Films I Rate 9/10

__Welcome back to my series of posts in which I list all the films I've seen, grouped by rating. This time, we're looking at the movies upon which I've bestowed a 9/10 rating, meaning not quite full marks but still great movies in the five-star tier. There are currently 176 in this range, which is about 8.1% of the total amount.

__Before we begin, here's some more general advice for all ten of these posts. The lists are in alphabetical order, obviously. If a title begins with a number, it's arranged as if the number were spelt out in words. So if you're looking for a particular movie in any of these lists, it should be easy enough to find.🙂 But pay attention to the year, because it might not be the version you're thinking of.

American Beauty (1999)
Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie (2014)
Anomalisa (2015)
Antz (1998)
Argo (2012)
Arrietty [AKA The Secret World of Arrietty] (2010)
Attack the Block (2011)
Avatar (2009)
Avengers Assemble [AKA The Avengers] (2012)
Baby Driver (2017)

Films I Rate 10/10

__Welcome to a series of posts in which I list every movie I've seen up to now, grouped by rating from one to ten. I already listed all the ones that form part of a series (or just a distinctive banner like, say, the Disney animated features), so if you haven't already, you can check out that post to see how I think each instalment in a series compares with the others. But now it's time to spotlight every standalone movie in between as well. I'm such a nerd that I actually keep a record of every movie I've seen (including short films, documentaries and even two-episode TV miniseries, which can easily be viewed as one movie split in half), and I try to keep my full set of ratings consistent across all movie-related websites.

__For this first entry, I'll be listing the absolute best, the movies I love so much that they've earned full marks. Lately, a full 10/10 is becoming the hardest rating to achieve, because I've seen so many movies, especially mediocre or downright terrible ones, that I'm getting increasingly jaded and harder to please. Of the 2,186 movies that I've seen to date, there are 115 that I've placed on the top tier of my enjoyment scale. That's about 5.3% of the entire library! So these are the elite, the cream of the crop, the ones I absolutely love and will never get tired of.

__And keep in mind that, since I live in the British Isles, they'll be listed alphabetically by their British titles. If the American title is significantly different, I'll be sure to mention it. I did think of making each title a link to the film's IMDb page in case you'd like more information, but considering I'd have to copy more than two thousand links and insert them into the selected text, I decided that'd be a bit too ambitious and time-consuming.

__Right, enough preamble! Here we go.

AC/DC: Live at Donington (1992)
Aladdin (1992)
Alien (1979)
Aliens (1986)
Amadeus (1984)
Apollo 13 (1995)
The Artist (2011)
Avengers: Endgame (2019)
Back to the Future (1985)
Back to the Future Part II (1989)

Film Series I've Seen

__Welcome to the last month of 2020.🙂 I hope everyone has a good holiday season, and let's keep hoping for much better times all around next year.
__As I said in my last post, I've been using Wordpress instead of this blog for several years now. Obviously, I've seen tons of movies in that time, so I thought, "Why not bring anyone reading this up to speed?"🙂

__I am working on a series of posts in which I list every movie I've placed in each level on the rating scale from one to ten. However, as many of them are sequels that sometimes wind up with a higher rating than their predecessors, I think it'd be best to group them by series or category first. So this is going to be a comprehensive list of every film franchise I've seen to date, along with my rating for each instalment.

__The franchises will all be listed in alphabetical order, followed by a section in which I list a bunch of miscellaneous two-parters, i.e. movies that have only one sequel, or at least only one that I've seen. Then, at the end, I'll list everything I've seen from some of my favourite directors, again listed alphabetically from James Cameron to Edgar Wright, as well as three directors for whom I have… well, let's just say much less respect.

__If you're curious to know how much I like or dislike a movie in particular, especially if it's part of a set, you should easily be able to find it here.🙂 If it's not in the section you expect it to be, try doing a "find on page" search for it. And if you'd like more information on any movie, each title will serve as a link to its IMDb page.

__First, let's do a rundown of what my ratings mean. And keep in mind that they're just gauging my enjoyment of the movie rather than indicating any technical or artistic merit.

10/10 = outstanding
9/10 = great
8/10 = very good
7/10 = good
6/10 = not bad
5/10 = okay
4/10 = not good
3/10 = poor
2/10 = dire
Turd = atrocious

__I say "turd" because 1/10 might be too easy to confuse with 10/10 at first glance.

__I'd love to use something more visual, like five stars to correspond with 10/10, four-and-a-half stars for 9/10 and so on, but apparently there's no Unicode symbol for a half-star. Or rather there is, but not all software can read it.

__For the record, here's how I'd define the five-star scale…

10/10 + 9/10 = five stars (love it)

8/10 + 7/10 = four stars (like it)

6/10 + 5/10 = three stars (it's okay)

4/10 + 3/10 = two stars (don't like it)

2/10 + 1/10 = one star (hate it)

First Impressions Review Diary 14-Nov-2020

__Hello.🙂 I hope everyone's doing well.
__It's been a long, long time since I posted on this blog. For the last few years, I've been using Wordpress instead. However, they've recently revised their writing system to a format I really don't like. The text is divided into blocks, and it no longer seems to be possible to insert "read more" tags or wrap the text around pictures, like I wanted to for this post. Besides, the main reason I stopped using Blogger was because emoticons only showed up in text form, but it appears you can insert them as special characters now, so I may start using Blogger on a more permanent basis once again.
__Before I continue, I should probably explain the format my posts have been following lately. I've seen so many movies by this point that I've lost my motivation to write the full reviews that I used to on this blog, so I usually just copy and paste my comments from Twitter, with each movie's title serving as a link to its IMDb page if you'd like to know more.
__Today's post, however, will follow a layout I haven't used for a long time: the usual series of mini reviews from my Twitter page, followed by a full review of the last game I played. I've been watching a lot of Let's Plays lately, mainly NES classics like Castlevania and Metroid, although I have actually sat down and played a more recent game on top of that, and it turned out I had enough to say to fill a review of almost 250 words, just like I used to.

__But before that, let's go over the last few movies I've been watching. Among them was Weathering with You, the last movie from 2019 that I was really looking forward to seeing; I just had to wait for the DVD. After that, as per tradition on Halloween, I watched several new horror movies, in this case the Shark Attack trilogy (yeah, I was in the mood for some trash this year😀) and some of the Universal classics to offset it.
__There's also Predator 2, the only film in the Predator series that I hadn't seen yet. So, before I comment on that one, it might be appropriate to give my brief thoughts on the first Predator movie, especially since I did watch it again before the sequel anyway.

Predator (1987)
An adept example of pitting macho heroes against an impossibly greater threat. I like how the cinematography conveys the tightness of the jungle. But by far the best part is the climactic cat-and-mouse game between Arnold and the Predator.
My rating: 75%.

__So, with that out of the way, let's get started on the movies I was watching for the first time.
Predator 2 (1990)
It's hard to care about the characters because everything about the acting and overall presentation is so over-the-top that it becomes obnoxious. Ultimately, it just feels like a cheap rehashed sequel that doesn't add anything significant.
My rating: 30%.
Weathering with You (2019)
The animation is outstanding, and the movie points out how the weather affects your mood, so I think it's clearly a metaphor for the romance, especially given Hina's direct connection to it. The only thing I don't like is the ending.
My rating: 75%.
Beetlejuice (1988)
It's a comedy infused with Tim Burton's signature macabre zaniness, but it also has its share of effective dramatic moments, like when the couple first realise they're dead. It's boosted by a fun and inventive take on the spirit world.
My rating: 75%.
Shark Attack (1999)
If you're expecting B-movie trash, you're not quite going to get it. The sharks take a back seat to an involved business plot, and the attacks are often obscured behind a flurry of hectic cuts. It's not spectacularly bad, just kind of dull.
My rating: 40%.
Shark Attack 2 (2000)
This is bursting with the so-bad-it's-good quality that the first movie lacked. The writing is stock, and the effects are so lame it's hysterical. It's a terrible movie, but I laughed so much that I can't quite bring myself to hate it.
My rating: 25%.
Shark Attack 3: Megalodon (2002)
In terms of competence, this truly is one of the worst movies I've ever seen. The laughable dialogue and effects can only go so far when they're surrounded by utter stupidity to the point of getting shark species wrong.
My rating: turkey.
Dracula's Daughter (1936)
For the most part, the countess's struggle is an interesting one, seeking to break her vampire curse through psychological means and being told to confront her issues instead of avoiding them. It's all undone in the third act, however.
My rating: 65%.
Son of Dracula (1943)
All the characters are memorable: Alucard in search for new feeding grounds, the detectives on his trail, and his bride who has motives of her own. It's a fun sequel with plenty of satisfying plot developments and a great ending.
My rating: 70%.
House of Frankenstein (1944)
The first movie to include three Universal monsters, all held together by a mad scientist using them in a quest for revenge. Dracula is the first attempt, which fails and forces him to find an alternative. It's good but not amazing.
My rating: 70%.
House of Dracula (1945)
Aside from a couple of good ideas, like what comes of Dracula's blood transfusion, it's definitely one of the Universal monster series' weakest, because it blatantly disregards all continuity. The result is a second-rate retread.
My rating: 55%.
The Mummy (1932)
The original Mummy might still be the best. Right from the opening scene, it's spellbinding. Be it exploring Imhotep's past or his central quest to recover his long-lost love, the overall tone is just as hypnotic as Boris Karloff's stare.
My rating: 85%.

__And now let's end with the more in-depth game review.

Jurassic World Evolution (PC)
__Essentially a remake of Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis. It's the same basic setup: build a park, create dinosaurs by excavating their genetic material from dig sites around the world, and try to keep both the animals and the guests satisfied.
__I'm still trying to decide whether I prefer this to JPOG. On one hand, as strange as it sounds, I prefer when everything's locked down on a grid; it makes space much easier to manage. Here, when trying to place a building close to another, or a path or something, it would often say "building constraints" or "terrain constraints" or just "obstructed", even when it looked like there was plenty of room. On the other hand, I love the freedom you have in JWE, not just in the variety of dinosaur species (especially with the DLCs that include even more), but the fact that you can name individual dinosaurs, buildings and even your ranger teams.
__The only DLC I didn't bother with was Secrets of Dr Wu, because I'm just not interested in the hybrid dinosaurs.
__For me, the hardest part was trying to unlock every entry in the InGen Database (basically what other games might call a codex). In some cases, the conditions are just outrageous, particularly Paul Kirby's character profile! That's the main reason my final play time was over 103 hours.
__Overall, it's a fun and addictive park simulator, and by far the best thing to bear the name Jurassic World.
__My rating: 90%.

History of the World

   I was reading Jurassic Park the other day, and it mentions at one point that most people find it hard enough to imagine historical events that took place hundreds or even thousands of years ago, but that’s small potatoes in comparison to the millions of years that palaeontologists and geologists deal in. So I’ve decided to provide you with a little demonstration of just how big a difference that is, and how insignificant human history is in the grand scheme of things.

   The Earth is a staggering 4·54 billion years old. Let’s imagine that vast time span in the space of one year. That means each day of the year represents about 12·44 million years.

   So the Earth was formed on the stroke of midnight that marked January 1st, and away we go! :)

   Now, the earliest undisputed evidence of life on Earth – simple, single-celled organisms – dates from about three billion years ago. On our timeline, that’s somewhere around 7.30 PM (give or take a few minutes) on May 4th. There was a lot of geological chaos going on in those first four months, but we’re not here to detail the entire history of the planet: just a few of the most interesting evolutionary landmarks.

   Now, life may have existed since May 4th, but it’s not until November 15th, around 8.53 AM, that we get the first multicellular animals! (That’s 580 million years.)

   And it’s only at around 9.21 AM on November 19th (530 million years ago) that we find creatures with backbones.

   Up to now, all life has existed only in the sea. A select few creatures along the way were able to leave the sea and venture onto dry land, but it’s not until December that we find the land well and truly colonised. This happened in the Late Devonian period, between 385 and 359 million years ago, so that’s no earlier than 1.08 AM on December 1st on our timeline.

   So what about the dinosaurs? I’m sure that’s one you all want to know about. :) Well, the dinosaurs only appeared at around 11.08 AM on December 12th. (The earliest known dinosaur, Nyasasaurus, dates from about 243 million years ago.)

   And the extinction of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago, was at about 6.35 PM on December 26th.

   And as for humans, modern man… well, only the last 23 minutes of this entire year represents their (or perhaps I should say our) reign of about 200,000 years.

   And now, just to finish up, let’s throw in a frame of reference that might be more recognisable to you. The birth of Christ, say. Well, out of this whole year, the 2015 AD years only represent the last fourteen seconds!

   Compared to this, an average human lifetime of seventy-five years is (are you ready for this?) 0·52 seconds. Blink and you’d miss it!

   So there you go. Human history of five thousand years or so may seem like a very long time to us, but compared to geological time, it’s beyond negligible.

2014 in Film: My Favourites and Least Favourites

   Once again, the new year is just around the corner, so it's time to reflect on the movies of the year that's just passed, both the good and the bad. I've done one of these lists every year since 2011, so welcome to my fourth annual movie round-up. :)
   Now, bear with me for a moment; I need to set some criteria. Movie release dates are a complicated business, and I have my own idea of what qualifies as a 2014 movie. It simply has to have been released to the general public in the year in question. So any movie that's only seen the light of day at film festivals so far, no matter how big a splash it was, is out. The same rule applies to a movie's release date in a particular country: I judge by the first public audience it reached according to IMDb, so if it was initially released in another country earlier but didn't make it to yours until this year, it doesn't count. It is a pain that that's a two-way street, because some big US releases towards the end of the year won't reach my shores until January and February, so I currently haven't seen movies like Big Hero 6, Into the Woods and Birdman.
   Speaking of which, I emphasise this every year, but something else to keep in mind is that this is going purely by movies that I've actually seen. I try my best to see every movie that gets either exceedingly good or bad buzz to see if it'll make either of these end-of-year lists, but there are always some that, for one reason or another, I never get round to. But I'll go into the specifics on that in the individual good and bad sections.
   So, without further ado, let's get started. :)

   I tend to get the bad news out of the way first so that the good news becomes sort of a reward.
   But let me tell you, this was a hard list to narrow down! Truth be told, this was a distinctly underwhelming year for movies. There were practically none whatsoever that I either really loved or really hated; the whole year seemed to be running on indifference nonstop. …Or maybe that was just my own ennui.
   And I may not have the utmost authority to make a worst-of list anyway, because I haven't seen many of the reputedly worst movies that came out this year. Like, I haven't seen any of the Tyler Perry movies or The Expendables 3, for instance. There's also Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, the remakes of Endless Love and Annie, Dracula Untold, A Haunted House 2, Mrs Brown's Boys, As Above, So Below and Uwe Boll's Rampage: Capital Punishment, among others I'm sure I'm forgetting. But the big one is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; I never watched Ninja Turtles myself – I didn't grow up with it – and I certainly didn't want this piece of shit (as I'm sure it is) to be my first exposure to the franchise.
   But anyway, from what I have seen, these are my picks for the top ten worst movies of 2014…

#10 = Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return

This is an embarrassing attempt to bring Oz into the twenty-first century by making the dialogue and humour exceedingly contemporary. It's such an ill-advised idea that this movie is basically dead on arrival. Not to mention, the songs are bad, and some of the voice acting is terrible: in particular, Bernadette Peters is staggeringly wooden as Glinda. Also, I didn't care much for Oz the Great and Powerful, but the little China Girl in that movie was far better than the China Princess in this one. I just wouldn't recommend showing this to your children; show them the more timeless movies instead.

#9 = Under the Skin

This movie, right from the first minute, seems like it's trying desperately to be a Stanley Kubrick film, with a very slow pace and a vague, visual-fuelled narrative. But a sci-fi movie of this nature doesn't lend itself well at all to that approach; it really needs to be cohesive. As a result, it leaves tonnes of questions unanswered. Just what is that liquid she traps men in? Who is that guy working with her? Why does she even need men's skins in the first place? None of this is ever explained. It constantly left me thinking, "What the hell is going on?!"

#8 = Transformers: Age of Extinction

I've made no secret of my utmost disdain for the Transformers sequels and Michael Bay movies in general. I was fully expecting this to top the list before I even saw it, so imagine my surprise when it turned out to be nowhere near as bad as I was expecting. It's still overlong and poorly structured, and the human characters are more annoying than ever before, but at least it wasn't as all-around infuriating as Transformers two and three. Despite learning from a few of its predecessors' mistakes, like reducing the robot cast to only a few clearly distinguishable Autobots, overall it's just plain dull.

#7 = A New York Winter's Tale (known in the US as simply Winter's Tale)

This is basically a failed attempt at a modern-day fairytale, and I have a hunch that it's going to become a new classic "so bad it's good" movie. But personally, I was only laughing at it half the time; the rest of the time, I just found the stupidity on display aggravating. As an example of both extremes, I lost it whenever I heard Russell Crowe's ridiculous Irish accent, but when Peter survives for a century without aging, it just leaves you wondering what kind of social life he's had in the meantime. There are just too many outrageously stupid moments to even count.

#6 = Behaving Badly

Based on Ric Browde's novel While I'm Dead… Feed the Dog. I haven't read the book, but it must surely be better than this. As the title would imply, a lot of the humour is meant to be dark or distasteful, but the overall direction is so indifferent that there's no wit to it; it just comes across as immature. And some of the concepts are downright cringe-worthy, especially the plotline of the best friend's mother having sex with the teenage protagonist, which is wrong on so many levels! I spent the whole time either cringing or just sitting there in awkward silence.

#5 = The Purge: Anarchy

I hated the original Purge, but thought maybe this sequel could offer some improvement. But that hope was quickly dashed. The whole concept of the Purge is still beyond absurd, so illogical that it beggars belief. Thankfully the characters aren't aggravating morons this time around, but it's the cinematography that really kills this attempt. The camera never stops shaking, everything looks overexposed – it's all simply ugly to look at. Plus the half-assed nature of its satire is exemplified at the end, when it turns into a blatant Hunger Games rip-off. So, while it's not as bad as its predecessor, this still isn't much more watchable.

#4 = A Long Way Down

Another movie based on a dark comedy novel. But this time, the mistranslation from book to film is plainly noticeable – and distressing. Right from the opening scenes, the movie's joking approach to the characters committing suicide made me distinctly uncomfortable. It's a disastrous failed attempt to be darkly humorous about a very delicate subject. And the rest of the movie that follows is just as awkwardly unfunny. The characters often got on my nerves, but by far the most annoying is Jess: she never shuts up! Basically, it's a movie that shoots itself in the foot right from the start and never recovers.

#3 = Bad Neighbours (known in the US as Neighbors)

One word: annoying! It's one of those movies where both parties involved in the rivalry are as unlikable as the other, in this case because all they do is shout and scream and be as loud and obnoxious as possible – it's just noise, noise, noise! It's so cacophonous that the painfully unfunny and often sophomoric jokes are almost secondary. I also have to wonder why our leading couple are the only ones in the whole neighbourhood who bother to call the police about the noise. The sheer level of annoyance I got from this movie is really what puts it at the number three spot.

#2 = The Legend of Hercules

This retelling of the story of Hercules is as clichéd a Moses story as it gets. You can even pinpoint the famous historical epics it's blatantly ripping off, including Ben-Hur, Gladiator and every triumphant "people's hero" leader story you've ever seen before. Plus the CGI is astonishingly bad, the acting is so dull it's downright depressing, and the only one of the famous twelve labours that's even remotely referenced is the Nemean lion; even the Disney version had more to do with the legend than that! In short, this is one of the most boring, derivative movies I've come across in quite a while.

And #1 – straight in there from the moment I saw it – Lucy

God, this movie is stupid! Even the trailer had me laughing because, as yet, I didn't realise the "ten percent of the brain" thing was an actual misconception; I always thought it was just an expression meaning that hardly anyone makes full use of their talents. But now here's a sci-fi movie taking that completely false idea entirely seriously! It's insulting! But even simply as a movie, Lucy lost me very early on, when it keeps cutting between two completely unrelated series of events; the transitions are just jarring. The second half is mostly just unremarkable action fodder, but it's still frustrating because it's serving such an idiotic purpose. I hated this movie! It flat-out fails both in conception and execution, and it gets my vote as the worst movie of the year. Others might have been technically worse in terms of tradecraft, but none were more frustrating to watch.

Runners-up:
• Divergent is head-scratching in its idea of a society dictated absolutely by personality.
• I, Frankenstein is so bland and mediocre that I was almost completely indifferent to it – up until the ridiculous ending.
• Into the Storm is chock full of stock characters and maddening abuse of the found footage gimmick.
• Need for Speed was a surprisingly drab return of old-school, CG-free stunts.
• The Quiet Ones was the most thoroughly forgettable movie I saw all year.
• And Rio 2 is a wholly sloppy, half-hearted sequel that also tries to do way too much at once.

   Well, that's the worst-of list. Now I get to wash my hands of those stinkers by talking about the movies this year that I actually liked. :)
   Now, I mentioned this earlier, but it bears repeating. Compared to the other years I've been doing this, this best-of list sadly isn't quite as strong a remedy to its counterpart. The line-up of movies this year was pretty subpar; there were next to no movies that I even liked enough to award five-star ratings. Even some of the movies that were huge hits with both critics and audiences, like How to Train Your Dragon 2, didn't resonate quite as strongly with me personally. Perhaps the biggest examples are the two Marvel movies this year – Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy – both of which I thought were just okay. Is the movie-going public getting desperate for something to latch onto, or am I just becoming too cynical?
   And again, there might be some glaring omissions on this list, because there were a fair few reportedly good movies this year that I didn't catch, like Muppets Most Wanted, Big Eyes, Pride, What If (AKA The F Word), Veronica Mars (I think it best to watch the show first) and The Babadook – the latter of which I feel really guilty about because, when I first heard about it, I thought it sounded incredibly stupid, and by the time I heard what it was really like, it was too late. But the one for which I'm kicking myself the most is Boyhood, helmed by many as the best movie of the year; unfortunately I missed it in the cinema, and it won't hit DVD until January. I'd also like to give a special mention to Dinosaur 13: I usually take no interest in documentary films, but that one sounds like just my cup of tea. :)
   Bottom line: if there's a movie that you feel really strongly should be on this list, chances are I either haven't seen it or I just didn't like it as much as you did.
   So, with that rather pessimistic intro out of the way, let's now jump right into the joyful side of this year's cinema. :D Here are my top ten favourite movies of 2014…

#10 = Interstellar

It's more of the same complex sci-fi fare we've come to expect from Christopher Nolan. :) This time we have a team of explorers scouting deep space to try and find mankind a new home. A few aspects of the story don't add up, but I could still follow it well enough overall. I really didn't like Hans Zimmer's raucous, bombastic music, which even drowns out the dialogue at times. But on the other hand, the whole "time is relative" concept leads to one of the most powerful emotional moments in recent memory. Overall, it's far from Nolan's best offering, but still a pretty good one.

#9 = Godzilla

Finally, an American Godzilla remake that actually respects the franchise! :D Personally, I've only seen the original, but from what I've heard of the rest of the series, this movie is an affectionate tribute to the whole franchise. The human characters are boring, and they take up so much of the movie that that can be a little disappointing, but the story, and the plan they devise, still consistently held my interest. However, the final monster battle is definitely the highlight. :) Overall, while I could have used a little more focus on the monsters, I was still more than satisfied with what I got.

#8 = Gone Girl

When his wife disappears, Nick Dunne suspects kidnapping and goes public with his search for her, but then the media begins to suspect that he may not be all that innocent. Well, it's been a while since I've seen a thriller that kept me guessing all the way! :) The mystery of what happened to the wife only lasts for the first act, then it becomes something entirely different: an equally riveting battle of wits. The last act made no sense to me at the time, but fortunately it does become clearer on reflection. On the whole, it's a well written and highly effective thriller.

#7 = Chef

This is one that I really underestimated at first. The first act, involving the main character's feud with a critic, is pretty shaky, because all the trouble could have been avoided if he simply told the truth; you just want to jump into the movie and explain that it's all because of managerial mandate. But the second half, after he opens up the food truck and goes on tour, is quite simply some of the best feel-good entertainment I've seen in a long time. I especially love the developing relationship he shares with his son – who delivers one of the best child performances in years.

#6 = Oculus

This was the surprise of the year for me. I usually don't find the supernatural scary, and the idea of a haunted mirror sounded ludicrous to me. But instead, the movie succeeds by offering an extremely well written psychological study. As the film progresses and we get to know the two leads more and more, we start to wonder which of them is actually delusional, which is what makes the second half so intense. Watching the whole movie makes you feel like you're descending into delirium. It's an absolutely riveting mind trip, and probably the best horror movie I've seen since Cabin in the Woods.

#5 = X-Men: Days of Future Past

I went into this movie with high hopes, and came out feeling that I'd seen the best X-Men movie ever made. In a word, wow! :) It's impressive in just about every respect, but I'm especially amazed at how well written it is. The story is everything that a comic book movie should be: tightly written, and exciting thanks to being witty with both its clever ideas and its endearing characters. All the performances are top-notch, but Michael Fassbender stands out in particular. But the main thing the movie did for me was the last half-hour: the tension in the climax is nothing short of breathtaking.

#4 = The Imitation Game

If any movie this year was right up my street, it was this one! :) It's a biopic of Alan Turing, who developed the first prototypical computer to decode Nazi communications in World War II. The film as a whole is endlessly compelling and exciting, and even manages to pack some truly devastating emotional punches. But of course, it's Benedict Cumberbatch who steals the show. The movie portrays Turing as autistic, and, speaking as someone on the spectrum myself, Cumberbatch's performance is pitch-perfect. His tendency to rarely look people in the eye, and sometimes have trouble forming complete sentences or even words, really rang true.

#3 = The Book of Life

Another big surprise. Right from the opening scenes, it was so emotionally poignant that I was won over instantly. The story is as basic a fairytale as you can get, which just makes it all the more engaging: sometimes simplicity goes a long way. But aside from that, I simply adore the art design and the animation; I can't think of any other movie that looks like this. I said before that I hardly rated any movies five stars this year, but this is one that I strongly suspect will earn that coveted rating on repeat viewings. I loved it.

#2 = The Raid 2

This is one for which I had particularly high hopes, being a huge fan of the first Raid. This sequel features a much more complicated story; I had a bit of trouble keeping up. But all the characters' motivations made perfect sense, so I began to become steadily more invested. And then, once again, the third act made all the difference. I mean, WOW! The action scenes are some of the best in recent memory, including one of the best car chases I've ever seen, period! They're so exhilarating that I felt like I had to take a breather after each one was over!

   So, what could be number one? What did I enjoy more than any of those other movies? The answer surprises even me.

My #1 favourite movie of 2014 is… Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie

Now, I admit I may have a bit of a bias towards this one, since I've been a huge AVGN fan since 2007, and James Rolfe himself, through his other videos, has become one of my biggest filmmaking idols. I was following this movie's progress from day one, trying not to let myself get too hyped, and boy was it worth the wait! :) It never stops being entertaining, not even for a second! Just about every step of the story feels natural, and I love how progressively outrageous the situation keeps becoming. I'd be lying if I said the obvious low-budget effects weren't occasionally distracting, but some of them just add to the humour in a big way: seeing some of the actors turned into part of the miniature models is frigging hilarious! :D Judging from its IMDb rating, it seems even a lot of AVGN fans hated this movie, but I'm clearly not one of them. I couldn't help but share in the passion on display, and thoroughly enjoyed the ride. It's my favourite movie of the year.

Runners-up:
• Batman: Assault on Arkham is more about the Suicide Squad than Batman himself, but their interplay makes them just as enjoyable to watch.
• Belle is maybe a tad romanticised, but still a compelling tale of morality and breaking boundaries.
• Edge of Tomorrow (released on DVD as Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow) is a very clever thriller that plays around with the concept of time travel magnificently.
• The Grand Budapest Hotel is both a dryly humorous comedy and an effective mystery story all in one.
• The Lego Movie is funny, creative, energised and even surprisingly profound, as demonstrated near the end.
• Nightcrawler is that rare movie for the bad guy, topped by an outstanding performance by Jake Gyllenhaal.
• And Noah acknowledges both the good and bad at the root of human nature, and ultimately reaffirmed my faith in humanity.

   And those are my picks for the high and low points of this pretty meagre year.
   Let's hope we get a more illustrious catalogue of films next year. After all, we've got the Wachowskis' Jupiter Ascending to look forward to, as well as the Fantastic Four reboot, Ant-Man, not one but two Pixar movies, Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight, and quite a few sequels: Avengers: Age of Ultron, Mockingjay Part 2, a new Mad Max, another Bond movie, Mission: Impossible 5, Star Wars: Episode VII and – perhaps the one I'm personally most excited for – Jurassic World (man, it's been a long wait for that one!). On the other hand, I'm rather dubious about The Minions Movie: I'm not sure those characters are really leading role material. And then, needless to say, I couldn't be less enthusiastic about Fifty Shades of Grey; why that's even getting a film adaptation is beyond me!
   In any case, let's hope for the best. :)
   So thanks for reading this summary of my own outlook on cinema in 2014, have a fantastic New Year, and I'll see you next time. Take care.

Thoughts on "Jurassic World"

   I just saw the trailer for Jurassic World, and I'm ready to share my thoughts. And if you intend to keep reading, you'd better get comfortable, because I have a lot to say! :)
   Man have I been waiting for this movie forever! The last Jurassic Park movie was back in 2001; that was, of course, the God-awful Jurassic Park III. And since then, a fourth movie has been teased several times, but has remained in development hell as far as I can make out.

   Now, I'm usually not one to keep up to date with a movie's development progress, but because I'm such a huge Jurassic Park fan, I found myself making an exception in this case. Any article I saw about the development of Jurassic World, I was all over it.
   A Jurassic Park sequel is usually released every four years, so in 2005 – the time I'd been expecting another movie to be released – I read in Total Film magazine that Steven Spielberg was working with the studio to produce a script they were happy with. "Too much science will make the movie too talky," he said. "Too much fiction will make it seem dry."
   From then until only a couple of years ago, nothing really happened. Then, when I read that the script was in the hands of Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, the husband-and-wife writing duo behind Rise of the Planet of the Apes, I was optimistic. My only hope was that they had as much passion for the Jurassic Park franchise as they did for Apes. But apparently, the script has been revised by Colin Trevorrow and Derek Connolly since then, so that point may be proved moot.

   On the other hand, another article I read presents a whole other discussion in itself.
   It seems they decided against giving the dinosaurs feathers in this new movie, because, as they put it, "a Velociraptor with feathers is not a Velociraptor". And I think that's a shame. I mean, that would have been a great way to solidify the new evidence of feathered dinosaurs with the general public. Especially since an earlier article had included a script extract where Dr Wu addressed the outdated image from the earlier movies by discussing the flaws in gene sequencing: maybe the dinosaurs had no feathers because of their slapdash approach previously. (An idea that's also explored in Telltale's Jurassic Park game, by the way.)
   Now, I can understand why some people would be reluctant to accept feathered dinosaurs, because I've been there myself. All my life, I've known dinosaurs as scaly reptiles, so for all the research that was turning up indicating that some species had feathers, I was extremely reluctant to listen to that evidence. Hell, it took me until a couple of years ago, when I saw the documentary miniseries Dinosaur Planet (not to be confused with the BBC's Planet Dinosaur) to finally accept feathered raptors; the feathered Velociraptor in that series looked amazing. Sometimes you just need to see something in action for it to really win you over.
   But what about T-Rex? Well, we know the very earliest tyrannosaurs had feathers, and some of them were pretty big, but we're not so sure about the more advanced ones. Until recently, I remained a firm sceptic of the idea that Tyrannosaurus Rex itself had feathers.

But then I saw this picture of a statue in Poland that depicts it with a carpet of downy feathers. And the more I look at it, the more sense it makes. That's a feathered T-Rex image I can get behind. If this new Jurassic Park had made its T-Rex look like this, I wouldn't mind a bit. It would still look respectable and intimidating, certainly not like (to slightly alter a quote from the first movie) a "forty-foot turkey" that you couldn't take seriously.

   Anyway, after all those developments, the trailer's finally out, the movie is finally within sight, so what do I think? Well, to be honest, the trailer did very little for me; I was kind of indifferent to it. Trailers very rarely get me excited to see the movies they advertise, because I know they can sometimes be misleading. The first teaser appeared to confirm one of my biggest fears for this project: that they were relying too much on CGI. The full trailer, like I said, didn't get me any more excited for the movie, but at least it didn't add any additional fears on top of that.
   But, right off the bat, there are two major problems with this movie, both of which are very obvious, but I might as well get them out of the way.

   The first problem is that I'm worried about the special effects.
   Stan Winston, the special effects legend behind the animatronic dinosaurs in the first three movies, sadly passed away in 2008 – an unfortunate blow for any potential practical effects. The real genius of the series so far, and what made Jurassic Park so groundbreaking in the first place, was how well it blended the CGI with the animatronics. To paraphrase the words of the filmmakers, their intention was to make the two match up as best they could, so that they wouldn't come across as two completely different entities, and therefore the dinosaurs themselves would seem complete. And for the most part, they succeeded. I remember going to see the first movie when it was rereleased in 2011, and I didn't see animatronics: I saw frigging dinosaurs!
   But now that the leader of the practical side of things is no longer with us, that sensibility could be gone altogether. Now, let's make one thing perfectly clear. CGI is very tricky to pull off convincingly; unless you do it perfectly, it just ends up looking like the digital animation that it is. And most blockbusters since Jurassic Park, especially in the most recent years, have made the mistake of relying too heavily on CGI; nothing seems grounded in reality anymore, so almost all CG effects just look like video game graphics, not live action in any way. I really hope Jurassic World doesn't succumb to peer pressure and reduce its computer effects to clearly animated sprites in that manner.
   Well, if the trailer is anything to go by, I have good reason to be apprehensive. Right from when I saw that shot of the gate in the first teaser, I thought it looked straight out of a video game, completely devoid of the wonder we felt as we approached the gate to the park in the first movie (which was achieved mainly because that gate was a real prop, it was actually there). And the dinosaurs look like cartoons.
   Still, according to Wikipedia, there are indeed animatronic dinosaurs in this movie. We'll just have to wait and see how it all fairs out.

   The second thing that hurts it for me is that it just took too damn long. Nothing is worth so many false release dates and setbacks. With each year, our expectations grew higher, and sometimes we let our imagination run away with us. The early concept art of dinosaur mutant hybrids certainly didn't help.

   But, with all that aside, what else did I take from the trailer?
   Well, Chris Pratt's performance, for one thing. It's about as far from his Star-Lord performance (and, if I'm not mistaken, his usual roles) as you can imagine! He's so deadpan serious he wouldn't be out of place in Man of Steel. But that's all right with me, because… I'm just going to come out and say it: I hated him in Guardians of the Galaxy. Though maybe that was just the character of Star-Lord himself; if the trailer's only showing us a tiny portion of Chris Pratt's scenes and it turns out he's applying that same shtick to a more likable character, maybe I won't mind so much.
   What the fuck was up with that mosasaur show? I asked this question of Jurassic Park: The Game and it still applies here: where did they get the DNA to clone it? And during the show, how can they guarantee the safety of the spectators? How does the creature even fit in that pool? Is it supposed to be a satire of the killer whales' cramped conditions at SeaWorld?
   But there is one thing I have to commend the trailer for: intrigue. They're promising a new dinosaur – which, by the way, I really hope they can justify well, otherwise it's just going to come across like the clichéd "scientists didn't know what they were doing" story. But if this new creature is to be a replacement for T-Rex, let's hope it's a more worthy choice than Spinosaurus from the last movie.
   And on a side note, they didn't show this in the trailer, but I'm glad Dr Wu is in this movie. He basically had a cameo in the first movie, played by BD Wong, but he played a much bigger part in the original novel. Maybe he'll finally live up to his potential this time.

   Anyway, that's about all the preconceived feelings I have for now. Now we just have to wait until June 12th, and all will be revealed. :) And, regardless of everything I just said, I'm still looking forward to the new movie. I'll be there opening day if I can. …Wow, it's hard to believe the wait is almost over! Fourteen years of anticipation is coming to an end.
   So thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time.