Special Review: “Superbad” – A Moving Dedication
Directed by: Greg Mottola
Produced by: Judd Apatow, Evan Goldberg, Seth Rogen, Shauna Robertson
Written by: Evan Goldberg, Seth Rogen
Edited by: William Kerr
Cinematography by: Russ T. Alsobrook
Music by: Lyle Workman
Starring: Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Bill Hader, Seth Rogen, Emma Stone, Martha MacIsaac
Year: 2007
I’m baaaaaaack! Sorry I haven’t written in a few weeks. The reason? I moved!
And, as always, moving brought with it a great deal of stress along with a lack of time and, mostly, energy. Then, after spending a week in my new apartment doing – well, admittedly very little, I went on a much needed vacation to visit my grandparents – my first real vacation in quite some time, as I haven’t had the chance to leave the state in many years and haven’t seen my grandparents in almost as much time. So, yeah, things have been busy, and I effectively wound up taking a bit of a hiatus from my writing hobby. But, yes, I am back, and I think I’ve sufficiently stored up enough rest to once again pick up my duties. (Haha! Gross imagery…)
Now, before I begin the official portion of my review, I figure I should give the appropriate introduction as to why I have chosen this to be my first standalone review in quite some time. You see, not only did I move to a new apartment this past month, I also had to say goodbye to my roommate of the past 6 ½ years, who also just happens to be my best friend. Read more…
2012 IN REVIEW: The Best Films of the Year
At last, we come to the climax of my review of the films of 2012. To those of you who continue to keep up with me, I one again apologize for the slow updates — I saw so many movies this past year and have been doing so much this past month that it’s been hard to keep up with a regular update schedule!
This is how I felt ALL WEEK!
I’m currently in the process of moving, with my best friend / roommate moving back to his hometown to be closer to family, so it’s been tough keeping up with the blog, hanging out with him a few more times after seven awesome years of being roommates, while also just figuring stuff out for the next period of my life living as a single person for the first time. It’s tough, but thankfully he lives where my family lives, and it’s only 100 miles away. Lucky for any fans I may have (Hello!…?), it’ll likely result in me doing more reviews, though the higher amount of rent I’ll be paying will undoubtedly impact my ability to go to the theatre as often as I have been.
On that note, before I get to the meat of this final entry, I want to thank everyone who has been reading this blog, regularly or even sporadically. I may not know you, but I appreciate you! This may be a hobby of mine, but it’s meaningful to me and keeps me sharp. I started The Viewer’s Commentary in September of 2011, after lots of personal setbacks and a good long while of feeling stupid and even being made to feel stupid for wanting to start a blog about movies, and by the time I finally decided to just go for it and not listen to the negativity, I still didn’t really know whether I was going to still be writing in even a few months’ time. So to already be in the middle of my second year and still be having a blast getting my thoughts and opinions out there about one of my favorite subjects has truly been a great experience. To those of you who have read, continue to read, and even to those of you I know personally who encouraged me and maybe don’t even share my passion and probably aren’t even reading this now but you supported me all the same, thank you again for being there! I’m definitely looking forward to what 2013 promises to bring! (STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS! FINALLY!)
The film’s villain amongst a bunch of red shirts. This isn’t going to end well…
Anyway, enough self-reflection! You’re here for the rundown of the best films of 2012, aren’t you? I assume so, since you are continuing to read this. I’ll let you get to that, but first, let me explain how this list is working, as I’ve changed it up a bit from last year and from most other “Best Of” lists.
First off, last year I did it in multiple parts (here, here, and, finally, here – in order). None of that this time. You’re getting this all in one big wave!
Secondly, and this is related to the third alteration, there are no longer just 10 films on this list, but rather a whopping 17. Why?
Well, that’s because the third alteration I made is that I’ve decided that a lot of the best films of the year weren’t necessarily my favorites, but I wanted to recognize their greatness by putting them on this list anyway, rather than lump them in with the films that were just average. (I did something similar with the “Films I Liked” this year after realizing I didn’t necessary love nor despise a lot of films enough to put them on the worst or best of lists.)
This did not make the list. This shouldn’t make any lists… BECAUSE IT SHOULDN’T EXIST!
So, while the films below are all fantastic films and deserve to be considered among the best of the year, their order has everything to do with favoritism over quality. After all, lists like these are highly subjective, and while it’s certainly possible to objectively call a film “one of the best,” ultimately by ranking such diverse works against one another, you just have to acknowledge the fact that you’re playing favorites.
So, yeah, anyway to review and summarize: These are, in my opinion, THE BEST FILMS OF 2012, but they are ORDERED ACCORDING TO FAVORITISM. Make sense? I hope so! If not, then just keep reading on, ’cause I think you’ll get it, anyway! Read more…
2012 IN REVIEW: My Top 10 Worst Films of 2012, featuring a review of the #1 Worst Film of 2012
As you may already know, I’m of the opinion that 2012 was a pretty strong year for films. But even in the best of years there is always a deluge of awful just waiting around the corner to ruin your good time.
Unless you want to actually watch a bad movie (and, let’s face it, sometimes it’s fun to watch bad movies), I strongly advise against watching any of the films below. And even if you are in the mood for a bad movie, I would still recommend never, ever seeing the film that quite literally stole the top spot on my list.
It was honestly so bad, I broke a few rules just to avoid having to write about it again and made my say here my final say on the movie overall. Previous lists never featured a built-in film review for any of the films that didn’t have one previously on The Viewer’s Commentary, but this film was a special kind of awful, and so I decided to treat it thus just for this occasion.
Which film could possibly be so bad to inspire such madness? Well you’ll have to read on to find out. … Or you could just scroll down and spoil the surprise, but… well, that would be kind a mean and hurt my feelings. I already compiled this list for you so that you could avoid them and have a good time, and all, and you’re just going to ignore all my hard work, aren’t you?… :( Read more…
2012 IN REVIEW: Neither the Best, Nor the Worst Films I Saw
This same section of my 2011 in Review had 17 films listed on what I, at the time, called “The Films I Liked.” 2012 being the first full year that I was blogging, I made a concerted effort to see as many films released in the year as I could afford. And, wouldn’t you know it? This list has 31 films on it — films that I realized I didn’t always entirely like, too, but were not necessarily worthy of being put on any kind of definitive “Worst of…” list that I could come up with. I could have been a pessimist and just put all the bad movies on the naughty list or something, but I’m feeling especially upbeat right now, and so I’ve decided to rename this list as a list of the films that were “Neither the Best, Nor the Worst Films I Saw.”
As the name would imply, these are a mix of films that range from bad to good, but never awful nor excellent. Some of these films are possibly even films that I may not even feel much of anything towards, so I just put them here because I saw them and they met the criteria for making this year in review — that is, they were released (at least widely) in 2012, and I saw them at some point before writing this, either theatrically or on DVD.
There is one exception I made for this list, and I will be making it again for another film in a future list, and that is for the film that is marked with an asterisk (that’s the little star symbol that looks like this: *). It featured previously on my 2012 IN REVIEW: Films I Didn’t See list, and yet I finally saw it now that it’s on video, and I felt that it was good enough to comment on here. I won’t be making that exception for every film I’ve since seen from 2012 since starting this year in review, but I’m making some exceptions and marking them as such.
Anyway, without further delay, here are the films that were neither great nor awful, the good films on down to the bland ones that I saw from 2012: Read more…
2012 IN REVIEW – The Films I Didn’t See: September – December
My apologies for the slightly longer delay in getting this part out. I kinda got stricken with the flu for a few days, and didn’t exactly feel like writing. But, here it is, the final third of the films I didn’t see in the year 2012. This is the period of time where the summer movies begin to trickle out before coming to a complete stop and where film studios begin their flood of Oscar-baiting dramas and such.
That’s not to say that there are never any good action films released during this time. That also isn’t to say that none of these Oscar-baiting films are any good, too. Far from it. 2012 saw the release of Oscar-worthy greats as Argo, Lincoln, and Zero Dark Thirty releasing in the same time period as cash-grabbing features like the final Twilight film, The Hobbit, and Wreck-it Ralph, all with varying degrees of success. It’s actually a fairly ripe time to watch all sorts of movies, come to think of it. Possibly better than even summer!
Still, it’s not like I’m going to see every film released during this time. If anything, I ran out of time and risked going out of budget for all the films that I did want to see, but didn’t always have time to. Then there were also films that, quite frankly, I could just do without seeing. But, for the purposes of this article, I’ve gone through and examined all these, both enticing and repugnant, some being granted my attention possibly for the last time ever, and have collected my thoughts and impressions below. As mentioned previously in parts 1 and 2, this isn’t my final say on these films, and some of the commentary below is based pretty much on plot synopses, other reviews, skimmings, and a heavy use of Wikipedia and Rotten Tomatoes. I watched the trailers where I could and didn’t for those films that I just basically didn’t care. Which ones are those? Read, and you may just find out! Read more…
2012 IN REVIEW – The Films I Didn’t See: May – August
Ah, summer — the time of tentpole blockbuster films that are meant to pad out the studios’ budgets for the next few months. I believe I saw most of the major films released during this period, at least at some point in the year, if not the theatre: The Dark Knight Rises, The Avengers, The Amazing Spider-Man, Men in Black 3, Battleship… Overall, it was a more than satisfying year for quality summer blockbusters that pleased both audiences and critics. … Well, probably not Battleship. That movie was awful.
With so many films that release in theatres that are best seen actually on the big screen, though, it was only inevitable that smaller and/or less interesting films fell by the wayside of my attention span. Critically acclaimed features like Beasts of the Southern Wild and Oslo, August 31st would get unfortunately lumped in with similarly ignored-by-me crap like Step Up Revolution and That’s My Boy this past summer, which isn’t a commentary on their quality as much as it is a reflection of my time and budgetary restrictions. (I subscribe to a number of rental services and still buy and go see movies in theatres, but I can only do so much and thus prioritize quality spectacle films usually over the quality comedies and dramas.)
So while I do believe I got the most out of my summertime viewings that I possibly could, let’s go over the films that I somehow managed to not see as of the time of this writing, for better or for worse. Read more…
Tyler Perry & Larry The Cable Guy: Together at last…
Umm… Remember how I said the following of Tyler Perry and Larry the Cable Guy just last week?:
He’s like the black, sophisticated and moralizing counterpart to Larry the Cable Guy’s white trash dumbass, and both of them manage to be equally insufferable while also remaining bankable, despite being so superficially different from one another. If they were to ever join forces and produce a film together, this would likely be the only reason I would go willingly to either one of their productions, if only for the fact that it would very likely be one of the worst things of anything ever and would thus likely never see the light of day again…
Um… Yeah, that’s happening… Guess I might have something to look forward to already this holiday season… X'(
2012 IN REVIEW – The Films I Didn’t See: January – April
2012 was a surprisingly satisfying year for movies, whether you wanted serious dramas or escapist fantasies, but it’s pretty much impossible to for any one person to see all the movies that come out within the span of one year, and I’m no different.
While I tried my best to see most of the big movies and the movies that came out in 2012 and all the movies that I was interested in, whether in theatres or on home video, there were many that I admittedly never got around to, didn’t care to getting around to, or had never even heard of to get around to them.
Though 2013’s just getting started, I’m going take some time to look back on the past year over the next couple weeks, starting with the films that I didn’t’ see. As with last year, the commentary below is not necessarily going to match up with my final impression of any given movie once I do actually come around to seeing them (if at all), and is solely meant to express why I never got around to it and, possibly, whether or not I intend to see it all. This is all based on plot synopses, Rotten Tomatoes scores, Wikipedia entries, a few external reviews, and, of course, the films’ trailers, and, once again, are not necessarily reflective of a final opinion of a film.
I start, of course, at the very beginning for this first part. Lots of films released during this traditional dumping ground period were smaller films, films that were released in foreign countries or film festivals back in 2011, or were just outright given their timeslot because the studio just had very little faith in the film’s performance at the box office. Sometimes films fall into all three categories. You’ve possibly even forgotten about them or haven’t even heard about them, or maybe you forgot you heard about them and only vaguely remember the name, maybe a few clips from the trailers you saw some time long ago. I know that was the case for me.
But that shouldn’t discourage you from seeing some of these films. Many of them actually look quite promising, and I’ve even added several to my various media queues, too. Hopefully you’ll find some films among the rotting corpses of the genuinely awful ones that were exiled to the early year winter and feel compelled to give these films a second (or third) glance once you remember what they are. Read more…
2012 IN REVIEW — Happy New Year! Let the reminiscing commence!
Happy New Year, everyone! 2012 has come and gone, and we’ve made it into 2013 still standing, despite what some may have feared. Lucky us! It’s looking like 2013 will be an exciting year for franchise films, what with a new Star Trek, Iron Man, Thor, Superman, and Die Hard, but then there’s also original material like Guillermo del Toro’s awesome-looking Pacific Rim and District 9 director Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium, too! (I’m sure there are some other movies in there that aren’t sci-fi or fantasy-based, too, that might turn out to be good, but these aren’t usually the types of films that generate buzz so early on until they’re shown at film festivals.)
But before we jump into the films of the new year, let’s take a look back at what was supposed to be the final year of the planet as we know it through the films that were released in our apparently bygone twilight period. As with 2011, in the coming weeks, I will be deconstructing 2012 into the following categories (subject to being broken down into smaller parts):
- Notable Films I Managed to Avoid Seeing
- The Films I Liked in 2012
- The Worst of 2012
- My Top 10 Favorite Movies of 2012
Since 2012 was also my first full year of blogging, I aimed to see more theatrical releases and, barring that, renting 2012 releases as soon as I possibly could, but there are still some notable films that I just wasn’t able to get around to, mostly due to having to gauge my expenses — usually because films were released so closely together. That being said, I’m really looking forward to looking back on what turned out to be one of the more exciting and satisfying years in film, in my humble opinion. But, in case you can’t wait, feel free to peruse through the archive and check out all the parts of 2011 in Review, conveniently ordered out for you below!
- 2011 in Review: Notable Films I Managed to Avoid, For Better or For Worse — January – April, May – September, October – December
- 2011 in Review: The Films I Liked
- 2011 in Review: The Top 5 Worst Films I Saw
- 2011 in Review: My 10 Favorite Films — 10 – 8, 7 – 4, 3 – 1
Review: “New Year’s Eve”
Directed by: Garry Marshall
Produced by: Mike Karz, Wayne Allan Rice, Garry Marshall
Written by: Katherine Fugate
Edited by: Michael Tronick
Cinematography by: Charles Minsky
Music by: John Debney
Starring (in alphabetical order, by first name): Abigail Breslin, Alyssa Milano, Ashton Kutcher, Carla Gugino, Cary Elwes, Halle Berry, Héctor Elizondo, Hilary Swank, Jake T. Austin, James Belushi, Jessica Biel, Joey McIntyre, John Lithgow, Jon Bon Jovi, Josh Duhamel, Katherine Heigl, Lea Michele, Ludacris, Matthew Broderick, Michelle Pfeiffer, Penny Marshall, Robert De Niro, Russell Peters, Ryan Seacrest, Sarah Jessica Parker, Sarah Paulson, Seth Meyers, Sofía Vergara, Til Schweiger, Yeardley Smith, Zac Efron
Year: 2011
The reason why I ordered the cast in such an order is, quite frankly, because I couldn’t figure out what the main starring role for this film was. Wikipedia had Halle Berry listed first, but I don’t really think her role as a nurse who simply stays put while a man is on his deathbed until it’s revealed in the final couple minutes that she’s also been longing this whole time for her man-in-combat really puts her at the forefront of this film’s ridiculously massive cast. The alphabetizing brings a little sanity to the madness of what amounts to a celebrity hodgepodge of A, B, and C-listers. At the very least, if that list doesn’t get me a bump in the site hits, I don’t know what will. (Possibly a review of Garry Marshall’s previous ensemble casserole, Valentine’s Day….) Read more…
The Viewer's Commentary 