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trinityvixenI wanted to get to the So-Bad-It's-Brilliant category right away, but I have to stop first and pay respects to the other milestone on the way to the better movies.
Better than they had a right to be:
The Green Hornet - I loathe Seth Rogen, but this one was fun. It was incredibly stupid, but you could do worse. Christoph Waltz trying to figure out how to take his ordinary gangster character to the next, comic-book-over-the-top level was pretty much the funniest shit going on for most of the movie.
Source Code - I almost put this on the disappointment list. I was more dissatisfied with it the more I thought about it, but given that this is Duncan Jones' second movie and this one had a budget (and, hence, a studio to meddle with it) riding on it, it did pretty okay. Loved Vera Farmiga; her character made the movie for me because her quieter, more aware crisis of conscience balanced out the wild overacting (necessary for the situation) of Jake Gyllenhaal.
X-Men: First Class - It was decidedly imperfect, for a variety of reasons, but it's by far and away the most engaged with its material of the last three X-Men movies. I still go back and forth on whether the filmmakers knew their movie in no way provided evidence for why anyone would side with Xavier over Magneto. If they did it on purpose to show how alluring Magneto's version of reality is, it would be an interesting and terrible way to make the audience complicit in his dreams of genocide. I don't think they quite managed it, alas, but still, miles better than expected.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II - Rescued from disappointment only thanks to nostalgia for the series and Alan Rickman's performance. I really didn't like it, generally, but I'm much more disposed to forgive it its faults (ugh Neville on a snake hunt) than I was when I first saw it.
Horrible Bosses - It's gratingly sexist at times, but it was also uproariously funny at others. I'm still peeved that sexual harassment--on the scale deployed by Jennifer Aniston's character--was considered okay to laugh at, but I admit to laughing at it.
Friends With Benefits - Better than most romantic comedies I've seen because it was both romantic and funny. The leads have fantastic chemistry, but beyond that, you actually care about their characters and want them to be happy. Why is this so hard to get right?
Fright Night - A remake of a not-so-terribly-good vampire movie (there! I said it!) from the 1980s? Actually good? Get out of town. I'm not the hugest fan of David Tennant (leftover irritation from his being hailed as THE Doctor of the new-skool Doctor Who), but he was hilarious. More credit should go to Collin Farrel who played his vampire character as both believably feral and sexy in a way that was both self-depricatingly jovial and dangerous. A delicate balance, well struck.
Tucker & Dale Versus Evil - The trailer really did give away about 90% of the jokes, but if you haven't seen it, you'll love this movie all the more. Gotta give props to Alan Tudyk, too.
The Muppets - Not wall-to-wall awesome, but given how hard it is to update these guys in movie format, an honorable attempt. ::MANIACAL LAUGH::
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows - I enjoyed the first one well enough, but these movies aren't good by any stretch of the imagination. They're fun, to be sure, but I thought the formula might drag in the sequel, and, at times, it did. Where it really shone was in Jared Harris' Moriarty squaring off against, well, everybody. He's a fussy-looking professorial type who happens to kick enormous amounts of ass. Most people were distracted by the bromance (or, let's face it, the straight-up eye-fucking) between Holmes and Watson, but I enjoyed the villain tremendously.
Better than they had a right to be:
The Green Hornet - I loathe Seth Rogen, but this one was fun. It was incredibly stupid, but you could do worse. Christoph Waltz trying to figure out how to take his ordinary gangster character to the next, comic-book-over-the-top level was pretty much the funniest shit going on for most of the movie.
Source Code - I almost put this on the disappointment list. I was more dissatisfied with it the more I thought about it, but given that this is Duncan Jones' second movie and this one had a budget (and, hence, a studio to meddle with it) riding on it, it did pretty okay. Loved Vera Farmiga; her character made the movie for me because her quieter, more aware crisis of conscience balanced out the wild overacting (necessary for the situation) of Jake Gyllenhaal.
X-Men: First Class - It was decidedly imperfect, for a variety of reasons, but it's by far and away the most engaged with its material of the last three X-Men movies. I still go back and forth on whether the filmmakers knew their movie in no way provided evidence for why anyone would side with Xavier over Magneto. If they did it on purpose to show how alluring Magneto's version of reality is, it would be an interesting and terrible way to make the audience complicit in his dreams of genocide. I don't think they quite managed it, alas, but still, miles better than expected.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II - Rescued from disappointment only thanks to nostalgia for the series and Alan Rickman's performance. I really didn't like it, generally, but I'm much more disposed to forgive it its faults (ugh Neville on a snake hunt) than I was when I first saw it.
Horrible Bosses - It's gratingly sexist at times, but it was also uproariously funny at others. I'm still peeved that sexual harassment--on the scale deployed by Jennifer Aniston's character--was considered okay to laugh at, but I admit to laughing at it.
Friends With Benefits - Better than most romantic comedies I've seen because it was both romantic and funny. The leads have fantastic chemistry, but beyond that, you actually care about their characters and want them to be happy. Why is this so hard to get right?
Fright Night - A remake of a not-so-terribly-good vampire movie (there! I said it!) from the 1980s? Actually good? Get out of town. I'm not the hugest fan of David Tennant (leftover irritation from his being hailed as THE Doctor of the new-skool Doctor Who), but he was hilarious. More credit should go to Collin Farrel who played his vampire character as both believably feral and sexy in a way that was both self-depricatingly jovial and dangerous. A delicate balance, well struck.
Tucker & Dale Versus Evil - The trailer really did give away about 90% of the jokes, but if you haven't seen it, you'll love this movie all the more. Gotta give props to Alan Tudyk, too.
The Muppets - Not wall-to-wall awesome, but given how hard it is to update these guys in movie format, an honorable attempt. ::MANIACAL LAUGH::
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows - I enjoyed the first one well enough, but these movies aren't good by any stretch of the imagination. They're fun, to be sure, but I thought the formula might drag in the sequel, and, at times, it did. Where it really shone was in Jared Harris' Moriarty squaring off against, well, everybody. He's a fussy-looking professorial type who happens to kick enormous amounts of ass. Most people were distracted by the bromance (or, let's face it, the straight-up eye-fucking) between Holmes and Watson, but I enjoyed the villain tremendously.
