Sunday 29 December 2013

End of Year Awards: Movie Edition

"I Know Who The Winner Is..."


This year I have decided to make my end of year review into a kind of awards ceremony thing. If you followed me on the facebook last year you may have seen my top ten list of films of 2012 and if you didn't you are either a new friend or an un-friended friend. I have un-friended more people than I have added this year, in which case you probably won't be reading this and it was entirely YOUR fault you were un-friended. As anyone who knows me is sure to admit, I am the nicest, most tolerant person you could meet and your claims of me being an Xbox fanboy just made you come across as the bigger PS3 fanboy. Can't we all just get along and love games despite the platform. Except for the Wii. Which gives me an idea of doing a best video games list this year. Look out for it.



"Yeah, Looks Like"

 

Now let's begin with this completely meaningless awards ceremony that I have made up categories for just to fit a certain film into. If you want to make it feel more authentic then get yourself an envelope and you can open it before reading who the winner is. And to make it even more fun spray paint the envelope gold. But remember, breathe deeply while spraying. Let's get started.



Best Tarantino Film:
Django Unchained.
Obviously. Everything you love about Tarantino is in this film. From the racism to the unnecessary cameo from the man himself. No matter what he puts into his films it never seems like it's too much or too little. It's always just right. And if you didn't laugh at the hood scene then you need help. Plus it has Christoph Waltz. Christoph Waltz!

The reason you won't win an Oscar this year:
Lincoln.
Why even bother doing your best acting when you're only gonna be going up against Daniel Day-Lewis.
It's like if Mastodon are releasing a new album the same year as yours then expect to be forgotten about. Day-Lewis was really the only man who could do justice to the Lincoln legend. Never mind the fact they overlooked his gayness. but I guess the Electric Six video for Gay Bar can fill in the gaps. HA! Butthole.

Best film about the end of the world:
The World's End.
Sure, this may have been the only film I saw about the end of the world this year but it is still a great film. While it may not be as good as either Shaun or Hot Fuzz I do believe that after some more time and a few more watches it will sit comfortably alongside them as another Cornetto classic. I mean not everyone liked Hot Fuzz when it first came out. Just like all those people who didn't like the first X-Men film until the second one came out. You know who you are.

Best sequel:
Despicable Me 2.
Out of all the sequels this year I think Despicable Me 2 did what a sequel should. Go bigger and better. And it did so by having a lot more of the minions in it. You could say Iron Man 3 went bigger and better too but that didn't have minions. I could overlook some of the "dumb action movie plot holes" in it had there been minions. Just replace Jarvis with minions. I just fixed the Iron Man. But yeah, anyway, Despicable Me 2 wins best sequel.

He sure loves not wearing a top:
Hugh Jackman in The Wolverine.
Even the movie poster had him topless. I suppose if I had a personal trainer and was ripped I'd go around topless too. Until then I'll just keep taking my top off at inopportune moments. Take that, society.

Why let the source material get in the way?:
World War Z.
It wasn't until after watching World War Z that I decided to see what similarities the film had with the book. It turns out that the book doesn't actually have Brad Pitt being all Brad Pitty while Sub-Human Viral Carriers™ (not real zombies) run amok. It wasn't a bad film itself but it shouldn't have had that title. Just call it "Fast Infectors and the Explosions they Cause."

Opposite World:
Star Trek Into Darkness.
They kind of have all their stories written for themselves now since in the original remake they added that alternate timeline story so all they have to do now is take the same plot from the William Shatner films and swap around what happened to Kirk and Spock. It's ingenious. And lazy. But at least Benedict Cumberbatch was awesome in it. And since this is the opposite I guess that makes Kirk better than Picard.

Seriously? He's just wearing glasses:
Man of Steel.
While Christopher Reeve at least acted like a different person when he was Clark Kent, Henry Cavill just looks like Superman with glasses. And the terrible CGI made it look like video game characters with glitchy bodies were doing the fighting. When The Avengers destroyed a whole city they still looked (relatively) normal while doing it. D.C. Comics, it's time to shit or get off the pot.

Should have took it easy with the CGI:
Mama.
Mama was a pretty good idea. It had creepiness and Jamie Lannister. Two of them! But what let it down, like most new horror films, was the overuse of CGI. Sometimes people don't know when to end a film. I can tell you when. It's when you think using shit loads of CGI to try freak out the audience is a good idea. Just look at how good Insidious was without it. And how bad that one part with it was.

Maybe leave them alone or You probably deserved it:
Blackfish.
Has anyone in the world deserved to be mutilated more than those who force killer whales to do tricks and then enclose them in a tiny tank? Maybe post office workers but they're not in a film that I'm aware of. Blackfish is kind of like Oldboy. The whale is held captive for years until they finally get the chance to smash people's faces in with a hammer. And I couldn't be happier to see it.

Surprisingly better than expected:
Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunters.
The trailer made this look fun. But then it was put back a year so they could tack 3D onto it which made me think it was gonna be awful. Watching it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. There was some good killings and Jeremy Renner remains unusually good in most everything he does.


This is just here to break up all the writing.

Best prequel:
Monsters University.
A friend told me that Monsters University was just as good as Inc. but in a totally different way. And he was right. The change of setting gave the creators the chance to add new characters, such as mine and most probably everyone else's favourite, Art, as voiced by Charlie Day acting as himself from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. And we also got the origins of how Mike and Sully became the great monster team and friends they were in Inc.

What the WTF?:
A Field in England.
I watched A Field in England a few weeks ago and I couldn't tell you what it was about. Something to do with digging. There was no real resolution but it was quite a trip getting there. Ben Wheatley remains an acquired taste and this would be his second least accessible film. For an introduction I would say try Sightseers. Not as good as I was hoping but I do like his gritty looking documentary style.

Tom Hiddleston Award:
Tom Hiddleston in Thor: The Dark World.
Yes he gets his own award. If you need to ask why then you don't need to know. If other actors were to embrace their roles as much as he does then Hollywood wouldn't be worrying about illegal downloading (and if HMV weren't so piss poor and catering to cretins I wouldn't have to seek other means to watch films). He's the best advertisement for whatever film he's gonna be in. Has any other villain been so loved that they had fans petition for their own film?

Needless remake:
Evil Dead.
Had I seen the Oldboy remake then that might be here instead. I've wrote enough about Evil Dead in the past so you can read my review of it to see why it wasn't welcome. I will say that the people who love this film seem to only talk about how it was all practical effects and not CGI. The effects don't suddenly turn a terribly acted film with an unlikeable cast into a Scorsese film. You can't say it's good just because they use a rubber tongue and not a computer generated one.

Best underuse of extreme violence:
Elysium.
How has everyone not ripped off Neill Blomkamp's style. Elysium had some of the best camera angles and handheld shots. But it was it's use of extreme violence that I really liked. There wasn't much of it but when there was it was just right. Some films can overdo it and others don't use enough but Blomkamp seemed to know what was called for and when. Even his use of slo-mo was spot on.

Film of the Year:
Pacific Rim.
Unless you've been ignoring me for the last 5 months then you should have known this would be my film of the year. It was also the first film I ever saw in Imax 3D. If you're gonna see a film in 3D then see it in Imax because otherwise you will just be watching a dull picture with some blurry backgrounds. It will also be the first film I see on Blu-ray thanks to Aishling.
Why is this film so good? It's down to the action and the direction and the imagination. In lesser hands this could have been Transformers but in the hands of a genius like Guillermo del Toro we got a spectacular blockbuster the likes of which Americans largely ignored. But they can keep their inspirational music documentaries where a young Katy Perry realises her dream of being a whore. So long as del Toro keeps producing work like this I'm happy to ignore the ignorant and live in a fantasy world of pure bliss.


"Numbers are as close as we get to the handwriting of God"

 

 

Well, there you have it. The most definitive end of year review of the past year's films. And if you don't think so then I will attempt to bribe you with a prize. The first, or randomly selected person to answer the following question will win whatever I have lying around that I feel like giving away. It may be something awesome or it may be nothing at all. In all fairness I'd say it'd be either my sister or Aishling who bothers to answer.
What TV shows and/or films are the three heading quotes above taken from?
I want title and the character who said them.
Comment with your answers.

Now that my bribery is out of the way there is one thing left to do. My recommendation:
Santa's Slay.
It's about former wrestler Bill Goldberg killing people as Santy. Perfect for this time of year.

Have a Merry Christmas and...