Ruk's Count Down 65 Movies from 2013 ('Yes, I'm actually going to finish this.' edition)

[rukaio101]

Okay, since I've been suffering from a bit of writers block recently, I decided I'd do something like this to try and snap out of it. Brief disclaimer, aside from a few select reviews, I have pretty much none of this pre-written and, since I have about 50 other things I should probably be writing instead (including stuff for my Screenwriting class which is kinda prioritised), I may end up with some pretty large schedule gaps. Hopefully not as large as Films's, but just warning now.

 

Also, I should point out that I'm ranking these in how much I personally enjoyed them. I'm not ranking them as to which I objectively consider the best, or else my list would be pretty different and not nearly as fun.

 

Also also, I know most people here are only selecting films with a North American Domestic release. Well, I'm British, so I refuse to do anything in an American way. I'm also a large anime and DCAU fan, so I'll be talking about some of the Japanese releases and straight-to-DVD releases. 

 

Also also also, this is going to be me covering every 2013 release I've seen this year, so if you're wondering why 'so and so' hasn't made the list, it's probably because I haven't seen it. Also, 'so and so' was overrated. You all know it's true.

 

Finally, this list is not recommended for fans of Man of Steel. You've been warned.

 

Anyway, on with the list. First entry will be up pretty soon.

 

Edited April 10, 2014 by rukaio101

[rukaio101]

65. A Good Day to Die Hard

"Pfft, glass? When that's ever hurt anybody?

 

 

Now, I'm going to start this by saying something controversial. I liked Die Hard 4. Was it a good Die Hard movie? No, but it was a perfectly entertaining and competent action movie in its own right. This piece of crap isn't even that. And that's possibly the most surprising thing of all. Because this is almost entirely action and, believe it or not, I am really fucking easy to please when it comes to action scenes. But the action in this is so dull and lifeless, yet somehow so over-the-top and stupid it's impossible to take seriously.. Bruce Willis is so phoning it in here part of me just wonders whether they got a ventriloquist dummy that looks like him and used that for the whole film. The new characters are flatter than a sheet of paper that has been run over by a steamroller carrying a tap dancing elephant. Hell, I remember absolutely none of their names or motivations or anything about them at all, except some of them are Russian. The plot is convoluted and boring and, most frustratingly of all, there's absolutely none of that fantastic John McClane snarky humour that's such a great staple of the series. The biggest joke in the film is him repeating 'But I'm on fucking holiday' every 5 minutes, even though it was established at the beginning of the film that he was there looking for his son, not that he was on fucking holiday!

 

Now, I'd like to talk about this movie more, since it's at the bottom of the list but, annoyingly, there's really not much more I can say about it. It's just bad. It's not so bad it's entertaining. It's not the kind of bad I can go on long rants about. It was juat a stupid, boring movie and the first Die Hard movie I've actually really disliked, so for those sins it gets the bottom place on this list.

[rukaio101]

64. Man of Steel

"You know Clark, exposition exposition exposition, meaningless gibberish that sounds kinda deep in the trailer."

 

 

Yeah, you knew this was coming.

 

Now, I gave AGDTDH a lower position on this list since, given a choice between the two, AGDTDH is the one I’d least like to have to sit through again. But, out of the two, MoS is the one I despise the most and much more consistently. I’m not exaggerating when I say I consider this the worst superhero film I’ve ever seen. Worse than Batman and Robin. Worse than Green Lantern. Worse than Superman IV. Because, for all of their many many faults, I at least got some level of enjoyment out of them, even if it was just something so goofy you can’t help but laugh. I got none of that from MoS. This movie is entirely joyless. Entirely fucking joyless. And I’m not the sort of person who needs a superhero movie to be cracking jokes every minute. Sure I enjoy that but it’s not entirely needed. But every aspect of this film is so joyless. The characters, the dialogue, hell even the fucking screen is so grey. When people say they want a darker Superman, Snyder, they didn’t mean make the fucking colour pallet darker!!!

 

 

Speaking of Superman, I’m not a die hard Supes fan. I know enough of him not to consider him a boring character like many people, but I’m not a ‘ooh if you change <insert minor detail> you’ve ruined the character’. That said, the character I saw on screen in this was not fucking Superman. Want to know why? Because Superman is a superhero. The asshole in this movie is no fucking hero. Why? Because he never once puts himself in harm’s way or any serious danger for somebody else. (And before I get people whining ‘Ooh, but he destroyed the world machine and handed himself over to Zod’, I’d point out that, had he not done those things, he’d have ended up dying as well.) Compare to Marvel’s Captain America, his moral equivalent, who willingly jumped onto a grenade to help his comrades, even before he got the super soldier serum. Now that’s a hero. In fact, let me do even more comparison with Cap. Captain America was about a man who started off with nothing but really wanted to help people and stand up for what’s right. MoS was about a man who started off with everything and reacts with complete indifference towards people and doing what’s right and never once manages to convince me otherwise. And I’m not even going to get into how they butchered Pa Kent's character.    

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sge5sUNJkiY

 

Now, I’m sure there are plenty of people here who enjoyed the movie just for the action. And that’s fine. But I hated the action in this movie because the fucking camera wouldn’t keep still! Now, I know a lot of people who hate shakey cam. Honestly, I’m okay with it and think if used well it can really add to an action scene. Take Batman Begins for example. Batman’s main shtick is that he keeps to the shadows and relies on theatricality and surprise attacks to take down bad guys. Hence, shakey cam in there makes sense, since you can't get a fix on the guy or see what he's doing. Superman doesn't need to rely on theatricality. He punches people through walls. So keep the camera fucking still and let me watch him bloody do it! Like I said when talking about AGTDH, I'm very easy to please when it comes to action scenes, so if, during a fight between two superhumans, I'm thinking about their overuse of shakey cam (and the mass destruction to the city) you've done something very very wrong. And I'm not sure how Snyder managed this because I really enjoyed the action scenes in pretty much every other film he's ever done. Even Sucker Punch (which was godawful overall). So how did he screw this up so badly?

 

 

Speaking of Snyder's direction, I have to wonder whether he replaced every actor in this movie with a robot duplicate. Because I like many of them and think they've done really good performances in the past. But most of them read their lines in such a dull unemotional tone, it's amazing. Especially Amy Adams. The only exception to this is Michael Shannon's Zod who was just hilariously hammy. Probably the only character in the film I kinda liked, even if his some/many of his actions were really stupid. (Why did he bring Lois on board the ship? Why, if he was trying to convince Kal to join him, did he think burying him in a pile of skulls would appeal to him? If his primary aim was the restoration of Krypton, why not go to a different, abandoned planet where there's absolutely no chance of someone interfering to destroy the World machine? Why didn't he get sucked into the Phantom Zone with the rest of his team near the end? (Okay, that wasn't a tactical mistake of his, that just really bugged me)).

 

 

Speaking of Zod, I suppose I should go into the whole neck snap thing. Honestly, I'm not against Superman having to kill someone because he has absolutely no choice. But this movie handles it so so poorly... Okay, let's forget for a second how easily the family threatened by Zod's laser beams could get away or how Supes could've just flown up, or covered the beams with his hands, etc etc. The reason this scene doesn't work is because it doesn't give any build up for it. The film has never shown Supes as violently adversed to killing, or having a no-kill rule like Batman or anything like that. And while you could claim he was naturally raised not to kill like pretty much everyone in the world, that doesn't explain his over-the-top reaction to it. And, most annoyingly of all, it doesn't explain why he just seems to forget about in the next scene. One of my favourite anime series is Trigun (a Western series with some sci-fi aspects which I'd totally recommend to anyone). In it, the main character, Vash the Stampede, has a large anti-killing rule that's built up through several episodes. In a late episode *major spoiler* he's forced to kill someone. There's a ton of build up to it, the scene is fantastically shot, you really get the feeling it took everything out of him and the entire next episode is him trying to come to terms with it. That is how you do something like that Snyder! You don't just have the character let out a yell and then forget about it next scene!

 

Now, there's probably much more I could say about this film. I could talk about the dialogue that tries so hard to sound meaningful but falls apart faster than a space shuttle made out of bandaids, when you really look at it. I could talk about the ridiculous amounts of destruction in Metropolis and how we never see Superman lift a finger to help. I could talk about all the wasted opportunities for a genuinely good story. But I won't. Because my arm is tired. So this'll have to do. And at the end of the day, that's Man of Steel's only real positive. It's an awful awful film but it gives me just so much to rant about.

Edited February 8, 2014 by rukaio101

[Plain Old Tele]

tl;dr

[rukaio101]

tl;dr

There. I have split it up with some pretty pictures/comic/videos for you. They may have a... slight bias to them.

[Plain Old Tele]

[baumer]

Wow!  That was an epic deconstruction of MOS.  I actually kinda liked it but your review is making me think I was wrong.  

[rukaio101]

63. Gangster Squad

"We're like the Untouchables except without any charm or likeability!!"

 

 

Like AGDTDH, I don't really have all that much to say about this movie other than it was boring and pretty damn awful.

 

Funnily enough, at the beginning of the year this was actually one of my most anticipated. It was by the director of Zombieland, it had a great cast and it reminded me a lot of the Untouchables, which is one of my favourite films of all time. So what went wrong and how did it end up so boring? Short simple answer, the script. It was awful. There wasn't an entertaining line in there. I'm really glad the guy behind this isn't doing the Justice League movie script. Now if only Snyder and Goyer weren't probably doing it either.... No, no, I already did my piece on MoS and that was long enough. I'm not talking about it here.

 

Another major problem with the film was the romance between Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. It was poorly done and it took up way too much of the film's running time. Because when I go to see a film called Gangster Squad, I want to spend a large part of it watching the guy from Drive and Gwen Stacy awkwardly hooking up.

 

The action in the film was decent. Nothing bad, but nothing really that good either. Honestly, I could say the same about most of the actors. They weren't bad, but they had a poor script and didn't really try to make anything entertaining out of it. I would've killed for a Jeremy Irons Profion or an Arnold Schwarzenegger Mr Freeze or a Nicholas Cage.... anything to come in and lighten the movie up. But I got nothing except a boring disappointing mess. 

[rukaio101]

62. Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters

"Have you people even read the books?"

 

 

Okay, as the tagline suggests I'm a pretty big fan of the Percy Jackson books (although I've kinda fallen behind in recent years) however, as I stated in my MoS rant, I’m really not a ‘ooh if you change <insert minor detail> you’ve ruined the film’ kinda guy. I'm a screenwriter myself and I understand the need to change details to make them more suitable for the different format of film. That said, the Percy Jackson movie series have always pissed me off because the changes made in them not only suck badly but also really didn't need to be changed at all. This is more an issue I have with the Lightning Thief than this film. but it's still present and has really started to backfire on the filmmakers. For example, in the Lightning Thief, they cut out important details and characters such as Thalia's tree, Clarrisse and Mr D. And while that could've been tolerable (albeit stupid) if Lightning Thief was the only movie they made, they kinda dug a hole for themselves since those details are pretty much key to the plot of this movie. So instead we spend 10-20 minutes of the movie introducing all these new elements and trying to convince us that they were totally there all along.  

 

In addition, they've sucked every bit of life out of the characters. Percy becomes the generic idiot hero, Annabeth becomes the generic annoying female, Grover becomes the slightly offensive annoying black comic relief, Luke becomes the generic broody villain, who's supposed to be intimidating but isn't because Percy already kicked his ass in the Lightning Thief film (another fantastic change there) so we really don't have any reason to fear him. In addition, his motives have massively decayed in comparison the book where he rebels against the gods because of their distance and unwillingness to help their children (but in the film has been changed to 'staying away because they love them too much' (BTW, that twist in the first film really pissed me off since the book's explanation made much more sense and was better)) but in the film is just being evil for the sake of it apparently.

 

There are a couple of bright spots in the film, in the form of Stanley Tucci and Nathan Fillion who just decide to have fun and are a riot to watch (although Nathan's scene has the most forced Firefly reference I've ever seen). And I suppose Kronos's weird glass thingy was pretty cool (although they've screwed themselves out of a villain in any future films). But it's so not worth the rest of the crap I had to sit through.

 

In conclusion, I admit, thinking about it, this film probably wouldn't have reached this low if I hadn't already read the books, but I suppose it deserves its place for being, in my opinion, the prime example of how not to do an adaptation.

 

 

Anyway, I'm going out to see the Lego Movie now so I won't be back for a while.

[rukaio101]

I just got back from the Lego Movie. It was awesome. Everything is awesome. Except this.

 

61. The Great Gatsby

"Old sport."

 

 

I'm going to begin this by saying something controversial (again). I really don't like Tobey Maguire. I don't think I've liked him in anything I've seen him in. Not even Spiderman. I think much of that has to do with his nasally irritating voice that just burrows through your ears and makes your brain feel like someone impaled it with an ice pick and just goes on and on until you can't take it any more and want go around smashing everyone in the face with a wrench until their nose sprays rivers of delicious cherry-red blood and... *cough* Sorry, I might've gotten slightly carried away there. My point is, I find Tobey Maguire annoying. He's also the narrator and one of the main characters in this film. Things were never going to go well.

 

I'll admit, I didn't really want to watch this film. I'm not the biggest fan of the book, which I had to read for my A-Level English course which I absolutely hated. But, since I was still doing said A-Level English course at the time, I felt I had to go see it. And god do I regret it. Because it was boring as hell. So very boring. And I wasn't entirely sure why until I saw a certain other film this year (which I won't spoil now since it's one of my favourites) which made me understand just what fails so much about this film. Quite simply, it's this. For a film exploring the decadence and shallowness of the rich in the Jazz age, it really doesn't go far enough. When I think 'extreme decadence' I don't think crowds of tuxedo'd people jumping up and down to Jay-Z music while confetti flies everywhere. I think hookers and cocaine and blow (oh my!). When you're supposed to be portraying the fun decadent side of the rich, it's supposed to be... you know, fun and decadent. Not boring. Like this film was.

 

Acting was alright. Leo and Mulligan were both fine, nothing too bad, nothing particularly great either. Surprisingly, I actually liked the guy who played Tom because he was a bit of a ham, but not enough to save the movie. Unsurprisingly, I really hated Maguire and he was in pretty much every scene.

 

So yeah, final thoughts, too little decadence, too much Maguire and just really really boring. 

[rukaio101]

60. Bullet to the Head

"Does anyone actually get shot in the head in this?"

 

 

I like Sylvester Stallone. I like Sung Kang. I like cheesy action. I like team-up movies like this. So why did I end up hating this movie so much?

 

I think much of it has to do with the massive hard-on the film has for Stallone's character. He always has to be on top in partnership. His way always has to be right. He always has to have the last word in the Snark to Snark combat he has with Kang (a staple of buddy films like this and usually one of my favourites) of which usually consists of him insulting Kang for being a cop. There's no sense of fun or cheekiness to it, it just comes off as Stallone being an asshole. For a goody buddy movie to work, there has to be a sense of balance between the two and that wasn't at all the case in this film. It's always biased towards Stallone's character, even when it shouldn't be. When Stallone coldly and unnecessarily murders a guy they kidnapped, I was totally with Sung Kang in saying he'd gone to far. But the movie just seemed to treat Kang's complaints as 'whiny by-the-book cop complaints' when they're anything but. In the end, the only real thing Kang got to do in the end was shoot Jason Momoa (who was great, BTW, and deserved to be in a much better movie).

 

I suppose the action was pretty good, albeit nothing special, but the movie just pissed me off so much with its idolising of Stallone's character and neglecting of Kang's that I really couldn't get into it.

[baumer]

Damn.  Your 4 year old niece sure sees a lot of shitty movies.

[baumer]

60. Bullet to the Head

"Does anyone actually get shot in the head in this?"

 

 

I like Sylvester Stallone. I like Sung Kang. I like cheesy action. I like team-up movies like this. So why did I end up hating this movie so much?

 

I think much of it has to do with the massive hard-on the film has for Stallone's character. He always has to be on top in partnership. His way always has to be right. He always has to have the last word in the Snark to Snark combat he has with Kang (a staple of buddy films like this and usually one of my favourites) of which usually consists of him insulting Kang for being a cop. There's no sense of fun or cheekiness to it, it just comes off as Stallone being an asshole. For a goody buddy movie to work, there has to be a sense of balance between the two and that wasn't at all the case in this film. It's always biased towards Stallone's character, even when it shouldn't be. When Stallone coldly and unnecessarily murders a guy they kidnapped, I was totally with Sung Kang in saying he'd gone to far. But the movie just seemed to treat Kang's complaints as 'whiny by-the-book cop complaints' when they're anything but. In the end, the only real thing Kang got to do in the end was shoot Jason Momoa (who was great, BTW, and deserved to be in a much better movie).

 

I suppose the action was pretty good, albeit nothing special, but the movie just pissed me off so much with its idolising of Stallone's character and neglecting of Kang's that I really couldn't get into it.

 

You know, I think you nailed this.  I liked the movie more than you did, but only because of Jason Mamoa.  But I also disliked it for the exact reasons you mentioned here.  This was all one sided and it did put one too much emphasis on Stallone's character and that is the wrong tone of the movie.  Great piece of writing there.

[The Panda]

Damn.  Your 4 year old niece sure sees a lot of shitty movies.

 

Wrong thread Baumer.

[rukaio101]

Wrong thread Baumer.

Obviously. My 4 year-old niece has great taste in movies.

 

Also, sorry for the wait for my next entry, but my computer restarted while I wasn't looking and I hadn't saved it so I've got to rewrite the damn thing. 

[rukaio101]

59. Epic

"<insert Epic Fail joke here>"

 

 

I was actually looking forward to this going in. It had a great trailer and an interesting premise. Sure the comic relief slugs seemed annoying, but they couldn't be that bad, right?... right?

 

Yeah, this sucked. And it's really a shame. When the film started out it was actually pretty good. The main character was decent, I absolutely loved the chase scene and the film wasn't afraid to kill off characters. But it soon turned more and more to ass. A part of this is because those god damn comic relief slugs who, in my opinion, are Jar Jar level annoying. The weak, half-hearted justification for keeping them around didn't help matters much either. But the blame doesn't entirely lay with them. The main hero, Nod, is nearly equally annoying as the slugs, is really bland, has a barely consistent character arc and just feels like he could've been cut entirely in place of Colin Ferrell's character, who was more interesting, more badass, had better lines and had a better established character arc. The main character's dad is too over the top and weird for us to take him seriously and many moments that really should've been emotional were ruined by his ridiculousness. And for all the delicious ham Christoph Waltz brought to the role, the main villain was just bland.

 

But worst of all was the final battle. The characters are preparing to defend the bulb from the villain's forces and it looks like we're building up to a huge scale battle that will really take full advantage of the fantastic visuals. The villains turn up on bats to block out the moon and the good guys ride a group of hummingbirds to stop. Okay then, it looks like we're going to get a badass dogfight between the two groups. Nope instead we get 5 minutes of batwings in the camera obscuring nearly everything. Fuck you movie. For all I rant about the shakey cam in MoS's fight scenes, at least I could kinda tell what was going on. In this I could barely make a goddamn thing out. I did not sit through two hours of those fucking slugs so you could basically wave your hands in my face while I'm trying to watch the action. Oh, and the main villain is killed via disappointing Deux ex Machina. Whoo.

 

In conclusion, I will say there are some really good things in this movie, but there's just so much crap and disappointment it's just not worth it at all.

[rukaio101]

58. American Hustle

"Wait, this is a comedy?"

 

 

We've got a pretty good selection of films competing for the Best Picture Oscar this year. I've seen all except 2 (which 2 I won't reveal yet) and, honestly, I'd be happy with any one of them winning.... Well, nearly any one of them.

 

Yeah, I've not really bothered hiding my dislike of this on the various Academy Award threads. It's pretty much gotten to the point where my official position on the Oscars is 'As long as American Hustle doesn't win I'll be happy'. While part of this may be a mix of hype backlash and the fact I was kinda expecting it to be something it wasn't, most of it is because the film is really fucking boring. The 'cons' are a mixture of confusing and just plain uninteresting, the dialogue is flat 90% of the time and most of the characters are dicks. And rather being interesting, enjoyable dicks like Jordan Belfort, they're just boring. Also the only likeable character (Jeremy Renner) goes to jail and has his political career torn to shreds. Whoo.

 

I'll admit, I can't deny the acting is excellent though. Especially the aforementioned Jeremy Renner who I think gave a very underrated performance. But when you're given such a weak script and characters to work with, there's only so much you can do.

 

Also, why did this win Best Comedy for the Golden Globes? I laughed twice in this film. (The first was with Bale's combover and the second was the ice fishing guy). I laughed much more in Dallas Buyers Club and that was about people dying of fucking AIDS!!!

[rukaio101]

57. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

"This is going to piss off most of the forum, isn't it?"

 

 

God damn it, why couldn't you people have agreed with the critics on this one? Look at the review thread! There's only one vote there that isn't an A or a B and that's from me!

 

Seriously though, I just couldn't get into this film. Maybe it's because I have an instinctive dislike for those sorts of films that are just like 'Ooh yeah, why don't you go out and really start living your life' as if a) it's that easy b ) you can do it precisely the way the film says you can or c) you aren't already happy with your life. Maybe it's that sort of film, like MoS, which thinks it's really deep and meaningful and pisses me off because it really isn't. Especially the scenes with Sean Penn. Those just pissed me off. 'Ooh look, we're playing football but we're doing it in such an artsy way! Aren't we deep?!' The twist with picture being of Walter all along was so cringeworthy and predictable I kinda wish they'd done what I thought they were going to do and never reveal it at all Oh, and the product placement in this film for eharmony and Papa Johns made MoS look subtle. (I've just realised that's the second MoS comparison I've made. Sorry about that, I don't think this film's that bad.)

 

One thing I've noticed with many positive reviews for this is that a lot of people are saying how they really connected with this because they're daydreamers as well. Well I'm also a massive daydreamer (although I like to think of it as being more like the Mind Palace in Sherlock than this) and I didn't feel that gave me any extra connection to the film. Speaking of the daydreams, for what was advertised as the main selling point for the flick, the daydreams were pretty pointless. You could probably have cut them altogether and very little would really have been lost.

 

Okay, to save what little respect I have left on this forum, I suppose I should talk about the positives. For one thing, the Scenery Porn is absolutely gorgeous. For two things, the soundtrack was fantastic. For three things, I actually thought the romance in the film was really well done. And I'm not normally one to get behind movie romances. That said, I could've done without the misunderstanding but still.

 

But yeah, overall I didn't like this film. Buy your torches and pitchforks here.

 

Now, I think I've got time for one more entry before Baumer bans me and/or creates a dislike button specifically for this post....

[rukaio101]

56. Walking with Dinosaurs

"Shut up!!!! Just shut up!!!!"

 

 

This was a beautifully animated movie, richly exploring the ancient world that dinosaurs roamed and managing to tell its simple, but effective tale so easily through the use of its very high-standard visuals. Now if only it would shut the fuck up.

 

I mean… my god! I’d heard the rumours about how bad the narration was! Hell, I’d even joked to my friends about how I was planning on watching it with earplugs in! And I can tell you, I wish I bloody had. Literally 10 minutes in, I was shoving my fingers in my ears in an attempt to block out the horrendous jokes and downright painful voice acting. And it didn’t bloody work! In the end, I settled for attempting to reach a Zen like state where all speaking from the film turned into ambient background noise. Still didn’t work, but at least I was no longer in danger of accidentally poking my finger into my brain. Yeah, it was pretty damn bad.

 

The most annoying thing about the narration though... One of the most annoying… One of the many annoying things about the narration though is just how badly it was tacked on. Aside from a couple of minor bits where they rewinded the tape, you could remove the entire narration and you would never even notice it was supposed to be there in first place. I’m completely serious. None of the dinosaurs have their mouths move in time with it, many of the plot elements are shown much more effectively through their body language than the narration, it feels more like a Rifftrax done by people with no comedic ability whatsoever.

 

There’s a cheesy live-action bit at the beginning and the end of the film involving Karl Urban as the world’s smexiest palaeontologist (a competitive position) which usually I probably would’ve criticised. But instead, I ended up asking why the hell they couldn’t have gotten Karl Urban to do the narration instead? It would’ve been a damn sight better than Sid the Sloth doing an Antonio Banderas impression.

 

Okay, I suppose I should talk about the positives but I think you can guess them. Everything that isn't the narration is absolutely fantastic. The animation is top notch, the way they can tell a better story through the visuals than the entire fucking narration can is fantastic and the roars are just awesome. A large part of me wants to raise it higher on this list simply because of how much effort and passion must've gone into all that but I just can't. Because of that fucking narration.

 

There are two films I've seen this year that I think were killed by bad executive meddling and this is easily the most galling. But honestly, I would recommend you see this film. Not in theatres, no, wait until the DVD comes out then turn off the volume, put your ipod to a mix of epic music and you'll probably have a fun time. 

 

To sum up, fuck that narration.

[rukaio101]

Feck it, I'm in a writey mood. I feel like doing some more.

 

55. The Call

"The calls are coming from inside the house..." (Okay, they're not, but what a twist that would've been.)

 

 

You know, The Call really could've been one of my favourites this year if it wasn't for that god damn ending.... Okay, that's a blatant lie, it was B+ at best but the point is that ending was really awful.

 

Seriously, what was that? Most of the movie was a tense, pacey pretty realistic thriller with excellent performances from Berry and Breslin, then that ending... It's not just Jumping the Shark, it's jetpacking over a Giant Shark wrestling with a Mega Octopus... on Mars. It's contrived, ridiculous, involves a serious derailment of Halle Berry's character, feels like a poor genre shift into a Straight-to-DVD Serial Killer, with none of the imagination or tension of the rest of the movie and, quite frankly, drags the entire quality of the film down with it. 

 

First, why would Halle Berry's character, who has been established to be a sensible person trained to deal with emergency situation and can remain calm and logical in stressful situations, go down into the killer's lair on her own? Why didn't she go and get some police officers? Yes, I know she tried calling them on her phone and couldn't get a signal, but that simply means she should've gone and got them personally or moved somewhere where she has signal. Now, I know people are thinking 'Ah but she might've been able to save Breslin in time'. First of all, she doesn't know Breslin isn't already dead or won't be kept alive until the police arrive. Secondly, Berry is an unarmed woman with no shown fighting ability. It would take a lot of coincidence and luck for her to be able to take out the killer like in the film. More likely she would end up killed by the killer and the police would be none the wiser to the killer's location.

 

Second, they really half-handedly try to force a motive for the killer based on incest and hair and etc. There's little to no foreshadowing to it, it's not all that interesting and it feels really unnecessary. It doesn't make the killer any more interesting or understandable or sympathetic and it doesn't really affect anything in the film. It just feels like padding and really kinda cheapens the film. It's much more effective to keep things like this a mystery and leave it ambiguous as to why the killer is doing all this.

 

Finally, at the end of the movie, Berry and Breslin tie the killer and leave him to die. What?! Just... what?! Firstly, we've never seen anything in Berry's character before this to think she'd effectively murder a guy. Secondly, how do they know they guy won't break out? It's his lair, he knows it better than anyone else, Berry and Breslin probably aren't experts in methods for keeping him subdued and people can do pretty impressive things when they're desperate. Much safer to have in custody and watched by police officers. Thirdly, yes it's nice and all that Berry and Breslin got their own personal revenge and justice, but what about the families of the other murdered girls? As far as they know, the killer is still out there. And the police will think that too and waste good money and resources hunting down a dead killer, when said resources could be used for something more useful that'll actually help people and save lives. It's good and all to say 'Ooh, he got what he deserved', but when giving him 'what he deserves' comes at the unnecessary cost of added stress and worry for innocent families and a large waste of police resources, it's really not worth it.

 

So yeah, that ending was awful. The rest of the film is pretty good but... just... that ending.