Saturday, December 20, 2014

What's the Movie From This Year That You Wish You Loved?

It's like it says on Mike's Rolling Stones t-shirt: you can't always get what you want.

2014 has been a very good year for movies, but that doesn't mean we haven't been disappointed from time to time. There are movies for which we had our hopes up that let us down; there are movies that seem to have captured the cultural zeitgeist but which leave us a little cold. What was that movie for you this year? Without shitting on something that someone else might love, is there a movie you wish you had connected with better?

34 comments:

  1. Ok so I got a few to add on here along with some brief comments

    1. Sabotage- (Pic Above)- I had high hopes for this one with Arnold doing a darker character and having a cool SWAT team to back him up. Unfortunately the crew is so unlikeable I just cant get behind the movie and I truly think Arnolds trying here.

    2. The Monuments Men- George Clooney plays a real life Indiana Jones and brings together the Museum expendables to save European treasures and its heart is so in the right place. Unfortunately the pacing is very slow along with characters being underdeveloped. In its defense it has a few very nice moments (Christmas gift for one) but they are too few and it might be my biggest heartbreaker of the year.

    3. Need for Speed- Aaron Paul in what I believe is his first starring role in a major film (off his Breaking Bad success) with lots of car chase scenes filmed practically. Unfortunately that doesnt always mean its going to be any good and it wasn't. Unlike Michael Keaton my inbox wasnt white hot after this.

    4. The Expendables 3- So much CGI and people who arent action heroes, just ugh.

    5. Interstellar- See F this movie podcast

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    1. Sabotage is not a good movie, but I feel like I would have loved it if it came out in 1984 and starred Charles Bronson in the Schwarzenegger role (also, my phone just tried to autocorrect "Schwarzenegger" to "schwanz" so at least I know I'm living life right). Between Sabotage and Escape Plan Arnie has given a couple of legitimately good, layered performances...I just wish either of them had been in the service of a decent movie.

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  2. Oh it's totally Sabotage. Check out the alternate ending though. Shockingly, it could have been much, much worse!

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  3. I mentioned it yesterday, but it's The Lego Movie. Everybody and their mother loved that movie, it seemed, and I found it amusing with a respectable message, but I still apparently didn't see quite the same movie that everyone else did.

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    1. Totally agree. I thought I was going to love that movie, but it just did not connect with me. I did not hate it; I just wasn't singing its praises. I think I let me self go into it with so much expectations due to others reviews, which I should never do with a movie.

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    2. Right on. It was the same for me. My expectations were SO high that the movie could not possibly have met them. Maybe upon a rewatch with a better idea of what to expect, I will appreciate the movie more for what it is.

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  4. Birdman. It's a movie I really, really like but just don't connect with the way I want to. It feels like something I'd probably have loved when I was in college, but now it leaves me somewhat cold. I find myself paying too much attention to the technique rather than allowing myself to get lost in the movie. I honestly don't know if the blame for that belongs to the movie or to me. Probably a little from column A, a little from column B.

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    1. Agreed. I also appreciated a lot of the performances and believe Edward Norton will probably win an Academy Award, but a connection with the story just didn't happen for me.

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  5. Here's a few if mine

    Under The Skin and Enemy
    I have a really hard time getting into these types of movies and I really really want to because they're so interesting and different than anything else that's being made. It just makes me feel really dumb when I end a movie and I'm like okay well that could have been anything, what am I supposed to take away here? Then I go online and read theories and I go oh wow that's a really interesting theory and that makes me look at stuff a different way but why didn't I come away with that? Why did these people "get it" and I didn't? Even though there was almost no way for me to come away with that anyway.

    Under The Skin worked better for me i loved the first chunk with the creepy atmosphere and music and it's one of the most beautiful looking movies I've ever seen in my life. The slowness ended up getting to me in the 2nd half but it's one that Id like to revisit and see if I can come away with something new. I love that these movies exist I just wish they didn't leave me so far behind and that I didn't feel a director behind the camera twirling their thumbs going "I know what all of this means, but what do you think it means?"

    Tusk
    Very disappointed, an unappealing mix of humor and horror for me.

    Sabotage
    Huge mess with a scrambled plot and characters that really irritated me. Big missed opportunity

    Amazing Spider-Man 2
    Way too many things going on and not enough focus on telling a good story

    Godzilla-
    I wish someone would've worked on the script more and that there was an actual plot with characters I cared about because once Godzilla shows up it really kicks ass.

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    2. Enemy and Under the Skin are in my top 10 of the year! Totally understand your thoughts though.

      I'm right there with you with Tusk. That one, Horns and The Babadook are probably my three that I really wish I liked.

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    3. I'm going to see babadook tonight I'm hoping I love it

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    4. Awesome, I think you will like it. I definitely should have loved it but there were too many variables in play of the particular day that I saw it that made me "ho hum" about it. I'll revisit it in 2015 for SMM,

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    5. What did you think of Babadook, TravisL?

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    6. I actually got really sick and didnt go so I ended up staying home and watching another horror movie from that part of the world, Housebound, which was excellent and a lot of fun.

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    7. Housebound is in my top 10 of the year as well! Get feeling better man.

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  6. I'd have to say Cold in July. I thought the movie had so much potential. It was a good fast-paced thriller until Don Johnson appeared on screen. Everything just went against what had preceded his appearance though. The story, other characters. Ended up hating the second half and loving the first. So disappointed.

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    1. The Don Johnson stuff was my favorite in the movie! Not necessarily plot-wise, but because I enjoyed his performance so much.

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    2. I also love DJ in the movie. It was such an interesting group that formed in that movie I wanted to see other adventures with them going out and saving babies and shit.

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  7. Boyhood. Everybody I knew loved it, but the last third of the film, which was incredibly tedious and slow to me, really paled in comparison to the first two thirds, which were lively and engaging.

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    1. Agreed. I was disappointed also by how flat and conventional some of the dialogue was particularly considering it came from Linklater.

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  8. I hate to say it, but it's Nightcrawler for me. I really respected the movie in almost every way, and when I first saw it I thought it might end up in my top ten. The more I thought about it though, the more problems I had. The biggest one was that I thought the two main characters (Gyllenhaal and Russo) stepped past the line of believability. Russo's character would have been alright by herself, but Gyllenhaal's was SPOILER....completely insane, almost a robot with faulty circuitry. It took away from the film's message and took me out of it. I don't need characters to be sympathetic, but I at least like to understand them. I thought the performances were amazing, the script was really good, and it was shot really well. I just couldn't suspend my disbelief that people like this would ever exist. In the spirit of this article, though, it's a movie I really want to love and I totally understand why everyone else does. It just didn't work for me.

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  9. Really wanted to like Under the Skin. Really didn't. It sure has all the trappings of a movie that I'd really like, but for whatever reason it didn't gel. In fact, you could say that I hated it. I'm hoping that if I see it again in a few years I'll like it more, that's happened before but I doubt I'll ever come around to loving it.

    I wish I liked it, unlike something like Godzilla, which I was really looking forward to but was completely disappointed by, UTS has a lot of things I usually like. Whenever someone tells me why they liked it, I really have no counterpoints besides "Yeah, I just didn't like it." I wish I could be more objective than that, but I really can't.

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  10. *nightcrawler* fo-shizzle… the soundtrack absolutely destroyed that movie! it felt like james newton howard had leftover tunes from his rom-com work and just shoe-horned them in. dissapointing, james newton howard, dis.a.pointing.

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    1. Did you notice how uplifting and inspirational the score was when there was some really dark shit going on in the movie? Seemed like a directorial choice to give a messed up character a sappy theme because he's actually succeeding at what he's trying to do even though the things he's doing are awful.

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    2. i considered that, but even if so, it failed at conveying it in a musically articulate manner (in my opinion). i really thought nightcrawler could have been amazing if it pushed those boundaries more, but jake g seemed to be the only one taking any real risks...

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    1. Bump. Nice pull. I totally forgot about that movie and that says it all.

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    2. Another vote here. I really wanted to love this film. I had high hopes and wanted more of David Thwelis like the performance he gave in Mike Leighs Naked. It was a big let down for me

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  12. Godzilla for me. I remember really liking Monsters when I saw it years ago, so I was excited to see what Gareth Edwards was going to do with this movie. I thought it had some amazing shots and imagery and a pretty talented cast, it just did not hit it out of the park for me. With that said, I am still looking forward to the 2nd one.

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  13. Amazing Spider-Man 2. I was really excited to see it, and came out of the theater seriously bummed out. I liked ASM even though it was flawed, but I hoped they would fix those problems going forward. *cue Kevin Spacey* WRONG! I think it bothers me so much because there are scenes and moments that, when viewed out of context, would make you think this would be the best Spider-Man movie ever made. But then there is everything else.

    Spider-Man is my second favorite comic book character, and they've had 5 attempts and as far as I'm concerned haven't made a fully satisfactory movie once. Yeah, you read that right.

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  14. 12 O'Clock Boys seemed like the kind of movie I should really respond to but it left me feeling underwhelmed. Ditto We Are the Best! to an even greater extent.

    As a martial arts fan I was disappointed by how much I hated The Raid 2. It's been in the number one slot for least favorite movie of the year since I saw it this summer. Will be surprised if anything topples it in the next week or so.

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