Amph Film Releases & Trends of a Decade Retrospective: The Nineties A-Z. Now Disc: 1993 D-G

September & October 2008

Notable releases: (listed in release order)

September:
-Bangkok Dangerous
-Burn After Reading
-The Family That Preys
-Proud American
-Righteous Kill
-Towelhead
-The Women
-Superior Ultraman 8 Brothers
-Appaloosa
-The Duchess
-Ghost Town
-Igor
-Lakeview Terrace
-My Best Friend's Girl
-Eagle Eye
-Fireproof
-Forever Strong
-Miracle at St. Anna
-Nights in Rodanthe

October:
-An American Carol
-Beverly Hills Chihuahua
-Blindness
-Flash of Genius
-How to Lose Friends & Alienate People
-Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
-Religulous
-RocknRolla
-Body of Lies
-City of Ember
-The Express
-Quarantine
-Max Payne
-The Secret Life of Bees
-Sex Drive
-W.
-Changeling
-High School Musical 3: Senior Year
-Pride and Glory
-Saw V
-The Haunting of Molly Hartley
-Zack and Miri Make a Porno

T2Q Comments:

-Eagle Eye: I really dug this little techno conspiracy thriller. Very Enemy of the State.

-Fireproof: Never saw this and, going by mainstream reviews, see no reason to. However, going by a few youtube clips I've seen, for a supposedly serious drama about a couple considering divorce, it has some of the most unintentionally hilarious scenes about addiction to internet pornography you'll likely find (it's no "Banana Man", but still).

-Body of Lies: I swear I saw this but I really can't remember any details off the top of my head. I'm wondering if it was just the trailer being seen so many times...

-Quarantine: A one-camera POV trapped-with-zombies film that isn't particularly scary (up until the end, perhaps, which has some creepy stuff). The POV does make some of the action towards the end frantic, which probably does make it more interesting/exciting/frightening than it would be otherwise.

Worth noting that the characters mostly act intelligently (or, at least, competently), for a zombie film.

Not a terrible view overall, but not something that needs to be seen as it's not particularly memorable. I do give it points for the characters mostly acting very intelligently (or, at least, competently) for a zombie film.

Due note that the trailer gives away a great deal of the movie, including the final shot of the film.

-Max Payne: Never played the games so I can't compare it to the source material, but I liked this film's style, even if it drags a bit. I do love the trailer, though. That Manson song is haunting.

-Changeling: Excellent drama. Great script by JMS. Eastwood gets some great performances out of his cast. Jolie really shows her range, playing this role in the same year she played her Wanted character, who are just at opposite ends of the spectrum in looks and personality. Malkovich is also good here, and even that kid that gives that dark-**** confession is great.

-Saw V: The weakest entry of the series. Really, besides the intricately woven backstories and building anti-hero mythologies, the main focus of these films is to build up a mystery until we get a shocking twist ending that blows you away (as the classic "Hello, Zepp" theme music plays) and leaves you wanting to see the next sequel.

The first 3 did this well. The 4th did it decently. The problem with V is that it telegraphs the ending twist waaaay too early so it's basicaly just treading water for the audience until it gets to what we expect.

-Zack and Miri Make a Porno: Some (including Smith himself) saw it as a Smith trying to out-Atapow Atapow, but I still liked this one on the whole. Not Smith's best, but far from his worst.


Movies I (probably) Want See
-Appaloosa
-Bangkok Dangerous
-Burn After Reading
-City of Ember
-Flash of Genius
-Ghost Town
-Lakeview Terrace
-Miracle at St. Anna
-Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
-Religulous
-RocknRolla

Overall Trends:

A lot of the political films (from both sides) in this election year pretty much bomb. These two months did have a good variety o

 

It's obvious that this is the year when I almost stopped going to the cinema, which I guess is because I moved away from the people that I used to go to the cinema with.

- The Duchess
Beautiful costume drama about human relations in the end of the 18th century.

 

November & December 2008

Notable releases: (listed in release order)

November:
-The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
-Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
-Role Models
-Soul Men
-Slumdog Millionaire
-Quantum of Solace
-Bolt
-Twilight
-Australia
-Four Christmases
-Transporter 3
-Milk

December:
-Cadillac Records
-Frost/Nixon
-Nobel Son
-Punisher: War Zone
-The Reader
-Che
-The Day the Earth Stood Still
-Delgo
-Doubt
-Gran Torino
-Nothing Like the Holidays
-Adulthood
-The Wrestler
-Seven Pounds
-The Tale of Despereaux
-Yes Man
-Bedtime Stories
-The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
-Last Chance Harvey
-Marley & Me
-The Spirit
-Valkyrie
-Revolutionary Road
-Defiance

T2Q Comments:
-Quantum of Solace: This one seems to get a bad rap, but I rather liked it, when taken as "Conclusion to Casino Royale". Some great scenes like the opera house. However, the director's overuse of shaky cam renders a couple action moments indecipherable even by Michael Bay standards (what happened to that boat? I don't think I'll ever be able to tell you).

-Twilight: You couldn't pay me to watch this. Even before I had any idea what Twilight was, or that it was perplexingly popular, the trailer just looked awful. And the more I heard about the series, the worse it sounded. Might be worth a Rifftrax viewing, though. If anything was MST3K-bad from this decade, I can't think of a better qualified candidate.

-Transporter 3: The female lead makes an non-presence (I think she was cast for her freckles) but I liked theoverall structure/concept. Not the best Statham movie (Crank 2 this is not), but not the worst.

-Punisher: War Zone: Ray Stevenson makes for a better comics-accurate Punisher (though I enjoyed Thomas Jane's take on the character more) and the violence is appropriately plentiful, but sadly everything else about this falls short of the superior Jane film. This movie is just really bad. Worse than Ghost Rider.

Any scenes with Frank and no bad guys was passable (he'd fit right in if they include him in the Avengersverse). Any scenes with the bad guys, though? Some of the worst spans of time I have ever suffered through in a theater. They're silly, over-the-top- and not in agood way. The demeanor, the delivery and their terrible accents (did they just cast everyone from Vancouver who wanted to be on the Sopranos but couldn't make it through the audition process?) all coupled with a terrible Nicholson Joker rip-off via Jigsaw. (That walk- WTF?!)

However, I would like to see Marvel continue the "Marvel Knights" branding for some of their grittier properties.

-The Day the Earth Stood Still: Kinda bad, really. Might have been halfway decent if they had cut out all of the military and Kathy Bates scenes- they're just your typical stupid 50's B-Movie military-thats-gotta-shoot-things.

Klaatu...Keanu...er, Klaateanu was very effective in it, though. And GORT was very neat and intimidating in a Cylon/Galactus sort of way. Some of the technobabble exposition is figured out unreasonably quick and never comes across as a natural progression.

So, other than Keanu and the robot, nothing to see here.

-Gran Torino: Get off my lawn!

-The Wrestler: Liked this one quite a bit. I cannot listen to that Ratt song anymore without thinking of this movie.

-Valkyrie & Defiance: Seeing these two close to each other made for a solid WW2-themed double feature (and, along with Rome/Gladiator, inspired that "essential works" thread of mine that I need to give some more love to...). Both are very solid action/drama/war films.

The former manages to make the audience think they actually might still pull it off, even though we know via history that they can't. Still, you're on the edge of your seat hoping and, then, waiting to see how they fail.


Movies I (probably) Want See
-Bedtime Stories
-Bolt
-The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
-The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
-Doubt
-Frost/Nixon
-Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
-The Reader
-Revolutionary Road
-Role Models

 

Lots of oscar contenders here, as is expected in the holiday season. Frost/Nixon and Slumdog Millionaire were great. As for Kate Winslet's two big films I preferred her in the Reader, mostly because that was just a better film overall than Revolutionary Road. Although I will say that Michael Shannon managed to upstage both Kate and Leo and freakin Kathy Bates. I loved The Wrestler and Gran Torino, the latter showing that Clint Eastwood is still badass after all of these years.
[image=http://images.icanhascheezburger.com/completestore/2009/3/7/128809488283854802.jpg]

 

Frost/Nixon I wanted to see quite a bit in theaters, but it never opened in my area, sadly (which was a shame- I was looking forward to erasing the bad taste left by War Zone that weekend!), and I just didn't feel it would be something worth buying on DVD when it came out on video. And, I don't rent movies usually, so I still haven't seen it. Will definitely be a priority for my to-watch list once I put together my list for this decade...

 

-Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
Not as good as the first one, but still holds up. And the penguins get a bigger part.

-Slumdog Millionaire
Beautiful film. It's one of those that I don't want to watch again, but I really enjoyed it. One of these films that just comes out of the blue.

-Australia
Epic, romantic drama in typical Luhrman fashio. I liked it, but it is one of my favorite genres.

-Valkyrie
I've raved about this film in some other threads. The whole event is one of my special interests in WW2, and this film manages to capture the history really well. My favorite thing with the film is that you can't help wanting them to succeed, eventhough you very well knows that that isn't going to happen. Also we are coming up on the 20th of July tomorrow, so I'm going to watch it again.

 

The year 2008 in review- what's worth seeing (once or several times?), what's worth keeping?

Skimming back through the lists I posted, here's my personal selections (and, as always, I encourage folks to skim back through the lists and make their own):


Worth Keeping: (aka: get the DVD!)
-Changeling
-The Dark Knight
-Defiance
-The Incredible Hulk
-Iron Man
-Rambo
-Speed Racer
-Tropic Thunder
-Valkyrie
-WALL*E
-Wanted

Worth Seeing a Few Times: (aka: maybe get the DVD)
-The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
-Cloverfield
-Eagle Eye
-Gran Torino
-Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
-Quantum of Solace
-Pineapple Express
-Saw V
-Star Wars: The Clone Wars
-The Wrestler
-Zack and Miri Make a Porno

Worth Seeing Once: (aka: rent it or get it in the $5 bin at Best Buy or Walmart)
-The Forbidden Kingdom
-Forgetting Sarah Marshall
-Hancock
-Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
-Max Payne
-Quarantine

If It's on Cable: (aka: not completely awful, but no need to intentionally seek it out)
-Jumper
-Transporter 3
-Untraceable
-You Don't Mess with the Zohan

List of Films I Still (Probably) Want To See:
-21
-10,000 BC
-Appaloosa
-Baby Mama
-Babylon A.D.
-Bangkok Dangerous
-The Bank Job-Be Kind Rewind
-Bedtime Stories
-Bolt
-The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
-Burn After Reading
-City of Ember
-College
-The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
-Death Race
-Disaster Movie
-Doomsday
-Doubt
-Flash of Genius
-Frost/Nixon
-Get Smart
-Ghost Town
-Hamlet 2
-Hellboy II: The Golden Army
-Horton Hears a Who!
-The House Bunny
-Kung Fu Panda
-Lakeview Terrace
-Leatherheads
-The Love Guru
-Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
-Meet the Spartans
-Miracle at St. Anna
-Mirrors
-Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
-Nim's Island
-The Reader
-Redbelt
-Religulous
-Revolutionary Road
-The Rocker
-RocknRolla
-Role Models
-The Ruins
-Run Fatboy Run
-Semi-Pro
-Shutter
-Slumdog Millionaire
-Son of Rambow
-The Spirit
-Step Brothers
-Stop-Loss
-The Strangers
-Street Kings
-Superhero Movie
-Swing Vote
-The Tale of Despereaux
-Traitor
-Vantage Point
-Vicky Cristina Barcelona
-What Happens in Vegas
-Yes Man
-The X-Files: I Want to Believe


Next: We move onto the final year of the decade!

 

(ignore)

 

(note, some more limited/video additions seem to fall into the wiki listings I'm using for reference starting with this year, I'll try to filter some of these out but many will still get listed, but then, i guess no harm in that- good is good)

January & February 2009

Notable releases: (listed in release order)

January:
-Bride Wars
-Not Easily Broken
-The Unborn
-Hotel for Dogs
-My Bloody Valentine 3D
-Notorious
-Paul Blart: Mall Cop
-Inkheart
-Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
-Donkey Punch
-Ink
-Killshot
-Outlander
-New in Town
-Taken
-The Uninvited
-The Class
-Luck by Chance

February:
-Coraline
-He's Just Not That into You
-The Pink Panther 2
-Push
-Fanboys
-Confessions of a Shopaholic
-Friday the 13th
-The International
-The Secret of Moonacre
-Two Lovers
-Billu
-Fired Up
-Madea Goes to Jail
-Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience
-Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
-Crossing Over
-Echelon Conspiracy

T2Q Comments:

-Paul Blart: Mall Cop: I would never watch this, but I remember when I found out about it. It was around xmas 08 and I had some relatives over, and I started playing some of the bigger trailers that were relatively recent for upcoming movies in 2009.

And, seemingly not phased by the selections, some younger cousins mentioned if I had the preview for that mall cop movie, because it was the movie they were looking forward to the most. I said no, I hadn't heard of it. So I looked it up, played it and viewed the trailer in horror. "Doesn't that look great?" "...yeah...sure, it does.".

To this day, their opinions on anything are kept in this context as a precautionary method.

-Taken: Awesome action flick. It came out almost a year later in the US than worldwide (and, given the initial release date of the trailer, made it seem like one of those movies they were advertising FOREVER) but hit great success, as it deserved. The simple trailer sold us, and scenes like the lightswitch torture delivered.

-Coraline: Beautiful and creepy stop motion flick. Really liked this one. It's not the instant classic that NBX was, but surpasses Corpse Bride by a large stride.

-Push: Not necessarily a great flick, but not completely bad either. Enough material works here to be sufficiently entertaining. I'm a sucker for telekinetic battles, so this film delivered on that front, and both Evans and Fanning are pretty good here. I'd really like to see a sequel but I doubt that'll happen.

-Fanboys: Really fun comedy that has a good amount of heart to it in terms of the friendships involved. And generally has a more balanced take on nerd humor- celebrating it in humorous ways instead of just mocking it. Basically showing how they are mostly normal people that are adjusted in different ways (so it doesn't come across as something awful like Big Bang Theory). The romance subplot is forced, however, and should have been jettisoned.

The scenes inside Skywalker Ranch also capture the wonder that engages film fans quite perfectly. When something intangible manifests before you into the physical like that, you can't help but share the moment.

The endless cameos are also quite fun. Overall, it's not a perfect comedy or a classic, but it's worthy and i'm glad the fans fought for the film to be as it is, instead of the gutted notions the studios wanted to accomplish.

-Friday the 13th: This ended up being better than I expected. Major kudos for the placement of the title, too- the audience erupted into loud cheers and applause when that happened.


Movies I (probably) Want See
-Ink
-Inkheart
-The International
-Killshot
-Two Lovers
-Outlander
-Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (it'll be bad, I know)
-The Unborn
-Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
-The Uninvited

Overall Trends:

Not much here, except I suspect Slumdog's success resulted in more Bollywood titles getting wider limited release.

 

March & April 2009

Notable releases: (listed in release order)

March:
-12
-Watchmen
-Horsemen
-Phoebe in Wonderland
-Sherman's Way
-Tokyo!
-The Last House on the Left
-Miss March
-Race to Witch Mountain
-Brothers at War
-The Cake Eaters
-Sunshine Cleaning
-Duplicity
-I Love You, Man
-Knowing
-The Great Buck Howard
-Sin Nombre
-12 Rounds
-The Haunting in Connecticut
-Monsters vs. Aliens
-The Education of Charlie Banks
-The Cross

April:
-Adventureland
-Fast & Furious
-Bart Got a Room
-C Me Dance
-Lymelife
-Dragonball Evolution
-Hannah Montana: The Movie
-Observe and Report
-17 Again
-Crank: High Voltage
-State of Play
-American Violet
-Every Little Step
-Earth
-Fighting
-Obsessed
-The Soloist
-The Informers

T2Q Comments:
-Watchmen: I think we've debated this film in a lot of depth in several threads in the forum recently, so I'll be brief and just say I really liked the movie- from it's haunting trailer that compelled me to read the graphic novel to the entertaining theatrical film to the Black Freighter DVD to the (IMO) superior Director's Cut (with exception to one extra scene that telegraphs the revelation the climax of the film revolves around way too early). Haven't seen the Ultimate Cut yet, though.

-Knowing: A pretty solid drama/thriller with some haunting imagery \. It doesn't top Proyas's Dark City or The Crow, but nor is it as mundane or average was I, Robot was. The plane crash sequence in particular is great, and the ultimate revelation is actually one of the more horrifying concepts to grace the screen in recent years.

-Monsters vs. Aliens: Really fun flick with a great cast.

Favorite small touch: Hugh Laurie (as Dr. Cockroach)'s indignation when reacting to the robot's use of forcefields, as if it was somehow beneath him to deal with such a technology.

-Fast & Furious: Taking the surprise revitalization of the franchise from Tokyo Drift, the reassembled original cast are paired with a revenge investigation plotline and a couple impressive action sequences and the film works quite well.

--Observe and Report: A dark comedy that is mostly successful, so far as it succeeds in getting you to laugh/root for bad people doing terrible things that should otherwise be revolting. It's not a dark comedy classic, but it's an interesting mixture of tones and genres.

-Crank 2: High Voltage: One of my favorite films ever. It's just a bat****-insane movie that just gets crazier and crazier and exceeds the original film in every respect (though you still kinda need to see the first film to fully enjoy this one), with interludes and stylized encounters that become increasingly random in their selection but welcomed for their variety.

"**** you, Chelios!"

-The Great Buck Howard: I didn't see this, nor plan to, but if your title contains "Howard" and "the", it's probably not a good idea to use another word that rhymes with "Duck".



Movies I (probably) Want See
-Adventureland
-Duplicity (Warning: Julia Roberts!)
-The Haunting in Connecticut
-Horsemen
-I Love You, Man
-The Last House on the Left
-Lymelife
-Race to Witch Mountain
-State of Play
-Tokyo!


Overall Trends:

WWE makes another crack at trying to make John Cena a film star with 12 Rounds, the financial success of Fast & Furious would deliver the biggest opening ever for Universal Studios and would solidify the franchise's continuation.

 

May & June 2009

Notable releases: (listed in release order)

May:
-Battle for Terra
-Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
-X-Men Origins: Wolverine
-The Limits of Control
-The Merry Gentleman
-Next Day Air
-Star Trek
-Julia
-Little Ashes
-Powder Blue
-Rudo y Cursi
-Angels & Demons
-The Brothers Bloom
-Management
-Not Forgotten
-Make the Yuletide Gay
-Terminator Salvation
-Dance Flick
-Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
-Easy Virtue
-The Girlfriend Experience
-Tormented
-Drag Me to Hell
-Up
-What Goes Up

June:
-The Hangover
-Land of the Lost
-My Life in Ruins
-Away We Go
-Doghouse
-Imagine That
-The Taking of Pelham 123
-Food, Inc.
-Moon
-The Proposal
-Year One
-Dead Snow
-Whatever Works
-Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
-My Sister's Keeper
-Cheri
-The Hurt Locker
-The Stoning of Soraya M.
-Surveillance

T2Q Comments:

-X-Men Origins: Wolverine: This one is actually pretty decent for the first 30-45 minutes, being something of an adaptation of the excellent Wolverine Origins graphic novel. But it pretty much goes downhill after he escapes from Weapon X- not only does it have surprisingly awful CGI (those claw effects- seriously? T2 came out in 1991. Why in the hell does a film made in 2009 have metal blade CGI effects that are worse?), it actually ignores the only minor piece of continuity to the first two films it needed to maintain (that being the 15 seconds of flashback footage of his experimentation and escape*) and manages to do some awful character assassination (you get the 5-years-in-the-making fangasm casting of Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson/Deadpool and then do that to the character? WTF?!**) or simply just wasting other characters (like Gambit- why the hell would you use him in a setting that makes him and Rogue ever hooking up pretty much impossible?).

Still, better than X3, even if XOW is only half a movie.

*Yeah, yeah, you could blame Wolverine for having faulty memories or something but that's a lousy excuse for not matching up such a miniscule amount of footage which would have taken an absolute minimum of effort with even a 2nd unit shoot.

**Thankfully, it's so bad that the persistent breaking-4th-wall mocking of it will play an amusing part of the Deadpool movie in the works, and we'll still have Reynolds it seems so that's a relief.

-Star Trek: Overall, pretty good. The action and scale is impressive, and there are some pretty radical moments. It's one huge flaw (outside some camp/cheese like the final "all systems ready!" scene, which felt out of place) is not developing Nero very well. There's some inklings of what could have been a memorable villain (the way he delivers the line "Hello, Christopher, I'm Nero..." was one of the best lines in the movie and I would have liked more of that awesome delivery/anti-Federation/I'm better than you because I'm from the future snark; a few other lines that had weight in the trailer weren't given the context to breathe to the same effect in the film itself), and while the deleted scenes on the Klingon prison planet would have helped a little, the rest of the movie still needed more of him.

Of course, it's kind of ironic that to make Trek a mainstream hit, they had to make it more like Star Wars .

-Angels & Demons: I recall enjoying this more than The DaVinci Code, but finding the non-Hanks cast to be less interesting than TDVC.

-Terminator Salvation: Another example of "a good movie to a point, but then..." only here the exact point the movie goes wrong is much more obvious. The first hour of this movie is really good, and a welcome change of pace from the misfire of T3. It's different, but not in a bad way. This first hour covers the initial installation assault, chopper crash, T-600 battle & the harvester/truck/highway/warthog chase/attack. And we get some nice character bits for Kyle & Marcus (even in the prelude, with Marcus's great "So that's what death tastes like" ****-you moment at carter's character.

But then, when Marcus and Blair get to that gas station afterwards, t

 

July & August 2009

Notable releases: (listed in release order)

July:
-Public Enemies
-I Hate Valentine's Day
-Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
-Bruno
-I Love You, Beth Cooper
-Blood: The Last Vampire
-Humpday
-Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
-(500) Days of Summer
-Homecoming
-G-Force
-Orphan
-The Ugly Truth
-The Answer Man
-In the Loop
-Shrink
-Adam
-Aliens in the Attic
-The Collector
-Funny People
-The Cove
-Thirst

August:
-G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
-Julie & Julia
-A Perfect Getaway
-Cold Souls
-Paper Heart
-Bandslam
-District 9
-The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard
-Ponyo
-The Time Traveler's Wife
-Earth Days
-Grace
-I Sell the Dead
-It Might Get Loud
-Spread
-Inglourious Basterds
-Post Grad
-Shorts
-X Games: The Movie
-Art & Copy
-Five Minutes of Heaven
-My One and Only
-World's Greatest Dad
-The Final Destination
-Halloween II
-Taking Woodstock
-Big Fan
-Mystery Team

T2Q Comments:
-Public Enemies: Not bad, great cast, some good moments, but could have been stronger.

-Bruno: Awful. Really awful. Borat was hilarious, this just comes across as mean and... awful.

-Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Same overall quality the films have had since the 4th film.

-Funny People: I liked much of this dramedy, but it goes on for too long.

-G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra: Holy crap, did they torpedo this concept. They had the perfect casting for Snake Eyes and they waste it on this piece of crap. They had access to source material that included one of the more celebrated comic runs in history, and they crapped out this.

What's amusing is that the only sequence of the film that has any tension is the Paris chase, which is actually pretty fun...except all the tension of the chase is erased because every trailer and Tv spot showed the outcome. They would have been better off spoiling the climax's action than that sequence.

-District 9: Way better than I had expected. Different, solid action and surprisingly awesome special effects.

-Ponyo: Some interesting moments, and has a kinda wacky ending but it's cute overall, and doesn't meander as much as Spirited Away, which is a plus.

-Inglourious Basterds: Probably my favorite Tarintino film now. Just awesome overall, great, great cast.

-Halloween II: I enjoyed this one- though it never meets the excellence of that Michael/Loomis sequence in the original remake, it is better, on the whole, than the rest of that film. It's sort of a cross between Halloween 2 & 4, with a couple scenes that reminded me of House of 1,000 Corpses (which I don't mind so much as I'm not inclined to watch HO1KCagain and can have this movie be a substitute).

Zombie shows growth in his visuals, and though the result of the ending isn't entirely clear, I give Zombie a lot of credit for trying to do his own thing here and take the story in a new direction (which, hopefully, Halloween 3D will continue with his input, even if he doesn't direct).




Movies I (probably) Want See
-(500) Days of Summer
-A Perfect Getaway
-Bandslam
-Cold Souls
-The Collector
-The Final Destination
-The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard
-Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
-In the Loop
-Mystery Team
-Orphan
-World's Greatest Dad


Overall Trends:

The Final Destination's surprise success due to 3D ensured it would not, in fact, be the "final" Destination. However, it's success over Halloween II delayed plans for Halloween III (which will now be Halloween 3D). 500 Days' success would lead director Webb towards the webslinger's eventual reboot. GI Joe somehow made money and will get a sequel that will hopefully not suck as much.

 

September & October 2009

Notable releases: (listed in release order)

September:
-All About Steve
-Extract
-Gamer
-American Casino
-Amreeka
-Carriers
-9
-I Can Do Bad All By Myself
-Sorority Row
-Whiteout
-Crude
-Beyond A Reasonable Doubt
-No Impact Man
-White on Rice
-35 Shots of Rum
-Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
-The Informant!
-Jennifer's Body
-Love Happens
-Bright Star
-The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry
-Splice
-Fame
-Pandorum
-Surrogates
-Trailer Park Boys: Countdown to Liquor Day
-Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
-Coco Before Chanel
-I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell

October:
-Capitalism: A Love Story
-The Invention of Lying
-Whip It
-Zombieland
-A Serious Man
-Couples Retreat
-Bronson
-The Damned United
-An Education
-Good Hair
-Trucker
-Virginia Creepers
-Law Abiding Citizen
-The Stepfather
-Where the Wild Things Are
-Black Dynamite
-Janky Promoters
-The Maid
-Love the Beast
-Amelia
-Astro Boy
-Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
-Saw VI
-Antichrist
-Ong Bak 2: The Beginning
-Motherhood
-(Untitled)
-The Marine 2
-This Is It
-The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day
-Gentlemen Broncos
-Skin

T2Q Comments:
-Gamer: A disappointing flick- great concept, but I guess the Crank movies just set my expectations too high here.

-9: Great little animated flick, love the look.

-Pandorum: Not a terrible movie, but not the great one it could have been- very straight forward. It has an amazing look to it, though- the best description of the film is it's the best movie based on a video game that never existed. A couple of the fights are impressively brutal, though.

-Law Abiding Citizen: Pretty solid revenge flick. Dug this one quite a bit (though they never explained why he stripped naked at the start to be arrested).

-Zombieland: Loved this one. So much fun.

-Saw VI: A big improvement over the lackluster fifth film, with one of the better endings of the series. The topical health care debate was also unexpected.

-The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day: Picked up the DVD but haven't watched it yet (been so long since I saw the first that I wanted to do a double feature one day).



Movies I (probably) Want See
-Antichrist
-Carriers
-Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
-Extract
-The Informant!
-The Invention of Lying
-Ong Bak 2: The Beginning
-Splice
-Surrogates
-Where the Wild Things Are
-Whiteout


Overall Trends:

Not a lot to comment on here. I suppose one could say Saw VI was where the series's time felt finite, after it's performance. It's failure to top Final Destination 3D would directly lead to the final Saw movie being shot in 3D. Zombieland's perfect blend of violence and humor also likely led to those writers tackling the upcoming Deadpool movie's script.

 

Haven't seen too many from these months. Zombieland and 9 are great, and I heard Boondock Saints 2 isn't worth it. But hey, I'll make any excuse to watch the first one again. The only thing I really remember from Gamer was when Michael C Hall did that weird dance.

 

So this is me catching up on the whole 2009. It seems I only saw two films at the cinema, but at least I've seen some more afterwards.

-Fanboys
Funny and heartwarming for me as a fan. I like seeing it with other fans, but it doesn't work if you don't understand all the nerdisms. For example I would never how it to my SW-hating sister.

-X-Men Origins: Wolverine
I don't have any attachment to the comics, but I still wasn't impressed with the film. I'd like to watch it again and see what I really think about it.

-The Hangover
The best film of 2009. I've never been so surprised by a film. Me and a friend had decided to go to the cinema, and basically this was the only film. I expected a silly film with a lot of under the belt jokes, and I don't like that kind of humour, instead I sat down and didn't stop laughing until after the end credits.

-Public Enemies
Great cast, could have been a great story. Unfortunately I never got to care about the characters and that made it pretty slow.

-Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
A bounceback from the disappointing Ice Age 2. Not as good as Ice Age, but well worth seeing a few times.

-Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
The first HP film where I had read the book before seeing the film. I thought it was great just after having seen it, but to be honest now two years later I can't really remember any special thoughs on the film. I haven't seen it since then.

 

November & December 2009

Notable releases: (listed in release order)

November:
-The Box
-A Christmas Carol
-The Fourth Kind
-The Men Who Stare at Goats
-Precious
-That Evening Sun
-2012
-Pirate Radio (The Boat That Rocked)
-Fantastic Mr. Fox
-The Messenger
-Uncertainty
-Lesbian Vampire Killers
-The Young Victoria
-The Blind Side
-Planet 51
-Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
-Broken Embraces
-Nativity!
-Ninja Assassin
-Old Dogs
-Me and Orson Welles
-The Princess and the Frog
-The Road
-St. Trinian's 2: The Legend of Fritton's Gold

December:
-Armored
-Brothers
-Everybody's Fine
-Transylmania
-Up in the Air
-Invictus
-The Lovely Bones
-A Single Man
-Crazy Heart
-Avatar
-Did You Hear About the Morgans?
-Nine
-Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel
-The Last Station
-It's Complicated
-Sherlock Holmes
-The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
-The White Ribbon
-The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond

T2Q Comments:
-The Men Who Stare at Goats: Really fun comedy. Clooney and Ewan are great here, as is Bridges. Kinda funny that Ewan says "Jedi" here more times than he does in the actual SW films . That bit in the desert with the non-lethal weapon demo sold me on the film.

-2012: Actually quite good for a man-vs-nature disaster (the kind that lacks an enemy you can fight against)), though part of that is because this film throws every kind of destruction at us you can think of (there's nothing left to blow up in ID4 2 ).

It avoids the near-parody that was the first half of The Day After Tomorrow, but the larger cast prevents it from beinga s focused as the latter half of TDAT. Oliver Pratt's character, despite being a voice of reason in the film, is portrayed to an extreme limit for no other reason than to have a semi-villain for the end.

It's not ground breaking but it does what you'd expect of the genre without being TV movie awful in story, and enough FX thrown at you that it literally feels like they're telling you "this is the end of this genre- we've done it all, there's nothing left, no one can do anything more than this, we hope you've enjoyed the ride."

I kinda hope that the rumors of a "2013" sequel tv series pan out one day, as I think that'd be an inetresting setting for a series.

-Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans: Not sure what to make of this one- it varies between dark stuff where Cage does some good performance but then kinda explodes into Cage parody at times.

-Ninja Assassin: Some great action and cool ninja effects, but sadly not even JMS's polish could add enough depth to the script.

-Armored: I liked this one a lot. Very solid heist flick.

-Avatar: Gone into depth on this in the Avatar thread already, but, suffice to say that, even if it's not Cameron's strongest film, I really enjoyed this one- and the extended edition and deleted scenes really reveal the more unique strokes of the story that were lost in the effort to reduce the runtime, which I think made the "Dances With Wolves in Space" critique seem more obvious than it would otherwise have been.

And, of course, it had some amazing visuals in 3D (quite awe-inspiring if you were fortunate enough to see it in a non-liemax IMAX theater).

-Sherlock Holmes: Really enjoyed it- the cast was fun and witty. The last moment of the film before the credits didn't hit quite right but other than that it worked very well all around. It also had a unique score.


Movies I (probably) Want See
-A Christmas Carol
-The Box
-Brothers
-Fantastic Mr. Fox
-The Fourth Kind
-The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
-Invictus
-The Last Station
-The Lovely Bones
-Pirate Radio
-The Princess and the Frog
-The Road
-Transylmania
-Uncertainty
-Up in the Air

Overall Trends:

Avatar's success changes movies (and theaters) for a very long time in regards to it's use of performance capture and 3D. A rapid expansion of 3D theaters would follow in it's wake- and though it would initially result in several subpar 3D conversions rushed to completion to cash in on Av

 

-Pirate Radio (The Boat That Rocked) Well worth seeing, but don't go in expecting a comedy that makes you laugh. It's great in capturing the spirit of the time.

-The Young Victoria Cute film if you love historical dramas, like I do.

-The Princess and the Frog Disney's return to more old school animation was good, but the visuals made me happier than the story itself.

-Avatar I think I've mentioned this before, but I simply thought it was too long and predictable. Put me in the "Dances with Wolves in Space!" camp.

-Sherlock Holmes Great example of a fun action flick, I'm hoping that the sequel will keep up.

Still wants to see
-The Men Who Stare at Goats

 

A Christmas Carol- Surprisingly faithful adaptation of the book, easily the most accurate animated version. Falls into the uncanny valley less than The Polar Express, for the most part. Carrey showed his great range with the spirits and, of course, Scrooge.

The Men Who Stare at Goats- A great, fun film. The best use of "More Than a Feeling" since Scrubs.

Up in the Air- Easily one of Clooney's best performances, as well as Anna Kendrick.

Invictus- This was only alright. There was very little conflict and too little focus on the people who weren't Matt Damon or Morgan Freeman.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus- Great film. Lots of great visuals and acting. Seeing Andrew Garfield in this role assuaged any doubts I had at him playing Spider-Man.

Other films I saw that were good:
Pirate Radio (The Boat That Rocked)
The Blind Side
Fantastic Mr. Fox
The Princess and the Frog
Avatar
The Last Station
Sherlock Holmes

 

The year 2009 in review- what's worth seeing (once or several times?), what's worth keeping?

Skimming back through the lists I posted, here's my personal selections (and, as always, I encourage folks to skim back through the lists and make their own):


Worth Keeping: (aka: get the DVD!)
-Avatar (Extended Edition recommended)
-Crank 2: High Voltage
-District 9
-Fanboys
-Fast & Furious
-Inglourious Basterds
-Sherlock Holmes
-Star Trek
-Up
-Watchmen (though I recommended the Director's Cut or Ultimate Cut)
-Zombieland

Worth Seeing a Few Times: (aka: maybe get the DVD)
-9
-Armored
-Coraline
-Halloween II
-The Hangover
-Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
-Law Abiding Citizen
-The Men Who Stare at Goats
-Monsters vs. Aliens
-Saw VI
-Taken
-Terminator Salvation
-Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Worth Seeing Once: (aka: rent it or get it in the $5 bin at Best Buy or Walmart)
-2012
-Angels & Demons
-Friday the 13th
-Funny People
-Knowing
-Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
-Observe and Report
-Pandorum
-The Taking of Pelham 123
-X-Men Origins: Wolverine

If It's on Cable: (aka: not completely awful, but no need to intentionally seek it out)
-Ninja Assassin
-Ponyo
-Public Enemies
-Push

List of Films I Still (Probably) Want To See:
-(500) Days of Summer
-A Christmas Carol
-A Perfect Getaway
-Adventureland
-Antichrist
-Bandslam
-Battle for Terra
-The Box
-Brothers
-The Brothers Bloom
-Carriers
-Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
-Cold Souls
-The Collector
-Dead Snow
-Duplicity (Warning: Julia Roberts!)
-Extract
-Fantastic Mr. Fox
-The Final Destination
-The Fourth Kind
-The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard
-The Haunting in Connecticut
-Horsemen
-The Hurt Locker
-I Love You, Man
-Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
-The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
-In the Loop
-The Informant!
-Ink
-Inkheart
-The International
-The Invention of Lying
-Invictus
-Killshot
-Land of the Lost
-The Last House on the Left
-The Last Station
-The Lovely Bones
-Lymelife
-The Merry Gentleman
-Moon
-Mystery Team
-Race to Witch Mountain
-Ong Bak 2: The Beginning
-Orphan
-Outlander
-Pirate Radio
-The Princess and the Frog
-The Road
-Splice
-State of Play
-Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (it'll be bad, I know)
-Surrogates
-Tokyo!
-Two Lovers
-The Unborn
-Transylmania
-Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
-The Uninvited
-Uncertainty
-Up in the Air
-Where the Wild Things Are
-Whiteout
-World's Greatest Dad
-Year One


Well, that decade only took me a year and a 3/4ths longer to review than I had hoped for, ha!

For my next update we'll take a final look back at this decade as a whole before we move on (or, should I say, back) to the next decade to tackle.