Archive
2015 IN REVIEW: The Films I Didn’t See (September – December)
Ah, the final stretch of films I didn’t get to see. This is awards season, where the Oscar-bait films get released in the hopes of staying fresh in people’s minds – particularly the minds of the Academy members. Although, increasingly, a lot of bigger films are also getting releases in this time period, including superhero films and spy films and sci-fi adventures, etc.
This list has an admitted large number of films. If you don’t know, I don’t see movies for free, so I rely upon streaming and Redbox in a lot of cases to see certain movies to keep costs down. This being just the past few months, a lot of these films are either still in theatres or are in that limbo between theatre and home release. Others, I just haven’t yet had the chance of getting around to, even if I wanted to.
If you don’t see a movie on this or the previous two lists (Part 1, Part 2), then there’s a good chance I saw it or just managed to not list it. I can’t be that extensive, you know. Also, as always, I reserve the right to see any of these films and include them on my upcoming lists of films I’ve seen, just so long as I have seen them before publishing the list (obviously).
The films below are listed in order of release and have their current Rotten Tomatoes score posted, as well. Read more…
2015 IN REVIEW: The Films I Didn’t See (May – August)
Huh. You know, I think I saw most of the big blockbuster films this summer. So, what else came out? Not a whole lot! I mean, at least not stuff that was promoted fairly well. There look to have been some great indie gems I missed, and then your usual horror film sequels that I skipped. Plenty of international releases that look fantastic, too!
If you didn’t catch it already, be sure to check out the films that came out in January – April 2015 that I missed first!
No big introductions this time. Let’s get going! Read more…
2015 IN REVIEW: The Films I Didn’t See (January – April)
Alright, so if you aren’t already familiar with how I do my Year in Review process, I always go through a list of the films I didn’t see first, divided into three 4 month sections. Why do I do this? Because I like to still review the stuff that was making the rounds that I managed to miss, firstly, and because it’s a great way to find movies that might never have been on my radar in the first place had I not pursued them, and I like to share them with you, too!
Basically, my process involves perusing the list of films on Wikipedia and various other sites that I read regularly, which tend to be able to publish their Best/Worst of the Year lists far more in advance of me because, you know, they’re actual media, not just a crazy movie fan who likes to spend his weekends watching movies all day, like me. These films are ones that I managed to not see for one reason or another, usually because I just didn’t have the time, but often because I just wasn’t interested, but others just because I didn’t know about them in the first place.
This is by no means a judgment of quality, as they’re listed in order of release date (though I included the Rotten Tomatoes score, if any), and this is also by no means a complete list, either. I’ve already explained that I also had to eliminate my coverage of too many foreign films because they usually weren’t even marketed in the U.S. in the first place and likely will never come here, too. That being said, the ones that did make it over here in some capacity (or ones that struck me as notable for their concepts) were included, so this isn’t totally just Hollywood and American indies, either, and I’ve also begun considering VOD and streaming services as valid, notable venues for feature film debuts. As per usual, I reserve the right to take interest in any of these films and see them before I begin to publish my lists of films that I actually did see, so you may see these films reappear in the coming weeks if I managed to get around to those before publication.
The first part of this feature will, of course, cover the traditional dumping ground for expectedly low-performning flicks from January – April, the second part the traditionally summer blockbuster season from May – August, and the final part will cover what is often considered the Oscar-baiting season, from September – December.
2015 IN REVIEW: The Fifth Annual One of These Things
2015 is over. Can you believe it? For me, this was probably the most looked forward to year in movies since 2012, when The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises premiered. In fact, 2015 was in a lot of ways exactly like 2012 and had a lot of follow-ups to major films of 2012 – an Avengers film, a new James Bond film, a Hunger Games film, a new Quentin Tarantino film, a prestige Steven Spielberg historical drama, a new David O. Russell film featuring Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, and Robert De Niro, a new film about Alfred Hitchcock, an Aardman Animation film, a new Pixar film featuring female leads… Yup, pretty much a repeat of 2012, only 2015 featured even more familiar cash-ins than even then, with even more familiar brands making their return to the silver screen: Mad Max, the Terminator, Jurassic Park, Rocky, The Transporter, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Vacation, Taken, the Fantastic Four… Oh, and Star Wars. Can’t forget that one!
But a lot of other films did come out this year beyond just major franchises and major brand releases. I can’t say that I saw everything that was released this year, of course, and I do have to make a confession about my film viewing habits this year, too: I saw far more of those major releases over the minor ones than I had actually intended. Oops. I feel like a bad critic, particularly since I am pretty much about to break another record for number of movies I have seen for a single year. (I count Redbox and streaming services and also post-New Year’s views, too, so long as they’re before I complete the year in review, just to let you know.) I had a rather personally tumultuous year, you see, and so I do believe this resulted in me not exactly engaging my brain nearly as much as I wish I had, and so I feel like I got a little lazy in seeking out the particularly great but overlooked films that were released throughout the year. I might very well break my streak of seeing every Best Picture Oscar-nominated film in a year, in fact, which I have managed to maintain since I first did it for 2012. — Hey, look! Another 2012 parallel!
As a result, I am going to do things somewhat different this year for my year in review, but only slightly.
The major change: I am no longer covering films that were released solely in foreign markets. You see, when I first decided to start doing these year in reviews, I intended for the reviews of film I missed to reflect what was going on in the world of cinema outside the United States, too. I had good intentions, and the list of films supplied by Wikipedia was pretty extensive, particularly for Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu language films releasing out of India, and I mostly had a lot of fun finding out what was making waves in foreign box offices. However, the process of researching these films was exceedingly exhausting, as trailers were rarely in English, and so I had to seek out synopses for these films before I could even provide any sort of commentary on them. Sometimes this resulted in pure ambivalence that I feared could be misconstrued as condescension. I just don’t think I have the energy this year to do it, and I’d really like to make 2015 the year that I get the year in review completed at least by the end of January again, and so I had to sacrifice researching films I really had no chance of seeing in the first place. Foreign films won’t be completely absent, of course, as I’m still including particularly significant or interesting films that I curated while doing preliminary research, as well as foreign films that at least had limited theatrical releases here in America. So, yeah, I’m not being xenophobic, you see! It just made the most sense to lighten my workload in this area of all areas.
The minor change isn’t really an alteration of my process as much as it is an alteration of the changing way in which we watch movies. Yes, since this was the year in which Netflix decided to start releasing original films, I am now also including significant films that debuted on streaming media services from here on out, as well. (Many of them also saw limited theatrical releases, anyway, so I’m not sure how much this counts as a real change, like I said.)
Also, this year, I will actually continue to separate my Best of the Year list (or whatever I end up calling it) by genre, as I did the year before, since I find it unfair to judge the excellence of a side-splitting comedy against the excellence of a tear-inducing art house drama and declare one the victor when they set out to do completely different things and may have equally excelled at those goals, different though they may have been. I am still going to rank the Worst of the Year list by level of craptitude, however, ’cause I have no problems ranking my level of gut level disdain for each individual film!
That’s really about it, otherwise! I will continue to breakdown these lists into multiple posts, starting with a 3-part review of the films I managed to miss, a review of the middle ground films I saw and didn’t feel especially strong in either direction towards, a review of the most terrible films I saw from the year, and concluding with my favorites (’cause, again, I sometimes still really like fluff entertainment that has flaws as much as I like an expertly rendered cry! I’m dynamic like that). As per usual, here is the schedule:
- 2015 IN REVIEW: The Films I Didn’t See (January – April)
- 2015 IN REVIEW: The Films I Didn’t See (May – August)
- 2015 IN REVIEW: The Films I Didn’t See (September – December)
- 2015 IN REVIEW: Everything in Between That I’ve Seen
- 2015 IN REVIEW: The Worst Movies of the Year
- 2015 IN REVIEW: My Top Films of the Year
2014 IN REVIEW: My Top Films of the Year
I saw so many movies this year, I honestly couldn’t pick the best movie. The selection was so wide because I saw so many, I honestly couldn’t pit movies I just enjoyed versus films I admired. So, this year, I’ve decided to do something different — I separated them into genres. it’s not exactly what you might expect – Guardians of the Galaxy isn’t in sci-fi, for instance, because it’s much more of an adventure film in space.
I’ve ordered these based on gut instinct overall, however, and so you’ll be able to see what I (currently) favored over others. That being said, however, all of these movies are fantastic.
I’m tired of explaining things, honestly. The process of doing the year in review this year was a lot longer than I intended. So, yeah. You know the drill. Read below! Read more…
2014 IN REVIEW: The Worst Movies of the Year
This 2014 in Review series is taking me a lot longer than I anticipated, but such is life and work. After this, we’ll be getting to my favorite films of the year, but before I do that, it’s time to pass judgment on some of the worst films released in 2014.
These are the movies that bored me, that angered me, that were so bad they left me bewildered as to how they even got released in the state they’re in. For your reference, this year I have also included the Rotten Tomatoes score for each movie. While I cannot say that the order I’ve placed them in is definitive, even for me, they are arranged roughly from worse to worst, ending with my pick for the #1 worst film of the year. I have more picks for 2014 than I ever have in the past, but it was a pretty easy and obvious pick, though some of you might be thinking of the movie I put in the #2 slot. I have my reasons why it went there and not at the top, but you’ll just have to read to find out.
2014 IN REVIEW: Everything in Between That I’ve Seen
Finally, we come to the films that I actually did see! As with the films I didn’t see, these films will come at you in three parts: the films that were just somewhere in the middle in terms of quality, the films I greatly disliked, and the films I really enjoyed.
I use those qualitative terms just to avoid confusion over what I’m ranking here. The films in this section range from generally bad to generally quite good, but never elevating to excellence or making me fall in love with them or making me hate them with a passion. That being said, I didn’t expect to like some of the films here as much as I ended up liking them, and, of course, I was letdown by others I actually was kind of looking forward to.
If you don’t see the movie here and didn’t see it in the list of films I didn’t see, then you can almost certainly be guaranteed to find them on one of my next two lists, as this is just a portion of the 121 total films I ended up seeing from 2014 as of this writing, whether in theatres, on DVD/Blu-Ray, or through streaming. Read more…
2014 IN REVIEW: The Films I Didn’t See (September – December)
I’m not going to waste too much time this year on introductions. For this third and final part of my review of films I didn’t see, we’re going through the prestige Oscar-baiting season. You know — hammy acting, controversial subjects, beautiful cinematography, politics… It’s often a mixed bag, and for every stunning masterpiece, there’s often a lot of films that misstep and come off like a cheap cheeseburger dressed up to look like prime rib. … I’m hungry.
This is by far the biggest portion of films I didn’t see, largely due to a lot of them coming out so much more recently and not being available to rent, if I missed them in theatres.
Yes, 2014 may have been a record year for me seeing the most movies from that year, but there were still movies I never got around to or never even had the ability to see due to either foreign or limited release. I still like going over them, however, as this process often leads to me finding some unexpected gems that I might enjoy. Some of these I might become so interested in that I see them before I even get to the films I did see, so there is actually a possibility you might see these films reappear in this 2014 in Review series if that becomes the case.
Anyway, here are many of the films from September to December 2014 that I didn’t see, for one reason or another. It’s by no means complete, but that’s what you get when you’re using Wikipedia and Best of/Worst of lists from other sites. Read more…
2014 IN REVIEW: The Films I Didn’t See (January – April)
I’m not going to waste too much time this year on introductions. We all pretty much know this is the dumping ground for lesser films prior to the summer blockbusters and awards season after that. Still, it’s worth mentioning that this was a slog to go through, and I didn’t even see these movies; I just charged myself with reviewing why I never got around to them.
Yes, 2014 may have been a record year for me seeing the most movies from that year, but there were still movies I never got around to or never even had the ability to see due to either foreign or limited release. I still like going over them, however, as this process often leads to me finding some unexpected gems that I might enjoy. Some of these I might become so interested in that I see them before I even get to the films I did see, so there is actually a possibility you might see these films reappear in this 2014 in Review series if that becomes the case.
Anyway, here are many of the films from January to April 2014 that I didn’t see, for one reason or another. It’s by no means complete, but that’s what you get when you’re using Wikipedia and Best of/Worst of lists from other sites. Read more…
The Viewer's Commentary 
2014 IN REVIEW: The Films I Didn’t See (May – August)
I’m not going to waste too much time this year on introductions. For this second part of my review of films I didn’t see, we’re going through the summer blockbuster season, which is typically where a lot of hopeful franchises and big, loud, action-packed spectacles are typically placed. That doesn’t mean that they’re stupid or anything, as some of them look quite good, but don’t expect too many of them to be all that deep or groundbreaking.
Yes, 2014 may have been a record year for me seeing the most movies from that year, but there were still movies I never got around to or never even had the ability to see due to either foreign or limited release. I still like going over them, however, as this process often leads to me finding some unexpected gems that I might enjoy. Some of these I might become so interested in that I see them before I even get to the films I did see, so there is actually a possibility you might see these films reappear in this 2014 in Review series if that becomes the case.
Anyway, here are many of the films from May to August 2014 that I didn’t see, for one reason or another. It’s by no means complete, but that’s what you get when you’re using Wikipedia and Best of/Worst of lists from other sites. Read more…
Share: