Woke Up This Morning

Well this is my fifth blog post to date, and already my second blog post about a celebrity who has died recently and made me sad. Believe me when I say I did not intend for this blog to become an obituary for famous people. I really had much better aspirations for this blog. In fact, I was kind of hoping it would be "Annamal Crackers". Look it up (are you looking at it? I used to hang out with that chick!) There were a lot of things I wanted to talk about, like how awesome Justice League is, but then one of my all-time favorite actors had to go and die and shit. So I'm going to try and make sure this post does not reflect how sad I actually am. Shouldn't be too hard, I think most bloggers are that way.

You know, besides Tumblr. Everyone's sad on Tumblr.

For those who don't know, television's greatest actor (sorry Bob Crane) recently passed away at the young age of 51 this week, when he was violently attacked while on vacation in Italy by his own heart. Sometimes you just can't trust those fuckers. To most people who met him, which, sadly, was not me, he was a gentle and honest man. To most of the world though, he was famous for playing a large, constantly angry Italian gangster who dealt with his stress by beating the piss out of other people and occasionally seeing a therapist. Naturally, it was generally regarded as the greatest thing to ever happen to television since the invention of the remote.

Just kidding, this thing sucks.

In playing the befuddled and stressed, but nonetheless badass mob boss Tony Soprano in the earlier part of the 2000s, Gandolf the James established a standard in TV performance that had simply not existed before, and became an overnight legend for turning HBOs The Sopranos into what was certainly the greatest television show of the time, if not all time. Yeah I said it, fuck The Wire (mild sarcasm, The Wire's fantastic). His show, and his presence on it, helped pave the way for more complex  fare on television like Mad Men, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, and Justice League. Whereas before if you wanted to watch quality television you would have to watch shows like Frasier and reruns of Star Trek. I cannot imagine a greater hell. Granted, the series owed an equally large amount of thanks to the rest of the cast, including Edie Falco, Michael Imperioli, and other people who are all both less talented and still alive, and so will receive no more credit on this particular post. 

But we don't want this whole post to be just about Tony Soprano, who has been dead for going on five years now, if he died at all (I don't know what the ending was all about either). Mr. Gandolfini was much more than just a physically intimidating italian man, although this typecast proved difficult for the man to shake. It's not hard to see why; he once had a guest spot on Sesame Street where he talked to Zoey (and by extension, all of us) about things that are scary. It was a very sweet moment, but surreal at the same time; most of us would recognize that disarming smile of his as something we've seen multiple times before he proceeds to beat the shit out of someone who "went against the family". Even paparazzi exerted caution in harassing him, even though the actor himself has probably never hurt someone in his life. It's a moment that stuck out to me because I had never known beforehand just how much of a regular guy he was. He seems a man who cared deeply about his onscreen persona, while being careful to keep his offscreen identity separate. Indeed he was probably the single safest person on Sesame Street during his appearance.

If only because Elmo is completely psychotic

It might seem weird to say that the single saddest thing about the passing of a 51 year old actor is all the promise he showed, but its the truth. It seems in recent years he managed to break into Hollywood with an exciting vigor, appearing in films from the underrated comedy In the Loop to the more recent Zero Dark Thirty, as well as multiple indie films. While the performance that made him a legend will persist, and while it is an amazing performance, one can't help but think we never really got to know the guy.

Worst Films of 2012

Usually the only thing more fun than doing the top ten films list is doing the bottom ten of the year. It's well known that the only thing more fun than listening to someone rant about movies that everyone likes is hearing them bag on movies everyone hates. So, I'm probably going to piss some people off with this one. And for mostly good reason; 2012 was an astonishingly good year for movies, which means most of these really aren't all that bad. So even my list, which is somewhat neutered as it is to make up for my almost obsessive habit of generally staying away from bad movies, probably has a few that people liked. Ergo, all of this year's favorites, like Ghost Rider 2 or whatever crap Adam Sandler came out with probably didn't make the cut. Just whatever I got forced into seeing on a date. Which, does not happen a whole lot.


10. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

 Oh wow. I'm going to get shit for this one. If I'm lucky it'll just be in the comments section and my friends won't give me too much shit. Look, I don't hate The Hobbit Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, it's not even really a bad movie. I even sort of enjoyed watching it. I'll probably even watch the next one. Again this about as good, or bad, as I can do. I loved the book as a kid, and I was looking forward to the movie for years. I'm willing to overlook the fact that there is CGI in almost every shot, or the fact that the film's childish tone, and the high frame rate basically make the film look like a cartoon, or the fact that the only truly good points are when characters from the Lord of the Rings show up for no real reason. But the real problem is the most obvious one; it isn't complete. By the time the movie is over, it's been three hours and I couldn't help but feel that all that time, and all the stuff they needlessly threw in from Tolkien's appendices was completely worthless in helping us get to know the characters better. I wasn't expecting a Fellowship-worthy masterpiece, but I was expecting a full movie. Also, it's currently in the IMDB top 250. I know we all love Tolkien, but it's important to remember that just because a film does justice to a good story does not make the film itself good.

9. The Amazing Spider-Man

On the subject of movies I don't hate, here's this. I know people that like this movie, and people who absolutely hate it in every way. I understand both arguments. At this point, I'm kind of just judging it by whether or not it's worse than "Hobbit" and, to that film's credit, it is. But this one is not that bad either. It offers a slightly more gritty look at the character, where the darker sides of New York are on display. Furthermore, Stone and Garfield have great chemistry, Martin Sheen and Sally Field are a great Uncle Ben and Aunt May, and Dennis Leary is great as Denis Leary. But that's it. The rest of the movie is full of plots that are left unanswered, awkwardly directed scenes, and dumb dialogue. Also Kermit the Fucking Frog is the villain. And his objective is to turn everyone in New York into other Kermit the Frogs. The 3D was awful too.

8. Snow White and the Huntsman

 Snow White and the Huntsman, like most of this year's less good movies, is a great example of an otherwise fine film ruined by the script. For one thing, it's clear to say that Charlize Theron is the best thing about a film that should have just been called "Evil Bitch Queen". I'm not going to lie, this is one of the best shot films in a year filled with well shot films, and Theron's female Darth Vader is an intimidating dictator. I honestly didn't regret watching it, but it's not really worth the money to watch again. It just doesn't hold one's interest for too long. The dialogue is kind of shitty, and the pacing is off, and the characters don't have any chemistry. Also, there are seven dwarfs in the movie, none of whom are actually played by dwarfs or have any influence on the story.

7. The Campaign

 Now we're getting into the bad stuff. The Campaign is a mostly unfunny attempt by the usually fantastic Adam McKay at political humor in the middle of the 2012 presidential race. One of the problems is that, contrary to popular belief, Will Ferrell acting like a manchild and Zach Galifinakis talking like a weirdo is not intrinsically funny. Neither character is incredibly likeable because of one major problem: you cannot do political satire without pissing people off. So trying to have both a republican and a democrat main character should at least give a little insight into the political system. But no, we wouldn't want to offend anyone. So everyone of every belief is right at the end of the day, because the Koch brothers are the ones raping the system. That's only half right. At least The Newsroom is honest about where it stands.

6. The Bourne Legacy

Okay, let's explain the good things about Bourne Legacy. The acting is mostly good, there's two truly tense action scenes. And that's it. Fuck this movie. I wasn't looking forward to seeing it, and I wasn't looking forward to it being made. At least the initial premise, where the CIA decides to kill every assassin that's ever worked for them after the events of Ultimatum, acknowledges that Paul Greengrass's fantastic, genre-bending trilogy happened. But from there it's a bullshit story where Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner) tries to find the government drugs he needs to make him who he is. The film tries to have the same realistic grit as the previous films, but it keeps forgetting that it replaced the badass amnesiac with a druggie. It's the rare sort of bad sequel that, if you didn't know it existed, you'd be better off for it.

5. Lockout

Lockout is the latest from famed french screenwriter Luc Besson, and the first film in quite a while to star the great Guy Pearce, who usually just has cameos in other, much better movies than this crappily written Die Hard ripoff...in space. Yes, I realize that sounds amazing, but aside from some witty banter from Mr. Pearce, there isn't anything about this movie that makes us care even remotely about these people. It's not aggressively stupid, but it is incredibly mediocre, to the point that it's annoying. You can see every twist from a mile away, even when you can tell how stupid they are.

4. Act of Valor

Act of Valor was intended as a recruitment video for Navy SEALS, and it shows. I have to be careful what I say, because there are a ton of people in my area, and a few probably reading this, who love this movie. It's understandable, if you like military shit, a story about being a Navy SEAL featuring active-duty Navy SEALs in the starring roles, using actual Navy SEAL tactics should be fantastic, right? There's even at least one very well-filmed scene (that invasion scene was pretty badass. Okay, so is the interrogation scene). But most of the film is kind of pointlessa; the characters talk and act like what the movie wants us to think real people talk and act like, but there is one problem: Navy SEALs are not actors, and there's something kind of perverse about putting them through the things they are put in in this film. It's not awful, but it's not really a movie, it's just propaganda.

3. The Lorax

Okay, I've been pretty nice so far to the movies on this list, because, to be fair, they're almost all at least watchable. Except for this movie. In the words of Roger Ebert "I hated this movie. Hated, hated, hated it." The E-Man was talking about the Elijah Wood movie North, but it holds true here. It was bad enough that they fouled up one of Dr. Seuss's most tragically straightforward books by filling it with stupid jokes, annoying cliches, and poor voice acting. The ultimate sacrilege is what the film represents. A bunch of greedy executives took what was essentially an anti-capitalist story and turned into the year's number one product. It's the ultimate perversion: an environmental message being sold to us on the side of buses. Perhaps you can watch it, just so long as you don't think too much about all the starving voice actors in Hollywood who did not get hired because the studio wanted Taylor Swift and Zac Efron.

2. Project X

It's curious that this film came out the same month as Chronicle; whereas that movie managed to be great in spite of it's found footage approach, Project X keels under it. To be fair, I was surprised that this was based on a surprisingly interesting true story, let alone that it even had a plot. However, just barely. I borderline hated the characters, and the film spends way too much enjoying what is clearly a party gone totally wrong, when it would have been far more interesting and entertaining if it let the characters languish in its disaster. Instead, it's a dreadfully condescending movie about a bunch of nerdy kids who become cool when they throw a dangerous party and then get no real consequences. It's not that I'm a prude whose afraid of parties or chaos, but chaos disguised as fun is no fun at all.

1. The Twilight Sage: Breaking Dawn: Part 2

That's more colons than should be in a title. It's funny, really, I've been waiting forever for this movie to come out and finally end this crappy story. Now, I have to give credit where it's due, and the fair answer is that this is not an incredibly horrible film It's even fun to watch in a few campy ways, but the fact that 55% of the critics on rotten tomatoes apparently think it's worth watching is a bit preposterous. Yes, there is a riotously entertaining ending fight, but it's rendered worthless by one of the most ridiculous twists I've ever seen. Yes, you care about the characters a little more than in Twilight, but it doesn't help that they constantly make baffling choices. Or the fact that every major conflict is usually just some misunderstanding that Michael Sheen's hilariously prissy villain gets all upset about for no reason. But what baffles me the most about this supposedly romantic story is it's utter saccharine nature. I don't want to spoil anything, but what's there to spoil? There's no conflict! Literally every problem is just two vampires deciding to jump at each other instead of just fucking talking about it like normal people. But whatever. It's over. It's finally fucking over, so let's all start forgetting about it.

Goodbye Mr. Ebert

Well, I said I didn't want to get all emo this early in my blogger days, but whatever, here I go.

It didn't really hit me until I visited his website. Then I realized how often I would check, often without paying attention, on his opinions on nearly every movie I wanted to see, was considering seeing, or even was vaguely curious about. And now I would no longer get those. And then it truly hit me: my favorite journalist, and a personal hero, was finally dead. He had Met Joe Black. He had found his Deathwish. He was...he's dead. I'm not making any more puns. That's it.

I've dealt with this sort of thing before, particularly last year when I was hit with the one-two deaths of Ray Bradbury and Christopher Hitchens, two more writers whom I admired. But I still had Ebert. I could still get away from complicated matters of politics and religion and just focus on movies. It may seem weird, but film criticism, perhaps more so than actual film, was an escape for me, especially in high school, where I was often more interested in seeing what the critical and box-office reaction was to a new film than I was to how a certain team was doing or whether a girl liked me. And when I say "often" I mean "literally all the fucking time." But that's mainly because I didn't give a shit about sports and girls didn't give a shit about me. If one of those has changed I hope it's the latter. But all throughout high school, I felt this pull to film, and I desperately wanted to know which films were good and which films were bad, and why they were that way. It does not seem fun, but people like Ebert made it fun, and maybe I could find something to do with myself if I could replicate that sort of magic.

But let's get into the man himself. Roger Ebert, was a portly Catholic film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times since he was young, but he did not rise to prominence until he co-hosted a telecast with the slender, Jewish Gene Siskel. Coincidentally, the two struck something with this show: people loved to talk about movies, and if people could talk about movies in an entertaining manner, other people would gladly watch it. Its not an absurd idea: film as an industry was just being conceived at the time, and while the advent of Jaws was still a few years off, film culture certainly had a popular following. And thus, movie criticism as we know it today was born.

However, the draw was not simply watching them talk, but debate. Contemporary (well, nostalgic) critic Doug Walker would later comment that most of the people watching the show were merely interested in seeing whether the two would snap at each other. And they would, often, but off the air. There are multiple outtakes, available on the internet, of the two viciously arguing off-set, even making fun of each other's religious background. They eventually bonded however, over a shared contempt for the "fucking Protestants." And no, I'm not making that up: you can find on youtube the video where the two put aside their differences and riffed on Protestants for about ten minutes. It's the exact moment the two started liking each other, and it went uphill from there. If there's one thing that can bring people together better than a shared love of good movies, it's a shared hatred of shitty movies.
Even at the end of Siskel's life, the best thing Ebert had to say about him was that he "did not hate him." I actually found it rather sweet. Siskel's spot was later filled by Chicago Tribune columnist Richard Roeper, who cultivated an equally interesting partnership with Roger.

People loved them and hated them; it's great to hear someone give shit to a movie you hate, and bring praise to a movie you love, but for most people, all bets are off when there's disagreement. I should know, I nearly lost faith when I saw that my favorite critic had given a negative review to Jurassic Park, my favorite movie. But I looked past it; reviews are subjective in the end. Not everyone would agree, there was a fiasco not too long ago where the aging critic openly stated that video games are not art, and the whole nerd world went into a tizzy. Ebert later defended his statements rather eloquently, saying that he meant no harm to his fanbase and no disrespect to video games, but that art is subjective by definition, and to him, a
medium that requires reward-based interaction cannot be art. Also, he was a 60 year old film critic, so what the fuck did everyone want him to say about video games?

Ebert and his associates very quickly found themselves to be staples of popular culture. Gene and Roger were parodied on SNL, Animaniacs, and The Muppets. But they embraced it, appearing as themselves in shows like The Critic and Bill Nye the Science Guy, where they told kids about the importance of eyeballs. They even inspired the films they reviewed. Ebert would lament that the "thumbs up, thumbs down" motif used in Gladiator would not have existed at the time because, of course, he was the one who invented it (in Roman arenas, a thumb in any direction meant death). They even inspired characters in the Roland Emmerich film Godzilla. Ebert was again disappointed, saying that the film would have been more enjoyable if his character had been killed off.

I suppose the main takeaway from all this would be the effect the duo, and Ebert in particular, who became the first Film Critic to win a Pulitzer, had on popular culture. You can't be on the internet for more than ten minutes without coming across some sort of film review website or blog, an ocean in which I am a happy drop. It's paved the way for shows like the Nostalgia Critic and Half in the Bag, the latter of which is essentially At The Movies for a newer, more vulgar generation.

I never got the chance to meet him personally, but I can't help but feel I knew Roger, and not just because he once wrote an article about the intimate details of his sex life. Or that I read it. I can name his opinion on just about every movie, a fair amount of which gave me hope to defend my own opinions (if he likes the Star Wars Prequels and the Matrix Reloaded, then dammit I can too!). I know his favorite film of all time is Citizen Kane, and his least favorite is North.
But I had also followed his illness for some time, so when he announced his retirement from reviewing earlier this week, I feared the worst, like most. Initially, when the announcement came, I was not incredibly shocked. His last published words were, fittingly, "I'll see you at the movies."

Top Ten Films of 2012

I know! I'll start here!

As I expanded upon in my first post, I'm hopelessly in love with two things: films and my own opinions. Ever since I was young I loved movies, and ever since I was in high school, I loved film criticism. The idea that something you like to watch could somehow mean you were smarter than someone else blew my mind. So I spent most of my high school studying movies, which ones were good and which ones were bad, and what made them good or bad. Some would say that engorging myself on the subjective opinions on others is kind of a stupid way to spend one's time, and that I'm completely missing the point of appreciating art. But what do they know? Beauty is always in the eye of the beholder until you watch an Adam Sandler movie. Then everyone's like "okay, this is bullshit." Except for Adam Sandler.

But anyway, I decided that when I finally got a blog I would do film reviews. I changed my mind about that when I realized that would get actually pretty annoying if I had to see and comment on every movie, and also people, in all honesty, would not really care. But I had to do a top ten list every year. It's the ultimate celebration of film criticism: completely pointless and banal, but just really fun to do anyway. Obviously, if you don't see you're favorite film here, it probably just means I didn't see it, as I have neither the money nor time to see every movie that comes out.

Honorable Mentions

2012 was a great year for movies, period. Perhaps one of the best years in the past couple decades. And I saw a lot of great movies, but most of them did not make the list. I liked Ted a lot when I saw it, and I'm really proud of ol' Mr. MacFarlane for finally making a movie, but it wasn't really that great the more I thought about it. I was impressed that I was able to actually care about a rude, swearing CGI creation, but it wasn't the funniest movie I saw all year. That would be 21 Jump Street. Looper was pretty good too, but not great. I did like it, I really did, but I have a tendency to favor narrative over other things in the movie (Lit major, what can you do...), and as beautiful and well-acted as it was, there was still too much slow-pacing, weird story choices (why are we out at this farm?) and plot holes for me to really get too into. Maybe I'm just an idiot and I need to see it again. Let me know in the comments (but not really, I don't think anyone's even reading this).

The most honorable mention I can think of, and I suppose the winner of 11th place, is The Raid: Redemption, otherwise known as the most balls-to-the-wall batshit nuts action movie I've seen in a long-ass time. It's too short on plot to be as good as most of the movies here, but, honestly, it's harder to find and much more fun to watch than almost anything else here,  so definitely give it a watch if you can.

10. We Need to Talk About Andrew

 At first glance, Chronicle seems to encapsulate everything that's wrong with movies right now. It's a shaky, "found footage" movie, it involves teenagers with superpowers, and it came out in February. All of those should be red flags, and indeed I was not really interested in it until I had to watch it on a long plane ride. Needless to say, this movie surprised me. Actually, "surprised" isn't the right word, "shocked" is a bit more appropriate. I was genuinely not expecting a movie like this to be so difficult to watch.
Chronicle tells the story of three high school age teens who suddenly get telekinesis when they find a weird space rock thing (the writer cleverly does not elaborate on the rock too much). Two of the kids enjoy just fooling around with their powers, but Andrew, the third kid wants more. In spite of the commercials, Andrew is not you're run-of-the-mill angsty emo teenager. His life sucks, and we feel for him. So it's only natural that he want to use his powers to make his life a little better, and maybe do the same for others too. But this is not superhero movie, it's a fair, honest look at what would really happen if teenagers got all "God mode". Surprise: it isn't pretty.
It's also kind of neat that most of the cast and crew are younger than thirty, including the director, Josh Trank, and the writer Max Landis, whose responsible for the famous "Death of Superman" video on youtube.

9. Kill Me, I'm Irish!

Seven Psychopaths is a film written by an Irish screenwriter named Martin about an Irish screenwriter named Martin trying to write a film called Seven Psychopaths. Because you write what you know, I guess. In the film, Martin, played by Colin Farrell, suffers from a debilitating case of writer's block, so his psychotic friend Billy (Sam Rockwell) and his other psychotic friend Christopher Walken (Christopher Walken) try to help inspire him by bringing him into contact with a bunch of other psychotic people. Unfortunately, Billy ends up stealing a dog from a psychotic gangster (Woody Harrellson) and the trio gets into a lot of trouble and may end up dead.
Martin MacDonagh, who also directed In Bruges, one of my favorite movies of all time, does another swell job here, and its great to see him break out into Hollywood more. Like the trailers suggest, the movie is very violent, very crazy, and very, very, funny. But Martin is a bit more introspective than just that. Like his last film, Seven Psycopaths delves into the nature of violence, and even delves into the nature of delving into the nature of violence. It crosses a lot of the same ground In Bruges does, perhaps too much to be brilliant, but its still lots of fun.

8. Superfriends

Yep, here it is. I don't think I have another movie that will split people more. Half the people reading this will hate how far down I put it, the other half will hate that it made the list at all. But, fuck it, this movie is rad. The Avengers tells the story of how the superheroes from four different Marvel movies all come together to fight the evil Loki (because only the oldest villain in the history of western civilization is good enough for this movie) before he takes over...well you know. And that's it. That's the plot.
And "rad" is a perfectly acceptable compliment for a film. This year brought up a huge debate over why Avengers is so great when like Transformer 3 is so bad. Both films revel in just being nothing more than over-the-top summer action. But when it comes down to it, Avengers counts as a great movie because of just that: it's great. The acting's great, the special effects are great, that Joss Whedon dialogue is great. The fact that its about a bunch of flamboyantly-dressed individuals fighting aliens shouldn't really matter as long as you actually care about them and like seeing them onscreen.

7. Syfy Channel: The Movie

The Cabin in the Woods tells the story of four teenagers: a jock, a nerd, a slut, a virgin, and a comic relief who all take a vacation in an empty shack out in the middle of nowhere, and then are viciously set upon by undead monsters who try to kill them. Along the way, they make stupid decisions, spout stupid dialogue, and stupid things happen.
Did I mention this movie is fucking brilliant? I don't really want to give away what makes this genuinely scarier and funnier than practically every horror film of the past twenty years, but suffice to say, there is a twist. For one thing, the Jock isn't really a jock, the Virgin isn't a virgin, the slut isn't a slut, and, best of all, the Cabin isn't really a Cabin. You probably already know it by now, and it's revealed in the brilliant first scene, but still. I want to preserve it for that one soul out there who hasn't seen it. Long story short, the idea is fantastic, the direction is great, and the dialogue is smart (when it's supposed to be). It's very clever, and its speaks volumes about not just horror films, but culture in general. Those monsters they keep talking about? They're us.
 
6. The Dark Brit Rises

In Skyfall, James Bond dies.
Okay not really, but in the first twenty or so minutes, after a rousing motorcycle chase, he gets shot and then everybody thinks he's dead. When he comes back, after taking like a year off to drink Heineken (R) he finds that MI6 is under attack by an older, and maybe better, agent than himself, Raoul Silva (an especially effeminate Javier Bardem). Bond must then fuck, kill, punch, screw, kick shoot, and have sex with lots of people to stop Silva before he kills Bond's boss, M (Judi Dench).
As you may, or may not, be aware, Skyfall is not the first James Bond movie. There were a couple before it. It may not even be the best. But it is one thing: definitive. A more appropriate title would have been "James Bond: The Movie." And it's not just because Bardem is a great villain, and Sam Mendes is a great director, and Adele's song is fantastic. It's because, after fifty years, this is the most we've gone into Bond's head. It's the most personally destructive and intimate Bond. He falls, he gets shot, and at one point he even cries. Also, with all respect to Berenice Marlohe, the real Bond girl here is the unbelievably sexy Dame Judi Dench, who steals the film with her fiercely restrained maternal figure, M.

5. Totally Not About Scientology

In The Master, former Late Show with David Letterman embarrassment Joaquin Phoenix plays Freddie Qquell primal, stupid, aimless, and violent man, in one of the best performances of the year, who gets drawn into a cult run by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, in one of the best performances of the year. The cult leader, Lancaster Dodd, enjoys being seen as a figure of authority to everybody, but in reality, is trapped in service to his wife, who is played by Amy Adams, in one of the best performances of the year. Over the course of the film, Dodd builds a following, speaks of philosophy, and inspires many, while Quell masturbates on a beach, fights some people, and threatens to fart in a man's face. Eventually, Quell contemplates whether he should follow a man so clearly above him as Dodd, who seems to rely on the Quell more than he should.

Paul Thomas Anderson is a genius, that goes without saying, but even genius has flaws. I think I can say with conviction that The Master is the most well-made film of the year. It just happens to labor under a rather poorly paced screenplay that doesn't really build appropriately. This isn't a fatal flaw, just one that turns what would have been a masterpiece into just a really great movie. It's also totally not about Scientology. Totally.

4. Nanananananananananananana......

Yeah, it' over here. There you go. I knew you were looking for it.
It doesn't matter how many superheroes they throw into Avengers, if it's missing Batman, it's losing.
Now admittedly, there's probably a few people who had a problem with this movie, and rightfully so; it's arguably the sloppiest movie Christopher Nolan has ever made, and it's easy to disappoint people when making a sequel to the greatest comic-book movie ever made. However, it makes up for its shortcomings, and gloriously. The film is dark, borderline brilliant, and finely acted. Nolan is never content with just making a superhero movie that helps you escape from the real world; like its predecessor, Dark Knight Rises throws modern American issues right in your face, only with weird masks.
Eight years after having stopping Joker and Harvey Dent, Bruce Wayne (Bale) has retired from Batmanning, but has not retired from being an angry, depressed, asshole, much to the chagrin of those close to him, like Alfred (Caine). So when a masked man named Bane (Hardy) shows up to spark revolution in Gotham, Bruce decides to suit up and stop him, but finds himself in over his head. Stopping Bane is one thing, but getting out of the violent lifestyle he has thrown himself into is another thing entirely. The Dark Knight has a lot of silly things going on it, mainly the last half hour, but its excusable. It succeeds mainly on its new ideas with how to treat an old character, and give him a satisfying ending. It also helps that, in Bane, Nolan takes a B-level baddie who has not been very interesting since the early 90's and turns him into arguably the year's best cinematic villain, not to mention that Hathaway's Catwoman may be the second-best performance in the series. Let's just give credit where it deserves: this is the first 3rd superhero movie that was done mostly right.

3. Django: Unchained

Django Unchained is the latest in a long line of brilliant films this year with silly names. It's also the latest film from Quentin Tarantino, and that should pretty much explain it. It's gory, violent, and they say the word 'nigger' a lot. There, I said it. That is literally the very first time I have written and posted the word 'nigger'. I sincerely apologize, but saying 'the n-word' sounds kind of patronizing. I mean so does 'nigger', but not in the same way. Maybe I should just talk about the movie....
Django Unchained is story of Django (Jamie Foxx), a freed slave who, under the tutelage of German bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz, becomes the biggest bad ass in the west. Ultimately, his travels take him to the ranch of Calvin Candie (a hilariously unhinged Leonardo DiCaprio), the sadistic slaveowner who owns Django's wife. Over the course of the film, bullets are shot, people are shot, and bad words are said. And it's fantastic.
I really had to think about Django, so much that I overthought it. When I first saw it, I just thought that the moral of the story, which is basically just "slavery is bad" wasn't very new or refreshing, until I actually thought about it. We in America tend to either forget, or underplay, just how bad it was. That's why we love the moral absolutism of Inglorious Basterds so much, because the bad guys in that movie are Nazis, and Nazis of any kind are evil! But it's a little different when the gun is aimed at pre-civil war Americans. We get so wound up in "the south will rise again" bullshit we need Tarantino to remind us: slavery is awful and anyone (not just white people) who engages in it deserves to be shot. And then explode, apparently. If there's one problem with this wonderfully acted, smartly written, and, naturally, wonderfully directed film, it's the fact that the pacing can be a little off and it runs a little long in a few places.

2. Argo

 

When most people heard that Ben Affleck was making a movie called Argo, and that it was about Ben Affleck making a movie called Argo, they probably were not as excited as I was. Even the ads specified that the man behind it was"the director of The Town", as opposed to, say "that guy who was Daredevil". But Affleck is a pretty talented actor when a good director is behind the camera, and in this case the man behind the camera is him. While he's in front of the camera. Whatever, he's quickly proving himself among Hollywood's more talented directors. Anyway, Argo is about how CIA agent Tony Mendez worked with a major film company to make a fake movie, so he could get a group of embassy workers who escaped the Iranian hostage crisis out of the country. And that's it. Pretty simple. It's also nearly perfect.

The much-debated Best Picture Winner is essentially two movies. One is an incredibly stupid ripoff of Star Wars, and one is a brilliantly tense drama about that first movie. No that's not what I mean. One is a hilarious story about people in Hollywood having to deal with other people in Hollywood while they make a cheap Star Wars knockoff that they aren't actually going to make. Alan Arkin is at his snarky, beleaguered, Jewish best as the producer of the project, as is Goodman as the team's makeup man. We also get Bryan Cranston as another CIA operative. There's a particularly hilarious scene in what's supposed to be a nerd convention. Then there's the second movie, which can only be described as the same sort of violent, tight, and viciously tense heist movie that Affleck established in the fantastic The Town. Argo is a film about how stories save people. If that seems lame, and to a lot of people watching the awards it did, the film explains itself pretty well. The film is well aware of the issues that would be brought up upon its win: the world is full of horror, and films, especially lame stupid films, seem pointless; but they can bring people together in even the worst times. I suppose you could say they help people....escape? Actually, fuck this, now I'm just confused.

1. Les Miserables

 

 Do you hear the people sing? Singing the songs of angry men? It is the music of the people who apparently didn't do their fucking homework. Okay, I'll calm down. Honestly, there's a lot of people, who did not appreciate all the praise this film got, either because they like musical theater too much and don't get how films work, or they like films too much and don't get how musical theater works. Yes, they sing the whole time and barely talk. That's how its supposed to be. For those who don't know, Les Miserables is based on a play, which was based on a book by Victor Hugo, about a convict who breaks his parole in order to make a better life both for himself, and others who he meets in his travels, and Javert, the policeman obsessed with tracking Valjean down and bringing him to justice. All set against the backdrop of the second French revolution.

Okay, Okay, let's be fair here: Les Miserables is flawed. For one thing, I'm not even entirely sure how to say the name, even though its one of my favorite plays. For another thing, it's long as shit, and there are actually a few moments where I got kind of tired and bored. This is especially when Valjean and Javert, two of the greatest nemeses of all, are not onscreen. Which is actually quite a lot. So what makes this film so much better than Argo, when it's probably not made as well? Is it just that it had more of an emotional effect on me? Is it just because I'm a crybaby? Well, maybe, but the point of movies, or almost all art is to illicit an emotion, and provoke thought. Les Miserables has always done both, and this is perhaps the best its ever been done onscreen. The film does the century old play almost perfect justice, and it comes out brilliantly. It's an unforgettable experience, and I'm not afraid to admit it. It's more genuinely affecting than almost anything I've seen. But the main selling point is the acting. Seyfried, Redmayne, Bonham Carter, and Baron Cohen are all great. As is Russel Crowe, despite what people may have said, be nice. Hugh Jackman and Samantha Barks, both Broadway stars and X-Men (well okay, only one), are perfectly in their element. Oh, did I mention Anne Hathaway? Best two minutes of film this whole year. Hell, best two minutes of film I've seen in years.

Blog!!!

Well. I did it.

I made a blog. It finally happened.
I'm famous among myself for being late to things. And by that I mean trends and fads like Facebook and reddit, but I suppose parties and job interviews as well. Just everything. I'm late to everything. I never even got a myspace.
Anyway, I should have gotten one a long time ago. I'm the blogger type. I've been spouting inane and useless information that nobody cares about, opinions that nobody wanted or needed to hear, and whines that can be easily fixed for the better part of since I was 13. And it hasn't gone away now that I'm in college.
So, I suppose this is going to be my more public face, for potential employers, family members, potential family members, and family employers to use to get to know me, as well as for strangers to read my opinions on things, provided they're masochists. But mainly it is to be used as a way to keep all the stupid shit I say in one place for people to easily access so I don't have to constantly throw it in everyone's face. This is the blog most of the people I know are going to watch. I was planning on getting a Tumblr for more intimate material, but I don't know how it works. In fact I think I just broke a cardinal rule by mentioning it. Where do I post page-long rants about movies? Also I don't have a lot of intimate material.

For those who don't know, I have this to say. If you want to get to know a fascinating person you have never met, if you want to make a personal connection with a fellow blogger over the internet, and if you are waiting with held breath to understand my deep, personal thoughts and feelings...

...then you came to the wrong-ass place. I'll probably just get another blog for that shit. You know, thoughts and feelings and what-not. Those things people have.
No, this blog is about important stuff, like movies. And comic books, and popular culture. I may be wrong, who knows. Maybe someday I'll be remiss in my duties and come on here to cry about being dumped or getting fired or having an undercooked sandwich (I'm not making fun of people who have blogs like that, but they have far more interesting lives than I do), but I can guarantee there is going to be a lot more me getting angry or happy at films than anything else.

But, for those who need an introduction, my names Ryan. I like movies, and comics, and video games, and women, and sharks, and dinosaurs. I fancy myself a writer in much the same way I fancy myself a superhero; I've taken necessary steps to make it happen, but in the end I'm about as much of one as you are, and I often wear underwear outside my pants. You know, like writers do. Occasionally I do standup and improv comedy. I swear to god its only a little worse than this.

Anyway, where to begin?