Jack Henry's Year in Film - Week 4
Man, has it really been a month already? It’s been quite the journey thus far and definitely not an easy one but it’s been good to be keeping routine and consistently writing. This week especially though has been a struggle to find watching and writing time so my film selection, as you will soon see, consists of a lot more “easy to watch” films.
I hope you enjoy:
WEEK 4
MONDAY (1/22) - Caddyshack - Harold Ramis
Caddyshack…what can I say? It’s less of a movie and more of an experience. Caddyshack hardly has a plot and is more of a slew of characters interacting with each other. You’ve got the Rodney Dangerfield vs Ted Knight story, the Chevy Chase vs wealthy boredom story, and most famously the Bill Murray vs the Gopher story. All these are sort of interconnected by Michael O’Keefe as he wanders around the golf course trying to figure out what he wants from life. My good friend Dillon works at a golf course so this is kind of what I imagine his day to day looks like. Now, Caddyshack is by no means a good movie, but it’s campy humor, bizarre zaniness, and incredible quotability garnered it as one of the most famous cult films of all time, so it’s got that goin’ for it, which is nice.
MY RATING: 6.5/10
TUESDAY (1/23) - Beauty and the Beast - Bill Condon
Man, I feel like I’m gonna get a lot of flack for this one because most everybody I talked to really liked this movie. Sorry guys, I was not a fan. Now, I spent a lot of my childhood watching and rewatching Disney movies basically every day and, along with Lion King and Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast was one of the ones I watched the most. That being said, I know that movie forwards and backwards and this to me felt like a bad almost shot-for-shot remake. This movie suffers from the same fate that a lot of other remakes do: unoriginality. Why remake a film if you’re going to do nothing new? Seriously, it felt like they took the original script and reworded some things and threw in some awkward quips that played on nostalgia. Now, there were a couple of new things they added and, though they were few and far between, I thought they were some of the stronger parts of the movie. I liked the side story with Belle’s mother and the character arc for Le Fou (I mean it’s hard to not like Josh Gad). And for the most part I really like the cast, I mean, Emma Watson, Kevin Kline, Josh Gad, Ewan McGregor, Stanley Tucci, Emma Thompson, and Ian McKellen, how do you go wrong with that? Overall, this movie had some charming moments, but I would only recommend the original which does a vastly superior job at telling this tale as old as time.
MY RATING: 4.5/10
WEDNESDAY (1/24) - Moonrise Kingdom - Wes Anderson
Now, while Wes Anderson has become the idol for the pseudo-Bohemian-film-intellectual, he’s always been kind of hit or miss for me. Now I am a big fan of The Royal Tenenbaums and Grand Budapest Hotel but some of his others, for some reason, don’t sit well with me. This is not the case with Moonrise Kingdom. Anderson’s style lends itself excellently to the simplicity and whimsical nostalgia of childhood adventure in this film. It’s a story about the innocence of love. Sam Shakusky, an abnormal Khaki Scout, and Suzy Bishop, a gloomy bookworm, start out as pen pals but decide to reunite and run away and live together in the wilderness. Obviously this poses a lot of problems for Suzy’s parents (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand), Sam’s scoutmaster (Edward Norton), and the local Chief of Police (Bruce Willis) who, as adults, don’t quite understand Sam and Suzy’s unorthodox relationship. While a little offbeat, it’s a fun and honest film about love and the sentimentality of childhood.
MY RATING: 8.5/10
THURSDAY (1/25) - Doctor Strange - Scott Derrickson
So, I’ll be honest, and a lot of my friends know this but, I’m not a huge fan of super hero movies. For some reason I don’t really connect with characters that are either super wealthy geniuses or god-like super-humans, but that’s just me. I mean, I really like the Nolan Batman films (I mean, who doesn’t) but that’s about it. But, I was pleasantly surprised by Doctor Strange which is weird because most people I know that saw it said it was pretty subpar. Now, the plot is pretty unoriginal and there are plenty of cringy gags and one-liners but I think it was the visual style that made it for me. Now, plot wise it had some similarities to Batman Begins but visually it felt akin to parts of Inception. I really enjoyed the strangeness and psychedelia of the magic and found all the fight scenes on the moving buildings through space and time to be quite enjoyable. To me this felt like a refreshing break from the Marvel template, similar to what Guardian’s of the Galaxy (which I liked) did, and I really did enjoy this one, but maybe it was because my expectations where so low to begin with.
MY RATING: 6.5/10
FRIDAY (1/26) - Ace Ventura: Pet Detective - Tom Shadyac
I can still remember walking into Blockbuster (remember those days?) and seeing the case for this movie and, in my young impressionable immaturity, thinking “NOW, THAT LOOKS FUNNY!” My mom undoubtedly said “Uh, no honey.” and we ended up picking something else (probably something like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids or Sandlot). Well, over a decade later I finally got my hands on this movie and, uh…it’s not really my thing. Now, I like Jim Carrey in his later more serious roles (i.e. The Truman Show, Man on the Moon, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) but his earlier comedy doesn’t really do it for me. I did kind of enjoy the noir spoof aspects of this film but the absurd slapstick insanity is not my cup of tea.
MY RATING - 3/10
As I will have to watch a little over 250 movies this year I would greatly appreciate some suggestions. Feel free to leave some in the comment section. Or if you want a recommendation don’t hesitate to ask.