I lost my focus on what this blog was intended for, and it has come to bite me in the ass. This blog was originally intended to help me keep track and process the movies that I watched in my yearly goal. I keep a list on my computer of the movies I watch so I can keep an accurate tally. That is, until I was forced to wipe my HD due to a virus on my computer and I lost my files. I had backed everything up, but that was back in January. I pieced together the list as best I could from memory but I know I watched about 3 other movies that I can't account for anymore. Doesn't bode well for my memory or those films that I can't remember them less than 2 months out. But onward and upward. Here are some thoughts about the films that I DO remember watching.
11. Coraline
This was the first movie that I saw in a theater this year. It was also presented in 3-D. I was pleasantly surprised with the 3-D glasses that were provided. Gone were the flimsy red and blue lenses that never work right. For the extra two bucks we had to pay for the film each we were given glasses that resembled Drew Carey frames with lenses that were only slightly tinted grey. They easily fit over my real glasses so I could see just fine. And they worked like a charm. The 3-D effects are awesome in this film and add some real texture to the movie. There are only 3 or 4 instances of an overt 3-D move like someone poking out at the screen, or a needle coming at you. The rest is just a nice layering effect.
The movie itself was very good. It's defiantly one of those films that straddles the line between being a movie aimed at kids and adults. Gotta maximize those profits somehow. It's a very good story with dark overtones and many layers to the story. Most children won't pick up on all the subtleties of the film, but the adults should enjoy the film more because of it. It's amazing to think that the entire film was made via stop motion. The style very much resembles Nightmare Before Christmas, but has a more polished look and feel to it.
12. Eagle vs. Shark
This came on my radar because it starred one of the members of Flight of the Concords. My feelings about this movie can be summed up pretty quickly. Imagine Napoleon Dynamite set in New Zealand. Though forced a bit, the humor and quirkiness were there and there were some very genuine funny parts. I didn't love it, but it was pretty OK.
13. Botched
A slasher/horror/comedy about a failed heist gone horribly wrong. This one got going pretty quick. A heist goes wrong and the robbers take some hostages and get stuck on a seemingly abandoned floor in a high rise building. Quickly devolving into a gore fest with some bizarre twists and turns that involve some of the captives really being the bad guys along with some kind of thinly veiled back story of the crazy people that inhabit the abandoned floor being descendant from Ivan the Terrible. If you can stay with the weirdness you can sit back and enjoy a pretty well done slasher movie. It's never scary, and the deaths are defiantly over the top. But it stays within the context of itself and doesn't try to do to much. I enjoyed this one.
14. Sex Drive
I remembered this had come out a while back simply from the poster of a giant doughnut in a sombrero. It was a pretty good Teenage Sex Comedy in the same vein as American Pie. The problem with most TSC's that have come out in recent years is that there is little new comedic material to be covered so everything usually feels like a remake of some other shitty movie. But this one has enough new stuff as well as twists to the themes of the past that it makes it enjoyable. It moves fast enough and doesn't try and hammer in some lame joke over and over again.
15. Extreme Movie
This is also a TSC but done in a different manner. This has the feel of a sketch comedy troupe that wrote about 10 different sketches that are all based on the same thing and have differing levels of funniness, and they need to figure out how to connect them all together. There is a plot of sorts about a boy like a girl but being to chicken to ask her out, but these scenes are either used as filler or to launch of of the sketches. Very hit or miss, but probably would have worked better as individual clips.
16. Watchmen
I loved it. Most other critics didn't. I think you have to have some history with the source material, or you just won't get into it and quickly dismiss it. Visually it's awesome and features much of the same level of gore and stylized violence as 300. Sticks close to the source material up until the end, sometimes to it's detriment. Some of the dialogue is very short and clipped. Which makes sense on some level as it's based on a comic book where you can't write tons of extraneous dialogue. But in this format I think it could have been punched up a bit and made to sound a bit more natural. There is a new ending that cuts out a major part of the book. But the effect is the same. I actually thought the new ending was pretty cool and a bit more believable. Clocking in at a shade under 3 hours, this was well worth the money to see in the theater.
17. Brothers Solomon
I know everyone has that musician, artist, author, or actor that no matter what you will check out there new stuff. You have an allegiance to them for some earlier work of theirs that you really loved or that effected you greatly and you feel like lighting will continue to strike and all there stuff will be golden. I have that with Bob Odenkirk. I love Mr. Show. I think Bob Odenkirk is a funny dude and will watch whatever he's in. I also really enjoyed a movie that he directed called Melvin Goes to Dinner. Mr. Odenkirk directed this movie which also stared Will Arnett and Will Forte, both of who I have liked in other things. There were quite a few other actors in this film that I enjoy in other things. That being said, I didn't really dig them in this film. The premise is simple, but the setups aren't developed enough to make them funny or explain why everything is happening. It had some mildly ammusing parts, but in the end I felt like this was a funny concept that probably should have been cut down to a 10-15 minute sketch that just kept getting stretched and stretched until it was movie length.
18. Otis
Netflix's gremlins compiled all my previous likes and dislikes and figured I would like this film. It's basically a serial killer movie with a man who kidnaps teenage girls and torments their families by calling them and talking about their daughters while he has them locked up. Which could be pretty creepy if done right. But this movie has no intention of being a creepy serial killer movie. It wants to be quirky and funny as well. All the bits of the movie get shaken up and become muddled together until you can't decipher what the point of it is. There's some shenanigans going on and the ending is pretty predictable and just wraps up pretty quickly. It felt like they had the movie chugging along, but then realized they had to finish up in like 10 minutes so they crammed a bunch of stuff together. I can't say I liked this one. To muddy.
