My Blog’s July 2016 Recap

Happy August, everyone! August? When did that happen?! Well, it’s a new month so here’s my blog recap for July. 🙂

POSTS

My Most Popular Post: My Ten Most Hated Movies Since Starting This Blog. I think this proves that people love a good bitchfest! I was starting to wonder if anyone looked at this blog anymore when I decided to put this post together on a day when I was in a really bad mood. I got loads of comments! I loved hearing from people who agreed with some of the movies I absolutely hated but also from many who disagreed as well (my hatred of Mary And Max & of Slumdog Millionaire was especially unpopular).

My Favorite Post: My Top Ten DJs/Disc Jockeys In Movies. This was a fun list to put together & one I’d been meaning to do for ages. I still love that, while researching this list, I discovered that a cartoon Skrillex was in Wreck-It Ralph.

MOVIES REVIEWED

My Most Popular Movie Review: Circle. This movie was a very pleasant surprise. This is the type of movie I love to blog about – good films that not many people have seen or maybe not even heard of & which deserve more attention. I think I talked a few people into watching it. Oh, and one of the lead actors also stopped by & left a comment so that was cool. I love when that happens! Glad that didn’t happen on my “Most Hated Movies” post…

All Movies Reviewed (ranked best to worst):
Battle Royale
Circle
People Like Us
The Secret Life Of Pets
We’re The Millers
Red Dawn (2012)

MOVIES WATCHED

In Cinema (ranked best to worst):
Finding Dory
The Secret Life Of Pets

At Home (ranked best to worst):
Battle Royale
Circle
Little Witch Academia
The Book Thief
Deathgasm
The Visit
Paper Towns
Finders Keepers (2014)

TOP TEN LISTS

– Top Ten Tom Hanks Movies
– Top Ten Harry Dean Stanton Movies
– Ten Most Hated Movies Since Starting This Blog
– Top Ten DJs/Disc Jockeys In Movies
– Top Ten Kevin Spacey Movies

SEARCH TERMS

My Top Search Term: “gnome project x“. But spelled as “gnom” – how annoying. Well, variations of this search term pop up all the time. The “gnome giving the finger” in the movie Project X seems to be very popular!!

My Favorite Search Term: “jennifer balgobin weird science“. I like search terms for people I’ve never heard of. I had to look up Jennifer Balgobin. Turns out she was “Biker Chick” in Weird Science (which I reviewed HERE). Cool.

Here are my top search terms for the month:

BOOKS

Book Reviewed: Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill

Book I’ve Just Finished: The End Of The World Running Club by Adrian J. Walker

Book I’m Currently Reading: Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King

BLOG PLANS FOR THE COMING MONTH

I’ve been taking it easier & not posting as many reviews plus I’m doing simple Top Ten & Music Video posts as these don’t take up much of my time. I’m going to stick with doing things this way for now as I can keep up with the slower pace. It’s no longer a fun hobby if it becomes stressful! I was happy that I finally managed to watch Battle Royale for my July Blind Spot film as I really enjoyed that. I’ll watch my August Blind Spot film soon – what do you guys think of these choices? It was going to be El Topo but I keep putting that one off so may go with one of my alternates instead:

El Topo
Akira
Zodiac
The Raid
Running On Empty
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
House (Hausu) (1977)
Tetsuo
Solaris (1972)

Upcoming Movies:

There are quite a few movies coming out in August that I’m hoping to see. I wasn’t all that excited about Suicide Squad but I’m changing my mind now (mainly because that below poster for it is so awesome). I’m sure none of these will be great but I’m looking forward to The Shallows, Lights Out & The Purge: Election Year (I seem to be in the minority but I’m a fan of the first two Purge movies – you can see why in my reviews of the first movie & the sequel). It looks like the adaptation of Stephen King’s Cell is finally coming out this month?! I expect that to be horrible because of all the problems & delays that movie has had. What a shame as I really liked that book. I’ll still watch the movie, though, since I watch every King adaptation. Finally, I’m curious to see how the Pete’s Dragon remake turns out so I plan to take the kid to that. Remakes piss me off but this is one rare occasion where I have to admit that the original film is badly dated (even though I love it).

I always end these with a music clip related to something I watched/reviewed. Well, there weren’t any great soundtracks in the movies I watched this month so here’s a tribute to the Project X gnome! I didn’t like the movie but did like some of the songs in that film. My favorite was probably Pursuit Of Happiness by Kid Cudi (Steve Aoki remix).

My Ten Most-Hated Movies Since Starting This Blog

Since starting this blog at the end of November 2012, I’ve watched a lot of fantastic movies. This is partly because 1) I think I make more of an effort to watch good or, at least, “interesting” movies since I’m now writing about them and 2) projects such as my IMDB Top 250 Challenge have forced me to finally get around to watching some highly regarded classics. I’ve also been enjoying my 2016 Blind Spot choices so far so I’ll probably keep that going each year for however long this blog continues.

But it’s not all been good! I’ve also watched far more crap than ever before. My husband is partly to blame for this as he’s always like “Don’t watch so and so good movie without me!” but then he never actually watches any movies with me at home & I’m stuck watching something shitty by myself so he doesn’t moan at me watching something good without him. Marriage. Gotta love it. October is also to blame as I feel the need to review horror movies all month long so I end up watching whatever horrors happen to be on the services available to me & they end up being shit 90% of the time.

Anyway, as I’m in a bad mood & have nothing else ready to post for today, I thought I’d do a list of the ten movies I’ve hated the most of all the ones I’ve watched for the very first time in these last four years of “blog life”. Speaking of blogdom, I’m down on that lately too. Is it just me? I think the blog thing is dying off. Sad. Oh well – I’m still gonna shoot the shit about movies here for a little while longer, even if I’m only talking to myself. 😉

Oh, I should add that I’m excluding the movies I watched for Eric’s (in)famous Shitfest at The IPC as the whole point of Shitfest is to watch the worst movies possible. Clearly, these movies were worse than most on my following list. So here’s a quick list of links to my Shitfest reviews. I don’t hold you responsible for making me watch these atrocities, Eric! Well, maybe a little. 😉

– The Hottie & The Nottie
– Children Of The Living Dead
– Moshi Monsters: The Movie
– Crystal Fairy & The Magical Cactus
– Alone In The Dark (as part of a Shitfest Social where a bunch of us bloggers watched this movie at the same time while trashing it in the comments at that link. Good times! I miss those days.) 🙂

So, now, here are the Ten Movies I’ve HATED THE MOST!!!! (counting down to the very worst):

10. Blue Ruin

9. The To Do List

8. Trance

7. Oz The Great And Powerful

6. Slumdog Millionaire

5. Mary And Max

4. Into The Woods

3. The Victim

2. Repo! The Genetic Opera

1. Love

Wow – have I really reviewed every single one of these movies other than Love?? Clearly I take the time for reviewing movies when they piss me off. HA! I do love to have a good bitchfest sometimes. Wait until I go to town on Love! I hated the FUCK out of that one (and there was lots of fucking to be hated).

(Dis)Honorable Mentions:
ATM
Red Dawn (2012)
Used Cars
The Boxtrolls
Mr. Peabody & Sherman
Lockout
Factotum

IMDB Top 250 Challenge – Movie #15 – Slumdog Millionaire

Slumdog Millionaire (2008) – IMDB Rank #194

Watched 28/4/13 as part of my IMDB Top 250 Challenge.

Directed by Danny Boyle & Loveleen Tandan

Starring:
Dev Patel
Freida Pinto
Madhur Mittal
Anil Kapoor
Irrfan Khan
Mahesh Manjrekar
Tanay Chheda
Tanvi Ganesh Lonkar
Ashutosh Lobo Gajiwala
Ayush Mahesh Khedekar
Rubina Ali
Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail

Plot Synopsis (courtesy of IMDB):

A Mumbai teen who grew up in the slums, becomes a contestant on the Indian version of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” He is arrested under suspicion of cheating, and while being interrogated, events from his life history are shown which explain why he knows the answers.

I’ll add that this takes place when he’s answered all but the final question. They never expected him to get that far so they interrogate him before he’s able to go back & finish the show. We’re shown his life in a series of flashbacks as they go over each question he’s answered so far & he explains exactly why he knew the answer to each of them.

My Opinion:

Urgh. Okay. I’ve been putting off reviewing this. There are obviously people who love this film. It won 8 Oscars including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. AND it’s in the IMDB Top 250 films, which I see as more “real world” and more representative of what people actually like. Well, I think the IMDB voters were swayed by all those Oscars and have given this film a far higher rating than it deserves. Yet another current film in the Top 250 simply because it’s current and lots of people have voted for it.

I posted a little while ago that I’d watched this and didn’t really like it and then waited for the backlash. Turns out I’m not alone in feeling this way about the movie. The main thing people kept saying was “overrated” and, although I think that word sometimes gets used too often when talking about movies, it really is the accurate word to use for this one. I don’t want to start trashing this movie TOO much – it’s not horribly bad, just average. So I’ll divide it up into the Good & the Not-So-Good like I did with Iron Man 3 (also average – Sorry! But at last I enjoyed that one far more than I did Slumdog).

The Good:

– The main character – Jamal. He’s fine. Thank god for that at least – it would have been unwatchable otherwise. I didn’t feel that he was as fully fleshed out as he could have been & I didn’t feel TOO strongly about his character & what would happen to him but I think that was the fault of the script, not the actor. I bought into him a bit more as a young boy than when he’s grown up but I think that’s because the majority of the scenes where he’s older are when he’s on the game show or when he’s being questioned about cheating.

– The love story between Jamal & Latika. Although, I have to say, I found it totally unbelievable it was still sweet and you do find yourself rooting for the guy at the end & wanting him to get the girl.

– The concept. It’s an excellent idea for a story! I know it’s based on a book so I looked it up & read a bit about it. Looks like they changed A LOT. It’s really just the overall concept that’s stayed the same but, again, it’s a REALLY GOOD concept. Which is why it was all the more disappointing that the movie was so weak! How did they make an exciting story so boring? I’ll go into that more in “The Not-So-Good” below.

– The final 20 minutes. It DOES finally get fairly exciting at the end.

The Not-So-Good:

– The shit-covered kid. Jamal jumps down into a huge pile of shit after his brother has locked him in an outhouse & it’s his only way of getting out. This is in order to get some big famous actor’s autograph who happens to show up right at that moment. This actor is the answer to one of the first questions Jamal later answers on the show. I obviously won’t give away any of the other questions but I had to mention that one as it’s SO ridiculously stupid. What is it with Danny Boyle & excrement? Honestly. You know I tried to watch this movie about a year ago? I didn’t make it past that bit the first time around.

– Jamal’s brother – Salim. He starts out as your typical prick of a brother when they’re young & then turns into some pathetic & totally unbelievable version of Tony Montana.

– Poorly developed characters. Aside from Jamal (who actually isn’t very well-developed either), we really don’t get to know anyone. WHY is his brother a prick? They have a horrible life growing up – all they have is each other so why wouldn’t he treat Jamal better? Latika is slightly more believable as a young girl than when she grows up to be absolutely stunning – I felt they REALLY wasted her character. We know nothing about her! She becomes nothing more than a pretty face for Jamal to want to win a game show for. But you still want things to work out for them as they’re the ONLY likeable characters in a film filled with hateful people. Oh, the game show host – PRICK! And the gangsters… Oh yes, there are bad guys in this. Gangsters. But, like, really shit gangsters – not Scorsese gangsters. Yeah. Honestly – the “baddies” in this were so unbelievable. I didn’t understand their motives or why they even needed to be in the movie AT ALL other than to add a bit of excitement I guess? So unnecessary – the story itself is exciting enough without having to add all the lame one-dimensional bad guys.

– The way they took an excellent & exciting concept and managed to make a boring movie. Seriously – How did they make an exciting story so boring? I think one problem is that they made it too unbelievable. Surely the audience (film audience) is meant to be convinced by Jamal’s story of “why” he knew each of the answers. Some of it was just too far fetched, though. And I expected the “feel good” film that was promised. I expected a moving drama. I didn’t expect to keep looking at my watch up until the final 20 minutes when it finally gets exciting. (Okay – I don’t wear a watch. Does anyone wear a watch anymore?).

Summary: Slumdog Millionaire takes an excellent concept & manages to make a totally unbelievable & shallow film with two underdeveloped main characters that you only slightly care about. The rest of the characters are very one-dimensional, especially the “baddies” who felt totally unnecessary. This supposed “feel good film” just left me cold. And I obviously won’t give away the ending (if you still want to see it?) but if you’ve seen it you’ll know what I mean when I say: And now what? Honestly, what is going to happen AFTER how this film ends? Luckily I don’t care!

But you probably shouldn’t listen to me – Slumdog Millionaire won 8 Oscars. Including Best Picture. Yeah.

My Rating: 5/10

Looks sweet, doesn’t he? A wide-eyed dreamer? He’s taking a shit.

And I thought my review for Danny Boyle’s Trance was a bit harsh… Turns out I enjoyed it more than this one. But I never want to see a kid covered in shit OR Rosario Dawson’s vagina ever again. 😉

I’ve also now watched another IMDB Top 250 film & I’m happy to report it’s MUCH better – Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious.

IMDB Top 250 Challenge – Slumdog Millionaire

Well, another one to cross off the list for my IMDB Top 250 Challenge. And I think I can safely say it’s my least favorite one of those that I’ve watched so far since starting this in January. Another current film that has ended up in the Top 250 simply because it’s current & lots of people have voted for it at IMDB. What’s worse, though, is that this was actually a Best Picture winner?! (Ohhh… Am I going to be in trouble for saying this?). 🙂

I’ll try to review this over the next few days. It won’t be a glowing review but I sometimes change my mind a little after thinking things over for a few days, which is why I try to never review movies right away.

I’ll try to be nicer than I was when I reviewed Trance. Honestly, at this point I think I enjoyed Trance a bit more. What’s going on Danny Boyle? Trainspotting & 28 Days Later are great. I think I’m not too bothered about still not having seen 127 Hours now…

Initial Rating: 6/10 (we’ll see if I change my mind over the next few days).

Am I alone in feeling this way about this movie?