Movies seen in 2021

 And, here are the films that I watched this year:

 

Movies seen in 2021   

1. Soul - Latest pixar flick. It wasn’t all sappy like most of them are. Still good.


2. Tenet - Sorta like if James Bond had time travel tech. It was head-ache inducing in the way that a lot of time travel stories can be, but the action pieces were really cool, so at some point, I just turned off my brain and enjoyed those a great deal. I’m sure if I watched it a second time I’d catch more, but I don’t have a huge desire to do that.


3. Fatman - After a 12 year old sociopath gets a lump of coal for Christmas, he hires a hitman (played by the always awesome Walton Goggings) to assassinate Santa Claus for him. (Santa is played by Mel Gibson) Goggings is exceptional, and absolutely the best thing this movie has going for it. Gibson’s performance is fine, but, you know, it’s Mel Gibson. So there’s baggage. Even though this was only like 95 minutes, it still felt like it could have been trimmed a bit. This was really only an “okay” movie, not good enough to really become a cult classic or anything. I think if it had gone through a few more rewrites, it might have been better. As it turned out, *meh.


4. Peninsula - Sequel to Train to Busan, which was a fantastic zombie flick from a few years back. This one was ...okay, but not nearly as great. I mean, it wasn’t bad, just hard to strike lightning twice, I think.


5. Freaky - Fun! Vince Vaughn is a serial killer, who body swaps with teenage Millie. Putting the slasher twist on the body swap genre is quite creative, and this was just a fun combining of the two.


6. Cube - rewatched this low budget horror flick. It’s slower than I remember it being. I also remember the death count being MUCH higher than it actually was. And I think I’m combining the ending of Cube Zero with the ending of this one in my head (I thought there was a twist with Kazan not being who he was presented to be), so when it just *ended* I was left with a bit of a “huh” reaction. But this was still not a bad movie, just not quite as amazing as I had recalled.


7. The Hunger Games - Steph & the kids recently read the novel, so we decided to (re)watch the film adaptation. Holds up pretty well, imo.


8. Coming 2 America - a lazy “30 years later” sequel that nobody really wanted, which coasted on nostalgia of the first film. The first one was a fish out of water comedy that worked due to Eddie’s charm, reversing the story simply didn’t work. Perhaps they could have had more biting satire if they’d had King Akeem and Seemi spend more time in America and commenting on how things have changed since they were last there, but ...nope. Ah, what do I know from funny, ya bastard?


9. 12 Hour Shift - low budget horror/comedy flick that I watched before the Dead Meat Kill Count episode on YouTube. I really enjoy James A. Janise’s series, and when I saw he was going to cover this, and that I could watch it on Hulu first, I figured I should. Sadly, this wasn’t that great in either the horror or the comedy aspects. I did chuckle a time or two, but the humor just wasn’t there. The gore and horror (or even just anxiety) weren’t there, either. The plot is that Mandy works as a nurse in an Arkansas hospital, where she is part of an illegal organ smuggling operation, with her supervisor, Karen, and her cousin, Regina. When Regina loses the kidney she is supposed to deliver, the black market crimelords get angry. Regina tries to force Mandy to get her a replacement kidney, and when that fails, she decides to take matters into her own hands. Things go poorly. This wasn’t a *horrible* movie, I was simply hoping for more than was delivered. Oh well.


10. Kid 90 - Soleil Moon Frye spent several years as a teen and young adult back in the 90s documenting her life. She was like a vlogger before that was even a thing! And since she grew up in Hollywood, a lot of her friends were folks like Brian Austin Green and David Arquette and Charlie Sheen and Leo DiCaprio… so, her pulling all these old video and audio tapes out of the vault and putting them together as a documentary served as a huge nostalgic time capsule. It was sad seeing how much tragedy that there was in this “minor brat pack”, and it served as (yet another) reminder that celebrities really are just ordinary humans who have just as much suffering and confusion about life as the rest of us. (They’re just better looking. ;))


11. Boss Level - Groundhog Day meets Happy Death Day meets Wanted. This was a mindless action sci-fi flick where Joe, who was once special forces, gets trapped in a time loop where each day ends with his being murdered by one of the many assassins sent after him because his ex-wife is a scientist who has created a not-quite-yet-working time machine. The whole thing was pretty ridiculous, but it didn’t take itself seriously at all (it was very much in the vein of Deadpool, with the narration and quick cuts and what not), so it was not a bad way to spend 90 minutes.


12. Critters - A cheesy 80s sci-fi/horror flick. The Crites are a bunch of hedgehog type animals that have a tendency toward murder, destruction, and chaos. Like Gremlins, but furry and able to shoot quills out of their backs. They also grow in size, at least for the climax of the film. After the Crites steal a spaceship and crash land outside of a farm in ..Ohio, maybe?, they begin to terrorize the family that lives there. The Crites are being hunted by a duo of bounty hunters who have the ability to change their form to look like anyone they encounter. The bounty hunters terrorize the townsfolk, and do way more destruction than the Crites do at all. I had seen this as a kid, but I think even then I knew it was subpar crap that was meant to jump on the Gremlins bandwagon. Rewatching it now, it was even worse than I remembered. Somehow this was given two thumbs up by Siskel and Ebert, which is just mind-boggling. There’s nothing really redeeming about this movie. It doesn’t work as sci-fi, it doesn’t work as a comedy, the characters are all unlikeable and cardboard. Amazingly, it had three sequels. Given the fact that movies in this type of series typically get worse as they go along, I think I’ll pass on watching them.


13. The Social Dilemma - a documentary that showcased YET AGAIN how harmful social media is. If you’re paying attention at all this was mostly preaching to the choir, with not a lot of new information.


14. Promising Young Woman - MeToo Revenge flick that was ..okay. But in no way, shape, or form deserves a Best Picture nomination. (I mean, sure, 2020 gave us a lot less movies than normal years, so I guess the bar has been lowered somewhat, but I didn’t think it was THAT low.)


15. PG: Psycho Goreman - This was a lot of fun. Gory, stupid, hilarious sci-fi fun. I can see how it wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea - some of the characters are …”hard to tolerate” is probably the nicest way to put it, and not every joke lands, but for me, enough of them did for me to have a good time while watching this outlandish sci-fi horror romp.


16. Wonder Woman 1984 - Maybe I needed to see the other 1,982 movies (I did see Wonder Woman). Ha ha. But, really… this was um. Kind of not good? I mean, superhero movies are ...whatever. And, sure, this was just a popcorn flick where the main intention is to turn off brain and enjoy the physics breaking action and whatnot. And, sure, that’s doable. To a degree. But, some of the choices made in this movie were ...oof. The “Reagan'' impersonator was quite possibly one of the worst ever put on screen. And the plot holes...oy vey. And, the pandering. So much pandering. Max Lord is obviously a Trump caricature (although, apparently, one with enough “humanity” in him that he loves his offspring. So, huge difference there.) and, sure, calling him a con man and a loser (and even having HIM recognize that he’s a bad man and a loser) is wonderful virtue signalling, but ...I don’t even know. The movie just wasn’t great, and had more problems than things of value, I guess.


17. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire - I’m sure this was a rewatch, but, man, I did not remember ANYTHING about this (or the next two movies in the series, for that matter). It was a little slow and talky to set things up, and I think that it captured the horrors of Panem pretty well, for a PG-13 movie. It probably didn’t need to be 2.5 hours long, but, it was the 2010s, and it was what Hollywood was doing with YA adaptations at the time. After it was over, I was thinking about it, and Steph asked if I was pondering that “really deep movie” (asked sarcastically). The thing is… we were both sort of right. I mean, no, it wasn’t particularly deep, or have anything profound to say about living in a fascist dystopia, but it also was art. Of a sort. I don’t know. I guess I’m just trying to say that I enjoyed it, and didn’t at the same time.


18. Army of the Dead - Zack Snyder’s latest zombie flick. This time, combining a casino heist flick with zombies. It had moments of fun, but this was bogged down by a crazy running time (2.5 hours? Really?), some unfired Chekov’s shotguns (“they rehydrate when it rains”; the “twist” with the Zombie Queen’s condition; probably something else I’m forgetting now) and a tad too much nihilism. Yeah, it’s a zombie flick, but if none of your characters have any hope, it’s hard to root for them, ya know? Anyway, it was mostly enjoyable, just think if some of the fat had been trimmed it might have been moreso.


19. Rubber - absurdist movie about a group of people “watching” a “movie” about a mass-murdering tire with psychokinetic powers to make people’s heads explode. I’d seen this before, but it had been a while, so I opted to rewatch it. More or less holds up. I mean, it’s a stupid horror comedy about a tire that can kill people with it’s “mind”. You’re either on board with a film like that, or you’re not.


20. Fantasy Island - oh, man. This needed a rewrite or three. So damn convoluted and unclear. The problem was they felt they needed multiple ‘twists’, but they forgot to focus on logic. Sadly, since it was made for like 7 million and earned 34 at the box office, I’m sure they’ll keep cranking out garbage “horror” like this.


21. Bo Burnham: Inside - 2020, in all its horrific, surrealistic, laugh-so-you-don’t-cry glory. With the added benefit of Bo Burnham music to help it all go down.


22. Godzilla vs. Kong -MONKEY VS DINOSAUR.


23. Anything for Jackson - A wealthy elderly couple lose their daughter and grandson in an accident, and decide to use some Satan witchcraft to possess the unborn child of another woman. They kidnap her and lock her in a soundproof room in their home. The spell does not go as planned. This was a pretty solid horror movie.


24. Wrong Cops - Ugh. I saw that the director of Rubber had a few other movies he’s made, so I thought I’d check them out. This was a “comedy” about a police force that takes the truism “all cops are bastards” to an extreme. Sadly, none of it was funny or interesting, just ...boring. There was nobody to root for, because all of the cops were crooked, and there was no chance that there was ever going to be any justice served. It was just assholes being assholes, and having the badge to back them up.


25. 9 to 5 - still amusing 40-whatever years later.


26. Nobody - A very watchable John Wick-ish type action flick. I didn’t know there was a certain older actor in this (until I saw his name in the opening credits) so that was a nice surprise. Also, it’s kinda cool to see Bob Odenkirk display his acting chops, and also kick some bad guy butt.


27. Spiral: From the Book of Saw - Oof. I’ll sit through pretty much anything from the Saw universe, but oy, this was extremely bad. Like, Saw 7 level of bad. If you think Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson would make for a great pair, and might bring a comedic twist to the franchise… um. Well, I have some bad news for you. Chris Rock does do a few bits of obvious stand up routine near the beginning, but it wasn’t his prime material. And Samuel L. Jackson was pretty much there to collect his paycheck (he gets paid by the “motherfucker”, I’m sure.) The traps were pretty dull, and the villain was super guessable (his motive wasn’t, because certain information was kept from the audience). And of course, they left it wide open for a sequel, because we’re in the darkest timeline.


28. A Glitch in the Matrix - a documentary (of sorts) focusing on the simulation theory - the idea that reality as we know it is actually just an elaborate ruse - a simulation via an advanced computer program or whathaveyou. I didn’t learn anything, really, since, you know, the theory is unprovable, but it was engrossing enough of a film that I didn’t mind. I think they maybe gave a little bit too much airtime to the convicted murderer, and it was interesting - and disturbing - to showcase how accepting the “it’s all fake, so none of what i do matters” mindset can (and has) negatively impacted people. I don’t know. Interesting topic - there’s no way of proving or disproving it, of course - but I sorta wished it had gone more into picking the theories apart aspect of it.


29. A Quiet Place Part II - Maybe not quite as good as the first one, but still a solid little popcorn flick. I’d honestly not mind it being a trilogy, especially if they’re able to wrap things up.


30. Alone - a by-the-numbers zombie flick that really only had the fact that Donald Sutherland shows up in the 3rd act going for it. Even his 20 minutes in this isn’t really enough to recommend it, though.


31. Super Mario Bros. - I had seen this before, and knew it was garbage, but I’d forgotten just HOW bad it is. Oof.


32. Luca - I thought the ending was a little too rushed (I mean that the inevitable acceptance that we all knew was coming seemed too sudden. I understood the dad, and of course, Juliet, being able to accept the truth, but the townspeople just shrugging it off seemed ...unbelievable. But, that’s truly a minor quibble. I really enjoyed this Pixar flick. Felt like it was one of the best they’ve done in quite a while.


33. Becky - not quite cinematic junk food, but probably not really nutritious, either. This was an enjoyable home-invasion type flick, where the twist is that the protagonist is a 13 year old girl clearly going through a lot of grief over the death of her mother.Lulu Wilson does a great job as Becky. Joel McHale is Becky’s dad, and he SUCKS at parenting, but is still great to see. Kevin James plays a very menacing nazi convict who is looking for a key that Becky got from her mom. When Kevin James and his band of other convicts invade the cabin that Becky, her dad, and step-mom and step-brother are at, Becky manages to fight back.


34. The Transformers: The Movie - I’ve gotten into a bit of a revisiting stuff from my childhood mood lately. (midlife crisis, maybe? I suppose one could argue that…) This movie was AWESOME when I was 10. It is sadly quite dull at age 46. I gotta give ‘em props for actually killing off Optimus Prime (and Megatron) ...and Starscream and a number of others, but… none of it meant anything. They were just names, nothing to really connect with. I mean, when I was a kid, I watched them week in and week out, so back THEN I felt something, but just coming into this piece without that context? Nah. The work isn’t there. It was great to hear Weird Al, though. And the soundtrack is very 80s in general. YOU’VE GOT THE TOUCH! Heh.


35. Crawl - when a hurricane hits, you get out. Otherwise, you might have your home invaded by supersized gators. Not a problem if you’re a professional swimmer with daddy issues, though! This had some genuine laughs (the gators were funny at times!), and the dog survives, so there are certainly worse ways to spend 85 minutes. I still maintain that the better ending would have been if the helicopter at the end had been piloted by an alligator. (Of course, that’s true of 95% of every movie ever made.)


36. Raya and the Last Dragon - a lot of this has been done (better) by other Disney movies, but none of them looked as freaking gorgeous as this one did. Holy smokes. Not a lot of the “humor” worked (not sure why sometimes Disney and/or Pixar movies can be very funny, and other times it feels like they’re trying too hard. This largely fell into the latter category) but this was still a decent movie, and again, was absolutely beautiful visually.


37. Till Death - Megan Fox stars in this slightly ridiculous thriller that is better than you’d think it would be. She’s married to a complete asshole, and has been cheating on him. She ends the affair, but he’s found out and has devised a plan of revenge. He takes her to their remote cabin in the middle of winter, has a romantic dinner, and promises to be a better husband. The next morning, she awakens to find herself handcuffed to him. He then shoots himself in the head.


38. Zack Snyder’s Justice League - hmm. What did I say about the original version we got? Ah. This: it was as though they had a checklist of things that Avengers had done and they were trying to mimic them (without looking like they were copying them outright). Introduce lots of new characters? Check. CGI generic super villain wants to destroy things? Check. “Witty” banter? Check…ish. (99% of it fell flat, honestly. I think I laughed at maybe two of the ‘jokes’ that were delivered – Aquaman sitting on the lasso, and Flash’s “show our bellies” line – everything else was trying WAY too hard to be funny). Wonder Woman/Gal Gadot is still amazing, and I do like Affleck’s Bruce Wayne, but overall the DCU is just… not good? Well, some of that was still true in this version. Mostly the CGI generic villains and the introducing lots of new characters. But most of the “witty” (read Whedon) dialogue was removed, and that was a vast improvement. Still, this was NOT a great movie, and being nearly 4 hours long (!!!) was...indulgent, to say the least. To steal a joke from the internet about this film: “Now THAT is how you polish a turd.”


39. Irreversible - a French film that tells a revenge story about a young woman who gets raped and murdered and her lover hunts down the man who committed the crime. The ‘twist’ being that it’s told in reverse chronological order. Like most revenge flicks, this was a pointless movie and the rape scene in particular is overlong and cruel. This is on the 1,001 Movies You Need to See Before You Die list, and no. No, you don’t.


40. Save Yourselves! - indie romcom about Su and Jake, two millennials who decide to get away from the constant screen life, and retreat at a friend’s remote cabin for a week. Unfortunately, at this exact time, earth is invaded by adorable (but deadly) aliens that look a bit like oversized tribbles. This was charming, and even had several bits that were laugh out loud funny. Nice mixture of sci-fi and romantic comedy.


41. You’ve Got Mail - this hasn’t aged all that well, but it was based on a story written in the 1930s, so I suppose that makes a sad sort of sense. Just would have been nice if Meg Ryan hadn’t been lied to by Tom Hanks for the last 30 minutes of the movie and totally thought that was acceptable and charming.


42. The Forever Purge - ridiculous, but marginally entertaining. Oddly, I’m a little bit excited about the lore of this series now, and if they do manage to make another one continuing in this timeline, I’m down for it.


43. Beetlejuice


44. Black Widow - This should have happened like 10 Marvel movies ago, but better late than never, I guess. It wasn’t anything outstanding in regard to Marvel-flicks, but it was an enjoyable enough action movie.


45. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions - *rolls eyes* Everything about this screamed “made as quickly and as cheaply as possible”.


46. Playing God - semi-decent indie-ish film about twins Rachel and Micah who are con artists. They recruit their mentor, Frank (played by Michael McKenan) to scam a grieving billionaire (played by Alan Tudyk) into believing that Frank is actually God. This wasn’t bad, but not anything really worth seeking out, either.


47. Wer - low budget modern werewolf flick. It’s not great by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s mildly entertaining, I suppose. Starts off with a family in France being attacked (the young son and father are killed, the mother lives but is hospitalized) by an “animal”, who turns out to be Talan Gwynck, a dude who has a “medical condition”. A defense lawyer is brought in, and her team tries to find ways to prove that he didnt commit the murders. Only to discover (slowly at first, and then with huge leaps of logic) that, yep, Talan is in fact, a werewolf. Combining a horror flick and a legal drama was a semi-neat idea. If there were money (and good writers) behind that concept, I think it could have been something. As it is, it’s just ...there.


48. Coraline


49. Old - huh. I’m actually not sure what - if anything - I thought about this movie. It was stupid, and weirdly acted. But somehow, I was into it DURING the watching of it?


50. The Suicide Squad - Dumb, ultra gory and also quite hilarious. I wish all DC movies were this enjoyable.


51. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay part 1 - I know i’ve seen this before (Haven’t I?) But, man, I had forgotten, like, everything. Upon rewatching it, I can kind of see why. There isn’t a lot here that is super memorable here. It’s a good movie - a bit slow, and mostly just buildup since it’s part 1 - just not anything that you’d be talking or thinking about days later, ya know? Still. We’re planning on watching part 2 tonight, and I’m actually looking forward to it.


52. Pig - the trailers lied to me; I was expecting an action-y John Wick type movie with Nic Cage hunting people down in Portland after they stole his pig. I did get Nic Cage searching for his pig, but instead of killing people, he instead spreads existential dread. It was a decent movie, just not what I had gone in expecting, so it threw me for a loop a bit. If you know that you’re gonna get a slow rumination on grief and what makes life worth continuing on, you’ll probably enjoy it more.


53. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay part 2 - I’m still torn on whether the final book needed to be two movies, but I’m glad that I got to see this one. I didn’t cry, but I came close a couple of times. And the mutations beneath the city were actually pretty terrifying (at least to me). The ending may have been a little too pat and a bit unbelievable, but, eh. I don’t know any other way that it could have been done, really. Watching the movie almost makes me want to read the series again. I probably won’t, but it did make me want to.


54. The Dark and the Wicked - 90 minutes of dread. Holy crap. This was a bit slow at first, but after the first ten-fifteen minutes, it started to really kick in, and the tension and dread was relentless. This was about Michael and Louise, who come to their parents farm to help take care of their dying bed-ridden father, despite their mother warning them to stay away. The reason their mom doesn’t want them to come to the farm? There’s something evil on the grounds. Ghost stories don’t normally do much for me, but this one was pretty effective. There are some scenes involving suicide and/or self-harm that were ...intense. Not a perfect horror movie, but definitely one of the best I’ve seen this year.


55. Candyman - the 2021 reboot/sequel that… is okay? I liked the callbacks to the original, and some of the kills were creative (the bathroom massacre was a standout) but the movie felt disjointed and I didn’t connect with any of the characters. The original was creepy as hell, this one was largely forgettable.


56. Free Guy


57. Elf


58. Blade