(Man, I used to spend a lot of time writing stuff, huh? I listened to The Shins’ “Wincing the Night Away” today and remembered writing something about the song “Sealegs”. I did - in a tiny part of my huge year-end commentary of the best songs, albums, and lyrics of 2007! Holy moly, that’s a lot of written text! I really nailed it on my Plain White T's slam! Take that, T's! Here is much less text on this past year’s movies.)
I did not see very many of 2015’s movies! Still, I saw most of what I was interested in seeing. The handful of movies on my watch list are: Spectre, Sicario, The Martian, It Follows, and Sleeping With Other People. That’s it! That’s all! There are too many movies in the world!
Here’s my intense criticism of the films I did see - you should know that I saw Mad Max and Star Wars in a theater, and the rest on via various video services. These are listed from most enjoyed to least enjoyed.
Mad Max: Fury Road*
You know it’s good when, 20 minutes in, you can barely comprehend the names of the characters or the plot, and you’re still ba da ba ba ba lovin’ it. I call every large truck a “war rig” now, and to the delight of everyone I call heavy traffic or hazardous roadways “a real fury road situation”.
Furious Seven
What happened in this one again? Oh yeah, the gang went to Dubai, and The Rock was in the hospital, and there was a parking garage and Jason Statham. Oh yeah. Oh yeah! Despite the writers’/director’s insistence on making it seem that Paul Walker was going to die in every scene, this movie definitely had a bunch of cars driving around and was pretty great.
Ex Machina
This movie lasted exactly as long as it takes to assemble a plastic toy kitchen: a good amount of time, but not too long. Simple (yet complex!), well-acted, memorable. That scene where you see the robot trying so hard it wears down its arms! That will stay with you. Yikes!
Kingsman: The Secret Service
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation
Attractive older male stars! Conspiring forces! The world is in trouble! One is funny and one is occasionally funny!
The Overnight
Can you imagine how bad this would have to be for me to dislike a movie featuring Adam Scott and Jason Schwartzman? It would have to be much worse that it was, which was: pretty good!
Star Wars: The Force Awakens*
Luke Skywalker has vanished.
In his absence, the sinister
FIRST ORDER has risen
from the ashes of the Empire
and will not rest until Skywalker, the last Jedi,
has been destroyed.
God, this thing. I LOL’d at the opening line of the scrolling text. And you read that the First Order came out of the ashes of the Empire, so you think it's a little baby deer of an evil organization, just getting its legs, but nope, it's got a billion stormtroopers and identical, gigantic spaceships. And it’s got a planet-destroying weapon that is built inside of a planet? And that planet-destroying weapon planet is fueled by a sun that it orbits, so when it drains that sun it can’t be fired again until it drifts past another sun? No, it can be fired as many times as the First Order wants? Okay. Also, we're working with a whole galaxy here, but yeah, let's have everybody be related to each other. Not even distant relatives -- everyone can be in everyone else's immediate family.
Ant-Man
This was dumb but fun.
Jurassic World
This was dumb.
