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.

Friday, December 31, 2010

Favoritest Movies of 2010 (So far!)



My wife didn't think much of Tron.  Okay, she derided it in it's entirety.  Why would I be fond of a sequel that was so derivative of the original, that it was little more than an almost an exact rehash of the original plus jets?
Here is the plot outlines of both movies: Spoilers in italics

Our protagonist sneaks into a place in the middle of the night and sits in front of a laser and goes into the computer world.  He is given a disc, and put into the games.  The first game his opponent falls through the floor, subsequently this is followed by a Light Cycle scene which ends with going off the grid. Here we regroup, consume sustenance, and share exposition establishing on how to resolve the plot. We'll wind up on a vessel sailing on a beam of light, towards a larger perpendicular beam of light, through canyons and encounter the enemy battleship. There will be a final confrontation of good and bad guys, a big explosion and traveling home up that big beam of light to a sunny and happy ending.

This describes both Tron movies. If I deleted a few dozen words, it'd be almost every Final Fantasy game from the '80's and '90's. The less words you use to describe any story the more it sounds like another.

Tron is about a guy needing... a piece of paper. While for the whole time I've known my friend Matt, a fellow fan of the original movie we've used "Greetings program!" as a greeting. Yes, we are huge dorks.  But, in all the times I've ever been looking for a piece of paper, I've never felt or even thought of Flynn.

Tron Legacy is a father and son movie.  "You're messing with my Zen thing man."  No movie, that I've ever seen, has put all the internal contradictions of being a parent into one line so efficiently just so it can get to megalomaniacs trying to do their Ming the Merciless impersonations, only to have the heroes escape (with a shot riffing the departure in Jaws) and do a cover rendition of the Falcon escaping the Death Star; kicked off with the female character saying "Here they come!"

If a movie is going to be a hack rip off, it tries to hide it more.  This movie was nostalgia squared, cubed... Hell, nostalgia ad infinitum!  When I look at my kids, I see little derivative copies of us.  And this movie, better than any other of these ill thought out movies, born out of our childhoods, gave us (nerds at least) one to share with our kids.  I love that my kids love the Transformers movies, I loved Transformers and still do.  But I look at these movies of the past few years, and while the Blu-rays of them make my TV look prettier, and remind my how loud my sound system can get... I'd rather watch Springer and Arcee push that launcher into place against Devastator.  Well, maybe Dark of the Moon will top the post this time next year!  This year was about Tron...  other than that, it was kind of meh.

Now, there are a number of movies I'm really looking forward to seeing that I haven't yet; The Social Network, Tangled, Megamind, The Other Guys and plenty more.

  1. Tron: Legacy
  2. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I
  3. Superman/Batman: Apocalypse
  4. Salt
  5. Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths
  6. Toy Story 3
  7. Iron Man 2
  8. The Sorcerer's Apprentice
  9. Inception
  10. Kick-Ass
  11. Hot Tub Time Machine
  12. The A-Team
  13. Despicable Me
  14. Batman: Under The Red Hood
  15. Predators
  16. Planet Hulk
  17. Clash of the Titans
  18. The Special Relationship
  19. Killers
  20. Knight and Day
  21. Sherlock Holmes (Asylum)
  22. True Grit
  23. The Spy Next Door
  24. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
  25. Valentine's Day
  26. The Wolfman
  27. Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief
  28. The Last Airbender
  29. Resident Evil: Afterlife
  30. Skyline
  31. Océans
  32. The Losers
  33. Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore
  34. Centurion
  35. The Karate Kid
  36. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
  37. Dante's Inferno
  38. How to Train Your Dragon
  39. The Expendables
  40. Letters to Juliet
  41. Jonah Hex
  42. Paranormal Activity
  43. Date Night
  44. Alice in Wonderland
  45. Furry Vengeance
  46. Diary of a Wimpy Kid
  47. Cop Out
  48. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
  49. Vampires Suck
  50. When in Rome
  51. The Runaways
  52. Repo Men
  53. Dinoshark
  54. The Bounty Hunter
  55. The Crazies
  56. Grown Ups
  57. Legion
  58. Tooth Fairy
  59. Altitude
  60. Sex and the City 2
  61. A Nightmare on Elm Street
  62. The Book of Eli
  63. Robin Hood
  64. Shutter Island
  65. Black Swan
  66. Dear John

Oh heck, one more nice visual never hurt anyone...


Legend: Onto the next Round! (Scored at or above the 80th percentile.)  In the middle. I do NOT enjoy (below the 20th percentile).

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