2019 At The Movies

In accordance with the prophecy, it was well into January before I had an opportunity to think about all the movies I saw last year. As always, my ratings are influenced by more than just the movie (I am only human after all.) So you may find movies in a weird order. If you think any movie rating is crazy, let me know about it. 

2019 Movies

Shazam! ****

Good Boys ****

Booksmart ****

Knives Out ****

Spider-Man Far From Home ****

Frozen II ***1/2

Avengers: Endgame ***1/2

Tag (2018) ***1/2

Aladdin (2019) ***1/2

Klaus ***1/2

Toy Story 4 ***1/2

Spies in Disguise ***1/2

Fast & Furious Pressnts: Hobbs & Shaw ***

Stuber ***

Long Shot ***

Jumanji The Next Level ***

Men in Black International ***

Secret Life of Pets 2 ***

Lego Movie 2: The Second Part ***

Captain Marvel ***

Dark Phoenix ***

Missing Link ***

Stan & Ollie ***

Dora and the Lost City of Gold **

The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018) **

Holmes and Watson (2018) **

Fantastic Beasts The Crimes of Grinderwald (2018) **

Haunt **

Vice *1/2 (2018)

Most of the movies on the 2019 list were seen in the theater, although  Booksmart, Aladdin, Klaus, Long Shot, Lego Movie 2, Dora, The Spy Who Dumped Me, and Haunt were seen in a home viewing situation. Tag, Stan & Ollie, Holmes & Watson, Fantastic Beasts, and Vice were seen on a plane. You can infer what you want about the impact of seeing these films outside the theater on my opinion of them. None of the films I saw outside of the theater that I rated low were particularly critically acclaimed, with the exception of Vice. But I believe that the positive reception of Vice was more politically motivated on the part of the professional reviewers. I found Christian Bale's performance to be Saturday Night Live-quality with over-exaggerated lip smacking. But the worst crime of this movie is that it was boring. The twist about the narrator was interesting, but ultimately meaningless. And I was very disappointed that a movie by the maker of The Big Short was so dull, despite the possibly more straightforward source material. 

I was happy to see a fun DC comic book movie, and this year had two excellent coming of age comedies. And Knives Out was definitely a highlight of the year. 

I finally got around to seeing a Fast and Furious movie. It was good fun! No wonder they have made so many of them. I still hate the naming convention, though. 

The list of older movies I saw this year includes any movie I saw all the way through for the first time or any movie I saw for the first time in a long time.

Older Movies 

Irma La Douce (1963) ****

Bringing Up Baby (1938) ****

The Muppet Movie (1979) ****

Lawrence of Arabia (1962) ****

The Maltese Falcon (1941) ****

Palm Beach Story (1942) ****

The Third Man (1949) ****

The Music Man (1962) ****

Attack the Block (2011) ****

White Heat (1949) **** 

The Thing (1982) ****

West Side Story (1961) ****

The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944) ****

Mad Max 2 (1981) ****

Scream (1996) ****

Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) ****

Top Hat (1935) ***1/2

The China Syndrome (1979) ***1/2

Strike Me Pink (1936) ***1/2

Baby Face (1933) ***1/2

Dial M For Murder (1954) ***1/2

Gidget (1959) ***1/2

My Favorite Wife (1940) ***1/2

Strangers on a Train (1951) ***1/2

Desk Set (1957) ***1/2

Funny Girl (1968) ***1/2 

Hot Millions (1968) ***1/2

Bachelor Mother (1939) ***1/2

The Bachelor (1925) ***1/2

The Lost Boys (1987) ***1/2

Sleeping With Other People (2015) ***1/2

The Descent (2006) ***1/2

The Three Caballeros (1944) ***1/2

The Little Hours (2017) ***

Mission: Impossible (1996) ***

The Candidate (1972) ***

Move Over, Darling (1963) ***

Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) ***

Penelope (1966) ***

Lifeboat (1944) ***

Saludos Amigos (1942) ***

By the Light of the Silvery Moon (1953) ***

Ice Station Zebra (1968) ***

Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein (1948) ***

Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) ***

Start the Revolution Without Me (1970) ***

Designing Woman (1957) ***

Meet John Doe (1941) ***

The Big Sleep (1946) ***

Escape from New York (1981) ***

Penn & Teller Get Killed (1989) ***

Unfinished Business (2015) ***

Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940) ***

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) ***

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) ***

Bye Bye Birdie (1963) ***

Sabrina (1954) ***

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) ***

In Person (1935) **1/2

The Three Musketeers (1946) **1/2

Horse Feathers (1932) **1/2

A View to a Kill (1985) **1/2

The Freshman (1990) **1/2

Promise Her Anything (1965) **

Moonraker (1979) **

Luxury Liner (1948) **

The Quiet Man (1952) ** 

Octopussy (1983) **

Jaws 2 (1978) **

A Fine Pair (1968) *1/2

Mad Max (1979) *1/2

2018 At The Movies

Every year, I like to put together a list of all the movies I saw in the previous year.

A small number of movies on the 2018 list were released in December 2017, but I watched them in 2018. Some of them were released in the US earlier than December, but I saw them in the theater in Japan in 2018. Many American movies released in Japan come out several months after their US premieres. So, even though Coco was released in mid-November in the US, I saw it in its second week of release in Japan in February.

This year, I am trying something new and am creating a second list of movies that were released before 2018. This list contains any movie that I saw for the first time in 2018 (or saw for the first time as an adult in 2018) in addition to the new release movies I saw last year.

Movies I saw on a plane may not have been seen in the best of possible circumstances. I used movies to keep awake for the flights so the jetlag wouldn't be as bad. Maybe these movies are better than I thought? I was particularly tired when I watched the movies that are ranked lower on my lists. Because of this, I have noted these movies with a (+).

As always, the movies are ranked on a scale from zero to four stars.

(Movies of 2018)

Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse **** (Why haven't you seen this yet? It's amazing! I've seen it in theaters twice already!)

The Death of Stalin **** (+)

Mission: Impossible – Fallout ***½

Deadpool 2 ***½

The Disaster Artist ***½ (+)

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri ***½ (+)

Incredibles 2 ***½

Coco ***½

Ralph Breaks the Internet ***

Ant-Man and the Wasp ***

Halloween (2018) ***

First Man ***

Ready Player One ***

The Greatest Showman ***

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle ***

Aquaman ***

The Post *** (+)

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom **½

A Futile and Stupid Gesture **½

Darkest Hour **½ (+)

All the Money in the World **½ (+)

Avengers: Age of Ultron **

Mary Poppins Returns **

The Happytime Murders **

Christopher Robin **

Nutcracker and the Four Realms ½

(Other movies I saw for the first time in 2018)

Poltergeist (1982) ****

Gone with the Wind (1939) ****

The Walk (2015) ****

Arthur (1981) **** (+)

Soapdish (1991) ****

Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) **** (I saw this in 2017, but it somehow didn’t make it on the list for that year)

The Women (1939) ****

The Imitation Game (2014) ****

Vivacious Lady (1938) ***½

What About Bob? (1991) ***½ (+)

Goon (2011) ***½

Backdraft (1991) ***½ 

The Conjuring (2013) ***½

The Blair Witch Project (1999) ***½

Marshall (2017) ***½

It Should Happen to You (1954) ***½

Walk, Don’t Run (1966) ***½

O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) ***½ (+)

War Dogs (2016) ***

High Society (1956) ***

Trick ‘r Treat (2007) ***

American Hustle (2013) ***

Miss Grant Takes Richmond (1949) ***

Summer Stock (1950) ***

Sully (2016) ***

Pillow Talk (1959) ***

Keanu (2016) ***

The Adventures of Tintin (2011) ***

Dunkirk (2017) *** (+)

Father of the Bride (1950) ***

The House (2017) **½

Father’s Little Dividend (1951) **½

The French Connection (1971) **½ (+)

Goon: Last of the Enforcers (2017) **½

Brainstorm (1983) **

A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014) **

X Men: Apocalypse (2016) ** (+)

The Rock (1996) ** (+)

Brigadoon (1954) *½

Antz (1998) *½

The Black Hole (1979) ½

The Last Flight of Noah’s Ark (1980) [zero stars]

I love talking about movies, so I would be happy to hear how I am wrong! Let me know.

2017 At The Movies

I post to this blog relatively infrequently. This is mostly because the posts here tend to be about creative work that I do in my very limited spare time, and lately I haven't had enough time to make enough progress to be worth posting about. So, as an experiment, I am posting my thoughts about the movies I saw last year. If people find this sort of thing interesting, I may decide to post about my other interests as a way to fill in the very long gaps between major project updates. In other words, I am considering adding more filler!

In many popular discussions about the movie industry in 2017, there was a theme about how people are not going to the movies any more. Certainly, this summer was one of the least attended in recent memory. And movies continue to be a much smaller industry than video games. A lot of the discussion about the poor summer box office seemed to focus on the role of TV streaming services and other changes in the way people like to see movies.

This is probably true to some extent, but I think a far more important factor is that there was a huge hole in the big studios release schedules. I like to go to the movies a lot, and for a period between mid-July and November, there was no new movies released that looked particularly appealing.

Disney, the box office leader for 2017, released zero movies between Cars 3 (June) and Thor (November). The number two studio Warner Brothers, released a few genre pictures in that same time frame and did quite well with 'It', but mostly had an unimpressive slate. The US Domestic Box Office was down by the equivalent of only two or three moderately successful movies. And the overcrowded holiday period probably is hurting some of the current releases that may have done better earlier in the year when there was less competition.

In particular, I feel like this year was lacking in medium-scale comedy films. The only pure comedy movie I saw this year was Fist Fight, which left theaters before I got a chance to see it. But usually I see more than one of this type of movie. And it just felt like there weren't any made that stuck around.

Below is a list of movies I saw in 2017, listed approximately by how much I liked them and scored on a scale of zero to four stars (although I apparently don't see zero star movies).

**** Wonder Woman
**** Baby Driver

***1/2 Thor: Ragnarok
***1/2 Star Wars The Last Jedi
***1/2 Shin Godzilla
***1/2 Logan Lucky

*** War for the Planet of the Apes
*** The Boss Baby
*** Murder on the Orient Express
*** Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2
*** American Made
*** Despicable Me 3
*** Beauty and the Beast (2017)
*** Dunkirk
*** The Mummy (2017)
*** Fist Fight

**1/2 Star Trek Beyond
**1/2 The Lego Batman Movie
**1/2 Logan

** Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
** X-men Apocalypse

*1/2 Kong: Skull Island

* Hot Pursuit

You may notice a few movies from 2016 or 2015 on this list. I saw them in 2017, so sue me.

Also, note that there are a small handful of movies that I wanted to see but so far have eluded me. I have not yet had the opportunity to see the following:

Coco
The Disaster Artist
The House
Goon: Last of the Enforcers
The Little Hours
The Post

I decided on my movie ratings on the day I saw the movie. As I compiled the list, I allowed myself to adjust the ratings based on how well the movie aged in my head. For instance, Shin Godzilla went from a *** movie to a ***1/2 movie, because the more I thought about it, the more I appreciated the movie and liked how it was partially about the difficulty of making coordinated decisions about group actions. Likewise, Baby Driver and The Boss Baby got better the more I thought about them.

Not all movies got better with time. War for the Planet of the Apes, Kong Skull Island, and Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 went down in the ratings the more I thought of them. Of course, movies that I saw very recently like Star Wars The Last Jedi and Dunkirk may not stick in my mind either. So I guess I am less confident about my thoughts about them.

So, am I a monster for liking Fist Fight better than Logan? Did I miss any other movies that I didn't list here that I should see? And why didn't you go see Logan Lucky?