I can’t say I’ve ever been particularly punctual with these things, but the start of 2023 really threw me for a loop and it’s taken me much longer than I would have liked to put out these lists. Still, there’s no shame in taking your time with something you only do once a year, and given how little free time I’ve had the last few weeks to work on it, I’m surprised I managed to get them done at all. In any case, we’re starting with the good list and 2022 definitely had some standouts even if we were still trying to figure out how to make movies in a Post-Pandemic world; or at least in a world that is choosing to ignore the still ongoing pandemic. In any case, let’s get started!!

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Honorable Mention – The Marvel Cinematic Universe

It’s hardly an interesting choice given how pervasive the MCU has been for the last decade and even I’ll admit to feeling some fatigue in trying to keep up with it all. Still, where other franchises are struggling to adapt to the new Normal, Marvel has managed to once again stay ahead of the curve with a slew of outings this year that will cater to just about anyone still invested in this universe. Lighter fare like the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special and She-Hulk sat alongside some of its darker outings like Moon Knight and Werewolf by Night, and all were perfectly suited for a more casual viewing experience which was greatly appreciated as things got very hectic this year. Moon Knight in particular was a highlight as it had some excellent acting to go with its moody atmosphere and I appreciated that it spent much more time on that than the action so that when things finally did ramp up it felt like a genuine escalation of stakes. The ones that did make it to theater, like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Thor: Love and Thunder, may not be the highlights of the MCU but were still some of the better blockbusters of the year and are the kind of movies that make theaters worth seeking out even as they cede more and more ground to the streaming services. In any case, this is less about saying that Marvel is the height of cinema as it is about appreciating how they continue to make their output more accessible with each passing year; something that DC and Warner Bros Discovery have proven is not as easy as it looks.

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10 – Ambulance

Full Review

Michael Bay may not always hit it out of the park but I appreciate the times when it’s clear that he’s invested in the movie he’s making and not just churning out another paint-by-numbers summer blockbuster. Unfortunately, those films also tend to be the ones that underperform and even with such a low budget to overcome, this just didn’t grab audiences the way that it should have. It’s a shame that, once again, he makes a great film and not enough people show up to see it, but regardless of its lackluster box office, it’s still one of the better action films of the past few years. Gunfights, chase scenes, they’re all present and accounted for in Bay’s uniquely exaggerated world, but the cinematography is a standout as he manages to pull off some fantastic shots with far fewer resources than he’s used to working with; once again proving how much of a genuine auteur this guy is even if I can barely stand half his filmography. It helps that this is just as much a character piece as it is an action film with the majority of the film taking place in or around the titular ambulance, and with such a tight focus it ensures that the momentum is constantly motivated and forward moving which can often be an issue with his bigger movies that tend to spread themselves too far with no clear direction or purpose. Bay’s passion is infectious when he really puts himself into a project and I hope that those Transformers movies got him enough clout to continue making movies like this, and I’ll still show up to see them even if no one else will.

Continue reading “Cinema Dispatch: Top 10 Best Movies of 2022” →

2021 may not have been as sparse as 2020 as far as releases, but it was still a rough year to get out to the theater and so I didn’t as many movies as I had hoped; hence why I did a few pieces trying to catch up on a few things that I missed. If I didn’t get a chance to review it, I didn’t put it on this list so keep that in mind as we go through the best films that I saw last year! Let’s get started!!

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Honorable Mentions: Spiral & Snake Eyes

Spiral Review; Snake Eyes Review

I like to give the unofficial eleventh spot to something that may not have been a great film but clicked with me in some strange way and held my interest throughout the year. For 2021, it was two movies that managed to do something new with existing franchises that I had written off a long time ago; GI Joe being a series I’ve never been a fan of and Saw having run itself into the ground a decade ago. Both films are significantly flawed in some fundamental areas with Snake Eyes having some terribly shot action and Spiral losing a lot of tension whenever Chris Rock starts in on his shtick, but I’m genuinely impressed at how both brought their respective franchises back from the dead by getting to the heart of what makes them work in the first place. Saw as a police procedural feels more in tune with the strengths of the series than any of the Bigger is Better sequels, and Snake Eyes focusing on a handful of key players instead of throwing the entire GI Joe/Cobra war at us from the outset allows us to actually develop these characters and make us care about their struggles and motivations. In a year that gave us hollow and cynical nostalgia bait like Space Jam: A New Legacy and Ghostbusters; Afterlife, it was refreshing to see movies take a sincere and stripped-down approach to build us towards something new instead of rehashing the same old nonsense as blatantly and obnoxiously as possible.

Continue reading “Cinema Dispatch: Top 10 Best Movies of 2021” →

Now that we’ve got the bad movies out of the way, it’s time for us to focus on what was good because despite EVERYTHING that went oh so wrong this year, there were more than enough highlights to help us get through it all.  With hope (and a lot of hard work) on the horizon, we’ll take one last look at the films that made 2020 more than just a dumpster fire before jumping into 2021 with renewed vigor and a spring in our step (and a few prosecutions against the outgoing administration wouldn’t go amiss either)!  Let’s get started!!

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Honorable Mention: MOVIES IN THEATERS

In the US we got about three months of movies before everything shut down, and while there were some absolutely DREADFUL ones (particularly in January), it was actually shaping up to be a pretty darn good year!  There were movies that looked good and lived up to those expectations like The Gentlemen and Birds of Prey, but we had a LOT of surprises; not in terms of movies that turned out to be five star classics, but movies that SHOULD have been terrible but were actually pretty decent!  I mean think about it, can you imagine a world prior to 2020 where a Sonic the Hedgehog movie WASN’T going to be in everyone’s worst list or that a Vin Diesel vehicle would have decent writing?  Sadly the COVID pandemic cut everything short; not just the big blockbusters we know about like No Time to Die, Black Widow, or Dune, but all the other movies that don’t get months of buildup and turn out to be great regardless.  For years I had been seeing two to three movies a week and while a lot of them weren’t great there were more than enough to make it all worthwhile.  Now that everything is either streaming or pushed back, it’s difficult for me to find that passion to just try and watch everything when I could just as easily watch reruns of It’s Always Sunny or The Simpsons with just as much effort and without spending an extra penny.  Maybe the days of rushing to the theater every other day are gone for good and I won’t be returning to it even after this is all over, but that’s how I saw a lot of the movies I still love to this day and that’s how I saw some pretty darn good movies this year!

Continue reading “Cinema Dispatch: Top 5 Best Movies of 2020” →

As with the good list, so must come the bad.  Except… maybe not quite, this year?  There’s been a lot of blow back to WORST OF THE YEAR lists and especially WORST OF THE DECADE ones that have been coming out as well, and I do understand why.  These things can come off as snarky and mean spirited and there’s just not a lot of constructive criticism to be had when trying to make clickbait WORST OF lists.  Personally I’m not too happy with how my list came out last year as it felt a bit performative which is not what you want if you want to be taken seriously and not just someone looking to chase down easy views.  I still firmly believe there is value in recapping bad movies as I’ve already said negative things about them already in my reviews, and there are certainly films with horrible messages that are worth deriding as well as technical failures that are worth learning from.  The lessons from last year have definitely been learned however and so instead I’ve narrowed it down to films REALLY worth talking about instead of just trying to round it up to ten, and I’ll avoid using overly superlative language; hence why this is a NEEDS IMPROVEMENT list instead of a WORST list.  Without further ado, lets’ get started!!

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Honorable Mention: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

Full Review

If we’re gonna approach this as a NEEDS IMPROVEMENT list, I don’t think we could have asked for a better example than JJ Abrams’s attempt to stitch the Star Wars fan base back together which may average out to a good movie (hence why it’s only an Honorable Mention), but it’s flaws are ridiculously glaring throughout.  I could sit here and list all the reasons this movie’s slapdash narrative fails to connect both in terms of the previous Disney Star Wars films as well as well as what we expect from movies in general, but you should already know by now how rushed the pacing is, how many plot points are shoved in here, and how much backtracking they did to paper over basically everything I liked about The Last Jedi.  And yet, what’s most interesting to me is that for all the effort JJ Abrams and company clearly put into this Frankenstein monster of an ending, no one seems particularly happy with it!  Certainly not the fans who were more or less clamoring for something more familiar than The Last Jedi provided, so what was the point?  Was the vocal minority of obnoxious fans (not all people who didn’t like The Last Jedi; just the ones who wouldn’t shut up about it) loud enough to scare the most powerful entertainment company in the world into spending half a movie apologizing for it?  Was JJ Abrams not able to square the circle that Rian Johnson left him and just reverted back to his original plans that no longer fit with the new paradigm?  We probably won’t know for sure exactly went wrong for some time, but as far as I’m concerned the answer is clear on how this could be fixed.  Do something different!  It worked for The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, Rouge One, The Mandalorian; heck, even Solo felt like its own thing within the Star Wars universe!  By being so referential and tied to the original trilogy without properly examining it or making it feel like a modern interpretation of its core themes, we ended up going through the motions but in an utterly directionless fashion; knowing the steps but not knowing where they were gonna take us.  Maybe that Rian Johnson trilogy will work out a lot better.  I’m sure some fans will hate it, but I think we’re officially done giving the obnoxious subset of that group the time of day.  Their moment came and went, and all they got was an okay movie that they can’t stand either.

Continue reading “Cinema Dispatch: Top 8 films of 2019 That Need Improvement” →

Another year has passed and as usual we have to spend the first few days of the new year looking back at what came before; usually ranked from ten to one in some fashion!  Well, let no one ever say that I’m not a part of it too as we’re here today to look at my favorite films of 2019 which turned out to be a pretty good year all things considered!  I mean… for movies at least as we’re still facing the overwhelming threats of fascism, climate change, and bigotry every single day with a commander in chief that’s only bee fanning those flames even further, but at least we have these movies to provide us with a modicum of relief and escapism between trying desperately to fix it all before it’s far too late!  Will YOUR favorites be reflected on here, or will this prove once and for all that I have absolutely no taste?  Let’s find out!!

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Honorable Mention: Dolemite Is My Name

I have no particular fondness for Rudy Ray Moore as I only know his films by reputation, but boy was this a fun little story about yet another artist yearning to get his vision out there; and make a few bucks along the way of course!  I’ve always been a sucker for films that take place on a movie set and I even put The Disaster Artist on my 2017 list, but what sets this one apart is just how different its subject matter is from other films like it.  A lot of times these movies about artists are essentially a reflection on the creation of art itself, but few come from the world that Rudy Ray Moore came from with the priorities that come with it.  Guys like Tommy Wiseau wanted a creative outlet and the adulation of the public.  Rudy Ray Moore certainly wanted that as well, but there was more at stake with the creation of this movie (namely his career and financial stability) and there’s something a bit nobler about making a movie for an underrepresented audience than making a movie out of sheer ego.  I have no idea how accurate this movie is and you should take any biopic with a grain of salt, but for what it’s trying to do and the story it’s trying to tell, it succeeds with a whole lot of style and a whole lot of heart!

Continue reading “Cinema Dispatch: Top 10 Best Movies of 2019” →