Monday, December 20, 2010

2010 Wrap Up

O.K. so it’s been a while again. I have been busy, but I thought it would be good to post something before the year was out and since every magazine and website out there is doing it, a best and worst list seemed like the best way to go since it would give me an opportunity to do a quickie review of a couple of the more noteworthy flicks this year. Bear in mind that I have not seen everything out this year. This is based only on the few movies that I have seen.
The Best
Scott Pilgrim v.s The World
Inception
Let Me In
Kick Ass
The Town
True Grit
The Social Network
The Crazies
Toy Story 3
How to Train Your Dragon
Honorable Mention
Centurion
Predators
The Karate Kid
Secret of Kells
Iron man 2
The Wolfman
The A-Team
The Worst
The Last Airbender
Clash of The Titans
Jonah Hex
The Losers
District 13 Ultimatum

Best Remake or Adaptation

This is actually a close one. So it takes a little explaining.
Let me in, Kick-Ass, The Crazies and Scott Pilgrim are all in the best list with Wolfman and The Karate Kid in the honorable mention category. I admit that Wolfman had its flaws but I’m just such a fan that it seems to have made the list based solely on my bias for the awesomeness of werewolves. But the rest definitely deserve to be there.

First, Let me in: I’m a huge fan of the sweetish film and thought it might be the best vampire film ever. So when I enjoyed the American remake even more, I nearly crapped my pants with shock. Indeed i almost crapped down both legs with shock. It was not only a better looking movie visually but the characters were fleshed out in a much fuller and more compelling way. I felt like I knew them and really sympathized with all of them. PLUS it was actually scary (something I felt the Swedish version wasn’t).

The Crazies: The original 70’s film was actually pretty crappy in my opinion so it wasn’t to monumental a task to outdo it. However the filmmakers really outdid themselves altogether when making the updated version. I can’t think of a single flaw in the whole thing. The Crazies is a truly great horror movie.

Kick-Ass: I straight up didn’t believe this comic could be made into a movie at all. Not because of style. But the fact that watching a little girl kill people seems like it would be even worse on film than on paper. But they pulled it off. I just thought it was fun. I’m either sick and twisted or that was a good damn movie.

The Karate Kid: They took a cheesy 80’s movie starring a scrawny whiney 22 year old man as a high schooler in southern California and turned it into a martial arts epic actually set in Asia with a meaningful ‘fish out of water’ story, great characters and starring a cool kid, (an actual 10 year old kid mind you) and a martial arts legend. Well done.
So yeah, three way tie for first place and two fine runner ups.

Biggest Disappointment

To start, Clash of the Titans was BAD. I’ve covered that already in a review. But the award for this title actually goes to the Last Airbender, which believe it or not I hated much worse (and if you’ve read the Titans review, you know how much of a disappointment Airbender must have been). I didn’t write a review for that one at the time it was released because I just couldn’t bring myself to do it having loved the original animated series so much. It even beats the awful Losers and Jonah Hex movies based solely on the fact that they were mediocre comic books to begin with and the Last Airbender is one of the greatest television shows ever and definitely the best animated show ever. When you have such fine source material and you still make a shitty movie, you have screwed the pooch ROYALY. You broke my heart M. Knight Shamalan you dirty, dirty bastard.
Verdict: The Last Airbender
Biggest surprise

Scott Pilgrim. Thought that comic was unfilmable. Turns out I don’t know shit.