If there is one thing more annoying than the onslaught of Hollywood blockbusters right now it is the BARRAGE of “Oscar-bait” films. As movie fans, it is our job to keep up with new releases, know who directed what-when and be able to rattle off numerous top-10 lists. No matter what we do it seems like every year there is a slew of films made for the studios to increase their profit share through award nominations. This year there’s been a lot of talk about who was, or more importantly was NOT, nominated for an award, and it got me thinking about the awards in general. Mainly, I’m trying to find a reason why we care so much about something that has no effect on whether or not we enjoy a thing, whether it be a film or a tv show. What, pray tell, is all the fuss about?
Ricky Gervais may catch some flack for hosting the Golden Globes and causing a ruckus with the celebs but, honestly, his viewpoint (act) is the one shining example of how we should regard these overlong, pretentious and obnoxious award shows. We all get into a tizzy about what will or will not be nominated but I have a question for you. Are any of your favorite films award winners? Has that ever been a factor for you in whether or not you enjoy a movie? If you answered yes to either of the previous questions, then congratulations on being a hipster douche.
I love The Dark Knight with a passion. I know it has some issues but, much like The Force Awakens, it hit the right notes in such a right way that I don’t care. The way Nolan reinvigorated Batman and The Joker is the stuff of legend, and I will always love Ledger for his performance here. That being said, this is one of the few examples of a favorite film of mine being successful at the Academies, earning the aforementioned Heath Ledger a Best Supporting Actor nomination. Yet, the nomination and win have no bearing on how I feel about the movie. In fact, I couldn’t give a rats ass. “Honoring the legacy” of the actor means absolutely nothing to me. I honor his legacy by enjoying his performance in the movie, as it should be.
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Goodfellas, Jaws, The Big Lebowski, etc. etc. etc… There are hundreds, nigh THOUSANDS of films that never won an award and yet are part of the fabric of cinema. Look at guys like Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick. Neither won an Oscar for direction throughout their career, yet their legacies are some of films’ most important. Lawrence of Arabia, and epic predicated on the performance of its lead was unjustly denied Best Actor for Peter O’Toole, yet his performance is absolutely legendary. My point is that plenty of films and performances have been slighted over the years. It is nothing new, and it will continue as long as these awards shows are made out to be so incredibly important. It is not isolated to people of color or minorities, it simply happens when you have higher quality films.
This year there has been an insane amount of attention and effort put into painting the Oscars in a negative and, unfortunately, overtly racist light. It is easy to look at the nominations and not notice “people of color” being recognized. Alarming as that may be, like all serious issues, it needs to be analyzed further. Chi-Raq was a polarizing film that touched some (Kupka) and disappointed others (Law). Not having seen the film yet I can’t comment too strongly one way or another, but the general consensus seems to be that a stylized musical about gun violence in Chicago just didn’t connect with the majority of people. Straight Outta Compton, an adequate movie about NWA, is not that great of a film. Biopics are largely by the numbers and generic, typically catering to their fanbase, and I felt Compton did that. That brings us to the biggest snub, Beasts of no Nation. I said it before that the film was unjustly ignored this year, but I think that has more to do with the studios’ fear of Netflix beginning to take a foothold over the film industry than a racist slight against black people.
Awards are won based on merit. Have we all forgotten that 12 Years A Slave was Best Picture two years ago? This conversation seems to be propagated by the media and a few key celebrities, probably for Twitter hits. The culture seems to continue trending towards this climate of acceptance and complacency, but has anyone stopped to ask whether or not the films that were not nominated simply were not all that great? Creed was entertaining but an easy film to make since it was a cherry-picked reworking of all the elements that made the previous six Rocky films work (sorry Luke and Garrett). People need to get over this whole racist angle. In this past season of Project Greenlight, Effie is a cheerleader for diversity, seen in the very first episode where she insists on trying to hire someone of color/diversity. Matt Damon, in my opinion, very eloquently shoots down what Effie is trying to get at by saying that the contest should be decided for the filmmaking and the merit of the applicant. Isn’t that how awards are supposed to work as well? Black, white, red, yellow, brown, orange or green, the quality of your work should be the deciding factor in whether or not you get nominated, plain and simple.
After all of that, what to do? I say wave your middle finger to Hollywood and ignore nominations and wins. Who cares? For those of you who loved Mad Max Fury Road, do you love it more because it was nominated for Best Picture? Pretty sure either way that movie has a guy with a flaming guitar in it, so in my book it will always be on my action movie rotation. That’s what matters, how you feel about the film, not how everyone else is telling you to feel about the film. Personally, I was underwhelmed severely by The Revenant, but I’m not going to make concessions about it based on everyone else’s thoughts. Think for yourself and say “fuck off” to these ridiculous, self-serving awards shows.
Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sad to inform you that we have lost another TITAN of our film-geek world. You’d be hard pressed to find one amongst us who didn’t like, if not love, Alan Rickman for one of a dozen different fantastic performances. In a week where we had to send off David Bowie, this just seems like it adds insult to injury. Rickman was an actor that I always had an affinity for. As such, rather than be sad for the loss, here are my five favorite Alan Rickman roles, in no particular order.
Hans Gruber – Let’s get it out of the way first; Hans Gruber was metal as fuck. Die Hard is the first word in action films, due in large part to Hans “Fucking” Gruber. The man has cool steel running through his veins and the wit and cynicism of a world-class comedian. Couple that with the initial bait and switch terrorist plot and you’ve got one of the best overall villains in cinema history. Hans Gruber will always be remembered for being the fantastic bastard that he was, and Rickman made him all that he is.
The Metatron – Dogma was my introduction to the View Askewniverse and Kevin Smith’s work. As a comedy, it works well, but as a contemplative take on religion and the modern man’s (or woman’s) relationship with it Dogma is a better rounded story than most of Smith’s oeuvre. Yet, there’s really only one performance that stands out in a film full of laughs, and that is Rickman’s turn as the Metatron. We have seen the expository mentor figure in countless films but Rickman brought something more to the role, infusing it with a surprising level of hubris and warmth. At times dryly funny, at others caring and wise, Metatron is a role played mostly for laughs but somehow becomes endearing.
Alexander Dane – Those of us who know our Star Trek (I’m looking at you Lance) understand just how lovingly Galaxy Quest was made. They nailed all of the important beats to us Trekkies while also defining their own identity as a sci-fi entity. Dane, the stand-in for Leonard Nimoy, was simply brilliant in what has become an iconic movie character. The gimmicky headpiece he is forced to wear, the famous line that he essentially vomits out on command and the “true actor” persona he wears and struggles with accounts for a lot of the comedy in this movie. The funnier performances tend to not get a lot of recognition but it’s unquestionable that Galaxy Quest wouldn’t be nearly as good without Rickman’s presence.
Judge Turpin – There are some out there with an inherent aversion to musicals. I’m not one of those people, and consider this to be the last great Tim Burton film before he went off the deep end with Disney. Rickman’s menace is on full display here, playing the menacing and controlling Judge Turpin with relative ease. This, more-so than some of the other performances in this list, feels most like a perfect fit for the thespian with his singing also being pretty decent. Todd is a good musical, and Rickman is a consummate professional in it.
Professor Snape – You don’t play a character for eight years and stick the emotional landing unless you are a world-class performer. Despite my personal qualms about the second half of the Potter franchise, Snape’s arc was magical to see. I grew up with the Potter books and, to a lesser degree, the movies, so Snape has been a presence in film for me predating so many other things. While it may not be my favorite performance of his, I think it may be his career’s magnum opus.
If this is any indication we are in for a tough year. Bowie was a huge blow to many of us, detailed in Garrett’s great write-up of the man, and Rickman was an equally large presence in my world. Here is to a man whose life was dedicated to connecting with all of us, in some small way. Well, sir, you did it.
I am unequivocally and undeniably a Tarantino fanboy. The man’s work is responsible for kindling a love of film in me and, as such, the guy always gets special consideration, even if his film is lackluster. There are simply too many hits in his catalog for me to discredit his talents on any level, which is why it really pains me to come to the conclusion that, after rewatching it as my own personal movie homework, Jackie Brown is really tepid and uninteresting.
Maybe “Sucks” is too strong a word for this movie but there’s an undeniable sense of meandering in Brown. You have a decent enough story, adapted from Elmore Leonard, of a woman using her position in a criminal’s operation to her advantage and trying to get away with the cash. The story is largely in Tarantino’s wheelhouse, and it’s clear he had an affinity for the original story this was based on, Rum Punch. Beyond that, the way Tarantino turns this film into a modern Blaxploitation flick is also on display, and well done mostly. The extreme 70’s vibe from the wardrobe down to the admittedly incredible music all works well in establishing the tone and energy of this film. There’s actually a lot to like here, but it’s all superficial and serves little purpose to the narrative.
Jackie Brown is Tarantino at his most uninteresting. With a story predicated around the idea of people aging and changing I just found myself with no one to root for. I didn’t care about Jackie, I didn’t care about Max Cherry or Ordell. No one in the film had any characteristics that I could see in myself, and that is a huge issue for me. I essentially couldn’t suspend my disbelief because there is no one in the film that responds in a way that I could deem credible. Even DeNiro, who is in my opinion grossly miscast, does nothing with his role. He comes across as a “react-when-the-script-says-to sociopath, but I didn’t buy any of his background or characterization. This is disappointing because if there’s one thing that Tarantino does better than most it is absolutely character work, something that seemed to be largely absent here, save for Brown and Cherry.
The best way I can describe my issues here would be to use other Tarantino films as a reference point, and as such I can look at the classic Pulp Fiction. Fiction works because of how the story is secondary to the dialogue. We invest in the characters immediately because of how charismatic and relatable they are. Brown attempts to do this admirably. We begin on the famous “AK-47” conversation, but it is undermined by the gravity of the actors speaking the lines. Fiction goes to Samuel L and John Travolta. One guy needed a career revival and the other, while well known, wasn’t the Samuel L we know today. The distraction of Robert DeNiro sitting through another character’s speech in an almost subservient way does go against his typical type of role, but it comes across as, in a word, flaccid. From there, we meet a cast of characters who already exist and have lived in this world. That’s just fine if you know the world, as some Elmore Leonard fans undoubtedly do. As a film standing on its own two feet, it feels oddly discriminatory, and since I have no connection to Leonard or his characters some offhand comments and references made make it seem like I, as a viewer, need to do some homework to appreciate what’s going on.
That rubbed me the wrong way here, and wasn’t something you needed to bring to Pulp Fiction. When things were established as history in Fiction, they weren’t blind references for the sake of fan-service, as they feel here, but rather integral anecdotes that related to the characters and situations they are brought up in. When you hear about Antwoine Rockamorra (Tony Rocky Horror), it directly relates to a character we meet later in the film, and hence it has purpose in informing a later conversation that the audience gets to see. In Brown, there is so much talk of what happened in the years leading up to the story that goes nowhere. Things that are supposed to flesh out Louis and Ordell change nothing about them from the beginning of the film until the end. There’s simply a lack of restraint with delivering information relevant to the story that inflates the runtime severely.
Saying this is the worst Tarantino film is a strong statement, and luckily I don’t have to because Death Proof exists. At his worst, Tarantino still delivers a 6, given to the aforementioned Death Proof. I settle on a very soft 7 on 10 for Jackie Brown, largely because of the disappointment of what it was and the uninteresting film that was delivered to me. He does some things right, but a lot of things wrong, and I think even he knows this since he hasn’t bothered to adapt someone else’s work since. While I hate to admit it, the guy isn’t perfect, and that shows very much in Jackie Brown. Brown should have been a slam dunk, but it absolutely isn’t, and the fact that this movie is as flaccid and flat-out boring is why this sucks.
A year ago I did something bold. Something daring. Possibly something alcohol influenced. Instead of doing the typical “top 10” of the year, I decided to review EVERYTHING from 2015 all in one article. It took some time and ultimately was my way of summing up how I felt about the year. While it’s impossible to see absolutely everything by the end of the year (despite the recent alleged availability of certain films) I did my best, these past few weeks especially, to see the stuff that people this year went gaga over. What did I find? Overall, a pretty average year in movies. This was a year filled with filmmakers trying to tickle our nostalgia funny-bone over and over again, with only a few real good hits. We’re finally nearing the over-saturation of the superhero film and some of the year’s best movies went virtually unnoticed. Here goes nuthin’.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens – N/A
I’m getting this one out of the way right now because Star Wars: The Force Awakens comes with a ton of baggage. Look, the original trilogy occupies a really special place in my mind. I describe it like this: the OT goes on a shelf away from all other films because of how those movies made me feel when I was a kid. I don’t really like to rate those movies the way I rate other films because they mean so much to me. As such, I could nitpick TFA to death (as I could also do to Jedi) but the hits are far greater than the misses. The most important element was nailed, which was making the flick better than the prequels. For that alone the movie is a triumph in my book and, as such, TFA deserves to be put right next to the original trilogy as a movie that makes me feel like a kid again, and really what else did I want from it?
It Follows – 4/10
If I were to give out an award for “Film I Most Wanted To Love” I would give it to It Follows. The story of a spirit/ghost/specter that follows you no matter what you do, transferred via sexual intercourse, is a decent concept for an 80’s throwback horror-thriller. The problem here is that the movie doesn’t have much beyond the initial concept and peters out quick. The ending especially is so incredibly stupid that I have serious issues with the logic of the writer. A decent time but nothing that I can recommend.
Crimson Peak – 6/10
When it comes to Guillermo Del Toro I find myself in the minority. I actually think Hellboy: The Golden Army is FAR AND AWAY his best film. I enjoy the rest of his filmography but the meticulous care and love for the material is on display with TGA. Here, we have another fantastic looking Del Toro film that, as soon as you start to peel back the layers, has very little to do with any sort of supernatural elements. As a throwback to the hammer horror days, Crimson Peak is pitch-perfect, but like the Hammer horror films it’s all style and little substance. I didn’t care much for the main story and hoped there was more to the mystery of what was going on than what we were given. Far from an awful film, especially on a technical level, but left me wanting a lot more.
Jurassic World – 6/10
Possibly the most hated film on Binge Media, Jurassic World, rightfully, was dethroned by TFA as the highest grossing film, highest grossing opening weekend and blah blah blah. Jurassic World was ultimately a nice retread of the themes present in the first two Park films but without basic movie logic applied. Bryce Dallas Howard gave the worst performance of the year and the trained raptors are still a tough pill to swallow, but in my opinion as simple popcorn fun the movie was fine. I think a lot of the backlash on this movie is because it wasn’t particularly well made, and I get that, but I think if you take a movie like this and put it up against a lot of the other shit coming out (i.e. Battleship, Transformers, etc.) I’d rather see young people buying tickets to a Park film than those other franchises.
Dope – 6/10
Someone once said that one of the most important functions of a film is being relatable to the viewer. As such, Dope is a tough movie for me because I don’t really see myself in any of the characters. I think this has less to do with the physical differences between us and more to do with the circumstances these characters find themselves in. Comedy is a tough thing to nail, and if the slightest thing isn’t working with it, typically, the jokes fall flat. I didn’t find much funny about Dope, but I did appreciate the social commentary the movie provides. One of the more unique movies of the year for certain, but one that I couldn’t quite grasp.
Ted 2 – 7/10
I make no reservations about the fact that I loved Ted. Yes, I’m in the target demographic for it (Baaahston sports fan, Rhode Island pride ala Seth MacFarlane) but I really found the first Ted to have a handful of great one-liners. Ted 2 was a movie that I loved just as much as the first. From the throwaway gags like referencing Jurassic Park while looking at a field of weed to the glorious Tom Brady cameo (and it is glorious) Ted 2 is a pretty fantastic comedy in a year largely devoid of good ones.
Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation – 7/10
M:I 5 was ok. That’s about all I have to say about it. What the filmmakers did was, essentially, take the blueprint of what worked for Ghost Protocol and did all the same things, including the lackluster villain. I will watch Ethan Hunt until they decide to stop putting him on the screen but I do have one big issue with this film. So much fanfare was made about the fact that Tom Cruise latched onto a plane while it took off for a stunt in this film. While the stunt was ok in terms of what Cruise physically did for the role the scene pales in comparison to the brilliantly shot Burj Khalifa sequence in Ghost Protocol. The Khalifa climb was integral to what was happening in the story, while here in Rogue Nation the plane scene was mostly a throwaway cold-open joke, and I didn’t like that. It seemed like sensationalism for its own sake rather than the story, and the rest of the movie didn’t really match that scene’s level of spectacle, for me. Here’s hoping the next one FINALLY has a villain worth watching.
The End of the Tour – 7/10
I feel like this type of movie comes out every year, but when it is well made it tends to be one of the year’s best. The interview of David Foster Wallace by Dave Lipsky is, much like the book Infinite Jest itself, a famous moment in hipster culture. Jest is the book that everybody owned but few actually read, and the Rolling Stone interview is the stuff of pop culture legend becuase of the fact that it was never published. The movie does a great job humanizing both writers, with Lipsky’s sheer awe and jealousy of Wallace’s success and easygoing nature conflicting with Wallace’s own confusion and misunderstanding of himself. This isn’t a great film, but it’s an interesting movie for certain.
Mississippi Grind – 7/10
If you like Ben Mendelsohn or Ryan Reynolds then Mississippi Grind is your kind of movie. A through and through character study, the loose story at play concerns Mendelsohn needing to come up with a sum of money. Reynolds, a fellow gambler, decides to partner with Mendelsohn and travel to a bunch of backroom parlors up and down the coast winning the money they need. This is the kind of movie that asks nothing of the viewer and delivers some quality entertainment, just don’t expect the themes to be more challenging than “Gambling is tough”.
Misery Loves Comedy – 7/10
Solid documentary about the nature of depression in comedians lives and how strife informs humor. This is one of those docs that includes talking heads from all across the board such as Jemaine Clement, Nick Swardson, Jon Favreau, Kevin Smith, Martin Short and many others. Directed by Kevin Pollak, it’s easy to look at this documentary and criticize it for being one-note, but as a collection of thoughts from many different comedians it’s a pretty rousing success.
Furious 7 – 7/10
A blast of a movie to kick off the summer, Furious 7 had to stick the landing for Paul Walker’s sake. While a decent action flick, it’s actually even more interesting to watch the film and try to spot where they had to use a CGI Paul Walker throughout the film. Despite that, you get a lot of great moments, including The Rock who is arguably the most entertaining movie star working today. The formula, however, is starting to wear thin, and it’s time to shake up this franchise again before the format gets stale.
Avengers: Age of Ultron – 7/10
AoU was supposed to be the next big thing from Marvel but it proved to be too simplistic and sequel-baitey for its own good. The character development for characters like Hawkeye and The Vision was ok (Paul Bettany’s my boy, goin way back) but most of the film suffered from trying to spin too many plates. It’s also kind of upsetting that for the second film in a row they can’t quite figure out how to integrate Thor in a meaningful way, so they just take him out of the plot for a while until the script needs him again. I found Ultron to be less of a menace than the trailers made him out to be, which was also a let-down.
The Wolfpack – 7/10
A fascinating slice of life encumbered by some boring filmmaking, The Wolfpack is one of the stranger documentaries you’re likely to see. The story of the Angulo boys’ “captivity” in a New York apartment is strange but made all the more strange when their warden/father explains his reasoning for keeping them inside for their entire lives. I found the boys to be especially creative in making their version of The Dark Knight batsuit out of cardboard and sponges. A good documentary that could have used a more innovative filmmaker to keep it interesting.
The Gift – 7/10
This is one of those rare cases where I didn’t find anything in The Gift that wasn’t done well but the film just sort of stalled out for me. I think it has more to do with the fact that this type of story has been told to death and that the movie is no more than a glossed-up Twilight Zone episode, but that being said it works really well. Edgerton proved, more than anything else, that his talents as a director may actually exceed his acting skills, and I look forward to his next picture.
Black Mass – 7/10
I’ll stand by the fact that this is still the performance of the year. Depp is back in a big way, it’s just a shame that the movie around him isn’t a better one. Black Mass is a good film, but nowhere near as good as the source material dictates it to be. The sad truth is that at the end of the day The Departed is still the better Whitey Bulger movie, even though ‘technically’ it’s not a Whitey Bulger movie (even though it is). See it to reinvigorate your faith in Depp as a dramatic actor.
Sicario – 7/10
Another let-down in a year full of them, Sicario was visually stunning. Roger Deakins is the kind of cinematographer where, at this point, I stand up and take notice when I see a film of his. Simply put no one else this year put images on the screen as breathtaking as the silhouetted show against a rainbow sky seen near the end of this film. That alone makes this one worth the price of admission. That being said, there are some pretty huge character issues that this film should have addressed. Emily Blunt’s character is criminally half-baked and I hope that there’s a director’s cut in the pipeline to fix some of the issues I have with the film.
Bone Tomahawk – 7/10
The most horrifying thing I’ve ever seen in a movie occurs in this film. I’ve seen Salo, I’ve seen I Spit on your Grave, but I’ve never seen anything so cruel and seemingly real than what occurs in this film. It was so bad that I actually shut the movie off and revisited it weeks later. Bone Tomahawk is a very well directed debut film from S. Craig Zahler featuring one of the better ensemble casts this year. His claustrophobic direction coupled with the sheer brutality of what goes down in this film is what makes it so impressive, even if, in my opinion, he took it a little too far over the edge. I expect great things from this director down the road.
Spectre – 7/10
Another franchise film that caught a ton of flack this year, Spectre was entertaining and a nice throwback to the Bond films of yesteryear. In a year where nostalgia and sequels ran rampant, Spectre was too long for its own good. Sam Mendes clearly had some great ideas but failed to reign them in a bit and make a more concise film, which is my biggest complaint with the movie. I loved Christoph Waltz and what they did with his character, although I did find it to be highly telegraphed. Spectre is no Skyfall, but how could it ever be?
Creed – 7/10
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; I’m no fan of the Rocky films. I find the franchise to be redundant and repetitive with few even realizing that the original Rocky is essentially a remake/reworking of Somebody Up There Likes Me. If I were to rate the original, I’d give it a 7/10 for being innovative and fresh for the time, and as such I liked Creed in the same way I liked Rocky, no more and no less. Creed was a decent extension of the franchise with a solid performance from Michael B. Jordan and Stallone, who no doubt will get all sorts of accolades for actually acting for the first time in his career (whatever). I just don’t connect with these films, but I did love the angle at which they connected Adonis to Apollo.
The Martian – 7/10
Everyone’s favorite movie of the year was ok. It was just ok. In a year where films were mostly lackluster The Martian stands out as a crowd-pleaser across the board but it was a very safe and easy film. Damon gives a great performance, and I thought a lot of the elements at play worked well, but for fucks sake there is almost no conflict here. Does anyone watching this movie actually believe that Watney won’t be rescued at any point? Is there a single dissenting opinion or adversarial element in the entire film? Again, this is a safe movie, but one that is entertaining and ultimately deserves mention on a year-end list.
I Am Big Bird: The Carol Spinney Story – 7/10
I had no idea Big Bird was such a big deal. Carol Spinney, a guy whom I had seen in a few documentaries here and there, is a real innovator of his craft, and this documentary, while ultimately light on hard-hitting details, is a great look at a living legend. Seeing Spinney working the puppet of Big Bird and his process of becoming the character is fascinating, as is the archival footage of Jim Henson and Frank Oz. This is a great, sentimental documentary that deserves a watch from anyone who is a fan of Sesame Street, Henson’s other work or even Star Wars as that is briefly touched upon here as well.
Ant-Man – 8/10
Taking the mantle of superhero movie of the year is Ant-Man. I figured that Paul Rudd in a Marvel film was too good to be true, but thankfully it was a match made in heaven. Rudd is great as Scott Lang, and as such Michael Douglas is equally great as Hank Pym. Out of an impressively structured script Ant-Man managed to relate well to the overall Marvel universe while also being its own story. It was also refreshing to see a Marvel movie not end with a giant air/space battle.
An Honest Liar – 8/10
My second-favorite documentary of the year, An Honest Liar is the story of The Amazing Randi, magician and defrauder of fakes. James Randi, a Canadian-born performer, has a story that is as fascinating as it is deceptive. His personal life comes into focus and, without spoiling anything, is just as if not more interesting than his professional one. I have an affinity for people who seek truth above all else, and Randi is a lifelong champion of that. Particularly his targeting of self-help gurus and televangelists is pretty noble.
Roger Waters The Wall – 8/10
I was lucky enough to see Roger Waters’ The Wall at Fenway Park back in 2012. It still stands as the greatest live event I’ve ever been to. There was an immersive factor to the performance that is completely unrivaled. Cut to this year when the obligatory movie version of the performance was released. Now there are differences in the performance, with the filmmakers curiously leaving out several key moments for one reason or another. I really liked the inclusion of Waters’ grappling with the loss of his father and grandfather. It’s actually a unique situation where the art is morphing over time and gaining new meaning through life experience for both Waters’ and myself as a member of the audience. This is a very solid concert film that should be seen by all fans.
Kingsman: The Secret Service – 8/10
Kingsman kicked off the year of the spy film in glorious fashion, and to me it never got better than this. Fun, shocking and entertaining, Kingsman had everything I wanted and a little more. The Freebird scene is the stuff of legend, with it being a brilliant opera of violence. Samuel L. put forth one of his more entertaining performances with his Mike Tyson-esque lisp and usual hilarious cadence. I loved Kingsman and absolutely think it’s one of the better films of the year.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl – 8/10
Every few years a nice, sweet little indie film with lots of heart bursts onto the scene. This year, Me and Earl is that indie film. While strikingly similar to Dope in several ways, Me and Earl centers around a couple of film geeks who collect Criterion Collection movies and imitate Werner Herzog. If that doesn’t get your cinephile boner raging I don’t know what will. The story, centered around a girl who has cancer and the experience through the eyes of the lead character is very sobering. While not a depressing film it does feel incredibly real and heartfelt. You can’t help but wonder if the filmmaker experienced this himself, hence his knowledge of the situation.
Steve Jobs – 8/10
The award for most surprising film of the year goes to Steve Jobs. Firstly, I’m a fan of the Fassbender General and I think he’s one of the top actors working today. Secondly, The Social Network is one of the most rewatchable movies I know of due to the fantastic script, so the fact that Aaron Sorkin attacked this was great. Thirdly, Danny Boyle’s movies are largely hit-or-miss for me, with his filmic structure having real issues in the third act of many of his films. Still though, in spite of himself, Boyle plays this movie mostly straight and gives us the most entertaining script of the year. This movie could have been about anyone, not necessarily Steve Jobs, and it still would have been a success. To anyone with trepidation about watching this, throw that right out the window now as it is worth your time.
7 Days In Hell – 8/10
An HBO short film, yes, but still a pretty fantastic little gem, 7 Days In hell really harkened back to the glory days of Christopher Guest. I’ve been waiting for years for Guest to put something together in the vein of Best in Show or A Mighty Wind (or the immortal Spinal Tap) but it seems that Samberg took the concept and ran with it. The story of these rival tennis players squaring off in a match for the ages is hilarious and, without spoiling anything, pretty god-damned shocking. If you haven’t checked this out yet, you need to.
Spotlight – 8/10
I’m a little torn on Spotlight after giving it some time to breathe. On the one hand, the script here is very good and these sort of muckraking stories will always have a place in the cinema landscape due to their structure and nature. That being said, there’s almost no visual identity to this film at all. This could have been a lifetime movie and the source material, despite how repulsive and repugnant it is, never elevates the film to having any meaning outside of the journalism process.
The Hateful Eight – 9/10
I am, through and through, a Tarantino mark. In my opinion he’s only made one bad film (Death Proof). While my feelings are still very fresh on The Hateful Eight, I will be the first to admit that the film is not perfect. There is a lot of exposition that takes its time building tension and, while the dialogue is well written, Tarantino’s prose is a little tougher to swallow without the prevalence of pop culture references and the old nod/wink to the camera he is so good at doing. All that being said, I enjoyed the hell out of the movie (I saw it in the 70mm Roadshow presentation). The entire cast is perfect and well rounded, as is no surprise with Quentin’s films. I have to say that above all else the music is what most drew me in. Rather than a western score, Morricone built a horror movie theme and even worked some of his unused score from The Thing into it. Hateful Eight is Tarantino’s toughest pill to swallow, as I think a lot of people are going to be turned off by the sloooooooooooow burn of it, but especially after a second viewing this is cemented as one of my favorite films of the year.
Inside Out – 9/10
Pixar, you had me at hello. Inside Out is yet another phenomenal entry into their oeuvre. Not since Up has one of their films hit me so hard in the feels. The creativity of how the brain is processing all these different emotions and feelings is really spectacular and cements the studio as the most creative out there. While not all of their films are hits anymore, the ones that are are so in spectacular fashion.
Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief – 9/10
My favorite documentary of the year, Going Clear was a documentary that I watched at least three separate times. The story of Scientology is fascinating to me, and this serves a brilliant companion piece to The Master. I actually went to Clearwater, FL this year and saw the Ft. Harrison Hotel in person. It’s just as creepy in broad daylight as you think it might be. This is a fascinating, sometimes maddening story that makes you as angry at the US Government as it does Scientologists.
Kung Fury – 9/10
Another short film that packed more of a punch than most feature-length films this year, Kung Fury was the cheesy, action-packed extravaganza that no one realized it could be. Another film I’ve watched several times this year, Kung Fury packs a hell of a punch in a short amount of time. Triceracop, the Kung Fuhrer and Barbarianna are all part of this elaborate, insane story that is every bit as satisfying as it is awesome.
Beasts Of No Nation – 9/10
Some films are so important that you can’t help but respect them. Beasts Of No Nation is an incredibly morbid, well-made and disturbing movie, the likes of which we see once a decade. Operating on a level of evil rivaling Amon Goethe in Schindler’s List, Idris Elba gives one of the year’s greatest performances as the Commandant, the nameless leader of a group of child soldiers in some part of Africa. He is at once despicable and pathetic, but also opportunistic and truly evil. Agu, the lead character, is put through the ringer in this film, becoming a part of a band of children taken from their homes and made into cold-blooded killers. The film never shies away from the disturbing and grotesque details of what these kids are forced to do, but it also doesn’t sensationalize them either. Once again, Fukunaga delivers another great long-take, this one being much more disturbing than the one we saw on True Detective. A truly phenomenal, important film that should be required viewing for any film fans this year.
Ex Machina – 9/10
Some of my favorite movies are the ones that take a simple concept and bring it to its logical conclusion. While you could argue that elements of Ex Machina have been done before, the film is so well made, both visually and aurally, that it hit all the right notes for me. I love a great science fiction story, and Ex Machina absolutely is one. The idea of true AI and the structure of this film very smartly set you up for one thing while pulling you in the opposite direction by the end. Oscar Isaac (my boy, goin’ way back) and Domnhall Gleeson both turn in good performances with Isaac’s being the more showy of the two. Alicia Vikander, the AI, is also pretty spectacular, with some of her scenes being duly disturbing and vulnerable. I loved Ex Machina and am always fascinated by truly phenomenal sci-fi forays. This is one of them, and for me one of the year’s best.
Mad Max: Fury Road – 9/10
No surprise here, as I’m sure many others will have this atop their list, but I simply didn’t see many movies I loved more this year than Mad Max: Fury Road. As a moderate fan of The Road Warrior and neither of the other two Mad Max films, Fury Road was the perfect shot of adrenaline the franchise needed to give it some new life. I’ve heard the complaints about the film not focusing on Max or how it was too simplistic but I implore those of you who believe that to go back and watch The Road Warrior. Max was a secondary character there and that film is regarded as the best in the franchise, so really, what are you complaining about? Fury Road had everything I wanted from it and a little more, making it one of my favorites this year.
What We Do In The Shadows – 9/10
All due respect to Mad Max, THIS was my favorite movie of the year. By taking the mockumentary approach and using it on a group of vampires who are completely out of touch with modern times was brilliant, but the filmmaking on display here is also fantastic. Written by the brain-trust behind Flight of the Conchords (and technically a movie I saw last year even though it wasn’t in this country until early this year), WWDITS almost immediately entered the conversation of greatest comedies I’ve ever seen upon the first viewing. There are too many amazing scenes, and it’s endlessly quotable. If you haven’t seen this yet, get on it.
That’s it for 2015 Bingers (?). I have yet to see quite a few flicks but as it stands this is what I’ve got. As far as what I’m looking forward to next year? I’m curious about Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, if only for Affleck’s portrayal of the Bat. The new Coen Brothers flick Hail Caesar looks promising and, of course, the next Star Wars film looks pretty fascinating to me. Let me know what you think in the comments below, Happy New Year to all of you and, as always, Binge On!
Around this time every year good manners dictate that we look at things and be thankful for them. Family, friends and good health are amongst the most immediate and important ones but these days we have a lot to be thankful for. For instance, I am thankful for Facebook allowing you to see when a recipient reads a message you have sent them, just so later when they try to lie about having seen it you can catch them with their pants down. I am thankful for places like Binge Media where all us cool kids can go to bitch about pop culture with one another. Here, I present to you, a list of ten movies that I am thankful for, all for different and unique reasons. Keep in mind, much like my 10 Movies That Should Be Remade article, is presented in alphabetical order, not in order of importance.
The Jist: As far as comedy goes Monty Python are, to me, the absolute kings. I love the Pythons and a lot of their individual projects as well so it really is not much of a stretch to say I have a lot of love for A Fish Called Wanda. Combining the writing/directing/acting talents of John Cleese with Kevin Kline’s insane Otto character is a comedic match made in heaven. Add to that Michael Palin playing the brilliantly stuttering Ken as well as Jamie Lee Curtis hamming up every scene she is part of and you get a really brilliant comedy that gets overlooked far too often.
The Jist: Believe it or not there was a time, not so long ago, when Batman was an irrelevant mess. While the 66’ television show was a big, flash-in-the-pan hit, it drove Batman as a character into pop-art positivity, a far cry from the current iterations of the character. All that being said, Adam West played a great Bruce Wayne/Batman and the show, while omitting Two-Face, introduces most of the Rogue’s Gallery pretty well. This all culminates with Batman! The Movie, essentially an extended episode where Batman and Robin square off against Catwoman, The Penguin, The Riddler and The Joker trying to take over the United Nations and the world. The movie is kitchy and insane, but it is so much fun to watch and enjoy when you are of a certain frame of mind.
The Jist: Some concepts are so perfect they just need to happen. Eventually, Tarantino was going to make a World War II film, it was just a matter of what his angle would be. I love this movie, and it is actually one of the few films on this list that also sits on my favorite all-time movie list. Everything that makes a Tarantino movie a unique experience is present here. You have fantastic dialogue, kinetic direction, unique wordplay and a great deal of suspense on top of the usual Tarantino comic relief that punctuates all of his work. I would even go so far as to say that if every director has one film that best illustrates their style then Inglourious Basterds wholly encompasses Quentin’s style.
The Jist: A genuine surprise for me when I first saw it, Red State is about as far as Kevin Smith could conceivably get away from Jay and Silent Bob’s shenanigans. The film, uniquely I find, follows not a main character but takes more of a documentary style following a situation as it unfolds. What beings as an innocuous sexual encounter via Craigslist evolves into a disturbing and intense modern terrorist encounter. Red State doesn’t feel like many other films and has few fans but I count myself amongst them for doing things differently. It also helps that Michael Parks steals the film with his magnetic performance.
The Jist: Star Trek has always been known for taking the genre in new and interesting directions. I think most Trekkies would agree that some of the films are miles ahead of the others. In my opinion, Star Trek First Contact is the most interesting and innovative of the Picard films. Where the main story deals with time travel and Picard’s run-in with the Borg collective the far more interesting plot takes place with the man who invented warp drive, Zefram Cochran. The idea of examining history and the difference between how it is perceived versus how it actually is makes this film a great sci-fi movie, even outside of the franchise. It is also really great to see the most important event in the entire Star Trek mythos happen in this film, and while the film does not shove the idea down our throat it does a good job conveying the importance and gravity of that moment.
Scene I’m Thankful For: The aforementioned moment of First Contact.
The Jist: A woman is struggling with being a single parent as a creature known as the Babadook seems to be terrorizing her son. The film, an Australian independent, made a pretty big splash last year as one of the great horror films of 2014. While I am not a big fan of the film, there is something to appreciate from it, seen below.
The Jist: Maybe the most controversial film in American history, most of us remember last year when North Korea threatened to end all American life if Sony released this film. Luckily, they couldn’t keep the movie down, with anonymous movie guy and VOD delivering the film straight to our homes. You have to appreciate this film for having the cojones to call out a current world leader while also illuminating the problems inherent in that society. I thought the facade storefront scene in particular was surprisingly powerful for a movie full of dick jokes.
The Jist: As far as documentaries go this is probably my all-time favorite. The flick concerns the world-record holders in classic arcade gaming and all the nerdy quirky-ness that comes along with it. Centered around Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell as your classic rivalry story, this flick is a perfect example of why documentaries are great; they can illuminate an aspect of the human condition that we mere mortals know nothing about. While the records in this film have already been surpassed at this point, this is still a nice snapshot of a time when men where men, and boys played Ladybug.
The Jist: Cross-dressing and old-school horror films collide in what is easily the ultimate midnight movie. Tim Curry is at his best here and sets the standard by which all other flamboyant musical performances will be judged. A role for Meatloaf, Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick playing the straight couple and the oddity of the entire thing is what makes Rocky Horror such an insane movie, but one that continues to entertain to this day.
The Jist: A hard-boiled 70’s thriller, Pelham 1 2 3 is a real classic when it comes to gritty genre flicks. The flick lives in a very realistic New York where a group of armed men board a commuter subway train and hijack it, demanding a ransom for the hostages now on board. The great casting from top to bottom starts with Walter Mathau and goes right on down the line to Robert Shaw in what I believe to be his most underrated performance. While this film was remade recently it does not hold a candle to the original by any means.
Scene I’m Thankful For: ***FINALE SPOILERS*** Gesundheit!
We’d love to hear from you and know what movies you’re thankful for by commenting below! Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone (except for you Canadians) and Binge On!
Some things are just a part of life. Air is what we breathe, barbers will always have return business and Hollywood is going to keep producing remakes. While a small percentage of remakes are good, I’d like to turn our attention to some films that acutally could benefit from being remade. Constantly there are reminders of the failure of Hollywood remakes, from Black Christmas to Arthur, but here’s a list of ten films that I think could and should be improved upon.
300 – 300 was and continues to be a fairly popular film and there is precedent for that. Without straying from the source material, 300 was a retelling of the Frank Miller graphic novel that gained a lot of traction due to the success of Sin City before it. Zack Snyder, a guy who I do not particularly like as a filmmaker, does an adequate job here making one of the great “hoo-rah” pump-up movies of the past few years, and films like this will always have a place with a certain audience. For me, 300 was a massive let down, but it was my own fault for letting the hype get to me. The trailers are still phenomenal, but the movie around them is incredibly one-dimensional and anti-climactic. The real tragedy is that the real story behind the 300 Spartans is MUCH MORE EPIC than what was put to page here. For example, did you know that the Spartans actually fought off the Persian army for three days AFTER Leonidas was killed, just to recover his body? There’s a really great action-drama in the vein of Apocalypto waiting to be made here and it is a shame that we haven’t gotten it yet. If ever there was a story that needs a fresh take on the big screen, I think it’s this one. Possible Directors – Peter Jackson, Mel Gibson, George Miller
Fire In The Sky – When your movie is famous for a terrifying alien probe scene you know you have something special. The unfortunate reality of Fire in the Sky is that outside of that one horrifying scene the movie suffers from being pretty average. There is not a surplus of great alien horror films out there from the perspective of people being abducted and in the right filmmaker’s hands this could be a modern classic, almost like the anti-Close Encounters.
Slaughterhouse-Five – One of the strangest time-travel stories ever, the movie simply struggles to capture what the book conveys so well. Without spoiling the story, Slaughterhouse-Five is about a man caught in time named Billy Pilgrim. Pilgrim seems to experience all moments of his life at once, only pausing occasionally in different times of self-awareness. Time travel is a tricky subject and especially so when you have a concept as abstract as this one, but intelligent science fiction is not too common so I think there is a place for this in the cinematic landscape. Possible Directors – Terry Gilliam, David Lynch, Shane Carruth
Soylent Green – There have been a ton of suggested gritty reboots over the past few years but Soylent Green is one that needs to happen. The entire idea of this film is ripe with social commentary, and like Slaughterhouse-Five could be the next great science-fiction concept. While the original film is a classic product of the 70’s, the themes of this film could be expanded upon and made into something even more meaningful and special with some quality writing.
Spawn – At some point, Spawn is coming back, so maybe this is an easy target. That being said, Spawn was always a really dark and intriguing character to me. A guy who dies and sells his soul to the devil in exchange to see his wife again is something that is pretty primal and ridiculous. The Michael Jai White film was largely a failure due to timing and execution. In a world where Deadpool is getting a fair shake, I think the odds of seeing a good Spawn film are higher now than ever before.
Star Trek The Final Frontier – I think we all have certain films that no matter how bad they are we just don’t care. For me, Star Trek The Final Frontier is one of those films, most likely due to the fact that I saw it so young. Despite that, the search for God is something that Star Trek is uniquely positioned to examine, it just seems that Shatner was not the guy to pull it off whatsoever. While Abrams was abjectly wrong for trying to remake The Wrath of Khan, my vote would have been to rework this story and run with it.
Super Mario Brothers – Let’s face it, Super Mario Brothers doesn’t have much in the way of redeeming qualities. In fact, I don’t know the name of the director who could have done this justice, but I do know who could knock this out of the park: Pixar. Whether it’s Pete Docter or any of the other phenomenal talent they have, I’d vote Pixar on this all day. While the licensing might be a challenge it would be well worth the investment.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen – Superhero team-ups are all the rage these days so I think now is as good a time as any to take another crack at this one. Granted, Alan Moore is not kind to anyone who adapts his work, but I don’t think his approval is needed to make something great out of this. Who wouldn’t want to see an R-rated superhero team-up with famous literary characters? The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a must-remake if ever there was one.
The Odyssey – This movie is largely the entire reason why I created this article. To date, no one has made an effective or competent cinematic version of The Odyssey. The Hallmark channel Armand Assante production was ok, but it’s nowhere near as expansive or adult as I believe the story calls for. Greek mythology has not fared too well in recent years with there being an interesting opportunity for something innovative to be done. The Odyssey is one of the world’s oldest stories and I think it’s high time someone gives us a take on the material.
The Stunt Man – One of the coolest movie plots I know of, The Stunt Man is a criminally underseen film about a convinct on the run from the police who stumbles onto a movie set. The director hires him on the spot to use as a stunt man in the film he is directing and the stunts get more and more deadly as the shoot goes on. Peter O’Toole absolutely kills it here but this is an often overlooked film in the pantheon of 70’s thrillers. This is the kind of concept that is so wacky you can take it in a bunch of different directions, but I’ll keep my fingers crossed that someday we get an update.
There was a time way back in my life where horror films were something that I could not watch. Specifically I remember one afternoon, after I discovered what a real film was supposed to be, where I decided to conquer my fear of scary films. The plan was a three-step process:
Pick a bright, shining Summer day at noontime
Open ALL the windows in the house
Watch The Exorcist
Looking back on it, I now realize what awful conditions those were to experience a horror film under but it did the trick and snapped my fear of horror in general. After you see a film like that and then watch the documentaries, you become someone who “knows how the sausage is made”, and the film becomes just that: a film. Cut to now, some 13 years later, and now it’s just the opposite reaction. I can’t find a film that scares me at all in the horror genre. In fact, I’d say the scariest films I’ve seen have been across almost every other genre. Luckily for me, there’s one director who dipped his toes into those types of films over the years yet he is a guy who doesn’t get associated with scary films for some reason. That man is Stanley Kubrick, and there are a lot of reasons why at least one of his films should be on your watchlist this Halloween.
Part of Kubrick’s lasting power has been the immense achievement of even his smallest films. While easily his most unpopular directed feature, even the melodrama Lolita was a boundary-pushing adaptation for its depiction of a married man infatuated with an underage woman, in the early 60’s to boot. Kubrick always pushed the envelope of what an audience could handle into pretty bold territory right from the start, with his earliest films Fear & Desire, The Killing and Paths of Glory all dealing with heavy themes despite the restrictions of studio filmmaking. Even Spartacus, the Kirk Douglas starring epic was decidedly anti-establishment. Leave it to Kubrick to, in the age of Cecil B. DeMille, make a sword and sandal epic that simultaneously ignores any religious ties and features a homosexual subplot with the lead villain, again a trailblazing idea at the time. Too often, though, is Kubrick not given his due credit in terms of what he has done for horror. Where horror films live within very specific confines for the most part, Kubrick secretly injected horror into all of his films in ways that you may not have even realized.
The Shining is Kubrick’s only guaranteed “horror” film throughout his body of work. While the film has several different theories behind what my have happened within the plot and what the film is actually trying to say there is one consistent thing almost anyone who watches The Shining can take away from it. The film has a tangible, almost in-explainable sense of hopeless dread to it. Sure, there are your famous takeaways from the film with the two twin girls calling out for little Danny to “play with us”. Yes, the old woman in the bathtub rotting away is disturbing and off-putting and of course the creepy dead stare of Jack Nicholson mugging for the camera is always good for a shocker. I think underneath all the insane dread of Jack Torrance is the very real family drama at the center of the film, and Kubrick knew this too. Regardless of what Stephen King intended the story to be, I think even with all the supernatural elements that are clearly at work in this story the scariest thing about the film is the idea that despite being close to someone for years you may still have no idea who you’ve been sleeping with. That tiny little germ of an idea is at the center of why The Shining has lasted as long as it has, and why it still terrifies people today. Now granted, this film alone would quality Kubrick as a horror master to some, but it’s his work outside of this film that cements the legacy for me. For instance…
Full Metal Jacket. Possibly Kubrick’s most divisive bonafide classic, Jacket seems to continually get a bad reputation from scores of movie fans over the years. Some have called the film uneven, stating that the huge tonal shift after the first half of the film is too jarring to recover from. I couldn’t disagree more as the brilliance of R. Lee Ermey and the entire boot camp sequence are the perfect setup for the real-world that comes crashing into this film with Pvt. Pyle. The real horror attached to the film comes in Pyle’s performance. We see a naive, dimwitted man get grinded through the “system” and come out the other side as a broken and disturbed individual. There’s nothing scarier than losing your mind, and Vincent D’Onofrio’s performance of a pathetic man pushed a little too far is terrifying. Taking this element out of the conversation, you still have the sniper sequence at the end of the film where the platoon, after wasting some enemy soldiers that happen to be women, march off into the night humming the tune of the Mickey Mouse Club. The methodical, clean dehumanization of the characters in the film is what disturbs me most about Full Metal Jacket, and is oftentimes the thing that people overlook with this film. You walk away from this film feeling very off, but I think that’s part of what makes Kubrick’s skill set so special.
While it would be easy to ignore Kubrick’s classic black comedy Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb when talking about horror, it would be a shame to overlook the undercurrent of unchecked mental illness in this film, a running theme in all of Kubrick’s work. Gen. Ripper, played by Sterling Hayden, is clearly insane, believing there to be a Communist plot to “sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids!”. On the other side of the fence, you have the very clearly brash and headstrong Gen Buck Turgidson, played by George C. Scott, ready to plunge headfirst into all-out nuclear war, accompanied by the chiefs of staff and the President of the United States, played by Peter Sellers, in the famous War Room. While you can cast aside the very real threat of the cold war in this country at the time the film was made, almost every lead character in the film, including Maj. King Kong, are all mentally incapacitated in some way, whether it be a chemical or character imbalance. The thought that these could possibly be the people with their finger on the trigger of global doomsday is made light of in the film, but make no mistake, Kubrick’s story was nothing short of disturbing to many Americans at the time. The best way to describe the reception to this film upon release, while no one would admit it, would probably be fits of nervous laughter. Again, Kubrick, working on a subconscious level, delivers the goods.
My final exhibit is 2001: A Space Odyssey, my personal favorite Kubrick film and one of my favorite all-time films. Possibly one of the most forward-thinking science fiction stories of all time, there is a lot of hope in 2001. Hope for the future, hope that we as a species will continually evolve and discover what’s next, hope that tomorrow will be better, no matter how bad today may be. However, 2001 is anything but optimistic. While not a negative film, Odyssey clearly understands the horror and hardship of trying to survive in space. While the wonder of being able to travel to Jupiter and the spectacle of the different space stations and crafts in the film is unbelievable, especially for 1967, elements like the iconic Monolith serve as a constant reminder of the disturbing danger of space and the unknown. 2001’s conflict is solely man-made: survival in space, HAL 9000 and human emotion are all preyed upon in the story, all three of which come to a head during the fourth act Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite sequence. If I were to pick what I think is the scariest movie scene of all time, I would absolutely go for the quick, almost subliminal close-ups during the star gate sequence. The visceral, primal nature of those quick cuts is so jarring that it does something to you on a very deep level that’s not easy to shake. 2001 is a classic, and it wears its horror influence right on its sleeve.
While I chose just a few of the Kubrick films to prove my point, all of his films utilize these horror elements to help make them such classic films. I think this Halloween it would make a ton of sense adding at least one of these film classics to your horror docket because if the aim is to get the crap scared out of you, Kubrick has got the goods. Enjoy your Halloween and, as always, Binge On!
A few years back, on July 1, 2012 to be exact, I was lucky enough to attend Roger Waters’ performance of The Wall at Fenway Park in Bahhston. I have been a Pink Floyd fan for most of my life and I’ve always had much more of an affinity for Dark Side of the Moon than The Wall, but an opportunity came up and I got to see the performance. I remember that date so well because there’s a distinct difference between the life I was living before that showing the life I am currently engaging in. Concerts come and go for certain. Some are better than others, some are lackluster, and while Waters’ has been criticized for being hard to work with and stuck in his ways, after seeing the show performed live I have to believe that The Wall is, and always has been, less a Pink Floyd album than a piece of performance art put together by Roger Waters. The spectacle of that night still stands as the greatest live performance I’ve ever seen. I’ve frequented The Who over the past few years, seen Springsteen perform for 3+ hours without a break and been to a pair of AFC Championship games, but I can honestly say The Wall was as close to a religious experience as I’ve ever had.
So, naturally, I’ve been searching for something like it ever since the show ended, and in truth nothing really compares. The Wall was such a controlled, focused performance with such universal themes that trying to find its’ duplicate would be damn-near impossible anyhow. You can color me pleased, then, when I found out that Roger Waters The Wall was being made into a concert film. Immediately it was on my radar, and then it dropped off because, well, the docket overfloweth and I lost track of it. Cut to this past Tuesday when my main man Bill gave me the heads up that the flick was playing one night only in Providence. Along with a few other friends, we got our tickets and prepared ourselves. In my case, it was a chance to re-experience the show, while Bill, on the other hand, was experiencing the performance for the first time. After two hours of solid entertainment, and then an odd interview filled with dopey softball questions tagged to the end of the movie, the film was over.
As a movie, I’m actually incredibly impressed with how Waters was able to morph the overall theme of The Wall into something more universal than it had been originally. When it was originally written and performed, The Wall was an idea born out of frustration and the weight of stardom. At a performance of their then released Animals, Roger Waters was so insulted by talkative fans that he actually spat at one of them. Upon reflection of what he had done, the idea of a disillusioned and disturbed rock star who had isolated himself from those around him became the start of The Wall. While The Wall still is very much about that story, the larger message of the album is now one of anti-war sentiment. At the heart of the pain and anguish of the main character was always the loss of his father via the war. What Waters has done in the new film is he’s taken the framework of the story and interspersed scenes of the concert performance with his own journey to visit the site of the battle that took his father’s life. While this is very on the nose, you do feel the anguish and sadness of the very real journey Waters drew upon to write his story. It somehow makes the entire album seem more important and valid now than it ever was, but I would also maintain that this is an album where the studio version does not convey what the live performance does. The closest recording I know of to the show I saw, in terms of tone, would be the Is There Anybody Out There recording from 1980. Where the album had to cut a few key songs, namely “What Shall We Do Now?”, the live album preserves it and serves as, in my opinion, the truest form of the album.
As far as concert films go, I think this one floats high above most others if only because of the wonder of seeing a piece of art morph over time. The Wall is something full of negativity and menace, but in an odd way it’s almost as if time has matured the album and added layers to the storytelling. Because of all of that, the film serves as a prime example of how an artist can redefine and reinvigorate his own work over time. I’d give Roger Waters The Wall a very solid and deserved 9 hard-shell tacos on 10.
As movie buffs, I think we all have a docket. What is the docket, you ask? If you listen to our podcasts you should know, but the docket is the never ending list of movies and tv shows that you want to watch but will get to eventually. The docket is one of those fickle things that will never get smaller, no matter what you do, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s a bad thing. In one way, you’ve always got something next on your list, which is a great thing. However, more often than not things that are already on the docket get pushed further down the docket. For instance, I have yet to watch Banshee. I know everybody loves it, but I just haven’t gotten around to it yet, for whatever reason. That right there is the essence of the docket; a list that continues to exist against your logic and reasoning as a consumer.
Metal Gear Solid V…what can I say, I’m smitten. Between finals week and the new job, my free time has been 95% Metal Gear and 5% football. Considering I’m watching every NFL game I can this season, that gives you some perspective on just how much time I’m pumping into Metal Gear. I’m currently sitting at 30 hours and, while the end is clearly in sight, I’m working on building out my FOBs, invading other players and upgrading all the gear and buddies. It’s a grind, but it’s an enjoyable one. If you’re not playing this, get on it now. It might be the best game of the year. Maybe.
I don’t know how everyone else is doing but Fantasy Football has been an absolute nightmare this season. I’ve had the average amount of wins that I usually do (which isn’t many) but it seems as though this year in particular is really difficult. I blame this on the copious amount of injuries. Between several starting quarterbacks, a ton of wide receivers, some stud running backs and key defensive injuries, players are dropping like flies this year. Thankfully, none of them are Patriots, but I’m not holding my breath on that one either. How is everyone else dealing with the stress of the season? Are you feeling the anguish as much as I am?
That does it for this week’s blog. Be sure to check back for our daily blogs, a new Binge Aftertaste and another Binge GameCast. Binge On!