Movies in 2024
04 Jan 2025Following up on the pattern set by my 2023 end of year wrap up, here are the movies that I watched in 2024 that warranted commentary.
MoreFollowing up on the pattern set by my 2023 end of year wrap up, here are the movies that I watched in 2024 that warranted commentary.
MoreIn 2023 apparently all the pent up energy needed to come out and it was time to go to the theater. It looks like I saw ten movies in the theater which is… a lot for me, and certainly coming out of the past few years. Partially I was ready to get out, but also there were just some great movies to go see. I got very tired of that AMC movie quotes intro. Please stop.
MoreIt’s common to have a video game release alongside a film release as some sort of companion marketing synergy something-something. It’s rare that I actually experience those products in tandem as intended. But that has been the case with Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. So I have two pieces of media to process here, both of which have increased my curiosity about the original source material.
MoreSourcing off the same list that I got Let the Right One In, I added Thirst to my Netflix queue. This time the origin is Korean instead of Scandinavian, so it’s another subtitled vampire movie. Turns out not all of the best vampire movies out there come from America, go figure.
MoreThe internet is moving to a very democratic place where for all sorts of content there is the possibility for comments and ratings. This is generally a good thing, but transparency in the whole system is pretty critical because frankly most people don’t have a clue how to participate in a rating system.
MoreIt’s kind of ridiculous, but the premise of Idiocracy basically convinced me to have children. Yes, it’s a comedy, and one with extravagant extremes, but the core idea isn’t wrong. And I can’t really sit back and complain about that while also being part of the problem. But I’m not here to talk about Idiocracy, which has uneven quality at best. I’m here to talk about Phoebe in Wonderland, which is amazing (and is available via Netflix insta-watch, if that’s your thing). It is in fact nothing like Idiocracy (I’m already beginning to regret using that as a segue), except that both of them made me think about parenting.
MoreI’m pretty much a slave to my Netflix queue these days, as that it is by far my primary source of video entertainment. Whenever someone recommends a movie to me, or if there’s some repeating pop culture reference to which I am clueless, the movie goes in my queue. The rate I feed the queue is definitely faster than the rate at which I consume it, so over the years the queue has grown obscenely long. Generally I try to manage the top of the queue to keep titles up there that suits my current mood or are at least recently contextual. But every now and then I lapse, and, well… get Scarface.
MoreWhen Halloween rolled around this year I decided that I was very much in the mood for a vampire movie. So I flipped through this article on Rotten Tomatoes of the top rated vampire movies of all time. I cross reference that against the list available for instant watch on Netflix and landed on Let the Right One In.
MoreI have no recollection of how Paprika ended up in my queue. Maybe someone else recommended it to me, maybe it popped up on a Netflix related list. Regardless, going into the movie I really had no idea what exactly to expect. I knew from the sleeve that it was an anime, and that’s about it.
MorePixar has a pretty strong track record. They don’t make many films, but every single one of them has been thoroughly entertaining. They might not all completely rock your world, but with those animators painstakingly scrubbing frame by frame it’s pretty hard for complete crap to make it to the final cut. WALL-E completely lives up to its strong pedigree.
MoreIn watching Wanted I kept thinking of Assassin’s Creed. Not just because they are both stories about leagues of assassins, but because they are both stories with a lot of style but not a lot of heart. That sounds cheesy, and in no way do I mean to imply that the film was lacking some awful stock romantic comedy love story. I mean that the story callously blew by some serious events that most humans would stop at. I felt guilty every time Altair needlessly knifed some guard who was just doing his job; similarly I couldn’t help but notice the extreme collateral damage left behind by Wanted’s Wesley Gibson. Seriously, train wrecks that kill hundreds of innocent bystanders are hard to let slide. I’m a reminded a bit of Die Hard 2 (which by the way is terrible), where McLane saves the day but somewhere along the way an entire passenger plane of people is incinerated and nobody seems sad.
MoreI don’t bust out the 1 star rating on Netflix very often, but Broken Flowers has received that honor. You’d think a movie with an 86% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes would guarantee at least some level of enjoyment. Nope. The critics seem to love it, but if you look around at forums or user ratings you’ll see I’m not alone in my disappointment.
MoreFrom the previews I thought that We Own The Night was going to be the story of two brothers who end up as enemies in the war on drugs. But that’s not really what it is. It’s more the story of two divided brothers reluctantly coming together in the face of tragedy; basically a tale of the bond of family winning over everything else. And watching the preview again now I probably should have picked up on that, but it’s hard to process all that information in a short time period.
MoreWhen it comes to martial arts, Jet Li’s Fearless delivers, but everything else is just blah, blah, blah. I realize that these movies aren’t really about the plot… but is it that hard to make it engaging? Fearless is the story of a prodigy’s reckless youth, the (self-inflicted) tragedy that causes him to go into exile and think hard about his life, and then his return with transcending maturity and eventual martyrdom. In no way does the younger character feel connected to the older one. It might be me applying Western expectations to an Eastern story, but I like to see a character grow instead of be replaced. We’re an individualist culture, and like to see the soul of a character persist through a transformation. Jet Li’s character’s change isn’t properly explained. It’s like you take trauma followed by a breath of fresh air and out pops perfection. Formula for success. Maybe I just demand a few more flaws from my hero characters.
MoreIt seems like bad form to criticize a man’s peak performance so closely after his death. I didn’t plan it that way; the disc was already on its way back to Netflix when the news hit. And I know if I don’t write down my thoughts now I’ll have promptly forgot them a month from now. So, um, sorry for the bad timing?
MoreApparently I’m going against the grain in saying that Magnolia didn’t rock my world. It’s not that I didn’t like it; I enjoyed it very much, actually. But it’s fatally flawed.
MoreI’d like to say that monster movies traditionally had a sophisticated sense of suspense and restraint, and that the modern CG movie has ruined that. But let’s be honest, monster movies have always been extremely dependent on special effects (even before the computer got involved), and they’ve always been about as sophisticated as a steaming pile of poo. However I do think that modern moviemaking technology has led to showing off the monsters too often and too early. The movie makers are no longer worried about you noticing that it’s just a Dude In A Suit, so they justify ramming their overly glossy 3D animation down your throat.
MoreI don’t read as often as I’d like, but that’s not the only reason you don’t see many book reviews on this blog. Although reading a book involves a similar time commitment to that of a video game, I usually don’t find myself with much to say after I’ve finished a book. I think that’s partially because for me books are more personal, and any description of them is littered with comments of “well, you really had to be there.” In contrast, games have such technically measurable attributes that it’s easier to arrive at some sort of review structure.
MoreThere are some action movies that feature a rich storyline where rampant violence is contextually appropriate. But most are riddled with half-baked plots that are a weak excuse for a series of action set pieces. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, unless they take that plot seriously, which for some reason almost all of them seem to do. Thankfully some action movies realize that the whole genre is ridiculous and leave the plot behind entirely. Of course your enjoyment of these is gated by whether you can consider excessive violence funny.
MoreI recently watched Freedom Writers via the Xbox Video Marketplace. It’s not a standout film by any means. In fact, you’ve probably seen it before. It’s basically the same as Dangerous Minds or Take the Lead, or to a lesser extent Dead Poet’s Society, The Emperor’s Club, Mr. Holland’s Opus, or even Save the Last Dance. Take disadvantaged/disillusioned students, throw in an inspirational teacher, and have them overcome the system to create a heart warming, life changing story. This particular “naïve white teacher thrown in with inner-city kids” movie isn’t bad, but it certainly isn’t revolutionary either.
MoreApparently I’ve got zombies on the brain, so I might as well get this out of my system while I’m at it.
MoreWe love thieves. Not some dude who breaks into your car or pulls a gun on you in a dark alley. Those guys suck. No, we love heist-pulling, safe cracking, masterminding, acrobatically flipping, car chasing thieves. You know, the kind that only exist in movies. They act a whole lot like Bond, all classy, sneaky, and above the law. But instead of saving the world they’re sticking it to the man whilst serving themselves.
MoreCreated by the same people (and sharing some of the same cast) as Shaun of the Dead, I was totally excited for Hot Fuzz, even though I didn’t know anything else about it. Which is dangerous, because coming into a movie with expectations of any kind is basically asking for trouble. But Hot Fuzz totally delivered, and is definitely the best movie I’ve caught in the theater in a long time.
MoreIt’s been entirely too long since my last post. Work has been very demanding lately, and it’s left me tapped. All my critical thinking has been dedicated to my professional life. And I’d bore you with that, but I’d have to kill you afterwards. Which given the general anonymity of the internet is a task that I just don’t have the energy for.
MoreI’m a bit behind the times, because I only just got around to seeing An Inconvenient Truth. It’s definitely a “must see.” Not like “must see TV,” more like “must see or we’ll all die.”
MoreThis past weekend I watched Who Killed the Electric Car? (links: NetFlix, Wikipedia). And I’m having a hard time categorizing my thoughts, primarily because I have so many of them. I may have to break this up into multiple posts, so bear with me.
MoreI watched Hollywoodland the other night. And I was left feeling more than a little unsatisfied. It was no fault of the actors, they all had fine performances. And the colors and aesthetics of the movie made it quite pleasing on the eye. But it just didn’t go anywhere. It was pretty much the most anticlimactic movie I’ve ever seen. I guess there kinda was a partial climax, but it was smack dab in the middle of the movie, not closer to the end. Which left me with the feeling that I was still waiting for the real climax… and then the credits rolled.
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