My Year In Film, Part 1

In the last couple years, I've started to become a bit of a movie buff. That started a while ago when I stumbled upon a film website I really like reading, and found out I could buy DVDs cheap off of Craigslist. It continued this semester, since I'm living with my grandparents, and my grandpa watches a lot of movies. All told, I've watched 73 movies this year that I hadn't seen before (at least, those are the ones I recorded. I've probably missed a few). I'm not going to post the full list here, because that would be ridiculous, but if you're interested in seeing it, here it is.

I love writing about movies, so I'm gonna take this chance to write about the movies I saw this year. Some will be from this year, some will be much older, but they're all movies I saw for the first time this year. Be aware, this post is going to be massive, so consider yourself warned. Without further ado, my year in movies.

Best Bad Movie: Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus - I'll be listing some of my least favorite movies of the year later on, but you will not find this movie on it. That's because Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus is hilarious. I have a soft spot in my heart for terrifically bad movies, and this one joins the pantheon beside hall-of-fame bad movies like The Room and Troll 2. I would describe the plot of the movie, but frankly, all you need to know is right there in the title. Also, it includes the greatest scene in cinema history.

Biggest Disappointment: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader - This one wasn't disappointing because I thought it would be good. On the contrary, I was confident that they would screw up this adaptation (since I didn't particularly like the first two movies). However, since this was my favorite Narnia book, I was hoping that it would at least be the best of the 3 movies. Nope. Not even close. It's as generic an adventure story as you're likely to find, and filled with the worst kind of lazy storytelling. For the life of me, I cannot figure out why you would take a beloved children's story from one of the 20th century's greatest writers and then feel the need to completely change huge chunks of it. The movie speeds along at a breakneck pace, hardly ever spending time to develop the characters. There's a scene near the end where Caspian refers to Edmund and Lucy as his only family, but it feels completely false because they have nothing even approaching a meaningful conversation, and in the previous movie Caspian spends all his time interacting with Peter and Susan. Things just happen because the story needs them two, and on several occasions characters pop up simply for the purpose of spouting off exposition, then disappear, never to be seen from again. At least it's interesting visually, with some dynamic sweeping shots of the Dawn Treader, and some pretty great creature design on the giant sea serpent at the end. The other bright spot is Simon Pegg as the voice of Reepicheep. He brings a noble, heroic spirit to the character that makes him easily the best thing about the movie. If only the rest of the movie had that same sense of adventure, maybe it could have been special. Instead, it's not so much a bad movie as it is mediocre and bland, and in a lot of ways, that's even worse.

Best Performance I Saw This Year: Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network - I haven't seen many of the performances people are raving about this year (Natalie Portman, Colin Firth, James Franco), but Eisenberg is really brilliant here. He absolutely sells the antisocial, hyper-nerdy portrayal of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. He's twitchy and uncomfortable, but also haughty and superior. It's a great performance, and one that I'm not sure anyone but Eisenberg could have pulled off. Out of several memorable moments, this is the one that will stick with you most once you leave the theater.

Best Scene I Saw This Year: This one. If I have to explain why...

Top Five Worst Movies I Saw This Year:

5) The Fifth Element - I think I was more forgiving when I first watched this movie, but looking back on it, I have absolutely no desire to ever revisit it. It should have been a great movie. A Sci-Fi action movie by the director of The Professional starring Bruce Willis, Ian Holm and Gary Oldman. Instead, it's a plotless slog that seems entirely designed to show off character designs. It's loud, annoying, and has absolutely no logic to it. Ugh.

4) Knowing - There's nothing quite like Nicholas Cage playing crazy, over-the-top parts. This movie featured a scene where Cage's character witnesses a plane crash, runs into the flaming wreckage, sees a survivor running away while on fire and yells "WAIT!" Um...what? It's an illogical movie that really makes no sense. It's terrible, but at least it's terrible in a humorous, entertaining way.

3) The Squid and the Whale - I watched this movie without really knowing what it was about, because I had seen it highly regarded on a movie website I frequent. Ugh. It's a "rich people with problems" movie, which is tough to pull off at the best of times. The actors give good performances, but the whole thing is so twisted and depressing that the movie is just a slog. I don't know, maybe I'm just not the intended audience. It's not a totally inept movie, but it's so joyless that it's a task to sit through.

2) The Notebook - I should be an easy mark for this movie. I actually kind of enjoy chick flicks if they're funny and charming and at least mildly competent. I love Rachel McAdams, and Ryan Gosling is a solid actor. Lots of people love this movie. I'm not looking for much in a movie like this, just something resembling a coherent story and solid chemistry between the leads. It at least gets the second part right, and the sheer charm and magnetic presence of McAdams almost single-handedly makes the film watchable. Almost. The story, however, is flimsy, predictable and so blatantly manipulative that it boggles the mind. Characters simply disappear or die off because the script has no use for them anymore. For example, Noah's father is killed off in the narration, not because he had an illness or we saw a gradual decline in his condition, but simply because the story needed Noah to be living alone. The actors aren't so much playing characters as they are plot devices. When the terrible storytelling causes you to giggle throughout the movie, it just kills the movie and keeps it from reaching any kind of emotional depth.

1) Ultraviolet - Ultraviolet is like a seizure put on screen. The other movies on this list are bad, but at least they won't give you a headache simply by watching them. The fact that this was made by the same director who made Equilibrium is incomprehensible. I would try to explain the plot to you, except I have no idea what it was. It's in the future, and there are these vampires, only they aren't really vampires, they're just really strong and fast. Vampires can infect other people, but it's not really clear how (is it airborne? Bloodborn? We have no idea), and it's unclear why this would be a bad thing. Milla Jovovich steals a package that happens to be a young boy whose blood contains pathogens to do...well, that's not really clear. Cue much running around, fighting people (including some soldiers whose armor appears to be made of glass), and Jovovich's character apparently develops a deep maternal connection to this boy in the course of 24 hours. We're really not sure why she keeps running around and what the final goal is. I'd say that there are plot holes, but that requires a plot for there to be holes in. All of this would at least be tolerable if the visuals were good. To put it lightly, they are not. All the scenes are intensely bright in a way that makes everything washed out and indistinguishable. The fight scenes and chases are just a series of shots without any kind of overall sense of what is happening. Worst of all, the CGI looks like it was pulled from a bad Playstation 1 game. It's atrocious, and carries none of the simple elegance that made Equilibrium so great. The plot is nonexistent, the acting is awful, and the visuals will make your head hurt. It's a perfect storm of terrible.

To be continued with my top 10 list in Part 2