I've had to do a lot of growing up in the past few weeks, most of it against my will. If my taste in movies hasn't given it away yet, I can be pretty child-like even now in my late 20's. So things like setting up car insurance, buying a car (the Cardis!), getting my money right, they are all foreign to me. I've had to nut up and get them done. Well, hit the Final Fantasy victory music, 'cuz for now it looks like I got shit taken care of like a motherfucking adult. Now, having said that, I'm gonna bitch about some movies.
Given that I haven't posted in nearly a month, I thought it prudent to not do a handful of full length rants/reviews as that would be exhausting for everyone (mostly me). So I've opted to do several shorter rants on the films I've seen throughout the month of July. Now, much like my life in July, the films released on average were not great. Like, surprisingly so. If there is an optimist somewhere inside of me (there isn't) he would hope that the summer movie season didn't peak in May; but alas, this year it's apparent that we were on a downward slope after Star Trek, with some Man Of Steel-sized goodness along the way. To further simplify things, I've marked every film with a 'Best' or 'Worst', which is pretty self explanatory. I'll drop a little knowledge and hopefully by the end of it, I'll be back on track. Enjoy the downward spiral.
BEST: Despicable Me 2
Sometimes animated movies are the best. You know what you're getting: nothing serious (unless it's a Don Bluth movie, fuck that guy), probably ridiculously silly, some lame jokes, maybe a decent message. Sometimes you get a surprise kick to the feelings, like Up or Toy Story 3. DM2 is a great example of a balance between a good kids flick and something that a quasi-mature movie goer can enjoy. It helped that I find nothing funnier than watching my Mandi be entertained by a silly movie. The magic from the first one isn't gone so much as it's different. There are shades of superior animated films featured, such as The Incredibles. Also, and most importantly, Minions FTW. If you're looking for a good laugh without wanting to suffer through all the dick jokes, give this a shot.
WORST: The Lone Ranger
This should surprise no one, and by now everyone has heard about how hard this has flopped to the point of costing Disney to the sum of over 140 million. Maybe now people will listen to my anti-Johnny Depp rants. Don't get me wrong, Depp can be great, but the guy who played Raoul Duke is long dead and has been replaced by a drunk pirate. And even if this movie wasn't Captain Jacked into oblivion, there was just nothing special about this movie. It was very by-the-numbers, predictable, and about an hour too long. If this movie was made about 13 years ago, or I was 13 years younger, I might be singing a different tune. This was basically The Mask Of Zorro, but with white people. And one of them plays an indian.
THE VERY BEST: Pacific Rim
Ugh, my heart hurts thinking about how poorly this masterpiece of a popcorn movie has done. Everything that I feared would be wrong with this film was fucking PERFECT. Most notably, this movie looks indescribably good. You know how in Transformers, whenever the robots get into a scuffle, everything gets SUPER INTENSE to the point that you can't see or don't know what in the full hell is happening? This does not happen in Pacific Rim. The action scenes (of which there is a perfectly suitable amount) are clear as day, excellently timed and paced, and very engaging. I was more involved in some of the fights between Jaeger and Kaiju then I have been some UFC bouts. The acting was well done, with Jax Teller and BAMF Idris Elba leading the way. The story was great in that it was simple. It didn't try to be anything more than a sci-fi action movie where giant robots fight giant monsters. It shouldn't be hard to make a good film about that, but by the gods we have it in 2013 and Guillermo Del Toro deserves a lot of praise for it. He won't get it, and the film won't make half the money that Grown Ups 2 or whatever will (*cringe*), but the fact that there are people out there capable of putting out work like this gives me hope.
WORST: Red 2
Remember what I said about Despicable Me 2 not losing the magic of its predecessor? Red 2 lost the magic. The magic has Alzheimer's. Everything that made Red one of my favorite films of that year was gone, and all it left was a cliche and a prayer. When Red came out it got a lot of comparisons to The Expendables for some reason, and I find myself doing the same thing here. The first Expendables tried too hard to be great and ended up being so very meh after all of its hype. Red was very under the radar, until it came out and everyone loved it. The Expendables 2 fixed the problems it had and became a decent throwback to the 80's action fare that most of its stars are so known for. The opposite happened to Red 2. The Bruce Willis of yesteryear is gone and he's clearly ready to ride off into that sunset, as it's getting more obvious with every Die Hard entry that he gives less and less of a fuck. Malkovich and Mirren fall flat more often than not, but mostly because what made them great was not knowing or expecting how great they'd be. The word was out by the sequel and everyone knew what to expect. Not even Anthony "What did you see, Clarice?" Hopkins could save this from being a disappointing shadow of its former self. Red 2 should never have happened.
WORST: The Wolverine
Missed it by that much. While this was a VERY significant improvement on the first Wolverine solo venture, I grow more and more convinced that Marvel cannot do a good movie on the darker characters of its universe. Daredevil, Punisher, Wolverine. They all deserve good films, but in order to be good they need that R-rating that they will never get. There were some well done things in this film, don't get me wrong. I might even need a second viewing just to get my feelings straight with this, but the first viewing left a poor taste in my mouth. They're portraying Logan too much like Bruce Wayne, with the brooding and the promising never to hurt anyone ever again. HAHA NOPE . Logan don't get sad, he gets angry. Wolverine is the berserking action hero of the Marvel universe, just let him do that and enjoy my money. Also, and this is more of a personal note, but there are some links to the other X-films in this movie (without specifics, because no spoilers!) that drive me up the fucking wall. I hate hate HATE that X-Men going back to the way of Singer and First Class was just a happy dream of mine. It makes me sad, and so did this movie.
Alright, all caught up I think. Hopefully we get some good movies in before the summer ends and I have to wait till American Thanksgiving or whenever for another string of popular films to verbally destroy. One can hope.
Knight Owl
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