Friday, January 15, 2016

Movies I Missed in 2015: Part 4

28. The Night Before



I allow myself one Seth Rogen movie a year and intended to make this the one for 2015. The trailer made me laugh and I love Gordon-Levitt and Mackie. Just couldn't make my schedule work.

29. The Good Dinosaur



Wasn't super excited about this even before the unenthusiastic reviews. It's been on Pixar's To Do list for so long that my interest in it peaked a long time ago. But I do hear great things about the background animation in particular, so I'll get around to it one of these days.

30. Victor Frankenstein



Not sure this is going to be my bag, mostly because the tone seems inconsistent even in the trailer. Is it a horror movie? Is it a humorous action romp? Who knows. But I like the Frankenstein story and I like both those actors, so I'll give it a shot.

31. Christmas Eve



Everyone bags on these holiday-titled movies with huge casts of interconnected characters, but I tend to like them. And this one's got Patrick Stewart, James Roday, and Cheryl Hines.

32. In the Heart of the Sea



Sea adventure starring one of my favorite actors right now. Don't know why I'm not more excited, but I feel nervous about this one.

33. The Big Short



Love this cast so much and I hear good things. Not too sure about my interest in the subject matter, but I said the same thing about Moneyball and liked it a lot.

34. The Revenant



Sounds like an amazing experience. Not sure I want to put myself through it. Probably will.

And that's it. Thanks for letting me break this out over a couple of weeks. It gave me the chance to move a couple of films off this list and onto the other one. Next week, I'll start counting down the films I saw - least favorite to most.

7 comments:

Erik Johnson Illustrator said...

I'm right there with you and why missed these titles too. Although "Christmas Eve" is one I had not heard of before.

Paxton said...

I'm back. More of my thoughts:

The Night Before - I love 2/3 of the actors in this movie. I'll see it because it looks funny, despite the 1/3 of the actors that I kind of dislike.

Good Dinosaur - I should be more excited about a new, original Pixar movie. Unfortunately, though, even my kids are uninterested in the trailer that we watched. Not a good sign.

Victor Frankenstein - My take is that a) I just want to see these two actors crackle on screen together. I love both of them. b) Uneven tone is implied in trailer, yes, but that's not a guarantee. It looks to me like it'll exist along the same lines as the Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes movies which rocked wildly between "taking it serious" and "being a bit silly". And I thought they worked fine. It's all about the actors and their chemistry for me.

Christmas Eve - For the most part these holiday movies are harmless endeavors. I watched Valentine's Day with my wife and it's actually not that bad. I'm fairly certain I saw New Year's Eve, but I can't remember anything about it.

In the Heart of the Sea - YES. I'm excited about this.

The Big Short - I'm actually excited about this as well. I tried to convince my wife to see it but as soon as I said it was about the mortgage bubble she got glassy eyed. If the story is written well and the actors are on their game, the subject can be MADE interesting. Your Moneyball comparison is a good one.

The Revenant - I have little to no desire to watch this. Which is a shame because I love Leo and Hardy. It looks like an endurance trial for how much uncomfortableness the movie can get away with. No thank you.

Pax

Michael May said...

Comparing Victor Frankenstein to Guy Ritchie's Holmes films makes me 1000x more interested in seeing it. That's a great comparison and I love those movies.

Siskoid said...

The Night Before: Could be fun, but not the kind of thing I regularly spend money on. I've despised "on a bender" comedies like The Hangover and Superbad, so I fear more of that ilk.

The Last Dinosaur: It's still in theaters, but I don't really know anything about it. We keep talking about it as our plan B, but always find something we want to see more.

Victor Frankenstein: Initially excited, but then the reviews were pretty terrible, so it's going to be a long wait I think. I was hoping for an Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter.

Christmas Eve: Don't know it, but Patrick Stewart? I'm intrigued.

In the Heart of the Sea: They promoted The Finest Hours here SO DAMN MUCH that I thought this was that for the length of its run in theaters. Thor vs. Moby Dick is at least worth a look, right?

The Big Short: It was terrific and made a heavy and opaque subject understandable and hilarious, playing the housing crash as an absurdist comedy equal parts Kafka and Monty Python. One of my favorites of the year. Moneyball was good, but this is The Wolf of Wall Street without the tired Scorsese decadence.

The Revenant: Just saw it yesterday, and loved it. It's a subtext movie to be sure, where the Frontier is played as a frozen hell and afterlife to many extinct cultures, governed by animist rules (it's Inarritu so Magical Realism alert), incredibly visceral... I was a little overwhelmed at the end and teared up just talking about it, though not while watching it. It has a lot of detractors who just look at the survival/revenge plot and go meh, but if you look for what it's actually about, you get a lot more out of it.

Michael May said...

Most of the positive comments I heard about The Revenant were also focused on the survival/revenge plot, so that's what discouraged me. I like the idea of the subtext you mentioned. May give this one a shot soon since there's not a lot of competition for my attention in the theaters right now.

Siskoid said...

I think my "movie equation" for it was Valhalla Rising + Dead Man + The Gray, if that means anything.

Michael May said...

It does. I have mixed feelings about all of those movies and for similar reasons. Helps me know what to expect.

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