I'm making the most definitive list of favorite movies ever.
For every year, I'm listing every movie I've seen and compare them all to each other asking one question; Which movie do I like more. Movies that score in the 80th percentile or higher, advance to the next round: Favorite of the Decade. After each Decade is done, an All Time list will be formed.
Ah-hem, Now on to my "BEST" of the year Bullshit! So I was just reading Massawyrm's "Best of 2008" List on AICN. And the BEST movie of the year on his list is Frost/ Nixon. And that does look to be a kick ass movie, and I can't wait to see it. But... Unlike all these other BEST of whatever year lists, Massawyrm mentions, that his favorite movie of the year is Kung-Fu Panda! Because its fun. Wait, you think Wall-E and Dark Knight and Slumdog millionare are better movies than a movie you like MORE? I suspect all these other listeers are doing the same thing. Why would your favorite movie not be the best one of the year. If Frost-Nixon, is BETTER than Kung-Fu Panda, why don't you enjoy it more? Now, I know we all enjoy some movies that are complete piles of crap. One friend of mine KNOWS Little Nicky is a pile of Crap, and knows that to HIM, it's good! A Best list is from the author's point of view. Such as with my list below, I feel Mongol is a BETTER movie than Wanted, but not by much, I know I like Wanted a little more than Mongol, and Wanted did end up with a higher score than Mongol. Let me try to boil this down some.... If you don't LIKE a movie, it won't make your BEST list. If you LOVE a movie you're likely to argue that it's the best anyway! I do think 2008 is a "One Droid to Rule them all." kind of year. Wall-E is the BEST movie of the year to me, it's also my favorite of the year. Generally you're going to like what you think is good, and not like what you think is bad... Aw Fuck, just pop in the Criterion Armageddon DVD and listen to Ben Affleck go on about "Best"... So, as of 2008, so far, I still need to see Momma Mia, and Eagle Eye, the Best Picture nomoniee's, then I need to HATE any movie on that list Not ending in a hyphenated "E". Just kidding. I grew out of that... I think. Kinda. I broke down in 2008 and finnially watched Annie Hall. I liked it. It's good. But it wasn't better than Star Wars. When I redo my all time list, Wall-E may even threaten Colossus: The Forbin Project. But I've yet to see a movie that beats The Original Trilogy.
But, this is just '08, and with all the movies I've yet to see, I am sure of one thing, the number one slot safely belongs to the droid that gives me bits of;
I am Legend: He's the Last man on Earth...
Fight Club: He's a lone iconoclast causing people to question their day to day monotony
Titanic: two young lovers on the best ship in the world.
Star Wars / Droids with Ben Burtian personality!
Silent Running: The droid design
2001 /2010 / Colossus / Macross Plus: Auto, welcom to the pantheon. Dr. Charles Forbin is in the chamber of Hell reserved for Dr. Frankenstein and his ilk since Colossus didn't have an off switch.
Phantom of the Opera: Well not in theme, but you do open with Michael Crawford singing!
You're probably a nice number more, you little scamp, so here's your list, it should be your year, next year belongs to a different set of robots... or Captain Kirk, and if not either, I'm going to be pissed. Oh, only one red title so far... why? My hate for Semi-pro is so far from the special Hell deserved by the Happening, relatively, I like every movie but the Happening. Fuck there's the BEST of 2008 list EVERY MOVIE EXCEPT THE HAPPENING! You all get Oscars, leave M Night alone in his seat...
WALL-E
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Iron Man
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Quantum of Solace
Kung Fu Panda
Wanted
Mongol
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
The Incredible Hulk
Hancock
Journey to the Center of the Earth
The Spiderwick Chronicles
Cloverfield
Get Smart
Speed Racer
The Day the Earth Stood Still
The Forbidden Kingdom
Tropic Thunder
The Dark Knight
Step Brothers
10,000 B.C.
W.
The Spirit
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
The Love Guru
Space Chimps
Jumper
Meet the Spartans
Semi-Pro
The Happening
The Happening did make $64.5 Million. Maybe he should get the Oscar. I may have bitched that Dark Knight was overrated, but it was good enough to make bank! The Happening should have had the same fate as Extreme Movie, or at most Delgo! It's people staring at TREES! For two FUCKING HOURS, People run from and react to TREES. We all know "Spielberg does the same thing!" No. He does give us bits of seeing a shark or Dinosaur or UFO or Tom Cruise, BUT We're sitting there, looking at those people thinking, YEA, I'd feel that way seeing a shark or dinosaur or UFO or Tom Cruise.... NOT TREES! I'd say M Night needs to be Go-4'd but, if we're so STUPID as to give 64 MILLION to his movies. We might deserve him...
Andrew Stanton makes a movie about robot on robot love, and his movie gets branded as a tree huggin liberal by Fox news, but the Happening, a movie from Fox, about Tree's killing humans in retilation for human development makes 64 million. Fuck.
I've seen so many movies from this year, Finding Nemo doesn't make the cut to advance to the All-time list, and Matrix revolutions isn't sitting at the bottom! Even Hulk and Matrix 2 manage to stay out of the red, In second place; with nineteen words and two colons between their titles, one compared to... scratch that one WAS Star Wars on water and the other is Star Trek. There must have been something about boats that year. What an awesome pair, and a number of other good movies too, but the TOP spot, was a movie that for some reason, didn't make the list of even having been seen when I first compiled it, then, I'm working on 2002 and I see Two Towers, and think, wait, No! If Two Towers even exists in 2002, then 2003 BELONGED to only one movie, and it bows to NO ONE.
Return of the King
TIE: Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
TIE: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
X2: X-Men United
Underworld
Zatoichi (The Blind Swordsman)
Lost in Translation
The Corporation
Fog of War
Big Fish
Kill Bill Vol. 1
Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas
City of God
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Basic
Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S.
Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life
The Core
Bulletproof Monk
Kaena: The Prophecy
Runaway Jury
Timeline
Frank Herbert's Children of Dune
Finding Nemo
Looney Tunes: Back in Action
Bend It Like Beckham
The Last Samurai
The Medallion
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
Freddy vs. Jason
Tokyo Godfathers
Peter Pan
Scary Movie 3
The Triplets of Belleville
Final Destination 2
Spy Kids 3D: Game Over
The Italian Job
Wonderful Days
Once Upon a Time in Mexico
The Recruit
Phone Booth
Shanghai Knights
The Haunted Mansion
Down with Love
S.W.A.T.
School of Rock
Daredevil
Mystic River
Matchstick Men
Shattered Glass
The Matrix Reloaded
Hulk
Seabiscuit
Anger Management
The Dreamers
Freaky Friday
Ju-on: The Grudge
Paycheck
28 Days Later
American Splendor
Bruce Almighty
Cold Mountain
Rugrats Go Wild!
Old School
Elf
Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle
The Matrix Revolutions
The Cooler
Bad Boys II
Gigli
Thirteen
The Cat in the Hat
Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd
Cabin Fever
Dreamcatcher
Legend: Onto the next Round! In the middle. I do NOT enjoy.
Everything I was about to say just flew out of my ass when I went to grab a poster of this movie. Look at that thing! The red title and the color scheme are from "300"! The other posters look like Sin City. Impawards has the posters, look at all three movies. The Movie Blog was pretty hard on this movie's marketing, and it becomes only more and more clear as to why.
Anyway, I love Frank Miller, well his work and career at least, I only wish I knew him personally, I've never met him, but I've listened to him speak at conventions several times.
I almost don't want to put my thoughts down. Something did go wrong here, and I'm gonna buy the fattest special edition this movie has to offer to figure out why. Lets move on...
Frank, we've been reading that you're going to do Buck Rogers. Are you going to do Buck in this Sin-City look? Part of me says please don't, but I must admit, I'm curious to see it. It might be fresh. But please... editing... This thing was cut like a power point presentation, it felt like someone was holding my head while reading a book! Oh, and sound. Nothing technical was up to the visuals, and a movie can't just ride on one engine.
Please, hit Buck Rogers out of the park. We're rooting for you!
Okay, Peter Jackson remade King Kong, Tim Burton re-imagined Planet of the Apes and Someone monkeyed around to call this movie Day the Earth Stood Still.
Why is Keanu called Klatuu? He's a MUCH different character (More like Neo, only doing things with his superpowers instead of being a useless lump for two money and time wasting sequels) So, like a `90's Godzilla, he's Klatuu in name only.
Was Prof Barnhart relevant? He's in one scene.
And, I know I was one among many who hated the very idea of Gort being absent from the movie, but... Gort did not belong in this movie. His intro effects scream of being a late stage change in the production. If Klatuu's actual form would only frighten us, why does Gort have the meaty hands of a human, is that all the more alien you guys look? I doubt it. Lots of movies should sometimes cave to the fanboys, but now mistakes are being made by doing this (Gambit in Wolverine's origin of all places.).
I've been saying Gort this whole time, this pile calls him; G.O.R.T.... It stands for something... (behold my wikiknowledge) Genetically Organized Robotic Technology! Seriously, donate a buck a year to Wikipedia, they're a great resource for all this useless knowledge that keeps us from mass suicide do to culture-wide boredom.
BUT, In the theater, GORT in the silo thingy... Awesome visual. See I said something nice, but onto flaying this movie.
The President she works for must be the biggest dick and the dumbest loser in the universe. Aliens land, and he sends the Secretary of Defense. WAIT. You may be thinking, that was the same situation as in Transformers, but it isn't. In Transfomers a helicopter lands at a military base, shoots the hell out of the place, and then in short order goes after Air-Force One. That's safely in the hands of the SECDEF. But Klatuu, he asks to talk, even after having been shot. He ASKS TO TALK, and one of the dumbest character in the history of film says no. Way to kill the human race bitch!
She has the silliest line of the year. After multiple montages of mass evacuations and stock market crashes, the works. Kathy Bates says; "We don't want to start a panic."
I could go on and on... I'm bored bitching up this shit-fest, and I'll probably on my end of year list, say it's better than the Dark Knight... shit the commandments.. Sorry Dark Knight, can you forgive me Dark Knight? I'll say three Hail Rachel Dawes and pray the Utility Belt before I go to bed.
A few last thoughts on a movie I've been excessively hard on; If we throw out the names of the characters, it bears about as much resemblence to the original movie as E.T. did. The title does fit, and there are some good visuals of Gort.
I'd love this movie, but my wife thinks I hated it. I needed a Tums afterward. I really would love to be able to get past your wretched title, and the meaningless few minutes... minutes of crap and name service... that A) are the only things connecting it to the original, and B) made this movie crap, aside from Jr. I'm not going to bitch about Jaden Smith, he's 10 I'd rather bitch about what the adults were responsible for, like writing the most obnoxious kid since a problem child movie. I wanted Keanu to kick him off that little bridge. It was for the most part... kinda decent until I thought about it. This one just bugged me, especially with so many characters being really boneheaded, all the while it has some weird corporate assigned identity of being a remake of a movie that it's so barely connected to.
So, mostly I'm pissed at the wasted opportunity here. Remaking The Day the Earth Stood still could have been something very special. Whatever this movie was in the heads of the filmmakers, could have been too! But the amalgamation of those two ideas will befuddle me for a long time.
Why did I rent two comedies? Is Judd Apatow the producer of EVERY comedy in Hollywood, are they just the ones that get released... I just don't get it, but I'm not that into comedy movies. I can't watch them, usually EVER again since it's very rare that I'll find it funny again. Some things work for me, and I can laugh over and over, and some don't. Most movies don't. Especially romantic comedies. I usually HATE romantic comedy. They're almost always the exact same movie. Anyway, I'm not trying to bash on comedy here, they're... movies I don't OWN. Renting and comedy were made for each other, they're too bland for a big screen experience, and not rewatchable enough to own. Lets see, Do I even own any comedy? Does Arsenic and Old Lace count? The H2G2 TV series, and Happy Tree Friends... Action comedies like Rush Hour don't count either. Anyway, I'm bored, rambling and don't even care. Step-Brothers: It's a comedy, and I laughed a lot. Kudo's for the Wookie masks and Heavy Metal poster. Forgetting Sarah Marshall: I LOVE YOU! You were terreffic, written by human beings, instead of assembled from 10 year old color coded pages and assembled by chimpanzees*. Oh, since I saw that Cujofn knows of this blogs exestence... If you saw this movie, wasn't the main character Jace? Well, Jace with my affection for the Muppets. So, yea! Thatnk you people who made Sarah Marshall!
*Tangent: Not in either of these movies, but something I saw recently, I honestly forget what it was, it was on TV, and it wasn't old... It had wierd cell phone related dialouge. The guy had a little modern phone, but was talking about it like it was... special. Not iPhone special. No, the dialouge was in the vein of 'It's 1995 and I have a cell phone!' special. I know scripts sit around, many times for years, but that needed a re-write... BADLY.
2008 has been dominated by talk of Christian Bale as a winged force for good in a near perfect movie, and that perfectly describes a movie I do love so dearly. 2004 gives us the longest list yet... As usual, the blue means they're in the running for "Favorites of the decade", a semi final before favorite ever, and Red means 'I guess I just don't like you very much.' Blue movies score in the 80th percentile in their year... At the time I had a lot of love for Spider-man 2, but Spider-man doesn't age as well and some movies with better sequels. The big personal surprises is how much I do like Ella Enchanted, Anne Hathaway, Cary Elwes... gobs of effects, it makes fun of fairy tales, F*ck it even has Eric Idle and Queen and Elton John covers. 49% on Rotten tomatoes can kiss my... Oh well.
Howl's Moving Castle
The Incredibles
Hellboy
Ella Enchanted
Spider-Man 2
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Godzilla Final Wars
I, Robot
The Aviator
The Phantom of the Opera
Collateral
The Chronicles of Riddick
National Treasure
House of Flying Daggers
Team America: World Police
Alien vs. Predator
Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid
Hero (Jet-Li)
Kinsey
Welcome to Mooseport
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle
Steamboy
The Terminal
Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence
Jersey Girl
The Day After Tomorrow
The Girl Next Door
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
Bride and Prejudice
Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed
Dawn of the Dead
Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed
Mindhunters
Shaun of the Dead
Night Watch
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
Saved!
Million Dollar Baby
Starsky & Hutch
Kill Bill Vol. 2
The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie
Troy
The Punisher (T Jane)
EuroTrip
Garfield: The Movie
50 First Dates
Laws of Attraction
Meet the Fockers
King Arthur
13 Going on 30
The Butterfly Effect
The Stepford Wives
Van Helsing
Blade: Trinity
Resident Evil: Apocalypse
Shrek 2
The Manchurian Candidate
Closer
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Shark Tale
Saw
The Grudge
Fahrenheit 9/11
The Village
Catwoman
The Whole Ten Yards
Alexander
Super Size Me
Unleashed (aka Danny the Dog)
What the #$*! Do We Know?!
Legend: Onto the next Round! In the middle. I do NOT enjoy.
The horrible part of 2004 was what passed for documentaries. I went to see Fahrenheit 9/11 in the theater. I even bought "Dude Where's my country." A chapter in that book really chapped my ass. Michael Moore, in one chapter rails against the Horatio Alger myth. For a guy who's worth, millions, one website has him worth 50 million, but they hate him... Anyway, even if he's worth 10%... he could by my family as slaves. I'm glad he's enjoyed that kind of success, and it makes him the last person in the world to say it can't happen. Then we got that anti-McDonalds docu-mercial tripe. See, we all know fast food is bad for us. But, when you and your anti-meat girlfriend are picking on the burger place... it seems a little wrong. Both of these one viewing ever wonders though pale .. PALE next to the WORST MOVIE EVER. Wait, it's NOT A MOVIE. It's... something, it has video and audio, and that's about it. It certainly isn't a documentary... What the Bleep advertises itself as some quantum physics documentary, and is an advertisement for some Ramtha religion. It shouldn't even be on this list. It disgraces everything it touches. You want to sell me on Ranthma, take it from the door to door guys; Offer a flyer, say "Would you like to know more about Ranthma?" and then go on your way. Misrepresenting your movie and me paying $5 at Blockbuster is WRONG!!! Put your message on Youtube, Voeh but don't make me pay FIVE DOLLARS expecting something that wasn't AN AD! What the BLEEP indeed, to paraphrase Kieth Olbermann; What the Bleep, 2004's WORST MOVIE IN THE WORLD!!!!"
I'm going to probably continue this series of posts until I run out of movies... On New Years Eve, 2004, I popped in the DVD of the original Transformers the movie, timed for Victor Caroli to say at the stroke of midnight "It is the year 2005..." But, I know everyone did that. If you think it "loserish", well... WTF am I supposed to do on New Years, my wife's usually asleep by 10, the kids are away at the grandparents... so eh, WTH. As for the list, There was never any doubt. See, these list surprise even me. Happy Feet was a surprise. Each movie goes head to head with every other movie in a spreadsheet. point totals are turned into percentiles and voilà movies emerge at the top. Some years are a race for second or third. Colossus: The Forbin Project WILL top 1970, probably followed by Patton, but I won't get ahead of myself, since the past in retrospect is further ahead, the farther back you look. Anyway, this was a year with a Star Wars movie, and it wasn't 1999... that one will be interesting since... Um... I DO enjoy and love the Phantom Meanace, but 99 is a HEAVY year. I came up with 50 movies though for 2005, and Disney's botched H2G2 didn't bottom the list. Blue is coming to mean, will be in the running for All time fav... Red is, I don't like you.
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
TIE: Serenity
TIE: Good Night, and Good Luck.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Mr. & Mrs. Smith
Batman Begins
Kingdom of Heaven
Constantine
Syriana
March of the Penguins
Sin City
Memoirs of a Geisha
War of the Worlds
King Kong
Fantastic Four
Chicken Little
Corpse Bride
Walk the Line
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Kung Fu Hustle
The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3D
Lord of War
The Island
Mysterious Island
Aeon Flux
Madagascar
Sky High
MirrorMask
The Aristocrats
The 40-Year-Old Virgin
Flightplan
Fever Pitch
Stealth
Doom
Sahara
Rent
Zathura
Hoodwinked
Robots
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Wedding Crashers
The Ring Two
Saw II
The Dukes of Hazzard
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds
Son of the Mask
TIE: Monster-in-Law
TIE: A Sound of Thunder
Legend: Onto the next Round! In the middle. I do NOT enjoy.
See, I learned there are worse things then majorly raping Douglas Adams, and they were seriously devestating Ray Bradbury, mixing J-Lo with Jane Fonda, and other really bad movies.
Looking back on a year of movies where... screw that, cutting to the meat... FOUR way tie and one of them is HAPPY FEET. FUCKING HAPPY FEET!!! Well... In a word... Yes. Given the choice of who do I like more... Bond, V, Supes or those itty bitty cutesy oh so adorable penguins... I... I CAN'T choose just one of those movies!!! Maybe a different lineup will give them some space on an all time list. Happy Feet won't fare as well against the Lion King as Casino Royale will. But in 2006, I discover their were four deserving of the crown, and a Crown, I realised a lot of love for (Number 6, tied with Children of Men.) Making a list of the top of my head, I would have never listed that movie... But it was really kick ass, and very touching and comfortable... An all around great movie.
TIE Superman Returns
TIE Happy Feet
TIE Casino Royale
TIE V for Vendetta
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
TIE for 6th: The Queen
TIE for 6th Children of Men
TIE for 8th Underworld: Evolution
TIE for 8th Zoom
An Inconvenient Truth
The Departed
The Good Shepherd
Night at the Museum
Monster House
Snakes on a Plane
Mission: Impossible III
Curious George
Eragon
Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties
Cars
Pan's Labyrinth
Man of the Year
Ultraviolet
Final Destination 3
Over the Hedge
Borat
The Da Vinci Code
Scary Movie 4
Flyboys
Open Season
The Prestige
X-Men: The Last Stand
Silent Hill
Nacho Libre
Charlotte's Web (2006)
The Sentinel
United 93
Talladega Nights:
Stranger Than Fiction
World Trade Center
Lady in the Water
Saw III
Clerks II
Legend: Onto the next Round! In the middle. I do NOT enjoy.
I meant to do this a long while ago, but, I'll be honest, I'd do these charts by hand, I just learned over the summer how to do them in a spreadsheet... and now I'm addicted to Excel.
This is not a BEST list... There are great movies that I never want to see again. Too many movies to give it a second viewing, so, like on this list, movies like that suffer. Juno, while a darn good film, is punished by the fact that channel flipping is more appealing than rewatching Juno. One of the things that motivates me to make more of these lists is that it could save me lots of money, since the things towards the top of these lists oddly line up with being DVD's I watch again and again, and 80% of my DVD collection is this pile of aluminum and polycarbonate discs that occupy cases that do little more than accumulate dust. By my guess, lists like this could prevent my from having another 200-300 DVD dustcatchers. Sure, there's some I never watch but love having; thinking of Master and Commander there, just for that mood of wanting it on tap. But, I'm never watching American Beauty in my life, ever again. At this moment, looking forward, if I had all of the infinate future of the univers before me, I'd never watch American Beauty ever again. If you just thought" It won best picture..." Look in the $5 bin of DVD's at Wal-Mart right now. You can find all sorts of Best Picture noms and winners. That award is almost so detached from the art form in some cases in recent years it's very revalance is questionable. Well, maybe Wall-E will win this year. As for 2007... I thought that the Oscar winning No Country for Old Men was my most hated movie.. nope, not it of Spiderman 3... I learned what movie I hated the most last night... and I hadn't thought about the movie between turing it off, and last night. Onto the list:
Stardust
300
Transformers
The Man From Earth
Meet the Robinsons
Charlie Wilson's War
Aliens Vs. Predator - Requiem
Balls of Fury
Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
Enchanted
3:10 to Yuma (2007)
TMNT
The Golden Compass
TIE Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
TIE Hitman
Ghost Rider
Surf's Up
The Last Mimzy
Pathfinder: Legend of the Ghost Warrior
Michael Clayton
TIE Beowulf
TIE Resident Evil: Extinction
TIE Next
The Astronaut Farmer
The Mist
Dragon Wars
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
TIE 30 Days of Night
TIE Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
TIE I Am Legend
TIE The Kingdom. From here down, I probably just don't like you... or just never need to see you EVER again.
Lions for Lambs
Underdog
Alvin and the Chipmunks
Juno
TIE Ratatouille
TIE Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
TIE Across the Universe
Knocked Up
The Simpsons Movie
Live Free or Die Hard
Fred Claus
Epic Movie
Blades of Glory
Spider-Man 3
Shrek the Third
TIE Rush Hour 3
TIE Bridge to Terabithia
The Brave One
No Country for Old Men
Superbad
28 Weeks Later
Legend: Onto the next Round! In the middle. I do NOT enjoy.
The top four movies that came up at the top of this list, I noticed, I'd place their poster art in this blog's banner... Well, I guess I proved to me what I like.
Okay, okay, I know the 10 commandments... I) There is no greater movie than The Dark Knight, thou shall not place any other movie before he. II) Thou may only purchase officially licensed Dark Knight products, and may not have licensed products of any other movie. III) Do not use the name The Dark Knight in vain. IV) Keep The Dark Knight's theatrical opening days and DVD release dates holy. V) Honor Batman Begins and purchase it on DVD or Blue Ray if you have not done so already. VI) Thall shall not kill. VII) Thall shall not view any other movie. VIII) Thall shall not steal the Dark Knight. IX) Thall shall not disparage The Dark Knight to others. X) Thall WILL Covet the Dark Knight.
Okay, VI and VIII I definitely agree with, but I rented it, so... where is that... that's like paying to borrow. But, I'll try, TRY to heed The Dark Knight's mighty word. But, in the spirit of full disclosure, I'm still a Dark Knight skeptic. On my way to being a Dark Knight atheist. Was there a cup of cool-aide I missed? Right, heed the commandments.... okay, I will. But... I have some questions.
1) After Batman dives out the window for Racheal, how is it that the ever to this point meticulous Joker and his squad fail to notice the long bar closing two doors. It's in the hallway right there, like not 20 feet from him. For those that would argue the distance or visibility of the closet, I'll cede that point, but it still doesn't answer why they don't search every room on at least that level. The Joker has a Hans Gruber like control of that situation, and Harvey Dent is trapped...
2) If Batman has a plan to capture the Joker with the Deus Ex Machina phone gadget, why is he going to burn all that crap and surrender. It's all locked up shut down, but then he's more Bat-suits on tap...
3) Why didn't Gordon or Batman TELL Two-face that they wanted to save her, not his ass...
4) Where was the Leauge of Shadows in this movie? Where was the rest of Gotham?
I gave it a second chance. I'll wind up watching it again probaly with the rest of the family. So, I love how well this movie is shot, I do. Chicago looks BEAUTIFUL. The music's good, there's good dialouge. But I'm not converted. I've not a drop more love or even liking to give this overzealously overexalted movie. It's more GTA than Batman. I don't care for GTA at all.
I have zero aspirations of ever being a film critic. Blogging has killed criticism, and unfortunately left us with a droning homogenized mass herd of one note ideas... like the company created opinion of the Dark Knight. WB did the most amazing job creating this unquestioned love for a movie people hadn't seen! ... Ya, The Dark Knight DVD is looming, and I want to see it again. I want to hate it... I think. The Dark Knight is such an overrated pile of poo... Pile of Pooh. The Dark Knight takes bags of Pooh stuffies and rips their heads off poos in them and piles up the Poohs. I like Pooh. Is Pooh Disney? Are there multiple Pooh. Like, Pooh was written by someone else, and then Disney took hold of it... Like Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. I LOVE H2G2! But not their version. they destroyed it. I guess if you hadn't read the books or were familiar with it in any way prior it wasn't AS bad. Well, this bit of typing is a waste of time, since I don't really care to acknowledge whatever movie I'm supposed to be mentioning...
Oh, I did see a good movie! Hello... I just may love you. A cornflower blue tie from Fight Club, CHECK, Red Stapler ala OfficeSpace, Check! Gun-fu mixing it up with a chosen one constituting a remake of The Matrix, You it's there. Add a bit of Star Wars and it's like a Best movies of 1999 Mix Tape. Well, okay the pinch of Star Wars isn't of the 1999 vintage, it may be of an earlier vintage.
You... You may prompt a best of the Year so far list...
Where did you rank?
Well, I did a spreadsheet comparing each movie to every other movie I've seen this year, and Currently....
Wanted comes in fourth place.
WALL-E
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Iron Man
Wanted
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Quantum of Solace
Mongol
Kung Fu Panda
The Incredible Hulk
Hancock
Journey to the Center of the Earth
The Spiderwick Chronicles
Cloverfield
Get Smart
TIE: Speed Racer / Dark Knight
TIE Speed Racer / The Dark Knight
The Forbidden Kingdom
Tropic Thunder
W.
10,000 B.C.
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
The Love Guru
Meet the Spartans
Jumper
Semi-Pro
The Happening (This movie is guaranteed to be at the bottom, no matter how many movie I see... Ever. Battlefield Earth has company in movie Hell.)
Hadn't used this thing in awhile... Why? Eh, probably election coverage addiction. I'm over it. OMG, the election was exactly 28 days ago! I kid you not, I just kicked the Chris Matthews habit yesterday, deleted Hardball from the DVR... the season is OVER. Savage Dragon and Tina Fey WON, and I couldn't be happier. Plus we learned that all the candidates were Skrulls.
We did rent some movies in that time. Scorpion King 2: I... (Sorry honey, I fell asleep) Spiderwick Chronicles: Wow, a family fantasy that didn't suck.... Yea. Seriously I like you, you're faring well here. Mongol: Terrific. SEQUEL!!!! MORE!!! The Love Guru: Underrated. Seriously, I heard that this was the worst of the summer... Um... Nowhere close, since, I saw The Happening. This thing sucks BAD. Really. But Stephen Colbert is worth catching his parts on cable... They should have spent Love Guru money on a Tek Jansen movie. Forbiden Kingdom: I'm sorry I don't remember seeing you. I know we did, but.... THIS IS WHY I STARTED THIS BLOG! The Happening. Uwe Boll gets a bad rap. I never want to hear his name near the word "worst" ever again... Battlefield Earth had like one or two seconds of not sucking all the life out of your soul. I've never seen it, but I DOUBT Catwoman comes close. This is a real event. This MOVIE, is a miracle. Craps out, right out of the gate. It kills brain cells, space-time, personal integrety. Don't let this man anywhere NEAR Avatar the Last Airbender!!!!! Kung Fu Panda: Good enough to wash The Happening out of your pants! Kung Fu Panda Secrets of the Furious Five: A short that was worth the extra buck. Seriously. 20minutes, and it was worth the rent! Most of this list can't say that! Like this NEXT piece of GARBAGE...... Fred Clause: The GOOD: I fell asleep. The rhetorically WORSE THAN DEATH: I woke up. One of the worst movies ever made. Period. If you loved Vince Vaughn in Swingers, then you'll want to bury your copy of Swingers in the back yard after this. I'm some new species of stupid for admitting to rent this. You could edit this and The Happening and the Love Guru all together, at random, and have a better movie than all three! BUT: Kevin Spacey, esp. in the Superman cape, keeps this garbage from being anywhere near The Happening. BTW... Whe we watched the deleted scenes... there's a really.... REALLY long one, that would have had the movie make a skoosh more sense. Channel flipping would still have more of a plot.... Fuck... We've all seen Infomercials better than this!
Tommorow we're watching Prince Caspian.... My kids REFUSED to watch it. (I'm proud of them!)
Movie: Quantum of Solace Casino Royal became my favorite bond movie, after a lifetime of loving Bond movies. Maybe I expected too much. You're good. Lots of good moments. I'll end up owning you, but never wanting you. You're less of a Bond than your predecessor. BUT.... Big BUT here... BUT, Tosca (the opera scene) RULED THE BONDIVERSE. It is one of the best scenes EVER in a Bond movie. And, it, to me, destroyed the movie. After this scene, is where the next movie MUST pick up. If it does, then this movie is redeemed. There's only one oil slick after the Tosca scene worth seeing. I know I sound hard on this movie, but when the kid down the street gets an A-... YEA! Great for them. When YOUR kid, the kid you LOVE with all your heart gets an A-... It's time to get to work on fixing what went wrong. We can still get this Bond into a hollowed out volcano base and keep the feel of the series. Quantum kicks Spectre's behind! To re-apply the quote of the year (from SNL) "FIX IT!"
You had me at "Wild Space." Star Wars is a lifelong love, and to me, being taken back to the summer of '77 is to be taken back to a time when I couldn't reach anything, I was oft at peril to shit myself having newly acquired the skill of using a toilet, and was under constant pressure to engage in the activity of afternoon naps against my will. Sippie cups lacked widgets, and car seats were barely in use, much less luxuriously upholstered command chairs, with cup holders. Heck, most places I went in '77 I was in the front seat lap of an unbuckled passenger. My parents tried lies about Santa in winter and some Bunny in the spring, I had to ask for anything I wanted. Sure, I may have had a childlike sense of wonder and amazement about things, but that stemmed from ignorance. (I'll be ranting a great deal about ignorance here.)
A lifelong love doesn't need to take you back it needs to take the relationship forward. Sure, once in a while she can throw some pigtails in the hair and you can have a nostalgic night. But the whole relationship can't and should never be built on nostalgia. To those whose love of Star Wars is principally one of nostalgia, you got special editions, the old girl even had a boob job, so'd they be as firm as when you first met, and you whined bitched and complained. Well, she's finally taking this relationship forward in a mature and SERIOUS matter, a no holds bar animated series for all ages, like Avatar: The Last Airbender.
"It's directly for kids!!! That's not STAR WARS!!!!" Really. Go. Track down a VHS copy of From Star Wars to Jedi, a behind the scenes documentary from WAYYY Back in 1985. Or almost any interview with Mark Hamill. It's always been a kids franchise. The nature of kids properties has changed greatly, but, this is Star Wars, for OUR KIDS. Not US entirely. My son said of this movie as we were leaving the theater; "I want to watch this movie every day!"
The professional film critics seem to almost overwhelmingly hate it, for few given motivations, all with one common stripe; it's destination of television. That's compounded by it also being, Star Wars, and they've hated all of those until usually 3-5 years later. But, Clone Wars has the audacity to do something not done, that I can recall, launch a TV show in the movie theaters, weeks before the broadcast debut. Its an impostor in Movieland, and the critics are predictably trying to drive it out of town, less they become inundated with becoming Television critics. I'm sure it's bad enough that they have blogs and the rest of the web to compete with.
The Internet voices, have found Clone Wars unenjoyable. I'm sorry that they're not mature enough in this relationship to move forward. We appreciate that you're fans of how you felt sitting in your pumpkin seat. But, it's clear that you didn't LOVE Star Wars as much as you said you did. So much of this BACKLASH, is from prequel hating people who have never played the RPG, read any of the comic books*, or read any of the novels. Most of the blogosphericaly inclined were apparently wanting this to be a nostalgia fest. A movie not moving the relationship forward.
Harry Knowles said "From the beginning notes of “As Time Goes By” and the Warner Shield – it felt wrong." The Studio logo.... you begin damnation of a movie with the studio logo? Oh SHIT!!! Yes, bonus points can be scored with doing something nifty with a logo...The Matrix, Waterworld. These movies score some bonus points with logo alterations. Gee.. anything else Harry? Something about sloppy shots... "undoing all the awesome work that Genndy had done" Watch that toon much? So a crane shot traveling over the action as we scale a cliff, is so much cleaner in 2D? This makes the Genndimated series look lame in many regards. First off, Anakin doesn't have a ridiculous fighter customized to look like his pod racer, he's not the whiny piece of work that we continually suffered with and the Jedi lack powers that violate reason, more than even some of the worst offenses in comics.
What else is there, there's so much, I've been reediting this for a week or so... Not that anyone cares. The Jedi council forums are the only refuge for people who care for the BEST MOVIE of the YEAR... I kid, Recount is that, and Wall-E...
Oh... So, the near consensus on the net has been that Ahsoka Tano is Freakin Hannah Rock Damn Star Montana. Well, what are some character attributes of Hannah? She's a lying, ego driven, self obsessed, treacherous, two faced, manipulative young woman. Even though many of these charges against the little overexposed rock star character are exhibited and corrected within an episode, she is a character capable of these things manufactured to appeal to the fame obsessed vanity of tweenage girls. All other charges aside, she needs to feel the approval of millions of people and if she doesn't her frail ego will collapse. If Hannah Montana were force inclined and lived in the Star Wars galaxy, she'd be a Sith lord. She's worse that Palpatine! As a parent, I HATE most of the kids they throw on the screen. I wind up reminding my kids constantly how HORRIBLE these wastes of humanity are. That kids aren't supposed to behave like that, and that they're all horrible role models. Maybe I've seen to many Disney factory kids on TV, they're all self obsessed monsters. But, Ahsoka was a character I didn't mind my children seeing.
In defense of Ziro the Hutt The charges are, a homosexual, loudly adorned, Hutt that speaks basic (English to MANY of the websites...) First off. No Star Wars character speaks English. Not a one. They speak Basic. Basic, is the language that you watch Star Wars in. For me, it's English, for some it sounds like Spanish... It's alphabet is Aurebesh. We see it on monitors and displays... So, Ziro speaks Basic. We've never seen a Hutt on screen before a deep as possibly can be inside the core. We've seen them in the outer rim, where most residents speak Huttese. Now, with so FEW Hutts in this series, why do the residents of the Outer Rim, especially Tatooine, speak the Hutt language? Well, the Hutts run things out there. It's very wild west, and they... They're Gene Hackman in The Quick and the Dead. Wealthy in places where people will do anything for money, and immune to Jedi influence where Jedi are the closest hop to the law, Hutts have always had a prime position to run things out there. But, Coruscant is the wealthiest planet. There are to many people who can't be bought, and it's Jedi central. Ziro is trying to fit in by A) speaking Basic. WHEN IN ROME? and by... dressing the part. As for the flaming nature... Um... Hutts don't have girls and boys rooms to potty in, they have Hutt rooms, and Hutt parts. Hutts don't have to F-- themselves either, some actually choose to F-- other Hutts! So, Ziro, if ever sexually active with another Hutt, would be... well gay. So what? Captain Jack Harkness of torchwood would tap Ziro in a Corellian minute and Ziro would be begging for more! As far as ANY of this being "Unstarwarsy". Well, no one really bitched this storm up when Queen Jool first appeared in the Legacy comic series
Droid Slapstick. There's a line in Armegeddon; "Have you even seen Star Wars?" Sit. Watch Episode IV. Droid slapstick has been with us since the beginning. Droids in this universe think in non-linear, irrational ways. That's why the oil bath will "feel" good to 3PO. R2 and 3PO call each other names. They arguue and bicker... and even Battle Droids would need these irrational, non-linear thought patterns to process the abstract concepts of vauge tactical commands. Besides, it's just classic Starwarsyness.
Well, the box office numbers reflect that so much of the buzz, when you talked to people who don't spend huge chunks of their time online, was the misgiving that this movie would be on TV anyway, that it was the first few episodes. I imagine LOST or 24 would have similar box office malaise if they ran their season premiers in a theater, with the understanding in the minds of the audience that it would be shown on television regardless.
So, congratulations to the critical masses who hated this movie! For all of the writing and love being claimed for Star Wars, most of you haven't picked up a book, comic, RPG... Anything that required the use of HANDS! This movie wasn't for you. Please, HATE Star Wars, you mindless DROIDS. We don't serve your kind here.
If you hated Clone Wars: I sentence you to this. Press play. It's the WORST THING EVER
*By the way, if you've never read a comic book, of anything in your adult life, you're wasting your life away. Go, buy Watchmen or Sandman, or Bone, The Walking Dead, and QUIT WASTING your life. READ. Then, go to a local planetarium. Watch a few episodes of The Universe on History Channel. Okay, now there's about 100,000,000,000 galaxies with about 500,000,000,000 planets each in them, and we're never getting to any of them any time soon. We can look at them and wonder. And Star Wars, while not "scientifically accurate" or probably anywhere close to realistic, is a wonderful way to let the mind play on the playground of just how big and fascinating of a universe we may well live in.
So, my friend Robert calls me, wondering where my rant on this 'piece of shit' movie was... I misquote, he actually had much more colorful words and more creative phaseology, imagining what I would say than had I had anything at that point to say, but I NEEDED to do something else... and my family had... And I didn't call Robert back since I'd fallen asleep on the couch with my wife, right about time that absolutely all hope had flown out the window for the US Men's Gymnastics team grabbing gold had escaped reason. So, sorry Robert.
Huh. Oh, there's a poster... to the left... what do you say, AH Journey to the Center of the Earth in 3D!!!!! Yes, we had a pretty damn good time. So, Lemme rail on the sonnavabitch who was behind us, this numbfuck, was encouraging his cumstains of children to misbehave. It get's worse. Having a couple little cumstains that bring ruin to the world is nothing new in a movie theater... It's almost ALWAYS because the parents weren't clobbered by an English teacher when they were growing up so have no IDEA, no CONCEPT that the antonym to the word "YES"... Or that another option even exists.... No CONCEPT of the word..... "NO." Say it to your children often. Have fun saying it Say NO when you want it to be yes. Be driving, on the way TO MC DONALDS.... And when the tyke say... "Can we have McDonalds???" SAY NO! Mommy and I are still deciding on what we're having!!! But, it's not these two brats who were so exceptionally evil as to be noteworthy here.... BUT THE DAD WAS behaving worse than one of his children, just as bad as his favorite child. The father was behaving like a eight year old in PUBLIC! Jackass. So, when in public... Someone may rant about you. Not that anyone will know who you are... I could have made it up. Could have imagined it instead of watching the movie. Maybe. Maybe not.
Anyway, I don't know if this is actually a movie. My reptilian brain still lingering some control, you know the more primitive part of your brain, the part you had in the 80's, that wants to play with a Rubiks cube, Love cartoons, wants to eat cereal while sitting on pillows, thinks a perfect day can be spent in jammies playing Zelda with your stuffed animals by your side and nothing but a bag of Oreo's to sustain you in between grilled Cheese for lunch and someone ordering Dominoes for dinner.
That part of the brain. Yea, that said this wasn't a movie, but a theme park attraction without the stupid pneumatic gimble. So.... I likey.
This movie was good. It deserves a treat, (This has been inserted as penance for the HELL at the bottom of the next post)
Remember when Hershey's Syrup came in a can, and it'd sit in the refrigerator with those two triangular holes depressed into it at opposite ends of the top... sitting there, waiting. When your mother finally did make you a small cup of chocolate milk, it looked like your glass of milk was being given an oil change. Good times.
Heck, years and years after that, when we had a Sam's membership, RIGHT after they opened, Quick had to be opened with a can opener.
It's been a damn good summer of movies. I haven't hated a damn thing I saw in a theater. But, if I have to rank them, with my usual system, Each movie vs every other movie on the list, winner gets a point... If it's a tie, both movies get half a point...
Oh, yea, Hancock... Uh... Hancock... Guud... ugh! Seriously, it's good, but a bit of a letdown that almost every set piece was shown in the trailers. The trailers did nothing to ruin the movie, and kudos to that, but a we bit of post AVP syndrome. So a Hancock 2 might salve that over, but, if I don't get one, unlike AVP-R, I won't be heartbroken. Actually, given a choice between a Hancock 2 and a Res Evil 4 / Avp 3 double feature, I'll take the latter!
So the top 10 fo the Summer, that I've seen.... which oddly is 10 movies...
Wall-E. Perfect, and wonderful, may Pixar top this with John Carter of Mars!
(Tie) Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I remember trolling the shelves of bookstores and libraries for everything I could read about ancient astronaughts and UFO's when I was in the later parts of grade school. Oddly, of all of spielbergs alien movies, this one warms the heart of old, dead UFO nut in me the most.
(Tie) Hellboy II, Wow, you're pretty. Your world is amazing, the creatures awesome... The full package, and you'll probably get a number of spins on the DVD player, unlike some nut jobs on this list.
Iron Man. The new standard for super-hero movies. Give us the world of the comic, there's no reason to seel us short, create a universe between the titles! Keep it up and make mine MARVEL. (That goe's way back)
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor: I can't believe all the fucking ignorat stupid ass complaints about this movie. "Ble blu blah CG... Blu bea blea acting... Bluh bleia script. Ble bluhh bloorph I don't know how to POOP I'm so STUPID!" Some one commented on some site that a Yeti doing a field goal sign in 1940's China was too "Unbelievable" IT'S a FUCKING YETI!!!!!!!! Did you think they were real? It's a Goddamned movie SERIES about Mummy's COMING BACK TO LIFE!!!! And THE FIELD GOAL joke is a DEAL BREAKER? I'm sorry, I missed the Discovery special about how Yet's behave. They're on their way to Shangri-La. How do you know they don't have Yeti-Football, next to that POOL OF IMMORTALITY!!!! Someone said that they didn't like Indy 4 beacuse it was UFO's and the other Indy movies dealt with things that were "Real." I'm going to go make out with the tooth fairy, get drunk with the boogeyman and we're all going to have an orgy with the monsters under my bed, and let Santa Claus film it. There's a fucking REAL Indy movie for you, Indiana Jones and the North Pole! Pole smoking more like it. And would everyone stop complaining about CG. Pop in a few b list movies from the eighties, like Batman. You'll wish you had some quality CG effects. You know why you don't like CG... Before, when you didn't know how effects were done, you just stared in awe, now, you know they're done, somehow "With a computer." So... so you know movies aren't MAGIC. They're made, and Santa was never real either.
Incredible Hulk. "He looks fake".... Did you know it's partially because he's green. Green is a shit color on things, light doen't play on green... that's why green screens are GREEN!
The Dark Knight. Why so SERIOUSLY LOW on my list? Your ending. It was illogical and stupid. Pin it on the Jokers goons, show Joker in Arkham, and maybe have blown a boat, and this is at the top of the list, you'd have Wall-E sucking you all night, but Nooooooooooo. You had Gordon do something that's the first image in my head every time I think of the movie. That act, obliterates the Joker from my immediate associations with the movie. The moment itself is actually really cool, it's heartbreaking, I LOVE it when a movie can do that, but the REASON it's done is pure stupidity. Endings count; Empire Strikes Back, PotC Dead Man's Chest, The Usual Suspects... King Kong, Citizen Kane... even Casablanca. Change the ending of any of these and you risk ruining them. To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen; I know the Empire Strikes Back, I saw Empire Strikes Back in the theater in it's initial run and sir, you are no The Empire Strikes Back!
Hancock. I apparently don't hate Dark Knight that much, cause I like this movie, but in a head to head match up it gets less points. You're a good movie, and yet so low on the list, DAMN it's been a GOOD summer of movies!!!!!!!!
Speed Racer Mach-6. You could have been at least above Dark knight. WHY a MACH-6.... Oh well.
Get Smart. Could have been enjoyed as much as a rental. Wait, rental cheaper, enjoyed MORE?
Well that's the list. Clone Wars is next. It's task is simple, top the list or die trying. Easy bar for a movie... Be at the Top of the list. With Star Wars, James Bond and Harry Potter incoming, the top five may take some hits. I'd say it's the best year IU've ever seen, but NEXT year with Monsters and Aliens, Watchmen and Star Trek... oh, and isn't there Transformers 2? Next year looks even better.
Sunday, I'll take the kids to Journey to the Center of the Earth in 3D!!!!!!
Wow. Wife and I made a day date of it, had Saint Louis Bread Company for breakfast, you may know them as Panera. She tried some new breakfast sandwich, and didn't like the cheese they stuck on it, other than that a good sandwich, but I don't know that first hand, she had it... Oh, the bacon wasn't crispy! Oh, then we saw Mummy. Good movie. Then, we walked through the mall for just a bit... Chesterfield Mall kinda sucks. The only good / interesting things in the mall Is right off of that one arm with the movie theater. There you have the theater, the food court (needs.. NEEDS) a Mickey D's BADLY! Better yet, Burger King. I love Burger King! If I were Iron Man, I'd love Burger King too. Actually, If I were Iron Man, I'd have a Burger King, IN MY HOUSE. Anyway, down from that you also have the Starbucks kiosk, and a neat carousel. I've taken my kids on it a few times, so it's obviously not the carousel from Logan's run... Still, neat to have in the mall. Then, came lunch... CHEEBURGER CHEEBURGER! Oh, you wonderful place. The bacon was crispy, the cheese, wonderful, the sauces... can have to go lids! I'll be wanting to go here again. More specifically, since my wife and I both think, though not factually accurate, since everything fried there is fried in peanut oil, it'd like really hurt our son, so, it's a date place! Maybe. I hope it is. I know she liked it, but will she want to go back. The local Applebee's let us down the last time. O'Charley's, a one time fave, has been spotty at best, and Cheeburger made a great first impression.
Then we came back, watched Meet the Pres and George Stephanopoluos... then Mirrormask....
My friend Matt and I, like a number of movie freaks have been watching the horse race of this thing.
But, at the risk of some embarrassment, It'll cross the 500 Million line on September 14.*
*Unless, it does 60 Million plus, in the next seven day period, which I have this irritating trend line saying it might.... But that trajectory would have it cross 500 in just 16 days from now, and movies, well just don't tend to do that. September 14th looks good though... the ugh, August 19th 500 mil mark is from a trend line that I think could be modeled better....
The Fantastic Four franchise, if it were still alive, should die of shame, whispering "Hellboy" with its last pathetic breaths. Two fantastic four movies and, Hellboy gives me a monster emerging from a New York street. H2TGA give and gives and gives. I can't think of a "Live action" movie without the word "episode" in the title that has more delicious ingredients. An analogy a friend suggested; was a bucket of fried chicken, but just the skin. Not that there's no plot or character, but fuck, there is stuff that's good for you in ice-cream. And this is SOOOO Many scoops of ice cream, covered in everything but spaceships. Clockwork, steampunk looking tech, women who are beautiful in an interesting way...
I'm open to the possibility that I tainted myself with my own expectations this year. I expected Indiana Jones to be worlds of freakin fun, and it was. I expected Iron Man to put boot to ass in ways not nearly often enough done, and it planted that boot on a many ass indeed. And, I expected Wall-E to be the best Pixar movie ever.
I've been saying all summer, everyone's looking forward to Dark Knight, that the netfolk are just psyching themselves up for Dark Knight, and they're going to love it no matter what. Did I do this for Wall-E? Most years, having expectations leads to the opposite result, Transformers looked like a must see 'in honor of it's name' shit... It was golden.
This year, each movie I've gotten to see so far has landed right where it felt like it would... I haven't gotten to see the Love Guru, I heard it was shit. I didn't think it looked like it, but I'll believe them on this go 'round. I've had a bad feeling of Dark Knight, and that one looms large. I initially thought Hancock looked like a crap-flop, then I thought the most recent trailers looked promising, so I'd like to think it'll be a fun movie, but all I know is Hancock smells like money (and Bar-B-Que!)
F--, Will Smith could do a movie called Bar-B-Que, and as long as it opened on July 4th, it'd make 300 Million dollars! He'd be suburban dad trying to get home to his family for a July fourth cookout, when some giant smoldering beast has awoken from the Earth's mantle and looms large over downtown Dallas. (It's like Cloverfield, but you can see EVERYTHING in broad daylight) Somehow this everyman defeats through practical wit and wisdom a monster that the military has only kept at bay. The last line of the movie, when he's reunited back in untouched suburbia with his wife and family; "Aw babe, I forgot it, I'll have to run back to the store." I'm smelling a sequel cooking!!!!!
Anyway, I said Wall-E looked like Pixar's best movie ever...
So, what am I being when I say Wall-E is the best Pixar movie ever? Well... best, poo poo on that shit. If you have a Troy McCluresque weakness for fish, Wall-E is no Finding Nemo, Cars would probably be the movie James Spader's and Holly Hunter's characters in Crash would show their future children (I don't remember if the characters in that movie lived or what, it's been like 11 years since I saw Crash...) But, I love robots! Except Robots. I hated those robots. But, I love robots in movies so much, I've watched Silent Running multiple times! Yup, that much. Look at my Myspace page, I have an unyielding aesthetic affection for yellow and black safety stripes. Oh, Yellow tech grunge. When you have that yellow all rusted and dirty... like the lifters in Aliens, and .. gosh oh so many things, and it never feels like enough. Like this guy from the Ghost in the Shell line.
Oh man... and, obviously I LOVE space movies... Can't get enough good ones of those either... A scene I love in particular is (6:15 into the clip)
The "Good day, gentlemen. This is a prerecorded briefing made prior to your departure and which for security reasons of the highest importance has been known on board during the mission only by your HAL-9000 computer." That feeling of betrayal when you discover a secret being kept from you.
Wall-E features a singular red eye in the vain of HAL-9000 and Macross Plus's Sharon Apple.
F-- it. The most telling thing about Wall-E... My soda was still half full at the beginning of the credits... I FORGOT TO DRINK IT! My eyes were too busy drinking in his world.
Thank you Pixar. Thank you SOOOO MUCH.
P.S, My kids loved it too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is FAR from the last time Wall-E will be mentioned on these pages.
Best of the year: Top 3... 1.) Wall-E... (seemingly pushed by a small droid behind him) 2) TIE, between Mr. Stark, and Dr. Jones.
Ah-hem, Now on to my "BEST" of the year 
I have zero aspirations of ever being a film critic. Blogging has killed criticism, and unfortunately left us with a droning homogenized mass herd of one note ideas... like the company created opinion of the Dark Knight. WB did the most amazing job creating this unquestioned love for a movie people hadn't seen! ... Ya, The Dark Knight DVD is looming, and I want to see it again. I want to hate it... I think. The Dark Knight is such an overrated pile of poo... Pile of Pooh. The Dark Knight takes bags of Pooh stuffies and rips their heads off poos in them and piles up the Poohs. I like Pooh. Is Pooh Disney? Are there multiple Pooh. Like, Pooh was written by someone else, and then Disney took hold of it... Like Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. I LOVE H2G2! But not their version. they destroyed it. I guess if you hadn't read the books or were familiar with it in any way prior it wasn't AS bad. Well, this bit of typing is a waste of time, since I don't really care to acknowledge whatever movie I'm supposed to be mentioning...
