Good lord, are we really half way through the year already? Life barges on at a terrifying pace, an adjective which it has in common with this increasingly awful world we live in (or so it seems to someone who now reads the news like middle-aged people tend to do). Our only salvation*1 is the cinema. The large, darkened room where everyone is legally*2 obliged to shut the hell up because all that matters is the huge, glowing screen and its shimmering message, whatever that may be.
If memory serves, I'd predicted a slow-down of cinematic consumption in 2016. And like most things I predict, it didn't come to pass. I didn't set a target for going to the pictures this year, I just opted for seeing the movies which interest me (as and where I can), and maybe a few which look terrible but should be fun to pick apart, at least. As it turns out, the more I watch films, the more I'm interested by them. So, the more I watch.
Here are the notable entries from the half-year just passed…
2016 started strongly, with The Force Awakens still on general release, of course. But The Danish Girl, The Revenant and Room ushered in the more philosophically and emotionally heavyweight (read: awards-bait) fare which January is renowned for. Also on the theme of Films v Movies, 10 Cloverfield Lane, The VVitch and Hail, Caesar! all interested the hell out of me, and March's Eddie The Eagle turned out to be every bit as self-indulgent as promised (but even managed to win over the confirmed cynic that I am). Civil War arrived in April, overly-long and with far too much going on, but reassuringly MCU, nonetheless.
Once Spring had kicked in properly, it brought us the musically-inspired Miles Ahead, Green Room and Sing Street, the latter of which I already know will be my favourite film of this year (and is already pre-ordered on DVD). More recently Hardcore Henry and The Nice Guys*3 have cemented their place in the playlist of movies to watch into the night with friends and beer. Tale of Tales is an offbeat joy, and of course no win-list would be complete without a nod to the utterly magnificent Deadpool, already a contender for favourite movie (because I'll love the upcoming Rogue One no matter what, obviously).
Despite what I'm about to go on and say, there have been some truly marvellous films so far in 2016…
It's not all popcorn and giggles, of course. Zoolander 2 began the year flying the flag for belated, unnecessary and largely un-funny comedy sequels, just as Bad Neighbours 2 was more punctual but still managed to more than live up to its own name.
With a far straighter face, The Finest Hours struggled with character-building and storytelling in much the same way as it did with the Massachusetts accent. Speaking of accents (and crap sequels), The Huntsman: Winter's War was a bad film, made worse by allegedly Scottish vocalisations which make Mel Gibson's Braveheart look like a hagiographic documentary. But the horror-genre wasn't going to be left out of all this, so Friend Request, The Forest and The Boy dredged the lake of over-wrought, poorly executed clichés to the point that even clockwork-frightfest The Conjuring 2 seemed passable by comparison.
And for those who don't want to see potentially interesting films fail, but would rather watch an already terrible idea still managing to die on its arse, we got Warcraft and Gods of Egypt, both of which actively stripped IQ points from their audience as the hours wore on. I should also mention Me Before You, a film which certainly has its fanbase, but that actually left me more angry than disappointed.
And while this seems like a relentless list of complaining, bear in mind that it's not actually unusual. Bad movies are everywhere; on TV, Netflix, Amazon, the shelf in your local supermarket. The ones listed here are just the films which happened to be released in the cinema, first…
These have been the more troublesome nights. Ones where I'd anticipated a movie either by virtue of its trailers, advance buzz or previous installments, only to find myself oddly deflated by the time the credits rolled. Not necessarily disliking the film, but certainly wondering why it didn't work as well as it could (should) have.
Scoring highly in this department is X-Men: Apocalypse, a two-and-a-half hour trail of destruction which answers the audience's question 'how do you follow Days of Future Past?' with "yeah, we don't know either". Not a bad movie, but an insultingly bland one. The cautiously-approached (by me) Dad's Army reboot also failed to be anything more than a well-intentioned but needless cover-version of a thing you wish you were watching instead.
Foremost in this section is Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, of course. A film that's like three or four carefully selected presents for different people, that have been bundled together and gift-wrapped by a five-year old. I haven't gathered the strength to watch the Ultimate Edition yet, but I shall do so with great interest…
We're already a few days into the second-half, and there's everything to play for*4. The rebooted Ghostbusters is mere days away, a film which I'm confident will slot firmly into one of the categories above, although I'm going to do my very best to just enjoy it for what it is (hopefully not 'Pixels 2'). The third Star Trek movie of the new series is on the horizon, as is the fifth Bourne film. Doctor Strange lands in the MCU in the Autumn and of course Star Wars: Rogue One brings up the rear in December.
Yep, it's all sequels, reboots and franchise-entries, at least as far as the posters in the foyer are concerned. There'll be smaller and more interesting films of course, but as every cinema-manager knows, screen-time doesn't automatically equate to money-taking*5, so I've no doubt I'll be travelling afield to catch those as and where I can.
As I mentioned above, I didn't set a target for this year. As I mentioned above, I didn't have to.
Will I go to the cinema more in 2016 than I did in 2015? More than likely, yes...
Yes, I keep a spreadsheet. Wait, are you telling me you don't..?
*1 Well okay, and alcohol. I tend not to mix the two directly, though. Largely because you can't pause the cinema when you have to go to the loo.
*2"I will make it legal…" ~ Frank Palpatine, TPM.
*3 Good name for a band…
*4 As you can tell, I don't do sports-analogies. And when I try, I sound more like a 1980s gameshow host.
*5 Although the decreasing numbers at the midnight-showings held by my local in recent months (as well as the worrying advance-sales for Ghostbusters) would certainly suggest that the big releases are no longer a licence to print money, either.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
This is a quick state-of-the-blog-address as we've just skipped over the halfway point of the year. Regular readers may have noticed a slightly erratic posting schedule over the last month or so. This is due, in part, to the Summer Movie Season playing havoc with the programming at my local cinema, and due to me going through a spell of what I can only describe as writer's block (even though I'm hesitant to even use the term as I'm not actually A Writer™). Anyhow, that seems to have passed (thankfully) with the assistance of a couple of astoundingly shite films to get my teeth into (here and here).
That said, with footballs and tennises filling the TV schedules (and apparently people riding bikes - that's a sport now), the UK's film distributors have resorted to not knowing what the hell to put out when. This isn't a new thing, of course, and it's not like they're not showing anything in the meanwhile. Just nothing I really fancy seeing again.
Here's the running schedule for Transformers: Age Of Extinction at my local cinema:
Seven times a day, overlapping to ensure screenings are regular enough to be convenient for the public, and five 3D showings vs two 2D ones. Which is fine when you're trying to get bums on seats, but that coverage of robot-action doesn't leave room for much else in a five-screen cinema. And obviously, I refuse point-blank to see Mrs Br*wn's B*ys. Obviously. What I'm trying to say is, unless there's enough variation on offer to make it worth me scooting down to London for another #FilmDay, it's likely to stay fairly quiet round here for the time being.
12 Years I had great hopes for, which it easily surpassed and I think it's already cemented its position as An Important Film™ to watch. If you haven't seen it yet (perhaps because of the subsequent hype), rest assured it's every bit as powerful and brilliant as the reviews have lauded it to be. April's Spider-Man sequel was more of a surprise, if only because I think of the web-slinger as the weakest of Marvel's A-game canon. But Marc Webb's follow-up has more depth and lasting-impact than the Avengers-timeline's recent entries, and if Sony can keep this up, it bodes well for the future of their slice of the Marvel pie. And a complete surprise was the Tom Cruise actioner, Edge of Tomorrow. Deftly written and performed with a knowing grin, it works both as a dumb alien-invasion flick as well as slightly more experimental logic-gate. It's not quite at the level of Looper or Inception, but it has far more out-and-out fun with its time-travelling premise. I'd expected to be entertained by the film, but it's nice to see that there are still some movies which you'll need your brain for.
Honourable mentions of the year-so-far go to The Lego Movie, The Grand Budapest Hotel and Inside Llewyn Davis (by which I mean that I didn't award them full marks under my seemingly arbitrary rating system, but they've all left me thinking about them some months later).
If you'd told me at the end of December that six months later I'd be encouraging my readers to watch a Coen Brothers film and a Wes Anderson one, I'd have disbelieved you to say the least. While I have no great distaste for their previous works, I've always found them to be massively self-indulgent, at best. Of course, exactly the same can be said of Inside Llewyn Davis and Grand Budapest Hotel, but something's either clicked inside my brain whereby I now 'get' it, or these will be the sole films by the directors which I ever enjoy; the exceptions which disprove the rule. In Davis's case, it's that rare beast where the soundtrack doesn't work at all in isolation, and only becomes 'good' when you have the context of the film behind it. Likewise, once you know the soundtrack, the film becomes even better, and the two feed off each other, each becoming more intricately entwined with subsequent viewing/listenings. Yes, I know that sounds like a twattish thing to say, thank you. My enjoyment of Budapest is only slightly less twattish, as in addition to the sharp and underplayed comedy, a geek like me appreciates the switching between colour pallets and aspect ratios for the different time-periods in the film. The second time I watch the film, I think I grinned all the way through. Anyway, there's very little that's pretentious about The Lego Movie, and I grinned throughout that as well (although I still stand by my belief that Will Ferrell isn't a great choice for the film's final reel).
* * * * * * *
And so the year drawn inexorably on, and the next big blip on my cinematic radar is Marvel's Guardians Of The Galaxy. Part of their Avengers timeline, it promises to put some fun back into the continuity (which is sorely needed, even I have to admit). The film lands in UK cinemas on July 31st, but I'm hoping with all of my damned celluloid that Cineworld's Secret Screening on the 15th could well be Star-Lord's introduction to a cinematic audience. There's every chance that it won't be, of course, but I do know that the screening will be in 3D (as will GotG), and will be "a major new film well ahead of its UK release".
The cynical part of me thinks that it could just be Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes, but that opens nationwide a mere two days after the Secret Screening. And when I tell you that the last one of these screenings brought us The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, when Cineworld were due to run advanced screenings of the film only a week later anyway, it suddenly doesn't seen that crazy an idea. There's also the possibility that it could be Sin City 2 which is apparently in 3D. Time will tell, but I assure you that I'll be at the first screening of Guardians, whenever it is.
Finally, astute readers will have noticed*(1 that I've quietly, and prematurely, retired the #365DoW project. The idea was that I'd watch, read or play something Star Wars centered every day for a year, and write briefly about it here. It's not the first time I've tried this, and it's not the first time I haven't been able to make it work. Cruising my way through Dark Horse's Clone Wars comics was straightforward enough, but once I hit the animated TV series, that's where the wheels fell off. There are many excuses reasons for this; I wanted to use the exercise to finally work my way through the episodes in hi-def, but I'm not always in front of my BluRay/TV every day (or at least not at a time when I can set the speakers to Bastard Loud™); watching the episodes is one thing, but having something useful or constructive to say about each one, without being repetitive, is far more challenging that I'd thought; sometimes, the Star Wars I'm in the mood for isn't what's next on the agenda, and I at least wanted to stick to the OCD nature of the programme, so ended up using writing/screenshotting time for other things. The fact is, it's the kind of project which would be ideal for someone with time on their hands. This isn't me. I already don't have enough time for all the media I want to consume without setting a rigourous schedule for more. And so, I am still determined to watch the entire Clone Wars run before the end of the year, but I won't be writing about it (not in the #365DoW format, anyway). And as it's been about a month since my last SW post and catching up will be a nightmare, it seems easier to let the thing go. If you disagree, by all means let me know in the comments.
And that's that. The film reviews will continue, albeit at a pace dictated largely by the schedule planners at Cineworld, and when I'm not rambling here, I can be found rambling over at the World Of Blackout Facebook page or Twitter page.
Come over and let me know what your favourite (or let's face it, most disliked) films have been so far this year, and what you're looking forward to. Come and tell me why I didn't get on with Godzilla or Under The Skin. Come and tell me why the 300 sequel was better than I had it down for. Just don't come over defending I, Frankenstein; I'm not sure I could handle that...
Yen, Blackout Towers, July 2014.
*1 Although if they did notice, they didn't say anything. Well done, I guess?
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
