Gendo watches more movies in 2018

[Gendo]

Finally made it to 100!

100. Ant-Man and the Wasp - Enjoyable! Not counting the post-credits scene, just a simple cute heist screwball comedy movie. Very little Ant-Man or Wasp throughout most of the film; more non-suited people doing people things. Michael Peña stole the show; glad he got a larger role this time around. They found a lot of interesting uses for the shrinking tech too.

[Raxivace]

From the posts of yours that I've read, I can believe that you have more of a film critic's eye than Doug Walker... given that he is a mix between film critic and entertainer, I could see why some people more serious about film may not like him. But I'm a fan... I feel that in addition to simply getting enjoyment from his videos, I've gotten a deeper appreciation for film and art... he may not know more than the average critic, but I believe he knows more than I do.

Tbh he probably doesn't know more than you. Like I really doubt that he's seen (Let alone understood) hugely important films like Metropolis or M, while I know at least you've posted about those.

Anyways my problem isn't so much the comedy from people like Walker itself as much as how they use their comedic facades to defend how crappy their ability to critically engage a work really is. I've seen so many people online, especially young people, imitate the style of these guys from the internet web critic boom of 2008ish to 2012ish (People like Spoony, or the rest of Channel Awesome, or Red Letter Media, or CinemaSins etc.), and all of their argumentative styles reads the same. They think getting mad at a movie is critique. They think simplistic surface level analysis like, say, coming up with a huge list of plot holes is critique (Bonus points if the plot holes aren't even actually plot holes). They think anything that isn't traditional western narrative style is somehow a mistake (And of course, its only the western style of the last 40 or so years that these people are familiar with. Jaws might as well be the first movie ever for these people.) etc.

When called on this I've seen many of these people fall back on "Hey we're just comedians", though it always rings hollow to me because I do think all of them are trying to mix what they think is legit criticism with humor. It comes off as trying to have their cake, eat it too, and then passing around the recipe for that cake to all of their friends who pass it around to their friends and gains fame only for it to turn out the cake causes cancer. When called on the cancer cakes they defend themselves by saying "Hey you can't blame me for the cancer, I'm not even a real baker, now please ignore me as I pull this next cake out of my oven that I'm planning to sell".

tl;dr version - Having comedy/being entertaining is fine, but using the presence of comedy to defend shallow critique that gets imitated by their relatively large audience is what bothers me.

[Raxivace]

Also Kickassia and its sequels sucked.

[Derived Absurdity]

Yeah, but Lindsay Ellis is pretty cool.

[Raxivace]

I haven't seen any of her newer stuff though what I saw of her Nostalgia Chick stuff back in the day seemed just as bad as anyone else from CA tbh.

EDIT: I'm seeing somewhere online that she actually denounced all of her NChick stuff? That's more than I can say for any of these other people. Maybe I'll give some of her new stuff a look after all.

[Derived Absurdity]

She denounced it and did her best to scrub it all out of existence. She's highly incisive and obviously intelligent and has quite a lot of formal knowledge of film. All of her videos I've seen are good, but to start I recommend her breakdown of the Hobbit trilogy, her video on Bright, and her series which analyzes the Transformers movies from every angle imaginable. They're great. She's pretty much the only good Youtube movie person.

[Cassius Clay]

Lindsay Ellis is good people.

She's got a really critical eye, without superfluous petty bs. She's one of those people who can articulate issues you may have noticed subconsciously, but can't find words for.

[Derived Absurdity]

She also got arrested for public intoxication or something once, which is badass. She even has a mughsot and everything!

[Cassius Clay]

I forgot about that mugshot. She looks so ashamed of herself in it.

[Gendo]

101. Oliver & Company - It was fine... kind of like Aristocats, but not as good. I generally enjoy Billy Joel, but didn't find the music all that memorable. This was made too late to have the charming animation of the 70s; but before they'd done the impressive stuff with computers in the 90s. I did really enjoy the character of Fagin; played excellently by the one and only Dom Deluise.

[Gendo]

102. A Cure for Wellness - I really liked it for the most part. I'm torn though; some things were really good, while others were really bad. First, the good. The scenery was amazing; I loved the camerawork and sets. The atmosphere was consistently creepy throughout (well, until maybe the final 10 minutes). It was scary in the way a psychological thriller should be. The story itself was dark and mostly unpredictable. I was constantly looking forward to seeing what would happen next; to see how the mystery would unravel. The actual mystery was sufficiently different from other films of this nature.

But then, there were a lot of flaws. It was longer than it needed to be; entire sections could have probably been cut out. The story itself was somewhat convoluted; with not everything making sense by the end. And not in the good "it's up to multiple interpretations" way. Some bits seemed like story elements only thrown in to throw the audience off the trail. Which can sometimes be a good thing; but just felt out of place here. The ending went from creepy to goofy. And they went too far with showing a pretty graphic rape scene. I mean, I really would have preferred if they had simply implied that that was his character's plan, without the need to actually show him starting to execute that plan. Actually showing what they did was simply unnecessary, and feels like they did it just for shock. The acting was just ok.

[Gendo]

103. Escape Plan 2: Hades - Quite forgettable. The first one wasn't exactly good, but it was fun to see Stallone and Schwarzenegger team up to break out of a prison. The poster for the second one makes you think that it will be Stallone and Dave Bautista teaming up to break out instead, which sounds like it could have been fun. But no... it's about a couple other random people who are trying to break out. Stallone and Bautista are the guys on the outside trying to find and help these guys. Bautista is barely in it. The plot is excessively convoluted. The prison itself is uninspired.

[Raxivace]

Sounds like you needed an escape plan...to get out of the theater!!!!!!! Because the movie was bad!!!!!!!!

[Gendo]

I can't imagine what it would have been like to have paid to see it in theaters.

The sad part is that now that I have parts 1 and 2, I know I'll end up getting and watching part 3 eventually.

[Gendo]

104 - A Christmas Carol (1997) - The last version I had in my collection that I hadn't seen. An animated version with Tim Curry as the voice of Scrooge. It had a lot of charm... it was super cartoony, like a low-budget kids cartoon. It wasn't good, but it had some catchy songs, and as mentioned, it was charming. Tim Curry was sadly not enough to make it good.

105 - Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri - Wow... not at all what I expected. A powerhouse of emotion; so much more than a simple story of a mother trying to get justice for her murdered daughter. Many things were exaggerated for effect; it chose shock value over realism. Sometimes this seemed good; other times it seemed like it was trying too hard. Ultimately, it's a story about the journey of several characters, moreso than a murder mystery. I don't think it quite lives up to how much I liked In Bruges, but I still liked it a lot. Glad McDormand and Rockwell got the Oscars for it. I didn't think Lucas Hedges as the son was all that good... someone like Tye Sheridan would have been a boost. Overall, an excellent movie.

[Raxivace]

I've cooled a bit on Three Billboards though I still like it. Seems we're pretty close on it.

[Gendo]

106. The Disaster Artist - It was ok, but didn't really have much of a point. I'm a fan of The Room as an entertainingly bad movie, and learning the stories behind its creation could have been interesting...the problem is that there really wasn't anything to learn. It's probably because no one actually knows, but there were all sorts of unanswered questions around why things were done the way they were done. A lot of the questions asked by characters in the movie were just obvious critiques of the film. Franco was great; but still the whole thing just felt like an excuse for him to do a Wiseau impersonation.

[Raxivace]

It's more about Wiseau's relationship with Greg Sestero than anything else- the production of The Room itself is a bit tangential.

I recommend reading Greg Sestero's book The Disaster Artist. It's far more detailed account, and I think captures their kind of bizarre relationship better (And generally tries to paint a sympathetic portrait of all parties involved). A fair amount of weird shit from the book is left out from the movie too.

[Gendo]

Yeah I could tell that the movie wanted to be about the relationship between the two, but I think it failed to do so. We didn't learn enough about either character to really learn about the relationship they had.

[Gendo]

107. A Christmas Story 2 - This definitely didn't need to exist. It was just a really poor rehash of everything from the first one. To say something nice about it; I liked the end ok. The one thing I was kind of hoping to see was older Scut Farkus, and he wasn't even in it!

[Raxivace]

Yeah A Christmas Story 2 doesn't really work. I can't believe I've even seen it.

[Gendo]

108. The Greatest Showman - Good music; great visuals; fun colors. But not much of a story to go with it. It was fun; but left me wishing they had gone a lot deeper into the world and the characters.

109. San Andreas - Pretty typical disaster film. It had some neat visuals. I really liked the cliche-avoidance of the car crash at the very beginning. But then they went and played into the biggest disaster film cliche of having the main character be a divorced dad trying to save his kid. I wanted to see more of the Paul Giamatti story; that felt too pushed aside. Not a good film; but I was entertained.

[Gendo]

110. The Shape of Water - Good, though I'm not quite seeing how it's Best Picture material. If this weren't so hyped up; I would have come away feeling like it was one of those really interesting hidden gems that I can't wait to recommend to people. The story was super simple; but it was told in an interesting way. Michael Shannon was the best part; such a great role for him. It was great to see Richard Jenkins get a bigger and more serious role than usual as well. Over all a very well-made film; I just was expecting a bit more in terms of the story.

[Gendo]

Ok, so I saw 110 films for the first time in 2018. My top 10 personal favorites; in the order that I watched them in:

Psycho
The Founder
Coraline
The Lego Batman Movie
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Before Sunrise
Avengers: Infinity War
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Training Day

Honorable mentions: these two movies left a big impression on me, but I'm hesitant to out-right recommend them to just anyone, due to the fact that both can be difficult to watch.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
A Cure for Wellness

[Gendo]

Crap, somehow missed Arrival when looking through this thread. It belongs on there... I think it knocks off Before Sunrise, unfortunately.