Bottom 5: Movies Released in 2012 (The Drive Awards)

As of December 20th I have seen 67 movies released in 2012 according to Letterboxd, of which three were definitely TV movies and one was seen in 2011 and will not be considered for these end of year review posts.
 
I'll start my end of year movie recap by taking a look at the movies I actively disliked. In an attempt to avoid negativity and endless criticism I would like to point out that whilst these are not necessarily the worst movies of the year by any stretch of the imagination these are those five special films that I hoped for more from and was sorely disappointed.

I think it was last year that Drive killed my enthusiasm for cinema and in some ways this list could be called The Drive Awards AKA Man! I Hated This Movie. 

5. The Watch Dir. Akiva Schaffer

So much comedic potential gone to waste with this film, my expectations weren't too high but I did expect to laugh more frequently than I did. Easily the worst comedy of the year for me simply because of who was in it. I'm sure a Rob Schneider would have been a thousand times worse but then I would never watch one of his movies ever again so obviously it can't be nominated.

4. Savages Dir. Oliver Stone

I loved the book and hated the movie, there's a little bit of book reader disappointment involved in my disdain for the latest Oliver Stone mess but that aside I would have expected more from an Oliver Stone movie featuring lots of violence, such as being entertained not put to sleep. I make my plea once more, Mr Stone please find a way to remove Hollywood's dick from your ass or quietly retire from making films.

3. Dark Knight Rises Dir. Christopher Nolan

For so long this was my least favourite movie experience of the year. I know I am in the minority and that so many people orgasmed over its "brilliance" but I had so many problems with this tired and obvious movie (I don't even count plot holes as an issue, before that criticism starts here) from the second the plane was hijacked and they've only been magnified over time. It's certainly not worse than Birdemic or The Room or whatever because Nolan actually has talent but it certainly made me hate cinema for a while.

2. Total Recall 2012 Dir. Len Wiseman

I guess you could say that I expected something from this film, I didn't expect it to live up to the original or even the Philip K. Dick source story but I did expect to enjoy myself a little. Afterall it's a sci-fi chase story with lots of violence. And that expectation is what saves this from being my worst film of the year. Don't get me wrong, this movie has absolutely nothing going for it, it stinks from start to finish as discussed during the live twitter review but perhaps I wouldn't have hated it so much if it had a different title. Perhaps. Of course, if I'd waited another fortnight before watching the winner of the award there would have been nothing for this disaster to hide behind.

1. Taken 2 Dir. Olivier Megaton

It made a late run for it and scored big time. Man I hated this movie.To celebrate, here is my full review:

Holy shit snacks that was bad! Taken 2 has done what I never thought was possible, made me reconsider just how bad Total Recall 2012 was; compared to this steaming pile of nonsense it just might be considered an OK movie.

Perhaps my memory isn't so hot or I'm looking through rose-tinted glasses but I felt certain that whilst the first movie wasn't great it was a decent revenge thriller that featured Liam Neeson kicking so much ass in a series of well directed set pieces.
This one was mean spirited, derisive, clichéd, convoluted, slow, boring, un-thrilling, stupid, senseless, pointless, messy, exposition filled, racist, badly directed, horribly written, disastrously performed, and unnecessary.

My favourite parts: the directors name is Megaton and I couldn't get the movie title Giant Bay versus Megaton out of my head. Two painful directors, one movie, no survivors.

Also there's a moment in the first 30 minutes of nothing happening when Neeson gets given a brown envelope by some oil rich sheikh he was protecting, he opens it has a little chuckle to himself and puts it in his jacket never to mention it again. I can only assume that it was a moment of realisation that the large cheque received for starring in this worthless piece of shit sequel possibly wasn't worth it and he would be sacking his agent pretty sharpish.

What are your nominations for The Drive Awards? How often do you find yourself saying "Man, I Hate this Movie"? Who wants to be the first to defend Dark Knight Rises?

Elevenses (Liebster Award)

Today, it's time to respond to an award from a fellow blogger! Dan Heaton from Public Transportation Snob has generously passed along the Liebster Award, which asks each recipient to respond to a series of questions. You all know Dan as that massively entertaining guy whose posts are almost always themed and attacks a subject en masse. His current marathon theme is International Gangsters and started with a bang thanks to a great review of French flick A Prophet. I've since received the award twice more, the incredibly beautiful blog Love & Squalor and everyone's favourite film maker blog And So It Begins were also kind enough to pass on the love.

I'm giving it a go, but by this point there can't be many blogs left to pass it on to. If any of you fine readers feel like answering any one of the 11 questions I pose at the end feel free to leave it in the comments, I'm sure it'll be fascinating.

Here are the rules for the Liebster Award:

1. Each person must post 11 things about themselves.
2. Answer the 11 questions the person giving the award has set for you.
3. Create 11 questions for the people you will be giving the award to.
4. Choose 11 people to award and send them a link to your post.
5. Go to their page and tell them.
6. NO TAG BACKS


Eleven Random Things About blahblahblahToby

1. Currently enjoys his lack of employment way too much for it to be healthy and can be found most days laying on the sofa reading.

2. Wishes he was still a 21 year old hipster and dresses like it.

3. If he were to have a fight with any character from The Dark Knight Rises it'd be Bruce Wayne becaue he has a gimpy leg.

4. Has an addictive personality and is currently working on filling his apartment with books so that one day they might topple over and crush him - death by book porn?

5. Is endlessly procrastinating, never finishes anything and allows each new creative idea to push the current one aside.

6. Once dreamed of being a lawyer because he'd read too much John Grisham at a young age but Theodore Boone got there first. There's a reason Disney hasn't made a movie about lawyers you know.

7. Has noticed that any picture relating to Harry Potter or Disney gets more page views than anything else he's posted and is not ashamed of using that fact to boost his blogs stats.

8. Would have answered Maura Tierney to any question relating to picking an actress for anything until relatively recently and is sad that her career never really got going on the big screen before getting stuck on ER.

9. Loves the writing of Megan Abbott and the depressing yet true, shocking story of Barbara Payton, Franchot Tone and Tom Neal that features in the background of her novel The Song Is You.

10. Still considers becoming a professional football manager because a) he loves the sport and b) he's excellent at the Sports Interactive game Football Manager.

11. Enjoys comparing movie love affairs to his own life because his own life always seems perfect in comparison.


Eleven Questions From Dan 
 
1. What's the best movie of 2012 so far?

 

OK, so according to letterboxd I've seen eighteen movies released in 2012. The one I enjoyed the most has got to be Chronicle. I expected so little from the (relatively) small budgeted sci-fi thriller but director Josh Trank provided so much. It was a real pleasure to watch a good idea turned in to a highly enjoyable movie thanks to the talent of a new director, especially when it would have been so easy to make it generic and derivitive and a horrible mishmash of pop culture.

2. What's the worst movie of 2012 so far?

The Dark Knight Rises. Simply for how disappointed I was. It's not anywhere near as bad as John Carter in reality but then DKR provided my worst experience of a movie.

3.What is your favorite band or artist?

The Decemberists win this one hands down at the moment and for the past few years. Just taking a look at my all time plays on last.fm will tell you that I've played The Decemberists 8 times more than anyone else. Colin Meloy has a wonderful voice and he's a fantastic storyteller. He even writes kids books.

4. What's your opinion on singing karaoke?
Never. No way. You can't make me.
One of my most horrifying formative experiences is as a ten year old being left on stage by my sister to sing a song I'd never heard of n front of hundreds of people. Even now I wince at the thought of it and my heart is racing from the terror.

5. Spike Lee: Overrated or underrated?

When he's on form there's nobody better than Lee but he's his own worst enemy with some of the terrible films he's made, but then so is Woody Allen and he married his own daughter. At least Spike Lee's only apparent crime in the eyes of Hollywood is that he's black.

6. Although he won't admit it, does Tommy Wiseau realize that The Room is terrible?
Oh. I certainly hope so. Can you imagine the state of that guys mind if he didn't? But admitting so would cook the golden goose and he'd never be able to attend screenings as a superstar.

7. Beyond movies, what is your area of expertise for a trivia team?

Arsenal Football Club. Somehow this is what my brain is wasted on and why I identify so readily with Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch.

8. What's your favorite brand of cereal?

No cereal required when you live in the land of Vegemite on toast.
If we're ever out for breakfast and I don't feel like eggs I will however have the bircher muesli.

9. Is The Tree of Life a brilliant movie, a self-indulgent mess, or somewhere in between?
I haven't seen it yet, it's long. I am lengthist.

10. Are you excited about the Olympics? If so, which competitions?
I haven't cared about the Olympics since 1992, I don't even care about the fact that Great Britain has a football team entered this time around. It's not real football.

11. What's the last movie that you watched?
Bill Cunningham, New York

Who's Next? - Eleven Blogs That Deserve Your Attention
These 11 bloggers are all doing amazing work and deserve your attention. For that reason, they get the dubious pleasure of answering some essential questions. The "winners" are:
Cinemanarcs
Cinematic Spectacle
Can You Dig It?(feminisingfilm)
Defiant Success
Brian vs. Movies
Blondoner
What Indie Nights?
The Great Movie Project
Dangerous Dans Bookblog
OCD Viewer
Split Reel(This is me cheating because she's taken a break)



What I Really Really Want To Know Is: (Eleven Questions Paid Forward)
1. If the events of Purple Rose of Cairo could really happen, which movie character would you want to walk off of the screen in to your miserable little life?
2. If you were marooned on another planet with a limited space hard drive on your solar powered Macbook Pro (I'm sure Steve Jobs had them working on this before he died) what three movies would you like to have in your videos folder?
3. Is reading 50 Shades of Grey on public transport a badge of pride, a cry for help, a statement of sexual dissatisfaction or a label that screams "easily led by media fads"?
4. If you had to live in the world of crime fiction would you prefer to be in an Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler or Steig Larsson book?
5. You're stranded for 227 days in a boat with one animal, do you think a Bengal Tiger would eat you?
6. What superhero franchise would you give a dark and depressing Batman style reboot to on the big screen?
7. Gotham Central is a series of comic books about the lives of the gotham City Police Department and Death Comes To Pemberley is a detective novel set in the world of Pride & Prejudice, what fictional world would you like to see turned in to crime fiction and what type would it be?
8. Mint, Sage, Rosemary and Cinnamon, what flavour would you choose for your old fashioned tooth powder recipe?
9. You're tasked with programming an independant film festival, what genre do you focus on? Documentary, Horror, Anime, Martial Arts or World Cinema?
10. Witches, burn them at the stake or dunk them in the lake?
11. Which city in Europe would you most like to visit during the 2012 London Olympics?

My Movie Diary 23 July 2012

Have you been to Letterboxd.com yet? You should, it's ace. Aside from the social networking for film geeks aspect of it all it has the extremely helpful feature of creating a film diary, enabling you to document your thoughts quickly (essential blogging tool) before fleshing them out for a bigger review later. It also makes this much easier.

Tyler at the award winning Southern Vision hooked me up with an account last Sunday and since the 15th July I have logged 15 movies as watched. In a week that saw me go to the cinema for the first time since my Prometheus debacle for Dark Knight Rises it would be safe to say that some of these were superb whilst others were absolute garbage.

Let's get the garbage out of the way shall we?

Why Did They Even Bother?

Treasure Guards (2011) is a pan-European production starring Anna Friel that sounds a lot like The Librarian or National Treasure. At this point you may ask what exactly I expected and you'd be right. Poor Anna Friel has been in a series of awful films since Pushing Daisies got cancelled and this is right down there with Land of the Lost for worst movie of her career. My review on Letterboxd covers it quite well I feel:

"Just awful. Completely and utterly shocking in every aspect. It's not even one of those bad movies you can laugh along with."

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)  the end of the trilogy. I really disliked the film and struggle to find any redeeming qualities. There's a story surrounding Rob Zombie and the making of Halloween 2 that says he deliberately made it in to a giant pile of shit so that nobody could ruin his brilliant reimagining of the horror franchise after he was done. The combination of the studio forcing a sequel and Zombie not wanting to do it led to a poor movie and as far as I know they haven't gone back for a third film, Zombie got his wish. This story stayed with me and is the first thing I thought of upon walking in to the bright sunshine after watching TDKR, surely this would be the only way such a revered film maker as Christopher Nolan would create something so exposition heavy, something that was all effect and no cause? I wasn't surprised to later read that he didn't really want to make a third Batman movie.

"There was so much wrong with this movie I don't know where to start. Just a horrible waste of 3 hours and the good will built by the previous two movies. "

Blade: Trinity (2004) the end of another trilogy. I can't claim that this was any surprise. I'd previously turned it off after 5 minutes for crimes against the original film and excruciatingly bad performances but it was on Fox movies and Leah hadn't seen it so in one of our moods for mindless action we pressed play. Oh how we wish we didn't. Written and directed by David S. Goyer, the man responsible for the majority of TDKR script failed to entertain us in any way.

"Honestly worse than i remember. I can see why Dark Knight Rises was so poor with the majority of the script written by the exposition happy writer/director of this piece of junk."

There was a whole bunch of non events in the fifteen films, mostly old Bogart movies played on TCM but from the middling bunch I should highlight a few pieces of not so bad cinema.

 It Passes The Time

Treasure Island (2012) looks and feels like a TV movie, or a mini-series or something. It is a nice looking one that obviously had a very high budget. The adaptation is faithful and at three hours long probably too faithful.

"Izzard is good as Silver but I can't get his standup routines out of my head whenever he speaks."

Teenage Paparazzo (2010) is a documentary by Entourage star Adrien Grenier about a teenage boy in LA who became a Paparazzo (it's not just a clever name you see.) At 90 minutes it shouldn't have felt as long as it did, there were some real pacing issues that the 30 minutes of deleted scenes shows the film makers were aware of. The narrative drifted away from the subjest and in to a study of the relationship between the media and society which brought up a few interesting points but at other times felt contrived and obvious. I feel like it was worth watching though, not least for the way the relationshio between director and subject develops over time.

The Andromeda Strain (1971) was based on the Michael Crichton novel of the same name. A small town is killed by a space borne virus, scientists investigate. I enjoyed it for its content but not for its cinematic qualities. There was definite potential for this to be great.

"Great story. The whole time watching it I was thinking with better direction/creative vision this would be fantastic. I'm thinking oscar potential.

But sadly this was 8 years before Alien revolutionised the thriller and it suffers dramatically in comparison thanks the slightly campy attitudes of the early 70s. In the years after this we would see dramatic improvement thanks to Logans Run and Soylent Green and next to those this stands up well as an historical artefact."

Blade (1998) is cool.

"Stephen Dorff is great at swearing even when it's not really necessary and so he swears in every sentence of dialogue he has. Wesley Snipes as Blade is a total badass and so he acts like a total badass at all times. Tom Cruise is going to try delivering lines like Blade has in that movie Reacher and is going to fail, simply because he is a whiny little bitch and Wesley Snipes could kick his ass with one hand behind his back and the rest of him in jail for tax evasion."

Paper Heart (2009) has some fun with the documentary format. It's a documentary style movie about a girl making a documentary about what it is to be in love and who falls in love whilst making it whilst at the same time being a documentary about love. The seemless blending of interviews with real people and performances by Michael Cera and Charlene Yi playing versions of themselves provides an enjoyable experience that I'm very glad to have found hidden in the documentary section of the local video store.

"A really fun and cute mockumentary for fans of Michael Cera. Cera plays on his screen persona but It's Charlene Yi's movie."

Beyond that there were only a handful of fims that were truly worth my time.

Sometimes They Make Something Great

Cabaret (1972) based on the semi-biographical writings of Christopher Isherwood in Goodbye To Berlin. Starring Liza Minelli as the simply fabulous cabaret star Sally Bowles opposite Basil Exposition in the Isherwood role. I know you;ve heard of this movie and if you haven't seen it you simply must. Even just for the show stealing performance of Joel Grey.

"I don't go in for musicals in general but this is done so well and the songs don't interrupt the flow of the story in the way I usually find them to.

A fabulously entertaining film with tragic undertones and a sad ending."

Fat City (1972) is a late John Huston film starring a very young Jeffrey Lebowski opposite a superb Stacey Keach. Recommended to me via By Kubrick's Beard I shall point you to his fantastic review as there's nothing that I can say that will come close to the brilliant job done over there.

"Whenever you hear someone telling people about the great run of films America made in the early 1970's, and they get to the list, and they begin to feel fatigue, just wait for a pause and say "And Fat City. John Huston's Fat City." At that point the kids frown, and they admit they've not even seen Fat City. "Right," you say, "and you never even heard of "Fat City"
David Thompson - Have You Seen? "

Hombre (1967) a revisionist western starring Paul Newman and based on a book by Elmore Leonard is nothing like the Tv serials I have in my mind when I think of western movies. It comes close to being noir with the existential nature of the lead character. Highly recommended indeed.

"I'm a western novice but I reckon I could watch a hundred more and not find a better or more enjoyable one.

Newman is subtle yet powerful but the impressive Diane Cilento steals the show as Jessie the innkeeper. Its rare enough to find a strong, independant woman with brains and class in a film let alone in a genre typified by misogyny. I am surprised that this performance didn't shoot her to stardom, instead she returned to the relative anonymity she came from."

Letterboxd.com is great by the way. Go get yourself some of it and don't forget to follow me.