Welcome to Fantasy Friday everyone. It’s time to Blog for a Beer. (Click here for the rules.)
It’s December, and you know what that means: lists. Specifically Best Of lists. We humans have this need to look back over a meaningful section of time and decide on the most awesome things they experienced in that time period. Exciting, right?
What you don’t see too often is Worst Of lists. The biggest piles of crap you had the misfortune to witness within a calendar year. Stuff you wish you could forget but you can’t. So, instead, you rant about it.
Over the next three weeks we’re going to compile some Best Of/Worst Of lists, and you’re going to help. Why, you ask? Because we might give you $10 if you do!
We’ll start with something easy this week: Movies. What are the 5 best genre movies you saw this year? How about the 5 worst? (And I’m talking about movies in the theater, not direct-to-DVD stinkers or, Zuul help us, Sci-Fi Channel clunkers.) Whatever movies you choose, you have to back it up. Convince us. Because we’re going to put together the definitive Best/Worst Movies of 2008 list and we will defend it… to the death.
1 • Clint Harris said:
December 5th, 2008 at 12:47 pm, permalink
I don’t get out to the theaters much. When I do, it had better be earth-shattering, $9 popcorn gobbling, on the edge of your foldy-seat crazy oh-my-god-I-just-swallowed-a-bunch-of-Dots-at-once-and-need-a-stomach-pump exciting. This year, I saw only a few movies in the theaters.
Wall*E was one of them. At drive-in prices and the ability to bring your own hot-dogs and tasty beverages, well worth the money.
Though I had to wait for DVD, Ironman was excellent.
Get Smart was also great, with Steve Carrell doing a great balancing act between complete buffoonery and just being awkward. Unlike the Starsky and Hutch remake and others that missed the spirit of a show, Get Smart was fun and well, er…smart.
The Dark Knight makes the good list, even though I haven’t seen it yet.
Tropic Thunder. No, seriously, this movie was hilarious.
Now for the craptacular list.
Clone Wars.
10,000 BC.
Indiana Jones and the Blah Blah Blah
The Happening
X-Files
Doomsday (it was better when Tina Turner ran Bartertown)
Journey to the Center of the Earth
The Other Boleyn Girl (two words why it sucked: Eric. Bana.)
The “meh” list:
)
Prince Caspian (a hero with great hair does not a movie make)
Be Kind Rewind (the whole movie should have just been sweded)
Cloverfield (I was rooting for Cthulhu in this)
Hancock (it was good, but not great)
Hellboy 2 (could they have made Johann any more annoying?)
Spiderwick Chronicles (missed the teh suck list by This much…which makes me think of Get Smart. Then I’m happy again.
2 • Michael Gordon said:
December 5th, 2008 at 12:56 pm, permalink
I’ve only seen Dark Knight* (awesome!). I think I’ve gone to the movies twice this year. I did see Fallen on DVD (I live through Netflix), which I think was one of the finest dark fantasy/horror movies I’ve ever seen.
I heard the Swedish vampire movie Let the Right One In was good, but haven’t seen it.
*To note, as I watched DK, half my mind was envisioning it as a genre movie in which Batman and Joker were both demon-possessed.
3 • Randy Henderson said:
December 5th, 2008 at 1:15 pm, permalink
I just can’t assign relative values, but here’s my list.
Probably worse — 10,000 BC. — Can you say enough bad things about this movie? I think not.
I was expecting an epic tale based around the real historical cradle of civilization. What we got was a film by what I can only assume was a bad Stargate fanfic writer who decided to take Apocolypto and make it truly suck. The best acting in the film came from the wigs, who managed to maintain a straight face while sitting atop the actors’ heads pretending to be hair and not, as they should have been, at the end of a mop. But it was good to see them get some work after Battlefield Earth.
Somewhere at top: Dark Knight — I’m sure this film will be well covered by others.
Cloverfield – I wanted to like it. I kinda liked it. But what I think finally killed the film for me was jj Abrams claim that he was trying to make an iconic monster for America equivalent to what Godzilla is to Japan. Besides what I see as the temporally, psychologically, and culturally misguided basis of that goal (the media has changed, society has changed, and certainly we are not a country deeply and recently scarred by a nuclear holocaust and with a comparatively homogeneous cultural makeup) I think he utterly failed. Is it a cool movie? I suppose, in its own gimmicky Blair Witch way. But if nothing else, the monster design is not one that grabs the imagination, can be anthropomorphized, or made iconic in the way that Godzilla has. You will certainly never see a cartoon starring Codename Cloverfield and Cloverzuki.
Jumper – bleh.
Wanted – Awesome. Fight club meets Matrix and secret societies. What more could you want?
Iron Man – nicely done, but not much more than a popcorn flick.
Speed Racer – the film that makes everyone know what it feels like to have epilepsy. Or to be a 12-year-old video junkie with a nano-second attention span and an extreme Attention Deficit Disorder – and yet oddly expected to sit through a 2 hour movie. Was it cool to see the Mach 5 in its CGI glory? Yah sure ya betcha. And it had a monkey, which is always a plus – after all, all the best films have monkeys. Dunsten. Every Which Way but Loose. Monkey Trouble. Oh yeah.
Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull – Spielberg didn’t want to leave LA and his family to shoot on location. Yeah? Then let give the film to a talented and hungry director, you spoiled old rich dude! Hollywood sets and cheesy CGI sucked the life out of Lucas’ already lame-ass script.
The Incredible Hulk – This was sooooo much better than the last Hulk film. And I loved all the little nods to the television series. Overall all, I’d say it was a good film. My only beef with it was the way the film had the military firing indiscriminately in civilian areas. The worse was at the end, when they had a helicopter flying along and shooting down at an angle into a series of apartment buildings trying to hit the monster running along the rooftops. They must have mowed down, what, 50 families? I had a hard time buying that. Gamma radiated creatures that grow mass out of thin air and then return to previous shape with nary a stretch mark? Sure. But the military firing at civilian targets, not so much.
The Happening – here’s my spoof on it, written in my role as Administrator of QuantuMAge University. ‘Nuff said.
Hellboy 2 — Visually awesome, as del Toro’s work usually is. But what horrible writing.
Okay, badass prince (who I was cheering for, by the way) is hunting his sister. He catches her with Hellboy and friends outside the magic bazaar. Shoot him, Hellboy! No, he talks. The prince slooooowwly opens a device while Hellboy and friends stand and watch. The princess obviously knows it is something bad. They must realize it is something bad. But hey, let’s just stand and watch what happens. A giant elemental emerges, and Hellboy battles the elemental, while the prince does the whole “you are one of us, why protect the humans” monologuing, and tries to make Hellboy feel bad for killing the last of the forest elementals. Hey, prince, here’s a clue – if you want the last of the forest elementals to live, maybe release it in the forest, not in the middle of a city attacking a known demon killer, huh? And the ending sucked.
Star Wars Consumer Drone Wars — Because there just aren’t enough Star Wars toys in our landfills.
Another contender for a top slot: Wall-E — Emotionally manipulative? Of course. But still pretty awesome.
X-Files 2 — I saved my money and watched Fringe instead. Maybe I’ll get around to it at some point, but I feel like I should refresh myself on the relevant series episodes and first movie, and who has time for that?
I did not see Mummy 3 or Max Payne. But then, I didn’t see Zombie Strippers either, and somehow I think I’ll be okay.
4 • Clint Harris said:
December 5th, 2008 at 1:27 pm, permalink
Randy, yeah! Totally agree on Hellboy 2. The elemental and Doug Jones made it watchable. The bazaar looked like it was ripped directly out of Neil Gaiman’s “Neverwhere”. Not that I’m some sort of fanboy, but I would have thought Del Torro would have at least read a comic to figure out the whole Hellboy atmosphere. The first one, with the Nazi’s and Rasputin. Awesome. This one, not so much. Lord of the Rings elf knockoffs and the Deus Ex Machina of the century at the end.
Also, a note to the set designers: Abe can breate our air. In the first one, he needed the water rebreather, in this, it seemed optional. Let’s get some continuity folks. At least if it’s wrong to begin with, remain consistant.
And all this time I was hoping for a Captain Daimyo and Roger the Homonculus appearance, but now, I just want them to stop the hurting.
5 • Jeremy Tolbert said:
December 5th, 2008 at 3:22 pm, permalink
The best genre movie of the year was Pixar’s WALL-E. Who knew that you could take the comedic values of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin and apply them to a boxy little robot? This movie was a fantastic bit of cinema, beyond genre. If you didn’t feel compassion for that little bot, then you don’t have a heart. And when you add on the underlying messages regarding consumer excess, portraying perhaps the most bleak future ever in family film history, it clearly does more things to succeed than any other film of the year.
The worst film, if not the most disappointing, was that sullying of a legacy, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. George Lucas, you are dead to me.
6 • Clint Harris said:
December 5th, 2008 at 4:10 pm, permalink
George Lucas has actually been dead for many years now. Howard the Duck is rumored to be the culprit in his grisly demise. The entity you know now as George Lucas is actually a CGI of George Lucas run amok. He is the harbinger of the Singularity, replacing the analog world with crappy digital effects one beloved movie at a time.
Next in George’s nefarious scheme. A CGI of Gone with the Wind. Featuring the “lost” footage of Rhett Butler’s meeting with Jabba the Hutt and Jar Jar Binks.
I consider Wall-E as a resistance to that. Sure, he’s CGI, but the movie had a plot and a beautiful story. Plus, I want to know where I can get me one of those chairs that does everything for you.
7 • Katherine Sparrow said:
December 5th, 2008 at 4:26 pm, permalink
My vote for best is (drum roll please)
Let the Right One in.
Swedish tween vampire flick with gorgeous wintry setting and plot that unfurls in an inevitable, freaky way? Awesome. Bonus rounds for having a great last minute plot twist that I didn’t see coming, and that made the whole movie click into place in a shocking way. This is vampirism as the seduction of an innocent by an innocent. Yum.
My vote for the worst is (boo!)
Hellboy 2
The first one had plot and panache, this one was confused and boring and sad. Just sad. Clockwork robots couldn’t even save it, and hell, they can usually save everything.
8 • Nicole said:
December 5th, 2008 at 5:04 pm, permalink
Dark Knight was easily the best – visually and ensemble cast-wise, I’d say it put everything else this year to shame. The new Indy film was unquestionably the absolute worst. It started with Indy surviving a nuke magically in a fridge with a CG prairie dog companion, and *actually kept going downhill from there.*
Other than those two, I think it gets a little greyer for the other ones I saw this summer; Iron Man was fun, but utterly carried on Robert Downey Jr.’s shoulders, Wall-E was adorable for most of it, but had some mighty unsubtle moralizing, and Hellboy 2 had some great moments (Red and Abe singing, for one) combined with some mindbendingly stupid ones (most of the plot.)
9 • Jeremy Tolbert said:
December 5th, 2008 at 5:07 pm, permalink
@7 I just saw that and didn’t even think of it. I don’t know why. Great film, I agree. Another film which accomplishes more without dialogue than most films do with dialogue.
10 • Randy Henderson said:
December 5th, 2008 at 5:15 pm, permalink
Clint -
I was really disappointed in Get Smart. I felt Carell’s character was:
1. Too competent and normal. He was basically an average, mostly competent agent who had a few bumbling moments. Give me a super agent, or else someone who continually screws up yet somehow their hee-larious goof ups miraculously turn out to save the day (Mr. Bean, Sellers’s Inspector Clouseau, the original Max Smart), but don’t give me a lukewarm middle ground.
2. He phoned in his performance. I felt like I was watching a walkthrough, and kept waiting for him to put his stamp on the character. If he could do Uncle Arthur in the Bewitched remake, he could have done a much better Max Smart. Even when he said “missed it by that much” he just kind of uttered the words.
When you are left saying “The Rock’s” comedic performance outshone Steve Carell’s, you know there’s something wrong.
11 • Randy Henderson said:
December 5th, 2008 at 5:39 pm, permalink
Clint — yes, everyone knew about George Lucas v2.4. But you weren’t supposed to mention it where he could trace it back to you.
Oh, crap. Now I’ve gone and done it too. Great, now we are both doomed. Thanks.
And the worse part, when the robot assassins come, I’ll probably still be suffering from Howard the Duck flashbacks. Thanks. Thanks a lot.
12 • mockingbird said:
December 5th, 2008 at 9:11 pm, permalink
am I the only person who thought the fridge-nuking in Crystal Skull was kind of hilarious? =/
Dark Knight and Wall-E are absolutely at the top of the Best list. As for Worst…I don’t think I saw any dissapointing genre movies. Movies yes, Genre no.
13 • C.L. Holland said:
December 8th, 2008 at 8:18 am, permalink
I quite liked Hellboy 2, but the ending did suck. Surely it would have been more logical for her to challenge and cause a stalemate?
Cloverfield was okay, but the monster didn’t live up to the hype.
Crystal Skull made me want to cry, the writing was so bad.
Wanted was great, once I got over the collateral damage.
Dark Knight = also great.
Iron Man was good, mindless fun so I liked it for the same reason I liked Transformers.
The Happening was another okay, it would have been better if mark Wahlberg hadn’t been in it, but that could be said about a lot of movies.
14 • Cat C. said:
December 10th, 2008 at 7:07 pm, permalink
Movies that I really enjoyed this year: The Dark Knight, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man
Movies that I really WANTED to enjoy but didn’t: Indy 4, Jumper, Wanted
Movies that I loved because of the snark-fest they generated: Twilight!
Movies that I didn’t get to see in 2008 because the snark-fest pushed them out of their opening weekend: Harry Potter 6
Here’s hoping for a great 2009!
15 • gordsellar said:
December 11th, 2008 at 10:45 pm, permalink
Yeah, I gotta agree that Let the Right One In was probably the best genre movie I saw this year. (Though I also saw American Zombie in the cinema, I think it’s a bit older.)
Jeremy, I think the reason it might not come to mind as a genre film is that it’s (a) more like a mainstream film in its handling of, well, everything genre about it, and (b) it’s so damned much better than most genre films that get made.
Another amusing genre film I saw was the Korean film Garoojigi, which apparently is based on some bawdy old Korean text about sex magic and stuff. The village loser, left behind when all the men go off to war, ends up digging up an ancient, er, sex-magic artifact and the village women, er, make a man of him. Cheesy, but quite unusual as Korean films go.
(Also, Mirageman, a Chilean superhero film, rocked. And I got a big kick out of Om Shanti Om, a fantastical reincarnation drama/ghost story. It’s a 2007 film, but I think it was showing up in festivals and such during 2008 as well — that’s how I saw it all the way over here in Bucheon.)
Worst genre film I saw was the Indiana Jones. No, no, wait… it was that Doomsday. Which was AWFUL.