First Annual Completely Biased Film Awards!

Hello and welcome to my First Annual Completely Biased Review Of The Year In Film Awards!

           

            I have spent most of 2011 going to movie theaters every Friday/Saturday to watch movies.  Not just any movies, but the 'big release.'  I didn't care about the most well-reviewed film or the one with the most pedigree.  I was looking for the movie that had generated the most  pre-release buzz and I didn't care whether that buzz was real or due to an advertisement blitz.  To 'find' the right movie I used an algorithm thought up by a genius coworker.  This consisted of Googling the name of the movie with the word 'film' at the end, and seeing how many sites came up.  I made no attempt to compensate for studio created buzz, because that sounds like work.

            Once the film was selected, I wanted to review it from the point of view of a regular (albeit judgmental and cranky) moviegoer, rather than as an actual (trained, talented) film critic.  I think I got it down pretty well, and I certainly had some fun doing it.  I'll definitely be back next year, starting with Contraband on Jan 13.  Excitement!

            Now, without further ado, a completely biased and random look back on 2011's terrible crop of films!

            Most Surprisingly Unterrible Movie:  Fast Five.  This award is for a film that I truly expected to hate and ended up, maybe not liking it, but certainly being surprised by my lack of hatred.  I fully expected to despise this movie, especially since it's a Fast and Furious film and I don't care about cars.  Like I said in my original review, they did me a solid and took the focus away from the cars.  Sure, they're there and they serve a purpose, but Fast Five is more like a half-decent cops and robbers movie that just involves a few neat chase scenes.

            Worst Comic Book Adaptation:  Green Lantern.  When you're making a movie that spans galaxies, it would probably be a good idea to make the plot and main character incredibly appealing so the audience has something to hold on to.  Unfortunately, while I like Ryan Reynolds as an actor, he was never convincing in the moments where he was supposed to show weakness and humility.  Also, the special effects were more distracting than they were awesome.

            Most Disappointing Movie I Was Actually Looking Forward To:  Priest.  Go ahead, check out this trailer and tell me you expected this movie to gross less than half its overall production costs (U.S. gross).

            Most Overhyped Film:  Sucker Punch.  For a director who is well-known for fantastic set pieces and well-choreographed action, it's nice to finally see that Zack Snyder really, really needs someone else to write the damn movie for him.  Sucker Punch leaves no doubt in anyone's mind that he is nothing more than a fantasy-oriented Michael Bay, trading in explosions for zombie Nazis and dragons.

            Worst Comedy In Decades:  Your Highness.  For those of you who believe I should give this award to Jack and Jill or Zookeeper, keep in mind that Your Highness actually had a comedic pedigree.  To expect current-day Adam Sandler or hangdog everyman Kevin James to be anything more than passable is to have unattainable dreams.  To hope that the guy who directed Pineapple Express, James Franco and Danny Mcbride could put together a fun, funny fantasy flick is perfectly reasonable.  That reasonableness was laughed at, spit upon, covered in feces and locked in a closet.

            Worst Thing About Transformers 3:  The acting just barely edged out the plot.

            Best Thing About Transformers 3:  It wasn't Transformers 2.

            Most Boring Movie:  Water For Elephants.  For a movie involving the circus, this was insultingly, painfully boring. Oh, wait, Robert Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon are the love interests and the only great actors in the film are the elephant and Christopher Waltz.  That explains it.

            Most Wasted Actor:  Christpher Waltz, who did a fantastic job as the violent, jealous ringmaster in Water For Elephants.  Too bad the rest of the movie was elephant dung.

            Most Wasted Actress:  Cate Blanchett in Hanna.  A close second goes to the star of Hanna, Saoirse Ronan, but Miss Blanchett's delightfully detestable villain was a joy to watch. Too bad this action/mystery was so blandly predictable.

            Worst Actor:  Adam Sandler.  Go see Jack and Jill and tell me I'm wrong.

            Worst Actress:  Emily Browning.  Now, this may be Snyder's fault, but Sucker Punch's Babydoll showed absolutely no emotion beyond the opening scene, delivered every line with the energy of a speak-'n'-spell, and turned sexy dancing into something creepily nightmarish.

            Best Non-Oscar-Bait Film:  Warrior.  For a movie that was pretty much a 2 hour UFC promo, I was absolutely blown away.  Warrior combined fantastic acting with well-rounded, believable characters and perfectly spaced action scenes.  Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton are alternately fantastic and frightening, and their estranged father, played by Nick Nolte, is easily the most broken, depressing character this year.  Everything worked perfectly, and it's the only Mainstreamin' movie that I genuinely want to own and watch again.

            Other movies that deserve consideration are:

Conan: Worst Action Movie

Contagion:  Best Ensemble Film That Forgot To Have An Ending

50/50:  Best Comedy With A Heart

The Debt:  Biggest Waste Of Talented Actors

The Thing:  THIS CLOSE To Being A Good Remake/Sequel

Paranormal Activity 3:  THIS CLOSE To Being A Good Trilogy

           

            Feel free to chime in with your own thoughts.  What do you agree with?  What do you disagree with?  What did I miss? 

            As for me, I'm spent.  Have a Happy New Year and try not to get arrested. 

            Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a great New Year's gathering to attend, then I'm off to MAGFest.  See you in 2012!

The Death of Netflix'd

Shed a tear for Netflix'd.

            It only lasted a few months, but there's a chance that it's gone for good.  For now the only time you'll see Netflix'd pop up is when I get a bunch of obnoxious friends in the same room to help me make fun of a movie.  This is harder than it sounds because most of my obnoxious friends live in other states.  I'm currently stuck with calm, rational friends.  Eww.

            Now, Netflix is listening to and logging complaints, and it appears that I was just one of thousands of people who enjoyed Party mode on the XBox.  If you want to join the cause, feel free to call 888-811-1933 and lodge a formal, polite complaint.  Don't be a derpwad and just yell or whine.  That's not helping anyone.

            More importantly, what have I learned from all this?

            The simple answer:  Some movies are only worth watching with friends. 

            The better answer:  Not all films are created equal.  I understand that most movies are a labor of love.  Someone, somewhere, wanted a movie to happen and poured time, thought, and/or money into it in an attempt to bring their ideas to life.  (Of course, things like The Smurfs movie make that argument questionable, but let's assume that the majority of films are brought about because someone cared enough to work their ass off.)

            Well, what happens when that labor of love is stillborn? 

            Things go wrong.  Maybe the budget was too small.  Maybe the actors weren't right.  Maybe the director and scriptwriter didn't see eye-to-eye and things ended up muddled.  Maybe the entire film should never have happened.

            That last one is the category that most Netflix'd films fall under.  Birdemic seemed intent on proselytizing the dangers inherent in man's attempted domination of Earth, everything else be damned!  By everything else, I of course mean all acting, scenery, script writing, line delivery, sound, special effects, coherency and production.

            Mutant Vampire Zombies From The Hood was not much better, with the exception of better obvious production value.  That and Stripperland stand in opposition to by having absolutely no message to convey.  Despite being supposed horror movies there's nothing scary about them, and the action was, shall we say, lightly choreographed.

            On the other end of the spectrum, I finally got to see the live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender film.  My new goal in life is to charge Hollywood over $100 million for the right to have me take a dump on someone's chest.  Because this movie is M. Night Shyamalan shitting on the imagination of tens of thousands of people just for having the audacity to hope beyond hope that Hollywood could actually make a good film adaptation from a popular cartoon series.

            What else did I experience during my adventure into B movies?  I have learned that both Hollywood and independent, small-budget filmmakers often make the same mistakes.  The only real difference is in budget and actor/director name recognition.

            I don't want this to be simply a breakdown and insult of all the movies I watched, but it should come as no surprise that while actively asking people for recommendations of crappy films I ended up hating most of the movies I saw.  I wanted to plumb the depths of Netflix Instant's library and find those movies that make people stop and ask "Why the hell is this even a thing?"  I was hoping to answer that question by pointing out entertaining parts of otherwise crappy films.  I never expected to be able to defend an entire movie, but I truly believed that even cheap, direct-to-DVD films have some sort of redemptive value.  There are examples of small budget films developing a cult following after years of word-of-mouth.  I can't deny that I would have loved to have stumbled upon one of those films during this project, just to say I was one of the cool kids.

            The lone exception was Santa's Slay.  It had better-than-average production values, never lost coherency, didn't stick around too long and managed to be exactly what it promised to be.  It was alternately funny, goofy and violent.  There were no real plot holes and just a few instances of inconsistency.  I would say that, if I had to pick a winner for Most Surprisingly Entertaining Netflix'd Film of 2011, it would go to Santa's Slay.

            That being said, it seems obvious that if you're going to try and make a movie with very little money, shoot for a horror film.  If you can find a few half-decent actors, a guy who can make entertaining special effects on the cheap, and attach a light to your camera, you may be able to pull off something entertaining. At the very least you may get a few memorable scenes with a turkey wearing Groucho Marx glasses.  If you're going to go straight comedy, make damn sure you're actually funny to lots of people, not just your own social circle.  If you're shooting for drama or action, just stop.  Quit while you're ahead.

            I'm never going to stop loving cheesy, potentially-terrible B-C-and-D movies.  If Netflix'd taught me anything, it's that I need to try even harder to find the good stuff, before it gets buried by all the delightfully terrible.

            Of course, it never hurts to have good friends with you on your adventure.  The list of Netflix'd participants got pretty damn long, but please believe it when I say that if you're one of the many amazing, awesome people who joined me for some of those film monstrosities, thank you.  I mean it from the very bottom of my angry, bitter heart.  You guys are all fantastic, and you made this project a lot more fun than it had any right to be.

Other titles considered for this article:

I come not to bury Netflix'd, but to praise it.

Say Netflix'd one more time muthafuckah!

Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-Netflix'd!

Happy Holidays! A message from Mainstreamin'.

First off, special thanks to everyone who has been supporting me during this most interesting year.  I've discovered that I really enjoy writing what I hope to be humorous, mildly informative 'reviews.'  I'm kinda surprised myself, especially considering that many of the films I've viewed since March have not exactly wowed me, and some have downright horrified and disgusted me for all the wrong reasons.
However, we're now deep into the holiday season, which means that I'm plenty busy with other aspects of my life, and Hollywood is in the middle of their awards push.  This means that there are fewer terrible films out there for me to pursue, and I'm not all that eager to hunt them down.
I'd rather spend a month relaxing, watching potentially GOOD movies, and maybe going to MAGFest.
However!
Mainstreamin' isn't going away.  I will be back mid-January, as soon as the 11-month season of terrible movies kicks off again.  Until then, I won't be doing any new reviews, but I am working on two articles that I hope to get up within the next two weeks.  One will be an end-of-year retrospective, which will hopefully be the corniest thing you've ever read.  The other is a long-gestating defense of a genre that I don't think gets enough consideration.
Happy Holidays, and don't forget, even terrible movies have their fans.  Terrible, terrible fans.