Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join our ever-growing group by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and writing a bit about them!
NO! IT'S TOO EARLY!! I STILL HAVEN'T SEEN EVERYTHING FROM 2018 YET!!!
...he screamed unto the heavens, cursing release schedules and day jobs and Moviepass and NYC transit and and and....
AND THEN! He had a revelation. "Why don't I do the WORST films of 2018 instead of the best? At this point, I know what I'm gonna hate of what I haven't seen, and if any of them are worse than my current bottom three, well... they are SO not worth my time!"
And so it was, he chose three films from 2018 that you should absolutely NOT see. Under any circumstances. Speaking from personal experience.
Beautiful Boy (Felix van Groeningen) Oh lord. Look, I like Timothée Chalamet and Steve Carell as much as the next gay guy, but... neither of them are very good in this. Chalamet comes close, but he's not helped at all by the script, which is cliché after cliché that does a great disservice to not just one book, but two (this is supposed to be an adaptation of both father David and son Nic's memoirs about Nic's addiction). I'm sure they thought they were doing something interesting with the structure of the film, and they're not exactly WRONG - mirroring the cyclic nature of addiction in the plot structure is certainly a valid approach - but it's so poorly done that it makes for a wildly unsatisfying movie on the face of things. And that's before we get to the terribly sloppy editing and utterly god-awful music cues (seriously the worst in any film I've seen in a LOOOOOOONG time). In any other year, this would very likely be the absolute worst, and certainly the most disappointing, film of the year.
Fifty Shades Freed (James Foley) SIGH. The absolute worst thing this franchise did was put the second and third movies in the hands of male writers and directors. To the extent that the first film was any good, it was because it had a point of view that unquestionably came from the female voices at the helm. Since then, poor Dakota Johnson has been working overtime to put these blander than bland sequels over, playing opposite a romantic lead who CLEARLY doesn't want to be there, reading lines that have to be contorted to all hell to sound like anything human beings would actually say. This third one isn't even particularly sexy, WHICH IS THIS FRANCHISE'S ENTIRE REASON FOR BEING. Of course, a lot of the blame can be laid at the feet of the source material, in which literally nothing happens except people getting pissy about something they have no business getting pissy about, until the climax where suddenly everyone remembered that these things are actually supposed to have something called a plot, involving characters who, ya know, DO THINGS OF CONSEQUENCE. Anyway, this is deadly dull, and not even Dakota Johnson, brilliant as she has always been in these godforsaken films, can save it. In any other year, this would very like be the absolute nadir of film.
BUT NOT THIS YEAR.
Because this year, we had...
Life Itself (Dan Fogelman) I... I don't even know what to say. I mean... what on Earth CAN one say about something so fundamentally flawed and misguided that in ANY OTHER CIRCUMSTANCE, if it had EVEN ONE REDEEMING VALUE, it would likely go all the way past "abysmally awful" to become strangely admirable somehow. But, reader, I can honestly say: IT DOES NOT. For more of my unedited thoughts, check out my live-tweet (yes, I was high, and no, it did not help), but suffice it to say, it is PAINFULLY clear that everyone involved in making this thought that it was all clever and deep and meaningful and probably spiritual, but it is LOUSY with crazy structural ideas that not only don't work, but very specifically don't work IN A MOVIE THAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE HEARTWARMING. I mean... at least, I'm PRETTY sure that's supposed to be the feeling we're left with at the end, when the movie pins its entire reason for existence and its entire emotional weight on someone we first meet in the film's closing minutes. But instead, the entire thing ends up being a complete WTF moment writ large, a faux-humanistic wannabe-meaningful story that only ends up being a massive joke played on its unsuspecting audience. Or, in short, the opening unreliable narrator gambit so completely loses the audience's trust that it would take a miracle to get it back, and this movie is wholly incapable (not to mention undeserving) of a miracle.
Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join in the fun by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and writing a bit about them!
HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE!!
Yes, I know I'm a little late on this, but it's been a BUSY start to the year, and this is my first post here in 2019! And appropriately so, since it's freezing outside in NYC today, and this week's theme for Thursday Movie Picks is The Cold. So let's see... what movies did the walk to work this morning remind me of?
Wind River (Taylor Sheridan, 2017) The body of an eighteen year-old girl is found dead on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming, miles from any building. FBI special agent Jane Banner is sent to investigate, and she works with expert tracker Cory Lambert, who knows the Native American community, to investigate. The gorgeous cinematography adds to the feeling of chill that permeates this well-wrought mystery and masterful thriller.
The Ice Storm (Ang Lee, 1997) It's Thanksgiving weekend in 1973, and the Connecticut suburb of New Canaan is full of depression and sexual frustration. But an ice storm is coming, and the cracks in everyone's perfect veneers are going to crack and expose what's underneath. The Ice Storm is a difficult film to watch, but it's very well-shot and well-performed. The cast is just incredible: Sigourney Weaver, Joan Allen, Kevin Kline, Allison Janney, Christina Ricci, Tobey Maguire, and Elijah Wood are all great.
Cool Runnings (Jon Turtletaub, 1993) "MAN, I'm not smokin', I'm BREATHIN'!" My sister and I quote this movie, about the first-ever Jamaican Olympic bobsled team, to each other ALL the time. For my money, it's one of the most enjoyable, rewatchable films of the '90s. Yes, it's a bit standard, but it works within cliché and formula very well.
...and since I'm playing catch-up, last week I would have visited Brooklyn (my favorite film of 2016) and bought The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (the greatest movie musical ever made) after Flying Down to Rio (can't resist me some Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers).
