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2014 IN REVIEW: It’s The Viewer’s Commentary’s Fourth Annual Year in Review!
It’s January! That means that we’re all looking forward to a year of new movies while looking back on the year past and nitpicking all the stupid things that we think Hollywood should avoid in the future while totally ignoring the fact that they’re all really going to just keep doing the same stuff over and over again.
And that really was the general consensus regarding 2014, from what I can tell. While 2014 had plenty of films we hoped were going to be good, there weren’t very many movies that we could look forward to with certainty of their excellence, either. Examples:
- There was a freaking movie based on LEGO blocks…
- Marvel was hedging their bets on two of their most ambitious films yet. The first was a sequel that completely changed up the series’ tone from the retro sci-fi cheerfulness of its predecessor to a more serious, pessimistic, and shockingly violent espionage flick, despite it being helmed by a duo who were heretofore better known for working in TV comedy and directing You, Me, and Dupree. The second was a film set at a far point in the galaxy with all sorts of weirdness going on, including a talking raccoon and a tree with an extremely limited vocabulary in two of the lead roles.
- Hunger Games fever was seeing its first major me-too film adaptations in The Giver, The Maze Runner, and Divergent while the actual Hunger Games film series continued with the first part of the cash-grabby, two-part Mockingjay adaptation. What’s next? Hobbit knock offs?
- Disney was following up their smash hit, Frozen, with their first ever Disney-branded Marvel adaptation in Big Hero 6, which took serious liberties with the X-Men-related comic book source material, including moving the story from modern day Tokyo to the far future hybrid city of San Fransokyo.
- No Pixar film, while DreamWorks was churning out an update to a classic cartoon in Mr. Peabody & Sherman, a sequel to How to Train Your Dragon, and a spinoff of Madagascar starring the Penguins of Madagascar… titled Penguins of Madagascar.
- Teenage romance films in the same vein as the seemingly never ending Nicholas Sparks adaptations, one of which was a remake of a crappy 1980s teenage romance film, one involving a girl on the brink of death while roaming around in a ghostlike form, and, perhaps the most egregious sounding of the three, an adaptation of a novel about two kids with cancer who happen to also fall in love.
- More reboots:
- Godzilla. Another one. Made by Americans.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, courtesy of producer Michael Bay, who was meanwhile continuing his Transformers series with a reboot of sorts, too.
- X-Men: Days of Future Past, which actually managed to make erasing the previous series of films from the new timeline a part of the storyline.
- Veronica Mars, which was a crowsource-funded restart of a cancelled TV series.
- Left Behind, which also managed to shove in freaking Nicolas Cage in there in one of his most baffling roles of his career. Speaking of which…
- Christian films reached both an all time high for popularity, at least as far as theatrical release goes, and a nadir for quality, the most offensive being the latest Kirk Cameron atrocity.
Yeah, 2014 looked like it was going to be a pretty bland year, even if you weren’t into the serious dramas and independent film scene, which… I honestly don’t keep up with nearly as much as I probably should when it comes to pre-release buzz. I can’t imagine that there are that many who do beyond actual paid professional critics, of which I am tragically not.
In the end, it was indeed a pretty off year for films, but I’m actually not so sure that’s a bad thing. While there were plenty of terrible movies, most of those were easy to spot from a mile away, and many of those uncertain major films actually managed to prove themselves to be a non-issue, while some of them actually turned out to be pretty fantastic, in fact! Yet more unexpected gems also emerged from the darkness to surprise everyone with how good they were… or, at the very least, they surprised me. Looking back, 2014 was a year that the expected gave way to the unexpected — and it was refreshing and satisfying.
On a personal level, 2014 was also pretty great for my film habit, by the way. I managed to buy myself a surround sound system finally thanks to a nice Christmas bonus. (Yay for being freaked out about whether the neighbors will complain!) It was the first year in which I rented a film that was also still playing in theatres — some of them either not available in my area and some just because I was a lazy bum who didn’t want to make the trip. I don’t anticipate me doing this for every release in the future, though, as I still love going to the theatre, and the prices for these films are pretty much comparable despite my TV and sound system not matching that of a theatre, but for things like documentaries or limited releases that are playing just too far away from my apartment, it’s proven to be a pretty convenient medium — particularly when I managed to get some free Vudu rental credit.
Consequently, this was also the year that I broke a personal record for the number of films I saw before the year’s end: a whopping 104, either through theatrical release or rental. By comparison, in 2011, the year I started blogging, I’d only seen 32 from that year in total, with some spillover into 2012 for the viewing time frame. With the added incentive of blogging from the very start, 2012 saw an increase to 58 by the time I posted my last year in review entry. 2013 again saw an increase to 68, meaning my 2014 viewing habits increased by nearly 53% from the previous year — and I’m not done yet, as there are still some films I want to see that I’ll likely watch before I complete this review series. I don’t know whether I should be proud or not… but I choose to be proud. I’ve already told my friends and family, anyway, and it still didn’t inspire them to stage an intervention, so I think I’m good.
So, yeah, I’m actually pretty excited to talk about the films of 2014. I anticipate that it’s going to be interesting and pretty different compared to past years. As always, I’m going to roll this out in stages, first with three entries discussing the films I didn’t see, then an entry discussing just the middle ground films I saw, an entry on the worst films I saw, and, finally, my favorite films from the year. (I say “favorite” because, while they’re all good, in my opinion, I do not rank them in order of excellence but rather personal favor. The “worst” list works pretty much the same way, pretty much, but in the reverse.)
For a rough schedule, here’s how I anticipate it working out, though it’s subject to change if I need to space it out (I will have seen over 104 films, after all, and I might choose to break up the middle ground film entry just due to numbers):
- 2014 IN REVIEW: The Films I Didn’t See (January – April)
- 2014 IN REVIEW: The Films I Didn’t See (May – August)
- 2014 IN REVIEW: The Films I Didn’t See (September – December)
- 2014 IN REVIEW: Everything in Between That I’ve Seen
- 2014 IN REVIEW: The Worst Movies of the Year
- 2014 IN REVIEW: My Top Films of the Year
2013 IN REVIEW: My Top Films of the Year
FINALLY! The moment I’ve been building up to for far too long! It’s been a busy month… and a half… for me, but I’m finally done, and this is my last of my 2013 in Review articles! (Consequently, while none of these are exactly final reviews, many of them may as well be and portions of what is stated here may show up in a future review. For the sake of my sanity and my time, however, I’ve decided to present what I felt the need to write without very many edits!)
The format I’ve chosen for my annual Year in Review articles is a bit insane, I know, but while it’s time consuming, its also quite fun, and it’s just as much about sharing all the films released in the last year (or at least most, as I probably missed some in the sections where I went over films I didn’t get around to seeing) as it is about me locating films that you and I have both overlooked, which is also why a lot of the films I didn’t see this year made repeat appearances, as I couldn’t resist the urge to watch them, and it’s not like I’d be able to do another year in review for them, too, you know? This year, one of those movies I didn’t see at first but did during my writing these articles even made it onto this list, My Top Films of the Year!
So why don’t I call it “The Best Films of the Year”? It’s simple, really – it’s subjective, yes, but it’s also because even I switch around the order at times. I guarantee you that at some point in the past and future, I might have ordered these films differently. It took some time and thought, and this is ultimately what I felt comfortable enough with to publish, but I’ll tell you that this was a hard process, particularly in the top 10.
All of this year’s Best Picture Academy Award nominees are on this list. Seriously – I’ve even decided to mark the Oscar nominations this year. They were all very good and justifiably nominated, and while I might have my preferences as to who should win, they’re all remarkable, worthwhile films if you should ever consider watching them. Some of the other movies on this list, however, are also quite awesome, some of which I like better than the films that were nominated, and one of which I’m still very annoyed didn’t at least get the tenth vacant slot in their nominees list, just out of principle for how awesome it was. (I’m just going to tell you now, that movie is Inside Llewyn Davis.) How annoying!
So what of the rankings? Lists like these tend to demand them, so I include them, and I do think they are helpful in making priorities in our very busy lives as to what to see first and give preference to. Since the rankings are so subjective and sometimes even arbitrary, my main rule is to go with my gut on these things. Seriously. That’s what it boils down to. It’s a mixture of favoritism, enjoyment, entertainment, and, yes, the actual skill behind the scenes and within them. As such, films that were without a doubt brilliant masterpieces that will go on to receive tons of accolades and be remembered forever may be outranked by flash-in-the-pan popcorn films that have very little to say except, “Hey, look at this awesome thing we did!” but were also very skilled at doing so and are films that I will revisit time and time again whenever I want to be entertained. It’s hard to rank films of these sorts against one another, and if I felt that I could be that much more objective about these things and take out the entertainment factor, I would probably top load this list with all the heavyweight dramas and such. But I don’t think I can, so I don’t put up any airs of being able to do so.
But, you know, I think that’s alright. Variety is the spice of life, you know, and to say that dramas should be exalted at all times above the comedies and action films is, I think, false doctrine when it comes to film criticism and lessens the true value of joy and wonderment that isn’t always found in those serious dramas – so long as that joy and wonderment is done very well, of course.
So, with that all in mind, I feel I’ve prepared you for this eclectic list of my picks for not just the best films of the year, but also the ones that are my favorites, the ones I find most enjoyable, and the ones that blew me away with their spectacle. Read more…
2013 IN REVIEW: Neither the Best, Nor the Worst Films I Saw
I apparently watched a lot more movies in 2013 than I had realized… The films below represent not the worst, not the best, but certainly not always good, but also certainly not always bad movies that I saw in and from 2013. Only films released theatrically were counted, and film festival debuts did not count. Some of these films were truly great, others were truly awful, but none of them were seen fit to be placed in “the worst,” “the best,” nor “my favorite” categories. And so, they go here. Here are some of the films I watched in 2013, in order of release! Read more…
2013 IN REVIEW: The Films I Didn’t See (May – August)
Blockbuster season. Typically the season where most of the most anticipated films of the year — the ones that were hyped perhaps years in advance — are released. Since 2012 was the year when The Avengers gave us the first superhero team-up film and the year when The Dark Knight Trilogy came to a close, 2013 looked like it was going to be rather underwhelming this time of year. I already mentioned that Iron Man 3 was released in April, starting the season early, but Thor: The Dark World wasn’t coming until October!
So that left us with two major superhero films to look forward to: Man of Steel, which divided audiences and critics alike in its more serious, violent portrayal of Superman, and The Wolverine, which made good on its promise to improve upon its abysmal predecessor and managed to be both coherent and quite entertaining. Pixar and DreamWorks continued their rivalries, however, with the release of Pixar’s first prequel, Monsters University, and DreamWorks’ first sequel to cash-cow Despicable Me. (The less said about Turbo, the better.) World War Z finally came out and, predictably, did very well for itself, what with people being starved for zombie entertainment until the next season of The Walking Dead started. Summer also saw the release of some fairly big “prestige” films, however, the likes of which you’d normally expect to come out during the fall and winter Oscar season: Fruitvale Station, The Spectacular Now, and Blue Jasmine each received widespread critical acclaim.
Perhaps my most anticipated films of the summer were Star Trek Into Darkness, Pacific Rim, and The World’s End, which were all released during this time, and I personally actually enjoyed each of them immensely, though to also varying degrees. This was the time period where I did get promoted at my job and also got a raise, so I was able to see a few more films that I just wanted to see during this time. Nevertheless, I couldn’t see them all, so, as with the last time, here are the films that, as of this writing, I did not see from May– August 2013, in order of release, as noted on Wikipedia. Please note that, as in the past, I still reserve the right to watch any film that is listed here and then re-remark on the film in one of the upcoming articles on films I did see from 2013. So, yes, again, you might see some of these films again, and soon… Read more…
2013 IN REVIEW: The Films I Didn’t See (January – April)
With a few exceptions, this is the time of year when studios tend to dump lesser films and films not expected to do well during the blockbuster and Oscar seasons — stuff like low budget horror films, foreign imports, romcoms cashing in on Valentine’s Day, and films held off because the studios would rather market them at a time when nothing else is really out, and they might be able to get a few bucks out of those who crave a blockbuster but don’t want to wait a few months. Naturally, being the thrifty, frugal person I am, there were quite a few films I didn’t see during this time period, though with the summer blockbuster season creeping earlier and earlier into the year, such as with the high profile March release of Oz the Great and Powerful and the April release of Iron Man 3, it certainly seems like studios are catching on to the idea that, hey, there’s room to spread them all out. One can only hope that if that trend continues, filmmakers would be more likely to try harder and make films that standout in quality for your dollar… but that’s probably unrealistic.
Anyway, here are the films that, as of this writing, I did not see from January – April 2013, in order of release, as noted on Wikipedia. Please note that, as in the past, I still reserve the right to watch any film that is listed here and then re-remark on the film in one of the upcoming articles on films I did see from 2013. So, yes, you might see some of these films again, and soon… Read more…
2013 IN REVIEW: It Begins
Hello, everyone who reads this blog, and Happy New Year! I haven’t written in a couple weeks, mainly because, well, I really needed a vacation and was visiting with family. But I’ve actually been really looking forward to getting back to writing (even if my lazy mindset often convinced me of doing otherwise), and I’m ready to start blogging again. It being January, that means it’s time to look back at the past year in film and, at least for me, reflect on the movies I liked, loved, hated, and, yes, didn’t even see. That’s right — I start off my year in review with a look back on the films I managed to not see and comment on why that was. (If you’re thinking that this involves quite a bit of blind judgment on my part, then I’m willing to admit that, yes, that is indeed the truth in many cases, but never without reason, however sound, but, more often than not, it’s just because money and time did not allow for it.)
Before I get into all that, however, I figured I’d use this opportunity to reflect publicly about what the year 2013 in film meant for me, specifically. 2013 was a pretty big year of changes for me, after all. One of the biggest factors that took place in my life was the fact that, at the beginning of March, I not only remained a bachelor, I also became one without a roommate, as my best friend moved back to our mutual hometown to be closer to his family after his grandmother had passed away within the last year. Fearing change already but also having a very steady job I was not inclined to leave, I faced the challenge of staying where I was while simultaneously moving on in another way. This being a movie blog, I’m not so inclined to talk too much about how this impacted me emotionally and all that schmaltzy stuff, it did nonetheless inspire a special review of what is perhaps the “bromance” comedy of my generation, Superbad, a movie I note again that I unapologetically include on my list of films that have made me cry, and one that my friend and roommate for the better part of 6.5 years had given to me as a Christmas present not long ago on Blu-Ray (he got my DVD copy, which I was more than happy to bequeath, since that movie is actually quite beautiful to behold in HD).
Part of living alone (apart from two cats) is the fact that, suddenly, things become more expensive. My one room apartment is certainly cheaper than the total of our two bedroom one, but I’m personally paying more. I also have to cook all my own meals now, even when I’m tired from work, or otherwise obtain it in some other manner, whereas before my ex-roommate and I had a system of alternating halves of the week where one of us was responsible for providing both of our meals. This meant that, by Thursday, I was already either tired of the one thing I cooked in large portions so that I wouldn’t have to cook again or I opted for eating out — a factor that not only contributed to some unfortunate weight gain, but also an impact on my wallet.
And that’s why this happened…
How does this relate to movies? Well, I was certainly less willing to go to the theatre for just any movie for a good portion of the year (I got promoted midway through, so that helped), and I began relying upon Netflix delivery (thanks to my closest Blockbuster closing down — you know, before they all closed down) and streaming to fulfill most of my needs, renting at Redbox whenever I came across free rental codes and buy-one-get-one coupons… or a movie I just really, really wanted to see. The impact this had on my blogging was a lot of theme month reviews for me. Girly Movie Month. Guy Movie Month. I even had a period of doing friend suggestions that resulted in my first TV movie review in Ballet Shoes, wound up reviewing a TV special in It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown (which I’m actually pretty proud of), and did nearly end up doing a Christian Movie Month due to some annoyances I was having regarding the state of Christian entertainment, but I only popped out a couple reviews — Johnny, Fireproof, and Chariots of Fire. I even contemplated Controversial Movie Month and had even watched a few films in preparation (Brokeback Mountain, Mysterious Skin, The Woodsman, and was also planning on including The Last Temptation of Christ). Let’s also never forget my binge review of The Twilight Saga, borne of morbid curiosity and my giving my willingness stepsister the films for her Christmas and birthday gifts over the years when no one else in my family would. Hell, I even wound up reviewing two Tyler Perry Madea movies this year, including one I had doomed myself to reviewing early on, as if it were some kind of bad omen to look forward to for nearly 12 months.
… Never forget. Never again….
This limitation did, however, also result in my first anime reviews — Macross II, Perfect Blue, From Up on Poppy Hill, and Tokyo Godfathers — and I think I’ve finally gained a better appreciation for the medium’s potential, even though I never really outright hated it before. Overall, I think the financial limitations ultimately resulted in some solid personal growth for me as an amateur film critic. Luckily, I also happened to have gotten some theatre gift cards at the end of the year (which I’m still using up on some late year releases) from some friends and family, so while my movie habits have not exactly been as current as years past, I felt like I’ve been able to make up for lost time, more or less, so I should still be able to build a sizable list of films I saw, films I hated, and films I loved.
Awesome…
Regarding the films of 2013 in general, I do have to admit that it was an up-and-down year, but, overall, 2013 turned out to be way better than I expected. With films like The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises coming out in 2012, what we had to look forward to in 2013 seemed to be a bunch of cash-ins and sequels: Star Trek Into Darkness, Iron Man 3, Man of Steel, Thor: The Dark World… heck, even Twilight fans had to deal with The Host. And yet those actually turned out to be pretty good (well… except for The Host, which I currently still have no clue about), with Marvel’s films in particular proving that Phase 2 of The Avengers Initiative is going to continue to be quite entertaining, at the very least. But we also got several original surprises out of the year, as well. Pacific Rim and Gravity were phenomenal sci-fi spectacle films on polar opposite ends of seriousness, and dramas like Mud and The Wolf of Wall Street showing us that even formerly seemingly-irredeemable actors like Matthew McConaughey could, in fact, redeem themselves with great performances. I wouldn’t want to spoil any surprises, but, overall, despite all the downs, the ups certainly made up for much of it, and I was certainly happy for it.
And, so, that’s my introduction to my third annual year in review. I look forward to going back in time with you all and exploring both those highs and lows. Just so you know, I’m going to be following the same model as my 2012 in review, only in how it actually ended up. In other words, here’s the order I will be following:
- 2013 in Review: The Films I Didn’t See (January – April)
- 2013 in Review: The Films I Didn’t See (May – August)
- 2013 in Review: The Films I Didn’t See (September – December)
- 2013 in Review: Neither the Best, Nor the Worst Films I Saw
- 2013 in Review: My Top 15 Worst Films of the Year
- 2013 in Review: My Top Films of the Year *
Hope you enjoy the next few weeks! Here’s to an awesome 2014!
* …in order of my favorite
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: 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: 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
The Viewer's Commentary 