fantastic, but pretty good. Probably the most upbeat movie by David Fincher I'll ever see. 

Films Watched: 92

[dc20willsave]

Mothra vs Godzilla: Definitely one of my favorite Godzilla movies. We get a couple of really good monster fights that are very different, great background music, and the human characters actually do stuff.

Evanglion 3.33: You Can (Not) Redo: I liked it. There are some problems but it worked.

Digimon Adventure Tri: Reunion: It hit the nostalgia spot though the filler (read digivolution sequences) took up more than a bit of time.

Films: 94
Documentaries: 1
Rewatches: 3
Rifftrax Assisted: 2
Made For TV: 2

[Dread]

Last batch of film fest shorts: Hada/Polterheist

Bad Neighbors: 6 or 7 solid laughs, which is about as good as a comedy gets these days. I have to say that Rose Byrne is amazing in this movie. I know Rogen and Efron are the stars here, but without Byrne, the film is garbage.

Features: 154

Shorts: 88

Documentaries: 14

[Donomark]

Evanglion 3.33: You Can (Not) Redo: I liked it. There are some problems but it worked.

Digimon Adventure Tri: Reunion: It hit the nostalgia spot though the filler (read digivolution sequences) took up more than a bit of time.

Films: 94
Documentaries: 1
Rewatches: 3
Rifftrax Assisted: 2
Made For TV: 2

 I didn't hate EVA 3.33 like a lot of other people did, but I did think it was a cruel swerve to completely go off the rails after that badass ending from 2.22. As for Digimon Adventure Tri, I've seen the Japanese versions. Would love to see the dub, but even still I adore how they took the characters and direction of the series and matured it up with the audience. Digimon Adventure was a great anime, but it was definitely for younger audiences (I.E. with the requisite adult situations that made it edited for US television). Digimon Adventure Tri feels like it's grown up with both the characters and the fans that watched it as kids. It's a slow paced, slightly melancholic direction that really works towards the idea that everyone is older.

[Donomark]

When the Bough Breaks: Ohhh man. This was gold. A total Lifetime Original Movie that has no business being in theaters, it's really entertaining throughout. It has some good performances, and it's genuinely cool to see Morris Chestnut the main character of a movie instead of a supporting character or love interest or guy who beats up Taye Diggs for sleeping with his fiancee. At one point Michael K. Williams cameos and seeing the two of them team up is pretty awesome. The film, about a surrogate who becomes obsessively lustful with the father, is about as sleazy as it sounds, but it's not that bad really. It's pretty unoriginal at it's core, but I think the performances kept me engaged. It's a film a got a lot of laughs from, between Jaz Sinclair's evil face and the ramped up violence at the end that quickly became cartoonish.

[Donomark]

Watchmen (The Ultimate Cut): This is the first time seeing any version of this film since in the theater in 2009. Shall aim to elaborate further on this week's upcoming Comic Book Film Revue episode, but I'm eager to express my thoughts right now after finishing it.

I'm tempted to say the movie sucks, but that'd be ignoring the things I really liked about it. The attention to visual detail is unparalleled. The casting is 50% perfect, especially Billy Cruddup. If in a hundred years someone tries to adapt this again I can't think of a better actor to play Dr. Manhattan. The musical cues - while the opposite of subtle - are neat. It's definitely a heartfelt attempt in some ways.

At the end of the day two things became increasingly apparent as the day wore on while watching this. 1) Watchmen truly is unfilmmable. The best chance an adaptation has is a 12 part HBO miniseries. That's how you include every visual detail that's in the comic and ignored in the movie to better bring about the mental and emotional frequency that the comic is made for. A two, three or four hour movie cannot do that. Film is meant to tell compact, succinct stories. Watchmen is an entree you take your time with, it doesn't belong in a can. As a result, key scenes and moment fail to come across. Comedian's character, while well played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, is done away with quickly in the first act so his presence/lack of presence that reverberated throughout the book is basically forgotten about in the movie. When Laurie is made to know he's her father, it falls completely flat because her hatred of him isn't adequately depicted in the movie. But the film is trapped because Dr. Manhattan's return to Earth hinges on that scene. So the adaptation in that regard is hollow and almost not worth doing.

2) Zack Snyder obviously fell in love with the idea of these kinds of superheroes and was completely blind to the fact that the superhero genre was thoroughly broken down through the story. Rorschach is not meant to be a loveable badass in the spirit of Batman, he's supposed to be a natural realization of him, completely with ridiculous devotion to stopping evil through an insanely right-wing worldview that renders his actual life pathetic. Nite-Owl and Silk Spectre aren't awesome superheroes, they're people who really get off on thinking they are, or at least Dan Driberg is. Ozymandias isn't a mustache twirling super villain, he's a delusional neo-liberal who cares about humanity so darn much he killed three million people to save it. There's way too much adherence to the tropes of your basic superhero story that by the end of the movie that's exactly what it becomes. It's not a story about flawed people, it's a super-cool story about trying to save the world and failing hardcore, bro. Additionally all the acting that wasn't from the main characters was garishly cartoonish and piss poor. It made this supposedly real world unbelievably fake.

Edited September 21, 2016 by Donomark

[Donomark]

Bridget Jones' Baby: Have not seen the previous movies, nor do I intend to. This was supreme crap.

[dc20willsave]

The original is an above average rom-com but I can understand not wanting to see the original after watching the below average sequel.

[teenalphabro]

There's Something About Mary: If nothing else, good background noise

Films Watched: 93

 

[teenalphabro]

Pulp Fiction: Not Tarantino's best, but still pretty good. 

Films Watched: 94

[Dread]

Now You See Me 2: these movies are so fucking fun. So pulpy, so good at exploiting the premise. I would much rather see the third film in this series over any of the upcoming Marvel movies.

Features: 155

Shorts: 88

Documentaries: 14

 

[teenalphabro]

Kristy: It's a pretty alright home invasion movie. Nothing too flashy, nothing really that interesting. Ultimately, inoffesive, and remarkably average. 

Films Watched: 95

[Professor]

Went on a movie binge for the first time in a while.  Good times.

Deadpool - First viewing since the theater.  Enjoyable, but I think the joke land less the second time around.

Rush Hour - Wanted to watch some Jackie Chan.  I don't know.  14 year old me loved this movie.  31 year old me finds Chris Tucker endlessly annoying.

Shanghai Noon - I think I liked this one better because it is set in the old west. And Owen Wilson, while annoying, is an improvement over Tucker.

Skiptrace - Hey, a Jackie Chan movie I haven't seen.  This time the buddy is Johnny Knoxville.  This is about a cliched and by the numbers as a film can be, but I enjoyed it.  Chan has clearly slowed down some in his 60s (and the credit blooper reel is not as fun anymore) but he still goes as hard as he can.  And Knoxville is by far the least annoying of his sidekicks I watched today.