Tower Posted January 30, 2020 Share Posted January 30, 2020 I have never done one of these before because there are better writers than me here, so I didn't think it would be worth the effort. But I feel like doing one this year, and see how it works out. I have seen 58 films in total so far, and I'll go from worst to best and finish it all by tomorrow. there a few films that I mean to see, but with the deadline for the forum list coming up this seems like a good time to do this. Also a warning that I might have spoilers so if you are worried about those, then don't read that section. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tower Posted January 30, 2020 Author Share Posted January 30, 2020 58 Echo-הד I usually like Israeli films, but this film was just boring. You basically know what this film is about very quickly and it just drags on for another hour without much happening. This film has only one tone (sadness), and it does it the entire film, this combined with the bland characters just made the whole thing unbearable. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tower Posted January 30, 2020 Author Share Posted January 30, 2020 57-Long Shot as a drama it’s predictable and cliche filled and has generic dialogue. There was an argument at some point about following your morals versus compromising get in power, and it just felt like there was nothing in that scene that made it unique to this film. as a comedy it had a couple of amusing moments, but otherwise I didn’t find it funny, making the whole package bland. 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tower Posted January 30, 2020 Author Share Posted January 30, 2020 (edited) 56-Missing Link I wasn’t bored watching this and the basic plot is reasonable, but this film just doesn’t do anything very well. It doesn’t look very good (not just compared to a $200M Pixar production, but compared to something like Kubo), It’s constantly trying to be funny, but never actually is, and as much as the story isn’t terrible, it’s still pretty basic. The climax is also quite stupid with a whole lot of multiple people and a sasquatch being held on to ice by fingertips. Not the worst film but very forgettable and significantly worse than Kubo and Coraline. Edited January 30, 2020 by Tower 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tower Posted January 30, 2020 Author Share Posted January 30, 2020 (edited) 55-Yesterday The songs were nice, and the main premise was done unimaginatively but not terribly, so I didn’t find all of it a terrible viewing experience. Unfortunately, this film is the bad kind of bait and switch, instead of the premise about the Beatles being forgotten and him reviving their songs, the film focuses on its garbage love story. Eileen just comes off as a horrible person. First she blames him for not saying anything for 20 years even though she didn’t say anything either and waited for him to leave to suddenly spring it on him. Then she demands that he gives up his dream so that he could be more with her. Why not give up her teaching? Why not see him less because of his career and work it out anyway? Such a strange false choice. In the meantime while he makes his choice she strings along this poor guy that she immediately dumps. Edited January 30, 2020 by Tower 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tower Posted January 30, 2020 Author Share Posted January 30, 2020 54-Booksmart The basic description of the film doesn’t sound like something I would like, but the glowing reviews had me thinking that this would be more than that so I gave it a try. It isn’t, The music and cinematography is done well but the story is basically exactly what I suspected it would be. The girls go to a party and not much else, they shove some random inconsequential fight that comes out of nowhere and goes away quickly. Even with all my problems with the story, It still could have been OK if the comedy was good. Admittedly, my taste in humour is very particular, but I didn’t find this film even remotely funny. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tower Posted January 30, 2020 Author Share Posted January 30, 2020 (edited) 53-High Flying Bird The film treats the idea of players setting up their own league as some novelty and great master plan that defeats the league and ends the lockout. This just doesn’t work when there is always talk of this whenever there’s a lockout. Maybe a story about a competing league and its competition with the NBA could be interesting, but this film never really went anywhere interesting. The slavery parts felt forced and shooting it on an Iphone just made it look cheap. Also, how do they play in front of a bunch of kids with their phones, but somehow no one knew how it ended? That part made no sense. At least it wasn’t too slow and the acting was competent. Edited January 30, 2020 by Tower 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tower Posted January 30, 2020 Author Share Posted January 30, 2020 (edited) 52: X-Men: Dark Phoenix Clearly Not as good as the previous X-Men films (some of which have been really great). The villains were of the forgettable one note kind. Not her fault, but anyone could have played Jessica chastain’s part. The conflict between Xavier and Mystique should have been fleshed out, but was instead left paper thin. The dialogue for the whole film is unimaginative and lazy, making even the main story with Jean and Xavier, which isn’t inherently bad, feel bland. The action is decent enough but that isn’t enough to save this disappointing and forgettable film. Edited January 30, 2020 by Tower 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tower Posted January 30, 2020 Author Share Posted January 30, 2020 (edited) 51- Detective Pikachu Some people did come out well from this film. The original people who came up with the Pokemon idea since the world still works, The special effects people who did a good job of bringing the world to life, and Ryan Reynolds who is funny as Pikachu. Everything else though was bad. The main guy is a non-entity who is on screen a lot, but doesn’t really do much. The film is called Detective Pikachu, but neither Pikachu nor the main guy do almost any detective work, new information to move the plot forwards just gets told to them by either Clifford or the journalist. The dialogue is lazy and is often about repeating to us what we already saw. There are plenty of stupid parts, but the ending is particularly egregious. You know those old Bond films where the villain tells Bond his whole plan and then leaves him to die in some elaborate way that were being parodied by Austin Powers twenty years ago? This film takes that formula and quadruples down on it. He still explains his whole plan, but instead of having some imaginative way of disposing with the good guy, he replaces it with absolutely nothing even though the big weakness in his plan is that it requires that no one take that link thing off his face while he’s Mewtwo. Instead of the plan he just leaves him there by himself where he could just get up and walk over to his body and sever the link while he’s giving his speech. The film is somewhat entertaining in a dumb turn off your brain kind of way, but it’s a wasted opportunity to do something good with this franchise. Edited January 30, 2020 by Tower 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tower Posted January 30, 2020 Author Share Posted January 30, 2020 50- Pain And Glory Competently made with regards to acting and dialogue and the like, but I probably shouldn’t even try seeing this because even well crafted it still wasn’t interesting enough. The whole film is filled with reminiscing about relationships that didn’t go well, and a not terribly eventful childhood, leading the film to just flow along without leaving me in wonder of what will happen next or how it will end. I found the best part of the film to be with the actor because things were happening in the moment and not just about what happened 30 years ago. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tower Posted January 30, 2020 Author Share Posted January 30, 2020 (edited) 49-Captive State The IMDB description says that “Captive State explores the lives on both sides of the conflict - the collaborators and dissidents”, and I really wish it did this because that sounds interesting. Unfortunately that part isn’t really in this film. Instead we have a much more standard thriller that happens to involve aliens. For Sci-Fi films like this it’s crucial that they do a good job of building world that makes sense and guides the story. This exactly the part where this films fails. We don’t get to see much about the effects of the occupation on society, and we are shown nothing about the collaborators. You could see how little thought went into this world with how the press are shown. In one scene you see that everything has to go through a censor, indicating an authoritarian police state. In another you have a bunch of journalists asking embarrassing questions from the leadership. It just doesn’t make sense. The first half has a lot of people walking into some building and meeting some person for 10 seconds and moving on without the scene feeling necessary, a lot of this could have been replaced with setting up the world and character development. The second half is better, not amazing, but a pretty decent thriller, with a proper story. Edited January 30, 2020 by Tower 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tower Posted January 30, 2020 Author Share Posted January 30, 2020 (edited) 48- The Farewell The very accurate IMDB synopsis says this: “A Chinese family discovers their grandmother has only a short while left to live and decide to keep her in the dark, scheduling a wedding to gather before she dies.” For some films the synopsis is how the film starts, with the story continuing from there. Not this film though, here the synopsis is basically the entire story, stretching the film by rehashing the same thing over and over again. Billie arguing with one family member that they should tell their grandmother... Billie arguing with another family member that they should tell her... Billie arguing with a doctor that they should tell her... The whole thing just got more tedious each time. There were some positives: The soundtrack was nice, there were some moments of culture clash between east and west, and the acting was good. But the overall result is too boring to rate it any higher. Edited January 30, 2020 by Tower 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tower Posted January 30, 2020 Author Share Posted January 30, 2020 47- Toy Story 4 Not much to say about this, it had some of the things that were good about the previous films with Woody and Buzz and some Toy action scenes, and it obviously looks as good as ever. However, Sporky was mostly annoying, and the film never felt like it justified its existence the way the other films did. Don’t know if it’s a change with me or the film, but I never really connected with this film the way I did with the other Toy Stories. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tower Posted January 30, 2020 Author Share Posted January 30, 2020 (edited) 46- Captain Marvel The basic story is fine (although she switched way to easily into liking the Skrull) and the movie progressed in a way that wasn’t boring, which combined with the usual action was enough to not be a bad film. But the movie has a major flaw, and that’s the title character. Captain Marvel is the most bland superhero I have seen. Brie is a talented actor (she is great in the Room) but here she delivered such an incredibly generic performance here, that I feel like basically any actor could have done. Other than that, this movie just didn’t feel noteworthy, not the soundtrack not the visuals not the action and not the humour. And the prequelly parts just feel like setting up more important things to come. Edited January 30, 2020 by Tower 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tower Posted January 30, 2020 Author Share Posted January 30, 2020 45- Glass Unbreakable had this cool new take on the superhero story that made it so good. Unfortunately, Glass’s story is really just a variation on the basic X-Men story, which means that the big reveal at the end just feels like a “been there, done that”. While I think the story is decent enough, it still ends up as a superhero film without impressive action which instead has some really boring scenes in a psychiatric hospital that went on for far too long. Really liked Mister Glass, but David Dunn feels underutilised after being so good in unbreakable. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tower Posted January 30, 2020 Author Share Posted January 30, 2020 44- Hustlers I actually think that there’s an interesting story here, I just wish it was told in a better way. The director is apparently allergic to having a scene just play out and flow into another scene, instead it keep interrupting it with annoying voice overs and a pointless interview. Most of the interview parts added no new information, and most of the voice overs could have either been cut out entirely, or been replaced with an actual scene with dialogue. For example, at one point usher shows up so the club plays his music, so we get a voice over saying “the DJ put Usher’s music on” we know this already and have just seen this happen on screen, I don’t need a voice to explain what I just saw. The film is filled with this kind of crap. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tower Posted January 30, 2020 Author Share Posted January 30, 2020 (edited) 43-The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part This movie has a decent story and isn’t boring, even if it doesn’t reach the level of the original. Unfortunately, a lot of the humour doesn’t work, and the twist is the kind that doesn’t really make sense if you look back at what happened in the film up to that point. This would be more of a problem if the film was a more serious one, but even here it could have been handled better. Edited January 30, 2020 by Tower 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tower Posted January 30, 2020 Author Share Posted January 30, 2020 (edited) 42-The Red Sea Diving Resort A very Hollywoodised version of the story. They managed to get Captain America in it so the whole film has to revolve around his character, to the detriment of the film. The actual story of the Ethiopian Jews making these long and perilous walks isn’t shown so they just end up as mostly props. The Mossad higher ups also come off as one note idiots, getting angry at Captain America’s ideas but going along with him anyway for no apparent reason. Having said all that, I wasn’t bored, and while the film was very cliche, it wasn’t badly made cliche, and the story that was told was interesting enough. Edited January 30, 2020 by Tower 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tower Posted January 30, 2020 Author Share Posted January 30, 2020 41- Late Night I thought Emma Thompson was clearly the standout here and made everything around her better. Didn’t care much for any of the other characters, Mindy was good when she was doing comedy, but I didn’t find her character interesting and everyone else were forgettable. It was a decently told cliche story that didn’t break new ground. It’s more of a drama, but its comedic parts are actually the better part. The Story does meander a bit, but the good parts make it worth watching. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tower Posted January 30, 2020 Author Share Posted January 30, 2020 40- Zombieland: Double Tap I had a good enough time watching this film, the style works, the rules (and commandments) still work, and it has some good comedy action. The actual story is pretty bad though. It’s basically just about finding Little Rock, so they make a couple of stops before they find her, have a final battle with zombies, and then leave together, without actually resolving any problem that led to her leaving in the first place. They introduce the new and upgraded version of zombies, after which those zombies just go back to being the same as regular ones. The Columbus Wichita love story doesn’t work at all, probably because Emma Stone was sleepwalking through this (what a change from the Favourite). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
