I’m trying out a new feature this time, where I’m flagging my favorite and least favorite movies of this batch. That doesn’t mean I did or didn’t like the others — as you can see from the reviews, I liked most of these. But just for the sake of highlighting ones that I really loved, I want to have an easy way to signal that (★), and for the sake of letting you know which are most skippable, I’ll use something else (☠).
Going forward, if I don’t have a favorite or least favorite in a batch, I won’t flag them; we’ll see!
THE MOVIES
(★) Movie #47: Life (2017) | R
Oh my god this is just like Alien except so much better and more terrifying than Alien, why has no one ever talked about this movie, oh my goddddd
(I know why no one ever talked about it; the marketing was terrible and the title is super generic, though very appropriate in retrospect. I know that I assumed it was some generic hokey space movie when I started, but I was SO WRONGGGG.)
I don’t want to get into spoilers but it starts off all optimistic and Star Trek-y and wonderfully human in its curiosity and yearning for exploration, and then it takes a VERY SHARP TURN.
One of the things I appreciated more than Alien here was the script and its characterizations. I feel like in general the International Space Station is like an impossible dream, with so many scientists from various countries working together for a common good, which still seems absurd to me in our deeply politically polarized society, and I have no idea how this ever happened in the first place and feel like it could never get off the ground today. So my point is that you already have this great diversity of characters built in (although it should be noted that it ultimately feels like Rebecca Ferguson and Jake Gyllenhaal are the co-leads, and they are fantastic, but they are both white). And then the writing builds on that, showing all these people in their element, demonstrating their professional and social camaraderie, and establishing their personal motivations, potential flaws, and/or insecurities. The acting brings the characters to life, but the script took that time to flesh them out, and the movie is so much better for it.
This is the first movie of the Movie Cramming Project where, as soon as I finished it, I immediately messaged someone to blather about it and process, and then quickly recommended it to several people.
Movie #48: 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003) | PG-13
So I was spoiled for this one in the sense that I was warned that it flopped and nearly killed the franchise, but this is a really fun buddy movie! I can see why it may not have worked so well as a sequel to the first one — there’s almost no cast continuity, and the cast and characters were a huge part of what made the first one good, so if people were expecting that, they were probably disappointed.
But on its own, as a self-contained unit, it’s a fun story of its own, with twists and turns, with the same pointless car racing scenes and fistfights, plus a new undercover job. The romance is extremely underwritten, which is a shame, because Eva Mendes is a goddess, and the romance in the first one was actually pretty sweet and the lack of continuity on that really undercuts it in retrospect.
A final note: Who else feels like there’s a strong resemblance between Paul Walker and Hayden Christensen? I see it constantly — their faces, their smiles, their hair. I feel like this is the sort of career people probably envisioned when they cast Hayden Christensen.
Movie #49: The Wolverine (2013) | PG-13
I may have liked this one a tad more than the first Wolverine movie, because I did think the cast of characters we get to spend time with was more interesting (Wolverine 1 had plenty of interesting characters, but most of them got killed off way too fast).
It was also cool to be in another setting, something I don’t think many X-Men movies — or superhero movies in general — have really played around with much. And seeing so many Asian actors in a mainstream film franchise that doesn’t usually feature them much, that was cool too.
(☠) Movie #50: Goosebumps (2015) | PG
I actually really enjoyed the opening of this movie — we’re introduced to so many compelling characters, family relationships, and interpersonal conflicts, with snappy dialogue and a grounded sense of realism. But then the plot starts, and it gets pretty meh, in my opinion, and never quite recovers.
I think part of it might be because one of the things in the Goosebumps books that made the monsters interesting was that they each had a unique weakness, and the protagonists had to learn it and exploit it. But in this one, where you’ve got all the monsters and the author who created them, who should know all their weaknesses — there’s none of that. It’s all “Gotta trap them all back in the book!” which flattens all the variety of monsters into basically one monster, and it’s not particularly interesting that way.
Also, what was up with that accent Jack Black was doing? So weird.
Movie #51: Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014) | PG-13
A surprisingly fun and intense undercover spy movie, where the romance actually contributes a humanizing and tension-building element rather than being a pointless detour. Keira Knightley and Chris Pine are great together, and there are only a couple of damsel-in-distress moments. I didn’t realize the villain was played by Kenneth Branagh until the credits — he was also very good. Apparently critics didn’t like it very much at the time, and it didn’t do well enough for a sequel, which is disappointing, since this was way better than, say, Jack Reacher, and that got a sequel.
(Alas, this is one of those movies that ends with a headdesk because for SOME reason, the honor of “You get to meet the President!” doesn’t mean what it used to mean.)
SM’s Movie Cramming Project is where I, SM, watch all the movies so you don’t have to. Or at least the movies currently in my digital DVR. If you liked this batch, feel free to subscribe!