Steve’s Selections #16 – Stake Land (2010)

This is the fourth for this year and 16^th overall review of a film that Steve Honeywell at 1001plus gave me to see.  He is doing the same with films from me.  This month’s selection is Stake Land, one of the two horror movies Steve gave me this year.  I didn’t know if my health situation was going to allow me to get this done on time.  I was in pain while watching it and I freely admit this may have negatively impacted my impression of it.  Overall, I can see why Steve picked it for me – being a “not your usual” vampire movie – and while there are some good points to it, the film ultimately comes in at an “it was okay” level with me.

Steve’s Selections #15 – Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010)

First things first, this is a few days late.  Steve Honeywell at 1001plus and I plan to post our monthly reviews of the films each of us gave the other on the second Monday of the Month.  This time I gave Steve a heads up that health would prevent me from being able to do so on schedule this month.  I have since watched the movie Exit Through the Gift Shop and I liked it.  The big question surrounding this documentary is whether it is a hoax or not.  I have no firm opinion one way of the other, but I will submit that in the end, it actually doesn’t matter.

Movie – Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

After a thirty year wait Max Rockatansky returns in Mad Max: Fury Road…probably.  (More on that in a bit.)  This is a balls to the wall, completely insane action film and it blows my mind that it somehow got nominated for Best Picture.  Don’t get me wrong; I think it’s entertaining as hell.  It’s just that these kinds of movies pretty much never get Oscar nominations beyond ones for visual effects, sound, and editing.  Well, Mad Max: Fury Road (MMFR) received nominations for no less than ten Oscars, including one for director George Miller.

Movie – Bridge of Spies (2015)

What do you get when Steve Spielberg directs a film from a screenplay written by the Coen Brothers?  Bridge of Spies.  It’s a period drama (Coens) starring Tom Hanks (Spielberg) and a bunch of lesser known actors (Coens), done on a lower budget than most mainstream studio releases (Coens) about a man who is principled and steadfast (Spielberg).  The result works pretty well.

Movie – Room (2015)

Room is nominated for four of the big five Oscars – Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay.  I don’t know that it will win any of them because of the flaws in the film.  Brie Larson probably has the best chance of winning because her best scenes are during the better parts of the movie.  Overall, I’m guessing this got its Best Picture nomination because of the subject matter, not because of the actual quality of the film compared to the other potential nominees.

Movie – Spotlight (2015)

Spotlight is a film about the work Boston Globe journalists did to research and expose the vast scope of child molestation and cover-up that had occurred in the Boston-area Catholic churches.  The title of the film comes from the name of the team of journalists within the Globe who would get assigned months-long investigations of important stories.  This is a good film about a tough topic.  The best thing it does is treat the subject with the respect it deserves and not try to be sensationalistic with it, even though that has caused those who want more excitement and action to label the film “boring”.

Movie – The Big Short (2015)

As I write this The Big Short just became the unexpected winner of the Producers Guild Award for Best Picture.  Since the PGA winner has presaged the Oscar’s Best Picture winner for seven years straight, and since The Big Short was not considered the Oscar front-runner, this has thrown the Oscar race a big curve.  Making it even more unsettled is that if The Big Short were to win it would be the most comedic film to do so since at least American Beauty (1999).

Movie – The Martian (2015)

I have seen five of the eight Oscar nominees for Best Picture so far and among them The Martian is my favorite.  It combines the best aspects of Apollo 13, Castaway, and Gravity.  And I’ll address this right up front – despite the Golden Globe wins for the film and star Matt Damon in the comedy categories, this is a drama with some lightly humorous moments, not a comedy.  It’s also a great story.

I like movies where smart people deal with issues by being smart, or to paraphrase a line from the film - by sciencing the shit out of it. We have far, far too many movies about idiots being idiotic, so it's nice when every once in a great while a film like this gets made.  This is easily Director Ridley Scott's best movie in quite some time.  Drew Goddard (who got his start with Joss Whedon writing Buffy the Vampire Slayer) delivered a great script, too.  It’s all based on a book that started out as free, serialized posts on the blog of writer Andy Weir.  He got so many requests to turn it into an e-book that he finally did and was selling it for 99 cents.  It attracted Hollywood’s attention and the result was this film.

Movie – The Revenant (2015)

As I write this The Revenant appears to be the emerging favorite to win Best Picture at the 2016 Oscars.  That is still more than a month away, though, so we will have to see if it keeps its momentum or if it starts to fade.  It is a simple tale of survival and revenge very loosely based on the story of Hugh Glass, a frontiersman in the 1820s who was attacked by a bear, left for dead, but managed to make his way back to a fort.  It stars Leonardo DiCaprio in what might finally be an Oscar winning performance for him.  It’s got a lot of good things going for it, but The Revenant also has some flaws.

In Defense of the Movie Tomorrowland (2015)

Note: this is a revised and expanded version of the comments I left on Letterboxd after seeing this film a few weeks ago.

Back in 1999 parents were crying out for a well done animated movie they could take their kids to, one that wasn't incredibly stupid and/or made primarily to sell toys.  Brad Bird answered that call and came out with The Iron Giant. The result?  It was a blip at the box office and quickly went to video.  I saw it when it came to VHS and loved it.  I couldn't get anyone to watch it, though.  “No singing?  No toys for my kids to play with?  What kind of animated movie is that?”

Steve’s Selections #8 – Seven Psychopaths (2012)

We have arrived at my August review of a movie recommended courtesy of Steve at 1001plus.  This one is a film that I was interested in when it came to DVD, but for whatever reason I never happened to get around to watching it.  When I saw it among the twelve films he gave to me I was happy because now it gave me an excuse to go back and watch it.  What I found was a film that is a cross between Charlie Kaufman’s/Spike Jonze’s Adaptation (2002) and Quentin Tarantino’s, well, pick any Tarantino movie.  While this may seem to be a strange combination it works well enough onscreen to make me like the movie.

Movie – Interstellar (2014)

If you go to IMDB.com you will find Christopher Nolan’s films to be rated far beyond all reason.  There is actually a group of people who tirelessly work through thousands of accounts they have set up to rank all his movies as high as possible (and to rank competing films such as The Avengers as low as possible).  The result is that seven of the eight films he has directed since hitting the public consciousness with Memento (2000) are not only in the IMDB Top 250 list, six of them are in the Top 100, and three of them are in the Top 25, including Interstellar at #23.  While Interstellar is far from being the 23^rd best movie ever made, it is good enough to take the last spot on my Top 10 of 2014 list.

Movie – The One I Love (2014)

I saw the film The One I Love just before finalizing my Top 10 Films of 2014 list.  I’m glad I did because this movie ended up making it onto it.  It’s another small independent film starring Mark Duplass.  In recent years I’ve come to keep an eye out for his movies that fall into this demographic because he seems to be able to pick films that are better than average (i.e. 2012’s Safety Not Guaranteed, 2011’s Your Sister’s Sister.)  In this case the Netflix Instant description didn’t exactly sound that interesting, but I gave it a try anyway just on faith.  I was glad I did.  This is a film that went in completely unexpected directions.

Movie – Nightcrawler (2014)

When the Oscar nominations were announced in January the film Nightcrawler was one that I would sometimes hear mentioned as having been “robbed” (although it did get one nomination for Best Original Screenplay).  Of course, every year there are some films that have passionate supporters that feel exactly the same way when their personal favorite does not get nominated so I didn’t pay too much attention to that.  I do try to see as many Oscar nominated films as I can.  And I did make a mental note to see this movie before doing my Top 10 Films of 2014 list, just in case its supporters were onto something.  I am glad I did because this did make my Top 10.  Nightcrawler turned out to be a great movie not just for its story, but also for the lead performance of Jake Gyllenhaal.

Movie – The Wind Rises (2013)

The Wind Rises is purportedly legendary writer/director Hayao Miyazaki’s last film.  There are those people (I am among them) who hope that Miyazaki’s retirement announcement is like his previous five and he is inspired to return again.  However, if this is to truly be his final film then he made a great one to cap off a great career.  It has both a moving story and beautiful animation.  If anyone tries to tell you that only cgi animation can be stunning then show them this hand-drawn film.

Movie – Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

Let me be honest right up front: I thought this was going to be the film that would break Marvel's winning streak.  A movie about a bunch of strange beings, including a talking raccoon, based on comic book characters that even someone like me, who at one time had read comics for years, knew almost nothing about?  Not a chance.  Marvel had finally reached too far.  Man was I wrong.  Not only was this a massive box office hit for them, it is a hugely entertaining film and it’s my pick for the best movie of 2014.

The Ten Best Films of 2014

Each year that I do this I seem to be a little more reluctant to draw a line and name my Top 10 films of the prior year.  I always want to watch just a few more movies, “knowing” that there’s another one out there that will make my Top 10.  It wasn’t any help getting over that feeling this year when I had not one, but two films that I saw within the last two weeks that are making my Top 10.  I still want to see just a few more, but this is already the latest into a year I’ve waited before posting, so here goes.

I believe I’ve seen most of the big mainstream movies and critically acclaimed films of the year that I felt I might like, including all four Oscar winning films (Picture, Animated Film, Foreign Language Film, and Documentary).  I’ve seen all the Best Picture nominees, all the Best Animated Film nominees, and all the Original and Adapted Screenplay nominees.  I have not seen any of the other Foreign Language Film or Documentary nominees, however.

If you are curious, a complete list of the 65 2014 films that I saw can be found at the bottom of this post.  That’s down from 77 films for 2013 and 101 films for 2012 at the time I posted those Top 10s, so this year’s list may be missing a great one I just haven’t seen yet.

Movie – Big Hero 6 (2014)

Big Hero 6 recently won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film.  I have seen four of the five nominated movies, only missing Song of the Sea.  Of the ones I have seen I don’t feel there is a clear best film among them.  The Boxtrolls would be at the bottom for me, but this film, How to Train Your Dragon 2, and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya all have a similar level of quality and entertainment to them.  And all three have characters dealing with a loss at key points.  The other major awards reinforce the parity among the films.  The Annie Awards (ones specific to animation) also picked Big Hero 6, but the Golden Globes selected How to Train Your Dragon 2, and the BAFTA awards picked The LEGO Movie.  Regardless, Big Hero 6 is a good movie that can keep both children and adults entertained.

Movie – Citizenfour (2014)

Citizenfour won the 2015 Oscar for Best Documentary.  Even though I have not seen the other four nominees this did not surprise me.  The subject matter of this film is Edward Snowden – the man who exposed the fact that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) had been spying on millions of Americans with no warrants and without even the broad “preventing terrorism” justification given to it under the Patriot Act.  And this was just the beginning; the revelations continued to come out and had a worldwide impact.  Guess what?  There was actually a person there with Snowden as it was breaking in the news and she captured it all on camera.  The result is an amazing inside look at the few days that shocked millions.

Steve’s Selections #3 – The History of Future Folk (2012)

Watching movies nowadays it sometimes feels like low budget filmmakers have forgotten what the primary point of a movie is – to entertain.  (A studio exec would say it’s to make money, but the best way to make money is to make an entertaining movie that people want to see over and over.)  The days of Robert Rodriguez making El Mariachi (1992) for $7,000 and Kevin Smith making Clerks (1994) for $23,000 are long behind us.  Instead, it seems today’s filmmakers feel that to make up for the lack of budget they have to make their movie “artistic”, which is a polite euphemism for “a film only their mother and some professional film critics could love.”  Then just when it seems like all is lost along comes a film like The History of Future Folk to rekindle hope.  I had a smile on my face for most of the movie, either from the humor, or just from the sheer fun of watching it.