"Disappointments and disgraces" is the title of the first of six different categories that I will be discussing in reference to the "2011" year in film. I was going to write one very long and extensive analysis but I realized it would be way too long and that it would be best if it is broken up into smaller pieces. Each article will reveal a little more of my thoughts on the year, and will eventually lead up to my final top 10 of the year. I will also do a shorter series detailing my analysis of the year in television.
I felt like it would be best to start out with Disappointments and Disgraces because my best writing involves pure unadulterated hatred, and it is usually more entertaining for the readers as well.
So here goes.
Adam Sandler: Fuck that Guy
If you saw Jack and Jill, and liked it..... Then stop reading this immediately, and never be a part of my life ever again. Maybe I'm being a little harsh, wait... Actually no, I'm being the exact amount of harsh I should be. I plainly don't respect you and don't want you to be a part of my life.
Sure maybe I haven't seen it, but that is because I am of value. How many bad movies is Sandler going to make before we stop handing him millions of dollars every year?? His last moderately decent movie was I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Fairy, and without Jessica Biel's beauty (body [Tits]) that movie would've been gay.
Happy Madison Productions also produced Bucky Larson: Born to be a Star, and Zookeeper which were lauded as cinematic gems... Did I just say gems? I meant cinematic dogshit. Again, I didn't see these but Bucky Larson got a 0% on rotten tomatoes, and Zookeeper finished with 14%. Jack and Jill walked away with a 3% and Just Go With It got a 19% percent. If you average all four Happy Madison Productions together then you come up with a modest 9% for 2011. Sure, even the Sandler classics weren't highly regarded by critics, but 9%?? I'm not a mathematician, but that's fucking disgraceful.
Sandler used to be one of the premiere names in comedy and many people have shut off their brain not yet realizing that he hasn't really made a decent movie in the last decade. They keep on fueling the monster that is him, and allowing him to put a minimum amount of effort into his work while receiving a sizable profit. Even though his pathetic movies averaged a 9% approval rating by critics, they managed to rake in just under 260 million dollars.
Basically if we can all make a conscious effort in 2012 to stop giving Adam Sandler money, then he won't be able to poison and dumbify our society any more than he already has this past decade.
The Walking Nightmare that is Nic Cage
Despite the shit-storm of an acting resume that he continues to manifest, people continue to give Nicolas Cage leading roles in movies... It's like the producers in Hollywood don't know what to do with their money so they just cover it with honey and shoot it out of a cannon onto a brick wall. Except that weird thing that I just described would actually be somewhat entertaining, and anything Nic Cage is a part of is generally not.
Sure Cage has had some mesmerizing performances, but 95% of his schedule is filled with uttering out mindless drivel within the confines of a terrible action thriller. His movies have become laughable. Of the three released this year, the only one that looked enjoyable enough was Drive Angry, and that was more or less because it was meant to be bad. The movie didn't take itself seriously, so it was the only thing that he made this year that had a shot of being entertaining. Now again, I don't like to give money to anything that's bad, (unless it involves Jason Statham) so I didn't see any of Cage's movies.
The point is that you don't have to. You know what to expect year in and out with this man. Occasionally he'll sneak by a performance that is fantastic but most of his body of work consists of mindless garbage.
Stomach this: Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance is rumored to have 75 million dollar budget.......
The trailer for that is one of the most terrible things I've ever seen and I don't think it will make anywhere north of 25 million in the box office.
I guess it's not generally Cage's fault that these movies are bad, but he doesn't make them any better either. I don't know if it's out of stubbornness, or just stupidity, but Hollywood execs keep giving him the chance, and they keep producing these god awful films. If they have enough money to do it, then more power to them I guess. If they were smart they'd give me money and actual good things would happen, but who said anyone in Hollywood is smart?
Lindsay Lohan's Playboy Shoot And My Week With Marilyn
There are various comparisons you could make between Lindsay Lohan and Marilyn Monroe. Both were young Hollywood starlets, both struggle(d) with problems of addiction, and the first letter of both of their first names, is the first letter of their last names. The problem I have when comparing them is that Marilyn Monroe was literally the most famous woman in the world. She remains an icon, and was ogled by men all over the world. Her charm led her to be the star of various classic films and there was no one ever like her before.
Whereas Lindsay Lohan was in Mean Girls, and that's about it. For some reason though, Playboy decided it would be a good idea for her to do a tribute photo shoot to Marilyn Monroe. Why I don't know. First of all, I don't really care about seeing Lindsay Lohan naked. If I want to see a naked drug addict psychopath, then I would go to the Gold Club in Groton CT to see them in person. It's just a ploy to keep her somewhat relevant in our lives even though her tumultuous lifestyle has driven her reputation and career into the dirt.
I have friends on Twitter and Facebook who were excited when they heard that she was going to be naked and my first thought was "why?" Why on earth is anyone actually excited about that? All that means is we get to see some airbrushed coke-head titties. It's sad to say this but Playboy, you're better than Lindsay Lohan.
My Week With Marilyn, was overall in my opinion, a disappointment. It tried to do several things but all it did was just fall short. While it did display just how warped Marilyn Monroe's mind was and helped me understand how people were just drawn to her presence, it just didn't have anything of direct value. It felt shallow, and devoid of purpose. It was more just a portrait displaying how fucked up she is and why she may have turned out that way.
Still no matter how drugged up or insane she was it didn't matter to the main character who wanted to touch her tenderly with his penis. Even after she breaks his heart and it appears he has learned his lesson (which is to not fall in love with Marilyn Monroe apparently? Good luck, guy), she walks in at the end to say goodbye and he lights up like a Christmas tree. The movie may been well acted (Michelle Williams definitely deserves a nomination), but it just doesn't have a point.
Super 8 and Bad Movie Projectionists
I've never liked JJ Abrams. His obnoxious lens-flare style has bothered me from the start and the closest I've come to enjoying one of his films was Mission Impossible III.
Star Trek sucked. There, I said it.
Still for whatever reason I had really high expectations for this one. I thought it was finally going to be the movie that changed the way I felt about his movies. The critics had all said it was supposed to be an homage to the early Spielberg Sci-Fi films and while it looked like it tried really hard, it just didn't hold up any actual enjoyment for me.
*Spoiler Alert*
First off the movie starts out with the protagonist child sitting on a swing set after his mother passed away in a factory accident. The set up is that he and his father have become distanced after her death and the Dad isn't the best at communicating with his son. Over the course of the movie they grow more distanced and eventually when the Son is going back to save his love interest Elle Fanning from a dumb alien, the Dad goes after him.
It starts to look like the Dad is going to be heroic and they are going to be brought together because the Dad is going to save him. In the end the Dad just shows up, they embrace each other after the kids save the day, and the Alien flies away (lamest Alien ever).
Not much happens in the relationship between the Dad and Son and it might just go back to the way it was before, after the movie is over, but at that moment it looks as if they've grown because the son could finally let go of his mother's necklace.
This movie needed balls. One of the kids should've died at the end or something to make the movie actually seem interesting. Instead it was overly predictable and only reminded me of an early Spielberg Sci-Fi movie because it was set in 1979, not because it was like a Spielberg Sci-Fi movie. Within three or four years I'm sure this lackluster film will be largely forgotten.
One of the reasons this movie left a sour taste in my mouth was partially because half the scenes were so dark I couldn't actually see what was going on. This problem lies squarely on the shoulders of the movie theater I went to and the projectionist who set it up to be watched, not the movie itself.
I read in an article over the summer about a rash of complaints all over the country that the screen on whatever movie they were seeing was too dim. Now because everything is digital now, just about any projector can be converted to 3D to show those meaningless piece of shit action movies that continually come out month after month. What this means is that there needs to be a filter inserted into the projector to make it project in 3D. This filter dims the projection by 50%. If left in the projector on a movie that isn't 3D, the image doesn't look different, it just looks very dark.
With many movies they don't have many dark scenes so it almost goes unnoticed, but a good portion of Super 8 is very dark. I was struggling during several sequences to decipher exactly what I was seeing. I had just read about this and it frustrated me because we paid about 15 dollars to sit in this stupid fucking seats that move when the action sequences are intense, and I couldn't even see what the fuck was going on.
This kind of shit makes me furious. We used extra gas to go to the nicest theater in the southeastern CT area, and we spend extra money on tickets because not only is the theater more expensive, but we're also sitting in these useless sybian-like vibrating chairs, and we can't even see what the fuck is going on. It's not that I feel like I missed all that much of the story. The point is that we went out of our way and spent extra money so we could get the best cinematic experience we could for this movie, and yet they only provide us with a dimly lit version of it because they don't want to take the time to remove the 3D filter.
Apparently the process to remove the filter is extensive and requires several different pass codes to get in and takes about two hours. When I go to a theater to see a movie and spend over ten dollars, fuck over five dollars, I don't care if it takes them 9 hours to change the god damn filter. That's your god damn job.
The industry wonders why people don't go to the movies as much anymore and part of it is because of this shit. Workers being lazy. That's why rich people out on the west coast go to see movies at Arclight Cinemas; home of the 18 dollar weekend prices. A worker actually sits in for the first few minutes of a movie and makes sure that the projection is clear and crisp, and the sound is as well.
I don't see why every movie theater can't provide this kind of performance. It doesn't seem complicated. Even if you're standing in the projection booth, you should be able to see how it looks. How difficult is it to stand there for a preview to measure the quality? If you work in a theater you should know within seconds of viewing if it looks right or not.
I fully understand why people would stay away from going to the movies if they don't have a good experience. It's just not worth it to spend over ten dollars to see a shitty movie that you can watch in HD four months later in the comfort of your own home. Hopefully in the near future all theaters will learn to fix these problems so the shitty movies we see, won't be as shitty as we think they are.
Killer Elite
I just really hoped this movie would be better.
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