Year in Review 2013
Well, I wasn't very active in the Ticketverse this last quarter of the year, so my goal of reaching 20,000 hits didn't come to pass. I've resolved to be more of an active roll in the success of my writing endeavors, and have set a goal of accruing another 10,000 hits by year's end. To get things rolling, here's a collection of Critical Quickies from the past year I missed out on.
The Internship--Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson: Two laid-off idiot watch salesmen try and somehow succeed against a mental dream team after faking their way into an internship competiton at the Google campus. If you can convince yourself that Vaughn has a charming wit rather than an infuriating inability to shut his mouth, you might also enjoy the entire nonsensical bulk of whatever is left. But honestly, more thought went into making the end credits look clever than went into making The Internship a worthwhile expenditure of tine and money on either side of the screen.
D-
Furious 6--the cast of Fast Five, Michelle Rodriguez: The entire time I was watching this, I switched back and forth between Oh, wow! Awesome! and Oh yeah, Paul Walker's dead. Tradgedy always takes some of the enjoyment out of movies for me, but tragedy notwithstanding, Six was just as good as Five, if not better.
A-
Branded--cast unimportant because it was a waste of my money. Some guy figures out one day that he can "see" product brands sucking the souls out of people so that they can grow big enough to take over the world. As terrifying in an acid trip way as they are poorly rendered, these knockoff brands (Soda-Soda instead of Coca-Cola, for example) are ultimately captured by the Japanese and turned on each other like some corporate pot-head's idea of Pokemon battles. I didn't even finish watching.
F
The Lone Ranger--Armie Hammer, Johnny Depp: Another excuse for Disney to buy and re-boot, re-imagine, and re-tard something, as well as another excuse for Johnny Depp to play the exact same character he's been playing since Pirates of the Caribbean made him a famous cliche. It was fun to watch, like every other Disney tentpole out there, but devoid of substance or novelty.
C-
Elysium--Matt Damon, Jodie Foster: In a dystopian world (created by the same folks who used contagious aliens as an analogue for Apartheid-era South Africa in District 9), Earth-bound humanity is subject to disease, war, hunger, pollution, etc. while the select ruling elite live on the eponymous space station (also named after the Greek version of Heaven, where happy souls cavort with their loved ones through an endless wheat field and get drunk on honey-wine for the rest of eternity) equipped with medical technology sufficiently advanced to regenerate a shotgun-ruptured face and cure cancer and AIDS. Outfitted with an exoskeleton straight out of your average sci-fi novel, Damon's dying factory worker must infiltrate Elysium and thwart Foster's diabolical but accent-plagued sociopath before she can execute her plotted coup of the planetary government. Sounds ridiculous, but the filmmakers once again make their point clear with equal measures of substance and spectacle.
B+
The Family--Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Tommy Lee Jones: De Niro and Jones essentially play out their usual character archetypes (Cynical "Family" Man for De Niro, Cynical Veteran Cop for Jones) in a Martin Scorcese movie about liking Martin Scorcese movies that isn't nearly good enough to be called a Martin Scorcese movie. The Family is more like a film of an Elmore Leonard novel that serves to demonstrate what made Get Shorty great but also sports big neon signs pointing out where Be Cool went horribly wrong. A dose of pigeonholed boredom and trotted-out formula that still manages to be engaging without trying too hard.
B
As I Lay Dying--James Franco, Danny McBride, Tim Blake Nelson: Franco's adaptation of the Faulkner novel had me asking what the Faulk I was watching...when I wasn't sleeping through it. An almost entirely split-screen film featuring dead silence, boring dialogue in accents that were hard to take seriously, and overly artistic scenery shots of the Tree of Life variety, peppered with one-shots of a little boy saying "Mah momma's a fish." Again, what the Faulk?
F
Monsters University--John Goodman, Billy Crystal, Steve Buscemi, Helen Mirren: The Monsters, Inc. crew returns for this sequel that shows how the invisible lizard became a villain, how Mike and Sully first met and got hired at Monsters, Inc., and (somehow) why Andy from the Toy Story trilogy got sent home from camp early. The story is decent (showing The Internship what it could have been), the monsters are that perfect balance of cute and scary, and Pixar keeps their graphics rendering on an increasingly more impressive level than ever before (case in point: Mirren's centipede-tailed bat-dragon and the unexpectedly gigantic squid-librarian). Even the camp scene brings back vivid memories of Camp Crystal Lake from the Friday the 13th franchise. Just generally visually awesome.
A+
The Croods--Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, Catherine Keener, Ryan Reynolds: Caveman family gets the Land Before Time/ Ice Age treatment, being forced to embrace change when the splitting of Pangaea destroys their home and leaves them at the mercy of an array of dangerous--and imaginitively concocted--hybrid animals (piranha birds, owl-y cats, carnivorous flowers) and constantly shifting terrain. Also fun to watch (and possibly Nicolas Cage's best work to date), but also a depressing reminder of the dangers of evolution, technology, and laziness. Good thing it's meant for people who don't think about those kinds of things, i.e.: kids.
B+
The Way Way Back--Sam Rockwell, Steve Carell, Toni Colette, Allison Janney: After his stepfather (Carell) calls him a three on the proverbial scale of 1-10, a boy secretly goes to work at a water park, where Rockwell's man-child boss teaches him to assert himself, pick up girls, and breakdance. One of those small, impactful movies that makes you feel something and makes you feel good (redundant, but you know what I mean). And that Mr. Mister song will always have me asking "Who writes a song called 'Carry A Laser'?"
A+
The Kings of Summer--Nick Offerman (We're the Millers): A group of teenagers who hate their parents (one such father played to the pinnacle of mean-spirited assholiness by Offerman) decide they will build a house out in the woods and live by their own merits, but find that hunting at Boston Market is a far easier task, and maintaining a stable society is impossible while fighting each other for the love of one girl. The perfect companion for The Way Way Back.
A
This Is the End--The Apatow crew (Franco, Rogen, Baruchel, Hill, McBride, Cera, Rudd, Segel) and just about every other celebrity you could ever, or would never want to, get your hands on play exaggerated, R-Rated comedy, douchebag versions of themselves attending a party at James Franco's house. What starts as a good-natured but blatantly profane opportunity to poke fun at themselves and each other quickly turns into a fight to survive the events of the Book of Revelation (i.e.: the Apocalypse). Smart, funny, and impressively ridiculous all at once.
A-
Prisoners--Hugh Jackman, Paul Dano, Terrence Howard, Jake Gyllenhaal: When his daughter is abducted, Jackman's character embarks on a journey of brutal torture and revenge to find her. Dano (best known for his turn as the silent son in Little Miss Sunshine) plays the creepy next door neighbor to perfection, and the final twist in the case is brilliantly written. Buy this movie.
A+
Stay tuned as next time, I start the review cycle for the new year. Welcome to 2014, Ticketholders!
The Internship--Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson: Two laid-off idiot watch salesmen try and somehow succeed against a mental dream team after faking their way into an internship competiton at the Google campus. If you can convince yourself that Vaughn has a charming wit rather than an infuriating inability to shut his mouth, you might also enjoy the entire nonsensical bulk of whatever is left. But honestly, more thought went into making the end credits look clever than went into making The Internship a worthwhile expenditure of tine and money on either side of the screen.
D-
Furious 6--the cast of Fast Five, Michelle Rodriguez: The entire time I was watching this, I switched back and forth between Oh, wow! Awesome! and Oh yeah, Paul Walker's dead. Tradgedy always takes some of the enjoyment out of movies for me, but tragedy notwithstanding, Six was just as good as Five, if not better.
A-
Branded--cast unimportant because it was a waste of my money. Some guy figures out one day that he can "see" product brands sucking the souls out of people so that they can grow big enough to take over the world. As terrifying in an acid trip way as they are poorly rendered, these knockoff brands (Soda-Soda instead of Coca-Cola, for example) are ultimately captured by the Japanese and turned on each other like some corporate pot-head's idea of Pokemon battles. I didn't even finish watching.
F
The Lone Ranger--Armie Hammer, Johnny Depp: Another excuse for Disney to buy and re-boot, re-imagine, and re-tard something, as well as another excuse for Johnny Depp to play the exact same character he's been playing since Pirates of the Caribbean made him a famous cliche. It was fun to watch, like every other Disney tentpole out there, but devoid of substance or novelty.
C-
Elysium--Matt Damon, Jodie Foster: In a dystopian world (created by the same folks who used contagious aliens as an analogue for Apartheid-era South Africa in District 9), Earth-bound humanity is subject to disease, war, hunger, pollution, etc. while the select ruling elite live on the eponymous space station (also named after the Greek version of Heaven, where happy souls cavort with their loved ones through an endless wheat field and get drunk on honey-wine for the rest of eternity) equipped with medical technology sufficiently advanced to regenerate a shotgun-ruptured face and cure cancer and AIDS. Outfitted with an exoskeleton straight out of your average sci-fi novel, Damon's dying factory worker must infiltrate Elysium and thwart Foster's diabolical but accent-plagued sociopath before she can execute her plotted coup of the planetary government. Sounds ridiculous, but the filmmakers once again make their point clear with equal measures of substance and spectacle.
B+
The Family--Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Tommy Lee Jones: De Niro and Jones essentially play out their usual character archetypes (Cynical "Family" Man for De Niro, Cynical Veteran Cop for Jones) in a Martin Scorcese movie about liking Martin Scorcese movies that isn't nearly good enough to be called a Martin Scorcese movie. The Family is more like a film of an Elmore Leonard novel that serves to demonstrate what made Get Shorty great but also sports big neon signs pointing out where Be Cool went horribly wrong. A dose of pigeonholed boredom and trotted-out formula that still manages to be engaging without trying too hard.
B
As I Lay Dying--James Franco, Danny McBride, Tim Blake Nelson: Franco's adaptation of the Faulkner novel had me asking what the Faulk I was watching...when I wasn't sleeping through it. An almost entirely split-screen film featuring dead silence, boring dialogue in accents that were hard to take seriously, and overly artistic scenery shots of the Tree of Life variety, peppered with one-shots of a little boy saying "Mah momma's a fish." Again, what the Faulk?
F
Monsters University--John Goodman, Billy Crystal, Steve Buscemi, Helen Mirren: The Monsters, Inc. crew returns for this sequel that shows how the invisible lizard became a villain, how Mike and Sully first met and got hired at Monsters, Inc., and (somehow) why Andy from the Toy Story trilogy got sent home from camp early. The story is decent (showing The Internship what it could have been), the monsters are that perfect balance of cute and scary, and Pixar keeps their graphics rendering on an increasingly more impressive level than ever before (case in point: Mirren's centipede-tailed bat-dragon and the unexpectedly gigantic squid-librarian). Even the camp scene brings back vivid memories of Camp Crystal Lake from the Friday the 13th franchise. Just generally visually awesome.
A+
The Croods--Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, Catherine Keener, Ryan Reynolds: Caveman family gets the Land Before Time/ Ice Age treatment, being forced to embrace change when the splitting of Pangaea destroys their home and leaves them at the mercy of an array of dangerous--and imaginitively concocted--hybrid animals (piranha birds, owl-y cats, carnivorous flowers) and constantly shifting terrain. Also fun to watch (and possibly Nicolas Cage's best work to date), but also a depressing reminder of the dangers of evolution, technology, and laziness. Good thing it's meant for people who don't think about those kinds of things, i.e.: kids.
B+
The Way Way Back--Sam Rockwell, Steve Carell, Toni Colette, Allison Janney: After his stepfather (Carell) calls him a three on the proverbial scale of 1-10, a boy secretly goes to work at a water park, where Rockwell's man-child boss teaches him to assert himself, pick up girls, and breakdance. One of those small, impactful movies that makes you feel something and makes you feel good (redundant, but you know what I mean). And that Mr. Mister song will always have me asking "Who writes a song called 'Carry A Laser'?"
A+
The Kings of Summer--Nick Offerman (We're the Millers): A group of teenagers who hate their parents (one such father played to the pinnacle of mean-spirited assholiness by Offerman) decide they will build a house out in the woods and live by their own merits, but find that hunting at Boston Market is a far easier task, and maintaining a stable society is impossible while fighting each other for the love of one girl. The perfect companion for The Way Way Back.
A
This Is the End--The Apatow crew (Franco, Rogen, Baruchel, Hill, McBride, Cera, Rudd, Segel) and just about every other celebrity you could ever, or would never want to, get your hands on play exaggerated, R-Rated comedy, douchebag versions of themselves attending a party at James Franco's house. What starts as a good-natured but blatantly profane opportunity to poke fun at themselves and each other quickly turns into a fight to survive the events of the Book of Revelation (i.e.: the Apocalypse). Smart, funny, and impressively ridiculous all at once.
A-
Prisoners--Hugh Jackman, Paul Dano, Terrence Howard, Jake Gyllenhaal: When his daughter is abducted, Jackman's character embarks on a journey of brutal torture and revenge to find her. Dano (best known for his turn as the silent son in Little Miss Sunshine) plays the creepy next door neighbor to perfection, and the final twist in the case is brilliantly written. Buy this movie.
A+
Stay tuned as next time, I start the review cycle for the new year. Welcome to 2014, Ticketholders!
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