Apparently there was some technical difficulties (drunk Mexican, drunk Canadian, high bigfoot) with the end of our latest BingeCast and everybody has been yelling at us because our Worst Films of the Year lists were cut off before the money shots. Let’s fix this. Here is our entire list of films we deemed the shit-holes of the past year. Please comment below with your pick for worst movie of the year and why.
Starring: John Krasinski, Freddie Stroma, Toby Stephens, Pablo Schreiber, David Denman, James Badge Dale, Dominic Fumusa, and Max Martini
Michael Bay. The name is synonymous with so much that people find wrong with cinema today. He is the maker of such bombastic entities as Armageddon, both Bad Boys films, and Pearl Harbor. However, for the past nine years or so, Bay has been responsible for selling toys. His Transformers films encompass all of these things, along with the added title of toy salesman. Yet in all this time, when he wasn’t making films about robots who were more than meets the eye, Bay was ‘crafting’ overlong, crude, and outright insulting cinema like Pain & Gain. But in the midst of the studio’s marketing leading up to this release, Bay’s follow-up to 2014’s fourth Transformers film, I was getting eerily excited. See, when reigned in, Bay can make his overall genre bending and ear splitting aesthetic work. 1996’s The Rock is an example of a Bay formula that works on almost all levels. So the question I had going in was if 13 Hours was Bay at his most crude, or in completely serious thriller mode.
In short, it is an example of both. 13 Hours is Bay having fun without having to sell toys. But with nary a sign of juvenile humor or eye rolling one liners one expects from a Bay film, 13 Hours is by far his most serious film to date. However Bay, much like Katherine Bigelow did a few years ago with Zero Dark Thirty, does not concern himself with the political side of the Benghazi disaster as much as the human side. We are mostly shown how the relationships and soldiers’ well being survived, and all references to Obama or Hilary Clinton are welcomely kept to an absolute minimum. With the exception of a revelation that the U.S State Department blames Ansar al-Sharia for the attacks-as opposed to claims by Clinton immediately after- Bay isn’t playing Oliver Stone here. While his political affiliations -as juvenile as they are- have been worn on his sleeve in his past work, he is not leaning one way or the other in 13 Hours. He has always portrayed the military in the brightest of lights (he once bombastically proclaimed on a Transformers commentary track that the reason his portrayal of the military is more realistic than other filmmakers’ is because he has the Pentagon’s phone number), and 13 Hours marks a time when instead of cutting to Shia LeBeouf or Mark Wahlberg’s interractions with the military, he can keep it in just the military’s point of view. And this, dare I say, is where Bay thrives.
13 Hours portrays a Benghazi that is overrun by duplicate militias and turn coat commanders. With nobody stateside unaware of just how anarchist a place Benghazi had become, U.S security is helpless as on September 11th, 2012, chaos ensues and compounds are assaulted. This leaves private security officer Jack Silva (The Office‘s John Krasinski) and all teams within the personnel completely helpless.
What Bay does in a splendid fashion is never let us lose track of what is going on or where the attacks are coming from. He visually lets us know just how destitute and overwhelmed the grounded men are. How or why rescue teams were not dispatched remains a mystery to this day, and Bay illustrates this by cutting to military planes and helicopters just waiting on word to take off. It may sound a little ham handed. Ok, in Bay’s hands the result of the narrative’s execution is more than a little ham handed. But 13 Hours does not bombard us with what could have been. A two part anecdotal portrayal of those on the ground and political personnel would have been detrimental to 13 Hours‘ purpose. So the decision to focus on just the military staff in trouble plays up to all those involved’s strengths, and 13 Hours is a nice example of the synergy of these strengths coming together for one purpose.
While not exactly Black Hawk Down or even the aforementioned Zero Dark Thirty, 13 Hours is Bay as I like to see him; raw and confined. The thought of this turning into a disaster of a real-life portrayal not unlike Pain & Gain crossed my mind more than once leading up to this screening. But Bay’s ability to use the raw energy which suffuses his work is much to its narrative’s advantage. Oh yes. we still have Bay’s vaunted elongated slo-mo shots, ear splitting sounds of explosions, and the general aesthetic feel which encompasses all of his work. But unlike Transformers 2 (come to think of it, all of the Transformer films), 13 Hours is a brutal film for all the right reasons. More importantly, the film is also a reminder that outside of a director who loves to sell toys through explosions, America is a country built on heroism. Even when those who exhibit said heroism are let down by the people who are supposed to be in control.
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.
There are some horses within the entertainment business which are just too fun to repeatedly beat down, aren’t there? You have Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, whose reasons we tear them down with words are so easy to justify. There is what goes through us keyboard warriors’ minds when we see our favorite childhood film get mentioned in the ‘remake’ category. My impression of these types goes as so: “Oooohhhh, where is my iphone so I can rant on Facebook about how much this remake is a disgrace to society. FUCK HOLLYWOOD!” Don’t worry. I’ve been there too.
However, there is one nail people within the online community will not stop hammering in, no matter how delicate the wood block is. For some reason, people love to say just how much of a hack director Brett Ratner truly is. They like to point out the entire Rush Hour series, as well as X-Men: The Last Stand as examples of a director who really has no idea of what he’s doing. However, I am here to refute that.
Let’s start by dissecting his situation with that last film mentioned. By the time Ratner took the directing reigns of The Last Stand, the whole behind the scenes situation on the film was already in shambles. A cantankerous director by the name of Bryan Singer had switched franchises mid prep, deciding to try his hand at a Superman story. And the script was a mess, mostly due to the egos of some cast members insisting on bigger parts, and these requests being honored. Now I will probably be trolled like hell for saying this. But given what he was given, I do not think Ratner did a bad job with X-Men: The Last Stand. At the very least, I feel it is far from being the worst film baring the X-Men name -that would be X-Men Origins: Wolverine– and the movie actually flows at a rapid fire clip without seeming too jumbled. A common film misconception is that people think the feel of a movie is established on the page before cameras roll. But the truth is, all aesthetics and narrative flow is done by the director. On page, X-Men: The Last Stand had the makings of a disaster. But, dare I say thanks to Ratner’s sly hand, it isn’t nearly as bad as its reputation.
However much I am defending the guy’s talent, let me move on to something I feel he does perhaps better than the majority of directors out there. When handed a script like 2002’s Red Dragon, and given all the main Oscar nominated and winning actors that were on that film, the possibility of ego overload, much like Singer let happen on X-Men, was upped to its full capacity. Just take a glimpse at the Red Dragon cast list: Edward Norton, Anthony Hopkins, Ralph Fiennes, Harvey Keitel, Emily Watson, Mary Louise Parker, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Hopkins and Norton do not have the best behind the scenes reputations, and Fiennes doesn’t exactly exude warmth. Yet Ratner’s ability to keep all of their egos under control, as well as keep the film under budget and on time, is a feat that not many directors in his position as the ‘Rush Hour‘ guy could handle. Just listening to Ratner’s commentaries, he gives off such a passion for what he does, that I know it has to rub off on set.
Another thing people might not know about Ratner is just how much of a producer he is. In fact, his directing career has been tapered in recent years because the guy’s producing resume is impressively piling up. Here are just a few titles he has produced: Catfish, Prison Break (HBO), Mother’s Day (remake), Mirror Mirror, Jersey Boys, Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films. Oh yeah, and a little movie called The Revenant.
Like it or not people, Ratner is a Hollywood player. Knock Tower Heist all you want. I think that Hollywood needs more people like him, if only for the passion each of his projects brings out of him. Yes, his mouth can get the best of him at times (which is how he lost an Oscar directing gig a few years back). But in this society of ‘everything needs to be PC,’ Ratner’s candor is kind of refreshing. As is, dare I say, his directing style.
A Few Words About David Bowie’s Passing
First of all, I am not going to sit here and pretend that the late great David Bowie played a huge part in my life. I was not an outcast who had Ziggy Stardust plastered all over my walls. Nor did I watch Labyrinth on repeat. Truth be told, with the exceptions of a couple Rolling Stone Magazine interviews, a collaboration with Trent Reznor, and a flash of tabloid covers depicting his supposedly bizarre early lifestyle and marriage to former supermodel Iman, Bowie was pretty non existent in the first two and a half decades or so of my life. Even with everyone telling me that Marilyn Manson’s 1998 album Mechanical Animals, an album I absolutely loved, was an almost plagiaristic rip-off of Bowie’s own Ziggy Stardust persona, I never thought twice about him.
When I entered my mid twenties, something happened. I was still attending college, which meant many hours were spent on a bus listening to things to pass the time. One rainy night, I was listening as Howard Stern’s Sirius Radio show went off the air, and for some reason he decided to play a block of Bowie tunes. All of which, and this is something all good music does, felt like were written specifically for me. This one block of music drove me to pick up as much of his catalog that I could.
It was also around this time when I decided to, for the very first time, check out Labyrinth. The mid 80s Jim Henson/George Lucas collaboration is looked at by many as a first rate achievement in making musicals cool for kids. But if there is one thing I regret about my fantasy ridden childhood, it’s that I did not discover Labyrinth earlier. Watching it as an adult, it just did not resonate with me, and I almost felt bad about it.
Nonetheless, Bowie played a part in not necessarily my growing up or outcast cries for help. It was in his, ironically, ability to speak to me about how to become a man. Yes, there are fantastic ways of hiding from your problems and avoiding head first dives into reality. But it isn’t until you look these realities in the eye, IE Buddha of Suburbia, when you are able to transcend not only that reality’s surefire truth, but facing and making it a cummapance.
RIP Goblin King. You may not have been my childhood spokesman. But I respect your ability to do so when everyone else was fighting against what you represented.
Some big updates all around as I’ve added up the box office, gave proper nudity points to Rooney Mara and Alicia Vikander, and added the Golden Globes winners. I need Star Wars to stay on top for 3 more weeks to ensure I have a chance at the top three. Oscar nominations will be out soon also so keep an eye out for those. That’s all I got. Go listen to the BingeCast.
After Supka watched Tarantino’s latest 4 times in one day (I still don’t understand how that works), he demanded that we jump on air and talk about it. He had some feelings that strayed from the Binge staff and had to talk about it. Between Christmas and New Year’s, we finally found time to sit down, crack a few beers and record.
This is a SPOILER filled discussion, so no crying if you haven’t watched The Hateful 88s and listen to this.
When you’re done listening, rank your QT films in the comments section! Here’s mine:
Holy crap. We had a little bit to get through after two weeks off. That results in 17 movie reviews, our 13 Worst Films of the Year, a handful of shows in TV Round-Up, a couple voicemails yelling at us, and many beers in my belly.
In no particular order, we talk THE HATEFUL EIGHT, TRUMBO, THE REVENANT, SPOTLIGHT, BRIDGE OF SPIES, THE BIG SHORT, THE FORCE AWAKENS, CHI-RAQ, STEVE JOBS, ANOMALISA, SPECTRE, THE PEANUTS MOVIE, BONE TOMAHAWK, Making a Murderer, F is For Family, Billions, Luther, and a thousand other things my brain blocked out when I fell asleep on the toilet.
We also get angry with each other over our NEW YEARS EVE Movie Homework. It’s everybody’s fault. Except mine.
0:03:05-Weekend holidays got in the way of two weeks of Bingecasts. Apologies if you were butthurt because of the absence. LISTS. Making a Murder full length discussion will happen most likely on another podcast. You’ll listen to it because you can’t get enough, you obsessed asshole.
0:14:25-MOVIE HOMEWORK: New Year’s Eve. Fuck, really? Ugh.
0:37:20-TV ROUND UP. A little bit of Making a Murderer talk to tease you cocksuckers. Law discusses F is for Family, which Moreno approves of. The bald one also check out Billions and the the newest couple episodes of Luther. Law is a sad panda about Preacher news. Moreno and Ammon are still behind on the Leftovers. The taco lover started his Archer journey, and still states he won’t watch the upcoming season of Game of Thrones because George R. R. Martin is a lazy bastard. 11.22.63 Trailer gets mentioned.
1:32:20-WHAT DID YOU WATCH? Here we go. A three way (ew) discussion of The Hateful Eight kicks things off. The boys tackle The Revenant and a possible award for Leo. Next up is Trumbo, which surprised everyone. After a pee break, Moreno and Ammon give Law advice on Anomalisa. Moreno dissects Steve Jobs. Law bitches about Joy and In the Heart of the Sea, and then continues on with Chiraq, Creed, Spectre, Spotlight, and The Big Short. Moreno is pissed off about Black Mass. Ammon, at machine gun pace, talks about The Force Awakens, (It’s a-me,) Sicario Everest, Shaun the Sheep, Kingsmen, The Peanuts Movie, Bone Tomahawk, Bridge of Spies, and Dark Places. FUCKING WHOA.
3:27:30-Law, Moreno, and Ammon piss all over their choices for Worst Films of 2015. Have a nice fucking day.
As far as television is concerned, the last few weeks of my life have been consumed with Netflix’s Making a Murderer. I’ll get into this much more on the upcoming return of the BingeCast. When it was over I was left with a void unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. I was convinced all I had to do was sit in a dark corner and wait until Banshee or Game of Thrones started up. I’ve recently started to consider the Golden Age of television is trailing off. The majority of the greats have ended (most badly) and even with the emergence of things such as Mr. Robot, Jessica Jones, and Fargo the last couple years, it seems the superiority of the small screen is getting slightly less noticeable. HBO doesn’t even have a drama on right now – what the fuck is that? And then somebody released the pilot episode of Billions early and some of my faith was restored. Welcome to my new shit.
There was no doubt I was watching this show regardless of it’s hype. I love Paul Giamatti with a passion. Whether he’s playing Pig Vomit in PRIVATE PARTS or voicing a fat snail in TURBO, I will watch. What I didn’t realize was how familiar the rest of the cast will be. To put it plainly, they’ve seemed to recruit an all star cast of People Who Have Died Horribly on Other Shows I Watched. It’s brilliant. Let me break it down for you.
Brody, himself, Damien Lewis is the main rival for Giamatti and their back and forth is going to be legendary. This is a charismatic Brody. A cock-sucking douchebag Brody with more than enough money to be the world’s biggest asshole. Lets face it, he’s always going to be Brody so just deal with it.
“Fucking Tara is in this?” My exact words when she showed up. And she’s pretty un-Tara, if that’s a thing. It is, shut up. Maggie Siff drops the glum mystery she brought to SOA and fits perfectly as a go-between voice of reason here. She’s banging one (maybe both), is a successful and strong personality, and actually says more than 1-2 sentences in a row. Who knew?
By the time Gale (David Costabile) shows up I was starting to giggle. Did everyone have their characters killed off to be a part of this show? Does this show take place in TV Heaven? Am I drunk again? Yes, to all of this.
Okay, my gathering of other TV characters theory is gone to shit. Dale (Jeffery DeMunn) was eaten by a zombie on The Walking Dead. So, even if this was weird TV Heaven, Dale would be a zombie. Imagine if he’s actually a zombie on this show? Here he is giving procedural law advice while secretly waiting to eat your face. I just made this show even better than it is.
Now they’re going deep and getting personal. Tim (Terry Kinney), from Oz is in this fucking show too? Has someone been watching over my shoulder for the past 15 years and just picking random awesome characters from shows that I obsessed with at one point or another? Yes, they have. This is a fact I’ve convinced myself of over a couple shots of chocolate vodka and eleven beers.
The creepy glasses guy from Daredevil too? C’mon, man. There’s nobody on this show I can’t link to some other great show I once watched religiously. Call it Six Degrees of Law’s Work Playlist. Call it that!
Anyway, before I burst a head vein, you put all these throwbacks together and add people like Malin Ackerman and I’m more than interested. Like I said before…. Welcome to my new shit. It’s the same as the old shits.
A lot of us film fans tend to have accompanying film collections, and for those of us who still have ties to physical media have, at one point or another, grappled with the famous Criterion Collection. Criterion, for those not in the know, is a sort of international badge of honor for film geeks. Wikipedia defines them as “an American video-distribution company which specializes in licensing “important classic and contemporary films” and selling them to film aficionados.” I will say that the company is successful as for the past ten years their existence has been a cornerstone of my film-watching career (?), although as I get older I find a lot of what is in the Criterion Collection to be highly suspect, with no rhyme or reason to what gets added and what does not. It almost seems as if, on a certain level, Criterion is for astute film snobs who worship the brand rather than the consistency, or in my opinion lack thereof, of the content. For those of you who hate Apple, Criterion is the Apple of the movie world.
So what, exactly, makes a film worthy of consideration in the Criterion Collection? That’s not an easy question to answer. You could, for instance, argue that the social importance of a film is a big factor, and in this situation you’d reference a bevy of releases like The Passion of the Christ, Tootsie or Quadrophenia. There are films on the list that have particularly innovative technical achievements, like Stagecoach’s inclusion due to the fantastic stunt-work in the film (for the time, of course). There are the more controversial picks, like the infamous Salo: or the 120 Days of Sodom, My Winnipeg or Heaven’s Gate. While these categories seem to be well defined, there’s a lot in the collection that’s just plain strange. The work that Criterion and Janus Films has done in the past restoring films that have been thought to be long gone is extraordinary, oftentimes restoring these movies back to their former glory (see The Third Man as a fantastic example of this).
As a former collector, I used to bow the altar of Criterion and assume, very wrongly, that if it’s in the collection it must be worth seeing/owning. That was, overall, almost never the case for me. I remember owning movies like WR: Mysteries of the Organism and not knowing or understand why the fuck it exists. It all speaks to this odd, elitist film critic society that goes against what most people enjoy in movies. The list itself is utter chaos, with Fellini’s Amarcord sharing shelf-space with Armageddon. Those two films couldn’t be more diametrically opposed, yet why are they both part of this collector’s…well, collection?
While this seems like nitpicking something that I don’t even really need to pay attention to, I think it bears awareness to like-minded film-geeks like myself. Had I known early on that Criterion was no more than a gimmick I would have ignored it more thoroughly. Few films in the series were movies I ended up enjoying, and of the 500+ entries in the oeuvre I would say I liked less than 5% of what I saw. That’s a staggering statistic and one that doesn’t seem to be getting any better. Moreso though, the Criterion collection represents some of the most expensive DVDs and Blu Rays on the market, so to someone looking for a nice reference as to what any true geek should watch this collection is a little manipulative and misguided.
If you were to ask me for a few films to add to their library, especially considering the past year’s films, I would immediately say that both Bone Tomahawk and What We Do In The Shadows deserve spots in the collection. I responded differently to each film but I would argue that Shadows was one of the more unique comedies of the past decade and Tomahawk was insatiably brutal, going to levels of violence I’ve only seen in other Criterion releases. In other words, these two films represent their genres in new and unique ways, a STAPLE of what the collection is supposed to stand for. Yet despite these details one of the future releases is the Greta Gerwig Mumblecore vehicle Frances Ha, a pretty mundane melodrama about a woman living her life…and a film that looks much like over half of the Criterion catalog. Wes Anderson, a director that I love, gets a Criterion release almost automatically no matter what film he ultimately releases. What is the common thread here, and why doesn’t it seem to consider ALL types of films instead of this very small sample size? Maybe it is just me but it seems as though, like everything else in this world, there’s an obnoxious corporate influence in a place where none is needed. My advice to anyone just starting out down this path of film-geekery is to not take any one source as the divine last word of the Movie Gods and remember to branch out from time to time.
On a personal note I wanted to take a moment to give a quick “State of Jack Attack Tuesday” address to you, the readers/Bingers (gross). You may have noticed the articles have slowed down and become a bit more sporadic. While the prospect of a weekly blog was noble, and something I maintained without missing a week for over a full year, it does become daunting and repetitive to just come on and tell you all that “This week I watched ____ and I read _____ and blah blah blah…”. To keep things fresh I’m going with a slightly different format from here on out. That format is this: when I think of something worth writing, I’m going to write it and you’ll be the first to know. A little more volatile for certain, but something I’m choosing to do to keep the content worthwhile in the long-run. Thanks for reading, Happy New Year and, as always, Binge On!