Not being a guy who is really into the disaster film genre anymore (I turned off movies like The Day After Tomorrow and 2012 before I was even a third of the way in), I was more than tentative to give San Andreas a chance. It’s a genre that once held great interest to me in my younger days. I enjoyed movies like Independence Day, Deep Impact, Cloverfield while absolutely loving Titanic (my favorite movie of 1997), The Impossible (my favorite movie of 1992), World War Z (my second favorite movie of 2013), I Am Legend (my second favorite movie of 2007), War of the Worlds, The Perfect Storm and, shamefully, Armageddon. But for every success like Deep Impact or Poseidon, there seem to be films like Twister or The Core that set the disaster genre back. So, honestly, when I see a preview for a new disaster movie, my first instinct is to believe that it will be absolutely terrible. If it’s got somewhat of a science-fiction element (like World War Z) or if it is based on a true story (The Impossible) AND it does well with the critics, it gets more of a benefit of the doubt. If it has neither of those things, it most likely will not. I thought of the latter when I saw the first series of trailers for director Brad Peyton (Journey 2: The Mysterious Island) San Andreas.
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Category Archives: 2015
Escobar: Paradise Lost (2015)
I cannot help comparing Escobar: Paradise Lost to Leonardo DiCaprio’s The Beach. There were quite a few similarities and also quite a few differences. I’ll start with the differences first. Except for The Man in the Iron Mask (which wasn’t promoted as a blockbuster), The Beach was DiCaprio’s first marketed movie since Titanic. It had a massive promotional campaign and was expected to vault DiCaprio even further as Hollywood’s next leading man. I had huge hopes for The Beach and kind of liked it. Unfortunately, the movie got panned by audiences and critics alike. But before I get pounced on for enjoying it, please note that I saw this movie when I was about 24 years old. That is my defense. I cannot defend the actions where I have watched the movie about three times since then. But I like the idea of a paradise that’s too good to be true and a lead character who is suddenly so far over his head, he has no means of getting out. This was a similarity to the much less marketed Escobar: Paradise Lost, a movie that received mixed reviews but, for the most part, had as many people who didn’t like the film as it had people who liked it.
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Sleeping With Other People (2015)
Sleeping With Other People was the fifth movie that I saw over 48 hours. The others were The Finest Hours, Anomalisa, 45 Years, and Love & Mercy. While The Finest Hours was entertaining and was an excellent movie to see on the big screen in 3D, the only movie of the five that I enjoyed was Love & Mercy. As much as I disliked most of Anomalisa and 45 Years, the worst of the five movies was Sleeping With Other People. I am a big of Jason Sudeikis (We’re the Millers, Hall Pass). I liked him a lot on Saturday Night Live and thought that he had a fantastic start to his movie career, and sometimes he can make you laugh out loud with his humor. I think, at least for now, he needs to stick to strictly doing “funny” comedies. Sleeping With Other People was a comedy that was not funny and played like a dramedy more than any of the other movies of Sudeikis that I am familiar with. Likewise, this has also been classified as a romance, which I find to be sad and a discredit to the genre as a whole. I kind of hated the premise of this movie and felt that it was tough for me to relate to, either on a personal level or how I observe those close to me. Perhaps this is the lifestyle for many people, but I don’t see it in my life. I didn’t know if I was supposed to take this movie seriously or if this was just supposed to be a fun 90 minutes. In either case, it failed. I neither enjoyed myself nor even laughed one time.
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Anomalisa (2015)
This post is a first. It is my first ever post on an animated movie. After 260+ posts, I had actually to add an animation category under my genres. I have repeatedly said that I wouldn’t review animated films or documentaries (heck, sometimes I don’t know what I can even offer when I review a horror film or a comedy). Still, Charlie Kaufman’s (Synecdoche, New York, screenwriter for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) Anomalisa is not your traditional Pixar or Dreamworks animation. And this isn’t really animation. It’s a stop-motion animation, which is entirely different? Well, it is, and it isn’t, I guess. I don’t watch the F/X show Archer or anything on Adult Swim, so I don’t have much of a comparison (if any at all), but Anomalisa was the most adult-oriented animation that I’ve ever seen. It wasn’t adult-oriented in the X-rated sense. I wouldn’t say that there was anything obscene in this movie. It’s just that the themes were very adult-oriented in nature, and you wouldn’t want to be next to a kid while watching this film. Heck, I’m not sure you’d want to be next to anyone during this film. I would not say that I didn’t like this movie. I did expect to like it much more than I did as I kept hearing great things about it. But the two prevailing thoughts that I had while seeing this film were 1) I wanted to like it more than I really did and 2) It was really uncomfortable to watch at times. It is really difficult to recommend this movie.
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The Big Short (2015)
Completely flying under the radar in an otherwise crowded December release schedule (Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, Concussion, Joy, The Hateful Eight, The Revenant) is Adam McKay’s (Step Brothers, The Other Guys) The Big Short, a movie that is neither short on star power or storytelling. While most will find this movie riveting, it will, unfortunately, hit a little too close to home for many viewers. This movie, while at times challenging to understand, will leave you dumbfounded that what happened actually happened not in some far-off land in a time long ago, but right here in our own backyard just a few years ago. I promise not to explain this movie and then talk about some of the pros and cons. I will do my absolute best not to provide spoilers in this review.
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