Movies I Missed in 2015: Part 2

11. Lost River



Ryan Gosling's debut as a writer and director wasn't well-reviewed, but it has some things going for it that keep me interested: the spooky underwater town and a cast that includes Christina Hendricks, Saoirse Ronan, and Matt Smith. Gonna be low on my To Watch List though.

12. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl



Critics were divided on Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, mostly around the tone. Some found it charming while others described it as snotty and in love with its own specialness. Only one way to find out where I fall.

13. Big Game



Always in the mood for a movie where Samuel L Jackson plays the President of the United States and has to fight off bad guys in the wilderness alongside a kid with a bow and arrow.

14. The End of the Tour



I like Jason Segel a lot and Jesse Eisenberg some, but I'm especially looking forward to the movie's exploration of the shifting definitions of success. It's tragically fascinating how people are rarely satisfied with whatever level of success they've achieved. We're always reaching for that next rung. Would love to hear what The End of the Tour has to say about that.

15. Cop Car



I'm ready to see Kevin Bacon play a good guy again, but until that day, I'll take him as a crooked sheriff chasing a couple of kids who've stolen his ride.

16. Final Girl



I quit watching Scream Queens about three minutes into the pilot, but the idea intrigues me. And since there was also a 2015 movie with the plural version of this exact title, I'm thinking a double-feature might be in order.

17. Z for Zachariah



I like all these people and the trailer intrigued me. Looks like a twist on the traditional romantic triangle with higher stakes due to the post-apocalyptic survival angle.

18. The Intern



I'll pretty much see anything with Anne Hathaway in it these days.

19. The Keeping Room



Likewise Hailee Steinfeld, but especially a Western with a bunch of tough women.

20. Pan



I know it's supposed to be the worst movie of the year, but I like Hugh Jackman and the Peter Pan story enough that I can't ignore it. Besides, it can't be worse than Hook.

Top 10 Movies of 2012

10. Pitch Perfect



Movies get bonus points for coming out of nowhere and surprising me, which is exactly what Pitch Perfect did. I like Anna Kendrick and a capella singing just fine, but neither would typically be enough to get me to the theater by themselves. What I do love are movies about contests that We've Just Gotta Win and this one is hilarious (especially - but not only - thanks to Rebel Wilson).

9. The Dark Knight Rises



Not as great as The Dark Knight, but it's a good finale to Christopher Nolan's trilogy. It proved once and for all that Nolan's Batman is not the comic-book Batman, but I'm okay with that. I not only like the way Nolan finishes the series, I wish the comics would wrap up the same way.

The thing I was most excited about for this film though was seeing Catwoman and it didn't disappoint me on that level. Anne Hathaway narrowly edges out Julie Newmar as my favorite Catwoman (only because Newmar's version had a touch of crazy that I don't think the character needs).

8. The Cabin in the Woods



Embraces most of what I love about horror movies while making fun of everything I hate. The ending isn't perfect, but the rest of it sure is.

7. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel



I'm a sucker for elderly British people and stories about second chances. This was right in my wheelhouse on so many levels.

6. Skyfall



I haven't actually talked to anyone who's called Skyfall the best Bond movie ever, but I've heard that such people exist. If I were to meet someone with that point of view, my response would be, "Really?" Because I don't think they're thinking that through very well.

Skyfall is a lot of fun, it's gorgeous, and it works both as the 50th anniversary of the Bond series and as the finale of the trilogy started in Casino Royale. I especially love it from that last perspective. Say what you want about Quantum of Solace's dumb story and boring villain, but one thing that film did right was continue the story of Bond's relationship with his country as personified by M. Skyfall pays that story off in a beautiful way while also reintroducing elements from the pre-Casino Royale films that I didn't realize how much I'd missed. It's also got a great villain and covers its themes in interesting ways. It's a great Bond film.

But the best ever? No way. It owes too much to the early Connery films to seriously consider letting it surpass them. I'm not even sure I like it as much as The Living Daylights or Casino Royale.

5. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey



My including The Hobbit this high on the list is all the evidence anyone needs to verify that this Top 10 is my personal one and not an attempt at the 10 Objectively Greatest Movies of the year. If I were being objective about it, I'd agree with the critics who point out that Peter Jackson is indulging his every whim at the expense of telling a tight story. There's a reason that he released a Theatrical Cut of the Lord of the Rings films and then an Extended Edition for DVD. A lot of people simply don't have the patience to sit through scenes that legitimately could have been deleted to improve the pacing.

That said, I'm solidly in the camp of people who will only ever watch the Extended Editions of Lord of the Rings. I love all that extra stuff. I love seeing Middle Earth that fleshed out. I absolutely don't mind seeing Jackson do the same thing with The Hobbit. But I also can't be too harsh on those who do mind it. Jackson risked alienating those folks when he chose not to release a shorter, theatrical version, so it's fair for them to say it didn't work for them.

Even for me, it's not perfect. With Lord of the Rings, I love pretty much every change Jackson made to Tolkien's novels, but I miss the Bilbo that was blustered out his front door and into adventure by Gandalf in the book. Jackson's Bilbo begins his journey too eagerly for my taste. He's too heroic too early. It felt right as I watching it, so maybe I'll re-evaluate after I've seen all three films, but it feels like Jackson needed to speed up Bilbo's character development in order to make him more likable in this installment of the trilogy.

That - and the fact that it is the first installment in a trilogy instead of a complete story - keeps The Hobbit from being higher on my list.

4. Mirror Mirror



I've already written about Mirror Mirror a couple of times, so I'll spare us all another review. I really, really love this movie though.

3. Les Misérables



I knew I was going to have problems with this movie from the first time I saw the trailer and teared up listening to "I Dreamed a Dream." And I was right. Through the whole film, if I wasn't crying over the human misery, I was crying from the joy of hearing those songs again.

I've seen Les Misérables on stage a few times. It's my favorite musical and the reason I think Phantom of the Opera is over-rated. So I'm very familiar with the songs, but I don't own a cast recording and can't listen to them any time I want. I've never cared about hearing the songs outside of the context of the story as presented by actors.

But because I love those songs - and the story - so much, I've longed for a version with actors that I could own and watch whenever I want. In other words, I've been wanting this movie for about twenty years. And it was everything I hoped it would be. (Even Russell Crowe, who isn't an especially strong Javert, but has a perfectly lovely singing voice outside of that.)

The only reason Les Misérables isn't higher on my list is because I can't separate it from my feelings about the stage production. I don't know how I would've felt about it if I wasn't already in love with it from the moment it was announced.

2. The Avengers



Oh, wait... I mean the other Avengers movie about a red-headed spy in a black catsuit.



I seriously reconfigured my Top 3 movies I don't know how many times right up to the point of writing this post. There was a long time this year that I couldn't imagine any movie bumping The Avengers from first place.

A lot of my love for the movie is because it never should have worked. If I've learned anything from a lifetime of movie watching, it's that movies are never as awesome as we hope they'll be. From the moment Samuel L. Jackson appeared at the end of Iron Man, we were all thrilled by the notion of an integrated universe of Marvel superhero films all leading to an all-star Avengers movie. But admit it, you didn't think it would deliver, did you? I certainly didn't. It couldn't possibly live up to the awesomeness of its premise.

Except it did. It totally did.

And, in the process, it gave us the Hulk movie we'd all been waiting for.

1. Looper



Outside of its being really stinking good, the reason Looper is number one on my list is because it's not based on something I already loved. I had to give it bonus points for being a completely original story about characters I'd never heard of before. And what a story.

I dig a good, tightly plotted time-travel story as much as the next person, but what I really love are stories that make me think and re-evaluate my opinions about people. I can't talk about how Looper does that without going into spoilers, but it's so much more than just a fun, scifi movie and deserves to be Number One.

Final thoughts on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Anne Hathaway and I finished the book last week, so here are a dozen more observations with some SPOILERS if you haven't read it yet:

• Hathaway's voice for the Scarecrow made see why Movie Dorothy said she'd miss him most of all, but some of Hathaway's other choices are really odd. One of the two, main Emerald City guards sounded like Sylvester the cat and the other talked in a monotone that I imagine was meant to sound military, but was more robotic. She also gave some other characters strange accents that didn't have a lot to do with their personalities or other character traits. She does some excellent voices too; it just seemed like she was running out of good ones by the end.
• The Wizard's voice is especially off-putting. He has a Southern drawl that - combined with Hathaway's feminine voice - makes him sound like Dallas Royce on Suburgatory.
• Still, in all other respects, Hathaway's a wonderful reader and I highly recommend her reading of the story.
• The flying monkeys are handled a lot differently than the movie and are even more cool. I didn't think that was possible since they were always my favorite part of the film.
• Related: the way the Wicked Witch of the West captures Dorothy is so much more awesome in the book. Yes, the monkeys come into play, but as a last resort after a few less-successful attempts in which Dorothy's companions prove how badass they really are.
• I don't accept the Wizard's assertion that he's actually a good man, but just not a very good wizard. He's used deception to enslave his subjects, force them to build the Emerald City, and then serve him in fear. He never repents of this or comes clean to anyone who doesn't figure it out on her own. Nor does he allow those people to tell anyone else. He's a class-A jerk; just like in the movie.
• The Wizard's gifts vary a little from the film and what he gives the lion is especially entertaining. Instead of a medal, he pours liquid into a bowl and tells the lion it's courage. Baum never explicitly refers to it this way, but that makes the substance "liquid courage," which is pretty awesome. Almost redeems the Wizard for me.
• The book continues for a few chapters after the Wizard accidentally abandons Dorothy in Oz. The main quartet of characters (quintet, if you count Toto) travel South to visit Glenda the Good and see if she can get Dorothy home. It's an episodic part of the book as they have random adventures along the way, but a couple of characters' stories get tied up, so it's worthwhile. And as with all the adventures in the book, they're fun and interesting.
• Glenda isn't the same witch who met Dorothy in Munchkinland at the beginning. This is vital, because it fixes one of my biggest complaints about the movie: that Glenda knew the magic slippers could take Dorothy home the whole time and kept it from her. In the film, Glenda just appears occasionally to move the plot along without any believable motivation. In the book, she tells Dorothy how to get home as soon as she meets her. She's much more Good.
• My biggest problem with the film version though is that it's all a dream. That isn't the case in the novel. Oz is a real place with real borders; it's just surrounded by impassable desert, so no one knows where it is or can get to it without flying (which was much more difficult to do when Baum wrote the story).
• That leaves open a lot of possibilities for future stories, which of course Baum used. I'm definitely going to keep going, but I haven't decided yet whether that's via book, audiobook, or comics adaptations. I'm getting the Eric Shanower/Skottie Young comics either way, so I'll probably start there and then decide later whether or not to read the original text.
• The first of those comics should show up any day now.

(Image via Freaking News)

Seven thoughts from the first half of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Anne Hathaway is still reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to me and we're about halfway done. More notes on the first half:

• My memory of the movie is that the Scarecrow, Tin Woodsman, and Cowardly Lion all have significant moments late in the story that show that they already have brains, heart, and courage. In the book, that happens almost as soon as you meet them and several times.
• I'm not sure which I like better. I appreciate the drama of doing it later in the story, but it really is cool to see the Scarecrow figure things out before everyone else and to see the Lion being brave while claiming that he's not.
• Unfortunately, the Woodsman's heart is limited to his crying over hurt animals, but okay.
• I understand the special effects limitations of the film, but I'm sorry that they didn't include the Mouse Queen and her subjects. They make the poppy field scene a whole lot more fun and memorable.
• I also dig how the Wizard calls each member of the group separately and appears as something different each time. 
• Overall, I'm loving the book a lot more than the movie so far. 
• It's really making me want to read the Eric Shanower/Skottie Young adaptation.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Part 1 (Thank you, Anne Hathaway)

Been catching up today after being offline for most of last week. San Diego was awesome and I'll try to get a report up tomorrow.

In the meantime, I'm finally reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Or rather, Anne Hathaway is reading it to me. I'm enjoying it a lot, especially the difference between L. Frank Baum's version and the classic movie. For instance, I really like the small contingent of Munchkins at the site of the East Witch's death and how before Dorothy completely leaves Munchkinland, she stops off for a party at a remote farm. It feels more like Frodo sneaking out of the Shire than the huge production number from the film.

Also, Hathaway is awesome at the voices and her Scarecrow is especially funny and pleasant. I'm not too far in, but I'm looking forward to the rest now that I'm back in town and can listen in my car again.

24 movies I missed in 2010

The list-making bug caught up with me yesterday, so I'm not going to be able to leave it alone with just songs and comics. Over the coming week I'm going to post about every 2010 movie I saw. All 52 of them. In order from least favorite to most.

But as I made the list, I was also reminded of all the movies that I wanted to see this year, but never got around to for a variety of reasons. So, by way of explaining why you won't see Toy Story 3 or Harry Potter 7.1 on the big list, here are - in alphabetical order - all the movies that I wish I could've caught in the theater in 2010. Some of them (Harry Potter) I hope to still see on the Big Screen, but I'll have to wait for most until they hit the Netflix.

I'm tempted to comment on why I want to see each of the following movies or - better yet - why I missed them, but I'll resist that. If you really want to know why any of these appear here, I'll be happy to go into detail in the comments.