Rewatches March 2022

I managed to round out the end of the alphabet last month (paradoxically I will begin it later). So let’s get started.

William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996) Arguably the source of Leonardo DiCaprio’s popular career, the project that led to Titanic, I spent a long time being fascinated by it without really having spent time…watching it. So this rewatch was long in coming. As it turns out, it’s a kind of spastic version of what Hollywood has been so paranoid about, a Tarantinoesque take that doesn’t really understand what “Tarantinoesque” is, but is very clearly trying to be so. Thankfully Baz Lurhmann figured out his mistake in later projects, although he’s never really regained creative trust from the mainstream. I’m hotly anticipating his latest film, Elvis.

Wind River (2017) This was another needful rewatch, and now I have the proper appreciation of its achievement. Director Taylor Sheridan is one of the major filmmakers of the modern era, and Jeremy Renner is one of the significant stars, although neither enjoy enough acclaim for their efforts. Jon Bernthal has a brief but crucial supporting role that lets him, for once, avoid the antagonist’s spot he usually inhabits.

Wing Commander (1999) Popular opinion doesn’t like to admit how it’s formed, but this is a film that’s suffered, since it debuted in theaters, as impossible to measure against The Matrix and, at least as of 1999 (later revisions of taste obviously changed this), The Phantom Menace, and as such hardly worth considering at all, and as such, only worth dismissing at best…But I’ve always liked it. Even fans if the games from which it was adapted couldn’t wrap their heads around this one, since it spends most of its time on a concept unique to it, the idea of prejudice against the main protagonist based on his ancestry. If it had been released any other year prior to the same one in which the first new Star Wars in a near-two decade span, this clear homage to the saga, which still manages to become itself, would have been welcomed far differently.

The World’s End (2013) As it turns out, sometimes if you end up sleeping through most of the first viewing of a movie, you’re probably not really going to get an accurate interpretation of it. What I did see the first time I found…obnoxious. I apparently saw very little, and it only bewildered me. This is Edgar Wright’s final of three collaborations with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. Pegg had become an unlikely Hollywood staple by this point (a regular in Mission: Impossible and Star Trek films as well as star of various films), and as such was beyond being a mere costar with Frost. So in hindsight, and watching, y’know, the whole thing, this is quite the end of an era, and now stands as possibly by favorite of the three (and my previous wasn’t Shaun of the Dead, but Hot Fuzz, which itself will be a keen subject of further rewatching).

The Wrestler (2008) In 2008 mainstream audiences had once again definitively relegated wrestling to a niche market, so the release of a major film production attempting to reverse engineer its appeal by peeling back the curtain. And yet, I think it does so in a fashion it doesn’t really understand. Mickey Rourke’s character is never really put in a definitive context. Wrestling fans are as aware of their history as any other medium. If this were a baseball movie about, say, a Pete Rose figure, that would be pretty clear. But Rourke’s character was created from a false premise. If he is, for instance, Hulk Hogan, or Ric Flair, or Shawn Michaels (who at the time was winding up his career and actually evoking the movie in storylines), his arc would not lead to ending up working in a grocery store. The filmmakers certainly found plenty of aging wrestlers who were leading such lives, but a Hogan, a Flair, a Michaels would never be among them. So the results have to be interpreted through this lens. And can only be a qualified achievement. 

Zodiac (2007) a year before Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr. happens to costar with Mark Ruffalo in this David Fincher film that actually pivots on Jake Gyllenhaal’s conviction that he solved the mystery of the identity of the notorious killer. This is another rewatch I needed to do, because I hadn’t previously managed to stay awake through the whole thing, and in hindsight it’s another classic Hollywood movie that isn’t being made at the moment, filled with bona fide movie stars, but not necessarily at that time a cast that would really have been recognized, all three stars at different points in their careers. Actually, this might even have been the film that led RDJ to Iron Man. 

I’m not diving in immediately back to the catalog, so this marks a bookmark in the project, and April will be the first time since last August material for this blog won’t be focused on it.

Rewatches February 2022

After the relatively stuffed month that January turned out to be, I had to scramble to make my efforts look decent in February, but I think I managed nicely...

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) A lot of viewers dismissed this because they didn't think Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne carried enough weight as its stars, but I love the results except as a version of the current popular interpretation of world history being an unapologetic destruction of virgin territory, which is ridiculously simplistic.  

Vice (2018) A fever dream that allows the viewer to believe what they want to about its conclusions (the ending cleverly leans into the current culture divide), although it clearly has one interpretation in mind as Christian Bale hilariously leans into the Dick Cheney voice even in his early years.

Walk the Line (2005) When this was released in theaters I'd been listening to Johnny Cash music pretty heavily with my dad, so I was very prepared to enjoy a movie about him, and while Roger Ebert was very much mistaken when he claimed there was no distinction to be made between Cash's singing and Joaquin Phoenix's version, it's still fun listening to Phoenix's, and this is easily my favorite Reese Witherspoon performance, in which she stops trying to be a precocious individual and actually is one.

Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) For me, anyway, the Wallace & Gromit shorts were the last time I particularly cared about short films that weren't attached to Disney and/or Pixar films, so this feature-length version of their shenanigans, with its ridiculously adorable rabbits, will long be one of my favorite animated movies.

Warcraft (2016) The career of Duncan Jones fell apart fairly completely shortly after this, and watching Warcraft specifically again was to find I maybe wasn't as interested in the movie itself, originally, as the career of Duncan Jones, but it's still an accessible alternative to a fantasy landscape that isn't beholden to any specific knowledge of the source material.

The Way of the Gun (2000) It's amazing how paranoid critics have been about "another Tarantino," so that they've routinely rejected any material they deem remotely similar, including this movie, which is a great showcase for Benicio Del Toro and Ryan Phillippe, both of whom as a result had a much harder time impressing their careers, and talent, on the popular consciousness because of it.

We Are Marshall (2006) Looking back, I'm not quite as enamored with this one as I used to be.  In 2006 it was, as it in hindsight remains, for me a spotlight outside of Lost for the appeal of Matthew Fox, but as it was for me then an introduction of sorts to Matthew McConaughey, I've since watched other material I think I can say I reliably enjoy more.

Rewatches January 2022

I made a concerted effort to tackle more of the catalog movies to start off the year, coming up with a whopping seventeen (two bonus, but I'll explain).

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006) This is easily one of my favorite movies, and my favorite Will Ferrell, in which (and he had a whole string of sports movies at one point) he plays a NASCAR driver dueling an evil Frenchman played by Sacha Baron Cohen.  It's one of Ferrell's John C. Reilly movies, too, and is one of Amy Adams' breakthrough appearances.  

They All Laughed (1981) A Peter Bogdanovich film (good timing, since he just passed away) in which John Ritter and Audrey Hepburn, among others, are involved in unlikely romantic pairings.  Included in the DVD release is an interview between Bogdanovich and Wes Anderson, in which I suspect Anderson was most interested in talking with a guy who knew Orson Welles, one of the few people who put as much effort into making movies as Anderson himself.

Thirteen Days (2000) Kevin Costner's second JFK flick revolves around the Cuban Missile Crisis, and for me is a prime example of Kennedy's brilliant leadership.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) Martin McDonagh finds mainstream success with this cautionary tale about social media logic starring Francis McDormand as one of her iconic Midwestern roles (see also: Fargo, Nomadland), plus Sam Rockwell being Sam Rockwell, and Woody Harrelson in what seems like it's a villainous role, but isn't.

Three Kings (1999) David O. Russell's breakthrough movie, George Clooney's second classic (after Out of Sight), and the first classic movie based on a war in Iraq.

The Time Traveler's Wife (2009) I'm convinced a large part of what's wrong with the culture today is that there are too many idiots who are getting to control the narrative.  This movie was one of the early victims.  Adapted from a bestselling book (which I didn't read until later; I saw the movie originally because Eric Bana was one of the leading stars of Hollywood at that time, and I was a big fan), viewers found it creepy instead of romantic, that little girl in the field finding the naked time traveler being interpreted in exactly the manner you would if those few words are all you know about it.  But it's a classic book, a classic movie, and that's that.

To the Wonder (2013) The final movie Roger Ebert reviewed before his death, it was also the movie other critics chose to decide Terrence Malick was no longer someone they wanted to enjoy.  Their loss.  Unlike Tree of Life, which I found riveting, I couldn't make it through the first time.  This time was easier.

Tomb Raider (2018) Another movie that didn't deserve total instant dismissal.

Tomorrowland (2015) The movie that proved Disney was no longer capable of generating its own hits, quite undeservedly so.  Criticizing the continuing impulse to complain without actually doing anything, this was one of several high profile laments over the apparent death of the space program that happily has finally gotten back on track.  Also another George Clooney movie needlessly dismissed.

Topsy-Turvy (1999) I originally saw this in college as part of a world cinema series.  It's the story of Gilbert & Sullivan's production of The Mikado (which later popped up as a favorite of Grissom's in CSI), which in the grand Hollywood tradition of movies about making movies, is instead a movie about making an opera.

Training Day (2001) Denzel Washington, reaching an acting crescendo in the final moments of a brilliant performance.  I'm not sure he's found material worthy of it since.  Similar, but never of comparable challenge.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) Bogart drives himself crazy trying to justify a wasted existence.  The gold becomes just an excuse.

Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story (2006) Based on the book (which I actually read, although I was greatly distracted by Uncle Toby, much as Steve Coogan is so paranoid about), one of the great movies.  It really is.

True Romance (1993) One of two scripts Quentin Tarantino did not direct himself (the other being Natural Born Killers) is grounds for a Christian Slater performance that at its best transcends his Nicholson act, and features one of those trademark Tarantino moments, in which Dennis Hopper very inappropriately tricks Christopher Walken into killing, rather than torturing, him.

Under the Silver Lake (2019) Released the same year as Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Andrew Garfield stumbles into a weird cult phenomenon of his own, including a bewildering revelation about an old songwriter that's the best scene in the movie.

And, in Tampa, January means Gasparilla, the pirate festival, which means I watched two additional movies, out of the regular catalog, filed by franchise:

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011) The fourth in the series, revolving mostly around Jack Sparrow, Blackbeard, and the Fountain of Youth, featuring Sam Claflin before I later caught back up with him in Every Breath You Take.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017) I admit, at the time I had little patience for the fourth and fifth films, because they violated what was a key draw for me with the first three: Jack Sparrow is balanced by an equally compelling costar or two.  Penelope Cruz is the replacement costar in Tides, but there really isn't one in Tales.  Orlando Bloom does return, but only for glimpses, in it (with an even briefer look at Keira Knightley).  Fortunately, like the later Claflin role that caught my notice, the replacement costar in Tales, Brenton Thwaites, ended up back on my radar in the TV show Titans, making it easier to revisit.  Claflin's role is incredibly minimal, by the way, in Tides, where Thwaites, playing the son of Bloom and Keira's characters, is in effect taking Bloom's spot.  The whole thrust of Tales is revisiting the feel of the first one.  

So I will have to officially include both as worthy installments in the series.  I enjoyed them.

Rewatches December 2021

 This was another month bogged down in non-catalogue affairs, plus Christmas (more on that later), so not a ton to speak of, but plenty to say anyway...

The Stunt Man (1980) I don't think I'd even heard of it until I saw a special edition DVD at K-Mart, and then I kind of fell into the rabbit hole suggested by the accompanying documentary about the difficulties of the production.  Watching it again, now, obviously Peter O'Toole is always magnetic, which was most of the response it received on release (O'Toole received one of his non-winning Oscar nominations for the performance), but as with a lot of movies it now looks pretty dated, so that was distracting.  

Super Troopers (2001)

Super Troopers 2 (2018) The first is the breakthrough Broken Lizard production that became a cult classic, although I didn't see it until years later, and by that time I'd seen the troupe in Club Dread, which I loved, and so that was my Broken Lizard film (Beerfest was of course even more delightfully ridiculous), but as far as mainstream popularity goes Super Troopers remains the legacy.  So the belated follow-up finally happened, and I loved it the first time I watched it and loved just as much this time.  Just a lot of great Canadian humor this time.  Broken Lizard is never gonna be the American Monty Python, but the guys certainly tried.  

Syriana (2005) This was kind of the movie that convinced critics it was actually okay to like George Clooney (for a while), in which he participates in a grim assessment on the war in Afghanistan (Matt Damon costars).  I think it's predictably cynical.  Star Trek alum Alexander Siddig plays a prince looking to inherit the throne with grand ambitions for reform, so of course Clooney is assigned to take him out, because his brother is much better for American interests.  Clooney packed on the weight and grew a beard for the movie, and was rewarded with stellar notices for a few movies he starred in afterward, including Michael Clayton and Up in the Air.  

My Christmas tradition is watching Christmas movies and TV specials.  I've only recently added Bill Murray's Scrooged to the bunch, but it's become, actually, the one I most look forward to.  Also in the mix this year were the Jim Carrey A Christmas Carol; the Patrick Stewart version (which I've watched every Christmas morning for years); The Polar Express; Elf, Carrey's The Grinch Who Stole Christmas; Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer; Olive, the Other Reindeer; Hoops & Yoyo Ruin Christmas; and the Community episode "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas."  If you can't get a good sense of what I enjoy out of that, I don't know what to tell ya.

Rewatches November 2021

 I watched a lot of different things last month outside of the catalog rewatches, so there's not a lot to cover here except some movies that were well worth revisiting:

Solaris (2002) This is one of those movies I never understood how it got such a lousy reputation.  As near as I can tell, this only happened because critics and/or viewers were bizarrely protective of a book that has disappeared from the popular consciousness and a prior adaptation that was never in it.  Directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring George Clooney, credits that in a previous era would have guaranteed acclaim rather than prevented it, this is the kind of movie that challenges and rewards viewer patience.  Jeremy Davies and Viola Davis are ample supporting actors in this Clooney spotlight.  I never understood why it always seemed so hard to just admit how magnetic Clooney is.  This was before critics finally agreed, for a couple movies at least (Michael Clayton, Up in the Air), that he was indeed a movie star, and so they were still supposed to resent his existence, regardless of the quality of the material he was appearing in.  This is a story about the toxic allure of believing a lie, even when you know a trap has been set.  It is another classic piece of work from both Soderbergh and Clooney.

Source Code (2011) This is a movie I loved on first viewing.  It's the second directorial effort from Duncan Jones (another inexplicable victim of a system that often seems to reject talent regardless of actual talent), a repeating day story about a terrorist attack a powerful new policing tool can help prevent, if only Jake Gyllenhaal can stop worrying about his real world problems long enough to figure out how.  Of course, his real problems are very real, and revealed gradually enough that they're themselves a compelling feature of the movie, but his repeating eight minutes on a train are great drama, and if you're not happy that he manages to be happy he spends most of them with Michelle Monaghan, there's something wrong with you.  Jeffrey Wright has one of his great supporting roles, but the real star is Vera Farmiga, who initially seems too dismissive of Gyllenhaal's plight, but finally becomes his savior, in an ending that elevates the whole movie and places it far beyond its reputation and very close to a classic.  I hadn't watched it basically in ten years, and it was as good this time as it was the last time.

Unoffically, Starman (1984) was part of this, but I was watching it for the first time.  When Jeff Bridges later costarred in K-PAX, that was a movie that wasn't supposed to be enjoyed because it was "too much like Starman."  The two movies are nothing at all alike, as it turns out.

Stick It (2006)  This will always be one of my favorite movies that I was probably not really intended to like at all.  It's a gymnastics teen drama.  Bridges costars, which was one of my early Jeff Bridges experiences, although the movie around him is so fun and lively, you don't need to watch it for him if you're worried he's the only thing you're going to like.  I kind of assume this is a movie that people weren't supposed to like because Olympic gymnastics is still the thing everyone's supposed to love regardless of what we learn about the coaches, and a movie that condemns the relentless judgmental nature of it shouldn't be condoned.  All the same, it's as awesome a movie today as it ever was.

Stranger Than Fiction (2006)  It's very easy to assume that Will Ferrell made this movie believing it was his Truman Show, the movie Jim Carrey made almost a decade prior that thrust him in a more dramatic fashion while also trading on his goofy persona.  And it really, really wants to be that, but I think no one really knew how to nail it.  Ferrell is a man inadvertently living the life of an author's main character in her next book.  No attempt is made to explain how this is possible, except that it's a fact that eventually everyone just accepts.  Ferrell is as great as he ever is.  Everyone in it is fine, in fact, but the story, which is a story about stories, just can't figure itself out.  So you either accept it as is or you're left scratching your head, and settle for continuing to be a fan of Will Ferrell.  Which you should be.  He's been one of the best actors in Hollywood for two decades.

Rewatches October 2021

Safe House (1999) The lack of a real film career for Patrick Stewart kind of always baffled me.  Outside of Star Trek and X-Men, he doesn't have much to show for all his considerable talent.  Rewatching Safe House, it became a little more understandable.  I think either he just wasn't offered a lot of options, or he wasn't very good at making selections from them.  Safe House is a classic Patrick Stewart performance, filled with just about every quirk you've seen if you're familiar with his Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation, except the story itself can't decide if it's ridiculous or if we should be taking it seriously.  Stewart plays an ex-CIA DIA operative who in retirement lives a paranoid life no one around him understands.  Because the film can't decide what it is, Stewart spends most of it looking unnecessarily silly.  I'm left with the question, why waste his talent on something like this?

Screwed (2000) The death of Norm Macdonald hit a lot of people pretty hard.  I had been a fan who tried to keep tabs on his career post-Saturday Night Live, but eventually he sank into an undeserved oblivion (except for a vocal performance in The Orville, his last notable work).  He was one of those people, like John Cleese, who couldn't help but sound hilarious. Screwed is Macdonald playing a butler who hatches a crazy scheme with Dave Chappelle to stage his own kidnapping, with equally ridiculous results.  I love it.

Serenity (2005) This latest rewatch I finally just threw my hands up.  Joss Whedon developed a whole cult following thanks to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which carried over into Firefly, the short-lived show Serenity continues.  Ironically, it wasn't until Whedon reached his career zenith as director of The Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron that people finally decided maybe they didn't like him as much as they thought they did.  If I could sum up the career of Joss Whedon in one word, it would be: self-indulgent.  He was never really one to question the logic of his decisions.  The results, more often than not, were far more ridiculous, and not in the good Norm Macdonald sense, than anyone ever cared to admit.

Serenity (2019) In recent years critics have kind of gone out of their way to discredit the kinds of movies that used to define the mainstream.  This Serenity was one of those victims, labeled a total disaster despite being anchored by compelling performances from Matthew McConnaughey, Anne Hathaway, Diane Lane, Jason Clarke, and Djimon Hounsou, and an unusual story whose logic is spelled out despite what you might have heard, high concept, in the aftermath of Shyamalan and Nolan, having apparently become taboo.

Shazam! (2019) With the massive success of the MCU, the DCEU's relative failure tended to be explained as it lacking the sense of fun that pervaded, well, the successful MCU.  So Shazam! happened, and was actually less successful than the DCEU had been to that point.  I like it.  I don't love it (it doesn't help that lead character Billy Batson is outshined by two of his kid costars, Freddy Freeman and Darla (who hopefully has a vastly expanded role in the sequel).

Sicario (2015) Denis Villeneuve's follow-up to Prisoners, and to date his last English-language straight drama, powered by the doubt of Emily Blunt as she attempts to navigate the murky waters of Josh Brolin and Benecio Del Toro.

Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018) The follow-up, not directed by Villeneuve, is basically a repudiation of the first one, Brolin and Del Toro on the defensive, although it makes a strong case for the films best being understood as rare recent star vehicles for Del Toro, as this one ultimately hinges on his enigmatic foreign agent trying to find whatever justice he can.

Side Effects (2013) I can't really explain why Steven Soderbergh voluntarily shrank his Hollywood profile, perhaps feeling guilty over the glitz of his Ocean's trilogy.  Here he relies on Jude Law and Rooney Mara to navigate the tricky waters of the justice system and pharmacological drugs, with an unexpected twist ending.  I hadn't successfully watched the whole film previously (same as had happened with Prisoners), so it was a welcome discovery finding out what the actual film was like.  

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014) I don't think this follow-up is as successful as the first one (which was full of fun performances).  This one is more about the general pulp noir feel, which itself is still fun to experience, and adding the likes of Eva Green and Joseph Gordon-Levitt to the mix, plus increasing the size of Jessica Alba's role, creates enough new atmosphere to make it worth savoring.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004) The paradox of the modern film era is that when CGI made anything possible, the very idea of movie magic seemed to become impossible to enjoy.  This early digital landscape came and went to little interest, although the results are still fun to watch, nearly twenty years later.  Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow are a punchy duo in this version of something b-movies did all the time, but this one is just capable of doing it better.

2014 Capsule Reviews

 Interstellar

rating: *****

review: For me this was unquestionably Christopher Nolan hitting his highest note after The Dark Knight, and still his best film since, his most deeply piercing of the human experience, and the reason I personally became a big fan of Matthew McConnaughey.

Winter's Tale

rating: *****

review: Even before having recently having actually read a book by Mark Helprin, I fell heads over heels for this, which I saw because it stars my favorite actor, Colin Farrell, and costars two other favorites, Russell Crowe and Will Smith.  A truly transcendent fairy tale.

Locke

rating: *****

review: Back when there was still chatter of Tom Hardy being the best actor of his generation, there was a lot of interest in this hugely ambitious and yet incredibly simple movie: Hardy talking into a phone the whole movie, and that's it.  I find the results fascinating.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

rating: ****

review: Believe or not, but for those who are aware that Isle of Dogs later became one of my all-time favorite movies, I haven't really immersed myself in Wes Anderson's films.  This was very, very easy to love, and hits the kind of notes most other films don't even dream considering while employing Anderson's trademark all-star ensemble cast formula.

Miss Julie

rating: ****

review: Colin Farrell again, acting opposite Jessica Chastain in what is essentially a play staged directly to film.  I can't think of two actors I'd rather enjoy carrying a whole movie together.

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

rating: ****

review: Yeah, it's the movie that allowed everyone to love Michael Keaton again, a brilliant jazz case study of legacy and stage acting, filmed as one long cut.  It's hard not to be impressed.

Exodus: Gods and Kings

rating: ****

review: Yeah, it's Ridley Scott waxing poetic about the sad lives of great men, on a biblical scale, but for me it's always been the showcase for Joel Edgerton's best performance.

The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby

rating: ****

review: For a brief moment it really did seem that Jessica Chastain was going to be recognized as one of Hollywood's new giants, but that's not really how it's played out since.  This is arguably her greatest showcase, with an incredible three separate cuts with which to enjoy it.

Edge of Tomorrow

rating: ****

review: You may not realize this, but Hollywood really does go out of its way to try and make you hate its stars, after a while, and they'll do it in such a way that you think it was your idea.  Tom Cruise had already reached that point ten years earlier, and he had increasingly relied on action roles to keep his popular career going.  By the time this one came out everyone was tired of the act, but then enough people realized that it was actually pretty good that it deservedly became a cult hit.

Inherent Vice

rating: ****

review: Thomas Pynchon at last earns his Hollywood moment, and it was absolutely worth the wait.

The LEGO Movie

rating: ****

review: In what might have come off as a shameless plug for toys, it actually turns out to be one of the great Will Ferrell movies, among other things.  Everyone just assumes in animated movies these days it's a Disney Pixar world, but neither Disney nor Pixar is capable of something like this.

A Million Ways to Die in the West

rating: ****

review: Maybe you have to be the rare demographic that's familiar with both the western genre and Seth MacFarlane to appreciate it, but I found this hilarious, a spoof worthy of comparison with Blazing Saddles.

Noah

rating: ****

review: Russell Crowe brings so much weightiness to his performances it can sometimes seem difficult to justify.  I think this one does.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

rating: ****

review: I mean, sure, if you're worried so much about how the villains come off, you might worry about enjoying this one.  But everything else is literally amazing.  There are no better Spider-Man movies than the Webb/Garfield/Stone ones.

American Sniper

rating: ****

review: This is the last adult drama to top a year's box office.  It's probably Eastwood's last big statement.  And it's Bradley Cooper's biggest breakthrough.  This is the one that made him capable of doing whatever he wants.  He deserved it.  

Muppets Most Wanted

rating: ****

review: Everyone loved how the first one made the Muppets relevant again.  I love how this one just lets them be the Muppets again.

Monuments Men

rating: ****

review: Critics seemed baffled that anyone would waste time about making a movie around the guys who saved art during WWII.  I think the movie itself explains that, and does it entertainingly.  

Frank Miller's Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

rating: ****

review: I love these movies.  I'm still astonished they even happened.

John Wick

rating: ****

review: I admit I was pretty late to this party, so I'm still working at fully appreciating the results, but c'mon, this is Keanu Reeves finding a third defining film series.  Who does that???

The Zero Theorem

rating: ***

review: Terry Gilliam is sometimes just weird.  This is him being weird without really nailing the magic he finds in his best work.

Hercules

rating: ***

review: The good news is that this is far, far superior to The Scorpion King.  The bad news is that Dwayne Johnson doesn't quite find the Greek myth equivalent of the Avengers he might have been looking for.

Guardians of the Galaxy

rating: ***

review: It's very enjoyable, a huge breath of fresh air in the MCU, but it ain't quite Star Wars and it ain't quite Princess Bride, both of which it kind of wants to be.  

Dumb and Dumber To

rating: ***

review: Even though Jim Carrey is one of my all-time favorite actors, I confess one of the movies he's best known for I don't really know that well.  So this sequel is greeted, by me, as funny, but maybe not the best way to try and salvage his career at that time.

Snowpiercer

rating: ***

review: Greeted as an instant cult favorite, I caught it later and enjoyed it, but not sure it's quite the treasure everyone says it is.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

rating: ***

review: This kind of became the franchise where popular film careers came to die.  Undeservedly so.  This was another fine Chris Pine showcase with a fun supporting cast around him.

The Drop

rating: ***

review: James Gandolfini must have been a very confused man.  He received endless praise for his TV work (hey, Bryan Cranston has received the same treatment, by the way), but anytime he did a movie he couldn't find any love.  This is another movie worth considering to try and figure out why.  Tom Hardy, meanwhile, does another accent job.  A movie I personally need to revisit at some point, too.

Deliver Us From Evil

rating: ***

review: At this point I had such high expectations for Eric Bana movies, it was disappointing to see that he had reached his brick wall, from which he has yet to emerge.

The Theory of Everything

rating: ***

review: Kind of the opposite of A Beautiful Mind, this is the Stephen Hawking movie that kind of asks you to be okay with the way his marriage ended.  Colors my whole perception of the results.

X-Men: Days of the Future Past

rating: ***

review: Hugh Jackman had become bigger than the X-Men franchise from the moment he first appeared in it, but at the same time he also forever found it difficult to outlive.  This is the exact moment in which he began to succeed, and it's all the more impossible to care about anything else happening around him.  Except Quicksilver.  That was the second brilliant thing these X-Men movies did.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

rating: ***

review: I originally thought of this as the Nick Fury movie.  Then I thought of it as the elevator fight movie.  Now I guess I really just have to rewatch it, and I still think it's one of the better MCU efforts, but it's still tough to think of the whole movie as a distinct achievement.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

rating: ***

review: I actually do really enjoy the Hobbit movies, but Jackson's decision to have that one guy make truly ridiculous efforts to try and get away with being a terrible person, it gets in the way.  It's the main reason I haven't made an effort to rewatch the trilogy, which on the whole I think is better than the first one.

The Expendables 3

rating: ***

review: I love how this one commits to Mel Gibson being the villain.  If he can't be a Hollywood star like he used to, he ought to at least have interesting roles available.

Transformers: Age of Extinction

rating: ***

review: I love how these movies suddenly just dive into a dystopian future in this one.  

Let's Be Cops

rating: **

review: If Jake Johnson had significantly changed his persona from New Girl for this, he might have gone on to have an actual movie career.  Still enjoyable.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

rating: **

review: I always thought the Transformers were far too big in their movies.  And essentially it's difficult to love these movies for the same reason.  Only here, it just seems more egregious.

300: Rise of an Empire

rating: **

review: On the one hand, it's great to just let Eva Green be the lead actor, but on the other, it's kind of disappointing that they did make an effort to replace Gerard Butler, but they didn't really try.

Divergent

rating: **

review: I love how I really did hear people at the time praising the concept.  But this is strictly a cash grab attempt on the heels of the Twilight movies, and everyone involved knew it.  could have been better if they'd actually made a commitment.  Still more worth watching the complete series than the even less inspired Hunger Games movies, which are laughably just full of themselves.

Left Behind

rating: **

review: Kind of technically the last time Nicolas Cage was in something the studio actually expected someone to see while making it, a remake of a prior set of films based on the book series.  Too bad the whole budget was blown on Cage, although it's still interesting to think he made it at all.  In some alternate reality there're people who equally believe the whole series will be filmed someday, much like the Narnia books.

Selma

rating: **

review: Still one of my biggest cinematic disappointments.  Someone finally makes a movie about MLK, Jr., and it's barely even a movie.